How original

Ads are by far the most entertaining thing to watch on TV. Every once in a while, one comes along that is just so original, and so offbeat, it really grabs me. Here's the storyline...

Scene 1:

An old man, practically toothless, is sitting at the breakfast table enjoying his bowl of cereal. It looks like he's gumming the food. As he eats, we hear a doorbell in the background.

Scene 2:

The man makes his way to the door. Looking through the peephole, no-one is there. Then, as he continues to look, the unmistakable image of the grim reaper can be seen.

Scene 3:

This shot is from outside the house. It's a side view of the grim reaper waiting for the old man to open the door. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the handle of a hockey stick comes through the mailslot, hitting the grim reaper square in the nuts. He doubles over in obvious pain.

Scene 4:

Back in the house, we see the man returning to his breakfast.

Announcer:

As long as you keep living, we keep paying. (Fade out shows New York State Lottery "Win for Life" logo)

Raising Hell

If you look in my links section, you'll find Other Links that include a site called Raising Hell. I confess that I don't visit this link as often as I should (if I did, it would be in my Time Well Spent section). That's not to say it's not worth reading - only that I don't read it daily.

I visited the links in my Other Links section moments ago to verify that they were all functional (one had to be updated). In the process, I read some of the recent posts in Raising Hell. For those who haven't visited this site, it features a collection of humorous anecdotes on parenting. Since I have a neice and daughter who have recently become parents, I thought that featuring this long-time link in a post might persuade them to take a moment and be entertained.

Or not. It's not like they don't have better ways to spend their time!

My humble thanks

I was checking my sitemeter statistics today, and noticed that I had been visited by someone who was referred by a site I had never heard of. I visited the site and was surprised to see that there was a link to my blog! I say "surprised" because most visitors to my site come via google search, or perhaps from a comment I've left in someone else's blog.

I'd like to thank Lindsey, both for the link, and for a timely answer to my email. I'll keep an eye on her site to see whether it's one I'll be reading on a regular basis. Until then, I encourage you to visit yourself.

A new appreciation

I'm a Beatles fan. No, not the type that can recite the lyrics to every song they've ever done, or even recite the names of every album they've ever done. I just love their music. I love the fact that the lyrics are comprehensible (OK, there may be one or two exceptions, but you get the idea). And, for the most part, I can see meaning in almost every one of their songs.

But of all the songs they'd ever written, I'm probably guilty of giving short shrift to George Harrison. Sure, I enjoyed his contribution as a lyricist. "While my guitar gently weeps" is one of my favourite Beatle songs. However, with the likes of Lennon and McCartney, George just didn't get much respect. When he started recording on his own, I didn't listen much to his records, since I didn't relate well to the Eastern culture that made up the core of his music.

Now, he's released a new album. One of the songs (I have no idea what the title is) has a couple of lines that I have found mesmerizing...

If you don't know where you're going/Any road'll take you there

I see myself so clearly in those two lines. For years, I've wandered around emotionally, spiritually, and professionally. After all these years, I can't honestly say I've really gotten anywhere. And then I heard the lyrics to that song... Though I'm not sure yet how my life will change, I believe a change is imminent. When I figure out what it is, you'll be the last to know!

I survived Passover 2003

It ain't over til it's over. And now, it's over. Tonight, I dined on the finest Chicken McNuggets I've had in a long time (well, OK, since last Tuesday). Tomorrow, I go shopping for bread. My life is so exciting!

S.A.R.S. is closing in

I've just watched a TV news report that says that Cruise Lines in Seattle are turning away any resident of Toronto, to be sure that SARS doesn't make it on board. I can understand the paranoia. Yesterday, I overheard a conversation in my office. The cleaning lady was talking to her husband - remarking on how lucky it was that she had been too busy to attend the funeral of one of the people in her parish. It turned out that a doctor who attended the funeral was infected with SARS. Now, everyone who attended the church on the day of the funeral has been quarantined.

I'm a bit concerned, I must confess. The cleaning lady may (or may not) be in the same social circle as some of the people under quarantine. If they violate the quarantine order and socialize with the cleaning lady, how am I supposed to know? She's quite chummy, and always makes a point of greeting me as she enters the office. Yesterday, after she hung up the phone, I jokingly told her to stay away from me if there was any way she could be infected. I wonder how rude it would be for me to start showing up at the office with a surgical mask!

Passover - Day 6

I don't deserve to be treated so well. My sister, of bubelech fame, has raised her daughter to be a gracious hostess. Tonight's meal was fit for a king, and I did all I could to pack as much of it away as humanly possible. It's not like I made a pig of myself. I only had seconds on two courses... the salad and the stuffing. It wasn't until later, when I started counting up the courses - chicken soup with matzoh balls, salad, brocolli, chicken, stuffing, and potatos - that I realized just why my pants felt like they were splitting at the seams. I'd like to take credit for passing up on dessert, but truth is, there was no way I was going to be able to fit another mouthful of anything into me!

Nearly three hours after the meal, I'm finally feeling comfortable enough to entertain the notion of lying down to go to bed.

Thank you, Naomi, for a terrific meal!

And Ezra, whom I haven't seen since shortly after his birth in December, is really growing like a weed. I got to play with him for a good half hour before he was hustled off to bed. What a sweetie pie!

There's just two more days left to fend for myself. Judging by the amount of food in the fridge, I shouldn't have any problem!

Passover - Day 5

Passover is more than half over, and I still haven't felt food-deprived. Tomorrow, I have an invitation to dine at my neice's home. That leaves just Wednesday and Thursday to worry about. By Friday night, Passover will be over.

It was back to work today after the long weekend. I enjoyed being back, having become somewhat bored over the past few days. I was working on a new assignment today, and by tomorrow, I'll be finished and ready to move to something new. I've been enjoying the variety of chores on this job. It keeps me interested.

Today, I spoke with an air conditioner contractor who is bidding on doing the A/C at my home in Windsor. In a couple of weeks, the job should be complete, and I'll start giving some thought to putting pressure on my boss to get transfered back to Windsor. My wife is really excited about that prospect. So am I.

Passover in Toronto

I miss Windsor. I miss being with my wife and son, and seeing my grandchildren on a regular basis. If it wasn't for the fact that I get very sleepy driving through boring terrain (how many of you know how FLAT and straight the road is from Toronto to Windsor), I would travel to Windsor every weekend (it's only a 3.5 hour drive, one way). But every time I drive there (and back), I take my life into my hands. Last weekend, the drive back took six hours (including the nap I had to take along the way).

Anyway, this post is about Passover in Toronto. For those that don't know, Toronto is the hub of Jewish life in Canada. Next to New York, it is the most densely populated Jewish region outside of Israel. From the perspective of Passover, it means that grocery stores are well-stocked with Passover food. The quantity and variety are like nothing I have ever experienced. I am not an overly observant Jew. When being strictly Jewish becomes inconvenient (for example, if I have to go to Detroit or Toronto to buy kosher food), I cut corners. And when Easter and Passover exactly coincide (like they do this year), it's extremely inconvenient, seeing that my wife and her family celebrate Easter.

Well, in Toronto, there's no need to cut corners or be concerned with how my immediate family will cope with my inability to participate in the Easter meal. So, this year's Passover observance has been helped by an abundance of readily available food that I actually don't mind eating. And having observant family in the immediate vicinity doesn't hurt either. Last year in Windsor, my "treat of the season" was being invited to lunch at my sister's home. This year, I was invited to the home of my other sister, here in Toronto. She and I share a love of food (which would be obvious to anyone who took a look at our waistlines), and she prepared an absolutely marvelous "first Seder". So bountiful was the meal that "my portion" of the leftovers have already fueled the second and third nights, and I've still got enough for tonight. And on Tuesday night, I've been invited to Naomi's house (my neice) for dinner.

Next year, I hope to be back in Windsor for Passover, but this year, I'm glad I'm here.

Happy Holidays!

To all my family, friends, and occasional readers...

I wish you all the very best. May you celebrate the holiday season in peace and safety.




Jack

I think my computer is healthy again

I brought the computer back to Windsor with me, just in case I had to resort to purchasing a new computer or new drive or something silly. Instead, I got some good advice from one of the geeks working in a local computer store. They gave me a bootable Win98 diskette. Basically, they told me that if I could get the computer booted up in DOS, I would be able to go to the directory where the Windows Setup files are, and re-install Windows.

I tried that, and with some exceptions, it seems to have worked. The setup program seemed smart enough to realize that some of the programs were already installed (and were at a more up-to-date version than what was on the original installation files), and these were left alone. The only "lost" settings seem to be some registry settings and password files.

I have noticed a bug with Windows Update... since this program lost the registry settings that tell it what version of programs I am working with, it "thinks" I need some updates that I already have. That wouldn't be so bad; but when I try to apply the update (so it can refresh the list of program updates installed), it tells me that it has skipped the update (ostensibly because I don't need it), but it keeps telling me that I need to reboot my computer to continue with the updating procedure. After the third reboot, I figured that it didn't really know what was going on.

Except for that annoyance, and the fact that my firewall is again asking whether programs may be permitted to use the internet, I seem to have not lost anything.

And that's WITHOUT having to resort to restoring my programs from backup. I wonder if I should just leave well-enough alone?

How do you spell IDIOT

The spread of S.A.R.S. is growing daily. Here in Toronto, there is a larger number of cases than anywhere on earth excluding Hong Kong. On a per-capita basis, Toronto has had more cases, and more deaths than any other city, bar none. With over 200 confirmed cases, and 11 deaths, Toronto currently has a very dubious distinction. People in public places have taken to wearing surgical masks. I've seen masked citizens in grocery stores and movie theatres. I'm sure this trend is only starting. My own parents, calling from Phoenix, have suggested it might be prudent for me to begin wearing a mask myself.

But what really rankles me is the laissez-faire attitude of health care workers. They have done an excellent job of identifying the people at risk for S.A.R.S., and in all cases have imposed strict quarantine orders on them - but the quarantines are not supervised; they are voluntary. One quarantined person, restricted to his home for ten days, decided he missed being at work. Today, he went to the office. Now, I'm sure his boss was pretty amazed at his dedication, but sometimes, it's just better to follow doctor's orders. His disregard for quarantine regulations meant that the entire office staff (200 employees of Hewlett Packard) had become exposed to S.A.R.S. The health department has now ordered the entire office to shut down. All employees have been sent home and ordered not to leave their homes for ten days.

Instead of a mere 80 hours of lost productivity, HP will now be forced to swallow 16,000 man-hours of lost time. I guess there's one person who won't be receiving the Man of the Year Award any time soon!

Hmm. Yesterday didn't go exactly as planned. I did spend a great deal of my day working on the new assignment, but that was only after I spent the first three hours of the morning working on ... wait for it ... a dog and pony show. I guess there comes a time when a potential marketing opportunity makes management salivate, and I was pressed into service trying to create a demo that would impress some potential new client.

Now, had I been given more than a single hour's notice, I think I could have probably installed my software modules onto the laptop computer, and loaded it with some data required by the application. But one hour just wasn't enough, and I made that clear as soon as I was asked to help. I'm glad I did... since it would have led to great frustration when, at the end of the allotted time, we would have been no further ahead. Instead, I was instructed to set up a different piece of software. One that, under ideal conditions, could possibly be configured in a tight timeframe.

The laptop computer is set up with an operating system, database, and version of application software that is different from the ones typically used day-to-day in our development lab. There is no direct means of transfering information from one environment to another. However, after getting suggestions from a colleague, I was able to establish a roundabout means of exporting information from one environment in a format that could be imported into the other environment. The boss had to temporarily delay his departure from our office, but in the end, he left with a working laptop.

As for the work I thought I would be working on yesterday... I made good progress on that too, because I decided to stay and work some overtime last night. Consequently, I should still be in a position to finish that assignment today.

Come Friday, I'll be heading home for the weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing the family. It's been too long.

I can't wait to get to work today. When I first got in the door yesterday, there was general panic... a program I had written had been shipped to a client and had died immediately, even though that program had worked perfectly in our laboratory. Unfortunately, real life is never as simple as the controlled environment we face in the development lab. After a half hour of evaluation, we discovered the cause of the problem, and minutes later, the problem was history.

The client was happy, my boss was happy, I was happy. Then, the client started actually using the software and discovered that it didn't do what he wanted! Oh, it worked exactly as it had been designed (perfectly conforming to the design specification). Thing is, the specification was wrong. And the client was unhappy.

I spent most of the rest of the day on the phone, or in meetings. We wanted to ensure that we understood exactly what the client wanted before we tried to fix the problem. Since I was going to be implementing the solution, I was invited to join in the discussions. By 3:30 pm, I was pretty sure I understood what was required. By 4:00 pm, I had filed a plan of action, and by 5:00 pm, a completely revised solution was finished, tested, and ready for distribution.

Not every problem I encounter is fixed as quickly, but in this case, I had anticipated some level of problems from the beginning. Not having been involved in the original discussions with the client, I used a defensive programming strategy - one that minimizes "hard coding", and relies instead on "rules" that are built independently of the code. So, when the "rules" changed, I merely had to tweak them a little... no muss, no fuss. It's a method I've employed through most of my 30 years as a programmer, and it works most of the time.

There is a down side to this strategy. It doesn't lend itself well to "dog and pony show" presentations. Until the very end, this strategy does not yield visible results. There have been times when my boss will wander over to my desk and ask how things are going. After responding that things are going well, he'll ask to see a program in operation. It's hard to explain that the program will not function - that there's absolutely nothing to see. He has to take on faith that, behind the scenes, individual components are being built and tested, and that, when all the components are complete, the finished product can be assembled and configured in a matter of minutes. I think today's response to the crises is the first real proof he's had of the validity of my approach.

I've got to give him credit, though. He's quick to see the benefits and potential of this strategy. No longer a skeptic, he discussed this methodology with me, and asked how it could be used to design a new module that was requested yesterday by the client. It turns out that much of the work I've been doing for the past couple of weeks can be directly applied to this new request, and I believe I should be able to deliver a working solution by Wednesday. So like I said, I'm really looking forward to work today.

My sleep was rudely awakened by the CENTCOM briefing. As has been my habit since the war began, I go to sleep with the TV still on (to be truthful, I always go to sleep with the TV on, but I usually wake up during the night and turn it off. I haven't been turning it off since the war began). This morning, I seemed to be overly tired. All the electronic clocks around me showed 7:46 AM so I was a bit puzzled. Until I saw my watch. I really *hate* losing that hour when Daylight Saving Time kicks in.

I visited my SiteMeter stats lately, and noticed that a long-missing friend had dropped in on my blog. Following the link back, I saw that she's back online. Welcome back, Lee. Now, I can uncomment my link :)

I received a blog-worthy video from my sister today. I'll post it to my comic relief section as soon as I have FTP access to my website.

R.I.P.

My computer died. It's been four days, and yesterday, I finally got my old laptop out of storage just so I could read my mound of backlogged email. To be totally truthful, the computer didn't die. It was accidentally killed... by my stupidity. There are times when I am so exhausted, I should just leave the keyboard and go to bed. But no, instead, I try to fight through the fatigue. After all, I'm so close to the end of the work I've been doing for nearly a year, I can taste it.

The other night, I tried to install a new piece of software (work related). It didn't work the way I had hoped, so I tried to uninstall it. When it uninstalled, it seems to have taken part of a related piece of software with it. So now, not only did the new software not work, but it messed up something else. "No problem", I thought. I have "System Restore" on my system. I confidently went into the System Restore menu, only to find that there were no restore points on that date. So, I backed up into the previous month. On the last day of the month, there was a good restore point, and off I went.

To my horror, in the middle of the process, I noticed that the restore date was October 31st (not March 31st). Yikes!!! So, I do the stupidest thing I can think of... I pull the plug out of my PC. After the reboot, my computer came back to life, but it was really messed up. Nothing seemed to be working right. In fact, the only thing that seemed to work was Windows itself.

I'm very proud of the fact that I do twice-daily automated backups. I checked, and verified that I had a complete system backup that was only hours old. Thank GOD!!! I figured the best thing to do was to restore the registry, since everything on the computer seemed to still be there. I figured the only thing I needed was to put the registry back.

Really bad idea!!!

Despite warnings from my computer and backup program, I forged ahead and restored from my backup. Then I rebooted. I got a blue screen with a "Sytem Protection Fault." message. This was not good. Each reboot was met by the same message. I was finally able to get the system to reboot in SAFE mode, and now I knew that I would have to endure the wait to do a COMPLETE restore on my system. Only one problem... under SAFE mode, my CD-ROM drivers aren't loaded, and my backup was made to CD-ROM discs.

So now, I have to wait until my next trip home to pick up my System Restore CD. Once I apply that, and reinstall my backup software, I'll finally be able to restore from my backup. Until then, I'll have to put my programming on the back burner, and deal with only limited access to my blog and email accounts.

Say, what?

I may not have heard this properly, but on CNN, I think they just reported that Iraq has lodged a complaint that the coalition forces fired upon two buses of human shields that had been attempting to make their way to Baghdad.

Does anyone else see anything wrong with that?