Archives for 2003

fish, like family …

Apparently, we’re to expect a visit from my mother-in-law in September. She, like my own mother, has a hard time dealing with the boundaries that we established. So, playing the “aggressive ignorance” card, has simply booked her travel to come visit without consulting us under the pretext that she’ll be self-sufficient so we don’t have to worry about her. That’s exactly why we’re worried.

This is probably the worst time to be introducing this level of stress into our lives.

what is tcllian?

So, what is Tcllian? Well, it’s a Tcl plugin for Trillian Pro. What’s Trillian Pro? It’s a multi-medium Instant Messaging (IM) client — it lets you connect to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and IRC all from one single application.

So, what’s the big deal about Tcllian? Well, instead of having to code plugin functionality in C/C++ or Delphi or some other compiled language, Tcllian exposes the functionality of the plugin API via Tcl, an interpreted scripting language which is incredibly fast and simple to develop in.

So, once the core of Tcllian is complete, the ability to develop plugins for Trillian Pro will become a piece of cake. I’m hoping to get it to a 0.9 release by the end of August for a 1.0 release by the end of 2003.

livin’ la vida reboot

I absolutely hate computers. After a bout of system hangs for the past couple of weeks, I’d been Googling for answers. A lot of them pointed to a whole bunch of regsvr32 nonsense along with restoring an older version of oleaut32.dll using MCREPAIR. Unfortunately, with Windows XP’s WFP (Windows File Protection) turned on, reverting that DLL which is protected by WFP was next to impossible.

Eventually, the machine ate itself and refused to boot anymore this past Friday around 6:30 PM. So, I’ve spent this weekend doing a fresh re-install of Windows XP Home and getting all my various pieces of software re-installed as well. Needless to say, I’m not a happy camper.

I’m absolutely disappointed at Microsoft, yet again. No big surprise there …

that’s an expensive sheep

Starting out a Monday morning trying to get my machine not to crash, in between frustrating reboots I decided to do my regular “search for Dossy” routine. This time, I checked out MSN … and found this gem. I’m an expensive (to the tune of $90), collectible, out of stock sheep.

why I hate my commute …

Ah, I didn’t properly mention exactly why I hate my new commute. I started a new job on June 16th. It’s roughly 42 miles away from my house. Almost entirely highway driving. You’re thinking, “Gee, that’s not too bad.” Oh, but you’re wrong. I go from New Jersey into New York, crossing that horrid Tappan Zee Bridge.

On the second day of my new job, I decided to leave my house extra early — around 5:45 AM — so I could be in the office early and beat all the traffic. Oh, was I so sadly mistaken about missing the traffic. Some insane nutcase decides to make his personal issues public and threaten to jump off the bridge. This closed the bridge down — and I mean closed, as in, not even a single lane of traffic was open — from 6:30 AM until 9:30 AM. Guess what — I’d made it just before the Palisades Center Mall exit 12 on 87S/287E … still on the Rockland County side of the Tappan Zee Bridge. I was stuck in that traffic, until some guy managed to talk the nutcase down.

Personally, I think allowing people to threaten suicide and then allowing them to live sends the wrong message. Hey, if you’re going to threaten suicide, do it to some toll-free suicide hotline from the privacy of your own home and don’t screw with everyone else’s lives. If you’re going to climb a bridge and ruin thousands of people’s commutes, you might as well god damned jump so we at least get the pleasure of driving over your bloody corpse for making us sit in traffic for three hours.

I hate my commute …

Monday is a terrible way to spend one-seventh of your life …

Today starts my second week at my new job. The commute over the Tappan Zee Bridge wasn’t too bad today, just over an hour. Still, it’s over twice as long as my previous commute, which is a real drag.

I’m just about completely set up with my accounts and miscellaneous access to things at work, so I think this week is going to be even more hectic than last week. Lets see how long it takes me to beat things into submission here and get it all flowing smoothly …

The times, they are a-changin’

Thanks to Bob Dylan for the inspirational title … but man, my life is all about rapid change.

Marriage, two kids, buying a house, a new car, changing jobs … what else could possibly change next?