Chaos Magnet

Hell of a headache

This joke isn't quite work-safe, but it does apply to software problems, IMO.

Ever since his late teens Jim had suffered from terrible headaches. Finally, in desperation after years of misery, he sought medical advice.

Many tests later, the doctor sat down with Jim to deliver his diagnosis. The doctor said, "Jim, I have both good and bad news. The good news is I can cure your headaches... The bad news is that it will require castration. You have a very rare condition, which causes your testicles to press up against the base of your spine. The pressure creates one hell of a headache. The only way medical science can relieve the pressure is to remove the testicles."

Jim was shocked and depressed. He wondered if he had anything left to live for. He couldn`t concentrate long enough to answer, but decided he had no choice - "Cut `em".

When he left the hospital, he was without a headache for the first time in 20 years, but he also felt like he was missing an important part of himself. As he walked down the street, Jim realized that he felt like a different person - he could make a new beginning and live a new life. Seeing a men`s clothing store he thought, "That`s what I need, a new suit." He entered the shop and told the tailor, "I`d like a new suit."

The elderly tailor eyed him briefly and said, "Let`s see... size 44 long."

Jim laughed, "That`s right, how did you know?"

"Been in the business 60 years!" the old tailor replied.

Jim tried on the suit and it fit perfectly. As he admired himself in the mirror, the old tailor asked, "How about a new shirt?"

Jim thought for a moment and then said, "Sure."

The old tailor eyed Jim and said, "Let`s see...34 sleeve and 16 and a half neck."

Again, Jim was surprised, "That`s right, how did you know?"

"Been in the business 60 years!" the old tailor replied.

Jim tried on the shirt and it fit perfectly. As he adjusted the collar in the mirror, the tailor asked, "How about new shoes?"

Jim was on a roll now and said, "Sure." The tailor eyed his feet and said, "Let`s see... 9-1/2 E."

Jim was astonished. He laughed and said, "Don`t tell me, I know, you`ve been in the business 60 years!"

Jim tried on the shoes and they fit perfectly. He walked comfortably around the shop and the tailor asked, "How about some new underwear?"

Jim thought for a second and then said, "Sure."

The old tailor stepped back, eyed Jim`s waist and said, "Let`s see...size 36."

Jim laughed, "Ah-hah I got you! I`ve worn size 34 since I was 18 years old."

The old tailor shook his head, "You can`t wear a size 34. A size 34 underwear would press your testicles up against the base of your spine and give you one hell of a headache."

The moral of the story? Always check the obvious first.

It's about time: internet, not Internet

Iv'e never quite understood why why were supposed to capitalize "Internet", and wherever possible I've lowercased "web", to the constant chagrin of copyeditors. So I'm thrilled that Wired has annoucned that it will no longer capitalize internet, web, or net. Why?

The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

Deleting locked files or folders

This isn't really a "programming" tip, but it's a little tidbit I'm glad to have found, having been plagued in the past with Files That Would Not Die. Corey Collins explains How to Remove "locked" Folders/Files on his blog:

First, open a command window and go to the directory where the illegal files and folders are. Type in dir /x. This will list the files with a truncated 8 character dos name. The files will now have a ~1 after them, they will only have legal characters in them, and only be 8 characters long. Now, type rmdir /s baddir~1. This will delete the directory and everything inside of it. This can be a little time consuming if there are a lot of files, but it works.

Mozilla extensions

Here's a cool thing I just discovered. Apparently you can add extensions to Mozilla and Mozilla-based products such as Firefox (my browser of choice) and Thunderbird (my email reader of choice). These extensions are items such as feedreaders and calendars. Haven't poked around yet, but maybe I'll download some themes...

Memories of Charley

Everybody who knows I live in Florida has been calling or emailing to make sure that we're OK. Actually, I'm north of Tampa, but when it was headed straight for us, I almost made the decision to evacuate to my parent's house -- in Punta Gorda.

My parents are in New Jersey, but my 88 year old grandparents and their caretaker were in the Punta Gorda huse. The house lost its screen porch and a piece of stone tile came through a glass block window, but that was pretty much the worst of the damage, which is a miracle because the eye passed right over them.

But of course, they have no power. I got a frantic call from my mom on Saturday morning so we loaded up a rented van with a generator and some plywood, water, batteries, etc. and we headed on down. I can't begin to describe the devastation down there. You see it on TV, but it's nothing compared to being there. Houses flattened, businesses with missing walls, collapsing buildings everywhere, downed power lines, traffic lights and highway signs missing, freeway lampposts snapped in half with the tops slammed against the ground as though they were made of aluminum foil...

And the people. Watching them trying to put their lives back together. We spent three hours on Sunday trying to find gasoline to keep the generator running. We finally had to go 40 miles up the interstate.

It was really a life-altering experience. It really reminds you how many things you take for granted, and how many of the things that are SOOO important in every day life are just insignificant.

Royalty free sound

I can write. That's what I do. I can't draw, I can't paint (though that doesn't stop me from trying) and I can't write music. So I'm always looking for a good source of free clips, and by golly, I've found one over at Flash Kit: Loops Home. Not just a couple of sounds, but tons of them, and the few Ambient ones I sampled actually sounded pretty decent, which was nice to see. And Flash Kit itself is pretty cool, if you're into Flash. Or at least I assume it would be, from the looks of it.

Automatic browser redirects

Ever been to a page that says, "We've moved! You'll be redirected in 20 seconds," and then 20 seconds later (or thereabouts) a new page appears without your having clicked anything? Here's how it's done.

At the top of your page, add a "meta" tag. This tag passes information about the page to the browser. for example, if I wanted to redirect you to this blog's home page after 30 seconds, I'd use the tag:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="30;URL=http://www.nicholaschase.com/blog">

Here's what that does. First it tells the browser to refresh, or reload the page. The content attribute tells it when -- in this case, after 30 seconds -- and where to go when it does. When the browser refreshes, it will go to the specified URL.

You can also use this for simply refreshing a page by adding its own URL. Just make sure you set the delay high enough for the page to be useable!

Overriding Java's base classes

> Hi Nicholas
>
> First I want to commend you for the excellent book. I was trying to run the sample on using Traversal on the DOM according to the DOM 2.0 recommendation. I am using Java SDK 1.4.2_03. I have attached the source code of the program I am using. I am running on a Windows XP laptop
>
> I am getting an error message
>
> C:\JXML\test17>java ShowDocument
>
> supported
>
> Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException
>
> at ShowDocument.main(ShowDocument.java:45)
>
> Regards and Thanks - Ranjan

Hi, Ranjan!

The problem may be related to a bug that made it into Java's XML implementation. Java looks at its base classes, and then the classpath, so just replacing the offending classes on the classpath won't help. To solve the problem, download Xerces from xml.apache.org and use the "Endorsed standards" mechanism to make Java look at it first. To do that, you'll need to set the -Djava.endorsed.dirs switch. For
example, say your xerces.jar, xmlParserApis.jar, or whatever jars come with Xerces these days, are in C:\Xerces\lib. You would call your Java program using:

java -Djava.endorsed.dirs=C:\Xerces\lib ShowDocument

Please let me know if this solves your problem, and thanks for the kind words!

---- Nick

[NOTE: It turned out to be a permissions problem on the database, but the tip still stands. :) ---- Nick]

Is Bush losing it?

A long time ago, life got me really, really down, to the point where I asked my doctor for antidepressants. Within months, my wife was complaining that I just wasn't myself. "Sure," I thought, "myself is depressed, angry and miserable." But I got off the meds anyway. A couple of months later, I went to get a haircut and the guy who cuts my hair, who is normally quite friendly, told me he was on Prozac. By the time he started cutting my hair, I understood what my wife meant; he just wasn't himself. It was as though he was just a shell of his former self. Sure, he wasn't being compulsive-obsessive anymore, but was the alternative really that much better?

So what does that have to do with George W. Bush? According to Capital Hill Blue -- the accuracy and/or veracity of which I cannot verify, by the way -- he was prescribed powerful anti-depressants after a July 8 incident in which he stormed offstage after refusing to answer questions about his relationship with Enron CEO Ken Lay:

"Keep those m*therf*ckers away from me," he screamed at an aide backstage. "If you can't, I'll find someone who can."

So are things better now that he's on the drugs? Well, apparently he's, well, just not himself.

"[T]here are concerns," a top Republican political advisor admitted privately Wednesday. "The George W. Bush we see today is not the same, gregarious, back-slapping President of old. He’s moody, distrustful and withdrawn."

Unfortunately, there's a big difference here. When my hairdresser isn't himself, I don't enjoy my haircut. When the President isn't himself, it's a whole other story.

White House aides say Bush has retreated into a tightly-controlled environment where only top political advisors like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes are allowed. Even White House chief of staff Andrew Card complains he has less and less access to the President.

(In an interesting side-note, the same article claims that Donald Rumsfeld has fallen out of favor, and that the "real political power" in Washington is not Dick Cheney, but still-in-good-with-Dubya John Ashcroft, who, along with Bush, is referred to as the "Blues Brothers" because they both think they're on a mission from G-d.)

This kind of thing has the ability to make me strangely sympathetic; I know what it's like to get to the point where you just can't take it anymore -- but you have to. On the other hand, one of the most common observations about Saddam Hussein was that he was insulated from everyone and that's how he developed the way he did. And Washingtonians are starting to refer to Ashcroft as "Bush's Himmler". (If you don't understand that reference, you desperately need to look it up.)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.