Need a freeware merge tool? I found a great one: WinMerge. This little guy just saved me a hour of comparing two files and trying to figure out which lines I needed from each.
How'd I get in this mess? Well, I had a dev version of my file and a live version that is running for customers. The dev version is in the midst of large bits of changes and some people using the live code needed a rather large bit of changes to be made. I made the fixes but was left with two files with large disparate chunks of changes. WinMerge fixed me right up :)
So, let's dispense with the vacation talk. Yes, it was great. You can see photos from Ireland here and our photos from the UK here. I think the photos speak for themselves when we way that we had a really wonderful time.
Now, that being said, we're glad as heck to be home. I think we're both not only vacationed out, but we're also very very Europe'd out. We've just had too much Europe in the past twelve month-we've spend about 6 weeks there! This is nothing against Europe. I mean, I've seen some really cool places and may even consider moving to London or Rome someday if I had cause. I think this feeling is just the fact that we've been spending quite a bit of time worrying about being in other places rather than worrying about living life at home. It's fun and all, but I think it's time to come back to reality.
So what's reality? Well, we'll start with the two usual buzzkills that take down many post vacation highs Time and Money. Yep...these two guys are back to wreak havoc in our lives.
As for money, we're not doing too badly. I mean with Zing being purchased by Dell, the stock payouts have begun for me and this has given us a little breathing room (not much mind you...just a tiny bit). We were also able to take advantage of some tax rules for a p-h-phat refund on the taxes. Not to mention our nice little $1200 bonus from the W himself that will promptly go into our savings account. I think the issue is that we have some big plans on the horizon that involves buying some form of real estate to build/rent out/live in. So our little nest egg is looking more like a quail's egg rather than a nice healthy chicken sized egg. I'd love for an ostrich egg, of course, but you can't wait around till everything is perfect right?
Time is the other little bugger that is in rather short supply. With Bubbanotes.com up and running, there's a bit to do. I must admit that Hongyun is a natural at managing teams of volunteers in China who do everything from recruiting new users across the vast swatch of the Chinese interwebs to answering questions on our forum. It's amazing what sorts of resources one can call in from overseas at no cost! Even still, it takes time to add features and manage the team. So much so, in fact, that we've stopped posting on any of our blogs! Crazy, I know! Well, organizing our trip photos and videos have taken a while too (you'll notice that the UK ones are not labeled or properly ordered by any means--a project for the spare moments this week).
Not only that, I've been given some pretty cool work tasks that involve infrastructure work for automation so our test teams can get more done faster. It plays directly to my strengths of database and query design, statistics gathering, and hacking together websites that put that data to good use. I hope to get the "ooohh pretty colors" comment very soon. Seems to work very well for the upper echelons for any company.
The cherry on top is that I have a little voice in my ear (my wife) telling me that I should probably keep my options open as far as work goes. While I totally agree, I don't think I want to actively "look" for a job and start submitting my resume around as I have no intention of leaving for quite some time. I mean, if the right gig came along, I'd probably give it a go, but I'm just not sure I'm at that point where I'm really ready to go yet. However, I did read somewhere that when searching for a job, one really should divide up the prospects into three different categories:
1. Jobs that are about the same level or one level up from where you are now.
2. Jobs that are in the same field but quite possibly out of your league.
3. Jobs that are just out of left field. For me, things that sound interesting in this category would be working for a major blog house reviewing usb powered rocket launchers (pew pew), working at a brewery, finally going back to school for some reason or another, going back to consulting (ugh but pays some decent scratch), among other things.
Anyway, this process sounds quite involved and is a departure from how I landed my last two jobs at Microsoft and Zing. They basically amounted to a friend asking me, "hey dude, we got some openings, you wanna come try it out?" And then I would say, "ummm, ok, couldn't hurt." Then I go through the interviewing process and end up getting offers and then I deliberate for a few days and finally say, "ok."
Come to think of it, both of these job moves started with me getting to the point where I was totally not liking my job for one reason or another. For my MS job, I left my previous company because they threw me to the virtual wolves where I was some old guys query monkey day and night. I mean I learned to cut some serious sql from that crazy dude, but he would send me, a consultant who billed them $160 and hour on wild goose chases to find inconsistencies that totaled under $12 per year!! I mean, if it took me a day to figure it out, guess what? It'd take them a century to recover their cost of fixing that $12 inconsistency. I know, I know...it could have ballooned way over $12 very quickly but let's just say that we had much bigger fish to fry (the database tracked billions of dollars worth of cash flow among disparate benefits databases within a large defense contractor). Anyway, I got tired of wild goose chases after a while and decided to bail. I guess the folks who managed me just figured I'd sit there and collect cash from the old coot until the cows came home.
At MS, I loved the people I worked with. The team was excellent, a great bunch of people. By the time I left, I was even working with a guy I consider to be a pretty good friend. We still have lunch every now and then. But the problem was the business team had no idea what to do with us. Eventually, we lost our best devs to Google and other companies since they had us spinning our wheels for quite some time. I mean it's no surprise I guess. Just look at Vista and you'll see that if they can severely bungle their numero uno premium cash cow, you'll realize how things go south very quickly in other divisions that are not so central to the company's survival. Anyway, after I saw the next strategy for our team (or lack thereof), I knew it was time to head out.
So I think I'll not do that this time and really think about what I want to do and go ahead and do it. Sounds like a "duh Tommy" moment, but I think it's more of a dawning than you think after you've worked for quite a while. I'll start with looking at brewmaster gigs, I suppose. The "research" will be quite interesting I'm sure. :)
Well, they certainly don't make it easy to find, but luckily it has been found! Upgrade now and bask in the slightly more stable and tiny bit faster-iness of Vista SP1
Download details: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone (KB936330)
Time to go into nerd mode for a bit. Sorry...read this if you want to know why this is happening.
So, Hongyun's new site BubbaNotes.com is getting more users and we've decided to set up a bulletin board system so everyone can get to know each other better and have discussions about learning English. Anyway, I've been trying to get the Simple Machines Forum (which is simply phenomenal in my opinion) to understand Chinese characters. At first, I was able to switch the default character set to chinese simplified utf 8 and everything "just worked"--wow! Then for my own user account, I was able to switch to English which is really cool--each user can have their own UI preference as long as the theme supports it. Anyway, the problem came when I tried to input Chinese into the board. No matter what I did, I got back question marks ("???") instead of the actual Chinese characters. WTF? I thought. So I started digging...and digging...and digging as I normally do in these situations. I eventually stumbled upon Nixser's Solution For MySQL UTF-8 Encoded Data Unreadable In Web Pages..
In case you this page disappears, I've mirrored the info here:
Solution
I’ve solved the problem with phpmyadmin, with the inspiration from this MySQL Doc. I am not sure if my host has upgraded the MySQL server recently or not, but this method worked out for me. Note that I’ve tried to import the same database into my local debian box, the problem still occured and same work needed to be done. Now here’s how it’s solved.Warning, backup everything before making any changes, universal rule!First, you have to know where’s the data location that needs to be fixed(Database, Table, then Column). With phpmyadmin, I selected the database name, then the related table, and check on the field that needed the workaround. Edit that field DATA TYPE, to “Binary”. It is important that you make sure the LENGTH is maintained same. If the field’s data type was TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, or LONGTEXT, change it to “BLOB”, with the original length.(This is to ensure that your data won’t get truncated). Collation here is not important since data is going to be converted to binary.
You should now see the field’s data type being changed to “binary”, “varbinary”, or “blob” depending on the length. Now the second step is, change the data type back to what it was before the binary conversion. Note that, a correct “Collation” must be set this time. For my case I’m sure the data is in UTF-8, so I’d use “utf8_general_ci” for the collation. After making this conversion, the data that contains chinese characters is displayed flawlessly on the new site. It’s just that easy.
And it really is that easy...except for the fact that I have to do this to each and every text input field in the db...yikes.
For the most part it describes me down to a T which is rather scary but not so much. I like having something that explains my nerdish tendencies to non-nerds (most importantly of whom is my wife). I think we're going to have to sit down and study this post to ensure she understands just what makes me tick and just how to deal with it which is something that she has trouble with sometimes I must admit. Not that it's totally her fault or anything, I'm working on "de-nerdification" sometimes which means not vacuuming the internet via Google reader constantly and trying to disconnect on a regular basis (damned you Lifehacker for providing too many useful tidbits!).
Anyway, thanks to Rands for helping to explain me to the non-nerds of the world. Also, thanks for the nice idea about keeping a style guide...something that I should do and will do from now on, forever and ever, amen.
Cheap Vinyl Virgin
2008 Europe Trip
Hello My Beer Is Guinness 2.0
Code Monkey
Nintendo Wii Commercial Song
You Can Thank Insomnia
Haloscan for commenting
Pelle-Green-O
Gearing Up
Finally, It's 2008
Merry Xmas
Have Everything?
New Years Resolutions: Updated
New Year's Resolutions 2008
Tommy was Burbed!
Shut Yo Mouf
Testing Windows Live Spaces Photos
Top Geek Gifts
Together, we can profit from this tragedy.
deodorant shopping at the cafe
gOS and the $200 Walmart PC
Lykke Li - Little Bit
Halloween Party
Weekend Update (Halloween Style)
Dorms have changed
Are you kidding me?
RSS Overload
The Weekend Update
I'm Enlightening You
Pumpkin Patch
Ghirardelli Time
We're Screwed
The Costco effect
Doe Rae Mi
Pumpkin Time
Why I'm done with Amtrak
OpenOffice to Google Docs
DVD Film School
Costco Nativity Scene
Propser.com verdict: Money loser
From Chaos Springs Order
Fall Quater Begins
AC Transit breaks 52L
Parents to Game Retailer: "Raise My Kids"
Google Reader Wins Me Over
Bags of Fury
Switchbuntu
Egg Chair for Two
1-800-200-8054
iPod Nano Commercial Song
Political Debate Schedule
Jamon! Hee Hee!
More Housing "News"
10 steps
Republicans Get It
Avenue Q = HILARIOUS
I've been Scmap'd
Hilldog Loves Stupid People
Pink Crocs and Red Poodle
Holland hello and Holland goodbye
21st Century Travel
Iraq War Planning Picnic
Chillin'
flickr blocked in China
Wait for It....Wait for It...
Decluttering
Just how new is Windows Vista?
EPSON P-3000 Quirk list (or a Review in Bullet Points)
Cleaning House
Wifi on ACTransit
You can take this McJob and Shove It!
tommy and hongyun at makerfaire 2007
Supernova
Content Cost Analysis
The Silver Arrow
Llantas Nuevas
Make Your Own Camera Bag
Reverie Sound Revue back!
Encyclopedia of Life
Cinque Terre: An Update on Europe Trip Planning
Sino Disney?
Yahoosoft!
Google Says: No Suriwongs in Europe!
Europe Camera Strategy: No Laptop
Photoshopping CS3
Update on Poofy
Patient: Poofy
R2D2 is My (Lego) Homeboy
The Art of Tiny
Prayers Virginia Tech
No Wasted Seconds
You Are Here
Mish Mash of Code
How to Color Stuff
Rotating House
Sansa Connect Review-o-Rama
CFL Bulbs compared
Yowza! Free Books Abound
miles' allowance