I was recently working on a project which required me to be working on two different machines – my development machine, and the second local machine which had access to the remote server where I needed to deploy the changes. What this meant was that I would work on some code, then swivel in my chair to look at the other monitor with other keyboard/mouse, and either drag’n'drop the affected files to the remote server again or copy-then-paste the file again. 

The whole process is slightly annoying, but nothing too terrible. One of my coworkers and I were discussing a different matter the other day and I was working on this project while he and I talked. As he watched what I was doing he asked “Why don’t you just copy the file once again then just keep pasting it after you update it?” Um… because I didn’t know that would work? I suppose I should have, though. 

See, I know that when you typically move files in Windows you don’t REALLY “move” the data to a new location on the hard drive. The system merely grabs a reference to the file and then, in the case of a “move”, will merely flag where that data should now be logically accessed in your drive’s directory structure. But it doesn’t actually move the bits somewhere new. The same is true for copying from one location to another, whether the destination is on a local or remote machine over a network drive. If you “copy” the file, you will store the reference to the file’s location. If you paste, the system will at that time go get all data contained within the file and copy it to the new location. What this means is that you can keep changing the source location without having to re-copy it after every change – on each paste, Windows goes and grabs the full contents from the source before actually writing data to the new location. 

I guess you do learn something new every day.

A recent discussion with some people online created a bit of a link exchange discussing some interesting/funny music tracks and/or videos. While Baby Got Back and My Humps get honorable mentions, I think Gin ‘n Juice by The Gourds deserves top billing personally. One of my buddies had me listen to the track only a few weeks ago when I saw him out on the disc golf course, so it was funny to see the song had a bit of a cult following online as well. Check it out embedded below.

When I was growing up, I liked to read. A lot. I guess having a mother as a teacher helped that particular part of my childhood, but while I liked playing soccer and otherwise being active outside, and going over my friends’ houses to play on their 8-bit NES or Sega Genesis, reading was just something I did. I actually remember, growing up, how I had a lamp that clipped onto the headboard of my bed and I would keep that thing on for hours after my designated bedtime just to read through books. Hell I was such a reading junkie that my parents, after having to come in numerous times to get me to turn the light off and go to sleep, would come in sometimes to find me hiding under the covers with a flashlight; still reading, and hoping that this method wouldn’t cast enough light under the door for them to tell I was still awake. So yes, it’s extremely safe to say I was a reading dork. I read far above my grade level, which was sometimes interesting… Roald Dahl was one of my favorites, at one point I had read every book fiction or non- that he had written: and how many 5th graders could say that? Especially given the type of content Dahl would sometimes write about. I have to say, it was a sad day in Junior High when I found out he had passed.

Another one of the authors I enjoyed growing up was Madeline L’Engle, whom I recently discovered lives in New Hartford, CT. The A Wrinkle In Time trilogy was a series that I never really “classified” into a genre when I thought about the books, even though looking back now it’s funny that even back then I was reading sci-fi/fantasy novels. Where else does, again, a 5th grader learn about tesseracts and mitochondrion? And again, how else does a 5th grader think that learning about these types of things is normal?

To my knowledge, back then, the “trilogy” consisted of three books. A Wrinkle In Time, the original book in the story; A Wind In The Door, the second book that I always considered to be the least enjoyable of the three although it had its moments; and finally A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which in some ways brought the whole story around seemingly full circle. Beyond the trilogy, there was also a book called Many Waters which revolved around the two more-often-than-not overlooked brothers in the family that the trilogy revolved around. And I thought that was it.

Enter this evening’s trip to, of all places, Wal-Mart. I was there picking up a slew of things from an extremely varied shopping list (a list that a place like W-M is perfect for) and while I’m in the back aisle I see a stand of books. On it are a new set (reprints, obviously) of books from the A Wrinkle In Time series… and what do I find but a FIFTH book in the “Quintet” as the jackets called it, called An Acceptable Time. I flip the inside cover to see the copyright date on the book, and find out it’s 1989. 1989??!? How on Earth did this escape me for almost twenty years???

Needless to say, looking at a price tag of less than $5 for the book in paperback, it found its way to the register with me. This will honestly be the first book I have read in quite some time, since about the middle of high school the volume of books that I read began dwindling until nowadays it’s pretty much nothing outside of the new Harry Potter releases. But it’ll be good. It also shows you how much of an impact L’Engle’s series had on me if, saying that, I still decide to buy one of her books when I haven’t read it before. I will try to remember and touch base about how it was when I finish it.

Needless to say, I’ve been pretty busy lately. Keeping up (or trying to) with organizing the disc golf tourney I’m running next month, my office just moved locations and has been keeping me busy with work besides, doing the family thing and starting to work more on the yard now that the warmer weather is upon us. It’s just been crazy.

I’ll try and break things up into more bite-sized pieces, but I did have to post about this – I now remember why I stopped playing Mario Kart:DS online. Looking through my catalog of games, I saw MKDS and said to myself “huh, maybe I’ll go on WFC and see if I can still find anyone online.” It’s a testament to the title’s popularity how easy it was for me to find a game in “Worldwide” mode; I don’t think I waited more than 2 minutes total to get 3 opponents in the queue, which is darn speedy in my opinion for a DS game that’s been out for a year and a half. Unfortunately, in my three opponents I found three of the five archetypes that you will find when trying to play MKDS online (the first three were my opponents: I suppose you could put me in the fourth category, since even in my hey-day of playing MKDS I still wouldn’t have put myself in the fifth category).

1. The “Win/Loss Glitch” player – This guy you see who joins the race and you say to yourself “wow, 762 wins and only 23 losses! This guy must be awesome!” No, unfortunately he’s just a guy who plays a lot and knows how to exploit a bug found in the game where he can remove his losses simply by disconnecting before the first race even starts. He fills a slot so your game will start the setup process, but you almost never see him on the track.
2. The Loser – This is the player who has a record of 0-5, obviously hasn’t played much so you can’t really look down on their record if they took the game online and they obviously have owned it less than 24 hours. Unfortunately this is also the player who always drops after they lose the first-of-three races. The Loser is also likely either 8 years old, or at least is as mature as an 8-year-old.
3. The Sore Loser – This guy is much different than The Loser. Probably sporting a W/L rating around 66%, he can beat a lot of the competition out there but he still can’t hang with the big boys. Most skilled players can beat this guy without using items or snaking, perhaps just using a well-placed sparks boost here and there. This is the guy who will go into the third race with you and drop out halfway through when he throws a tantrum after realizing that no, there really is no way he’s even going to take a single race from you, no matter how much you try to let him “keep up with you”.
4. The Big Boys – These are the players who are able to get 3-star rankings in the game (not just on some tracks or GP’s, but have achieved the bona-fide “you have gotten 3 stars on everything” status), race time trials in order to work on their lines, and can snake in their sleep – they also don’t think snaking is “cheating”. You’ll rarely see a Big Boy quit a race, although sometimes maturity issues may make a Big Boy act like a Sore Loser.
5. The MKDS Lifers – Most games have them, especially racing games… the fans of the title who devote their entire lives to being good at the game. The Big Boys can get a flap of 18 seconds on that track? The MKDS Lifer can get a flap of 12.6. You remember the asian kids who took over your college’s computer labs from 9pm until 9am so they could play Starcraft? They’re probably either still playing Starcraft, or have become MKDS Lifers. If you get into a race with them, you already lost.

I woke up this morning to find more empty traps, but that same trap that had been moved the night before was a full 2 feet away from where I had placed it. Not only that, but it was on its side and the peanut butter cracker was gone. Checked the other trap in the dining room, same story. Unfortunately the straight plastic-on-hardwood was not something that I had banked on fighting, as the mouse had apparently gotten himself in the trap but then flailed around enough so that the trap tipped over, allowing him to escape with the bait.

So, knowing this would only be short-term, I decided to fold over a piece of duct tape and stuck it to the bottom of the traps, re-baiting them as well and putting them back in their places. The workday came and went, but no mice found when I came home. I had already told Jen that if we went another 24 hours and these traps failed, I was going back out to buy the old-school spring-loaded traps. See him try and get away from that.

Fortunately, tonight was a success as once the baby went to bed, it wasn’t long after as I was sitting quietly out on my living room couch that I heard the plastic once again being clawed at. I gave him some time, and eventually went out to check. . . success!!! One captured mouse, sitting inside the trap trying in vain to get back out the way he came in. I did the humane thing and took him out to the front of my yard before dumping him; of course he’ll likely be eaten by a neighborhood cat by sunup. But *I* didnt kill him, and he’s out of my home.

I’m going to sleep well tonight.

Enter 4am last night, when Jen wakes me up to let me know she heard the mouse rustling some plastic bags we had in the living room after a shopping trip (of non-perishables, thank you very much ). Let me interrupt myself here to just say that I’m thankful I didn’t marry a girly-girl, since she isn’t the type to squeal and jump and all that other stuff just because there’s a mouse around. But that said, she also didn’t like the fact that he was still around, so she woke me up to take a look. Sigh. Up I am in the god-forsaken hours of the night, casually looking around when. . . I see him dart behind the living room couch. That bastard.

So began another 10 minute fruitless chase before he magically disappeared into thin air again. So back to bed I went, fully knowing I had a rodent in my house and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it at the time.

Tonight I took a trip to wal-mart and bought four of these traps. . . the ‘Mouse Cube’ is a glorified plastic square tube with one end that has a hinged doorway. The instructions say to put a cracker with some peanut butter on the far end inside the trap, and even spread a very thin layer on the door itself, to bait the mouse. Mouse comes along, sees/smells the peanut butter cracker, noses up the hinged door and once his body gets under the door, gravity closes it behind him and he’s stuck.

Laid out the traps in a few key areas where we’ve seen him (behind the couch, by the dishwasher, and in the dining room) and I guess we’ll just see how this works out. Fingers crossed the thing is already trapped by morning and I finally have him out of my house.