So today started out great. Temperatures in the 80’s, so I took the kiddies outside. I put my cellphone on the trunk of my sisters’s car, put the kids on their bikes, put skates on my feet and rolled out to enjoy the day. Things were going well with my littlest one making turns at each end of the block. My sister pulled up and shouted some encouragement as she drove past. I waved and noticed my black cell phone on the white trunk of her car! ...
Today at work our main Flash developer asked me about expanding his skills and learning either Ruby or Python. My personal preference is towards python but ruby has its place. Flash is really doing well in the Java/Enterprise space lately so I went that way. Most of the Flash backend in our work is xml based so XML was on my mind anyway. Recently we needed to mock up a xml data data file for a project while the real APIs are being completed. We had the data in a csv file so we asked some developers to whip up a xml file. ...
I watched Michael Clayton today A decent legal / espionage plot. Predictive enough. The lawyer is defending an international chemical company for years. One day he goes off his anti-depressants and decides to champion the farmers being killed by the chemical additives. Drama ensues when the ‘fixer’ Michael Clayton is set on the case. But the lawyer who had the breakdown was Michael’s friend, and since Mr. Clayton has a good relationship with his son, so we assume he is not wholly evil. Its a good thing we don’t live in a world with people that would allow this to happen. A quick googling shows that our government recently decided to immediately phase out a harmful pesticide (that has been in use since 1950s) by 2012. ...
I attended a book signing and talk by Harry Boonin at Kesher Isreal today. He gave an interesting talk about the history of the temple and an insight into the history of the Jews in Philly. An interesting bit was his mention of a part of the building’s history where the Christian community collaborated with the Jewish community during a move and had mutual respect for each others religious paraphernalia. I have to wonder how the different communities could understand each other without wikipedia! ...
What better first post for my renovated, Philly style blog, then to mention “Glock Day”. A local range in the city (Philadelphia Archery and Gun Club) hosted some helpful representatives from Glock and offered free test firing of their models. The staff was helpful and it was fun. It reminded me of testing racing skis at Killington. Except less of the fresh mountain air and more of the smell of gunpowder.