Month: June 2008

Partied. Hiked. Got stung. (plus photos)

Had a blast this weekend… Went out to the band house for a big party, a lot of people turned out. Big fires, roasting stuff, N64-style Super Smash Bros, RISK lasting until about 4:00 in the morning.

The next morning I got stung in the arm by some kind of wasp. I’ve never been stung by one before, and I know that my mom is really allergic, so I don’t know what to expect. It’s over 24 hours later and I’m not dead, so I guess that’s a good sign, but the swelling didn’t really start until a whole day later.  Now half of my forearm is really tender and numb, it’s weird to type or drum. But I’m not too worried, if I had my mom’s allergies I’d probably be in way worse condition.

Yesterday I went hiking with Matt and Madelyn, we got lucky and had cloud cover most of the way up to Horsetooth Rock.

Here are some pictures of the weekend… I don’t know why, but recently I haven’t been taking any pictures of people.



(Link to Picasa album)

	


	
	








	
	

		
Accidental Art: Ballpoint Pen on Boxers
	


	

		
Yeah… So I accidentally let a blue pen explode in the dryer today. Getting all over an entire load of laundry. Not good.


I was really lucky and only had one really nice article of clothing in there- this is the good thing about having more T-shirts than I know what to do with. It won’t be worth trying to get all of the stains out. I might try to rescue an item or two, and I’ll have some spectacularly groovy underwear a la tie-dye. But one thing’s certain: today will go down in the book of Stupid Things Zeke Does when he Lives on his Own.


	


	
	






	
	

		
iPhone 3G First Impressions
	


	

		


The good:


    

  • $199 8GB / $299 16GB
    • 

  • 3G internet/voice with a minimal hit on battery life
    • 

  • No longer has the proprietary recessed headphone jack
    • 

  • Real GPS
    • 



The bad:


    

  • Aluminum backing replaced with fingerprint-happy plastic
    • 

  • 3G data plan costs an extra $10, bringing the base monthly price to $70
    • 

  • Still no MMS picture messaging
    • 



Overall, the best thing to happen here is the $200 price drop. Apple finally wised up and works like any other phone manufacturer, allowing the carriers to subsidize the cost of a rather expensive phone.


I’m happy because the only things my current iPhone will lack are 3G internet speeds (I’m often on Wi-Fi, so no problem there) and GPS location. The new firmware is on its way, and I’ll have plenty of third party apps and Exchange/VPN support to keep me happy.

	


	
	






	
	

		
The US has Quit the Human Rights Council.
	


	

		
In case you missed it, the United States withdrew from the Human Rights Council yesterday.


But Eric Sottas, director of the International Organisation against Torture sees it as a a political gesture. “The US has always clearly shown its opposition to the Council. This is a slightly more public way of putting pressure on it in order to raise the stakes. What is more the Bush dynasty is coming to the end of its mandate,” he said. “It reminds me of the time when the Nixon administration, which backed Pinochet in Chile, chastized the UN for criticising the Chilean dictator. But when Carter was elected in 1977, the American government took the floor at the Human Rights Commission to ask forgiveness. After a presidency like that of Bush, you can expect some important changes in US policy on human right.”


Have we no shame? We are supposed to be a leader in justice, freedom, and humanity. But instead, our leaders seem to be turning this into a rogue state. We are using torture methods invented during the Spanish inquisition, for anyone trying to find comparable acts.


Thankfully both McCain and Obama won’t put up with this. Hopefully they can clean up this mess we’re in, and hopefully it doesn’t get much worse before they take charge.

	


	
	






	
	

		
Dev Team
	


	

		
At my College of Business job, I recently moved from the security team lead position to an application development one. I’m really happy about the switch- I’ve been trying to get into a development role for about 10 months – but now I’m entering the nitty-gritty, “oh-god-I-don’t-know-these-languages” world. It’s an all-Microsoft shop, so I’ll be picking up some C# and ASP .NET pretty soon here.


So far, it’s been interesting trying to learn by fixing pre-written apps instead of building them from scratch. Not my learning method of choice, but it does let me see the results of my actions more quickly. Also, project scale and dependencies are way larger and more complex than anything I’ve done freelancing for small business customers. Welcome to the enterprise, eh?


But I’m in a job where my brain is tickled, I like the work, and I’ll know a lot more coming out of it. That makes for a happy Zeke.


(now if only I actually knew the languages I’m using…)