November, 2004:

For those of you who watch Jeopardy as religiously as Jess and I do… today’s the day.

It’s been “all”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20961-2004Nov29.html “over”:http://www.kottke.org/04/09/some-ken-jennings-news the seven internets since as early as September 8th, so I doubt this is really news to anyone that really cares. But, if you do care about Ken Jennings and his winning streak, and don’t want to know what happens before it happens, then stop reading now. Otherwise, read on.

Today is the day that Ken Jennings will lose. Or, rather, the taping of the show in which he lost will air today. In fact, by my calculations, he’s probably losing right… about… now. I love having him on the show. Not only did his presence add drama to each new installment but he was witty, humorous, and always appeared humble and gracious. Normally, I look forward to the specials like the Tournament of Champions and College week. But, with Ken around, I just couldn’t wait for them to be over so I could go back to watching him do what he did.

He isn’t the smartest man in the world. He just knows how to analyze everything he knows instantly and make a well educated guess. On top of that he knows when to take a risk and when to sit it out. I use these same principals in work and life everyday. It’s not a coincidence that he’s a computer programmer. I’d wager a true daily double that he’s damn good at what he does.

It’s official. Jess and I have received our “1st Violation Letter” from our Home Owners Association manager.

It states:

bq. During a recent property inspection, the following violation was noted at your residence: *The grass and weeds in the flower beds.* The Savannah COmmunity Association kindly reminds you that Article 7 (Construction and Use Restrictions), specifically Article 7 section 7. It is the Community Associations preference that all yards be kept neat and clean.

This is quite amusing, first of all, on a grammatical level. One would think that these notices are most likely canned letters needing only the resident’s name and address to be filled in. Yet, the above paragraph has been represented to you exactly as it was received. First, one should notice that the description of our violation is an incomplete sentence. It has a subject, but no verb or object. Secondly, while the letter mentions that Article 7, specifically Article 7 Section 7, reminds us of something, the sentence simply ends never stating what we are reminded of.

It gets even better when one reads Article 7 Section 7 of the CC&Rs:

bq. 7.7. APPEARANCE. Both the lot and the dwelling must be maintained in a manner so as not to be unsightly when viewed from the street or neighboring lots. The Architectural Reviewer is the arbitrator of acceptable appearance standards.

That’s it. That’s the complete text of Article 7 Section 7. Since Jess and I have not received any information regarding what “unsightly” is defined as, it’s difficult for us to be in compliance with an unwritten rule. Furthermore, since an Architectural Reviewer has never contacted us to inform us of any trangressions in need of repair, it is impossible for us to be in “Violation” of anything stated in Article 7 Section 7.

What’s even funnier is that our lawn hasn’t grown more than an inch in the past month since it is getting colder and creating conditions unsuited to the growth of the particular variety of grass planted on our lawn.

Then, of course, the very best part is that, if one were to stand on the street in front of our house, and spin around in a circle, it is highly unlikely that anyone would deem our lot as unsightly when compared the the piles of trash, rock, broken fences, port-a-potties, and broken lumber that is present in 6 of the 10 surrounding lots.

Now that I look in my “flower beds” (we don’t have any flowers, let alone flower beds) I can see a weed or two. And due to inadequate mulch coverage and a terrible breed of grass, the lawn does have a runner or two embedded in the edge of the mulch. While this is hardly anything to scream about considering the current state of our neck of the woods, the recent rain, and my neighbor who insits on watering her lawn 3 times a day for 30 minutes each causing swamp-like conditions for at least half of my yard, it doesn’t look wonderful.

So, I’m undecided regarding whether I should write our Association Manager a letter myself informing him that I don’t understand the complaint, see no violation to Article 7 Section 7, and have never been contacted by an Architectural Reviewer or if I should just go pull the damn weeds and let him win this time.

I hate to let him win. This guy is such a jerk. Jess and I call him “God”, not out of reverence, but as a reflection of his own inflated ego.

Okay. Since it flopped two weekends ago, and last weekend was too busy with Turkey-Day and all… Let’s try this again.

*Who*: You!
*What*: Your cash in my pocket (aka: texas hold ‘em)
*Where*: The Plantation (aka: La Casa de “Farris Goldstein”:http://gentlenews.com/)
*When*: This Friday
*Why*: Cause you don’t have anything better to do.

RSVP here. Now.

I stumbled upon “Phpersistence”:http://www.phpersistence.org/ today, a PHP4 library attempting to duplicate the functionality of Java’s Hibernate.

I jumped for joy. Then I cried.

The code is actually pretty well written. It’s capable of allowing normal objects that haven’t extended any special classes to persist. But there are some pretty hefty problems.

99% of all the setup for what goes where and why is handled by a configuration file written in PHP. This configuration file is parsed by a PersistenceConfiguration class, the name of which is hard coded in the Persistence class. This means that you can’t feed configuration to Persistence in any fashion other than this PHP file. And this PHP file is a bit complicated. That’s a bit silly, but workable.

The DB connection can be pre-initialized or the class will initialize it for you. This seems to be pretty flexible. Unfortunately, the class itself actually only accept the pre-initalized format and some of the class init routines handle creating a pre-initialized object if it isn’t created already. The pre-initialized class is stored in a GLOBAL variable. Why? Why? Why? Why? In order to define the parameters for the DB connection, one must use a series of DEFINEs. Why? Why? Why? Why? But… so what. So there’s a silly global variable floating around. Big deal. The next part is the kicker.

You only have the ability to define ONE database connection. This means that all of your tables within a particular configuration of Persistence must be in the same database, on the same database server using the same username and password combination. While I’m sure the majority of users will probably use it in that fashion, it just seems silly to me to code that limitation in when it could be avoided so easily. And, since the database connection is found via a global variable, you couldn’t even get around the problem with multiple instances of Persistence and multiple configuration files.

So, if you need simple object persistence, and you don’t really care about global variables or silly DEFINEs and you are willing to store all of your persisted objects in a single database, “Phpersistence”:http://phpersistence.org might be what you’re looking for.

Here’s a fun shot from my shoot with Lisa.

from above

(click to enlarge)

Anyone want to do a photoshoot tonight? Email me.

I used “Delicious”:http://del.icio.us/ and a bit of PHP hackery to create a “Personal Wishlist”:http://revjim.net/page/wishlist/. I’ll be adding more features as I have time but, for now, it’ll show you the item name, the price, a description (if I’ve provided one), and offer you a link for more information or to purchase. So, if you want to buy me something, this is the place to look. I’ll be adding more items as I find them.

Thanks.

Another of Erica. This shot has a soft, sexy quality to it that I really like. The profile of her face and her beautiful, full lips, coupled with the soft skin of her back really stir up desire.

look at me now

(click to enlarge)

Your comments are always appreciated.

My schedule is finally starting to clear up again, so, “just like before”:http://revjim.net/item/10151/, I’m looking for more people (or repeats of the same people) willing to donate a few hours of their time for a photoshoot. If you’re interested, please read over “what I’m looking for”:http://revjim.net/item/10151/. Afterwards, if you’re still interested, have a look at “my schedule”:http://revjim.net/phpicalendar/week.php?cal=Personal, find a free time that suits you, and send me an email, IM, or leave a comment (see: “contact me”:http://revjim.net/page/contactme/).

Monday through Friday (work days), shoots can begin no earlier than 7pm. Sunday through Thursday (when I work the next day) I’d prefer that the shoots be over by 11pm. Saturday and Sunday I’m willing to start as early as 8am (earlier for special circumstances). Friday and Saturday nights, I’d prefer to be done no later than 2am (later for special circumstances). A typical shoot lasts 2-4 hours. Please keep this in mind when selecting a time.

It’s a lot of fun, and I’m very nice and easy going as I’m sure any of my previous models will attest to. Even if you’ve never done this before, or have no clue what you’d like to see yourself in, but you still think it might be interesting, let me know. We can work something out.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Jess and I went over to see my mom, my sister, my cousin from Vermont, my brother, his wife, my nephew, and my two neices. Around 6:30pm, my brother and his family left. 10 minutes later, he called to say he’d been in an accident and that an ambulence had been called. Jess, my sister and I drove to meet him. There was a triple rear-end accident with my brother at the front of it all. My nephew (13 years old or so) and my neice (almost 2) were being put into an ambulence with their mother riding with them. My brother and my other neice (6 months) rode back to my mom’s house with me. My brother was going to borrow my mom’s car to get to the hospital and then, eventually, home.

However, by the time we got back to my mom’s house my brother’s elbow had swolen and he complained that he couldn’t move it. He was anxious, however, to make sure his family was okay. So, with my sister and Jess following my brother and I in my mom’s car, we drove out to the Children’s hospital in Fort Worth. Jess went in to check on them while my sister waited in the lobby. My brother and I walked across the street to the other hospital to get his arm looked at.

They gave him a shot of morphine when he first got there, which made him quite loopy. Then the took x-rays, determined that it wasn’t broken, fitted him with a splint, prescribed him vicodin for the pain and discharged him. This took about three hours. I know that ERs care for more critical patients first, and I fully understand that. However, no ambulences arrived, and very few new patients arrived during the time we were there. Three hours seemed to be quite a long time to look at an x-ray and fit a splint. Then again, I have no clue how an ER works, how many doctors were on staff to handle non-critical patients, or any of that. I’m grateful that he received care and that his injuries were minor.

My brother isn’t exactly the best patient in the world. He’s quite whiny, doesn’t provide all the information he should, and can be quite rude at times. Couple this with the morphine and he was a real pain in the ass. I’m very thankful that everyone at Harris Methodist that worked with him was very friendly, very polite, and very patient. The only exception to this would be the doctor. He was very direct and nearly unwilling to deal with my brother’s attitude or questions. He spent as little time as possible speaking to us, and, on several ocassions, we had to have the nurses track him down because we hadn’t had our questions answered or our concerns addressed and the nurses couldn’t assist us.

After he was discharged we walked back to the Children’s hospital. My nephew seemed to be fine with only seat-belt bruises across his chest. His x-ray showed that nothing was broken and they were merely waiting on the results of his urine test to discharge him. My neice was also fine, it seemed. However, they wanted a urine sample from her as well, which meant that they just had to wait until she was ready to go.

About an hour later, they discharged them both. My neice was perfectly fine, and my nephew had only the bruises on his chest. My brother decided he wanted to go back to my mom’s house to see his daughter, so, back into the cars we went getting back to my mom’s house around midnight.

Shortly thereafter, Jess and I began the 1 hour drive home. It was misting out enough that visibility was poor and the roads were very slick. Despite the 55mph speed limit on most of the roads we travelled on, I almost never went over 45. About half way home a police officer made a quick U-turn got up on my ass flipped his lights on and pulled me over.

As he approached me, he used his flashlight to look through the trash in the back of my truck. Then he told me that he had pulled me over because my license plate light was out. Apparently having a messy truck and your windows cracked open when it’s raining means that you’re on some form of narcotics because I was asked more than three times in regard to whether I had any such drugs in my vehicle. Additionally, he was quite curious as to why someone would drive in the rain with his windows cracked, as though I’m the only person in the world who had ever done this. Eventually, he took my license and insurance and went back to his car.

On the way back to his car, again he looked through the trash in the back of my truck with his flashlight. We must have sat there with his lights shining on us for at least 15 minutes before he returned. He apologized for the delay attributing heavy radio traffic as the culprit, handed me my license and insurance card, told me to drive safe, and wished me happy holidays.

Jess and I didn’t get home until 1:30am. We’re both exhausted this morning.

I’m glad that my brother and his family are doing okay. My brother was starting a new contracting job today however, is unlikely to be able to drive with the splint on. Additionally, they have to go through the trouble of finding their car (which was towed) and finding a rental car this morning. I hope everything works out okay for them. The worst part is that my brother had been looking for a job since he was let go a few weeks ago. If he doesn’t get this new job because of the accident, it could put his family in quite a bind.