Archive for March, 2008

Hills go up

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Yesterday I rode my bike home from Rancho Peñasquitos. A wrong turn bumped the mileage up to about 53. And of course, because it was there, I had to make a little detour to go up Mount Soledad from La Jolla. Of all the hills that I’ve encountered in San Diego County, the La Jolla approach to Mt. Soledad is by far the most challenging.

As I made my way up Via Capri, I happened across a group of folks sitting in lawn chairs in their driveway. Upon seeing my huffing, puffing self trudging up at the blistering speed of 5 mph, they began to cheer, and one dude got out of his chair to clap me on. As he approached, I gave him a smile (well, probably more of a leer considering my pain) and a peace sign. From watching the pro cycling tours on tv, I knew what he was about to do, and in the back of my mind I said over and over, “please don’t push me” because of course I wanted to make it to the top all on my own power. I know, I have issues. To my relief, he did not give me a push but instead a sharp spank to the arse as I pedaled by.

Perhaps they were making fun. Perhaps they were simply having fun. Perhaps they were genuinely impressed by the psychotic cyclist with the nerve to take on that hill. Perhaps it was a combination of all of those things. But whatever their motivation, they really made my day. I felt like I was in a pro tour. So thank you, Group of Folks Sitting In Lawn Chairs In Their Driveway On Via Capri That Day.

Posted in Cycling | 1 Comment »

Quite the little joiner

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

I have committed myself to a second cycling event: the Shadow Tour 2008 Spring Stagecoach on Saturday April 5.

They’ve even got my name up there in the riders list, so I guess it’s officially official.

As much as I hate it, I am slowly becoming a roadie, as evidenced by this picture:

Yes, that is a cycling jersey, complete with pockets in the back. And under the baggy shorts are cycling shorts with padded chamois.

All that is left is to get a road bike. :shudder:

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »

Moving picture

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

On the occasion of the 4000th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, one of our news stations ran a photo. I may have misheard the backstory but it seemed they attempted to link the photo with one of the four soldiers killed. I found the photo on flickr and it’s actually almost a year old, from April 2007.

Son receives flag at funeral

Edit: This article has more information about the photo and a link to the original story which is now defunct.

Edit: A couple more links:
ABC News: The Boy Behind and Iconic Photo
Child of Fallen Marine Accepts American Flag

Posted in Politics, War On Terror | No Comments »

Fun with statistics

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

My wife signed herself up for the 3 major presidential candidates’ e-mail newsletters. One message she got from Barack Obama includes some very misleading statistics. Quoth the e-mail:

In February alone, more than 94% of our donors gave in amounts of $200 or less. Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show that donations of $200 or less make up just 13% of Senator McCain’s total campaign funds, and only 26% of Senator Clinton’s.

The problem with this quote is that the data used to create the statistics is not consistent. Apples and oranges.

In the first sentence, 94% of Obama donors gave in amounts of $200 or less. This is the percentage of donors, not the percentage of total campaign funds.

In the second sentence, the percentages apply to the total campaign funds, not the percentage of donors.

So let’s do a little bit of math.

Let’s be generous and say that 94 out of 100 Obama donors donate the full $200.
94 x $200 = $18,800.

The 6 remaining donors give $20,000 each.
6 x $20,000 = $120,000.

The total donated is $138,800.

While 94% of donors donated $200, their percentage of total campaign funds is only 13.5% ( $18,800 / $138,800 = 0.135 ). Pot, meet kettle.

Posted in Politics | No Comments »

A sobering article

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

Given that cycling occurs on streets shared with motor vehicles, there is inherent danger. For the most part, vigilance is rewarded with safety. But once in awhile, we are reminded that we are not in control of our environment. The following op-ed article is a sobering read:

Deputy Sheriff Kills Two Cyclists

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »

Hi-larious

Monday, March 17th, 2008

BoingBoing did a bang-up job presenting this so I’ll just link directly to their post:

Guy overdubs his atrocious guitar playing over Clapton concert

I love when the other band members join in. Sounds kind of like a Grateful Dead concert.

Posted in Entertainment, Music | No Comments »

Sometimes the internet does it for you

Friday, March 7th, 2008

I had a bit of a frustrating time this week configuring my development computer at work. I’m a Windows guy. Not so much because of choice, but because that was the road well-traveled. But enough of that.

My company’s website runs on a Linux box hosted elsewhere. Since I’m the only developer here that is suitably proficient with web technologies, it’s my job to maintain and develop the company site. Pretty standard stuff: PHP scripts, mysql database, and Apache web server.

You may see where this is going. I’m developing on a Windows workstation, so my environment is obviously much different from the production environment. Not the best of situations, but hey, it’s only PHP and mysql, right?

So I got PHP and mysql all happy and square on my machine. Yay. But PHP is still running under IIS, and since my machine is running Windows 2000, it’s running an older version of IIS. Ultimately, I ran into a “feature” of IIS in which cookies simply cannot be sent when there is a redirect using the “Location” header. From what I can tell, IIS sees the Location header and sends it immediately to the client, completely ignoring any cookie data that was set beforehand. How rude.

After a day or two of cursing and scouring the internet for a solution, I came to the realization that there simply was no solution. So I decided to install Apache and bypass IIS.

After I got Apache and PHP all squared away (yay), I spent another frustrating day trying to figure out why PHP wasn’t loading its mysql module. It worked in IIS, but for some reason Apache didn’t want to let PHP play with mysql. After more cursing, I finally fell upon Apache’s error log, which reported something strange:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\\PHP\\apache\\ext\\php_mysql.dll' - The specified procedure could not be found.\r\n in Unknown on line 0

Something was not happy with php_mysql.dll. I immediately realized I must be in dll hell. A little more scouring of the internet unearthed this little gem of a blog post:

The php_mysql.dll module loads libmysql.dll, but apparently it has to be the version against which it was compiled. The required DLL is bundled with PHP, but what if an older, incompatible version of that DLL is found earlier in the search path? You’re hosed, that’s what if, and the module load fails with a message to the log file like so:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'D:\\php-5.2.3\\ext\\php_mysql.dll' - The specified procedure could not be found.\r\n in Unknown line 0

Oh lordy, that’s my error too! I applied his solution and a few seconds later my PHP was happily talking to mysql. Thank you, Sander, for lifting my soul from dll hell to purgatory.

His comments are turned off, or I would have posted my gratitude there.

EDIT: I’m including his solution in case his blog gets eaten by the internet:

How do we solve this the Apache Way? Not by copying DLLs around, that’s for sure. The Apache configuration language has the LoadFile directive for this particular purpose. Loading the correct DLL right before the PHP module:

LoadFile “d:/php-5.2.3/libmysql.dll”
LoadModule php5_module “d:/php-5.2.3/php5apache2_2.dll”

makes PHP pick up the right symbols to run with MySQL.

Posted in Computer Technology | No Comments »

Great quote

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Gleaned from this article about William F. Buckley:

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.

This reminds me of something I read awhile back on the intertubes about how the definition of morality changes with time. While it is easy to take our civil rights for granted, it is instructive to study how those rights have been apportioned among various factions of society throughout history. For example, in the mid-19th century, the morality of slavery was debatable, while today it is rightly viewed as abominable.

What social norms that are acceptable today will be viewed later with the same abomination?

Posted in General, Politics | No Comments »

The flip side

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

While it’s all fine and dandy to approach autism as a facet of neurodiversity, there is an ugly side for those of us who care for the neurologically diverse. While our child is nowhere near as difficult as the one described in this article, the author captures the challenges faced by the caretakers of autistic minds.

Posted in Exploring Autistic Culture | 1 Comment »