I always love July because of no special reason... other than June afternoons make me sleepy. You got me, I'm just quoting a Cracker song, kinda. But they do make me sleepy.

"Hey June, why'd you have to come, why'd you have to come around, so soon? I wasn't ready for all this nature. The terrible green green grass, and afternoons that make me sleepy."

I miss my iPod. Well, I have it in my glove compartment, but I don't have a tape adapter anymore. I mean, I have two, but neither work. I experimented with one because it was making too much noise and always got popped out by my car's tape deck complaining about "Clean Tape" or something. Like, WTF, there is no tape. It's just reading off of the metal thing at the top. And now it's missing all of its insides... and the tape deck pops it out immediately, saying "Check Tape". I wish it would just play it. It's the only thing I hate about my car. I have a CD player too, but I depend on my iPod.

When I don't listen to music that I love for a long time, I get very angry. You should see me, I'm always pissed off. My neighbor's six year old daughter asked me to play catch and I'm like "What for?!! Catch sucks. You just throw it back and forth, accomplishing nothing... don't ever ask me anything ever again." :D I'm kidding, I told her I'd play, and we did... but you could imagine if I could possibly get that angry.

I almost ran over a guy on a bike the other day. It almost wasn't my fault. A car was in front of me turning left, and they went, and I was checking left and moved up. I stopped. And I noticed that I had to move quick in order to make it before this huge line of cars coming would delay my arrival time by at least 2 minutes, and I just can't wait that long. So I was still looking left. I started going, and looked, and this bike was right in front of me, so I gunned it right and JUST missed his back tire!! He saw it, and was all angry and yelled "JERKOFF!!" I'm like, dude, did I hit you? No. I missed him by an inch or so, but close only counts in horseshoes and grenades, so he should have just not said anything, or he should have said "Woah, nice driving dude!" Of course, I was out of it, hung over... it was on my way back from watching the food channel over Billy's all day after drinking all night at the Dave concert. So, it wasn't exactly my fault because he should have noticed my head only looking left :D Jerkoff.

Tonight, I went to happy hour at the Boathouse in Malvern. It was my last appearance with the company I worked for. I turned down the full time position they offered me because I would be miserable working in the technology with which I would be working. Some people from work were there, including Hitomi, who I worked with at a previous job. That job together was hell, but everyone there was awesome. Most of the people on my MySpace friends list were from that job. It was awesome. We'd drink every f@#$ing Friday! And A LOT! Sometimes, we couldn't wait til Friday night, so we'd head out at lunch, and some other times we couldn't wait until Friday at all! Anyway, we were party animals. So, the new coworkers were a new experience for me. It was my last day there and the first time I'd hung out with any of them. They weren't party animals. Oh well.

Hitomi and I went to Ruby Tuesdays afterwards. That was funny. We go in there and she's freezing, so I give her my shirt. Then, we order coffee. We order soup (brocoli and cheese) and an appetizer, like a four way sampler which has chicken, mozzarella sticks, some other thing and some more chicken. On top of that I ordered a burger with fries. After the soup and appetizer, I was done. The waiter brought out my burger and I was like "I can't even take a bite of this, can I have a box to take it home in?!" The only thing that was eaten off that plate was a pickle that Hitomi swiped from me. It looks delicious though :)

Not much else going on... I'll be down the shore in Lewes Delaware (there's a photo album from last year's trip in my photos section) from Sunday to Tuesday. Hell, I could stay down for a few weeks if I wanted to, but I have to find a job soon... that sucks. I wanted to possibly take a trip. Just head out across the country with my laptop, my guitar, and my digital camera. I have some extra money in my cushion of my car, so I could do it. I should.

A Dave concert is one of those things that need no explanation. If you're going to a Dave concert, you're obviously seeing Dave Matthews. I went the other night. We got RIPPED.

The usual suspects, Mara, Billy, Jen and I. Drinking in the parking lot from around 6:30 (I forget honestly) until around 7:30 (again, no idea). We pounded a case of Molson Canadians in that time. It rained a few times. Mara and Billy were already drinking since 2pm. We go into the concert and found a nice spot on the lawn. We stood the whole damn time.

I'm honestly not a fan of Dave Matthews, but I don't hate him, and he has the best drummer ever. Basically because when I was in college, everyone was a Dave fan. It was annoying. I decided to devote my time to Sublime. And to Cracker. Not everyone were fans of these two. Strive to be different is my motto. In fact, Mara commented on how I am different everytime she sees me! Different haircut, new look, facial hair. Kate talked to Mara and asked "What does Jason's hair look like now?" So, it pays off. Right now I have short hair, long sideburns, and a goatee. Two weeks ago, I had a beard and longer hair. Last week I just had the longer hair.

I remember being in the concert, and someone had one of those glow sticks, but it was red and about 8 inches long or something, and bent fairly easily. I grabbed it and put it in my mouth! I was making smily faces at the girls behind us, and in the dark it had to look freaky! Like, all you can see is this outline of a head and a huge smile. I was having a good time.

Sublime came on at the intermission. I love Sublime.

On top of all that, it was a blast. We each drank about 5 of those 20 oz lagers they serve at the Waterfront. If you've been you know what I mean. Wax paper cups. I may not be a fan of Dave Matthews but I love concerts and would go to every one. I've never turned down an invite :) The crowd at a DMB concert is a good, fun crowd.

The day after, aka Recovery Day. Hung out with Billy since I slept over their place. We watched the food network all day. He loves the food network. I don't mind it, those people make some amazing things. The one girl, Giada de Laurentiis... she's a hottie. I'm surprised I remembered how to spell her name, and I have no idea how to say it. And the guy on Food 911 has some major skillz. He goes into peoples' houses, uses their tools, and still makes awesome stuff. Today he made steak, and I now have a few more tips to add to my arsenal of steak making (currently two items : 'Marinade', 'Grill to medium / medium rare'). Of course, watching cooking shows all day and being hung over makes you starving. So we ate hot dogs. Then I got home and ordered a stromboli and some hot wings and took a nap. I'm recovered.

Beaner came over yesterday to record some music on my Mac Mini. He had a microphone and a 300 W mixer, and his acoustic guitar. When he was done, he left everything on my bed. Instead of doing what I wanted to (or supposed to) do, I picked up the guitar and started recording stuff. It sounds pretty good, the mic picks it up decently. But during all this, I wondered "What about a music log?"

You hear of all new types of web logs ("blogs") coming out... Video logs, photo logs, podcasts, etc. What about writing a song each week?

I know a band called "They Might Be Giants", they're fairly famous. I can't find the article right now, but a record producer or a friend challenged them to record a song about every city they visited on tour. So it's possible.

I just think it would be fun, if I could sing, to record a song that's like a podcast. It would be challenging, which would make it more fun.

What would be cooler, though, is if my site had a "jingle".

All fixed.

First, it's common to want to do this...

Select * from Table1 join Table2 on Table1.ID = Table2.Table1ID where Table2.Something = whatever.

That now works in dumb by doing simply the following:

Table1 t = new Table1();
Table2 t2 = new Table2();
t2.setSomething(whatever);
t.setTable2(t2);

engine.load(t);

So it'll select everything from Table1 where a certain condition on Table2 is true. Like, selecting polls where a poll answer contains 'The'. Of course, this works in filters because the filter is actually generating its own SQL. Saving that object was never a problem, that's been a part of dumb since the old days, over a year ago.

Another problem I had... it's very common to have a table like this:

table UserFriend {
userId int not null,
friendId int not null,
constraint foreign key userId references (User) userId,
constraint foreign key friendId references (User) userId
}

Two fields are references to the same table. Before, my generated sql code would pretty much only work if no table was joined more than once, either from the same initial table, or later on down the joined road. Now, I can have any number of references to the same table either in the initial table or down the road. It all works now. It's beautiful.

Anyway, I'm still chugging away at the... oh wait, that last game update was the last one.

Because I don't feel like doing them anymore. If you want to know, just ask me. Or subscribe to the newsletter...

The thing's almost done. When you have a document called "CWG_Status.odt", it of course means you're using the OpenDocument format, but also means that you are reminding yourself of what you still have to add. And when that file goes from 10.4 KB to 8.3 KB, it means your almost done! So, I poke a little fun at ODF for its size... so what? The price is just right ($0.00). It's fast enough for me. Anyways. Right now I have 9 lines of stuff that still needs to be added. One will be addressed after the initial version goes live. I know, it can't be considered "Finished" until it's actually "Finished" but, name one piece of software where the creator had no more ideas for new stuff to add after it was "finished". It's the great thing about my job, I just work and work and work, and my boss will ask "Are you finished?!" and I'll reply "Software is never finished..." And it's like eternal job security with no ship date.

That's funny though, because you can finish a work of art. Like, a song, or a painting, or a photograph. With art, though, it's like, you reach a point where you consider it done, and then you take stuff away. Especially in sculpting. They haul in a huge chunk of marble for Michaelangelo and he says "I'm done! I just have to cut some marble away now."

At some point in the last 3 years, I've learned to see computer science as more art than science, though. A program can be beautiful. It can be elegant. You can show it to other people and they may or may not (usually not) see the beauty in it. It's a messy process. I'm not talking about the user interface either. I'm talking about the code. The design. The implementation. The very little code that does a lot. The abstraction. The sweet, sweet pleasure of everything running correctly.

So the game is almost done. It's looking beautiful... not in the sense of how you probably think of beauty, but in the sense described above. The code is beautiful. The interface is not beautiful, at all. Well, it kinda looks like this site, only less gray, and more non-colorish. Here's my motto:

Function, then beauty

It makes life easier. Get it to work, then make it aesthetically appealing. That's down the road though, since this isn't like a 3D game or something. It's a web game. With an incredibly lazy creator.

There's more logic in this game than anything I've programmed in the last 3 years. Well, I guess that's an exaggerated statement. There's certainly a lot of logic in dumb and it's web counterpart. I guess I can say, there's more logic in this application than any other application I've ever done. Meaning, something specific, like this website, or other websites I've done, even in work. Underlying systems aren't applications, they're tools to help make application development easier, and that includes dumb and dumb web. And the security system, and my menu system which still holds its own. So this adds a level of complexity that I wouldn't normally find in an application, but not one that I'm not capable of handling. Basically, here's what goes on with my other applications...

select data from the database
show it

or

show a form
input data to the database

With dumb and JSF, there was literally no work do be done here. I can't say what's going on now, only because it's too complex and it would give away my great ideas.

I look forward to releasing this game on the web for the 4 people in the world that will enjoy it. Should be within the next week or so. w00t!

It's sorta like "carpal tunnel syndrome" only it doesn't happen in the carpal area. It's in my freaking forearm. But it's from the same sort of hazard... (no not that you pervert)... creating awesome software. At least in my case. I never got carpal tunnel from programming stuff that sucks. Like, I never got it programming a "Hello, World" program. And I never got it from writing a paper in college, the only time, besides this website, that I ever used the English language in my life. Nope, I don't talk in English either. It's English-ish. Not like I have a second language, but I really don't even have a first.