Monthly Archives: October 2007

Writing Software in a Feedlot

A little story: I’m from West Texas where cattle ranching is big. In communities around the Panhandle, there are feedlots where cattle go to spend the last 3-6 months of their lives before becoming steak. Feedlots can hold a lot of cattle. As you can imagine, the air quality around feedlots is pungent, to put …

October 31, 2007 – 9:00 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Programming | Comments (3)

Day 3

I’m finding that I lack the ability to concentrate for long periods of time. I think concentration is a habit, one you can fall out of and working at BillMatrix for 7 years on top of my already bad habit of being distracted by shiny, jangly things has put a serious hurt on my ability …

October 31, 2007 – 4:46 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Abyss Diving | Comments (0)

Day 2

So my plan is to document however long this little no having a job experiment goes on. My apologies for 95% of my readers who are non-technical but most of these little daily summaries will be focused on my learning process. I’m setting the clock as of yesterday since the first two days of the …

October 30, 2007 – 5:13 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Abyss Diving | Comments (0)

RIP Pandora, 1993-2007

October 30, 2007 – 7:25 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Random | Comments (2)

A Dive Into The Abyss

So, as it turns out, my bitching about my self-review was unnecessary. Monday, October 22nd, I quit my job. I actually almost did it the Friday before but wanted to make sure I wasn’t making a rash decision (as if detesting each minute you spent at work for the past 4 months could ever be …

October 26, 2007 – 3:19 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Work | Comments (0)

Functional Programming Comparison

Seemingly late to the prom, Microsoft is adding lambda expressions to C# 3.0. For those of you unfamiliar with lambda expressions, they are basically just syntactic sugar for creating anonymous functions that you can pass around. Functional languages like Lisp and to a lesser degree, Python, have had them from day 1. In these languages, …

October 23, 2007 – 12:19 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Programming | Comments (0)

Deborah Kerr, RIP

Deborah Kerr has died. One of my all-time favorite romances is “An Affair to Remember” and I thought she was wonderful in that. She’s probably best known for that steamy kiss with Burt Lancaster in “From Here To Eternity”. The NY Times obit linked above has all the other pertinent details. I’m a little sad …

October 18, 2007 – 2:55 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Culture | Comments (0)

Who Knew

Did you know Ravel wrote a concerto for the left hand? Me neither though I guess I should have, given how farking hot Bo Derek was in Bolero. He probably needed to blow off some serious steam. But more seriously, I can totally see maybe a tone poem called “It really does feel like someone …

October 17, 2007 – 2:14 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Random | Comments (0)

It’s the Most Wonderful Time, Of the Year

Does that little jingle make you think Christmas? Well stop it, it’s not what I’m talking about. Halloween neither even though it’s a great little holiday. No, I’m talking about review time. That time during the year when the review fairy comes down from on high where she’s been hanging out with Jesus and John …

October 17, 2007 – 1:22 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Work | Comments (3)

God Tells Baptists Dancing Is Off-Limits but Pissing On Bar OK

Apparently, an assistant football coach at Baylor was caught Saturday night taking a leak on the bar at a local pub. Yup, you read that right, on the bar. The coach had been drinking the hard stuff for a little while and “apparently thought no one was watching him”. To which I say, this is …

October 16, 2007 – 1:05 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Sports | Comments (0)