Category Archives: Uncategorized

PCMLTOOLS

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I’ve started a personal open source project. Something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while.

The project is PCMLTOOLS — utilities designed to make working with the Java Toolkit for IBM i (JT400)’s Program Call Markup Language (PCML) easier to use.

The first tool is a Java class to allow a developer to retrieve a ProgramCallDocument object (which is normally generated from PCML) directly from a *PGM or *SRVPGM object who’s modules were compiled with the PGMINFO(*PCML:*MODULE) option.

The URL for the PCMLTOOLS project is https://github.com/fallingrock/pcmltools.

This is the first open source project that I’ve started … and I’m still getting the hang of github, so it may be rough around edges.

Ups Oops

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They gave me a new machine at work a few days ago … along with this new machine came a APC 750va UPS.

This is pretty cool, as I’ve been advocating having UPS’s attached to personal workstations for quite some time. I even went to the expense of purchasing my own UPS for my workstation before they got me the new one.

So today we had a power failure in the office … it was then that I found out that you have to pay attention to the outlet on the UPS you plug the computer into. I had inadvertantly plugged my computer into the Surge Protected outlet … not the Surge Protected & Battery backed up outlet.

So, when the power failed … so did my computer … my speakers, on the other hand, stayed powered up without a problem. 🙂

be750bb-annotated.jpg

Prairie Home Companion

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Ginny and I saw “Prairie Home Companion” today … in a word: Yawn

Don’t get me wrong … I enjoy the show on NPR (although I don’t go out of my way to listen to it), but this movie was just plain boring.

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough for it … but I could find no point to the movie. The music was pretty lame, with one or two exceptions the humor was absent (the off-color jokes by Dusty & Left [Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly respectively] were good and Kevin Kline as Guy Noir was pretty funny), and I couldn’t detect a plot at all.

Garrison: stick to radio.

[tags]NPR, Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion, Radio[/tags]

Developer Liability

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Security expert Howard Schmidt wants coders to be held responsible for vulnerabilities in their code, but others say their employers should be held to account

– Developers ‘should be liable’ for security holes – CNET

Yeah right … blame the programmer … not the company.

Um, folks, who’s responsible for NOT doing sufficient QA on the code?

Program bugs are inevitable … that’s the nature of things. Those bugs, however, should be caught before the code is released. That’s what QA is all about.

[tags]Software, Bugs, Security[/tags]

Half Blood Prince

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I’m about halfway through ::amazon(“0439784549”, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”):: and I must say it’s better than the last book. Much more readable and, at least in my opinion, on par with Ms. Rowling’s previous books.

I recommend it.

[tags]Harry Potter[/tags]

News Media

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The authorities maintain that the 42-year-old blogger, Joseph E. Duncan III of Fargo, N.D., took Dylan Groene, 9, and Dylan’s sister, Shasta, 8, from their rural Idaho home shortly before their 13-year-old brother, their mother and her boyfriend were found bludgeoned to death on May 16.

– New York Times article

What is he again? The 42-year-old North Dakota man? The 42-year-old suspected killer? No, he’s the 42-year-old blogger. The 42-year-old blogger supposedly kidnapped two children and murdered their mother and her boyfriend. The blogger bludgeoned the girl’s brother to death.

– strip mining for whimsy.

(via Ryan)

This is a pretty good example of how the media paints very broad strokes on things they have an imperfect understanding of.

Another good example can be found whenever the news sources make reference to settlements in Israeli territories … they almost always refer to them as “Jewish settlements” … not “Israeli Settlements”. What makes them unique is not the fact that the residents are all jewish … but they are all Israeli.

Theater Hike

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We went to see a “As you like it” performed by Theater Hikes at The Morton Arboretum today.

I really wasn’t expecting much, considering the venue and price of the tickets, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good for a community theater production.

Yes, it was hot… very hot. And humid. But there was a intermittent breeze and we moved around a bit.

The production values weren’t quite on par with Broadway or even Marriott Theatre, but given the situation, it was fun to watch. Somehow I don’t think Bill Shakespeare had jeans in mind when he wrote the play.

I think we’re going to try and see “Sleepy Hollow” in September … it will be cooler then. Not sure how they are going to do the headless horseman.

H2G2

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We went to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy last night with Steve and his MENSA moving group.

I never read the books … and when I watched it on PBS, I gave up quickly because the production values were so low (really bad props & special effects and pretty marginal acting, IMHO).

The movie certainly had far better production values … and was pretty funny, but seemed kind of disjointed to me. From what I could tell, they took a bunch of sections of all the book and stuck them together in a bit of a hodge-podge. There were also a lot of important elements that they used but never explained (Towels, in particular … and the “Peril Sensitive Sunglasses” that Ford & Zaphod wore).

I did laugh a lot … but only at the individual gags … the movie lacked a cohesiveness that I would have liked.