October 30, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:26 PM (Pacific)
Sometimes it's good to be hanging around with a bunch of foreigners. :) Their experience is different.
I have to think there is something deliberate about not acquiring programs with positive parent figures in them. This is the same culture that has tried to sell us the notion that paying someone $6.50 an hour to take care of your kids, is the same as raising them yourself.
We had a brief window in which women could stay home to raise their kids. Now the idea is to eradicate that, to pay two workers the same salary as one. So why rub it in? Why keep showing the happy kids with their parents there all the time, as if it were the norm?
I say foreigners because they're more attuned to propaganda, its mechanism. I doubt I'd even notice stuff like that otherwise. It's like a fish being aware of the water. If it's always around you, you just swim in it, you don't analyze it.
You know what would be cool? To hook Blogger up to a printing press. If you push a button, it prints out a paper book.
I had a dream about Greenwald last night. You know, the same guy I named myself after for six years.
I can't remember the substance of the dream. It had to do with business. There was this huge house, or building, and it was almost entirely dark. I was hiding in this building...okay I really can't remember the point of this dream.
I feel so crappy. I'd like to make a shepherd's pie, actually. It's a perfect cold weather dish and it's pretty easy to make. grumble It's just the thought of shopping for the "stuffs" (that is the plural of stuff, you know), that is killing me.
I have a cold again, or else it is the same cold. Cough, cough. I didn't get the cough last time actually, but this time it's on.
I fixed a couple bugs in some scripts. One was a completely dumb-assed bug. I didn't escape the characters inside a text box...and when I ran tests, I didn't use the characters that needed to be escaped. The first time I tried using the feature live, it cracked like a fresh egg.
Basically I got an error that the headers were being called twice. Huh??? It took me a while to notice that part of the script did execute--it incremented some counters I had--while the other part didn't--the part that processed the text inside the box whose characters were not escaped.
lol reminds me of those IBM Op Codes you used to find on the Net. I'll have to find and host a list of those because they keep getting taken down. One was DWIT--Do What I'm Thinking--:)
The other bug was, inexplicably, even dumber. I swear I ran tests on that one too. You know...
$variable == "true";
Ugh.
Next up will be something to allow users to delete images inside the product reviews forum. Right now you can't do that. Once an image is up, you can replace it, but you can't delete it. *rolls eyes*
Why can't you delete it? Not to diss the Reviewpost folks, but it is slightly complicated...it falls under "to be implemented by sucker programmer who bought this script" lol
October 28, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
1:49 PM (Pacific)
Celine Dion! Wow...I heard her cover of John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" today. I kept thinking, who is this singer, because the cover is sooooooooo good? :D
I like Celine Dion anyway...not so much the big show biz aspect, and not because she is technically the best singer. She isn't; Mariah Carey is. But Dion puts heart into her songs every time. She gives you your money's worth.
October 27, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
4:38 PM (Pacific)
People say believe half of what you see
Son, and none of what you hear
But I can't help but be confused
If it's true please tell me dear
I listen to the radio in the mornings...and whatever's on, sticks in my mind for the rest of the day.
Have you ever noticed that few of the cartoons on Cartoon Network have parents in them? Or if they do, the parents are stupid or crazy?
I just consciously noticed that.
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (there is one lone authority figure that everyone laughs at), Dexter's Laboratory (the parents are the stupid/crazy variety), Fairly Oddparents (ditto), Bill and Mandy (okay, I never got through an entire episode, but I didn't see any parents)...what's that one, Baby Loony Tunes? Isn't that like a big daycare? Anyone ever see any parents there?
I'm not sure what to conclude from this. They do show Jackie Chan Adventures, which they bought off some other station...that show is worthy. But otherwise, the only children's shows with positive parent figures in them, are on PBS.
October 26, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:00 PM (Pacific)
Maria, Maria
She fell in love in East L.A.
To the sound of a guitar
Played by Carlos Santana
Just had to get that out of my system. :D It's been playing in my mind for days now.
I can admit I do miss the days of the "guitar gods." I was sick of the whole thing at the time; there was far too much posturing. It became a joke.
But now, listening (at least in my head) to the sound of Carlos Santana playing, I regret that we're past those days, that we no longer produce guitar gods.
I am getting old. Only old people can even think that way.
I started out writing about the California ballot, because it is very interesting this time. It has some key measures that will determine our quality of life in this state.
However that veered too closely toward political commentary, and we don't do that.
I will say there is a very interesting "Wal-Mart measure" on there; check it out.
sigh It's cold today. It's cleared up but still cold.
Gotta go...
October 22, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
11:46 AM (Pacific)
Okay, I'm up to Fashion now. i.e. Arts & Leisure, Beauty, Blogs, and Fashion are finished.
We won't have ads on the front page of the site, the Women Bloggers page, and the Children's section, so next up will be Food & Travel.
I can admit it is a bit thrilling to put this code in place, because it means it's the last time I'll ever have to do anything page by page (knock wood). The side menu and footer are already Javascript. The only reason I didn't stay with Javascript for the ads is that Javascript doesn't like Javascript, and most ad technology is in fact Javascript.
October 21, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
6:37 PM (Pacific)
Oh, I am tired. I dunno what it is. I felt tired from this morning. I'm hoping it's just pre-TOM weariness and that it'll be gone by tomorrow.
I finished the Arts & Leisure section, ad-wise. It's not bad...I have this sneaking desire to convert all of the HTML pages over to my HTML-page-editing applet. Why not? It's simply a matter of marking the sections. It automatically skips over if it can't find the markers. It's actually the same code I used years ago to create a printer-friendly version.
At first I thought it looked clunky to put a full banner on the pages but now I kinda like it. For us it makes sense to put the banner on almost every page of the site, since people access different pages from search engine searches.
We have Google up there now and it has gotten better. Before, it struggled to cough up relevant ads. Now even I find many of them interesting.
Possibly next month we'll be open for selling the banner ads. I'd like to get them all in place first and have a better idea how many impressions the ads get.
Fareed Zakaria. It's not because he is, for a political commentator, actually kinda cute. *g* It's because what he says generally makes sense.
Zbigniew Brzezinski. I told ya looks don't count. :D An oldie but goodie.
Alistair Cooke, may he rest in peace.
BBC News in general.
Pat Buchanan, Arianna Huffington, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley...those guys.
So what does this say? I was wrong. There is more to the Third World than simply numbers. Okay that guy Zakaria is very Americanized but he wasn't born here. What makes him at the top of my short list, is his perspective. That is not something that can be home-grown here.
Our collective consciousness in the U.S. goes back about 325 years, being generous about it. For some of these so-called Third World cultures, it goes back thousands of years. They've seen it all. They're less inclined to go jumping around hysterically, the way we do.
What can't be beaten is that combination: Third World perspective, with Western progressiveness.
Brzezinski obviously is not from a Third World perspective but then there is something of a Second World one, combined again with (okay I am prejudiced), an American point of view.
Alistair Cooke...here you had an English and American combination, the old and the new.
BBC News...had me cracking up last night. They sent some English guy to cover the American election...he had "the aristocratic cowboy impersonator from Texas," "four more wars!", etc.
Is it so simple though? Are we hopelessly divided as a country? Time to secede?
I could go back and make it a proper recursive function but I've already finished the program. The code is OK, I'll put the snippet on the computer blog.
October 20, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
6:32 PM (Pacific)
What a day.
Someone wanted a form off the bureau of automotive repair website...yes, there is a bureau of automotive repair and they have a website.
Of course my newest Adobe Acrobat was somehow gone. It has been gone for a long time actually. I had downloaded the exe file for a new-enough one but had forgotten to install it. So that wasn't a complete disaster.
Then I had the idea of making a program to update the HTML files on this site. pfffff I got into doing that, it's Java. Then I had the idea of having the program spider the site. Why should I have to specify which directories and subdirectories get crawled?
I must be out of my mind. Halfway through I started to have visions of a...the term completely slips my mind. It's a function that calls itself. It was faster to actually write another tiny function. The first function calls the second function if a certain condition is met. The second function decides whether to call the first function again and how many times.
This should not work. But it does. It popped up a perfect list of all files and subdirectories in a given directory. It also crawled the subdirectories and returned their files and their subdirectories, and so on.
I suppose it actually works the same way as that...whatever...function that calls itself. It is sort of calling itself. It's like, hey, should I call myself? Oh yeah, do that. Really, how many times? Well each time I call myself, I ask myself if I need to call myself. And I'll keep calling myself until there's no real reason to call myself anymore.
lol
October 14, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
9:43 AM (Pacific)
I do realize that we don't cover politics on this site. In a way I feel we should...we could get together as a group, the nine members of this site, and come up with an endorsement. Eight out of the nine are Americans, after all, and everyone in this world has an opinion about the American presidential race anyway.
The reason we don't cover politics: when we were putting together the site back in 2002, I noticed that websites aimed at educated women tended to have a single political viewpoint. I'm against that. Not against having a single political viewpoint, obviously, but against the idea that a website aimed at educated women has to have one...that the site is either entirely apolitical (and typically 100% commercial), or else it subscribes to only a single philosophy.
I really do not know how to put that better but I myself resent being dictated to. To me it is part of a belief that women need to be told who to vote for.
Before this election, I myself would not have told people to get out and vote. I don't believe in our own system. It's become less and less...relevant? It's become ridiculous. We are expected to argue about the ridiculous, while our jobs and our standard of living steadily bleed out.
But this time, even I'm going out to pull the lever. I have to. This time, every American needs to be out there pulling the lever, no matter what happens.
So friends, put on your American flag pins or your hammer and sickle pins lol This time, get out and vote!
Last night's sunset: a perfect, cerise yolk pinned a few inches above the horizon, its reflection sketched vividly below it in the water, as if a child had colored it with a crayon.
I showed this to my kids and they were duly impressed.
Minutes later, the yolk had slipped behind a horizontal strip of cloud, which bisected it neatly.
I called my kids over. My son politely said ooh and ah. My daughter, irritated: "I saw it already!"
How finite are these times. I know they're growing day by day. I can't think of the time when they will leave.
Daughter to son: "I love you."
Son to daughter: "I love you. Now let's stop saying that and get to work."
October 11, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:35 PM (Pacific)
Sheesh, I feel tired. I hate feeling tired.
Okay to be fair, there are different kinds of tired. This specific kind of tired is...autotrader.com screwed up their program. I called them about it; according to them, they're working on it. But now, we can't change any of our car listings nor add new ones.
Are they really working on it? They took the "Save Changes" button off the editor screen. Hello. I think even the worst programmer knows how to put a "Save Changes" button on a screen. It's a straightforward CGI program. I dunno, it's as if I took the "Publish Post" button off the blogger editing screen? It's easy enough to do. Then you wouldn't be able to publish sweet fanny using a POST operation.
Then...I have a cold. All of my colds are exactly the same although they are supposed to be all different. They start out with a sore throat, then it's a few days of runny/stuffy nose, then...the cough. The cough lasts and lasts and lasts and lasts. Actually I think it's my own fault. I smoked for at least ten years. I quit...8 or 9 years ago. But still I suspect that I ruined my lungs. I never got coughs as a kid.
So kids, that's why you shouldn't smoke. Even if you quit, you just may suffer years later, and in a way that you can do nothing about.
Then...oh well I'm done bitching. :) My son is doing better in his school work. He's smart actually, he just has...bad school habits? He won't admit he doesn't know something. To me personally it's stupid; I don't care whether or not he already knows it. What's the point? If you don't know, now is the time to find out. It's a waste of time either pretending to know, or else guessing...it's funny...so much of my own public school education comes back to me. The stuff that no one ever explained to me and that I struggled needlessly over. Perhaps it really is cultural. I changed when I came out here, when I started learning from Chinese instructors and from programmers. How not to waste time; how to find a solution, how to use logic.
Hm. Can I admit that I actually like mending clothes? I stink at sewing generally, I do not have the dexterity. But I like sitting down and hand sewing, fixing something or even making something. I did this when I was a kid. It's soothing.
It got suddenly hot today. This weather, truthfully, is driving me nuts. It's so variable. What I crave in summer, is that hot, hot, hot, dry, sunny "just another s****y day in Paradise" weather. And it hasn't come, not in years.
Now that it's fall, you'll get a string of cold foggy days--literally, North Carolina style fog (the only thing missing are the cars with the fog lights on them) and then sudddenly bang! An almost balmy, perfectly clear morning that makes you want to dance with joy, which then morphs into a sweltering (oh, I am spoiled) afternoon.
October 5, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:51 AM (Pacific)
The bulk of modern Western civilization was built on the invention of the combustion engine, and the twin discoveries of harnessing electricity and coffee.
Yes, coffee. So often overlooked: harnessing the energy of coffee. But look at it this way. Coffee enabled an entire subsection of society to function in the morning. Certainly at least some of those people would have become coke heads or opium slaves, were it not for coffee.
Most technical and mechanical inventions were and are fueled by coffee. Ask an engineer what he/she drinks in the morning. It ain't tea.
Bumper sticker sighted a few days ago: Jesus Was a Liberal. Interesting.
There was a third thing I wanted to blog about, but it's slipping my mind...
October 4, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
2:22 PM (Pacific)
Take me home tonight
I don't want to let you go till you see the light
Take me home tonight
Listen honey just like Ronnie sang
Be my little baby...
Yep, I may be getting ClearChanneled to death...if I hear another go-round of Dido's "White Flag" or Jewel's "Standing Still," or for that matter, Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (excellent songs all, but they've been totally ClearChanneled) I will toss my lunch. Every time I hear one of them now, I feel this inexorable craving for Joan Jett. :)
But they did play this song today. It's fantastic actually. I read the Rolling Stone review of Eddie Money...a bit predictable. I never felt that this song was a Springsteen-alike; it's too early 60's in flavor. Not only does it feature Ronnie Spector, there is a small Wall of Sound behind it too. How could you miss it?
I feel a hunger
It's a hunger that tries to keep a man awake at night.
Are you the answer?
I shouldn't wonder when I feel you whet my appetite
With all the power you're releasing
It isn't safe to walk the city streets alone
Anticipation is running through me
Let's find the key and turn this engine on.
I googled around, I think this is the most accurate transcription of the lyrics.
It's definitely fall now. For all of my incessant moaning about cold weather, I still feel that crispy little East Coast joy at the change of seasons. Fall is the one season where simplicity and complexity are completely interchangeable.
I can feel you breathe
I can feel your heartbeat faster.
Take me home tonight!
I don't want to let you go till you see the light!
Take me home tonight!
Listen honey
Just like Ronnie sang: Be my little baby!
I get frightened in all this darkness
I get nightmares
I hate to sleep alone
I need some company
A guardian angel to keep me warm when the cold winds blow!
I can feel you breathe
I can feel your heartbeat faster. . . .
Be my little baby!
Just like Ronnie sang
I say
just like Ronnie sang:
Be my little baby
baby
my darling!
I feel a hunger
it's a hunger!
Take me home tonight!...
Take me home tonight!...
Take me home tonight!...
October 2, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:41 AM (Pacific)
I don't blog enough. I'm looking back on it; I blog every few days at best.
To be fair, I never kept a paper diary or journal. I used to write but it was not methodical. I was trying to write a novel, actually.
Writers and programmers probably tend to be insomniacs. I was, back before I had kids.
whew I just finished redoing a Microsoft Access form. It's 3:30 in the morning...the only time I can do this sort of work.
During the day, there are too many interruptions. I have to drive the kids around (they have different timetables), the phone is ringing, yadda yadda...now it's dead quiet, the kids are asleep...perfect.
The form is just that, a form. It's a non-standard-size contract. Every couple years they change the fields around just enough so that you have to go back in and move all the fields around. I've been doing this for five years, at least; I've changed the fields twice.
I learned two things, anyway. One is that as far as I know, all Microsoft products revolve around one or two key concepts. If you know the concepts, using the program is easy.
Example: Image Composer. I have Image Composer on one of the clunkers. The one thing you need to know about Image Composer is that you need to create a "sprite" before you can draw jack diddley. I mean you can't just draw on the thing. You need to make a sprite and draw on that.
Excel: you need to know how to use the shift and control keys to select the cells. If you don't know how to do that, you are so screwed. The other thing is that you can Undo Typing In Cell. I like Excel. :)
Word: it's the tabs. Once you know how to format them, life is sweet.
Access: snap to grid. You must snap to grid. If you're making a form and this is turned off, it's impossible. Once it's on, that's 90% of the work.
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