So yesterday was my birthday. Heather made me a cake and let the girls decorate it. OMG was it funny… They used every sprinkle,jimmy, confectionary item in the house on the cake. It was hilarious. (I gotta get a flicker account and upload some pics). They were so proud! and when it came time to eat it … they dove right in! (there was a lot of that gelatinous coloring stuff that you use to write with on it.) Our teeth were stained with blue and green food coloring 
We had a blast. My oldest had to have the 3 (I’m 37) that was in the center of the cake. I just couldn’t say no
Fun was had by all… Except heather… She had to work last nite…
So I know this blog says I want to talk about .NEt and I do have a couple of posts about it in the pipeline but work’s been pretty busy lately so I’ve only been adding to them incrementally. Soon I hope. But I did want to take a little time to talk about a lovely {sarcasm} tool called FxCop. FxCop is a code analysis tool that analyzes your code for a few different things: Coding style and coding efficacy.
Basically you take your project/solution and you compile it. Then you run the FxCop too against your Dlls. As a result FxCop measures how good your code is against a set of built in (and extensible) rules. These rule range from spell checking to actual errors. The tool basically runs like a compiler and spits out errors and warnings (you can customize what is an error vs warning based on your project’s coding standards). But some of the rules are just bizare. I find myself in a rush to get my project building because we are in this stage where we are running the tool with a big bang effect (we have a lot of code that we didn’t used to run it on … now we are and we gotta get the world building again). In this rush I am questioning the value of some of the rules as they apply to my project but I am just changing the code to follow them because it’s easier than changing the rules…
For example I have an Enum that has 3 values A=1, B=2, C=3 (if you don’t know what an enum is post and I’ll update with a definition). FxCop yells at me that I should have a value of None=0. So I put it in… But I really don’t need one and it could lead to confusion later… ugh… The things we do in the name of speed… So I added a comment like //TBD: Remove this later…. hmm…
I don’t like it 
In another “I Just don’t get it” moment… I was riding into work today and NPR was talking about Iraq and the surge and whether or not it’s working… from the sounds bites I’ve been hearing I’d say … no… But a more statistical slant should probably taken. Since the surge started how has the deathtoll (both American and non american) changed… for the better? For the worse? I think that’ll be my statistics project for the week.
Now to the “Disturbing” part. For the first time ever I had to turn off NPR. I was revolted and horrified when I heard the adoption stance Russia is taking and the description of the conditions over there. Russia is disallowing Foriegn adoption… “Temporarily”… In the face of this, orphanages are so full that hospitals have rooms full of infants that are going neglected… Children are tied down and or their mouths are taped shut. They are and I quote “Rotting in their own filth because staff are too overworked to take care of them.” OMG… I am saddened that children are kept in this way. Angered at a government that would essentially refuse help. I know there must be people in Russia trying to fix this and I wish them all the best and all the luck. Man there is so much that is incomprehensible to me in the world these days. I wonder to myself… What can I do? I am afraid that I’ll be desenitized to this over time… I don’t want to rail about it in this post just once … as a salve to my conscious.
hmmm…. This requires more thought.
So in wake of monday’s tragedy, I feel I have to expressing my emotions about what happened. They are still all jumbled up and not sorted out but I wanted to do a stream of consciousness post listing my thoughts on what happened. Maybe if I can I’ll expand on some of these thoughts in subsequent posts:
- How horrible and incomprehensible…
- What feelings are going through the gunpersons mind that lead up to taking of life?
- What can I do as one person to help?
- WHAT THE EFF! Why aren’t gun laws more strict!?
- Why are we allowed to bear arms at all?
- Eff the amendment that was written in a turbulent time at the origin of a country that was in turmoil and its infancy and needed to defend itself. Aren’t we more “civilized” now?
- At the very least can’t we keep AUTOMATIC weapons out of people’s hands?
- I cannot imagine what the parents of the victims are going through. My thoughts and prayers are with them.
So I just noticed the times were off (using UTC)… So I updated it. Apparently posts and comments are saved in the “set” time… Meaning it doesn’t store all times in utc and then apply the timezone shift when you render… So posts for today will be out of order 
Ok… first… I tend not to eat a lot of beef. I rarely if ever eat pork anymore.. I mostly eat chicken and fish… but I absolutely LOVE beef tenderloin. So we had some company this weekend and I got the opportunity to cook. So here’s how the week went leading up to saturday.
Sunday April 8th…
Heather asks: “know what you are making for dinner on saturday?” me: “huh?” (this is a little too far in advance of my typical meal planning)…
Tuesday comes… I think I’d like to make twice baked potatos and a mushroom sauce (I love mushrooms especially in a gravy)… Mushroom sauce tends to pair well with beef… hmm… what haven’t I made in a while… Tenderloin… that sounds good. Just need a veggie… Asparagus sounds good… I think it may even be on sale this week…
Wednesday: How will I prepare the asparagus… Well I only have one oven 
…. Twice baked potatos… hmm… What about dessert? Heather: Jen says she would like the chocolate creme brulee I made last year… ok that’s easy. I can make that saturday morning and refrigerate it all day… What do I want to do with the tenderloin… hmm… let’s cut it into steaks and Pan sear it… that sounds good… oh yeah… the asparagus…I broiled it the last time I made it and that was YUMMY… We’ll do that again… Ok…. Menu:
- Black Pepper crusted Filet Mignon with a mushroom sauce
- Broiled Asparagus with olive oil. (BTW… Extra Virgin Olive Oil is awesome)
- Twice Baked potatos with Gruyere Cheese.
- Chocolate Creme Brulee
Did the shopping friday nite.
Saturday morning I’m up early… Make the Chocolate Creme brulee, Make the potatos (save the second baking until just before mealtime). slice up the tenderloin… (I bet Chuck would like tenderloin… is soft and easily eaten ). get all the ingredients chopped and measures (Mise en place is your friend). Guests arive with Wine… There you go… If you want more details or recipe info, just ask I can round it out…
The meal went great. 3.5 lbs of tenderloin were consumed…. Leftover potatos, asparagus, gravy tonite… guess I’ll make some chicken to go with the Frog’s leap Zinfandel wins top honors to go with the main meal.
So it’s odd. I know a lot of people that are in or have been in the armed forces. But for the first time someone in my neighborhood who grew up with my brother is heading off to Iraq….
Nick from Billerica (I don’t want to use his full name without his permission) is 12 years younger than I (he’s 24)… However my mom and his mom are very close friends… In fact his mom and dad attended my wedding. Nick just finished is training for the Marines (I think it’s the marines) and on May 15th his heading to Iraq for 15-18 months. His mom is too say the least worried/depressed/sad but trying to put on a positive face for her son… Who was back from training for only 1 week before he had to head back… his mom is awesome, funny, and generally one of the nicest people you could meet.
I feel for their whole family as things will be very tense for them.
I hope things go smoothly for Nick. I hope he returns safely.
Well it had to happen I guess… My daughter had a play date with a friend of her’s in the Webkinz world. They played games together and chatted to each other. I really didn’t expect to have to start the monitoring so intensely… I found that some of the games let you play with other people via random assignment. Yes there is no chatting other than some precanned comments that you can send.. but my daughter went and visited her friend’s webkinz’s room… And this morning my daughter walked straight to the computer once she got downstairs… bypassing breakfast.
It’s a good thing we limit her time on the computer and restrict her to certain sites….. Shortly I’m putting netnanny or the equivalent on the computer.
Ah… Karma, Fate, Kismet, Fluke… Whatever word you choose probably applies.
So my wife and I were working on our budget last nite. It’s been a long overdue thing as we haven’t been really tracking some of our expenses and things were starting to snowball a little. So we decided to try and get on top of it and put a plan in place for our monthly expenses and savings goals. It was a good conversation. We literally finished our conversation, I went to get ready for bed, and my wife went to check the laundry…. She calls out to me saying “Uh oh Jay come check this out” I come down stairs… Sense of forboding and
wait for it
the washing machine is dead. The motor is shot. It’s over 13 years old so it’s literally not worth spending a minimum of 100$ to have it looked at.
So for those of you who aren’t aware: I am catholic. I tend not to talk much about it because I’m having issues with the catholic church. So I was in mass yesterday and during the homily (the time when the priest talks about pretty much whatever he wants) the priest encouraged us to respect all races, creeds, etc. And I immediately thought to myself… If you are encouraging this why can’t the church practice what its preeching? I’ve been having a LOT of problems lately with the church with respect to its stance on many things… First being their wholesale effort to get banned same sex marriage, for those of you wondering I am in favor of same sex marriage. I mean I just don’t get it. Why does the church go around closing churches because of budget and attendance reasons and then turn around and fund lobbyists to try and influence the government?
Whenever I think about the negative things that the catholic church are espousing/doing (no female priests, anti gay stance, convert the world to catholiscism (by the sword in the old days)). I see the need to speak their message, for without words any organization will diminish and eventually fade away. The central message that I take away from the catholic teachings is: love, forgiveness, goodness, responsibility. And there is never enough of that in the world… or maybe there is enough but it’s just not being channeled correctly.
I dunno… When I do go to church I actually don’t mind… I’ve always been connected to the music and the readings… It’s just at Homily time I tune out when the priest starts in on those things I previously mentioned. That and one time he yelled at us because people other people weren’t there… Guilt trips don’t work on me.
