american pride

in the suburbs, i see a lot of oversized american flags, telling me that the people who put them up are not only more patriotic than i am, but more so than all others who put up flags.

so it was refreshing yesterday to see this small flag in ravenswood, atop an oversized pole and dwarfed against the evening sky. it says, "i'm patriotic, and i don't have a small penis."

i bet you the owner drives a prius or civic or something, too. communist.

my breakfast menu

Here are the items i've sussed out so far for my breakfast-only restaurant:

1. Breakfast Fries -- a bed of french fries, covered with melted shredded cheddar, and topped with a steaming fried egg


2. Pork Slaughter -- a collection of all the pork breakfast items offered as sides: bacon, sliced ham, sausages


3. Starch your day -- like the slaughter, but a collection of all the starchy items: toast, hash browns, fries, english muffin, doughnout


4. Spam, spam, spam, eggs, sausage and spam -- a bowl of Count Chocula
   

helpful

i googled "convert ram to mp3" and came across this amazingly helpful instruction set at the aptly titled "How To Do Things" website:

1. Download a freeware or purchase an audio format converter that supports Ram to Mp3 conversions.


2. Install the audio format converter software.


3. Follow the instructions the software interface provides you with and you will be able to convert Ram files to Mp3 format.

Hurray! problem solved!

kids these days...

kids these days don't know jack about whitespace in programming. and i think i've figured out why. one of my coworkers (22) put some code up in a text editor outside the IDE. it was a mess of black and white.

"I don't know how you can read this," he said to me, commenting on how i'll often do coding work outside the IDE.

it occurred to me then that Kids These Days grew up with editors that color keywords, and the art of whitespace is being lost.

it also explains why they think i'm nuts when i keep telling them their whitespace is crap and their code is hard to read.

Fresh Mojitos

that was on the chalkboard sign outside the steak restaurant on the corner i don't like. i reckon it's in response to the German place across the street, who the week before had written Fresh Beer on their chalkboard sign.

fresh beer i can understand: i assume they mean the kegs are recently from the brewery and had recently been tapped. but fresh mojitos? call me crazy, but i like to think that any mixed drink i order from the bar is made to order.

null check

i saw this in some code the other day...

if (foo != null) {
// do some work on foo
}

bar = foo.data;

if you know enough to put in a null check...

when web translators go wrong

from here, a chinese restaurant relied on a web translator to get the english equivalent of its name. in preparation for the olympics and all.

"Is this beer dark?"

...asked the woman behind me at the Jewel, referring to her Guinness in cans. the checkout woman (with the unfortunate nametag "Donka Y") didn't know, but helpfully mispronounced "draught" (as in, "it hasn't rained in 3 months").

i assured the woman that Guinness Stout is, indeed, dark, which is apparently what she was going for.

i suppose i should forgive her, as i don't know much about wine. otoh, i can usually spot a red vs a white.