I ran across the new web-based MSN Messenger the other day.  I haven't had access to messenger from work in a long time.  The old version didn't work through our firewall, so I developed a local proxy to tunnel the traffic.  Then they started blocking that traffic outbound.  Then they rolled out a crappy customized version of it to collaborate in-house which couldn't go outside the firewall.  But this web-based one works perfectly through the firewall, so I am once again available while at work...within reason of course.

Last night, I upgraded to XP service pack 2.  It went very smoothly.  The new wireless networking support is fantastic.  I can finally unload the annoying software that came with the laptop to manage the networks.

I'm a little dissapointed with the firewall.  It adds a few new features, but still doesn't seems as configurable as I'd like.  We'll see...some more time with it may change my mind.

It was a very simple, smooth install.  I would let any of my family or friends attempt it by themselves, and probably will.

I mostly finished up the work I started last week on the back wall of the house.  Thanks a bazillion to Mom and Dad for helping out.  A few things I did smarter this week were to use a heavy duty car jack to lift the heavy hardi-panel panels into place.  They are really heavy, and since they are about .5“ thick, they really cut into your hands.  The jack worked amazingly well.  Thanks to my co-worker Mark Leech for such an ingenious, yet somehow common sense idea.

I'll see about getting some pictures up later when I'm not so sweaty and tired.

Well, i just couldn't wait.  I played Peasant's Quest and won.  It was pretty fun.  I wonder if anyone got higher than 135.

In a comment discussion, I mentioned my disdain for using Perl for anything larger than simple scripts or line-based text parsing (which is what it was invented for...see below). I received some pushback on this opinion from Shelly, obviously from her own experiences with the language.  I enjoy pondering a dissenting opinion when based on experiences or data.  She says:

Using a good OO design and programming techiques, a perl program is not a nightmare for maintainability...just like any other language (yes even assembly).

Obviously, I need to open my mind here. I guess my question becomes: Once you get to the point where you need to apply OO design and programming techniques, are there not more suitable languages for a project like that?  I'm curious to know what other people's opinions are on this.  What are the advantages of Perl over other truly OO languages?  Why would you choose it instead of another language?

For your enjoyment, here's the original manpage for perl:

 NAME
  perl | Practical Extraction and Report Language

 SYNOPSIS
     perl [options] filename args

 DESCRIPTION
      Perl is a interpreted language optimized for scanning  arbi-
      trary  text  files,  extracting  information from those text
      files, and printing reports based on that information.  It's
      also  a good language for many system management tasks.  The
      language is intended to be practical  (easy  to  use,  effi-
      cient,  complete)  rather  than  beautiful  (tiny,  elegant,
      minimal).  It combines (in  the  author's  opinion,  anyway)
      some  of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people
      familiar with those languages should have little  difficulty
      with  it.  (Language historians will also note some vestiges
      of csh, Pascal, and  even  BASIC|PLUS.)   Expression  syntax
      corresponds  quite  closely  to C expression syntax.  If you
      have a problem that would ordinarily use sed or awk  or  sh,
      but  it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little fas-
      ter, and you don't want to write the silly thing in C,  then
      perl  may  be  for  you.  There are also translators to turn
      your sed and awk scripts  into  perl  scripts.   OK,  enough
      hype.

Ever pine for the days of 16 color, 160x120 resolution adventure games?  HomestarRunner.com has expanded its Trogdor-related franchise by adding Peasant's Quest.  Last week, they had this preview of it, which was also hilarious.  Becky loved the rabbit algebra line.  I just went through a couple of screens of the game here on my lunch break, and laughing my rear off (ouch).  Looks like you can save and everything.  I can imagine it would be the most fun to play with a friend.  Maybe I can play it with Dave sometime.

If you've never visited homestarrunner.com, start with the welcome and go from there.  Alot of stuff won't make much sense until you've meet the characters, which you can do from one of the hilarious main menus.  Strong Bad's emails are my favorite and have been the birthplace of many of the funniest things on the site, including Trogdor himself.  Enjoy.

[Update: fixed spelling of Strong Bad. I think String Bad should be a new character]

This week has been pretty crazy. While doing some routine caulk replacement in the master bathroom, I discovered some water damage behind the tiles.  After removing some tiles and discovering some nastyness, I decided I could get into the wall from the outside more easily to clean it out and repair damage.

That wall of the house is obscured by some thick bushes.  I pulled an old picture of the house so you could see. I cut the bushes back so I could get to it.  I then discovered that the panelling was pretty nasty near the bottom that was being obscured and I had some ant problems.

To make a long story short, I spent the weekend ripping off the outside wall and replacing it.  Andrew came down Saturday and helped me put the new panelling up.  It was that Hardi-Plank stuff that's more like concrete than wood, and was MUCH heavier than wood.  It was also difficult to cut.  It pretty much destroyed a saw blade with one cut.  But it's supposed to not ever rot or mildew or anything, so it should be worth it.

Andrew and I replaced the panels I had removed, and as you can see we actually removed the window.  It was in the shower and I was tired of people being able to see me take a shower.  Also, it was the source of the tiling problem in the shower that lead to the water damage and an ant infestation.  We'll be redoing the shower/bath over the next few weeks, and Becky is looking forward to that.

Thank goodness I hadn't removed more panels, or we would have died.  It's pretty hot outside.  The heat index is well over 100 degrees.  I also hit my thumb with the hammer way too many times. I just finished caulking the wall and thought I share what's going on.  There's still quite a bit of work to do.  I need to replace the remaing 2 panels, but I'll need some cooperation from the utilities to remove all the crap they've screwed into the wall on the outside.

Webdell finished the BAR and relates the experience.  In there somewhere, he mentions having some bad dreams or nightmares. Peter mentions Clinton's entrance to the world of blogging. In honor of all these things, I will tell you about a dream I had last night that included all of those people...oh, Jenkies and Andrew were in it too, but Andrew doesn't have a blog and Jenkies hardly ever posts anything.  I know what you're saying and it's true. I have really bizarre dreams.  Here we go, I'll try to remember it as best I can.

Ok, so Peter, Webdell, Clinton, Andrew, Jenkies and I were driving to Waco in an RV. So it was alot like some kind of bizzare Segues reunion, but missing some people.  For some reason we were going south on I-35 from the Temple-Belton area, but were still headed to Waco.  It was a big RV and I think Webdell was driving, although I think the driver kept changing.  Whoever was driving was driving like a maniac, running over things and knocking down signs.

We got to Waco and went to the Baylor campus.  Evidently we were going to the library. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us in because we didn't have a library card. So we sat outside on the steps and threw rocks at birds.  Then for some reason we started throwing rocks at each other, but the rocks would become like water-balloons when they would hit, so it was alot like that Nissan Sentra commercial.

Anyway, we got back in the RV and somehow it became a submarine and was like “The hunt for Red October”. Webdell was doing a Sean Connery impersonation, but it was alot like his Saddam Hussein impression, which mostly involves him putting his fingers under his nose and smiling really big.

I don't remember anything from there, so I guess it's a bit anti-climactic.  I just thought I would share.

Today I needed an AVL tree implementation for some time-based indexing of cached data.  Unfortunately, I can't use the wonderful-looking OrderedDictionary in the PowerCollections project since .NET 2.0 is not due out for a while.  I searched around without any luck, so I rolled my own.  It's been a while since I messed with tree-based data structures.  I was pretty pleased with its performance characteristics, even with millions of records.

I'm thinking about releasing it as a short-term alternative for people having to wait on 2.0 and Peter Golde's PowerCollections project, so I thought I write a short blurb about it and link to some appropriate sites to generate some referrals and feedback.  Anyone interested in using it?

For those unfamiliar with AVL trees, it's a self-balancing binary search tree. Its characteristics that are of interest to me are:

• self-ordering - values are stored and can be retrieved in order simply by traversing the tree, something a hashtable cannot give you.
• self-balancing - This ensures that search times are O(log(n))
• fairly straightforward to implement, as opposed to Red-Black, or other self-balancing BSTs

Again, if you're interested in using it, leave me some feedback and maybe I'll make it a sourceforge or GDN project.