At the Little Boy's school, They apparently have a little toy shop that the kids are allow to pick one toy from to have if they've accomplished some goal or task. The Little Boy filled up his star card with gold stars so was allowed to go and pick up his prize. He choice was interesting to say the least. He picked a flying cow. Remember the little battery powered airplanes or birds that hung from a string to the ceiling and would fly in circles till the battery wore out, well he has the cow version of that. When I called home around lunch time to see how things were going he told me all about it, and asked that I help him play with it when I got home. Of course he was so excited he forgot it was a cow and called it a flying pig, which somehow seemed very ironic, but I didn't bother explaining it to him. Irony and five years olds don't go together. It's just one of those things. So what I didn't know was he was laying the ground work to have me install the flying cow accessories when I got home. 

Fast forward to the train station, My Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy pick me up, and as I enter the car, The Little Boy has a list of questions for me, to see how long he would have to wait to see if his flying cow could actually fly.

Little Boy: Are you sick or cranky?

Me: Well I’m not cranky but I am having a some trouble breathing.

Little Boy: Oh, so your not cranky, that’s good

Little Boy: Do you have to go poop or pee?

Me: I don’t believe that is any of your concern young man!

So after this little conversation my Beautiful Wife explains that he has been waiting all day and really would like me to assemble it for him. So with my trusty cordless drill (Thanks Brother K, this things works flawlessly) I had it mounted to the ceiling in no time and the Little Boy got to see a cow fly.

 

Being a Web Developer I have but one natural enemy in the wild, and that is documentation. Developers have written tons of software to transform documentation from a foe to a friend. I've use several of this applicattion, NDoc being a great application I use the most for this task. It that takes the comments in your code and create and MSDN style .Chm file to document the methods and properties of your application. However this kind of documentation is only useful to other Developers. Otherwise I write documentation up in Word.

The problem with that is I don't like Word. Don't get me wrong Microsoft makes a fine product, but it doesn't work like I do. Creating documents in Word is a very laborious process to me that required dedicated time, time that I usually don't have to invest. This is were a Wiki comes in. What is a Wiki. Well This is how Wikipedia defines a Wiki"

Here a wiki (IPA: [ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>^[1]) is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration.

So basically it's a website that you can edit, or add content to any time you think about it. Now this works for me. I always have a web browser open, so I always have the tool I need to do my documentation open. To me a website of this methods is a much more active type of documentation, when you read it, and see something is missing you just add to it, edit it delete whatever. A Word document is very static to me, because the barriers, you have to open a heavy application, make sure you have acess to the document, make sure it's not locked by any other users. To me Word documents are a centered around one person. Where a Wiki is much more group based and that is one of the big draws for me.

We are a small department at work with a lot of knowledge. However what happens if one us aren't there. Well usually a phone call is placed, because of being small department with a lot to do, one persons ends up having the specific knowledge needed at the time. Well a Wiki offers a great solution to that problem. I'll give you an example, today a mission critical application experience some dramatic slowness,  while there was a persons that could have recycled the application they didn’t know how. Someone else had to be called and do it remotely. While being about to do the task remotely is great, wouldn’t it of been much faster for the person that was already in and awake to do the task. I’d have to say yes. So I took 5 minutes took some screenshots and wrote and tutorial on how to recycle the application and now anyone in the team can look it up and take care of the task.

So now we are doing are documentation in a Wiki, it is fast, easy and dare I say fun.

I am trying very hard not to read every article of "Jay Leno's Garage" column in Popular Mechanics. I'm at work today and I should be working. But I keeping finding myself reading it, and thinking, I'll just finish reading this article and then I will go back to work. Most people know Jay as the host of the Tonight Show and as a stand up comedian.  However most car guys know that he has a garage to drool over.  I just found his column today while reading another article in Popular Mechanics on Alternative fuels.

Enter Bernard Juchli, foreman of the "Jay Leno More-Money-Than-Brains Garage." Bernard has built numerous race-winning cars and worked on many projects over the years. He took one look at this project and said, "Just shoot me now." -- Jay Leno

This is my favorite quote so far and it is from the article "Now That's a Hot Rod" a hand built hot rod with an 800+ bhp 1560 ft-lb of torque engine out of a M-47 Patton Tank.

Have a quick read, it's some fun stuff.

I have my iPod sitting here next to my laptop, and I am listening to Ravel's Bolero. The first piece of classical music I can remember listening to and simply loving. Bolero has been in my music collection ever since I've had a music collection, and I've had one for a long time. I was the kid in Jr. High that saved his money up to buy music. Tonight I was reminded of this amazing piece while reading an article in Wired. The article is entitled: "My Bionic Quest for Bolero". "With one listen, I was hooked. I was a 15-year-old suburban New Jersey nerd..."  The article is an amazing piece about a man who lost his hearing, but not his drive to hear Bolero again and all of the trials he went through to hear it again.

That first line in the article reminded me of my first time listening to Bolero, I was at my Grandparents house, my Dad's Mom and Dad, standing at my Dad's side, in their leaving room and Granddad put on this record and turned it up loud. I could feel the drums in my chest, and I had goose bumps on my arms and legs, I couldn't believe the sound that was coming out of the speakers. I kept looking up at my Dad and Granddad, they stood in the middle of livingroom, eyes closed and I could see that they could feel every note, and there was a smile that came when a new instrument would coming in, the oboes came in and it was subtle and yet felt like getting hit with a ton of bricks, this music was just so intense, and it kept building. The build up in the piece is so intense that I kept waiting for it to end and wishing it wouldn't at the same time. I was 8 or 9 at the time, so I wasn't able to put my feelings about this piece of music in to words, or the wonderful feeling of sharing the music and the moment with my Dad and Granddad.

Granddad and Grandma are moving back up to our neighborhood, they'll be a block or so from Mom and Dad, I feel certain one of the things we'll do while moving them in to their new place will be to dust of the albums set up the turntable and give Ravel's Bolero a quick spin.

As I mentioned earlier, I am a motorcycle guy. I grew up being a motorcycle guy, because my Dad is a motorcycle guy. His favorite brand is Honda, even though he currently has a 2001 Triumph Daytona 999i, so of course Honda is my favorite brand too. As I got older also started to gravitate towards the one-offs. The machines that was built for one season of racing, or because someone had an idea on how to do it different. Dr. Tuluie's Tul-Aris 780, an innovative frame and suspension system of his own design, mated to a 780cc 150bhp snowmobile motor and a custom designed transmission system (snowmobiles don't have transmissions like motorcycles, they use a centrifigual clutch, or CVT (constant volecity transmission). His transmission has a carbon fiber case, very exotic design to say the least.

Well surfing around this afternoon I found a great little video of another one-off a, six cylinder 250cc GP bike called the honda RC174 that was originally built in 1966. This one is a replica made by George Beale, man the sound of it is amazing. Check it out and let me know what you think.

“It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating.”

-- Jack Handey

So the stepdaughter a while back brought a mama cat home that she rescued from something or somewhere, I don't remember as I stopped listening to anything after hearing "I brought a cat home."  Now don't get me wrong, I love animals and I have special place in my heart for cats. I loved my cat Rufus, he was my buddy and I still miss him.

So the mama cat gave birth to kittens as this what mama cats do. The kittens were given away when they were the right age except for one that we've call "Kamakize". Not my favorite animal in the whole world, as he is the animal equivalent of that really annoying kid in the grocery store that throws things in the middle of the isle as you are trying to walk past, and laughs when your cart hits the box of oatmeal he just chucked. I not sure how he got that name but I suspect it has to do with the way that he hides under things and attacks your feet when you walk by. Anyhow, "Kamakize" gets neutered and of course we go to get the mama cat spayed and she was pregant again. So she had six little grey long haired kittens. Now when I walk to the train in the morning I look at all the cats in the neighborhood, and I yell at any grey long haired cats walking around, "you owe me money".

Well as I posted earlier, I am home sick with a cold. So I am sitting around watching daytime television. First, lets just say that I am pretty sure that I've lost brain cells from this stuff. After a couple of hours of watching Maury, Jerry and Montel I was looking forward to Jakers, as it is more intellectually stimulating than the previous shows. However while I was watching Maury, a episode called "Who's your Daddy" where a women who brought eight guys on the show to have a paternity test, it made me think, I wonder if I can round up the neighborhood cats and take them on Maury to find out which one is the Daddy. It's gotta be easier than the show I was watching as it can only be one of four cats that are the Daddy.

Walking to the kitchen to get some coffee, I saw the dog, followed by the mama cat, followed by Kamakize, followed by the alpha kitten and thought "What a Menagerie!"