Orrill Reports

Dear Developers

Jason Orrill — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:39:25 +0000

Dear Developers:

if (you.lastProgrammerOnEarth == TRUE && you.involvementInApp >= app.endOfLife) {
// do whatever you want
} else {
// INDENT YOUR DAMN CODE
}

Thanks,
Jason

Taking the Canvas Plunge

Jason Orrill — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:56:16 +0000

I could live to regret this, but since I’ve got some slack time between projects I’ve decided to start on a web implementation of Fraction Bars. My original intent was to do this in Flash, but I’ve decided instead to go the HTML5 Canvas route. This could be a problem for IE users, but there do seem to be some plug-ins available to provide canvas support, and if folks don’t want to go that route I figure they can always download a real browser.

Dear recruiters

Jason Orrill — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:00:52 +0000

Dear recruiters:

I have two suggestions for you. One: be sure that if you’re going to call me on the phone you both speak and understand English. Two: Not all computer geekage is equal. If you don’t see “COBOL”, “AS/400″, or “mainframe” in someone’s resume, odds are they’re not qualified for your position.

Thanks,
Jason

Here goes nothing…

Jason Orrill — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:54:44 +0000

I’ve made commenting here a little easier– last time I did something like this I got inundated with porn spam. This is a different blog engine though, so maybe this time it will go better. Time will tell…

Believe it or not…

Jason Orrill — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:52:17 +0000

This sentence is the beginning of a recommendation:

Tycho told me to read a book the other day and I told him to tear out all of the pages and shove each one individually up his butt-hole.

Political pendulums

Jason Orrill — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:16:11 +0000

I’ve seen talk off and on about how politics in the U.S. works like a pendulum. The idea is that it swings to the left for a while and then back to the right as attitudes and situations change. There may be something to that, but I think the pendulum is less like what you see in a stately grandfather clock, and more like this.

Plymouth Jaunt

Jason Orrill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:07:55 +0000

Couple of pictures I took this past weekend in Plymouth, MA. I didn’t get any pictures of what’s left of Plymouth Rock, sorry.

Yikes

Jason Orrill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:35:49 +0000

There’s more budget cutting going on in the University System of Georgia. UGA alone is being asked to cut just under $60 million, on top of all the other cuts that have come over the last several years. This is no ordinary round of cuts, though, and could lead to over 1,400 jobs cut as well as the loss of significant programs.

Selfish item first: this sucks for the prospects of selling our house.

Other thoughts:

I’m surprised at the number of agriculture related cuts proposed, not to mention the Botanical Gardens. If ever there was a time for a pitchfork-based protest, I think this is it.
Once again, no mention of anything athletics-related. Are they not part of the university budget? The way they keep cutting everything else, UGA’s just going to become a collection of farm teams with an occasional evening class.
According to the Athens Banner-Herald, the Senate Majority Leader claims USG “is among the least-impacted state agencies in percentage terms.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is true I shudder to think what the rest of the state looks like.
At what point will politicians, not to mention the population at large, realize that they can’t keep cutting and cutting, and they’re going to have to generate more revenue? (Sadly, with Georgia dominated by the Republican party, this could be a while.)

Chez Sam Diego’s

Jason Orrill — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:16:32 +0000

The good news/bad news cycle

Jason Orrill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:23:15 +0000

Bad news: Woke up my laptop and the screen stayed black.

Good News: This happened a couple days ago, and a restart fixed it.

Bad News: Restarted it, and the screen’s still black.

Good News: There seem to be some potential fixes for this on the net.

Bad News: None of those fixes work.

Good News: I take the computer to the Apple Store, where the guy at the Genius bar says there’s a known NVIDIA glitch that causes this.

Bad News: The computer passes his video test.

Good News: The guy at the Genius Bar is pretty sure that the NVIDIA glitch is still the culprit.

Which is a long-winded way of saying my laptop video seems to have conked out, which means I’m without it for a while. BUT– in the last “Good News,” because of the known NVIDIA glitch Apple is going to fix it at no cost to me, which is much better than $1200 or more it would have cost me to replace the logic board. At that price I would have probably wound up just buying a new one.