American Swiss on Whole Wheat

Christian M.

2008-08-15T00:46:14Z

Finally home.

2007-12-04T20:01:22Z

Shortly after my last post, I got on to standby flight. It was a rough ride up and back down, but I made it in one piece. With my luck, I was half expecting the house to be broken into or something, but everything was safe and sound. However, but cars now have "check engine" lights coming on. Boo.

Let me go home!!!!

2007-12-03T18:10:49Z

Sitting here waiting for a flight I only have stand-by on. The departure time has just slipped for the third time, to an hour delay. Apparently they're having trouble finding half the crew.

I'm starting to get a headache...

Stuck in Dulles airport...

2007-12-03T15:06:32Z

62 weeks since my last post? Woah.

Well, after having my flight canceled last night, I stayed overnight in a hotel and came in to the airport early to catch the next flight. When I got there, it was half an hour delayed. Then an hour. Then two hours. Then three and a half hours. (All that within about a half an hour!) Then it was canceled. I went to the self-service customer service, thinking I was being smarter than the people waiting in line forever (It worked yesterday!). The computer told me it was stumped and I had to pick up the phone receiver. I then spent a LONG time on hold while the person on the other end tried to rebook me. She then said that I needed to speak with a customer service agent at the airport. SO, I dutifully got into the very back of the line I had scoffed at. Once I got through, they said that they could put me on a flight at 9:30 tonight (I'm lucky, because the girl across from me got rebooked for tomorrow morning!). I asked if there was anything to Syracuse, Ithaca, Elmira or Scranton. I got rebooked for Syracuse at 4:30 tonight, and I'm on standby for 12:30 to Binghamton. It's almost 10:00 now, so I wait... Basically, if I don't get on this noon flight, I'm renting a car and driving from DC to Binghamton. What a nightmare... Oh yeah, and the first leg of my flight last night, it was hot, I was sitting next to a fat guy, and there was a baby crying constantly in the seat in front of me.

I'd have to say this is my worst flying experience ever.

Post

2006-09-27T16:23:52Z

Wow... Haven't posted in a while. I've been pretty busy, actually. No, really! It's almost a conference a month now, and I'm trying to get all the big projects done with so that next year we can spend more time gardening and hiking and camping. Last weekend we put blown-in cellulose insulation in the attic. Isn't my life fascinating? Anyway, we got completely covered in dust. But it's done, and last night was the test... Through a night in the 40s, the house stayed warm with no heating all night. Woohoo!

This weekend the plan is to start making some real progress in getting a final solution together for the basement floor.

Hmm, maybe my next post will be more exciting.

Want a job?

2006-07-18T15:03:04Z

Want to move to beautiful Binghamton, NY? Why not join my company as a software engineer?

My company just instated a referal policy where I get money if a person I refer gets hired... All aboard!!!

Wow... Water sucks!

2006-07-01T15:01:10Z

Well... I'm sitting in a Days Inn in Rapid City, SD. We were supposed to be in Rapid City yesterday, and we were supposed to have slept in Wyoming (see the Google Earth file in the last entry). However, the huge FLOOD sort of changed our plans. As soon as I get onto a computer with a SD card reader, I'll post pictures. But suffice it to say for now that about a mile from our house, neighborhoods were underwater.

We were unlucky enough to have two inches of water in our basement, and lucky enough to only have two inches of water in our basement. We were also lucky enough to have caught it JUST as it started flooding. We had a few friends over to celebrate Mary's birthday, and we we had gone downstairs to watch a movie. Stephanie commented on the floor being wet, at which point we noticed a number of spots of water scattered all over the floor. While we watched in puzzlement, the spots grew into puddles, which grew into pools. We started elevating some things and hauling other things upstairs.

The rest of the night our friends and I sucked water up with Wet-Vacs and hauled it outside into the pouring rain. Not how we expected to end the party, but boy were we glad to have the help! Things could have gone much differently. The next day, instead of leaving on our vacation, we hauled the remaining water out of the basement and proceeded to rip the carpet up. We spent the latter part of that day and beginning of the next day scraping up the soggy foam glued to the floor and spending a LOT of money at Lowes and Home Depot trying to dry out the basement and prevent a mold situation. With the help of Andrew, Stephanie, Peter and Leslie, we did all of this in an amazingly short time.

After a 24-hour delay, we drove off in our attempt to catch up to our schedule! After all, we are picking up Andrew's parents at Billings Airport in Montana... and they arrive in less than 3 hours! So two days ago, after scraping up the last of the foam, mopping the floor with a bleach solution, and leaving several fans and dehumidifiers running, we left the house in Peter's hands and began our drive to Chicago... at 1:00 pm. We arrived at about 3:00 am, slept for a bit, then took off again, this time to here... Rapid City, SD. We got here about 2:00 am, delayed by major traffic coming out of Chicago. Today we drive to the airport in Billings, and on to Bozeman, finally catching up to our schedule.

So... it's been an adventure. I will get pictures up as soon as I can (darn me for forgetting the card reader!)... We had a rough week, but we are grateful for our friends and for God's mercy in holding his wrath back just enough for us to be able to mitigate the situation and not have to abandon our vacation.

There is a huge project awaiting us when we return... The upstairs is packed with piles of furniture and random stuff, and my aunt comes to visit a week after our return. Wish us luck!

swiss_phool @ 2006-06-26T15:44:00

2006-06-26T19:45:34Z

Three things:

1) Added some new pictures to my Web Album.

2) Found a cool site for sketching up your own Google Maps maps.

3) Made a Google Earth file of the trip to Glacier National Park that I'll be leaving for on Wednesday. Includes:

Daily routes for the drive there and back.
All our hotels and night stops
Map overlays of Glacier & Roosewelt National Parks
Rather uninteresting placemarks

Photo gallery!

2006-06-17T03:30:42Z

I have a new photo gallery. I went Google.

You can also see my latest pictures on your news reader with this RSS link.

Student Essay Malapropisms (and other stuff)

2006-06-15T13:26:09Z

Ok, this site has a bunch of funny malapropisms, but a great deal of them are not technically malapropisms.

Many of these nonmalapropisms are absolute genius, much like short phrases you would find on a site dedicated to short phrases of absolute genius that are not malapropisms.

One of them is genius only because it was blatantly ripped off from Douglas Adams, who was a genius.

Some of the nonmalapropisms that impressed me most:

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie, this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "second tall man."

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 pm traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 pm at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

I hope they got an "A".

(Thanks Alex - another post worth reading)

Another great idea...

2006-06-13T12:54:54Z

As I've said before, I'm very impressed by great ideas that both impress and leave one with the thought "How did I not think of that?"

This is one of them.

(Credit to Boing Boing)

Just in case.

2006-06-13T12:25:39Z

FYI

Save it to a Word document and keep it in your 'My Documents' folder.

Rock Paper Scissors Dragon Alien Water Bowl Air Moon Sponge Wolf Cockroach Tree Man Woman Monkey...

2006-06-13T12:23:14Z

Rock Paper Scissors ... for the insane! I'd love to see somebody play this from memory... There's a helpful chart you can follow here. (Credit to Boing Boing)

Say no to Fwd:

2006-05-25T12:42:04Z

I would like to take a moment to remind people that 99% of email forwards are hoaxes. That means that they are utter bull crap. It doesn't matter how dire or mundane one may seem, chances are it is a complete fabrication.

You have to understand the power trip for a teenager to come up with a lie and in a short span of time have millions of people believe that lie and pass it along for you. You used to need to write a book and have some strong marketing support to do this. Dan Brown could have saved himself a lot of effort... Once an email reaches enough people, it's essentially immortal. Every once in a while I'll get a hoax that is over five years in circulation.

So next time you think, 'OMG, I'd better send this to everyone I know', just take a moment to think...

1) Does it make sense? - Do you really believe an email could carry some metaphysical power to help or hurt you? Do you really think some 15-year-old snot has that kind of power? And for goodness sake, no billionaire is giving out money willy nilly through email forwards! Just be thankful it's not even possible for them to track who you are emailing!

2) If you honestly think it makes sense, then check for legitimacy. Is there any identifying information? An abduction notice should at the very least have an exact location for where the abduction took place. Are there any citations? "A group of scientists" DOES NOT qualify as a citation!!!

3) If it is about the childhood and/or religious experiences of a famous scientist or historical figure, it is almost definitely bunk.

4) If it's about a toilet spider, it's not true.

5) Take the time to find some unique looking part of the email, such as "Elgine Heceta McArdle", copy it, paste it into google and type 'hoax' at the end. Chances are, you will find a site presenting convincing evidence of why the email is a hoax.

6) Unless you have personally confirmed the validity of the email, don't send it! Please!

Don't worry, a million other people will make sure word gets around...

DIY motivational posters

2006-05-18T18:55:20Z

Make your own!

Google Trends

2006-05-12T15:51:42Z

Ok, so I haven't posted in a while... Mainly because of the opera. That went well, by the way. I was very proud to see Mary make her solo opera role debut. She was awesome, of course.

After the opera, I caught up on my blog and was overwhelmed by all the cool stuff that had popped up, so I just didn't know what to post! Now that life is relatively boring again, I can focus more on interesting stuff.

So, Google Labs just put up a new site that I just can't get enough of. You can type in one or many search terms and look at a graph of how popular that search term was over time, compared to how common that term was in the news (with news highlights along the graph). Additionally, you can see how search term preferences differ by city, country or language.

So, here are some interesting comparisions...

Love vs. Hate (Go love!)

War vs. Peace (Wait, what happened to love?)

Love vs. War vs. Hate vs. Peace (Ah, but love still conquers all...)

Good News vs Bad News (And they say they don't report good news anymore... But here's a riddle: what happened in early 2005?)

Porn vs Love (Draw your own conclusions...)

Porn vs Politics (The media just doesn't get what America wants)

Pope (Wow.)

God vs. Satan (Woohoo!)

Titties vs Boobies (What the hell?)

Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam (Woah.)

Blue Pill vs Red Pill (Which would you take?)

And finally... The big winners go head to head... and the winner is...

(... he was right all along ...)

(... the internet is for ...)

PORN!!!!

(Oddly enough, it used to be for love, but after much indecision in 2004, porn finally claimed its rightful place on the throne in 2005.)

EBay

2006-05-05T12:45:26Z

Go to EBay.

Search for "demonic stuffed bear".

swiss_phool @ 2006-04-30T20:58:00

2006-05-01T00:58:16Z

I've been asked to make some updates to the first VBA code I ever wrote.

This was several years ago.

When I started the project, I had never done any scripting before. I had barely heard of VBA. I just recorded macros, did stuff, and watched what happened. And I googled. A lot.

The script takes data from an Excel spreadsheet (some of which is imported from Access), and draws a cross-section of a multilayered cable.

About halfway through the script, I had learned that you're supposed to break your code up into a set of subroutines.

By the end of it, I had some idea of what it meant to pass arguments.

My code was a monster. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to reorganize it into subroutines. But as for passing arguments... no such luck. And I didn't do a very good job of naming my variables anything easily interpretable. It seems my attitude was to keep variable names as short as possible. Four characters, preferably.

On the upside, I'm being paid by the hour.

My apologies for those of you who know nothing about programming. My advice to you: take a course first.

Google releases Sketchup!

2006-04-28T15:24:37Z

Google bought Sketchup not long ago, and now they're released it for free. You can create models fairly intuitively, put textures on them (not supported in Google Earth yet), and place them in Google Earth. Then you can post them on the Google Warehouse, and people can either find them there, or right in Google Earth through a network link that lets you see all the models available within your view, and download them.

So here is my first attempt: a model of my house!

My trip to Georgia, and getting lost in Newark... in Google Earth!

2006-04-26T14:04:16Z

The following link is a Google Earth KML file showing my GPS data from my Easter trip to Georgia. Included are the locations associated with the pics in my previous post, as well as my drive back to Binghamton from Newark airport, complete with all the blunders as I got lost over and over...

It's a good demonstration of how, although my GPS did nothing to prevent me from getting lost (and possibly contributed to it), it was a big help in getting un-lost. And it's also a fun way to look back on where I ended up!

If you need to download Google Earth (and if you haven't, you should!), you can get it here:

http://earth.google.com/

And then you can download my Georgia trip KML file!

Reality is out the windshield...

2006-04-21T17:35:47Z

Ever since they started putting satellite navigation systems in cars, people have had a hard time telling where to look to find the real world. That, or they seem to think that an inherently dated geographic database somehow trumps what they see out their windshield. Just recently...

People are driving on to a gravel road at the edge of a cliff...

and drivers are dunking their cars...

So, I decided I'd post some helpful tips on how to deal with in-car technology.

1) No matter what your satellite navigation system says, use the direction of other cars in the same lane as a strong indicator for the direction you should be going.

2) If your naviagation system tells you you are on a major road and you cannot breathe, stop looking at it, release your seat belt, kick out your window and swim upwards.

3) If your navigation system tells you you are on a major road and the big screen seems to have the altitude all wrong, say your 'Our Father' and feel joy that, if you have not already had children, you have done your part to improve the gene pool.

4) If you're confused as to what screen to look at, try the really big one with the super-cool graphics.

5) The data on the really big screen is ALWAYS more up-to-date than the data on the little screen. It's real-time, even. It's also relatively accurate.

Hopefully this will sort out at least some of the confusion inherent in satellite navigation technology. Drive safely!

There are still bad ideas out there...

2006-04-20T14:54:17Z

Speaking of stupid inventions...

There are still new ideas out there...

2006-04-20T13:20:01Z

I remember someone telling me once that there was nothing new left to invent. This is obviously a ridiculous mentality, but at the same time, I understood his frustration, mainly because there are just too many inventions out there. Most of them are complete junk, though I always catch myself wanting to buy them. I used to have a sideways can opener (safer, because you can cut yourself on the can, not the lid!), and on average I use most of my kitchen appliances about four times a year.

But there are still good, simple ideas out there. On today's skimming of Boing Boing, I found a link to this website. You just have to respect a nice simple idea that causes you to say both, "Yeah, that makes sense." and "Why didn't I think of that?"

I hate your continent

2006-04-18T14:29:48Z

Excerpt from an MSN chat with a friend of mine in England:

Christian says:
Guess you're not going to CAA?

Betta says:
no

Betta says:
neither are you

Christian says:
Nope.

Christian says:
I'm not going to use half my year's vacation time to go...

Betta says:
why how many days do you have?

Betta says:
I have 20

Betta says:
very depressing

Christian says:
10 days, plus two personal holidays.

Christian says:
20 is REALLY good, dude... for the US.

Betta says:
you should see Malta what with all the public holidays and religious feasts they get close to a month !

Christian says:
Dude, we get about 5 or 6 days for holidays per year.

Christian says:
I get less than 20 days TOTAL per year off... holidays included!

Christian says:
And that's the norm.

Christian says:
Don't talk to me about depressing.

Christian says:
I hate your continent.

Betta says:
lol

Betta says:
not that many people like yours

Atlanta Steeplechase

2006-04-16T03:56:10Z

The Atlanta Steeplechase horse race was fun. It was actually my first time going. Added some pictures to Flickr...