Jon Sagara

The Simpsons are coming to the big screen on July 27, 2007. 

This is the most awesome thing I have seen/heard in a long time.

Thanks to the CobbMichaels, Hunters, and Eoffs for coming over to partake in our little sushi-fest on Saturday.  A good time was had by all.

A cheeseburger sandwiched between a Krispy Kreme Doughnut?  Holy myocardial infarction, Batman!

For fark’s sake.  No wonder mid-westerners are so fat.

Yowch.  I had to have two crowns replaced today.

Droopy-faced, half-smiles are always fun, especially when the temporary crowns are bronze-colored.  Yes, that’s right: BRONZE.  The two weeks until I get the final porcelain crowns can’t go by quickly enough.

It’s back in the 1800’s and a mine owner is hiring new workers. A German steps up and says, “I can pick gold faster than any man alive.”  The owner hires him on the spot.

A Russian wanders up and says, “I can load gold faster than any man alive.”  The owner can’t believe his good fortune and hires this man too.

A Chinese man walks up and asks for a job.  The owner is so elated about hiring the other two men he says, “Well, if these other two men work as good as they say I won’t need any more help, but I’ll put you in charge of supplies.”

The next day the owner goes and checks on his new workers, and sure enough, the German is picking gold at an unbelievable rate.

The Russian is loading it as fast as the other workers can haul it out.

He looks around and can’t find the Chinese man anywhere.

He begins to walk around the mine to find him and just as he rounds a dark corner the Asian jumps out from behind a rock and yells, “SUPPLIES!”

I got an email from my recruiter today that started off like this:

Hello Jon,

Thanks for being suck a great employee

But he gave me free movie tickets, so I think I know what he meant.

That is a completely useless attitude toward software development.  Okay, not totally useless, but as far as creating a product and getting it out the door in a timely fashion, it’s about the worst attitude you can have.

Case in point: phpBB.  They have been stuck on version 2.0.x for a long time.  I remember using their software back in the day.  I would check back every couple of months just to see how version 2.2.x (now version 3) was coming along.  “It’s coming along very nicely,” the developers would say.  Great, just a couple more months, right?  Wrong.

According to their CVS stats, they began in January of 2003.  A full three years later, they still haven’t released the next version of their product. 

In the interim, Jelsoft, the company that publishes vBulletin, greatly expanded and polished their product with their 3.x release.  Prior to that, I’d say that phpBB gave vBulletin a run for its money.  Now, though, there is no comparison.  vBulletin is by far the superior product, even when compared to the as-yet-unreleased phpBB 3.

To further highlight phpBB’s futility, consider the case of Telligent Systems.  They took the old ASP.NET forums software and greatly expanded it, adding blogs, photo galleries, and numerous other complex features.  And they’ve done all that — with multiple, functional releases in between – within, what, 1-2 years? 

I guess if there is no money to lose, no mortgages to go unpaid, no mouths to go unfed, then there is no pressure to step up to the plate and get your project done.  It’s such a shame, too, because at one time phpBB was a fine product.  Now, though, they are hopelessly behind the rest of the pack, and at the rate they develop and ship their software, they will never catch up.  Looks like phpBB might be “done” before we know it.

Marley & Me

Great book, if you’re a dog lover.  You’ll laugh.  You’ll cry.  You’ll remember all the reasons why you got the little fur ball in the first place, and why you’ve put up with his shenanigans ever since.  Having experienced the full cycle of a dog’s life multiple times, I was able to feel the author the whole way through the book.  It’s funny, touching, and very poignant at times.  Grogan does a superb job of capturing the sublime relationship between man and beast.

I really can’t do it justice with a short review.  Pick it up on Amazon — it’s only $13 — or, if you live near me, I’ll let you borrow it.  It’s a great read that I highly recommend.

I just learned something interesting — or frightening, depending on how you look at it — from my coworkers regarding the size of India. 

I know that India has ~1 billion people.  Just glancing at the map, it appears to be a rather large country, but they informed me that India is roughly the size of Texas!* 

Now, there are ~20 million people in the state of Texas, many of whom suffer from AHS (Ass-Hat Syndrome), so you can imagine how horribly fucked up the people of Texas would be if 1 billion people lived in that small of an area.

Holy chit, man.

* The CIA Factbook says that India is actually a little bigger than 1/3 the size of the U.S., but still…  We have ~280 million people in the entire country.  Can you imagine 1 billion of us squished into an area 1/3 of its current size?