I Love My State...

Look, I am the guy who has given HEAVY consideration to getting three stars tattooed on his body in the shape of a pyramid, b/c I love this state oh so very much. However, I don't think this survey holds a lick of water.

Album Title of the Day

The winner of today's album title of the day goes to Snowing (ex-Street Smart Cyclist). What makes their album title truly awesome is that they sound like Braid (and I mean that as a compliment). Not so much the early Frankie Well Fare Boy Age 5stuff, but the later Frames and Canvas stuff. I like both versions of bread.

And the name is, drum roll please...: Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit Demo

Song title of the day

And the winner comes in from Carissa's Weird* The winning title: Sophisticated Fuck Princes Please Leave me alone

It has the advantage of being a low-fi electric diddy sung by a couple of girls. I have heard some other songs by this band and always enjoy them. Sadly I have not found a distro that I use who sells their records.


*Though I hear she can explain it all.

Where should our anger be?

I have recently decided to start reading the news again. I had to give it up many years ago b/c I was feeling oh so sad and angry all the time. I suppose the ole adage about, "If your not outraged then your not paying attention", holds true.

However, now it seems somehow different. Maybe it's b/c I am older and a tad less wound up*, but I just don't seem to get as angry about my government failing me. I am certainly pissed that there isn't going to be a public option/single payer system for health care, but I am also pretty damn excited if we can somehow get more coverage for people. I am also excited if we can get rid of the completely idiotic preexisting condition b.s. I am also giddy at the idea of passing legislation that says a health care company can't simply cap the amount of health care you receive in your lifetime or per year.

Now I am far from an economist, so there could be horrible fallout from these things. I am still bleeding heart. Don't you occasional have to take a win where you can? I would love to see an omnibus bill for health care reformed passed, however, don't we have to start somewhere? I dunno maybe I have lost the faith after all...



*Some will find this idea to be the height of high comedy

Break out your tin foil hats

So I was checking out PhoneDog this morning when I came across this story. Now, in general terms I don't buy into most conspiricies, but I may begin to start making exceptions if the above is true. The amount of data that Google and Verizon have on me is staggering...

Where And Means Or and Or means And.

Have you ever found yourself sitting around wondering what exactly it is I do all day at work when not giving you this lovely typo ridden blogs? No? You have haven't...well I gotta say that hurts. Lucky for you I don't care. I am going to tell you any ways. Here is a stark lesson in something I learned long ago and that bit me and a co-worker in the ass yesterday.

So we all know the words And and Or. And means these two things in conjunction. Or means this thing or this other thing. For the most part this logic holds true in computers as well. Save for the situation I am about to show you. Now you need not know a lot about SQL to get this lesson. The part you want to pay attention to is in Italics.

SELECT COUNT(*) AS rowCount
FROM StudentCourse r,
(SELECT StuCrs_Student, StuCrs_Course, StuCrs_LicenseCourse, StuCrs_Completion, MAX(StuCrs_Created) AS maxTimestamp
FROM StudentCourse
WHERE StuCrs_LicenseCourse = 'Course'
AND StuCrs_LicenseCompletion = '1974-10-17'
AND StuCrs_LicenseStudent = 'Student'
AND (StuCrs_Course <> StuCrs_LicenseCourse
AND StuCrs_Completion <> StuCrs_LicenseCompletion
AND StuCrs_Student <> StuCrs_LicenseStudent)
GROUP BY StuCrs_Student, StuCrs_Course, StuCrs_Completion) rh
WHERE r.StuCrs_Student = rh.StuCrs_Student
AND r.StuCrs_Course = rh.StuCrs_Course
AND r.StuCrs_Completion = rh.StuCrs_Completion
AND r.StuCrs_Created = rh.maxTimestamp

See that inner Select statement is how I am getting a ton of items out of our database. Now the symbole which you are likely not familiar with is "<>". That simply means not equal. Why did SQL chose that over != like every other reasonable language? Fuck if I know.

So here is where my cohort and I got into trouble, see if your saying this does not equal this and this does not equal this, and you only need one of them not to be equal you actually want to say OR. Basically this happens b/c I am mixing negative statements (not equal) with positive statements (equals) I know this sounds obvious, but I promise you this trips up more developers then you know. So remember kids, sometimes when you mean And you really mean Or.