Fleebin-Flobbin

Greetings and Salutations Prattle Ppl:

So it has been about a year since I last posted to convey having removed Prattle from an increasingly totalitarian liberal loon social media platform and now it’s time for another update.

Throughout the past year, I’ve been practicing my front-end web dev endeavors and otherwise pursuing software-related minutiae but paused to include for you some software developer jargon that can just as easily crossover into the mainstream vocab of the decidedly non-developer vernacular. See how many terms you can identify and then incorporate into your daily communications.  Impress your friends and vie for that promotion today!

Deprecate

Code that is still part of the overall application and remains in place for the sake of  backwards-compatibility.  e.g. a deprecated relationship

Rubber Ducking

A method of debugging code taken from The Pragmatic Programmer (1999).  The act of carrying around a rubber duck (or some other object) and explaining your code line-by-line to it in order to understand it better.  This sometimes happens in personal relationships when one side refuses to communicate and the other has to constantly second-guess the other side’s increasingly fucked up behaviors.

Reality 101 Failure

The program, or more likely a feature of a program, does exactly what was expected but when deployed becomes annoyingly obvious that the problem was misunderstood and is basically useless.

Happy Path

A default scenario that experiences no exceptions or error conditions and leads to successful execution thereby generating a positive response.  Contrasted with an exception path that results in reality 101 failure.

Nopping

Taken from assembler language NOP  meaning no-operation. Similar to a nap but doesn’t imply sleep, just zoning out.

Copypasta

Code which contains direct or nearly direct copy-and-paste.  As in a copypasta Dear John letter.

Yoda Notation

Two parts of an expression are reversed from the typical order in a conditional statement. A Yoda condition places the constant portion of the expression on the left side of the conditional statement. The name for this programming style is derived from the Star Wars character named Yoda who speaks English with a non-standard syntax. As in,  Let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, do not.

Egosurfing

Scanning the web for one’s own name.  May be to monitor personal brand but is typically for narcissistic purposes.

Jimmy

A generalized name for a clueless n00b.

Bikeshedding

A futile investment of time and energy in a discussion of marginal technical issues such as worrying about where the bike shed will go on a property that doesn’t exist.

Unicorny

An adjective to describe a feature that’s so early in the planning stages that it might as well be imaginary.

Stress Puppy

One who requires stress in order to function well yet voices dissatisfaction with it.

Prattle Encore | OpenCongress v. OpenSecrets

[The following is an encore piece that was originally published on 1 March 2010]

OpenCongress is a free open source endeavor of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation. The latter are nonprofit organizations whose shared mission is focused on web development, specifically, websites for “engagement” with government.

If you are an engaged and civic-minded voter, then OpenCongress has several useful features. It pulls information from THOMAS and GovTrack, predominantly, as well as from other sources such as Technorati and the YouTube Senate and House hubs. The navigation of the site is almost of a social networking vibe in that users can create profiles, add friends, and participate in discussion. There is even a built in Wiki that users can contribute to, as well as a blog, and website widgets tool to track bills and Congressional representatives.

Additionally, there is a bill, voting record and money trail tracker that will help you to keep tabs on your elected federal officials once you create a profile. Adding the money trail component was a nice touch, but if OpenCongress wants to blow its own horn as the premier site to “track” government, then the money trail tracker needs a hell of a lot more improvement.  Voters want to see who is pulling the strings after the money is deposited in Congressional bank accounts.

Although the money trail feature is broken down by industry, there is no way to discern when the money was shoveled into the representative’s coffers or how much was contributed by any given company. There is simply the rep’s name and the amount of money he or she received collectively by industry for the pertinent session of Congress. On the OpenSecrets website, following the money trail is vastly more comprehensive because you can see the name of the company and exactly how much they paid to purchase an advocate for their interests.

This is a very prominent feature because as everyone who has been paying attention lately knows, the Supreme Court has just ruled in the Citizen’s United decision that the United States will continue to have the best government that money can buy, only we’re not going to call it bribery, we’re going to call it free speech, instead. Since voting will no longer matter, and, the buying off of a Congressional representative is now codified into law, I think it is imperative that voters be able to see exactly how much each corporation donates to each tool representative. That way at least we’ll know which company to attribute the non-stop ass rape to once their bought-and-paid for whore representative(s) start sponsoring and getting bills passed in the pimp’s corporate person’s favor.

I like the OpenCongress site and plan to use it, but I do have one, minor quibble. The website design assumes that anyone using it has a widescreen monitor. If you don’t happen to have such a monitor, then half of the page is cut off unless you scroll over horizontally. Hello PPF and Sunlight Foundation? After fifteen years of being accustomed to seeing everything on the page without having to do anything except load the url in the browser, I personally find having to scroll over exceptionally inconvenient and annoying. And with double digit national and state unemployment figures, not everyone has the extra scratch to run out and buy a 27-inch widescreen, flat panel computer monitor. It’s a nice thought, but let’s pull our heads out of our asses and be more realistic.  Fix the site so that everyone can view it comfortably whether or not they’ve got a widescreen monitor.

OpenSecrets is a nonprofit company whose website makes it easy to follow the money. They’ve been around for a number of years first publishing the influence of money in elections in printed format back in 1983, and then in 1992, launched the website, which included tracking individual donations in addition to corporate.

In many ways, OpenSecrets is a lot more comprehensive than OpenCongress, and, makes the latter look amateurish and cheesy, but used in conjunction with each other, offers the absolute fastest and most convenient way to discover and study Congressional processes, and, the representatives we pay to collect payoffs campaign contributions, vote themselves lavish salaries and titanium plated benefits, lie, cheat, steal, obfuscate, deny, and, otherwise take off more time than any working American has ever had the privilege of experiencing.

You don’t have to be a beltway insider to know which way the wind blows if you use either site to its fullest advantage.

click to enlarge

©2010 Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™ with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Bioluminscence

A species of phytoplankton called lingulodinium polyedrum -the same phytoplankton that is also responsible for red algal blooms also causes neon blue waves like this seen at night here.

Dune Cat

Teaching History with Tunes

What an outstanding way to supplement a history class lesson about the American Revolution.  Reminds me of the old Saturday morning Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.

Compare and contrast Soomo Publishing’s video to the same lesson sung by the very excellent Schoolhouse Rock folks.  Yours truly used these little ditties to remember from how a bill becomes a law to the Preamble to the Constitution, and, everything in between.  Setting fact to music was a very helpful mnemonic device.

Records Retention

When I was in school, I kept my important documents in a portable, plastic filing box. Mostly the box contained prOn tax returns and pay stubs because my parents kept copies of the really important stuff –loans, promissory notes and such. At least I assumed they did. My mother had a designated spot in her bedside night table where she stored current monthly bills, but I don’t think she ever retained anything that wasn’t going to result in the house being foreclosed upon or the car repossessed should the bill not be paid.

My parents conducted their personal finances and stored their records in much the same way that they parented – out of their asses. But, surprisingly, the bills were paid in a timely manner, and, the IRS, or any other government entity charged with collecting money from delinquent accounts, never darkened our mailbox. I guess my parents’ tax returns weren’t sufficiently interesting to be audited, and, the fact that they spent decades at the same address, paying the same monthly bills, year after year, never spawned any further attempts to squeeze any further taxes out of them.

And then there’s me.

Movin’ On Up

From the moment I moved out of that backwoods armpit of a town, I have been assailed with numerous attempts by tax collectors to strong-arm me into paying various occupational fees and other personal taxes. You see, when you relocate from bumblefuck, nowhere, that’s one less sucker taxpayer there is to finance the hyper-inflated salaries of the school board, and, the ever burgeoning population of oldsters. And they will do almost anything to keep the tax monies flowing from the residents who actually have jobs. If that includes chasing down a former resident for imaginary fees, then so be it. And if you happen to be an uninformed, former resident who also doesn’t keep personal financial records, then you’re their favorite target. You can look forward to an annual written threat of fines and/or penalties and/or prison.

Two decades and several states later, I continue to receive notices from my state of origin threatening to assess fines and penalties if payment is not forthcoming for various, mythical personal taxes that only exist in the mind of the collector.  There is a hanging file folder in my cabinet dedicated specifically to these notices that I call the Don’t Get Cute With Me file.  Once I am able to stop myself from laughing uncontrollably upon reading a notice, I typically respond with my own nastigram to the issuing body.

Some years they skip sending me a bill, I suppose, because the tax collector has either slacked off or the state just doesn’t need the money. I’m not quite sure what the reason is. Or maybe they just need a break from reading my retina-searing responses to their solicitations. I do so enjoy ramming irrefutable evidence to the contrary down their collective, bottom-feeding gullet.

I used to get angry about the notices, but now I am merely amused because it makes me wonder how many other dolphins the state has snagged in its tuna net. I know that I can’t be the only one , but I can believe that I’m probably one of the very few who keeps personal business records indefinitely. And now, thanks to the likes of Bernanke and Goldman Sachs, et al., the entire U.S. economy is circling the bowl, which means that it’s probably quite prudent for you to retain your personal financial records.

Keep Your Records

Many state and local governments are either completely broke or about to be insolvent, and, consequently, are desperately struggling to find income.  Some cities are becoming quite creative in their quest for revenue, so don’t be surprised if a collection notice shows up in your mailbox for a long forgotten and since paid-for citation from a city that you lived in decades ago.

You remember the plastic file box that I used to keep – the same one that held, at most, half a dozen file folders? I have since graduated to metal filing cabinets. And while I used to just shove my documents into a folder just for the sake of storing everything in one, known place, now I neatly file everything from bank statements to monthly bills to tax returns in reverse chronological order and use a two-hole puncher to organize papers in fastener folders. I even print out labels.

I spend my life filing whether at home or on the job because I am a Paralegal by trade,  and, so I retain personal financial documentation above and beyond what some small business owners do because I refuse to be shaken down.  And what’s more, I retain those records indefinitely despite any guidelines issued by the Feds and/or State. Of course, such a comprehensive retention policy may result in having to rent storage space to accommodate your files, but I have found that via the abracadabra of electronic document scanning, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Provided that you back up your electronic files to physical media such as a CD-R, you need not worry about your hard drive crashing and/or the blue screen of death. All that you really have to worry about  -after you scan your docs- is keeping an index since you won’t be able to dig through a box of discs in quite the same manner as you would a filing cabinet.

Your mileage may vary as to what level of priority you attribute to your own records, but personally, I don’t place even a single scintilla of trust in either financial entities and/or government bureaucracies to not screw me over and otherwise attempt to bleed every last nickel out of my paycheck based on their fraudulent record keeping endeavors.

Happy hole punching.

©2010 Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™ with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Coefficient of Friction Fun

The Casio FX-115ES scientific calculator – Great for any late night, impromptu OED calculation!

279 functions, including 40 metric conversions

2-line, 12-digit Natural Textbook display

It’s just good bang for the buck considering the price. If you’re in the market for a sci calc, then I highly recommend this particular Casio. It’s better than any contemporary TI and also received much better reviews.

Update (2/21/11)

Stay tuned for a more detailed review coming soon!

Friday Fun with Traffic Control Devices

The California Department of Transportation (“CALTRANS”) uses a compilation of regulations called the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (“MUTCD”) for various traffic events.

How is this relevant to your life?

For starters, these are the people responsible for every official sign you encounter on the road throughout the Golden State. Specifically, speed limit signage. So for those stretches of parkway you may encounter in Suburbia, Home, Suburbia, look no further than CALTRANS and their fabulous book of regs for guidance.

I know what you’re thinking – this story is a ginormous yawn – why exactly should you care about some silly manual that doesn’t factor into your life on any meaningful level?

I’m glad you asked!

The average driver probably won’t care about the significance of the MUTCD unless and until he receives a traffic citation. And we all know that traffic citations only go to those scofflaws who fully deserve it because tickets are all about safety.

Well… Not quite, Virginia.

You see, the MUTCD is what spells out the guidelines for something called an engineering and traffic survey. You probably haven’t heard of this thing either, but that’s OK. All you need to know is that this particular survey is how speed limits are determined.

During your travels, you may have noticed a rather self-important looking lad alongside or in the road peering into something atop a tripod resembling a camera. But you’d be incorrect if you thought he was on location to shoot new footage for the latest “reality” based television show.

What these people are actually doing is conducting an engineering survey of the traffic so they can report back their findings to the mothership, laws can then be passed and appropriate signages placed accordingly.

Sometimes the speed limit jibes with the engineering and traffic survey, and sometimes, as in the case with a speed trap, the county will have CALTRANS post a speed limit that is so preposterously low it will ensure that a good 85th percentile of drivers will be ticketed for speeding.

You can spot a speed trap rather easily – Just look for that beautiful stretch of open road posted with two different speed limits within a short distance of the other.

The first speed limit sign will be something around 50mph, and, the second, located a short 150-200FT away will be an inexplicably decreased limit somewhere along the lines of say, 35mph.

Another tip off to a speed trap is that absolutely nobody pays attention to either posted limit until the end of/beginning of the month when your friendly neighborhood law enforcement officer will be hanging out alongside the shoulder, most likely concealed behind an obstruction of some sort, harvesting his monthly quota of arbitrarily assessed tax revenue for the county with his stylishly sleek laser toy.

If you bother to contest the ticket, then the MUTCD will be your first step.

Bruce knows how it is.

©2009 Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peyton Farquhar and Prattle On, Boyo with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.