Daley Ponderings

Warning: this post has to do with potty training and bowel movements. Those who do not wish to read such things should not click the "more" link. The new little potty we got Jonathan is great for urination, but it is not quite right for bowel movements. He does his best when squatting all the... (More)

It had always annoyed me that you couldn't use smarty commands in the stylesheet files in plog. It turns out it wasn't that hard to figure out, and the original authors had it basically done, but if you believe the comments, didn't think it worked yet. It is helpful to change... (More)

Whether you know the program as Merant, Serena or PVCS, the setup is difficult, and despite the sales department insistence that you don't need a full-time person to run their servers, I am starting to doubt it. Here are the instructions to setup a new project using the file server model... (More)

A Comcast guy came to the door yesterday.Cable Guy: "4565 Carroll - you don't have cable." Me: "Nope. We don't watch TV." CG: "You don't?" Me: "No." CG: "Do you have a TV?" Me: "Yes, but we only use it to watch movies." CG: "Oh. So you don't watch any TV at all?" Me: "Only the five... (More)

For those of you who have successfully installed Mercury's Test Director , and have it die suddenly, you need to check the IIS/NTFS permissions. ( Note, for those of you asking questions, you should read all four pages of comments - there are various questions and answers given throughout the... (More)

I have been teaching Jonathan using a not-so-intense version of the programs recommended by The Institutes . I'm adding this post here, because I want to give updates as a kind of diary. But I wanted to clarify in public why I am doing it. If it really does work, what better and easier... (More)

I went to a dermatologist this morning to have a mole removed and a small skin lump checked out. My referring doctor said this dermatology practice is the best in Pittsburgh. However, I really am getting more and more disillusioned with medical practice as we know it. As soon as I walked in, I... (More)

I have been evaluating different version control programs for my company for the last month or two. My current evaluation is that all of them are broken, although I hope to discover a good solution someday soon. Serena's Version Manager (PVCS) I have spent a lot of time with Version... (More)

A couple guys here at work have been working on some puzzles. They didn't like my solution to the 3rd puzzle, as they wanted it to be more math base and not like programming. Here are the puzzles: Assume: a and b are positive integers. ( I think this condition only matters for the third... (More)

Jonathan fell down one whole flight of stairs all by himself this afternoon. ): All three of us were up in the computer room, and he was happily exploring the floor. Then Jon said, "is something burning?" and I suddenly recalled that I had been making dinner. I rushed downstairs, and in my... (More)

Dr.Anderson called and said that Jonathan's lead came back 9.2. That's below their threshold of 10, but still some, so he said to be careful, make sure we wash his toys and keep the rugs vacuumed and watch out where he plays. Jon isn't really satisfied with that and said he'd call him to see... (More)

Jonathan had a routine blood test at his 9 month appointment, and they say he has a high lead content in his blood. They are re-running the test today, to make sure that they didn't mess it up the first time. The city will test your water, so we did that this morning. I think it takes a week... (More)

Wake up at 3AM because you can't sleep. Notice that the shower has not drained from the day before. Plunge the tub to force the water through the slow drain. Eat breakfast and decide that now is as good a time as any. Start ripping up the floor at 4:30AM. Stop to go to church (try to... (More)

I just discovered last night that if you type in more than one word into the address bar, FireFox assumes you are doing a google search, and even better, does the "I'm feeling lucky" feature of google. So, if you type Jon Daley into firefox's address bar, it goes to my home page.... (More)

Ever notice how it now takes a year for Acrobat Reader to load up? You can speed it up about 20x or so, by moving the plugins you don't use out of the "startup" folder. If you put the files into the "optional" folder, I believe it will still be able to find them when you want to use them, and... (More)