FeralBlog » Work

No excuses

mattcomroe — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 19:36:05 +0000

This whole “blogging” thing seems to have taken off lately. My best friend, my sister, and her very good friend (and also a friend of mine growing up) have all popped up with their very own in the last few weeks. If my mom starts a blog I will officially eat a hat.

It’s great to see these blogs; Ryan’s especially. He just made a dramatic move from Philly to Providence (well, maybe it wasn’t dramatic, but people in his life made it that way. I

Ajax = teh hotness!!11!!

mattcomroe — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 15:37:10 +0000

Well, I can’t believe it’s taken this long for me to start on a project using Ajax, but I finally got the opportunity with some new reporting changes at work.

If you don’t know what Ajax is you should just go read the Wikipedia entry above, but basically it’s a way to make changes to a page without having to reload the whole page. Think Flickr. Think Gmail. The whole application that I work on deals with presentation of data in large chunks, so the ability to use this technology is going to make for a much better user experience. Plus, it’s nice to be starting with something new. If there’s anything I hate, it’s feeling stagnant, which is why I try and do side projects whenever I can, but I’ve been pretty busy with life lately, so not much time for side ventures.

One thing about Ajax is that it can be a pain to set up, and a pain to debug when things don’t go perfectly. Thankfully people have already put out some code libraries to help speed Ajax development, and Microsoft is going to be including something in their next version of ASP.NET.

Why it’s sometimes easier to throw money at a problem.

mattcomroe — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 00:55:15 +0000

Today my manager asked if we could put some spell-checking on some of the free-form text entry pages of our web application. We had talked about it generally for a little while, but now I guess it’s a bit more urgent, and he also happened to catch me at a good post-release time with not a ton of crazy bugfixes and no time.

There are some home-brew solutions using Word, as well as a free component which has some promise, but the one I was drawn to was this one right here. It was a piece of cake to put into the form in question, even though it was totally dynamically generated (i.e. no textbox tags on the page at all.. everything created and inserted into a placeholder control at runtime). Just add a spellcheck control for each textbox, and a master one to pop the Javascript window which tests all the textboxes.

It’s one of those things where I certainly could have figured something out, but this solution was so easy and so flexible (and it helps that the client is so paying for it) that it’s just easier to send them a check and have something up and running in just a few hours.

Happiness is

mattcomroe — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 07:23:50 +0000

... running out to grab lunch wearing your pajama bottoms. Well, maybe they’re actually shorts that I use as pajama bottoms, but the point is I slept in them and then wore them all day at work today! I love telecommuting!

Yuk.

mattcomroe — Thu, 13 May 2004 16:13:20 +0000

Today is the first really warm hazy day so far this spring, which means it’s the first day that we are all learning just how fun it is to be just up the hill from the water treatment plant. It fucking reeks out there, in a way that puts the dead deer stink I rode past on the way in this morning (please please please someone come and get that before tomorrow morning) to shame.

So, that probably means no grilling today. That still means I need to step outside in order to go get something to eat, so maybe it’s a 6/half-dozen proposition.

Too funny

mattcomroe — Mon, 10 May 2004 16:12:46 +0000

So, we’re having some problems with our internal network this morning. Can’t hit the SQL box, which means can’t do any development right now. In order to pass the time, I send my coworkers these pictures of Britney.

Dan: Check out her fat ass.
Me: Yeah, she’s really let herself go.
Dan: She’s got that gunt thing going on.
Me: Yeah.
Pat: I’d still totally do her though.
Me and Dan (in unison): Yeah.

Top five reasons why my work is like a fraternity house

mattcomroe — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 05:07:25 +0000

Only guys work at my office. Not like it’s a sexist thing, and women have worked there before, but at the moment it’s only us Y-chromosomes folks.
Any day that it’s nice we grill lunch out on the back patio. Yesterday was turkey burgers, today was hot dogs!
Another thing that happens on nice days is the portable hoop gets put out, and some hot 2-on-2 action gets going after work. I stay far, far away from the games because a) I have no skillz whatsoever (I was only able to make it to JV in grade school, and only made 2 baskets all season (although one of them was in the game against the teachers.. yay me!)) and b) the boys I work with play hard, and I’m just not that competative about sports stuff.
We’re talking about having the occasional low-stakes poker game at lunch. Wait until I clean out all those dead money guys!

We have a mascot. It’s actually our 2nd. The neighbors next door had a pet rooster, or at least we hope it was a pet and not dinner. Anyway, McNuggets (as we called him) disappeared, and was replaced by a golden rooster. We don’t like this one nearly as much, as don’t feed him like we did Nuggets.
Anyway, if this sounds like a fun place, then we’re hiring. It would be for someone who does ASP.NET programming at a high level (classes, complex user interfaces, lots of SQL queries, etc.). You probably also should live in the Pittsburgh area. If you are this person, or know this person, send me an email at mattcomroe[at]yahoo.com.

Drinking contest

mattcomroe — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:23:28 +0000

In order to liven things up, we’re having a drinking contest here at work today. Not the alcoholic kind; water. We all will have our measured containers, and whoever downs the most during the course of the day wins. I will update throughout the day with current tallies, because I’m sure you’ll all be on the edge of your seat.

Dan: 0
Matt: 0
Pat: 0

Update 9:52 AM
Dan: 36 oz
Matt: 64 oz
Pat: 34 oz

As you can see I’ve taken a commanding lead, and have yet to “break the seal”, although that’s about to change in the next few minutes. Pat’s comment was “So, what are we going to have for lunch, salt?”

Update 10:48 AM
Dan: 90 oz – 5 bathroom breaks
Matt: 96 oz – 2 bathroom breaks
Pat: 68 oz – 2 bathroom breaks

Dan is catching up, but he claims he’s going to be slowing down soon. I’m feeling good; loose. I also started tracking bathroom breaks… that’s not part of the contest; just more of an informational thing.

Update 12:44 AM
Dan: 126 oz – 8(!) bathroom breaks
Matt: 128 oz – 5 bathroom breaks
Pat: 136 oz – 6 bathroom breaks

A few things become apparent, midway through the day. First of all, Dan has a bladder the size of a walnut. Second, when you have a little bit of a headache it’s a good idea to back off a bit. Third, Fritos are my friend.

Final Update 5:oo PM
Dan: 284 oz – 16(!) bathroom breaks
Matt: 160 oz – 7 bathroom breaks
Pat: 306 oz – 11 bathroom breaks

Pat takes it, and in fine style. I pretty much gave up at lunch; it was giving me a headache and in general making me feel like poo. In total, we drank almost 6 gallons, or 22 litres. Crazy.

And you think you had a shitty day at work…

mattcomroe — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:45:41 +0000

I’m at work.
I ate my lunch maybe an hour before.
Psyllium husk is kicking in; doing its job.
I hit the head.
Normal size, normal amount of TP.
Flush.
Gurgle
Uh-oh.
Water rises.
Oh, please, please, please no!

Almost on command, the water obeys… cresting at the lip of its porcelean cage, and then reluctantly lowers itself back down.
Phew.

You know that still, small voice in the back of your head? The one that gently whispers things to you that you should probably listen to? The one that told me “Go find a plunger, Matt… trust me….”? Yeah, well… I didn’t listen. The water goes back down to normal pre-flush levels, and I’m left with two choices: just sneak away and leave it so that when the next guy comes in to pee, he gets one hell of a suprise, or try to flush again. I’ll take door #2, Monty!

Whoops.

No stopping it this time… no prayers will be answered.

As casually as possible, I step out into the hall and check the janitor’s closet. No plunger. What the heck kind of crackerjack operation are we running here anyway?!? Alright… so how bad is it? I peek back in to the bathroom, and there’s water everywhere. Sigh. I get the bucket and mop and get to work. The mop is an utter piece of shit, so I have to resort to paper towels. Let me tell you, I think I’d rather muck through old code than be mopping and wringing toilet water. I got most of the water into a small bucket, and then thought that perhaps by just pouring the water into the toilet, but without adding the flush factor, I could control how much the level rose while trying to exert enough downward pressure to free the clog. That probably would have worked great, if the handle of the bucket hadn’t broken right when I was trying to pour. There goes half my water! More mopping/squeezing ensues.

A trip to Home Depot to buy a $5 plunger, and then a bit more floor wiping, and I think the room is pretty much back to normal. Damn, that sucked!

New Office

mattcomroe — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:58:28 +0000

The move all went fine on Friday, so yesterday was the first day in the new offices. I was excited to try out the new shorter bike commute, so I met up with my coworker Tom, otherwise known as TK Stack Money, at the end of the 62nd st. bridge and showed him the ride in. TKSM has been cycling for around 6 years at least, and has a really sweet Cannondale road bike, so he completely kicked my ass on the way in. I was pretty sure I was gonna die, but didn’t, so if we ride in together more often, I will probably get a pretty good workout out of it.

The new offices look really good, and I think the space turned out pretty well. There’s still some glare issues to be worked out, and right outside the window is a radio station transmitter tower that’s kicking out so many watts that it forces itself as our on-hold muzak, as well as filling up cell phone dead air. Kinda makes me wonder if I’m going to have a brain tumor in a year. But, my new desk is comfy and ergonomic, so everything else is a pretty minor quibble.

Big Brother is watching

mattcomroe — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:14:36 +0000

So, the hot new rumor about a former employer of mine is that they’ve installed monitoring software capable of keystroke logging on everyone’s computers. Since I left this particular company, I’ve seen things there go from bad to pretty much horrible.

One of the first things that went was the use of instant messaging software. Not usually a big deal, seeing as how it can be a big time-waster and all, but the reasons given for removing the software were, frankly, stupid:

“It’s a big security hole.”

“We don’t want company secrets getting out.”
Point number 1. If you’re worried about security, you might as well just shut off your email system, since that’s where 99.9% of the viruses that are going around these days are coming from.

Point number 2. Puh-leaze. This is not a company that works on government contracts, or financial applications, or even proprietary software. They make fucking dogfood coupons. Get over yourself.

Now the potential for keystroke logging comes along. I tried to imagine what the justification for that might be, and I just come up blank. If you’re trying to see what your employees are doing, so they don’t go to time-wasting internet sites, then just block them at the firewall. Plenty of places do that. Then I thought about the whole trade secrets thing, and again I refer you to the “fucking dogfood coupons” paragraph above.

The implications for watching your employees that closely are so sad. Are you planning on logging into their Hotmail accounts to see what they’re writing about the company? That’s at least unethical, and probably extremely illegal, as well. Checking to see how many spelling mistakes they have to correct in a day, so you can fire them in favor of someone whose typing is less error-prone?

The basic issue is trust. In order to have a tolerable work environment, there needs to be a level of trust between employer and employee. It’s not like you’re going out into the street every morning and picking the first 30 people that walk by and say “You there. You are going to make my dogfood coupons today.” These are people that you interview, you try and learn about, and gauge their character. Instituting such draconian measure in an environment where employees already are fearful about being let go on a whim will just make your employees that much more likely to bolt.

If you’re trying to make absolutely everyone quit, then you’re probably on the right track. If, however, you would like to have some measure of employee retention (doubtful, since turnover while I was there was over 100% in a year and a half), then give them some measure of personal freedom. As long as their work is getting done, there’s no need to make everyone feel like they’re in the Gulag.

Sorry about the rambling… I’ve wanted to unload about this for awhile, and there are plenty of other things that are not appropriate for me to discuss here, but as I still have friends at this former employer, and I really just want their work environments to be better. Life is too short to work at a shit job.

Moving day

mattcomroe — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:25:07 +0000

Changing offices today, in case you haven’t been noticing all the rearranging going on at the new office. Computer gets packed in 2 hours, and who knows when it’ll get unpacked. And even when it does, I don’t think we’ll have our T1 up yet, so who knows when I’ll be able to ~~goof off~~ work again.

Call me Clarence Thomas

mattcomroe — Thu, 21 Aug 2003 16:57:16 +0000

Some of the other developers at my job that work on another unrelated piece of software pulled some serious all-nighters over the last few days. All fine and dandy, except that they drank all of my soda that was in the mini-fridge in the process. It was only slightly bothersome, but what I really didn’t understand is that they drank all the caffeine-free diet Coke! There’s no caffeine in it! Or sugar! No stimulants whatsoever! Why?!?

I picked up another 12-pack of caffeine-free diet Coke today, and decided to be a little bit more proactive. I got some Post-It notes, and affixed one to each can when I put them in the fridge. On each one, I wrote “I put my genitals on this”.

Scotty! I’ve. got. to. have. more. power.

mattcomroe — Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:06:26 +0000

One of the fun side benefits of all this rain we’ve been getting this week (as opposed to all the rain we were getting every other week) is that now the power has decided to randomly cut out at least 5 times a day. I can’t even tell you how fun it is to be in the middle of something one second and then be staring at a bootup screen the next. Not only is my concentration broken, but a non-clean shutdown in Win2k causes it to grind away for about 10 minutes upon booting, trying to recover lost data or crush Linux or whatever it is it tries to do.

Both of the people I share this room with have laptops, so they’re covered. I’m trying to find an extension cord long enough to reach the server APS that’s in this room, but until I do I’ll just be saving my work every five seconds, and hoping I can get stuff done under these conditions. I actually had made a bet yesterday with one of the coworkers that I could get a particular bug fixed, tested, and checked in before the next time the power went out. I made it, but just barely, and a crisp $1 bill is a symbol of my triumph.

Play Ball!

mattcomroe — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 16:44:29 +0000

Through my job, I got a ticket for a luxury box at the Pirates game last night against the Red Sox. It was “turn back the clock night”, a throwback to the last time the two teams had played, the 1903 World Series. They had all sorts of neat touches at the park, retro uniforms, old-timey music, etc., but the weather just didn’t want to cooperate. We still crashed the luxbox and had a great time. That is a cushy setup they have there; you get your own room, your own covered (and heated) seats outside the box, your own bathroom, and all kinds of “free” food. I say “free” because it works like a hotel minibar; they know how much food and how many cans of beer they put in your box, count up after you leave, do the math, and charge you. My company’s law firm was the one picking up the tab, so I didn’t feel to bad about having 2 $5 cans of diet soda, or an $8 hot dog or whatever it cost.

After getting tired of waiting for the game to start, my one coworker (who shall remain nameless) and I headed over to Club Elite. I got the sense that he really wanted to go, and all the other guys who had expressed an interest had bailed, so I didn’t want to leave him hanging. We were only there a short while, and then the SLF got out of work unexpectedly early and came and had a drink with us! It was a nice suprise, although I think it might have made nameless coworker a tad bit uncomfortable, but oh well.

Computer Notworking, Illustrated

mattcomroe — Wed, 21 May 2003 17:57:09 +0000

This is what my connection looks like to everyone else:

(Yes, that’s a cartoon AIM icon. You can snag one here (under “Extras”)).

Grrr.

mattcomroe — Tue, 20 May 2003 18:35:30 +0000

The connection at work is still completely fux0red... very frustrating. Other than that, everything is fun so far. Rode in again yesterday, and probably will do so again on Thursday, if the weather cooperates. Trying to get ready now for a database update for one of the clients, which involves loading a copy of their database, trying to figure out which of the scripts that were previously run were blown away when the client overwrote the test database with the production one, and what order they need to be run in. Whee!

Update: Some guy from Nauticom was just here to replace the router, and so far everything seems to be working like it should. Fingers crossed.

Update to the Update: Nope. Still not working right.

Connection Woes

mattcomroe — Fri, 16 May 2003 22:35:19 +0000

Alex Trebek: The answer is: “Unknown Socket Error”
Sean Connery: You mother didn’t have any suck it errors, Trebek!
AT: That’s ”’Socket” error, not “Suck it”
SC: Aaah, you’re one of those nancy-pants network fairys, aren’t ya?!
AT: [sighs] Mr. Connery, if you don’t know the answer I’ll have to move on.
SC: Perhaps you should talk to your mother about moving. She just laid there like Catherine Zeta-Jones suffering from nicotine deprevation.

Yeah, so… network connection has been extremely lame the last two days at work (as I’m sure my friends who keep seeing me pop on and off of AIM can attest to). They thought they had it fixed yesterday (bad cable), but the problem still seems to be lingering today.

If I had a hammer…

mattcomroe — Thu, 08 May 2003 23:06:21 +0000

I work in a small building that looks like a dentist’s office because, well, there’s at least two dentists’ offices in it, as well as the little software company that I’m now working for. Over the last 2 weeks or so, the roof has been in the process of being reshingled, which has been fun on many levels.

We’ve had to dodge falling pieces of roof while getting from the building through the parking lot, as well as listen to the pneumatic hammers hissing and popping outside our 2nd floor window.

The culmination of this fun had to be earlier on this week, when it sounded like they were dropping 50 pound bags of cement mix onto the roof directly above our heads. Repeatedly. I’m not quite sure what they were doing, but it was loud and scary. I’ll be happy when they’re gone. It’s hard enough to concentrate at work, harder still when you have to worry about some toolbelt-wearin’ yahoo crashing through the ceiling and into your lap.

Information Overload

mattcomroe — Wed, 09 Apr 2003 20:46:45 +0000

My adventures with SharpReader continue. First off, my sister has created a LiveJournal feed out of my own site’s RSS feed. It almost looks like I have an LJ(LiveJournal) account and everything.

I’ve added a few more feeds of interest, and now I feel like I’m in control of a huge flow of information. It’s nearly overwhelming, it’s so huge. I sort of feel like Joey Pants in The Matrix, “I don’t even see the code anymore; all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead…” The auto-refresh goes off every 1/2 hour, the little systray icon goes yellow, and I have new items to look through. It’s sort of like TiVo for the ‘Net.

I’ve also been trying, over the last few days, to bring some of my music collection into work. It’s a decent amount of work; running through existing mp3 folders with Tag&Rename, making sure the folder/file names are short enough to fit on a cd, and getting them burned and in. (As an aside, my next car stereo head unit will definitely have to be able to play burned mp3s.) I also downloaded and (ahem) liberated a copy of Forte Agent newsreader, so I could start plucking “backup” copies of tunes from A.B.S.M.*.

I see Mark Pilgrim has released his site’s MT(Movable Type) templates. Some of them definitely look worth copying, especially the one for the full-page calendar.

I would also like to state why my new job rocks so far:

I don’t have to do timesheets.

I don’t even have a phone on my desk (well, it’s not really a desk, it’s a door balanced on two low filing cabinets). Keeps the interruptions way, way down when people can’t call you and disturb you. Heck, I didn’t even get my email set up until about a week after I started.

New Job, Day 1

mattcomroe — Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:16:46 +0000

Just a free minute or two on my first day, so I thought I’d do an update. Had a very nice weekend in N.J., although my friend Jen had a run-in with her landlord that I’ll have to update further on.

Highlight of the weekend? I was talking with my dad about my new camera lust, and he suggested that I should perhaps have his “old” camera, an Olympus C-3030, which is basically the precursor to the one I was looking to get anyway! My dad is probably as big of a gadget geek as I am, so of course he has it already all pimped out with extra memory cards, an external super-long-life battery pack, and other various stuff. Yay Dad! I just have to figure out how much money I should give him for it, but I don’t think he wants much.

Work so far is cool, just getting VS.NET installed on my machine, which took an extrodinarily long time, and now just familiarizing myself with the app I’ll be working on before I dive in.

My so-called life.

mattcomroe — Tue, 25 Mar 2003 17:25:59 +0000

Man, so much stuff going on I don’t even know where to begin.

First off, as Brian alluded to, I have indeed found new gainful employment, and I’ll be finishing up here this week. Tons of stuff left to do, lots of little projects to clean up, documentation to write, knowledge to transfer, paradigms to shift, etc. I’m pretty stoked about the new position. It’s a pure .Nizzle development job, although they work mainly with VB.Nizzle (ick.) Pehaps I will convince them of the beauty and love that is C#.
One of the cooler things about the new job is that it’ll be a longer bike ride, up to about 14-15 miles from my current 8. That will be a nice healthy run… I’ll probably do it just once or twice a week and feel great about it. I was worried that the roads I thought I’d have to go on were too dangerous, but various people have told me that there’s ways I can go to get there without getting my brains splattered all over the road, so sometime soon Dave and I will probably do a dry run in the car. In order to get ready for the longer ride, I’ll be picking up a mini-pump (“This sort of thing ain’t my bag, baby”), a spare tube, and a patch kit.
I’ve gotten it in my head recently that I’d like to have a new digital camera that actually takes half-decent pictures. I’ve settled on the Olympus C-4000, partly because it gets really good reviews, and partly because my current camera is an Olympus, which means my SmartMedia cards will work in that one, too. I really don’t want to spend the money on a new one, so I’ll just sort of troll eBay and see if I can find one for around $200-250, or a little more if it comes with a case/SmartMedia card/NiMh batteries/etc.

One of the features of MT(Movable Type) that’s turned out to be the most interesting has been the Activity Log. One of the things it shows me is what people are searching on, in a more real-time way than my weekly stats. It’s neat to see what people are looking for, whether they’re trying to find out info about my best friend, or just doing some straight narcissurfing (Hi Paul Fontana! ).

Vampire-Free Zone

mattcomroe — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:35:10 +0000

I would just like to apologize in advance to my pod-mates at work. The SLF and I went to Gullifty’s last night, and stuffed ourselves at their bi-annual Garlic Fest . We had a roasted garlic spread appetizer, and for dinner I had the 20 clove garlic chicken hoo-hah. And today you’ll know it. There’s been pure garlic coming out of my butt since first thing this morning. I also rode in, so I’m probably sweating it as well. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

It’s Chic to Reek™!

Flush, Part II (or, I really mean it this time)

mattcomroe — Tue, 18 Mar 2003 06:07:24 +0000

Not flushing the urinal is slightly annoying, but today was worse. Went into the Executive Washroom (i.e. the handicapped stall) to throw on shorts for the bike ride home, and had to pee while I was in there. Lifted up the seat (so as not to make a mess, you see…), and saw that someone had a horrible ass-splosion in there, forceful enough to splatter all over the underside of the seat (although thankfully not where I grabbed it to lift it).

Ok, if you have that big of a “paintball” (as Pat so eloquently put it), you’re gonna feel it on your ass, which means you’re gonna know that it’s all over. You’re gonna be washing your hands afterwards anyway (at least, I hope you are you sick bastard), so just grab a big wad of toilet paper and wipe that shit up! Sheesh!

Work

mattcomroe — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 17:48:23 +0000

“So, how’s work been these days?” you ask…

Abbi sums it up quite nicely, thank you.

update: I saw this missive on Andre Torrez’s site, and it gave me pause. Not because I think that I’m exactly in his situation, but because I wonder what it all exactly means to me. Perhaps he’s right about the apparent lack of old programmers. I certainly don’t ever want to become “the stapler guy”, but I also don’t think I ever want to do management, either. As much as I like to tell people I work with how shortsighted, schizophrenic, or otherwise idiotic they are, I usually like to do it to people who are in a different discipline than programming, and I know it would be hard to be telling a younger version of myself what to do and when to have it done by.

I kind of like where I’m at right now; I work with other programmers who want to learn about new things, and I can “mentor” or “coach” or whatever the fuck (both of those are too strong of terms, I just find something that’s cool/fun/makes business sense and we all basically learn it together)... but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can keep doing it. Programming seems to be a young person’s game, but I think I’m interested enough in new technologies to keep myself marketable. Besides, I have both my parents to look up to for examples; my dad still does basically what i do, writes code, talks to customers, and still looks forward to going to work in the morning. My mom even got back in game after sending all us kids off to college; becoming a Java developer until she got laid off (along with everyone else) from Lucent.

So, I suppose all is not dark. I might not always be “the smart programmer” at work, but I can always hope to be “the weird one”, or at the very least, “the old one.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, actually.

Flex Time (or, once again life imitates art)

mattcomroe — Mon, 24 Feb 2003 20:21:01 +0000

Guilt-free

mattcomroe — Mon, 17 Feb 2003 21:10:05 +0000

So, a leisurely hike to the bus stop and a stroll through downtown later, and I’m at work. Pat is the only other person in our department in today; apparently our manager was the only one who actually bothered to call his/her team and tell them they didn’t have to come in to work! (Oh, wait.. there was the email from my boss at 7 AM that would have done nobody any good unless they happened to check their work email between 7 and when they would leave for work)

I went out for a little spin in the snow a few times yesterday, and it wasn’t so bad. Apparently there’s some sort of salt shortage, because PENNDOT ain’t doing jack shit out there. It was fun spinning around, practicing handbrake turns, and in general just trying to stay out of other people’s way. My car is pretty good in the snow, but I still can’t wait until I get my next car.

It was a very nice weekend. The SLF has had to work every night since Friday, including tonight, so we’re going to do our VD dinner tomorrow night. Not quite sure where yet, but there are some good options out there. Paul once again came over Saturday to help me finish putting the bike together. I took a few pictures, but left my Flash card at home. I’ll post those tomorrow. If the weather cooperates at all I might even get to ride late this week, but we’ll see how much snow melts by then.

Yesterday I cleaned up my place some, and then sat and watched an “Academy consideration” DVD copy of LOTR:TTT. Makes me think I should find a DVD burner soon to store these little treasures when I come across them.

Tonight having some people over for WRC Rally Sweden party. Always a good time with that group.

Snow day (or, on being a guilt-ridden mess)

mattcomroe — Mon, 17 Feb 2003 17:56:28 +0000

Finally! A decent amount of snow! Now, don’t get me wrong. I hate winter. I can’t wait for winter to be over. But, some days you get lucky, and enough snow falls that you don’t have to go to work. Got a call from my mgr. this morning, and she said that while my boss didn’t explicitly tell everyone to stay home, he also didn’t say that we had to come in, either. So, now I’m in a bit of a dilemma; on one hand, I would really really like to enjoy a 3-day weekend, and work isn’t so jam-packed that I would feel like I was getting behind. On the other, I’ve been IM-ing with some of my co-workers who actually did make it in, and it sounds like there’s a decent amount of people actually in the office. I already slept in late, so maybe after a quick round of THPS4 I’ll drag my carcass into the office. All the benefits of a snow day, but none of the guilt of not actually going in. Then I can post about my weekend, too.

flush (or, how to gross out your co-workers)

mattcomroe — Wed, 12 Feb 2003 20:21:59 +0000

ok, so i drink a lot of liquid during the day, so that means i go to pee a lot. the urinals in the men’s room are the slightly old-fashioned type, in that you have to pull the handle when you’re done; there’s no little red eye that knows when you’re through tapping a kidney and flushes for you. i’ve noticed that at least once a day, maybe more often than that, i’ll go in and see that someone has used the urinal and not flushed. now, i know that since most urinals do this auto-flush thing, maybe people have been conditioned to not think about flushing so often, but i still really think that you could realize that you’re leaving a stinky puddle of urine and give the handle just a little flick…

Why MAC addresses suck

mattcomroe — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 23:38:44 +0000

any idea how much of a pain it is to find info about obtaining hardware MAC addresses from clients using an ASP page?

for windows machines:



strIP = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_CISCO_BBSM_CLIENTIP")

strMac = GetMACAddress(strIP)
	Function GetMACAddress(strIP)

Set net = Server.CreateObject("wscript.network")

Set sh = Server.CreateObject("wscript.shell")

sh.run "comspec /c nbtstat -A " & strIP & " > c:\" & strIP & ".txt",0,true

Set sh = nothing

Set fso = createobject("scripting.filesystemobject")

Set ts = fso.opentextfile("c:\" & strIP & ".txt")

macaddress = null

Do While Not ts.AtEndOfStream

data = ucase(trim(ts.readline))

If instr(data,"MAC ADDRESS") Then

macaddress = trim(split(data,"=")(1))

Exit Do

End If

loop

ts.close

Set ts = nothing

Set fso = nothing

GetMACAddress = macaddress

End Function

for *nix boxes:



strIP = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_CISCO_BBSM_CLIENTIP")

strMac = GetMACAddress(strIP)
	Function GetMACAddress(strIP)

Set net = Server.CreateObject("wscript.network")

set oShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

cmd = "COMSPEC /c ping -n 2 " & strIP & ">nul"

oShell.Run cmd,0,1

set oShell = nothing

Set sh = Server.CreateObject("wscript.shell")

sh.run "comspec /c arp -a " & strIP & " > c:\" & strIP & ".txt",0,true

Set sh = nothing

Set fso = createobject("scripting.filesystemobject")

Set ts = fso.opentextfile("c:\" & strIP & ".txt")

macaddress = null

Do While Not ts.AtEndOfStream

data = ucase(trim(ts.readline))

If instr(data,strIP) Then

macaddress = trim(split(split(data,strIP)(1),"DYNAMIC")(0))

Exit Do

End If

loop

ts.close

Set ts = nothing

Set fso = nothing

GetMACAddress = macaddress

End Function

substitute “REMOTE_ADDR” for “HTTP_X_CISCO_BBSM_CLIENTIP” if you’re not using this weak-ass cisco proxy software like i am.
i hate ASP.

How to say “poo” to the client and not get fired.

mattcomroe — Fri, 17 Jan 2003 21:06:15 +0000

two funny work stories that have to do with the same client (a toy manufacturer):

we’re working on a database-driven website for the aforementioned client, and we need to have it done in time for the big toyfair show. there’s lots of problems with their db, since it’s to be used by their manufacturers, suppliers and other non-consumer-types and there are lots of missing images, and unfriendly descriptions of products and their categories. so, this morning abbi and i are on a call with their db guy. we were talking about categorization of licensed products, one of them being winnie the pooh. so, of course, i made it a point to use that in all my examples.

me: so, how do i know if other things are poo?
the guy: well, we actually have several different lines of pooh products.
me: holding back my giggles of mirth so hard that i’m jumping up and down in my chair waving my arms ok, so do i need to worry about the different brands of poo? or can i just snort “lump” snark them all into one category called “poo”?
the guy: yes, that will be fine.
one of the other things this client makes is skateboard/bike ramps, so we have lots of little ramps and grindrails and a skateboard and a small bmx bike scattered around the office. well, one of their new products is a plastic quarterpipe, and we have a demo of one sitting in the office. i was all ready to grab the board and try to do a drop-in, but then someone told me that my boss and his young son had put the thing together, and there was a bag full of “extra” pieces sitting on top. uuuhhhh, no thanks.

whew! after a few fits

mattcomroe — Fri, 03 Jan 2003 18:14:19 +0000

whew! after a few fits and starts (including one scary moment when uploading the web.config file made everything go boom), we launched the new site around 7 p.m. new year’ eve. our guy who does all the file promotion over at gnc was late for a party, so he just opened up ftp permissions and i was uploading directly to the live site, which was a scary thing, especially when it’s exploding.

so far, all quiet on the western front. spent most of yesterday fixing a few tweaky little things (problems with layouts in ie5, which has recently been as annoying to code workarounds for as netscape 4.7 was with older-style layouts), catching some files which were updated but not promoted, and reformatting some pages that had slipped through the cracks, which gets easier and easier as our templates get more solid.

nye was very nice; low-key. the slf’s sister and neice came over, and we watched monsters inc. and a bug’s life, two very enjoyable “kid” cartoons. i snuck out for a short while to go to dave’s little wing-ding too, and he and casey had great food and refreshments… that girl can bake.

i was going to take a “sick” day today, but i thought maybe i’d come in and get a little bit of work done, especially since pat is out today. if it’s really quiet this afternoon i might go home early, but we’ll see. work is actually going to be sort of interesting in the near term; i have one from-scratch site that will have to be put together fairly quickly, but it’s going to be kinda cool, and since it’s all-new, it should be a little bit easier for me to create it as a compliant site. a big problem with gnc was tons of legacy content, and just lack of foresight on my part. we have lots of little content-management tools that we did for them, and rather than putting in my own markup tags for linebreaks and such (like blogger does, i left it free-form, and told them what tags to put in. of course, i didn’t know last year that we were going to try and go down the road of xhtml/css, so i didn’t tell them that a paragraph tag needs to be with a lowercase “p”, and you need a closing tag for it, or that you have to close all your

tags, too.

this weekend should be fun. going to a comp at the “other” climbing gym in wexford (which i’ve never been to). i wasn’t going to go, since i’m climbing like poo ever since the holidays when i couldn’t keep to a steady schedule, but then i found out that some friends of mine are competing, and jen will be there hanging out and watching as well, which will be nice.

sunday i’m going to try and get to see lotr, ttt with the slf, if we can squeeze it in before she has to go to work. we watched the extend-o version of “fellowship” on dvd over the weekend, so she’s all fired up to see the next one now.

finally, i think i found what i’m going to ask my dad to get me for my birthday next month. this little beauty should help my problem of having too many/too complicated remote controls.

go time (or, “ya say you want a resolution, well.. you know…”)

mattcomroe — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:03:44 +0000

moment of truth…. pages are about to be pushed live, which means that pretty soon i’ll know of the site is a fantastic success or a horrible crushing failure. while i’m waiting for the final go and the nailbiting while the pages are propagated to the 3 webservers that will show the new baby to 30,000 visitors a day i figure i’ll do my new year’s resolutions.

matt’s 2003 resolutions—i will try my best to be good to my friends and family; because i love them all dearly.—i will climb V7 outside.—i will pay off at least 2 of my credit cards.—i will climb at least 5 5.12s this season.—when the spring hits, i will ride my bike to work at least twice a week.—i will learn at least one new programming language or major technology, and use know it well enough to be able to us it casually in a sentence.—and finally (held over from previous resolutions by popular demand), in 2003 nobody will wonder what i’m thinking.

trials and tribulations (or, it’s christmas time in hollis, queens)

mattcomroe — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 06:15:04 +0000

i drove out the day before xmas eve right after work, and went to my best friend’s house. his parents are like my adopted 3rd set, and i always spend xmas eve with them. rather than making the drive all the way out to their new place (which takes about 6, 6 1/2 hours without traffic), i went to philly to go meet ryan, who was staying at his friend jane’s house in center city. the drive there was fairly uneventful, except for the otherworldly radio reception i was getting. i don’t know if it was atmospheric conditions or alien visitors, but i was getting crazy am reception on the drive out. i was about midway across pa, and picking up broadcasts from boston, nyc, chicago, cleveland, and d.c. i even got to listen to most of the exciting tie between the rangers and devils.

we went out for a bit in philly that night, hit a few bars, and then went back to jane’s and passed out.

christmas eve we drove to ryan’s folks’ house, and started doing some christmas-y stuff. ran out to the liquor store and picked up some presents as well as supplies for that evening, and ryan even managed to do all of his shopping for xmas presents at 5 p.m. at the eckerd. you’d be amazed at the sorts of things you can find there when you’re a bit desparate. ryan’s brother showed up a short while later, and we started taking our xmas pictures, which every year involves some props, and usually the dog. this year we had some bum polaroid film, so we had to make do with triplets of izone pictures, instead of just one of the 600 variety. too bad, because we had some really good ones. we all wore cloth napkins on our heads (sorta like the flying nun) (the dog included) and posed with various gifts for baby jesus; an apple, a box of godiva truffles, what have you… we also had a really good one of us posing by the ahem posed wooden reindeer. ryan and i take great delight in posing them this way every time we’re at his house over xmas. you know the ones, thin wooden cutouts, and one has their head down. you can sorta make the one with his head up straight mount the other one, and it’s extremely funny. too bad we weren’t the first to think of it, or at least the most famous to think of it.

xmas day my plans went all to hell. the nor’easter prevented me from making it to see either my mom or my dad, so i just hung out at ryan’s house all day, watching “a christmas story” (and researching the actor from it who became a porn star) at least 7 times during the marathon, eating prime rib, and in general being lazy.

the drive back to pgh was similarly uneventful, although when i was flipping across the dial i did come across this nutjob on a “rush limbaugh” station… his comments were so amazingly sexist that i wasn’t quite sure what to do; talking about his wife’s “job” as cooking and cleaning, and how he doesn’t want her to have any sort of free time or anything. my guess is they put him on to make rush seem that much more moderate in comparison.

anyway, got a couple of pretty cool presents. although i didn’t see my mom, she had mailed me my present a few weeks ago, some new pedals for my soon-to-be cross bike (which reminds me, i really need to give paul some benjamins for that). along with that, the slf got me this awesome windbreaker, which will come in quite handy for the bike rides on the chillier spring mornings.

so, the stress of the holidays is (mostly) over, but i still have a bunch of work to do on the project i’m trying to finish before the deadline. i’m happy that i get to redo such a highly visible site using all the hot new xhtml/css web standards and everything, but it is quite an undertaking. there’s tons of legacy content in the db, and time is just so short that i don’t know if i’m going to get to it all. very few of the pages validate (if any), but we’re still much closer to a compliant site. there are just so many issues to be addressed; here are some of my fun problems of the moment:
—problems with character encoding (pages that are “utf-8” encoded can’t handle “glyphs”, which are special characters which have a character for them, instead of using an html equavalent; i.e. � instead of ™). i can change the encoding from “utf-8” to “charset=iso-8859-1”, but that causes pages to barf in the validator since they’re being encoded utf-8 in .nizzle by default. it also throws a monkey wrench in all the product and category detail pages, which are using xml/xslt transformations (with the xml data being utf-8). the “right” thing to do would be to re-code these pages in .nizzle, but i just don’t have the time right now. actually, the Really Right Thing(™) would be to expose category and product data as a web service (which was my original intent when we redesigned last year, except i used a VB COM object to create an xml string using the msxml4 dom object, which works fine, but it’s clunky and does not easily lend itself to having that data reused by other sites/applications). (a little note: i think i might have found the answer while looking for relevant links for this post… i can set a global attribute for output response encoding, as shown here. set the encoding to iso-8859-1 in the web.config, and that should solve much of my problems.
—font size. i’m trying to stay away from hardcoded font sizes, and using named base fonts and just percentages in my stylesheets. one problem so far with that is the store locator page… it uses some funky mapquest webservice-esque process to get its results back, which would be fine except that it puts some html comments in the top few lines of the page, which means that my tag is not the first line in the html, which causes weird font size problems in ie, but not netscape/mozilla or opera.

so, i worked for about 7 hours today (as did amy, bless her heart), and i figure i’ll be back in the office tomorrow, too. thursday (new year’s day) the office is off, and we launch wednesday, and if all goes well i have a feeling i’ll be “sick” friday.

quickies: -yesterday was a most

mattcomroe — Fri, 13 Dec 2002 16:15:18 +0000

quickies:

-yesterday was a most craptacular day at work, and it’s not going to get better anytime soon. we have an insane deadline for a project (actually, several projects all rolled into one) that i have no idea how i’m going to hit, and to top it all off i’m going to be spending two and a half glorious days in rhode island doing a lovely dog ‘n’ pony show for another client that has a deadline 6 months from now.

-i see that tivo is finally going to add one of the features i’ve been asking them for for awhile; being able to program your tivo through a website. it would be very cool to be away from home, say, on a hellish two day trip to rhode island with your boss, and OH NO!!! you forgot to tivo joe millionaire! so, you log on, put in the instructions to record the show (assuming you don’t already watch a ton of reality-tv crap, or at least your tivo thinks you do), and when you get home, it’ll be there. that’s a nice feature, especially since my cats don’t know how to work the remote, and don’t even know how to answer the phone when i call.

-more comp stuff: results have been posted from the prg comp, and although they misspelled my name (i emailed them and they’re going to correct it next update), i placed 13th out of 56!!! i’m pretty stoked about that, considering how hard everyone there was crankin’. i also emailed jim horton (organizer of hound ears) to get him to put up scores.

whew! (or, dodging bullets)

mattcomroe — Thu, 05 Dec 2002 18:22:43 +0000

ok, so last week i had a very funny post or two involving an email that i had gotten at work… poking a bit of fun at a “morale-boosting” initiative that most people found rather silly. all a harmless bit of fluff, until i put up my auto-comment system this a.m. one of the first comments was under one of the posts in question, referring me to an entry on the fc website (see if you can find which one it is!).

apparently a disgruntled former-or-current co-worker decided to send in a copy of the email, exactly as i had edited it to protect the last names of the innocent. while i don’t think this was any more or less appropriate than my posting of the email in the first place, the simple truth is that the memo, posted to internal memos, now had a much wider audience than i had intended, and with my company’s name out in plain view (whereas i hadn’t put up the company name in my post (although an astute reader could have gone back through my archives and figured out where i work fairly easily)).

the end result of all this is that i yanked the two posts in question for the time being. i don’t like to do stuff like this, but i also don’t like being unemployed. my boss is the easily exciteable type, and i could easily see myself being summarily dismissed, even though i hadn’t sent the memo in to be posted. luckily, i was able to pull down the posts before they were cached by google.

Climbing and cock pictures

mattcomroe — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 19:00:00 +0000

so much blogging to catch up on…. have to tell you all about the awesome
.htm”>comp at the philly rock
gym, and various other thanksgiving weekend stuff, but real quick i wanted to post a picture of my boss’s cock for you:

Look for the Rooster

mattcomroe — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 19:00:00 +0000

this is, no shit, the email that was in my box this a.m.

From: John B
To: staff
Subject: Look for the Rooster!

Some of you may have noticed a wooden rooster around the office. There is a significance to the rooster that you may not be aware of.

In ancient Greek culture, the rooster was a symbol of pride and innovation. While chickens were routinely devoured, roosters were treated as Gods and given special privileges. Soldiers returning from waging successful wars were often presented with roosters as a symbol of appreciation.

It was often said that if you were born under the sign of the rooster, you were going to lead a long and successful life.

In the Greek congress, roosters were presented to leaders who best represented the will of the people. The saying, “proud as a rooster” , goes back to this ancient culture.

In keeping with this age old tradition, I would like to introduce the Proud Rooster Award to our office. Each Monday we will present a member of our staff with the rooster award. The award will be based upon outstanding performance in the call of duty. The individual will have demonstrated outstanding attention to quality, performed exceptionally well under duress, demonstrated innovative thinking or simply work their but off so hard that we all feel it is necessary to recognize their effort.

The rooster will “roost” in their office in plain site for all to see for the week. The nominating party will send an e-mail out to the entire staff notifying them of this outstanding performance. This e-mail will be added to their personnel file for future gloating.

By now, I’m sure you are wondering, “What can I do to get that rooster?” It’s simple, go above and beyond the call of duty to the point where your leaders and peers recognize your effort. If you see someone over achieving, let your team leader know and they’ll go to war with the other managers to bring the Rooster home to that person.

This week’s winner of the “Proud Rooster” is Sara H. Sara earned her first Proud Rooster with two (note two, not one) outstanding achievements. Sara organized the paper library for all of us as well as produced the Holiday Poster under considerable duress from me. While she had a great team to help her, she earns the first “Proud Rooster” award for self motivation and achievement. Stop by Sara’s office today and check out her rooster! Thanks Sara.

Note: Family members of Greek mythology are not eligible. Roosters may not be awarded for personal favors or as prizes in drinking contests. Decisions of the judges is final.

so… let me get this straight. my motivation is to work hard so i can have
my boss’s cock in my face for a week?

wow (or, awash in good luck)

mattcomroe — Sat, 23 Nov 2002 03:21:29 +0000

lots of stuff has been happening… i think i’ll work backwards.

first and foremost, verisign finally got their act together. i had recieved another phonecall wednesday evening telling me that the fax i sent them was fine and dandy, but they still needed an “authorizing signature” to make everything go through. sent that thursday morning, and finally got an email just a short while ago telling me that they have finally reset my password. you can even see my fancy new dns mappings! by the time i get back from this weekend, the dns should be all propagated and stuff, and i’ll be able to start developing on my new .net site.

i had to stay a little bit late at work tonight in order to get my latest project out the door. on the walk to the bus, i was going right through the middle of “light-up night”. it was a zoo, and the rain was starting to come down and get even colder, so i was happy to get out of there. (btw, what’s up with that woman’s hair???)

so, after reading my entry about bike-hunting, my homeslice paul hooked me up! he has a gently used trek cross bike (and it was even housed in my building; mutual friend holding on to it for him), so i’m going to take that off his hands, and put some swanky components on it.

wednesday night i watched the penguins lose to the canadiens in overtime. the slf had gotten some really kickass seats, tho. we were in prime puck-catching territory, if not for those snazzy nets.

a co-worker of mine

mattcomroe — Thu, 14 Nov 2002 16:08:28 +0000

a co-worker of mine and i were talking the other day about barcodes. we started off talking about the whole trendy “barcode-on-the-back-of-the-neck” thing, and then the co-worker suggested taking it a step further. he wondered how cool would it be to have your frequent shopper card code tattooed on your arm, so when you went to check out a movie or get your discount, you’d just swipe your arm over the scanner and check out the stunned reaction.

i got myself a safety light last night. i think i’ll go with “chase” lights on the ride home.

true or false (or, worst….test……ever)

mattcomroe — Tue, 12 Nov 2002 16:04:09 +0000

moving forward with the interview process for a certain company (hint: they sound like a former presidential candidate, but they’re not). last night i did another online questionnaire. this one was a personality profile. they are fairly stupid. they just keep asking you the same true/false questions over and over again, sometimes in a slightly different way, hoping that you’ll screw up and put different answers for the same question. anyway, i culled some of my favorite questions and broke them down by category:

the “how stuck on yourself are you?” category
Others seem to find me attractive. No one ever got ahead by being modest. I am very good at almost everything I do. Other people recognize my talent, although they may not always say so. I often fantasize about being famous.

the “how suicidal are you?” category
I am a moody person. Nothing seems to matter to me anymore. I can’t do anything well. I’m always tired. I feel like life is just passing me by. I often wonder how I got to be the way I am. The future seems hopeless to me. I frequently have headaches. My life often seems to have no meaning. When I was young, there were times when I felt like leaving home. Sometimes I feel like a failure. Sometimes my problems seem too much for me. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart. I sometimes feel irritated without any good reason.

the “how much of an asshole are you at work? category
It doesn’t bother me to criticize or contradict the persons who are above me at work. People often disappoint me. In a group, I don’t mind expressing unpopular opinions. I could do a better job if I weren’t interrupted so often.

the “how militia-style paranoid about government/authority are you?” category
If I wanted to, I could disguise myself as someone else. I get nervous if I think someone is watching me. The average citizen has no idea what our politicians are up to. If you want justice in this world, then you must be ready to fight for it. Some laws were just made to be broken.

the “how insane are you?” category
People can often sense my power. If I were in charge, I could get this country moving again. I have some powerful enemies. Because of my unusual gifts, few people are close to me. Sometimes I feel a kind of power around me. In time people will recognize my importance. I know who my enemies are. Sometimes I know what people are going to say before they say it. People with my special talents don’t need many friends.

the “how much of a party animal are you?” category
In my view a person who doesn’t drink can’t be trusted.

to quote lecter:
“oh, agent starling… you think you can disect me with this blunt little tool?”

fun flight

mattcomroe — Fri, 13 Sep 2002 15:57:22 +0000

so, made it back just fine wednesday night, although my flight back was interesting for several reasons:

1. there was a guy on the flight who looked exactly like bilbo baggins from lotr. he had really tight curly brown hair, was amazingly short, and had all these amazing lines/wrinkles in his face. he was wearing loafers sans socks, very miami vice. i almost asked him to take his shoes off to see how hairy his feet were.
2. i had a window seat right over the wing (row 13, as a matter of fact), and i don’t think i ever noticed before just how much the wings have a tendancy to flex when you ride through turbulance.
3. there was some sort of high-pitched whine in the cabin that led to all sorts of psychoacoustics for me. i kept imagining i was hearing things; my phone ringing (mozart’s sonata #11 (rondo alla turka)), “swanee river”, and all your favorite hits.

ft. lauderdale = prefab hell

mattcomroe — Wed, 11 Sep 2002 21:42:16 +0000

so, i’m down here in florida, in hollendale. we’re all done with work for the day, but because we have discount flight tickets, we can’t get on an earlier flight without a penalty…. so, stuck until 7. flying in last night wasn’t as bad as a thought. there were about 50 security people at the pgh airport checkpoint, but i breezed right through. guess all my planning to pack light paid off. flight was uneventful; i even managed to sleep for about an hour, which is pretty unheard of. i’m not a nervous flier, but i just find the seats so uncomfortable that it’s hard for me to drop off.

ft. lauderdale/hollendale is a weird area. it’s very industrial; lots of low-slung concrete buildings, pawnshops, check-cashing places… in general i think it’s a pretty depressed area. i don’t know why anyone would want to come here for a vacation. everything is bleached by the sun, and looks very old, even if it’s not (this includes the local populace).

i’m almost done with cryptonomicon, which i have enjoyed immensely…. i’m sad to see it end, but apparently it’s the first of 3 books in a series, although the other two aren’t written yet. i should definitely be able to finish that off tonight at the airport, and maybe get most of the way through this bike messenger book i picked up (link coming later), before i start neil stephenson’s show crash.

mmmm… tomatoes….

mattcomroe — Thu, 05 Sep 2002 18:23:41 +0000

mmmm… one of my coworkers brought in a big thing of fresh cherry tomatoes today. i don’t know if they’re home-grown or from a farmer’s market or what, but they are tasty!

i opened up a free account on brinkster yesterday. they let you do .NET stuff, so i’ll be hacking around with that, trying to do some fun stuff. i put together the counter that you see over on the right using that… it’s a web page that’s generating a graphic on the fly.

my life is a Dilbert cartoon

mattcomroe — Fri, 09 Aug 2002 15:44:31 +0000

scary as it is, this actually happened at my job a few weeks ago:

our long national nightmare is just beginning

mattcomroe — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 22:12:32 +0000

this day is seeming to drag on forever, which is why i’m choosing to cave in and create a blog. yes, i’m a matty-come-lately, but it will be nice to be able to just sort of free-form, post, and not have to worry about all the ftp/frontpage/asp hoohah. we’ll see how it all works out.