The thing is — for what is probably a typical Canadian situation where family distribution is measured in hours, even days — my grandparents were the happy glue of the family. We’d only have the larger get-togethers on special occasions; Christmas being the main event. If it wasn’t for Nick & Vera driving the course between their six children, I’m certain we would have lost touch. We certainly wouldn’t have a sense of “family.” Read the rest of this entry »
You know the kind. Small and cute; if it was a few pounds heavier it would probably be cuddly. Nice little guy. I fed him some horse sausage. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 29th, 2011 | Author:Deke | Filed under:The IT Life | Tags:IT
… because life isn’t already hard enough.
If you are a masochist (or your boss is a sadist(*); or your project made you one; or you have the ambition to be so) and need to set up job queues through Zend Framework with a MySQL database. Here’s how it’s done.
Precursor: finding any practical information/tutelage about Zend_Queue is nearly impossible. The documentation is complete shite – sorry; it just is. After fiddling around with it, I finally have a working model. Thought it worthy of ye good ‘ol fashion blog post.
It’s been one-hell-of-a stressful few days. Sitting here on the terrace, looking at nothing; hearing nothing; my mind went momentarily blank. It should do that more often.
Also, I’m pretty sure I just saw two crickets humping.
As I look around the landscape, I see so many start-ups from here that just seem to have their shit together. It’s not just that they’re making stuff that actually works, they’re also doing it sexy. I stole that term. Allow me to explain.
Today we said goodbye to a very close friend. It got me thinking: the only thing worse than saying goodbye is never saying hello. I’m certainly not the first to say this. I’m just glad I did.
I’ll skip the bits about how cool it is to have my brothers with me here in Slovenia; it’s been a blast. In the short time they’ve been here, we’ve gone through at least a life time’s of adventure. As proof of this, I present the following video shot just a few hours ago.
Carbonite!
They have this tradition here in Slovenia where carbonite is placed in a barrel, soaked in water, and then tapped with something hot; a stick-on-fire is apropos. The explosion is something akin to a canon. Now, normally all goes on without a hitch. Until a Canadian shows up. If you haven’t already guessed it, this is not what’s supposed to happen.
My day job — these days — is hacking Java. Well, that’s an understatement. I’ve been writing what is best described as some form of multi-platform, embedded system for a MysteryProjectThatImSwornToSilenceOver with some really cool people WhoImNotAllowedToMention. It’s an audio-visual experience involving joysticks and touch-screens; it keeps my left brain in tune. My night job is, well, multi-lobal funk.
It was our first trip to Canada as a family. Nataša and I were a bit nervous. Travelling overseas with a one year old is not for the faint of heart. But! It was necessary: my family hadn’t yet met our daughter Nyree and it had been years since I myself had been back. As it turned out the trip was a little-more-than extraordinary. It was something you’d almost expect to see on an American Soap Opera.
