Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

Really bad MIDI versions of Smoke on The Water make lousy ring tones...espacially in a crowded office. That's all I'm saying.

From the "You should read the manual before hand" file: This Guide to writing Custom SharePoint Web Services is pretty helpful. It includes this gem:

After you deploy your .asmx file and your assembly, test your Web service. To test your Web service successfully, you must create a test application in Visual Studio .NET that uses SOAP to invoke the Web service methods. By default, custom Web services for Windows SharePoint Services only honor SOAP requests from their clients. If you try to test your Web service using a protocol other than SOAP, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The security validation for this page is invalid and might be corrupted. Please use your Web browser's Back button to try your operation again.

What isn't entirely clear here is that this means that the ASMX test page falls into the non-SOAP request camp. You can waste a lot of time, like me, trying to track down the source of this problem.

I came across the Adventure Game Interpreter the other day on Wikipedia. What a neat piece of computing history. This is the underlying engine that produced games like Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. Both were staples of my adolescence. What's even neater is that people have reverse engineered the engine are and are using it to create new games.

So I expanded my cultural horizons recently by seeing the Cincinnati Ballet Company's production of Swan Lake. My top line impression is that I'm not itching to see the ballet again, but I wouldn't automatically dismiss it.

First the good: One cannot deny the strength and endurance that it takes to do what the dancers do. Tack on the fact that they have to be graceful at the same time and it is immensely impressive.

Now the bad: The first act was way too long and it is mainly due to all the repetition. I get the idea already that they are at a fancy party. Why does it seem like each of the 30 people on stage get to have their own solo dance. Then there is clapping. After each solo and after each moment, the audience breaks out into applause. I felt like I was at the State of the Union address.

I guess I am being a bit naive but I expect more out of the plot. I was expecting for some big story to be advanced or at least be non-convuluted. As I was reading the story in the program, I kept finding holes in the plot. I know that it is supposed to be a celebration of the dancing but I can't help finding a facet of the production lacking.

Lastly, things I found interesting: I was surprised to see the forth wall being broken quite a bit. I don't know if this is ballet custom or not but it is certainly very different than normal theater. I found it interesting that the "character" performers didn't get to take a bow at the end of the show. The "character" performers are people on stage that fulfill roles needed for the plot but don't dance. In the case of Swan Lake, this included the Prince's mother and a handful of waiter/servant people. Lastly, as the Winter Olympics has just finished, I can't help but think that the Ballet is much like Figure skating without ice and far less sequins.

If you own an iPod Shuffle you might have experienced the problem I have with my laptop. The USB ports on my laptop are recessed which causes problems when you try to plug in any USB device that has bigger than average body. The shuffle falls into this camp. Its size means that the Shuffle barely fits into the port and sometimes it doesn't make a good connection. Apple will come to your rescue by selling a color matched iPod Shuffle Extension Cable that will alleviate you poor connection woes. The problem is that this cable is $20. The dirty little secret that they don't tell you is that any USB extension cable will do and you can find them for about $6 or $7. So save you money and skip the overpriced color matched stuff.

I just noticed that there is a menu item under Help called iTunes Hot Tips. When clicked, it opens up the page: iTunes Hot Tips for Mac OS X. The trouble is that I run Windows and indeed that page does link to iTunes Hot Tips for Windows. However, why the indirection? iTunes clearly knows it is being run under Windows so why doesn't it present the user with the right menu item in the first place. This smacks of not thinking of the consumer's experience.

Invalid SharePoint Url Characters was a pretty useful little article.

The Squid Powerstrip is an excellent example of the marriage of form and function. It does everything that a normal powerstrip can do but it its innovative shape means that large plugs or power converter bricks as they are often known as don't intrude on access to the other outlets. This means you get to use all your outlets without having to solve some plug alignment optimization problem. All this and it kind of looks neat too.

My GMaps for Sibcy Cline GreaseMonkey script has had a minor rev to it. The script now properly modifies the Sibcy Cline website when you access without the www in its URL. You can get the script here.

A piece in Slate caught my eye the other day: The Crappiest Invention of All Time: Why the auto-flushing toilet must die. Besides a clever and funny title, I think the article is way off base. First off, the author states his needs from a toilet flushing point of view:

1) Clean the pool. You must be able to flush the toilet easily before sitting down, in case any detritus remains from a previous, inconsiderate visitor.

2) Clean the pool, again. You must be able to flush more than once after you are done. Some of us are more prolific than others, and courteous patrons will want to ensure that Point 1 is unnecessary for whomever follows.

3) Issue a courtesy flush. If you plan to settle down with the sports page, you should flush immediately after dropping the kids at the pool. There's no need to let the kids linger any longer than absolutely necessary. This is for the benefit of other visitors.

I don't know if his technique differs from my own, but that just seems like an absurd amount of flushing. Not to mention a crazy amount of time in a public bathroom. I don't know about you but I try to avoid public bathroom stalls like the black death. If I find myself dropping my pants in hostile territory its because I have to go really bad and its going to be a quick in out surgical strike. I'll be like a Navy SEAL on a mission. I'm not much of germ-o-phobe (people who have been to my apartment pre-marriage will atest to that), but there is just something about an unfriendly toilet that creeps me out to no end. That is why seeing this piece call for more time in the stall is just so unsettling to me.

On a related bathroom note, I have had a thought popping around in my head for some time now about urinals. For the ladies in the audience that don't know, men's restrooms often have a series of urinals mounted on the wall and often one of them will be mounted lower than the others presumably for the shorter and younger among us. This begs the question, why aren't they all mounted lower? As far as I can, there is no advantage to the higher urinal since you are supposed to flow against the back wall to minimize splashing. The lower urinal also minimizes the chance that belts or other types of clothing will take an unexpected dip in the pool.

So I ask you, the 12 readers that I, what is your preference and why? Inquiring minds want to know (or at least I do).

You've seen it every: "We don't accept bills larger than $20". I've always wonder about this practice and thought it was dubious since our currency has the following imprinted on it: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". Interestingly enough, this is legal, according to the US Treasury Department. The basic idea is that cash of any denomination is good for paying off any creditor but private businesses can setup their on practices unless prohibited by state law. You learn something new each day.

I must admit that I have grossly underestimated the importance of strategy in long distance running. I've also now come to more greatly appreciate training and running with Jeff and James who have previous marathon experience.

Today found me doing our long training run by myself for the first time. This turned out to be a lot harder than any of my previous long runs. Here is what I did wrong: I ate too much before running (which caused some bad, nasty hiccups). I greatly over estimated my abilities and started off way too fast. Then, to compensate, I drank water...way too much water which left me feeling too bloated to run. I suppose that is one advantage of running outside, you don't get many chances to drink too much water.

Lastly, one should not underestimate the encouragement and motivation you get from running with others. That makes it hard to slack off even when your body is screaming at you to stop. This is espacially true for the long runs which give you many hours to contemplate the sheer lunacy of running these distances. Not wanting to disappoint others and having someone make you go, is a big part of what I wrote about back in my One Year of Weight Loss post.

Lastly, doing this distance inside on the treadmill certainly has one last drawback: You are already home. If you are running outside and you make it halfway thru your course than your only option is to complete the course. When you are running inside, you know that the shower and the couch are mere feet away and after several hours of running and a few more to go, they call out with their Siren song.

In short, next week, I will definitely be running outside with James and Jeff if I know what's best for me.

It does absolutely nothing for my weight loss, and I am going to have to disagree with The Chippie and say that Lay's Sensation Sweet Chili and Sour Cream chips are pretty damn good. I don't buy (or eat for that matter) chips very often but this delivers a lot of what I like in a chip: good crunch, nice flavor and not overly greasy.

I just wish Lay's would give me a decent non-Flash website for me to link to their product. Whomever handles interactive marketing for them should be ashamed of themselves.

I also find a whole blog dedicated to potato chips to be disturbing and intriguing at the same time.

My boss informed me of a weird slice of Cincinnati's past that I had never heard of before. Sam the Chimp was a chimp that lived in a very posh enclosure next to the Loveland Bike Trail. What makes this story unusual is that someone trained the chimp to drink beer and smoke cigarettes. What an odd sight that must have been to see while out riding your bike!

I've been scrounging around for pictures of Sam, but I have yet to find any. If people know of any, please point them my way since I am very curious to see this for myself.

Wow, who out there knew that Mr. Snuffleupagus had an actual first name and it Aloysius.

Wikipedia never ceases to amaze me.

Quiesce - to become quiet or quieter.

Video Game Maps is a real labor of love. I can't imagine the amount of time it took to to take screenshots of all levels of these classic computer games. It brings back to my youth when I played way too much Super Mario Bros. Bravo to the creator of this.

I am way behind on posting this but here goes. Last month's Resturant of the Month club's destination was The Black Forest in West Chester. Its a bit far to travel for German food, but the atmosphere is very quaint, the service was excellent and the food was good. Angela had the Spatzel Alpina which had a wonderful flavor. I'd go back just to try that again. I had the King Ludwig II Schnitzel which was pretty good too (but I really crave is more of Angela's dish). In addition to the food, the resturant offer Liters of several different German beers and had a small band playing traditional German favorites. They were a fun lot and even indulged my request for "Sweet Home Bavaria". There was a dance floor as well where most of our (large) party took advantage of.

On the service angle, they deftly handled our very large party and even gave us seperate checks without us asking. That is a wonderful thing in my book. They even offered us free shots of Apple Schnapps. Lastly, if you are looking for something different, they do offer a table side preperation of Cherries Jubliee. I didn't try it but it is always fun to see food lit on fire.

All and in all, it was a good trip.

More pictures are available in the gallery.

Today we took a very different route for the training. This time, more emphasis was placed in Mariemont. Try following along in the course instructions. The course is very confusing and makes a zillion twists and turns and doubles back on itself. Its going to be very confusing come race day. The route we took today was nowhere near the actual marathon course but it did mean that we had about 13 or 14 miles under our belt before the climb into Eden Park. That certainly made the run feel a lot different this time...it was much harder and the aches and pains were more and showed up in different places this time.

On a positive note, ther weather was wonderful today for a run. Very warm for this time of year and sunny without it being too bright. The warmer weather brought out more people onto the course which certainly made for more interesting running. In the colder months, it could be pretty lonely out there on the streets.

Lastly, I've had a problem on the longer runs where legs seize up if I stop for water. It takes a good two or three blocks to be able to run after this. Trying to run sooner is very painful. Today I found that if I don't stop for very long (ideally, for the two seconds it takes to get water and then keep moving, my legs don't seize up. This is very positive news for when race day starts.

Rands' Vegas System is absolutely hilarous in its treatment of planning for a stereotypical bacchanalian trip to Las Vegas. Even if this isn't your cup of tea or something that you look down upon, you will find the writing and advice to be very frank and funny.

Good post on LifeHacker about always shredding your credit card applications. I can't agree more. A decent shredder at the office supply store isn't a lot of money and you should have one. Here is a tip, don't buy the cheapest model...it will be slow and the motor will burn out easily.

Another tip that I have is that you should keep a little bin next to the shredder where you can keep things "to be shredded". That's because the decent shredders are still on the slow side and if your junk mail is anything like mine, you will accumulate a lot of shreddable material. What I do is let the "to be shredded" bin fill up and then every few weeks or so, I do a mass shredding while I am waiting for something else to finish, like a load of laundry or dinner in the oven. Its a good use of time.

This sounds absolutely wonderful.

The web's ability to be an outlet for people's strange infatuations with minutia never cease to amaze me. Case in point, here is the sheet music to varisous themes from Super Mario Bros. This would be a perfect companion to play along with while you watched Video Game Maps.

25 Peeps seems like a fun little meme. Looks like a pretty simple Rails application. I've submitted a photo for this blog, so we'll have to see if that has any effect on the traffic that comes here.

Pretzels are a mere pretense to consume really yummy mustard.

Gotterdammerung - a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder.

I think I might have to work pretty hard to drop this into conversation.

2114. That's my finishing place in this past weekend's Heart Mini Marathon 15K. I finished the race in just under 1 hour and 35 minutes. My time was probably a minute or two faster because of the mass start. I wasn't really happy with my time but about halfway thru the race I did have some gastro-intestinal issues. I just felt awful...awful enough to have to stop and walk for a bit.

On the positive side of things, I think I have figured out the drinking technique that I will be using in the marathon. Squeezing the cup to make a little funnel makes it easier to get the liquid in my mouth. Also slowing down to drink is far better than trying to drink while running normally.

The other negative is that I am still probably not kicking it into higher gear until far too late in the race. I really need to work on when I should push myself to go faster.

I've always said that if I get to build a home some day, I'd like to add secret passways to the mix. Seeing Webster disappear into a grandfather clock on tv was always a thrill of mine. Now, it appears that there is a company the does secret passage ways as their whole business! Very sweet. Hopefully some day I will get to actually incorporate this into a house.

( via Bruce Schneier )