Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at November 12th, 2004

At six o’clock pm, Abby and Rebecca’s daycare provider starts charging a dollar for every minute we fail to pick our children up. It’s their helpful way of reminding us that though they very much like our kids, they have lives outside of daycare. We have never picked them up after six.

It’s 5:30 pm today. I am driving to pick them up after a long day of discovering new ways that computers can fail. A block away from work I begin to hear a slight noise from the back. Ignoring it, I drive onward, knowing that I need to to pick them up as soon as possible.

Thump-thump-thump.

What could that noise be? Am I having trouble with the break sticking? The car is slowing faster than it ought to and speeding up more slowly.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Years ago, I had a Chevy Cavalier with a slightly misaligned rear right tire. Not knowing this, I went through 3 tires in 3 years, almost always having the tire break somewhere extremely inconvenient (like the freeway). I did learn, however, that the noise of a flat tire is surprisingly loud.

Back to today… I stop, walk back, check the tire, and discover that one of my mini-van’s back tires is quite flat. Competely flat. Rolling on the rim flat.

Desperate to pick the kids up before outrageous charges begin, I decide to drive on. Unfortunately, the noise becomes unbearable, and I stop at a car repair shop that I happen to be passing. Could they possibly put air in my tire? They could, but I could hear the air hiss out as they did it. Could I use their phone? Absolutely.

I call Kristen. She is nearly 20 minutes away, having just parked in Meijer’s parking lot. I explain the situation and she leaves. It is 5:40 pm.

Ironically, the reason I was picking the kids up was that Kristen had needed to buy new tires.

After that, I move the car around the side of the repair shop and begin to change the tire. I learn a few things. I’ve never tried to find out where the spare tire is, but, now have no choice but find out. It turns out that the tire hangs on the bottom of the minivan, held by a metal cord and a winch.

The jack and the jack screw are screwed into the side of the engine compartment. I only learn this through checking the owner’s manual. It’s not something I would have guessed.

Anything that can stick, sticks. The jack is hard to get out of the engine compartment. The end of the metal line has rusted stuck to the spare tire (battering it with the jack screw helps get it out). The screws stick to the wheel, moving only after I stand on the jack screw. It also helps when I turn the screws to the left rather than the right. To quote Mike Huisman (plumber), “Remember, lefty loosey, righty tightey.”

Somehow, despite being winched tightly to the bottom of the minivan, grass and leaves have come to fill the middle of the spare tire.

I dump it out on the sidewalk.

By 7:00 pm, I manage to change the tire, replacing the normal tire with an obviously smaller spare.

Did I mention I hate changing tires in the dark? I’m not particularly wild about the neighborhood I was stuck in either.

In any case, things work out. Kristen manages to pick up the kids by 6:00 pm (or close to it, they have a 5 minute grace period). What’s more, they get to eat McDonald’s Happy Meals. All in all, a very good day for them.

As for myself, well… There are reasons that human languages contain profanity.

Posted by Jim at November 11th, 2004

I’m using Java and XML in my master’s project. Though I’ve used XML outside of Java, I’ve never used both in the same project. Thus I’m dealing with the associated learning curve.

Why am I using XML in this project? I’m still answering that question myself to a degree. The main reason is that XML is made to be used on a variety of computers and there are now many tools written in many different languages for using it. I could have created my own text format for it. Text is the ultimate in portability. Of course, XML is also text and if I had to create my own text format, would it be better than XML? Probably not.

The best time to use XML in my view is when your data is likely to be shared among various programs written in hard to predict languages. If you know what program/language people will be using to view your data, you’ll likely be able to find a better option.

Where am I using XML in my project? The best possible spot, I think. The project is a collaborative tool for editing web pages. I’m using xhtml (a version of XML based on html). This will allow me to either just store text in the xhtml (later to be parsed by an unknown program on the server) or to allow people to assign templates to the page and publish it directly.

How does Java parse XML? Basically a person has three options.

DOM: Java’s built-in class that implements the w3c’s suggestion for how parse XML. Essentially, it sucks the document into memory and reprents it as a tree. You find stuff in the tree (at least in the examples I’ve seen) by calling a function that recursively goes through the document. This works fine with many documents, but not too well with multiple gigabyte documents.

SAX: Rather than bring huge files into memory, the SAX parser searches through the entire file and retrieves only the part you request. I’m told that you have to write a bit more code to implement this one, but I haven’t yet seen this from experience.

JDOM: The first two parsers were meant as implementations of outside standards. Hence, they aren’t very “java-ish.” JDOM is a third party implementation of DOM that is supposedly easier to use than either DOM or SAX. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m getting tempted.

Posted by Jim at November 7th, 2004

Some Democrats seem to be talking about this election potentially radicalizing people as if that were a good thing. Here’s an interesting take on Karl Rove and the election that argues that this would not be good at all.

As someone who’s bias is basically toward being a moderate/centrist/independent, it sounds likely.

Posted by Jim at November 7th, 2004

Every so often I have the urge to fulfill boring domestic responsibilities. As someone with an interest in sociology, I’m aware of what some refer to as the “broken windows thesis.”

The broken windows thesis basically goes as follows: If you’ve got a cracked window and you don’t deal with it, other people decide that they can have cracked windows too. Also, a little bit of trash on the lawn isn’t so bad, so why bother picking that up? And thus neighborhoods fall into disrepair, contributing to crime in the area.

Obviously there’s more to it than that and one cracked window isn’t going to instantly turn a good neighborhood into a bad one, but over time you can push in that direction.

Even if the theory isn’t true your neighbors will be happier with you if take care of your stuff. Thus, yesterday afternoon I finally got around to raking my lawn.

Abby “assisted” me by jumping in the piles of leaves. Rebecca took a nap inside the house.

As of now, I have a large pile of leaves (half the height of my minivan) on the side of the street. Technically I can be ticketed for that. I’m hoping to buy bags before anyone cares.

I’ve found, however, that there are some unexpected side effects of fulfilling social expectations in this particular way. What are they?

1. Blisters on my hands. I don’t use rakes very often.
2. Bad smells. Apparently someone’s dog used my lawn as a toilet and I stepped in the remains. Initially I thought that Abby or Rebecca had a dirty diaper, but couldn’t find any evidence of it. I then went to someone’s house for dinner, tracked across Kristen’s mom’s carpet and attended church before Kristen noticed what was on my shoe.

A person who strongly believes in the broken windows thesis might argue that the dog owner allowed the dog to poop on my lawn because of the outrageous number of leaves. That person might be right.

All I can say is this: If your carpet stinks because I walked across it yesterday, don’t blame me. Blame society.

Posted by Jim at November 3rd, 2004

I’m doing a little bit of work on a website in my non-existent spare time.

Criminal Justice Chaplaincy is a small, non-profit organization that helps people re-integrate into the community after being in prison. I’ve been helping them get a website together.

What you’ll see if you click on the link represents a preliminary version of their site. By preliminary I mean that they’re having their annual fundraising dinner tomorrow night and wanted something, anything up on the web so that they could show people they had a website.

It needs revision, but it does at least exist.