I’ve all but given up on logically connecting paragraphs together here. Some day I’ll change the layout to put more of a separation between thoughts, but for now you’ll just have to deal. Maybe I could make it my business model – subscribe to Herman Thrust Pro today, and the daily postings will be seamlessly arranged in such a way that they might actually make sense. Until the venture caps start knocking…
I’m really behind in my emails, so apologies to anyone who’s waiting for one. As a mini-excuse, I got an email from my service provider saying that they’ve been having problems with their mail servers. I got that email twice. Could the problem be congestion?
I have those neat magnetic clip-on sunglasses for my glasses, but I live East of my job, so the sun’s usually at my back when I leave for work and when I come home, with the exception of reflections off of buildings. It’s still usually bright enough to justify wearing them, but sometimes it’s like holding an umbrella when it’s drizzling out, and you’re not sure if it’s stopped. Still, nobody ever wrote a song about holding an umbrella on a semi-drizzly day, so I think sunglasses are ok. The theory seems sound for this guy, anyway.
Work woes of a technical nature today. While Microsoft released a bunch of APIs as part of their legal battle, a casual inspection did not find a “MicrosoftExcel()” function, nor did I see any “FixThatBugThatHasHoundedYou()” routines. Ah well, I’ll keep looking. What I did discover today was that the Visual Basic Date() function returns a value that depends on the Regional Settings in Windows. Sure, that almost makes sense in some ways, but when you have an app that parses Date() to get the month and year, there’s a big difference between 8/26/2002 and 02/08/26. I know, I know (now), DatePart() is the proper way to do this, but the proper response to this problem is more along the lines of “why in the name of Zod did you change the desktops to use a different date format without telling anyone?” It’s like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters – you’re not sure what would happen, but you know it would be bad. It’s something you do when a giant man made of marshmallow attacks you, and I haven’t seen any Marshmallow Man attacks in the paper recently. On the bright side, there’s a workaround until we can get a patch shipped out (it only takes about 4 months with our standard cycle).
My career as a TV show making guy is going to take off any day now. I’m tired of big screen remakes of television shows that don’t add anything to the mix other than a budget. My new rule is that any remake will require the phrase “with ninjas” added to the title. Think about it, “LA Law”, or “LA Law With Ninjas“? “The Partridge Family”, or “The Partridge Family With Ninjas“? “Road to Avonlea”… Well, you get the idea. Blockbusters, all.
Finally, I went theme grocery shopping tonight. Berries, Bread, Bananas, Broccoli. I’m going to write The Alphabet Diet – your 26 day weight loss plan, as soon as I can figure out a few logistical issues with multi-word foods. Can you eat Yellow Beans with Yams, or are they strictly a B-day staple? I’ll sort it all out someday, and then I’ll go on Oprah and people will love me. You’ll see.