Winter Wonderland

For the second time in a little over 6 weeks, we are getting some snow in North Carolina courtesy of the winter storm that hit the mid-South. We got around 5 or 6 inches in northern Orange County, but the good news was no freezing rain. Woke up this morning to this view from my deck.

Anna Marias

One of my many dietary downfalls is pizza. I don't think I will ever not crave pizza. I understand that it is not good for me, but just like beer, there are some concessions that I am just not prepared to make.

I think this all started back in college when the "pizza wars" broke out in Oakland in the early 80s. At that point in time, I can vividly remember being able to order an extra-large plain cheese pizza with 2 36 oz Cokes (delivered) for $3.00! Money was really tight for me my senior year and I could stretch that feast to last me for 3 days. For the life of me, I can't remember what pizza place was offering that deal, but it wasn't Sorrentos. To this day, Sorrentos was the best pizza I have ever had in my life - they took it to a whole other level.

Must Be a String Buffer Overflow

Large software projects almost always incorporate components from different teams and result in a stack or tower of components that all have to work correctly together. These components are integrated and then tested together. When the inevitable bugs are surfaced, there is a debugging process that is undertaken to determine the failing component that needs to fix the bug. During this process, the bug can get transferred between various teams several times.

Depending on the personality of the players involved, this sort of hand-off between teams usually takes one of two forms:

1. Working with Pros - The largest percentage of the time, all parties act professionally. The engineer transferring the bug is sensitive to telling another team that there is a problem in their code. So that engineer typically does enough problem diagnosis to at least make sure that their software isn't at fault before initiating the transfer. It is no fun to tell someone else that they have a problem in their code and then subsequently find out that the problem was actually in your code.
2. PITAs - A very small number of engineers are either so arrogant or lazy that they simply don't do the required level of analysis and just pass it along downstream for someone else to look at. The problem couldn't be in their stuff and their time is more valuable than yours, so they just transfer it. If you are on the receiving end of someone like that, it gets old in a hurry - you end up having to do their debugging and prove that the problem is not in your code. 

I have recently discovered a third classification - people who just make shit up.

Little Toys for Little Boys

Chris took the PlayStation 3 back to his apartment for this semester at UNCG. So I found myself without a Blue Ray DVD Player in the Great Room. I wasted a couple of hours on Saturday after watching the Pitt-Louisville game (what a comeback - woo-hoo!) researching Blue Ray players at AVS Forum (which is a totally awesome site for AV gear).

Blue Ray adoption has historically been slowed by the high cost of BR DVDs and associated players as well as the format war with HD DVD. That war ended last year and the cost of players has come down quite a bit.

I was completely satisfied with the PS3 as a BR player, so it had been awhile since I had surveyed the lay of the land in BR players. The PS3 had decent disk load times, built-in wireless, and supported automatic updates of the player for new codecs and function.

UNCG vs NC State on New Year's Eve

On New Year's Eve, I took the 50 mile trek up the road to Greensboro to watch UNCG and NC State play in a non-conference basketball game at the Greensboro Coliseum.

For the first time in the school's history, UNCG this year has moved all of their home basketball games to the GC. In year's past, the school would play a couple of selected games there (usually involving an ACC team). In fact, I saw Duke play UNCG there in December, 2005.  

However, this year, their entire home schedule is played at the Coliseum (including their Southern Conference games). UNCG's on-campus facility is tiny Fleming Gymnasium, which was a very intimate facility. The Greensboro Coliseum is adjacent to the UNCG campus - in fact, Chris can walk to it from his off-campus apartment in 10 minutes.