I’ve always wondered where the “practical” in practical joke comes from.  What’s so practical about it?

I’m now safely ensconced in front of my mother’s computer, waiting for her to come home (she works the second shift in a hospital).  The drive home was a bit stressful.  I’m convinced that holiday weekend drivers are out of their freakin’ minds.  Some things I witnessed just this afternoon.

• An idiot in a new black Dodge Ram (quad-cab with Harley sticker on the back window) who passed in a no-passing zone just north of 1171 on 377 and almost caused a head on collision.  Later, at 407, I thought they were going to run the light (they were about halfway into the intersection when the light turned; it’s a good thing none of the usual concrete trucks were coming through).
• An idiot in a tan car with California plates (I didn’t get the model as it was just another typical four-door car) who went south in the left northbound lane of Loop 288 at I35-E.  He swung back over into his lane once into the intersection and stopped.  The driver was laughing(!), while the passenger had his head down and his hand over his face in embarassment.
• Some old woman in an old car who tried to pull out in front of me at the intersection of 155 North and Hiway 80 in Big Sandy.  One thing I’ve learned about Friday and Saturday night in Big Sandy is to watch out for drunks (although this one could have just been old).  But in the best of times this intersection is dangerous because it’s at the top of a hill.

If you could choose one supernatural power for yourself, what would it be?  Invisibility?  ESP?  Telekenesis?  Teleportation?  Something else?

I’ve often thought that the ability to teleport myself or objects would be pretty handy (imagine the savings on transportation ).  At the same time I wonder about the drawbacks or limits of such powers.  Invisibility could be a liability because you could get hit by someone who doesn’t know you’re there (I recall this specific situation from an episode of the X-Files ).  With ESP, would you really want to know what everyone was thinking of you?  What about the ethical implications?  What if you accidentally teleport yourself into a dangerous place (the middle of a firing range, a nuclear reactor, etc)? 

I know, this is weird, but every now and then these things just pop into my head.

I’m sitting here in the midst of the scent of perfume and cologne samples.  Foley’s is opening a new store in the local mall on Wednesday morning and they sent me a flier in the mail.  The flier included those little scent cards for Tommy Girl Jeans, Tommy Jeans, Spark for Men and Spark for Women.  The Spark isn’t bad.  It reminds me of something I’ve smelled before (but I can’t quite place it).  Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get it out of my nose. 

This new store opening also brings up an interesting observation.  Despite the reported shape of the economy, there are a lot of new stores opening here in Denton.  In addition to the Foley’s, Barnes & Noble is opening a store in the mall.  There’s also a new shopping center opening across from the Wal Mart which includes Best Buy, Pier 1, Famous Footwear, and Kroeger’s (and probably a few more I’m forgetting).  At least part of the economy is still growing around here.

That phrase has been rattling around in my head today, since this blasted bug that I’ve been afflicted with has decided to stick around.  It’s gotten a little better (at least I can talk now), but I’m still tired and fuzzy-headed.

Anyway, it got me to wondering where that phrase came from.  I didn’t find a really good explanation, although there was one that suggested that since dogs will eat just about anything that they’re prone to throwing up.

But now that I think about it, there’s nothing quite so pathetic as a sick dog.

Watching Final Destination 2 last night got me to thinking about something.  There’s a scene where one of the characters gives his keys and wallet to the main character and tells her to get rid of his porn and drugs so his mother won’t see them after he dies.

I wonder if there’s a business opportunity here.  People who live alone and worry about what their relatives will find after their deaths could contract with someone to come in and remove things before anyone else sees them.  In order to preserve some privacy, the person would create a list of items and their locations and seal it up along with whatever keys were needed to access the items.

Of course there are still some logistics matters to be worked out, like how the company would get notified (i.e. the next of kin usually get notified first, and they may not want to let the company do its job).  And it probably wouldn’t work for people who are living with other people (i.e. married or still living at home).

It’s definitely not a mainstream business, but then there are some interesting niche businesses out there.

Is it just me, or does that picture of Glenn Reynolds underwater look really weird?  I think it’s the eyes.  They’re going to haunt me until he gets back. 

Has anyone else seen those Ford Super-Duty truck commercials where they’re towing something huge, but they never show it?  All you see are the reactions of people as the shadow passes over them.

It’s driving me crazy.  I simply must know what they’re towing!

Wal-Mart has gained something of a reputation for prudishness when it comes to certain subjects.  This is somewhat understandable when you consider that their headquarters and a lot of their stores are located in the Bible Belt.

The local Wal-Mart here in Denton is one of those super Wal-Marts which has both a grocery store and everything else in it.  At the front of the store on the grocery side there’s a Blockbuster.  When you check out you’re facing the front of the Blockbuster, which usually has its windows full of movie and game posters.  Given Wal-Mart’s proclivity for promoting a “family” atmosphere, I was somewhat surprised to see this poster in the window of the Blockbuster:

It was a huge poster, almost life-sized.  I can imagine some little kid asking, “Mommy, what’s wrong with her mouth?”  I’m surprised that no one has complained yet.

It turns out that my instinct concerning our deployment date was correct.  They spent most of yesterday getting that last component running.  They had missed some more files when they released the code to the read-only filesystem.  They had also misconfigured some settings that took a while to track down.  This gets pretty frustrating, because the instructions for those settings are clearly given in the installation documentation.  The other thing that is frustrating is that the deployment people aren’t giving our application their full attention.  The original person got called off to work a severity 1 problem for someone else, so they brought in someone new.  While he was competent and did manage to resolve the problem, it took a long time because he wasn’t dedicated to our project.  He was constantly being interrupted by other issues.

The final result yesterday was that we found some further misconfigurations in the settings that will require a restart of the servers to fix.  Because of the rules that they impose, restarts have to be done at night and they have to get permission ahead of time.  This means that we will only be able to restart the servers tonight.  Therefore, I have to be online at 9:00pm tonight.  I can only hope that they work faster than they did the night before.  Provided they have fixed the settings correctly, I will be able to get on the new system and run some testcases to verify that it is functioning correctly.  Once that is done, we’ll let the customer know that it’s ready and they can start their acceptance testing.  If that works out, the proxy changes will be done next Thursday night to make the site live. 

Of course, given the problems we’ve had so far, I’m not even going to hazard a guess whether we’ll actually make it this time (the original schedule called for user acceptance testing to complete tomorrow morning with go-live tomorrow afternoon).

This means that I may have to cut my shooting session short today, in order to make it home in time to get online.