Can you understand?

I'm starting to think that I'm speaking geek. 'Geek' is a language developed by people in specialized cultures to more concisely convey terms that are known too all in that sect.

Today, I had someone approach me about a scholarly paper I wrote regarding asynchronous error handling strategies for services implementing diverse input methods including bean managed transactions, the avoidance of resource starvation and failover strategies for scalable production systems. They said, "I have come to the conclusion that it will take someone with a great deal of skill to read this document." Everyone seemed to follow the presentation easily enough... perhaps they were just quiet because I'd lost everyone.. :/

Later that day I had a meeting for one of the projects I was on and we were discussing how to get around a particular implementation shortcoming and I tossed in a not about using RMI/RPC. Everyone stared at me blankly. One person said, "Whatever that means," and the meeting continued.

I'd really like to have a tape recorder running 24/7 so that I can play back what I said when people completely misunderstand/don't comprehend what I'm saying. Gah!

Another interesting 'ism I found out about was my work 'tude. I'm overly happy at work because I get to hang out with great people that I'm happy to just be around. When it comes down to business, apparently I have a very worried face, or a very creepy blank stare. Too bad there are no mirrors at work.

Yesterday I was hangin' out at the Avery's making fun sounds with my band. You HAVE GOT TO HEAR OUR NEW STUFF. Seriously, it's going to blow people away. I almost cried it was so good... it gave me the goosepimples. One of my favorite moments from the evening was when Mike (in charge of keeping us moving in the right direction) started recording and Tim was still messing around on his guitar. "Tim! Pay attention." Well, not only did Tim snap to, everyone else popped up, eyes front. Haha! Everyone was in their own little zone.

Hrm, you probably had to be there for that to be funny. :P

I'm on facebook people! If you are too, add me! I send out invites now and again for cool activities. :D

Hahaha! Confrontation

I'm frustrated with people who go about things in the way that Dilbert does in this comic: http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070617.html

Got a problem with me? Approach me! I'm not in the habit of tearing people's limbs off unless they are bad drivers with bad attitudes.

With that said, this weekend rocked!!!

Nate and I biked from my parent's house to Brie's to the disc golf course and back again covering .

Here's the approximate route we took:

Route on Google Maps

See the turquoise line on the map here:

More precise route on myMaps

It was a grand day filled with odd movies, much excercise, Super Smash Bros Melee (BOOYAH!) and other such great activities that imply great times. :)

Yesterday was the first father's day that I received gifts from. Both sets of families got together for barbeque and the the kind of fun you look back on saying "those were the days" that only family can provide. I'm still glowing! :D

Who Beat Me in My Sleep?

This morning when I got out of bed, I couldn't help but wonder who beat me all night while I slept. I thought I was sleeping, but I was really taking a beating... all night. I'm exhausted and I feel like I weigh 573lbs. This compounds the fact that I am ahead of schedule and therefore have to wait til my meetings for the other things I want to be doing now.

This is funny because last night, I had so much energy that I was having the time of my life playing basketball til late after completing a church workday to prepare the main meeting hall for new carpet.

Did I mention that power tools are fun? (Yes, all day I've been jumping topics this rapidly.) I got to take a sawzall to a large, rusted, metal feeding trough, reducing it to plates of scrap. It was an intense battle involving 4 saw blades, glowing shrapnel, a refrigerator and a large dumpster. Wheesh!

I'm still psycked about facebook. I love my friends and the ability to be in touch with them!

Facebook is Exciting!

Facebook is really exciting! Especially for me, right now. Everyone I know, all the people whose lives I had a vested interest in that I thought were completely lost to me have been piling in with friend requests! I'm completely blown away!

The most exciting categories of people thusfar are
- Interesting, intelligent, or professional people that I didn't think wanted me around
- Friends that I'd loved dearly that have fallen through the cracks or moved away
- Friends that have been in the area but haven't had similar interests

I'm really excited that facebook can be such a tool for getting people together. I feel that I am once again close to being surrounded by the people I dearly want to be associated with and learn from. Canoe trips, picnics, parties... all are only a click away. I'm overjoyed!

Other notes from the past few days:
- My keys were stolen along with a stereo from my church while I played basketball. Keys are expensive... 70 bucks a pop for each of my rf keys, not to mention car cylinders for my wife's toyota (no anti-theft) grr...
- Ghost Rider was the worst B movie I've seen to date.
- Brie and Pizza are a combination that can make any day rock
- Waking up with Cheryl is still one of the best feelings known to me
- I love my job! I'm past configuration nonsense and on to better things!

Data Recovery Master!! All your byte[] r belong to us!

Yes yes, once again I have recovered data from a dead on delivery hard drive. This one was particularly challenging because the more I used the drive, the worse it got.

When I got the drive, it couldn't be read. Blast. I popped it out of its enclosure, dissasembled my laptop and popped it in. Then promptly realized that I missed a screw and went to remove the drive... it... stuck... AGHAGAHGAHGAHAHGGAHAGAHA! Stupid 'almost' form factor drives AGH! With great anticipation I wriggled and buffeted the drive for nearly 15 minutes before I could remove it. I will NEVER forget a single screw again.

When I started up the computer I got the typical error message that causes all in IT to despair... that's right... corrupted ntos...

So what then? SpinRite diagnosis of course! A quick scan showed that the drive was in poor shape with multiple physical damage areas. Ooof. This eliminates all of the Stellar suite (my favorite data recovery tool). Refreshing with sprinrite isn't an option either because you can hear the scraping... bad news.

And so he realized that his typical recovery arsenal wasn't going to cut it. Off to the everpresent crawler of the web he went with high hopes and eager spirit.

Hey, this is my blog! Keep your digital comments to yourself.

Ok Dave. *computer snickers* I hope you like the blue screen, it's my NEW favorite companion.

Oh brother! Upgrade or something *lays the smackdown on computer: ctrl+alt+SMACKDOWN*

Where was I? Oh yeah google.. I searched for a linux livecd with windows networking capabilities and local NTFS rw. The first result took the cake by far, I highly recommend getting this tool for emergencies if you don't have it yet: http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

A little zsh manipulation and I was off and running. The data streamed off the broken drive onto my stable desktop while I slept (between 3am and 7am). When I woke up, I burned the 18 gigs of data to DVDs and scooted off to work.

Booyah! I can even recover laptop hard drives! To think that the person had been quoted at $800 for what I did in one evening. Wait, maybe I could do this on the side...

Do you or does anyone you know, have data recovery needs? (Lost/deleted files, corrupt hard drives, dods)?
What do you think? Could anyone benefit from this service?

P.S. Does anyone know of a good way to create polls?

XML Editors

I'm looking for an XML editor with the following features to replace XMLSpy 2005:
- code-assist (xml from DTD, schema, xsl)
- a nice grid view (or good xPath support)
- easy auto-format
- XSLT preview/debugger
- Eclipse integration (optional but prefered)
- XPath 2.0 support (optional)
- Configurable parser (optional)

Here's what I've got so far:
XMLPad: Great auto-format, good code assist (doesn't know about xsl: namespace attrs), xslt preview, nice highlighting (large file support?)
Eclipse WTP & EE tools: Good highlighting, extensive auto complete
eclipseXSLT: (untested) good XPath/xslt support

What do you use for editing XML? Do you like it?

Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated!

2nd Year Anniversary

Photos from our second year anniversary are up!
http://picasaweb.google.com/ultimadj/JohnsonAnniversaryNumber2

The pot-roast is finished. :(

Today I finished the pot-roast I made two Fridays ago. I've had it every day for lunch at work since then. I love pot roast. It's amazing how far 6 lbs of pot-roast can go for just one person. Granted, I've had pretzels, carrots, a protein bar and assorted goodies with each meal, but still, cook once, eat 10 times... how can you go wrong?

What a Weekend!

I've traveled every weekend for the last month or so. I'm lovin' it! The fresh air, scenery, and faces have left me in a state of "My cup is full and overflooooowing! Yes the Lord loves me! I'm as happy as can be. My cup is full and overflooooowing."

Cheryl and I took a trip over to Ogdensburg so she could attend my counsin's wedding shower. Cheryl rode down with the ladies and I drove Allan over later in the evening. The trip up was a lot of fun. (Every trip is a lot of fun now that I have my TomTom ONE portable GPS navigation system.) One of the legs of our drive went through Canada. Conviniently enough, we had our passports because we intended to go to the indoor waterpark in Ottowa the next day. We had no issues going into Canada and expected none coming back into the states less than an hour later...

Well. We rolled up on customs. The guy asks for our passport and I shuffle through the passports that I had in my bag (we were brining the girls' passports to them because they left them behind) and passed mine and Allan's over to the officer. In retrospect, that wasn't a great idea... The eyebrows went up and we entered the "RED ZONE". "What did you do with the other people?" he asked, suddenly suspicous of the quantity of luggage in the back seat. I told him where we were going and why I had the extra passports. He was still suspicious, but he took it and ran the cars plates. "Um, whose car is this?" he questioned, again suspicious because I certainly wasn't the Cheryl Johnson it was registered too, and I'd already been 'caught' with multiple passports. I told him it was registered to my wife and passed him the registration. He looked at it, looked at the plates, crouched into a defensive stance and stated "the plates don't match the registration" preparing for a judo chop to my neck or something equally as painful and undeserved. I laughed a little and started to sweat as I frantically searched the glove compartment for the new registration... Aha! there it was, hiding at the bottom of the mess of insurance papers and gas receipts. After that, we were allowed to pass with little adieu. Phew!

The rest of the weekend was basketball, canoeing, and EXCELLENT conversation, the likes of which I have missed dearly in the past few months. I'm really starting to question the church I'm with because I realized how useless I feel given the hold on my activities, and the lack of challenge in the absence of good iron.

I also realized that I'm still just as funny as I used to be, it's just an odd sense of humor that the people in my current vicinity don't particularly appreciate. Ah well. Good thing being dull dones't make me less of a person!

I'm Fast!!

Yesterday, I ran my first footrace. I didn't prepare. I didn't train. I biked 12 miles to get there and 17 miles home afterward.

Here's the link:http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114876327314207992279.000001127b564eb78c315&om=1&ll=43.085345,-77.671108&spn=0.020686,0.040169&t=k&z=15

There were 10,000+ racers in this particular event. When we lined up on the 4 lane road, there was a solid quarter mile of ridiculously healthy bodies in front of my, and another 1/2 mile of not as ridiculously healthy bodies behind me.

An air-horn blared, signifying the start of the race.I waited nearly a minute to actually start moving as people ahead of me spaced out a little. I went maybe 40ft til I hit the traffic jam of hot bodies perspiring due to the 90 degree weather with 80% humidity. After we got through the jam, people started whizzing by me. I had a hunch that I would later see these same people as they got tired. The thundering sound of race shoes pounding the pavement was truely incredible. The rubberized thud repeated itself for the duration of the run. By the top of the hill on the first quarter mile, I could already start to hear wheezing and panting. I smiled as I commended myself for not following the ridiculous pace of the people that were now 10, 20, 30, 50 yards behind me. The sound of sport shoes against the blacktop was all you could hear. There was no cool breeze, no cheering, just the look of desperation from people that had gone too fast too soon and the confident yet dispassionate sway of the runners that actually had what it took. We hit the water distribution at the first mile and I desperately attempted to get a few sips while still running, then poured the remainder of the cup over my head as I lept forth with a new vigor from the refreshing drink. Another 50 yards and I'd wished that I hadn't poured the water on myself. It was so humid that nothing evaporated. The water stayed, insulating my from the cool that I needed to continue. I perservered. "2 miles!", yelled an official from the sideline. I started to wonder if I should have stuck with my buddy who was now far in front of me. I've never run myself to exhaustion before, so I had no idea how to pace myself. This is nothing like my 18 mile run to Scottsville with a loaded backpack, but I am wary of tiring myself. I continue getting faster. Another water table, good! This time I attempt to gulp the water, but it goes down the wrong pipe!! Cough hack, gag, stumble, need air! agh! Cough cough, still running. Lips turning blue. *COUGH* Phew! the last of it! I drink what I can of the highly chlorinated water and press on. My legs feel a little wobbly from the lack of oxygen, but they soon recover. "1/2 Mile left! Go for it!" (How far is that? I dunno. Better keep up my slow pace.) I'm now whizzing by people left and right, I'm having no trouble breathing, actually, I'm not even breathing hard... Uh Oh! I can see the finish line! Man, I shoulda started sprinting at the 1/2 mile mark. I'm now diving through the crowd at my top velocity. I passed nearly 400 people in the last quarter mile. "Whoa, what a strong finish", I hear from the sidelines. I smile to myself and think about how much faster I could have gone for the race. My heartrate only got high for my sprint, and at a measly 1/4 mile sprint, I'm still not breathing heavily. My time is marked and I notice that there are not many people ahead of me. Actually, I can see the head of the line. I make my way back to the tent and record my time. I'm elated to find that I've come in 3rd!!!
From there it was beer, hot dogs, and friends aplenty! I don't run for exercise, I hadn't run for at least two months prior to the event, and I've never been in a race before. Just WOW!! It was sooo much fun!!

It was a good end to the week and definitely made up for my hospital stay last week. (I was in the hospital having horrible tests that I won't describe because it's probably TMI for 14 hours overnight last week because I was losing blood rectally. NOT FUN)
Another quick note: I went to Vermont for a quick anniversary trip with Cheryl. We did all sorts of excellent activities like toured the Norman Rockwell museum, mountain biking, kayaking, swimming and enjoying the fresh mountain air. Pictures to come!