I heard a noise

January 23rd, 2012
P1215358 by Xymon
P1215358, a photo by Xymon on Flickr.

I heard a noise, saturday night, and thought it was some drunk messing with our dumpster.

Weekend in review

January 23rd, 2012

Built 2 small Lego sets, and one medium large kit.

Watched Captain America, The Green Lantern, Cowboys & Aliens, and the final Harry Potter.
Re-watched Down Periscope, hi there Patton Oswalt, being all quiet and background-y.

Cowboys and Aliens was an OK movie, probably a good flick for the big screen, just an OK flick for a home theater of less than heroic proportions. Plot holes the size of a bus, character’s whose primary motivations change on whims, and lots of stuff blown up real good. And grit, lots of grit. Sometimes I thought Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford were having a squinting contest.

Captain America was similarly engaging entertainment, fun in the moment, but nothing that will stick with me, beyond a vague sense of contented satiety.

The final Harry Potter, I will need to rewatch more than once, while not primarily occupied with Lego construction. It seemed to tie everything together, killing off characters left and right, while leaving some unscathed for the final epilogue scene, I’m sure satisfying in it’s mundane suburban fantasy to most fans, but for someone without the path of kids and family before them, it seems childish and hollow. Which is probably a good thing.

The Green Lantern was the least engaging of the weekend’s entertainments, with the oddly reminiscent of the second new Hulk film’s disfigured scientist sub-plot. Like many super-hero films, without a proper grounding in the mythos, too much of the film comes across as contrived and artificial. And the you-know-they-won’t-make-a-sequel-now, kiss of death, setup for the next crisis ending. I’m still waiting for the second Flash Gordon film; by the time they get to covering who picked up Ming’s ring, we might have the technology to bring back Freddie Mercury for the soundtrack album.

Oh Happy Day

January 20th, 2012

Finally figured out all my Selenium issues. Well, not all of them, in that I still don’t get the Grid system, but I at least know enough about it to know I don’t need it, so that problem is solved in its own way too.

As of now, I’ve got three remote drones, one for IE, one for Firefox, and one for Chrome. I can execute JUnit tests against all three targets, for the webservice running elsewhere.

Finally, I can start thinking about what I actually want to test, without worrying about if I can make it happen.

Hulu Plus is dog food

January 19th, 2012

They defend the inclusion of advertising in the paid-tier of service by touting its cheapness.

I could buy dog food for a lot cheaper than steak, doesn’t mean I’m going to eat it. At this point, it isn’t even worth free.

Livin in a movie

January 19th, 2012

It’s a little surreal today, first the governor declares a state of emergency, and now the city is recommending people leave work now, so that they are home before dark. It’s like we expect the zombies and vampires to come out any second now. Will I make the 100 yards to my home?! Only time will tell! Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion. =p

Clippy lives on at Google

January 19th, 2012

It would seem the geekworld’s favorite helper-to-hate, Clippy, has gotten a job at Google’s GMail division. You can see his influence in the new look, with it’s unhelpful way of showing and hiding buttons, assuming you can’t keep track of who your friends are by name, nor really want to see your big screen monitor actually full of useful information.

Hopefully someone will notice, and fire his ass, before it’s too late =p

The way it goes

January 19th, 2012

Less than 10, out of hundreds potential, are here at work today, but of course, the guy with an office directly across the hall from me is one of those 10, so I can’t just leave my door open and really crank up the tunes.

Oh well.

At least I finally got ChromeDriver to work, when everything is local. Still can’t figure out what’s wrong with my remote system. One day at a time.

I Tried

January 19th, 2012

I tried to do a good deed for the day. I see more than a few people, over the course of this ‘storm’, waiting at the bus stop outside my window at work, a stop that is closed when Metro is on snow routes. So, I put a sign up in the window that says “Bus Stop Closed”, and it only took this guy about 10 minutes before he looked up an noticed it.

Coordination

January 18th, 2012

Yesterday, noticed more than a couple people waiting at bus stops that were closed due to the lines that served those stops being on snow routes.
This morning, I notice that the bus maintenance people are helpfully clearing snow from the same, closed, stops. I pity the sucker that thinks they are open because they’ve been cleared.

Ah Miss-Spellings

January 17th, 2012

No, not Tori.

A cousin/uncle/whatever, about a niece or daughter…a little girl he feels nothing but familial love for, I’m sure, he posts a pic of her to facebook, with the intent of captioning her as ornery, as in precocious and troublesome in a cute sort of way, but instead calls her honry, which at first glance makes it look like he’s calling a tweenager ‘horny’.

Probably not his intent.