Happy Birthday, Foo!

03.01.2007

Waaaay back in 1983, I had a Rocky birthday. I had gotten Rocky Super Action Boxing for the ColecoVision, the coolest part being that it used the Super Action Controller, which at the time had more buttons than anything else ever made!

Even though I was turning 14, I still liked action figures (not dolls). I still wanted to be a kid (some things never change) so I asked Mom to get me an action figure. She managed to get me a Mr T Clubber Lang figure (not doll) from Rocky 3, making it a Rocky themed birthday (I also got Michael Jackson's Thriller on cassette to play in my bargain, off-brand walkman from Sears, but that would just ruin the Rocky theme if I mentioned it).

For whatever reason, I've kept up with that Mr. T action figure since 1983. I've lost his boxing trunks along the way. I don't know how, but he has. He's managed to finagle a spare wrestling singlet from Kurt Angle, as can be seen in the classic camtoons. I had his boxing gloves for the longest time, but they've disappeared too over the past couple of years.

With the last Rocky movie coming out at Christmas, the toy marketing department decided to release figures from all the Rocky movies. In that batch was Clubber Lang. Mr. T. 24 years later, made from a different mold, but still Mr T. I think that I should get a new Mr T action figure (not doll) for my birthday this Sunday. At that point the challenge will be to see if I can keep them for another 24 years.

Permalink action figures/toys

Monster.com Certificated Utility

02.27.2007

This showed up in my inbox (past the various filters keeping me from finding sex partners in my area and the promise of a larger penis):

Monster.com company greets you Russ Spears.

We are happy to inform you that we had succesfully upgraded our

site. Because of our system has great changes, you

have to install Monster.com certificated utility (click here) to be able

to use monster.com database. If you don’t setup this tool

until March, 1st, 2007, you will not be able to use your account

You don’t have to answer this letter - it’s just a newsletter.

Thanks for cooperation.

I wish I had been able to "click here" just to see what would have happened, but alas it was just plain old text instead of a link.

I bet this has something to do with those millions waiting for me from Nigeria.

Permalink random

800

02.23.2007

Thanks to the bargain bin at Wal Mart and my unexplainable like of bad action movies, I now have 800 DVD titles.

I would just say "800 DVDs", but that's not true. While the majority of them are movies, I've collected a lot of multi-disc sets, especially tv shows - like my 27 years worth of Star Trek. If there were an easy way to figure out the number of hours of DVD watching I've got, it would probably be scary. Luckily, I don't have the spare time (or at least I don't want to acknowledge that I have the spare time) to figure that one out.

I've been picking up a lot of older titles lately. I think it's because I've actually been going back and watching some of the older movies I've gotten, then I get in the mood to watch something similar. I don't think this is bad - a lot of movies that may be 10 or 15 years old are still good today.

I doubt Navy Seals is one those.

Weekend Update: I just finished watching Navy Seals. Although forth the 5 bucks I spent on it, I bet it's another 3 or 5 years before I even try to watch it again. I'd forgotten how some action movies from the 80's just through random scenes in to try to get more action into the movie (case in point: Charlie Sheen & the guys are off playing golf, a tow truck starts to ferry away Charlie's car, so he hops on a bicycle, gives chase, gets into his car, and escapes from the tow truck while narrowly avoiding the 80-wheeler that was following).

Permalink movies/tv/dvd

Sort Them I Will

02.19.2007

Over the weekend I tried to accomplish a little organization. I like organization. I like it the way that Jerry lives to make lists. Organizing things gives me a warm fuzzy all over. That's why I browse Staples when I'm bored.

I've got all this gaming stuff that I never use, but the possibility is getting closer that it may be used. With the success of last months game night the odds are good we could have another, maybe even this month. On top of that, I've found out that both Evil Matt & Trevor The Chiro are both BattleTech players. Or maybe it's BattleMech. Or MechWarrior. Robots and heat sinks, I know that much. Nonetheless, there could be even more gaming going on. And with more players playing whatever is being played, the odds of me not losing increase!

Since I've been getting gradually better at playing Battlefield 2142 online, I decided it was time to take a break and go back to some of the the boardgame fun that helps to keep me away from the computer. It wasn't time so much to actually play anything, but more for the preparation to play - a great use of my organizational skills! First up would be my Star Wars Miniatures figures.

Jerry and I played 2 games of Star Wars miniatures 2 years ago, yet for some reason I still keep collecting the pieces. It appeals to my "collector gene" in my DNA (those are the "C"s in the "ATC..." strings. There's a good history for the game in the movies, so there's not a lot of background reading beyond the actual game mechanics. There is a large community of support for adding on things (like my favorite scenery site). So I hold out hope that it'll be played again. The problem comes in that once I convince someone to play, it'll take forever to make up the squads and then dig out all the pieces that I have stuffed into boxes. So with a deep breath I began sorting through all the figures, grouping them along the way, and storing them in boxes most people keep screws and nails in out in the garage. It took a while, and I ran out of boxes, but I managed to get it done. Now I'm ready to play. Mostly ready to play. Almost ready to play.

It's a good thing I don't have anyone talked into playing yet.

Permalink boardgames gaming miniatures

How To Feel Stupid Dumb

02.14.2007

I've been making websites for the past 10 years. Every website in that time has used a database of one sort or another. Well, maybe not all, but 95% of them have. I've always made them by hand - there are tools that let you draw pictures linking tables together with what columns you want returned, but I've never drawn out my queries that way. A big part of that has been because I end up having to modify the query after the fact and it's a big hassle to figure out what an auto-generated query is actually trying to get. So I've always cranked out my queries by hand for the last 10 years (10+ if you go back before the web pages).

In that time, I've considered myself fairly comfortable in making database queries. Until today.

Inner/Outer Joins have been the bane for those learning SQL for a while. Bob Burruss introduced me to a shortcut that made life simple a long time ago. For a OUTER JOIN, just use "*=" with the "*" on the side that you always want the data returned from. Simplicity in itself. And it's worked. For years. Until today.

It seems the new version of SQL Server (2005, which is at least new to me) doesn't like "*=". It's not an ASCII standard. As such, you can tweak the settings on SQL Server to support it, but later versions may not support it at all. So go learn the right way to do it!

So I have to learn to do it the right way. A quick Google search showed me how to do it, but the sample queries weren't close enough to what I had to do. As much as I hated it, I was going to have to go look on the shelf that I reference about once every... 5 years? I dug out my Sql For Dummies book. I can see where Amazon has the 3rd edition, and another site lists the 5th edition. Me, I've got the 1st edition from August of 1995. I remember buying it for help in my Software Engineering class (it didn't help - I ended up having to take the class over again). I was about to reference a 12 year old book for programming help. I think that was almost worse than it being a "Dummies" book.

But I found the sample I was looking for. Of course, I had to search for it. In the index, it lists pg 163 as the only reference for OUTER JOIN. Once you get to pg 163, it tells you "... you have performed an OUTER JOIN operation (as discussed in Chapter 11)...", so then it's off to Chapter 11 to actually find out how to make an OUTER JOIN like the pros do.

For 10 years I've fought querying the right way. It looks like the system is starting to win. If only I could find a good way to *= the system.

Permalink programming/interweb