Bitwise Math & Roll Up Jeans So I've been trucking along out here in Sooke for a week now. It's been rather productive the last few days. It took a while for me to get a working development environment going. The PS guys are great ... always asking if I need something else. "Do you need another monitor? Do you want a different keyboard?". I'm good to go with whatever computer I'm sitting at. Adaptability is key when you are in my line of work.

So I'm using a windows machine. I have IIS installed, with PHP. I have a local running MS-SQL server nad I have encapsulated myself into my laptop out here. This way I can break things and not worry about the effects upon others. Eventually we will have a Visual Source Safe reopsitory for Rudy and I to make use of, but for now I'm good to go.

The hardest part of this project for me is really getting familiar with MS-SQL. I'm a command-line kind of guy, and the MS-SQL Enterprise Manager scares me. ;-) Not really, but I don't like GUIs for things like that. Just let me create the SQL in a flat file and run it on the DB in a command line. The whole Users / Groups thing for MS-SQL is not overly intuitive either. You have to add them into the security place before you create them in the DB. To me it feels like you are creating the user twice.

CREATE USER akopciuch WITH PASSWORD 'password' CREATEDB CREATUSER;

Doesn't that seem way easier than point and click these 7 things to set up a user, and then go to your database and add a user from the users and groups icon, and point an click a bunch more. Bah ... GUI. Another MS gayness I encountered: I wanted to create a simple key/value table for testing. Made the mistake of calling field names "key", and "value". It lets you enter them in, displays them inside [], but won't let me access them. because you get a syntax error at keyword "key". GRRRRRRRRRR! If I can't use them as column names ... why let me type them in in the first place? Just avoid the whole issue. I'm not saying one way or another that you should or should not be allowed to use keywords as column names. I can in PostgreSQL, not in MS-SQL. That's fine, I'm just saying that if you are not allowed to, don't allow me to enter them and lead me to incorrectly believe that it is alright.

My latest coding experience took me back to my days of engineer code at SED Systems. Lots of system development in C, C++. Hardware interaction etc. I remember learning very much in depth the tricks of using bitwise math operators, and storing information in numbers for flag processing. Check your mask as to whether you are on or off. Bitwise OR (|) to turn it on, bitwise AND (&) NOT(~) to turn it off. I didn't really get that far. I'm just using a mask of integers to hold which group of tabs should be accessible at anyn one given time. So I just do a bitwise AND (&) to check and set in a given placeholder in the bitmask was set, and display the proper tab. But it brought back my memories of pen and paper with a gazillion zeros and ones written all over the place. Many a coffee was drunk that afternoon.

So the weekend was upon us and the party had begun. Saturday I got up early and went shopping for some things. It is Karen's birthday on Tuesday, but she has finals so her birthday party was Saturday night. I got her a new pair of ADIDAS sneakers that I knew she wanted. I went to the store twice to make sure. I had to go back to the house and steal her shoe to check the size. She loved them! She squealed and jumped around for a few hours, and wore her "new kicks" at the house party.

Marshall and I went out in the afternoon. I took my car in for regular maintenance. We had lunch at Spinakers on the deck. The weather in Victoria was GORGEOUS! We went shopping around downtown for a while, and eventually got back home around 5:00. I bought two totally cool rye tumblers. Big thick and heavy. They are the coolest glasses I have ever bought ... plus they were on sale for half price. Melissa was preparing dinner for everyone in prep for the shindig. She made AWESOME chicken taco salad. Everyone can add whatever they wanted in the salad. I choose to avoid more of the chili sauce after Marshall deviously tricked me into thinking it was good to eat on corn chips ... not so much. My tounge is still scared of that jar.

So everyone was getting ready, and people were starting to come over. It was a margarita party, but since I don't like tequilla I was drinking rye and diet coke. I met tons of people. Marshalls friend Thor who is an accountant for the government, Johnny who is a cool wicked ass drummer. Me and Johnny are total geeks. We could just sit around all night long and talk about drums. Poeple think we are wierd. But it totally rocks! ;-) Sylvia recently got engaged, and also likes to drink rye. Paul who is also from Calgary and makes a living producing natural soap and similar products. Shane and Tanya (?) who actually live out here in Sooke. Esa (sp ... amybe Ece) who is a little french hottie. Totally cute, fun girl. I met lots more people but I can't remember everybody ... but you were all cool!

Do you remember in the late 80s early 90s when it was the cool fashion to tuck and roll your jeans up at the bottom. The tighter the better. And then people would wear big wool socks over top of their jeans too. I personally never did that. I remember it being the style with girls in my grade 6/7 classes. It always found it bizarre. Well we somehow got on the topic and before you knew it we were all tucking and rolling up the jeans to be "cool". Karen has the pictures, and the video to prove it. I said to Marshal "Dude ... do you realize it's 1:00 A.M. and we are rolling up out pants and dancing around because we think it's cool?". He said "yeah ... we're drunk".

Esa came with Marshall, Karen, Thor and Myself later in the night when we were completely anihlated. We went to a bar downtown. I can't even remeber what it was called. It was kind of a preppy club. Seemed like a cougar hangout to me, but it was fun times all the same. The bar was pretty short lived since we got there for last call. We are right downtown so downtown food it is. Me and Marsh went straight for Mr. Tub Steak again. Good stuff. Apparently Karen has a severe opposition to "Street Cock" so she went with Esa for pizza. Referring to our hotdogs as "Street Cock" seems to upset Marshall.

No cabs in sight. So we started walking. By this time in the night it had gotten fairly cold outside. So the walk in the wind wasn't so desireable. Karen decided to sing me songs to help keep us warm. Eventually Johnny came along to our rescue, and we swiftly made it back to the house. Melissa and Owen came out to join the really really drunk people. And someone decided it was a good idea to start having tequilla shots. that's when I tapped out and headed off to bed at 3:30. What a night ... what a party ... Happy birthday Karen! Glad I was there!
  ¶ 8:25:00 PM