Record as I Am

Tech && Soccer && PHP Coding - More Bolivian than America expected.

I've been staying up pretty late again, working on my various websites and geeking out, usually past 1am.  A lot of nights, I'll listen to the stream from the DC NPR affiliate, WAMU.  Unfortunately, at 1AM they broadcast the show Fair Game, which aspires to be a funny, Progressive take on the days events.

Why do newbies like to tightly couple systems to the point that a simple change is very likely to result in everything breaking?  Is it just a lack of experience, ie not having a big system fail on you? Its a shame if failure is the only thing you learn from.  The other part of the equation is that too often we're measured by how much code we write, not how much good code we write.

I was already going to write about how disappointed I was with TurboTax this year.  When preparing our returns, a few days ago, I submitted both my state and federal returns electronically.  My federal return failed, because TurboTax would not recognize one of the codes we'd enterred, which we verified in the IRS's own instructions for filing the 1040.

Besides wasting gas, SUVs are not very safe according to a study reported on CNN.

Mid-size sport utility vehicles are nine times as likely as passenger cars to be involved in fatal rollover crashes and twice as likely to kill the occupants of other vehicles in crashes, a government study says.

Seems that my old high school is been in the news for lack of diversity and admission bias leading to underrepresentation by minorities.

We all know a martyr person:

• Anything that goes wrong in their day means the universe is against them,
• They always misinterpret events in a way that makes them the injured party,
• Someone or everyone at their workplace is out to get them,
• Mundane tasks are too mundane to get done because they're too busy being persecuted,
• Choices they've made in life were never wrong on their part, the world just didn't let them work out in their favor.

Sometimes CNN is funnier than the Onion, as illustratated by this story about a shocking revelation by a TV watchdog group. The Parents Television Council issued a study finding that CSI is the least family-friendly show on TV. Well - no fricking duh, Einstein.