Hurley's World

New York

Ulster County

New Marlborough

There is a restaurant near where I work called KnowFat and occassionally people like to order from there for lunch. However, everytime they do, I want to cry. Disclaimer: I talk a lot about light salad dressings, however I do not know the ingredients in their salad dressing as I could not find it on their website. However, the one I had the last time I got food from there reminded me greatly of the lite salad dressings you can get in stores and in other restaurants both in terms of taste and consistency. I can not be sure what the cause is (sugar-substitute, sugar, or other stuff), but I do know it makes me sick to my stomach.

Well, we're back online and I couldn't be happier. Now maybe I can get to work on some of the other projects I'm supposed to be doing in my "free" time. One of those projects is actually nearing completion, a bunch of websites for two Catholic parishes in South Boston.

St Brigid Parish
Gate of Heaven Parish
St Brigid School

Beyond that, I have to help a buddy of mine redo the Republicans Abroad website and continue on some of my projects for a finance professor.

So, I have to admit, for a techie, I'm a bit strange. Well, actually, I'm a bit strange for anyone, but I'm really strange as a techie. I was reminded of this this morning when someone at work noticed that I was the only tech in and that it was before work started. The issue is that over the years I've become a morning person. I would much rather wake up early and work than stay up late. Most other people I know who program are the exact opposite.

Besides this, my life is pretty crazy right now. One of the founders of the company for which I work resigned (he's going to travel around the world and I'm jealous) around the same time we moved from Wakefield to Newton.

So far, so good. Granted the bus that takes me to work looks like it will occassionally be late picking me up, but I won't actually arrive at work late. And I've got to say, I'm digging the 20 minute bus ride (well at least versus the 1 1/2 to 2 hour each way journey).

At work today, they were wondering what I was doing to fill those hours and, well so far, not much. Yesterday I did some more unpacking after I got home and this morning I slept in a little and did some small tasks around the house (like finding my keys :-). Tonight will probably be more of the same. I'm also looking forward to having home-cooked meals again since we've been eating out most nights for the past month. It will also be a lot nicer once the house is more set up and once the interweb is up and running again. Then it will definitely be happy days again and even happier since I will have 3 hours of my life back each day.

Man has it been a busy week. Yesterday we moved from Wakefield to Newton and boy am I tired. I'm just glad it's over (well except for the unpacking). Here's a breakdown of the past week:

Friday
The stress and lack of sleep finally get to me and I get a killer headache/migrane that just wouldn't respond to medication. I had to call in sick because just looking at the computer monitor was making me feel worse. Hey, who am I kidding, having my eyes open made pain shoot through my skull. Fortunately, my boss was very understanding (I'm going to miss him). The day is a wash because I can't seem to do anything but sleep. Later on, it finally starts responding to medication and I can get some food.

This makes me incredibly happy:

Patrick became the first woman to lead at Indy, getting out front three separate times for a total of 19 laps. Still, the 23-year-old rookie shrugged off the notion that her showing was a victory for women in racing.

"I made a helluva point for anybody," she said.

Either way, Patrick's run was one of the greatest by a rookie in 89 years of racing at Indianapolis.

Story Here
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Yes Danica, yes you did! Nothing against most female athletes who try to compete with their male counterparts, but a lot of times they get pushed out there too fast or with too little ability just to push the envelope and get the ratings. It usually ends by reinforcing people's stereotypes about women and their athletic abilities. Yesterday she smashed just about every stereotype about women race drivers including the critical, "They're just not aggressive enough to pass." If anything, she went out there too aggressively. And in the end, it's incredibly awesome that she doesn't want to be the best female driver out there, she just wants to be the best.

I hated doing in, but I had to call into work sick on Friday. I had this awful headache/migrane that just would not go away and an upset stomach. Fred was worried about me all day because I wasn't answering his email but just looking at a computer screen made it worse. Heck, who am I kidding, openning my eyes made it worse. I finally was able to keep some food down by late afternoon and was able to take some ibuprofen, and I felt a little better, or at least, I was able to open my eyes without suffering from shooting pain.

The next day I felt fine. I got up early, paid some bills, and got started on packing and what not. While I didn't get as far packing as I had hoped, we actually got a ton of stuff done. Clothes we were donating were donated, books we are getting rid of are boxed up, some more boxes were packed, and things became a little more organized.

So I've been having serious problems with the one bus that I normally take to get home from work in the evening. Pretty much at least once a week since I started this job in February, the Route 558 5:45 bus out of Riverside has been a no-show. So far this week, it's happened at least twice. Now, I'm actually fairly chill about it (well except for the time that two buses didn't show up during a snowstorm and freezing weather, but that's another story. Here is the timetable for that bus run:

According to their website, the bus is supposed to get to me around 6:15 or so. So normally I leave the office around 5:45, I have a two minute walk, so I'm at the bus stop by 5:50 at the latest. And I followed this pattern yesterday. But the 5:45 bus never passed me.

HTML in Perl code and vice versa

Most people who have worked with me know of my ardent desire to keep HTML code out of Perl code. Since I'm a Perl programmer, most of the time when I mention this, people tend to bring up HTML::Mason (either saying "Yeah, it's great for that" or saying "Yuck, I don't want to use it"). Personally, from what I have seen of Mason, I dislike it. You see it gets around having the HTML in Perl code by putting Perl code into the HTML. To me, this is no solution at all for the problem that drives me to using modules such as HTML::Template, namely that most Perl programmers lack critical web design skills and that many web designers are not programmers.