Chip's 2004 Christmas Note

2004 (yes four) Christmas note text finally posted.

Allegheny Foothills Chapter Chairmain's Letter 11/2005

Posted my dad's forestry letter: Allegheny Foothills Chapter Chairmain's Letter 11/2005

Midday Meal, November 9, 2005

That was both a gourmet and a down home lunch: Leftover chicken that Madelyn had roasted recently, a small bird, probably labeled as a fryer but she roasted the bird regardless; stuffed it too. What is that signature spice in stuffing? Thyme? Sage? The diced and pre-fried chicken heart is the coup-de-grace in the dressing though. The poultry and stuffing was accompanied at lunch simply by black olives and pickles, the latter in two varieties: sweet midgets and dill sandwich stackers, and a small cube of gruyere cheese. Madelyn had acquired the gruyere for me from the fine cheese section at our local Wal-Mart. I’d read about its virtues recently, that it is relatively low fat, particularly compared to soft cheeses such at brie. I hadn’t had gruyere recently enough to remember its flavor, it is some serious cheese, aged to have that barn floor taste right in it. The cheese was good to nibble between bites of chicken and relish. I topped off the meal with a couple of Hershey’s new Extra Dark chocolates. Seems everyone is jumping on the anti-cancer bandwagon pulled by the flavonoids in dark chocolate. In this case Hershey offers Pure and Pure with Cranberries, Blueberries and Almonds. Yum.

Audio Books: "The Greatest Course that Never Was"

Reviewed "The Greatest Course that Never Was".

Interior 2005

We're sprucing up the inside of our house a little...

The Code Project - Interop: Waiting in C# on External Win32 Events - C# Programming

Thanks very much for your contribution to The Code Project. Your article 'Interop: Waiting in C# on External Win32 Events' in the C# Programming section has been edited and moved. Please note the new location of your article:

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/InteropEvents.asp

An article on catching external process events from within .Net (C#) code

Snowy Egrets for Breakfast; also Ghosts of Camping Past and of Empires

Well camping at St. Andrews State Park, near Panama City Beach, FLA (July 22 - 25), was fun – actually we did little “camping”, no fire, no hotdogs, the only meals we ate at the camp site were breakfasts and those were granola bars and poptarts straight out of the box. It was hot and humid, the air heavy with mosquitos, and our tent contained two large box fans connected to a long extension cord out to the power box; not exactly a serene sleeping environment. On the other hand our tent was pitched 20 feet from the bay, with crabs scurrying in the underbrush along the lapping shoreline. Each morning and one evening a snowy egret landed on the over-water roots of a large pine tree that provided us with “thank god” levels of shade for our site. We sat in our folding chairs, 10 feet from the water and the 3 foot tall bird as it fished and waded, first to the left and then back to the right.



We also saw deer and an alligator and dolphins and a sting ray and fish and many other birds from cardinals and blue jays to woodpeckers to herons. The gulf water was warm and friendly.



One night Caralyn was having trouble falling to sleep and I told her tales of camping with cousins in my childhood. I told her of lifting cottonwood logs, building bridges to escape across swollen streams and of finding isolated cabins and locking their locations up as secrets among us cousins by piling our hands together, each with its fingers in a “V” shape and the last free hand sticking an index finger down the center to lock it up until that lock be remade by exactly those present and undone the same way. After that she slept, from enchantment or from boredom or from exhaustion I can’t be sure, but we did plenty away from the tent to tire all of us. We spent hours on the beach, sailed an excellent Pirate Cruise, played Goofy Golf, ate seafood, went to the arcades and dropped too many quarters into the machines that pile quarters and push them with a little moving wall, the droppee hoping to have more quarters pushed over the edge and out to him than he drops in the top. It was a good time but parts were uncomfortable and I don’t expect any of us to remember those parts in a few decades.

Best Music of 2004

The Chipster Zone Reviews Page: "According to David Rawson":
I added Dave's list of the Best Albums of 2004 and also Best Songs and Best EPs of 2004.

A Paragraph, No More

After lunch the mug was there on the counter, near the coffee station. It was a light gray ceramic, pretty much the color of my mug. Had I left it here in the break room? When did I have it here last? Had I set it down this morning, there by the sink, intending to wash it and carry it back to my desk after using the rest room? These thoughts flickered through my head as I walked closer, reaching for the cup as I neared, then raising my hand on up to my hair as I realized that, no, this can not be my mug, it has lip stick stains around the rim and the gray is too colorless, mine is actually more beige anyway. In fact I veer awkwardly left and find the safe haven of the men's room before someone has any chance to challenge me about my covetous reach for a mug which is clearly not mine.
(Written 6/9/2005)

Chautauqua Central School 25 Year Reunion Class of 1980

Chautauqua Central School 25 Year Reunion Class of 1980

Audio Books Review of Report from Ground Zero

New: Review of Report from Ground Zero

Ascii Art from 1994

Here's an oldie that came up on my Google today: Ascii Art Spider from 1994

Water Bird, Madison, AL

Last Saturday morning Madelyn spotted a largish bird walking along the shore of the retaining pond at Dublin Park, after Caralyn's soccer game there.
The "pond" is probably half an acre, maybe less. But this bird was walking along the shore on its orange legs with a dark blue back and clearly hunting in the water. You couldn't tell it had a pretty long neck since it was cocked back, but then it stuck it out and grabbed a small fish and swallowed it. A minute later it grabbed another. We looked it up, identifying it as a Green Heron.

You can see how they hide their neck here:
http://naturestockshots.com/green_heron_hunting_2.htm
This one has his neck extended:
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/hillcountry/research/images/Green%20Heron%204.jpg

Reviewed "Code as Design: Three Essays"

Code as Design reviewed, includes the essay "What is Software Design".

Doubly Inherited Interfaces in C#

Yesterday the question of doubly inherited interfaces in .Net occurred to me when I moved the IDisposable interface to be a base interface for IMyInterface. This is the classic "diamond inheritance" issue from languages that allow true multiple inheritance (e.g. C++). (I was adding IDisposable in order to use an IMyInterface instance in a C# "using" statement). A brief search didn't turn up an answer in Visual Studio Help nor on the Internet at large (See Footnote 1). A quick example this morning indicates that C# collapses multiply inherited interfaces into a single implementation, at least that's what the Intellisense (Visual Studio .Net 2003) did as I added IOne and ITwo as base interfaces to "public SomeClass" in a test sandbox solution.

            public interface IParent

            {

                        void ParentMethod();

            }



            public interface IOne : IParent

            {

                        void OneMethod();

            }



            public interface ITwo : IParent

            {

                        void TwoMethod();

            }



            public class SomeClass : IOne, ITwo

            {

                        ...

            }



 

Attempting to declare ParentMethod explicitly as a member of IOne fails to compile as not a member of IOne, e.g.
"void IOne.ParentMethod()" within SomeClass will not compile whereas void IOne.OneMethod is fine.
This behaves as expected when instantiating a SomeClass object and using it via the interfaces

            SomeClass oSomeClass = new SomeClass();



            IOne iOne = (IOne) oSomeClass; 

            ITwo iTwo = (ITwo) oSomeClass;

            IParent iParent = (IParent) oSomeClass;



            iOne.OneMethod();

            iOne.ParentMethod();



            iTwo.TwoMethod();

            iTwo.ParentMethod();



            iParent.ParentMethod();

 

FootNote 1: I did subsequently find some related information in the C# language specification
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/csspec/html/vclrfcsharpspec_13.asp), including
my favorite section to date in 13.1.2: "The base interfaces of an interface are the explicit base interfaces and
their base interfaces. In other words, the set of base interfaces is the complete transitive closure of the
explicit base interfaces, their explicit base interfaces, and so on." Hmmm, is my case a complete or a partial
transitive closure? Being more of a practitioner and less of an academecian these days, I read on... Section 13.2.5 is more germaine, dealing with more complex cases than what I had. It implicitly clarified my argualbly more common case. Isn't dot Net fun?

Heard and gave a brief Review of "Jarhead"

Click for a brief review: Jarhead

Alabama State Closed 2005 Players List

I've spent some time getting the Alabama State Table Tennis
Championships page together in anticipation of this weekend's
tournament.
Alabama State Closed 2005 Players List

Added Page Landscaping 2005

Added a page showing our current yard work: Landscaping 2005

Non-Pro: North East Deciduous Forests and Online Bill Paying

Northeast Deciduous Forest Stamps Review and Rambling

I'm quoted on Joel on Software - Friday, August 20, 2004

Hey, my friend Todd just pointed out that my Amazon.com review got quoted on “Joel on Software”:

Joel on Software - Friday, August 20, 2004.

I'd missed that.

Report from Engine Co. 82 Reviewed

Review: of "Report from Engine Co. 82"

Developer Testing Review Posted

I posted a review of Kent Beck's recent talk on
Developer Testing.

Review of "Dinner with Persephone" Posted

Dinner with Persephone reviewed.

Sparkling Turtles Salt Shaker

I recently received a set of these crystal turtles: Lenox Sparkling Turtles Salt & Pepper Set

I'm trying to class up my table a bit, it looks good sitting on our black stone lazy susan, filled with pure white salt with gem-cut green eyes.
I recite a little rhyme when I add salt to my food:
"Turtle, Turtle,
From your vault,
Please may I have,
A little salt."

Followed by "Thank you." when I've finished flavoring. The kids think I'm nuts but its the kind of thing that may get remembered as home.

TalkBack: Autolink is bad for publishers | reader response on| CNET News.com

I haven't done much editorializing within this blog (thus far) but Google's AutoLinks have me a bit incensed (after reading bits from
Dave Winer and folks he's pointed us to.) All the more so since Neil Gaiman keeps admonishing us to "make good art."
And then Charles Cooper over at CNET.com puts up an article belittling the issue. I added my 2 cents there:
TalkBack: Autolink is bad for publishers | reader response on| CNET News.com

(I hereby confess to not only using Google's Toolbar but to using the "Blog This" button on their toolbar to post this entry. Sigh.)

Charles R. "Chip" Patton Jr., Software Professional Page

I added a sub-page to
The Chipster Zone
web site for job related stuff:
Charles R. "Chip" Patton Jr., Software Professional Page

Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" Reviewed

American Gods Review

Other Reviews: PowerPod

Review of my new Griffin PowerPod universal auto charger.

Hiring Technical People, Top 1% Comment

I added the second comment to Johanna Rothman's Blog entry on Hiring the Top 1% (1/31/2005): Hiring Technical People

The Chipster Zone

Did a little overhead: bought the www.chipsterzone.com for 5 years starting January 28, 2005. Moved the "What's Here" list to the top of the home page and added "Professional" (need to add a page and rearrange my job history, reviews, IFS Award, etc. to there).

Chip's 2004 Christmas Note Photos

Chip's 2004 Christmas Note. It's just the photos so far.