My CEO asked me if I still posted to my blog, and I responsed yes. Then I described the problem with this blog being very disjoint and hard to follow. Unless you are interested in Java, general computer technology, poker, and what I did this weekend, you probably aren’t all that interested in reading every post here. I probably ought to focus on just one thing or I should have some sort of categorization. But I can’t seem to write often enough on any one topic to make it worthwhile. The other problem is that I still censor myself a lot. I have a sizable repertoire of humor which doesn’t come through that much here. I even think of myself as funny.

Oh and now i’m consciously editing out my use of the word “So”. Sadly, it won’t make much of a difference to my terrible writing skills.

So this weekend I went down to Big Sur and stayed at my friend Dave’s house for a bachelor party. His family has a pretty amazing place down there. Tens of acres and a big beautiful house on with amazing views.. While we were down there, we played a round at the Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course. Wow, did I play great. I still can’t believe how well I was playing. My 108+ score may not seem that great, but I have only been on a course once or twice before, so any double bogie is a very good hole for me. The course is very nice, with great views and a I shot an amazing 51 on the front nine and a 58 on the back eight. We were all beginners, so we played very slow. It was so slow that the course marshal made us speed up by skipping a hole on the back nine, so we only got to do 8 holes there. It’s a short course, only 5600 yards and a par 70. So my overall was about a +42 or so over 17 holes. The highlight of my day was a 20+ yard chip-in from the fringe once. My short game was great, my putting was very good, and my driving was very good. I don’t expect to play that well again. I only had about 3 holes where I had to make 4+ putts. Everyone enjoyed the round, except the unfortunate Mike who got thrown from his golf cart by Alec.

In addition to playing golf, we played a lot of low stakes poker and a variety of different board games, and a few games of Starcraft. Also we had a very nice dinner at Nepenthe. I had a good rare ribeye stake with garlic mashed potatoes. The views are supposed to be amazing, but we got there after dark, so we didn’t see much of it.

So I’ve been working on a bunch of interesting things lately. And here’s a few things I’ve learned. Java’s builtin compression tools are really nice. HTTP cookies suck to implement and no one implements the standard. It’s annoyingly hard to get a process to address more than 2GB of memory on a 32 bit linux box. It’s totally impossible to get a java process to address more than 2GB of memory on a 32 bit architecture. RAIDs aren’t all they are cracked up to be if they aren’t configured right.

In other news, the Olympics are pretty interesting. I hate how they have to cover the USA basketball team so much. I can see those players any time. But watching olympic kayaking or table tennis, now that’s a treat. You know those players play for the love of the game because a lot of them can’t make money and they have to have full time jobs.

Well my work schedule may have finally turned a corner. We got a version of my stuff that might actually work. Took 3 months, but it is working really well right now. I hope work slows down a bit in the future. I like my job, but that doesn’t mean I want to continue doing it 60 hrs/week.

I’m also playing a bit of Warcraft 3 again. It’s not as good as Starcraft, but it’s still fun. A bunch of people I know are playing in the World of Warcraft beta. I don’t really have the time to play a MMORPG so I haven’t been playing it at all.

So here’s a devious thing that web sites are doing as told to me by Tracy about her friend.

The site will store cookies when you visit and quote you a price while you are shopping. Then when you go back, the price is always the same or higher. They never show lower prices after you have browsed them once. So her friend was trying to find airfare and got a price but wasn’t that happy with it, so she waited. Later she went to a different machine and got the same exact flight for lower. Then browsing with her own machine again she couldn’t get the low price again until she deleted her cookies.

Sounds like the stuff of urban legends, but of course it’s pretty easily doable, and it could make the site a lot more money, so I’d be surprised if no one had tried it.

The moral of the story. Try deleting your cookies every once in a while to see if you can get the price you think you should get.

Been busy at work still. Haven’t had much time for anything besides work really. Though work appears to be letting up just a bit. Tracy and I did go down to LA for a friends wedding this weekend. That wasn’t bad, except for the several extra hours we spent in the airport. The wedding itself was pretty nice, they had good appetizers which is my favorite, but of course is probably the least healthy part of the meal. At least I’ve been a bit better about working out the past week.

I’m starting to get excited that Half-Life 2 will arrive shortly. The beta of Counter-Strike will be out this week for a few select users(not me). To celebrate the arrival of the two I’ll be buying a machine soon, so yet another reason things will be looking up. Oh the highly anticipated Doom3 is out as well, but I’m not sure I’ll get it. I tend to wait and see before buying most single player games.