(this post is pure geek - you can move along to the next blog in your RSA feed : )


                                                                


I have always liked the Java programming language; still do, but today I found a weird one.

I was writing code to send stream of bytes to an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server, doing address resolutions - nothing fancy. Standard BSD socket stuff. I was reading the bytes to read as hex integers out of a text file - 04 5a 4b 40 etc etc etc - and converting each pair of characters to a byte value.

I'd come up with a way that seemed towork when I ran into a weird one. I was reading these two-digit strings in and using parseByte to turn them into byte values:

            s = byteFile.readLine();                            
                         //this reads in a line of text full of those two-char bytes - "04 64 4c 6b 6f..."
            String[] byteStrings = s.split(" ");              
                         //this creates an array of short strings, each two bytes long."04", "64", "4c", "6b", "6f"....
            for (int i=0; i<byteStrings.length;i++)
                 byte b = Byte.parseByte(byteStrings[i],16);
                               //this goes through and turns each of those short strings into a byte value

to get the bytes to stream out through the socket. Suddenly I get an error -

            Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NumberFormatException: Value out of range. Value:"a5" Radix:16

Yep, that's right. a1 in hex - 161 to you and me, in decimal - is outside of the byte range, which is (I thought) 0-255.

Okay, sure - it's "signed byte", right? And that's using up one of the bits, making the range -128 to 127?

Doesn't seem like that's the problem.

I messed with this for quite a while, and couldn't figure it out; finally a friend suggested this route of investigation:

                    byte b = (byte) Integer.parseInt(byteStrings[i],16);

...and that WORKS.

Java is saying "Hey, I can't turn that string into a byte for you, but I can turn it into an INTEGER, and I can turn THAT Integer into a byte".

It reminds me of when my eldest brother, Chuck, was very sick as a small child - maybe age 4 or 5. He had some sort of respiratory illness that wouldn't go away - it just kept hanging on and on.

Eventually the doctor told my father to take Chuck and douse him in icewater.

Dad said "But...but that'll give him pneumonia!"

The doctor said "Yes, it will - and pneumonia we can cure!"

If you can't solve one problem, turn that problem into a problem you can solve.


         

        

Last night, we watched Facing the Giants:

                                                         

This is NOT a polished movie. You're not going to walk away thinking "wow, what acting" or "great cinematography!" This movie was produced by (and stars many of the members of) a Baptist church in Georgia. The coach's wife was played by the coach's wife - many of the players were played by players.

I note that the single review linked to this movie on the IMDB page was a "don't bother to watch this movie" review - which makes sense. The writer of that review was probably spot on, in saying that this movie isn't going to convert anybody.

But if you can watch this movie without getting choked up - several times - then you and I do not share many of the same core values. We might get along just fine, because we probably aren't even close enough in world views to argue about anything :)

....This is a movie about football, and about God. Sort of a "Reese's Cup" of a movie - two great tastes that taste great together. N.B. - I'm not a Baptist (although I once was) and I actually don't see Him (exactly) as He is represented in this film - but many of the truths are truths, and they hit home hard.

(Side note to my friends Rich and Viki, who hate Bowdens - do NOT watch the interview with Mark Richt, in the special features - of, if you do, be sure to watch it on an old TV that you don't mind hitting with a sledgehammer)

        

It's a slow day here in the Hooterville of the Sonoran Desert, so I thought I'd lift everybody's spirits by posting this picture of Silas in his Pig Suit:

                                           

                                                   

This onesie has little pictures of pigs gardening - hoeing, planting, chasing away bunny rabbits. I have no idea why this outfit is so cute, but it is.

As you can tell, Silas is tickled to be modeling it for you.

This was the backyard of our little house on 6th St. in Athens, AL, seventeen years ago. That green stuff on the ground is called "grass" - it's a major weed back East. It just sprouts up everywhere, and people are kept busy driving or pushing small blade-rotating devices called "mowers" back and forth over it just to keep it at a manageable height.

These "mowers" are driven by small internal-combustion engines, usually built by Briggs and Stratton, whoever they are. They don't work well - in fact, they don't even work often (here's a testimony) but the head of the family is enslaved by his "mower" moreso than his car. If he doesn't want to drive his car, he doesn't have to - but his wife will force him out into the yard to operate his "mower" at any time that she suspects that he is resting, playing, or watching The Game.

(I've often wondered about this - the wife used to push me out the door and tell me to go mow often. In fact, it seems like every afternoon, from March till October, when I would get home from work, I'd no sooner sigh and start to look for my slippers when I was shoved outside. I'd be mowing the front yard in a cross-hatching pattern, and I'd look and see that all of the other husbands were in the same situation - ejected bodily into the yard until they had performed this (seemingly) daily function. I can't help but wonder - what were those women DOING in there, such that they couldn't have us in the house? Were they all putting on high heels and half-bras, and doing those poses that I used to see women doing when I looked in girly magazines as a kid? I mean, obviously (since I saw them in the magazines) women like to lay around the house like that, but I've never caught Ethel in any of those poses. So I'm forced to assume that that's what they are doing inside, while we poor guys are outside, pushing the mowers back and forth, back and forth, and restarting them every time we'd hit a patch of heavy grass, or wet grass, or a stick, or for all I know every time a cosmic ray would hit the carburetor.)

Having lived his whole (conscious, post-Pig-Suit) life west of New Mexico, Silas has no idea - when we lived in Anthem, he had to mow a patch of grass about 20 feet by 15 feet - and to hear him tell it, it was like the labors of Sisyphus, and he complained mightily about it. When I was his age, I had to mow a half-acre of swampland (this was called "the back yard") that was infested with mosquitoes; the blades of that crabgrass could cut your skin.

I've been thinking about putting some grass in the back yard, but Silas is about to turn 18, and he won't be around to mow it - wait. If Silas is still here in a year or so, then I'll probably put some grass into the back yard; this might provide the nudge that he needs to become self-supporting :)

Because, while he is a good kid and a real sweetie, he's nowhere near as cute as he used to be in his Pig Suit ; )

        

This is a little cove off of Bartlett Lake:

                 

(editor's note: some time back, I was wondering online why sometimes it's "Lake So-and-So" and sometimes it's "So-and-So Lake". Vida, from Canada, said that when it's a proper name (like Bartlett) then it's "Lake Bartlett", but if it's an improper name (like Mirror) then it's "Mirror Lake". I think that the same thing is supposed to apply to mountains (Mount Everest, Mount St. Helens,  Grandfather Mountain, Sand Mountain). That's fine, but that doesn't explain Smith Lake or Bartlett Lake or Hartselle Mountain) 

...which is where I went wakeboarding last week, and two weeks before that.

It sure is a pretty little cove, isn't it? Sparkling clear water, pretty grasses and cactus, big honkin' boulders in the water - huh? BIG BOULDERS IN THE WATER? Is THAT what I was getting smacked into when I was wakeboarding? That would explain a lot...

....alas, no. It turns out that hitting the water as fast as I was hitting it just makes it FEEL like boulders.

Joel is going wakeboarding again this weekend - he's going all the way to Lake Havasu, as it seems that he's run out of victims here in Phoenix.  (He keeps asking me "Havasu this weekend?" and I say "No, thanks - I have an Ethel").

My friend Ronnie "Pretty Boy Pete" and his new wife Lori are going kayaking up in Prescott - I'd like to get Ethel up there to do some climbing, maybe hook up with them briefly, but Ethel is still in super-overtime mode at work - it's their fiscal year end. That's like crunch time for accountants - they have to have all of their spreadsheets color-coded and sorted in alphabetical order, arranged by date and printed out in triplicate.

Of course, I'd also like to go sailing, but that's not very likely either - well, that's not entirely true. If I can get Ethel to recover the cusions in the cockpit, then she'll go sailing just so that she can sit on the recovered cushions.

Then we can recover the deck of the galley with faux wood, and then she'll go sailing so that she can stand on that....I just need to space out all of the modifications that we are doing to Soulstice so that Ethel will go sailing just so that she can experience each modification as it is made. Maybe I'll be able to spread this out enough so that we go sailing every weekend.

We've been looking at some of these mods, thinking that they might be fun - the nice thing is that they can (pretty much) all be done independently.  The bad thing about this project is trying to work inside the galley of a sailboat in Arizona in the summer - you lose interest really quickly.

Wish me luck - I'll be going home in a while, and I'll say to Ethel "well, honey - how does the weekend look?" That's probably when the fight will start....

        

As of last night, the New River Pucketts finished the six-hour French miniseries "Le Comte de Monte Cristo", starring Gérard Depardieu - who is, without a doubt, the only living human being who has a cleft in his chin AND in his nose:


               
(Ethel says that it looks like somebody tried to part his face - right down the middle - with a sword).

Every time I say "Gérard Depardieu", I can't help but think of Genius in France, by Weird Al - it's a Frank Zappa style parody that I've always thought was aimed at Jerry Lewis (and it seems that there are others who agree) but the amazing thing about the song is that it could, very well, have been written by Zappa - Weird Al can pretty much be anybody that he wants to be, I suppose.

Anyway, we really enjoyed LCdMC, and we watched it over four nights (it has four 90 minute episodes). In fact, I think I might have enjoyed it as much as I enjoy watching the 2002 Count of Monte Cristo, which is one of my favorite movies - but CoMC can be watched of an evening, while LCdMC takes a week's worth of commitment (and a willingness to go four nights without any Buffys¹, which is just about the limit of my endurance : )

The 2002 CoMC is very much a late-model, Americanized version of the tale - for one thing, our hero not only is wealthy and handsome and brilliant, but he can best anyone else in any sort of combat, armed or unarmed; the French version is much truer to the spirit of the book, in that the Count never even so much as slaps anybody; it's all about revenge, plot and intrigue.

It's funny listening to the three of us watching a movie; the comments being made tell you something about the personalities of the observers, as much as they tell you about the movie itself:

Silas: Did you notice how they just replayed that same portion of the theme music, but they did so in a minor key, at a lower octave? Did you see how that altered the mood of the scene?
Ethel: I also noticed that that one riff from that scene was exactly the same as the scene in the 2002 movie version, when the Count is landing his balloon at the estate to begin the festivities - obviously that score was derivative.
Jim: I like the music. It's nice.


Silas: That laboratory room where he's preparing those potions is really creepy.
<pause>
Silas: Didja notice how creepy that room is? I don't like that room - it's creepy.
<pause>
Silas: Every time he comes into that room, the music gets creepy. That's a
Jim: DON'T SAY CREEPY AGAIN! DON'T SAY IT!

I noticed a funny thing about the movie; while we're certainly all in agreement that the Count should forgive these folks, and that his motives for his actions are base and vile - we still like it when Fernand, Danglar and Villefort get what's coming to them :) It's sort of like the movie Payback, where Mel Gibson plays the bad guy, but this bad guy is the good guy, because he's so much better than the other bad guys that you hope that he wins :)

At any rate - if you have an attention span and like movies where the hero gets the girl, even though his face has been bifurcated, rent Le Comte de Monte Cristo - the New RIver Pucketts give it Three Thumbs Up (and Maia adds a paw).


¹I'm not sure if this plural should be Buffys or Buffies, since I'm not referring to the proper name, but rather the television show. I'm sure some Gentle Reader will instruct me in the proper grammar here : )

        

Went wakeboarding again, with Joel again, at Bartlett Lake, again.

Got beat up again.

There were some differences - this time, Ethel came along, to decide if she needed to increase my life insurance, and Joel brought along a couple of 20-year-olds to balance out the energies. I did do much better than before - I was able to get up and stay up for a while just about every time.

I'd getup on the board, most riki-tiki, feeling like the captain of my fate and the master of my soul, hearing "Flight of the Valkyries" in my mind:


                                           

Having gotten up on the board, I would ride out onto the water, feeling like a cross between a bull rider and a fighter pilot, hearing Steppenwolf singing "Born To Be Wild" in my mind:

                                              

At this point, I'm fine, I'm groovy - everything is great. Except for one small problem: I can't make the board go where I want it to go. I'm sort of like the NASCAR  of wakeboarding - I can only turn left. I can turn left - and go as far left as the rope will let me go - and stay out there all day long, and - if you didn't know that I wasn't supposed to be out there - you'd think that I had this deal down, dude.

However, this sport is not called "Flatwater Boarding" - it's called WAKEboarding, because you are supposed to be riding back and forth across the wake, letting it toss you into the air and doing all kinds of skateboard moves that have strange names.

So, after a while of hanging around way out there in left field (so to speak) I would realize that everybody in the boat was waiting for me to turn to the right, to come back across the wake into the middle and actually do something. You could tell this - I'd get up on top and be riding, and they would be giving me high signs and cheers from on board, and I would move out to the left, and they would wave and make encouraging noises...and then, after a while, they'd all go back to talking amongst themselves or looking for something to eat or playing solitatire or napping; that's when I knew that I had to try to head back into the wake.

So I would try to turn to the right, and I would get right up to the curl of the wake (if that's what you call it - I mean the place where the water gets all bubbly and churned up) and then the edge of my board would catch the wake, and I would slam into the water:

                 
I would try this fifteen or twenty times, and then Joel would make me get back into the boat so that somebody who could actually WAKEboard could play, and I'd start trying to figure out what I'm going to do next, now that I know that wakeboarding is OMTINGA ("One More Thing I'm Not Good At", although  perhaps that should be OMTAWING ("One More Thing At Which I'm Not Good") because ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed my little foray into wakeboarding, and I'm not TERRIBLE at it (One of the younger guys, Levi, allowed as to how "dude, you had some sick whups out there!" I'm not sure how to parse that - the last time that I had a sick whups, my mother made me mop it up) but I'm not good at it, either. And I don't have time to waste doing things that I enjoy a little bit, or that I might someday get a little bit good at, later - I need to find my Special Purpose.

Those of you who've known me for a while know that I flunked the aptitude test and that I'm a B-Minus At Everything. However, after Sunday's debacle recreation, Ethel and I were talking about that, and I realized that I must not be communicating very well.

I've said for many years that I'd like to find something for which I have a talent; remarks made in response to this statement (and the above elaborations upon it) have left me with the impression that I want to find that talent so that I can "be the best at something".

And nothing could be further from the truth.

What I've always heard is that everybody has a talent for something, and that having a talent means an inate knack for that something - it also implies that they will find enjoyment in that activity, and will be able to increase their enjoyment and abilities along that line.

Now I've figured out that folks think that I want to find my talent so that I can be really good at something - when, actually, I want to find my talent so that, then, I'll have something that I can continue to enjoy and get better at and pursue.

Every activity that I pursue follows the same curve - a quick shot up the learning curve to something like an "average" level of ability, followed by a hard push driven by obsession until I get to that B-minus level, and then I flatten out and quit because I can't get any better, and I know that it's not something that I really enjoy - I'm just trying it to find out if this might be it.

Sort of like "The Hunger Artist", who was only able to go without eating because he'd never found a food that he really liked.

(N.B. - there are some activities that I enjoy, as pastimes, purely because they provide a social setting (playing pool on the back porch, or board games) or keep my hands busy for me while I'm thinking about other things (guitar and banjo, although not banjo so much, as that prevents OTHER people from thinking). And there are some activities that I do because I don't like the way that I feel when I don't do them - running or lifting, for instance - and sailing.)

So, when I do something like wakeboarding - where I realize, right off, that I am BELOW average, there's no reason for me to keep trying it, because That's Not It, and any effort I put into it will only result in frustration later. So I might as well move on to the next thing (although, for the life of me, right now I have no idea what that next thing might be) - actually, we've been talking about making some modifications to the sailboat. Who  knows? Maybe I'll be good at that (no, I don't think so, either, because that's the sort of detail-oriented thing that I'm NOT good at. But might as well try).

        

Floyd and Angela spent Father's Day at the Petting Zoo:

                     

....however, it appears that zoo management was NOT interested in adding a Puckett to their collection, so they had to bring Jackson back home.

You'll note that Jax is staring at the llama in this shot, instead of at Floyd, who (I presume) is operating the camera. He was doing that all day - staring at the animals. It seems that he was completely engrossed in the critters - wouldn't stop staring at them.

He did the same thing with me, the day before; Jax stayed with us on Friday night, as advertised. He wasn't a lot of trouble - as long as Ethel kept his head covered up with a towel, I didn't have to look at him (although, with Jackson's head being as big as it is, we had to use the beach towels). We played peekaboo for hours - he liked having his face behind the blanket, and then he liked to grab it and pull it down, but every time I said "Peekaboo!" it scared him.

But just before he left, I picked up the gitfiddle and started strumming a little - and Church Was Out. His head swiveled and he stared at the guitar, and -as long as noise was emanating from it - he wouldn't look away, at all, at anything. If I stopped playing, he would, eventually, allow his gaze to rest on something else, but as soon as I started playing again - his head would turn and he would lock onto target and stare, as though he thought he could figure out what was making that thing sound the way that it sounded. He was fascinated - transfixed .

If that period of time were any indication, then Jax won't have the standard Pucketty ADD issues that most of us suffer with - if anything, he's got Attention Excess Disorder ("I'm staring at a llama. Don't bother me - I'm staring at this llama. This is a llama, and....I'm staring at it. Llama....the world consists of a llama, and nothing else...in fact, it consists only of this llama - not any other llama...")

Most Puckettlings would say "A Llama - cool!...Okay, what else can I look at?" Jackso would stare at the llama until his gaze was physically forced away from it, and he saw a goat or a deer, whereupon that critter would become the new object of his concentration.

He does seem to be much more calm than most Pucketts - and, without a doubt, he's the quietest ever hatched. Not only that, but he can't stand loud noises - they startle him; most Pucketts MAKE loud noises, and we're never startled by them. I don't know which is louder, a rock concert or a Puckett family reunion, but I do know that the reunion will hit those decibel levels without aid of amplifiers or speakers.

Maybe this is the new breed - Puckettus Novus - maybe he'll be able to take all of the good attributes of my branch of the family, and combine them with a new sort of levelheadedness and steadiness that will result in him perhaps, actually, DOING something.

I can't wait to find out : )

        

Summer is coming. Like a freight train - we can't see the headlight yet, but we can feel the rumbling.

In the mean time, it's been nice.

According to the local paper, this has been the coolest June in the Valley of the Sun since 1913.


             


That's an interesting thought - it's REALLY interesting if one realizes that, in 1913, Maricopa County did NOT have five million people, all driving cars at the same time over a paved area the size of Connecticut (I can't find population figures older than 1950, when Phoenix has 108K people. It's a good bet that it was considerably smaller in 1913 :)

So, if this is the coolest June since 1913, and yet now we have all of this heat-producers in a huge heat-sink - what does that really say about the weather? It seems to me that producing that we're enjoying that nice, cool temperature under conditions that 1913 could not have imagined - which may mean that the actual weather conditions themselves haven't been experienced since (possibly) much further in the past.

Whatever the causes, and whatever the comparisons - I'm loving it.

Of course, all good things have to come to an end, and the forecast highs for the next four days is 102 F, 104 F, 105 F, and 103 F - which are about normal for this time of year. I'm not really looking forward to that, but it's a lot easier to take having had this nice, long cool spell. (It's also easier to take realizing that, one month from tomorrow, we leave for three weeks on Oahu).

Maia is really loving it - now that she's been shaved almost bald, she's jumping around and acting like a puppy. I'm ready to order a set of doggie clippers to keep her this way; I've thought about shaving Ethel to see if she'll start jumping around and licking me, too, but I don't know how I would hold her still while I worked her over with the clippers (Ethel, unlike Maia, has yet to learn the "stay" command).

When it hits 102 F in town tomorrow, it'll only be 97 or so at the house - and the same temp range at Lake Pleasant, which is where I'd like to go sailing tomorrow, if'n I can get Ethel out of the house. I've been invited to go wakeboarding again on Sunday - I might do it, if'n I can get Ethel out of the house (there's a definite theme here - a repeating issue - but I can't quite make it out).

Tonight Ethel has obligated us for Ugly Baby Duty - after only seven months, Floyd and Angela have decided to get out of the house for the night, and we have been drafted coerced shanghaied volunteered invited to keep the little darling overnight. I've tried to explain to Ethel that it's been seventeen years since we've had an infant in the house overnight - not only that, but we practiced Family Bed with Silas; when he would wake up, she's roll over, latch him on for nursing, and go back to sleep. We won't be doing that with little Jackson - it'll be rocking and walking and drivng the baby back to sleep at 3 AM. But Ethel (everybody prepare yourself for this - it's gonna be a shock. Get smelling salts and fans to bring yourselves back to consciousness after reading this) - Ethel just won't listen to me.

And why do I have this funny feeling that, just about the time that Jackson wakes up for his 3 AM temper tantrum, Ethel will suddenly come down with some menopausal ailment or other? "Honey - get the baby. I've got the hot flash/cold chills/leg cramp/mood swing/running-out-of-egg-cells galloping never-get-overs".

It's gonna be a long night. But I might take the kid out back, onto the back porch, into the cool of the evening - while we've still got a "cool of the evening".

Because Summer Is Coming.

        

"I may be going to hell in a bucket, baby,
 But at least I'm enjoying the ride..."
               --- Grateful Dead, "Hell in a Bucket.


I'm sitting here at the office, with my heel in a little icebucket, trying to recover from some peculiar combination of Plantar Fasciitis and Heel Spur Syndrome.


                                                


This happened five years ago, but as far as I can tell, it passed pretty quickly at that time. That's what happens when you get older - the body  takes longer to recover.

The first time, it took a whiel for me to notice the symptoms; when I finally did notice them, I said "Gee, I've got PF" and I went to see the orthodoc and he gave me some orthotics and the PF was manageable (I could run with it) and it was gone in a few weeks.

This time, the PF/HSS manifested itself immediately and catastrophically during a track workout while I was wearing racing flats. I realized that I couldn't run at all, so I tried to ellipticate, and that didn't work, so I saw the doc (he said take a week off from running) and I wound up taking several weeks off, while just swimming, and then when I started up again, it was still there - and tryng to run with it for the last month has altered my stride to the point that now I've got shin splints in the OTHER leg, and what feels like a torn hamstring or Piriformis Syndrome in the other hip (I'm also sitting on an ice bag).

This week has been particularly hard - I couldn't run at all on Monday. And it wasn't the PF/HSS - I mean that I tried to run, and I COULDN'T. My body simply refused to do the running.

So then I tried to ellipticate - I made it a half mile, and I quit. I didn't lift, I didn't swim, I didn't even do my pushups.

On Tuesday, I tried to run again, and it simply wasn't happening - I then dialed it back another 2 mph, and I was able to get started, and even build up to a normal pace, but three miles was it.

This morning, I intended to do my normal Wednesday track workout - but I realized before I finished the warmup that It Simply Wasn't Happening, and so I decided to change it to a 10 mile tempo run. About five miles in, I realized that I couldn't maintain tempo pace, so I dialed it back about 0.5 mph and tried to hold on, but I still quit around 8.5 instead of the 10 miles that I had intended.

"I grow old, I grow old
 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled"
   -- T.S. Elliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

I reckon that I'm gonna have to see the doctor. I must admit to a certain fear - that he'll tell me that nothing's wrong, and he'll use that phrase that I am growing to loathe - "With the advancing years..."

        

Here's one I saw the other day - a sign above a toilet that says "No Objects In Toilet":


                                      

Okay, fine. I won't leave these objects in your toilet.

Now, JUST WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH THEM?

That's a terrible thought.

I suppose that it's reasonable, though, given the way that our society is heading - I mean, if you're walking your dog through the park, and the dog leaves a "dividend", you're supposed to pick it up with a little scooper and put it in a bag and carry it home. Obviously, we need to do the same thing in public restrooms.

One wonders if the same thing will soon apply to urinals?....then I'd be walking around with a bag AND a bottle.