mattriffle's Journal

www.perl.com redirect?

mattriffle — 2008-01-17T22:01:52+00:00

Hello, and welcome again to what is apparently the "something's wrong with perl.com" blog. In our last episode, the domain was on hold at the registry.

In today's exciting episode, or at least, as I type this, www.perl.com redirects to one of those spammy link farm pages.

Anyone know what's up with that?

www.perl.com is (temporarily?) gone

mattriffle — 2007-08-23T15:13:55+00:00

Looks like the domain perl.com was put on hold at the registry.

Anybody have any idea what's up with that? Just curious, and hoping to see it again soon. :)

-Matt

An Alan Smithee Present

mattriffle — 2004-12-11T22:40:17+00:00

So when we got home from some errands today, one of Jenn's Christmas presents was sitting in a padded envelope in the mailbox, with a very distinct return address. I saw it just as she got to the box, so there was nothing I could do.

I was a bit surprised by this, as I've very specifically had everything shipped to the office. It seems when they folded the receipt so the address showed through the packing slip, they left my billing address visible, not the shipping one. Grr.

Jenn claims to "not remember" where it was from, but I'm not falling for that one. Used that trick myself when I was sixteen years old, and my girlfriend just plain told me over the phone what she got me. It took a good 10 minutes of "Huh? What did you say?" before she believed I didn't hear. And even then, I imagine it was only because she really wanted to believe.

Anyway, this present has been completely ruined for me, so I signed the gift tag "Alan Smithee." I realize I'm pouting like a child, but hey, it's Christmas -- if you can't act like a child then, when can you?

On a completely unrelated note, I'd just like to point out that a few years ago I got winded walking from my car into my office. Today I walked 3.2 miles in 45 minutes (just walking -- it's a crosstraining day) and was able to go on with my day as if I'd spent that time lying on the couch. It's nice.

-Matt

Triple Your Charitable Donation

mattriffle — 2004-11-02T16:05:57+00:00

[Disclaimer: I do realize I'm pushing an American organization to an international audience. Research is universal, though.]

Well, it was 2 months ago today that I last posted. That post contributed to the irritation of a former pumpking slash maintainer of the CPAN.

Where does one go from there? Why, now I'm here to ask for money. ;)

My wife and I have joined the American Stroke Association's Train To End Stroke program. In a nutshell, we are raising $7600 for the ASA, and training to run a half-marathon this coming January.

You can read all about our efforts here:

http://www.jennandmatt.com/ttes/

Here are a few facts about stroke, copied from there:

Every 45 seconds, someone in America has a stroke.
700,000 people will suffer a stroke this year.
170,000 people will be killed this year by a stroke.
According to one study, nearly 1/3 of stroke victims are under age 65.

Let me get the Perl hook in at this point -- I'm offering to double-match any donations I receive through this posting. For instance, if you donate $50 through the secure link at the URL above, I will donate an additional $50 to the ASA, plus another $50 to the Perl Foundation (up to $600 total donation on my part).

I should also note that if you itemize on your tax return, the donation is deductible.

So, why are we doing this? In part it's because we wanted a structured program to get in better shape, honestly. But the research the ASA is doing is very important, most of all.

My family lost my Aunt Janet to stroke when she was still in her thirties. I was a small child at the time, and my only memories of her are fragments of a trip we took to her house in Michigan a year or two before she died.

Her being exasperated as my first shot at the mini-golf course skipped out of play and in to the parking lot.
Her being exasperated as my misinterpretation of her shower instructions resulted in the bath mat in the shower, and a flooded bathroom.
Her being exasperated as I finished a McDonald's hamburger (a feat for me in those days) only to promptly throw it back up after gagging on a stray onion (still don't like those) that was in the last bite.

As you can see, I was pretty exasperating in those days. I'd like to think I'm not now, and I wish she were here to see that.

The point is, given the statistics, every day there are a bunch of little kids like I was, suffering similar losses. I can't help my Aunt; I can try to help others. So that's why I'm here asking for money.

Thanks for listening.

-Matt

Pittsburgh Perl Job

mattriffle — 2004-09-02T15:08:13+00:00

I'm looking to hire a programmer at work.

Check it out if you are in/around Pittsburgh and are looking for a job.

-Matt

Forty-Eight (an OSCON wrapup)

mattriffle — 2004-08-01T20:12:53+00:00

48.

That's how many books we bought at Powell's over the course of two trips to the main store, one to the technical store, and a brief stop at the airport kiosk on the way home.

As I've said many times before: we may be addicted to buying books, but it's still cheaper and safer than, say, crack, or even cigarettes.

Here are some software packages that are new (to me) that I learned about at OSCON and plan to try out:

I also came away with my yearly shot of confidence in Parrot/Perl 6 (especially with Dan Sugalski's talk on how he's putting Parrot to use at his workplace).

All in all, it was a very enjoyable and informative week. I look forward to finding out where next year's will be. :)

-Matt

Trolling for a Gmail Account

mattriffle — 2004-06-21T17:56:38+00:00

If anybody happens to have a spare Gmail invite they wouldn't mind sending to mattr (at) riffnet.com, I'd be really grateful. :)

-Matt

One of Those Days

mattriffle — 2004-05-03T20:17:54+00:00

Ever have one of those days where you did tons of stuff, yet got nothing done?

I'm having one right now. Well, realistically, I just feel like I am because programming tasks (of which I've done none) feel more concrete to me than managerial tasks (of which I've done plenty).

Such is the life of a programmer gone pointy-haired, I guess.

-Matt

Movin' Out

mattriffle — 2004-04-26T02:16:16+00:00

We saw the National Tour of Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp's "Movin' Out" tonight.

It takes 20-some Billy Joel songs from throughout the years and pieces them together to tell the story of 5 friends from high school through the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

The production is done on 2 levels, literally: a band above the stage that does all the singing, and dancers on the stage that act out scenes without dialogue. The dancing is heavily influenced by ballet, though there were 2-3 breakdancing moves that I happened to catch, including the backspin. :)

I generally dislike musicals that have no dialogue, and the format of "Movin' Out" definitely takes some getting used to. It also took me a while to adjust to someone other than Billy Joel singing songs that were so familiar to me. Nevertheless, I was hooked within the first 20 minutes, and can definitely recommend this musical to others, especially if you happen to be a Joel fan. Just make sure to read the Act summaries in the program, and you'll follow along just fine.

Comment Here

-Matt

Quick OS X Question

mattriffle — 2004-04-13T16:28:14+00:00

Is it possible to have OS X require a password on return from sleeping, but not from the screen saver?

Doesn't look like it, since the one checkbox in Sys Prefs->Security mentions both of them, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I guess I should just set the delay for the screen saver to a really high value and go on with life...

-Matt

RFC 1

mattriffle — 2004-04-07T17:15:39+00:00

As seen on Slashdot, RFC 1 is 35 years old today.

It's an interesting read. I'm kinda surprised it's never occurred to me to check it out before. ;)

-Matt

Tasteless Pet Humor

mattriffle — 2004-04-03T16:12:49+00:00

Why can't our cat Willie spell his own name?

-Matt

Family Guy!

mattriffle — 2004-03-27T16:27:38+00:00

Family Guy is coming back!

I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've been hooked on this show ever since the pilot episode, when Kool-Aid Man burst through the courtroom wall, only to slink back out in embarrassment. :)

Now if only another network would pick up new episodes of the other great shows that Fox killed through poor scheduling (Andy Richter, Undeclared, Futurama, probably-soon-to-be-gone Arrested Development)...

-Matt

Yawn

mattriffle — 2004-03-21T15:22:33+00:00

My sleep tonight, such as it was, was framed by 2 phone calls from the office. The first at 1AM, the second at around 6AM.

I know, lots of people get much less sleep. Saturday night is supposed to be when I get caught up, though. ;)

In other news, on Friday I got the pleasure of riding in a car that topped 100mph several times in the decidedly non-rural area around downtown Pittsburgh.

When I related this experience to my wife, she understandably asked that I avoid doing that in the future, but then added "atleast until you get life insurance" (which has been on the TODO list for over a year, I admit).

</whine>

-Matt

W32/Bagle.j@MM SpamAssassin Rules

mattriffle — 2004-03-03T14:56:08+00:00

These are admittedly not pretty (or condensed as much as they could be), but they work:

http://www.jennandmatt.com/misc/bagle/

On a post formatting note: is there any way I'm missing to do something similar to <pre> tags in a post? I couldn't get the rules to format correctly inline, hence the URL.

-Matt

Sidewalk go boom

mattriffle — 2004-02-29T20:44:18+00:00

I put these up for my Dad to see (to give me more specific advice on what to do about it), but other people might find them interesting:

http://www.jennandmatt.com/misc/sidewalk/

My wife and I were on the sidewalk when it happened. No weight jokes, please. ;) It was a very slow sinking, presumably because the rebar bent instead of breaking.

-Matt

Uncle Webmaster

mattriffle — 2004-02-28T04:00:21+00:00

Since I was putting pictures of my new nephew up on my web site pretty much 10-15 minutes after my brother-in-law sent them out, he and I have agreed that he'll send them just to me and I'll point everyone else to the site when it's updated. Thus, I am Jacob's first webmaster. :)

I thought it would be cool to register jacobdwallace.com for him, so I did (no other .com variation was available).

This was all well and good, till I remembered I have 5 other nieces and nephews, all with their own names and nicknames. In the end it cost me $120, and that's with my $8/domain year staff rate.

I'm trying not to think about the overall cost of keeping them all active for the next decade or so. :)

-Matt

It's a boy!

mattriffle — 2004-02-26T00:16:24+00:00

My newest nephew, Jacob Darrell Wallace, was born this morning. He weighed in at 8lbs 8oz, and is 21.5 inches long.

I tried very hard to will him to be a leap year baby*, but apparently he was too anxious to get going to wait that long. :)

-Matt

* - The predominant view in my family was that being born on 2/29 would be a bad thing. I, however, think otherwise. When Jacob is 60 and wants to know why he can't tell people it's his 15th birthday, I (or my ghostly spirit, as the case will probably be) will let him know I did the best I could.

Gay Penguins

mattriffle — 2004-02-23T15:23:25+00:00

A version of this article appeared in the Sunday paper around here:

They're in love. They're gay. They're penguins.

Rather interesting. The only disturbing part to me is that a lot of people probably read that and thought the penguins were condemned to penguin hell.

-Matt

the kitten who can name fruit

mattriffle — 2004-02-03T01:24:57+00:00

While fiddling around with our web stats at work today, I noticed that somebody found us through Google with the search the kitten who can name fruit.

Indeed, I'm proud to say that we're the #1 result for that search. I'm amused to say that #2 is a podunk little hosting company that's just copied our page -- that's a not-so-rare occurrence. ;)

-Matt

Old Fashioned

mattriffle — 2004-01-26T16:02:45+00:00

A kid just showed up at my door offering to shovel the snow off my sidewalk for a dollar. :) That seems like a price from a different era.

I'm going to give her $5 (big spender, I know) but just between you and me I wouldn't have blinked if she'd asked for $10-$15-$20. I really need to get going to work, and wasn't looking forward to having to deal with the sidewalk beforehand.

UPDATE: Jenn points out that the girl's out there spreading salt on our sidewalk, as well. Now that's service.

UPDATE #2: Jenn points out that the girl has disappeared after talking to her mother. Perhaps she didn't get permission to use all their salt on the neighbor's sidewalks...

-Matt

That does it....

mattriffle — 2003-12-17T01:37:09+00:00

I know that every generation says "I wish we had toys like that when I was a kid," but...

That does it. Commencing reversion to childhood in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....

-Matt

Do you believe in love at first sight?

mattriffle — 2003-11-11T15:57:11+00:00

I do now. *

-Matt

* - My wife understands -- she fell in love with it, also.

Make Your Own Double-Feature

mattriffle — 2003-11-09T19:00:06+00:00

Jenn and I wanted to go to the drive-in last night, to see Scary Movie 3 and School of Rock. It was only 35° F, though, so instead we went to the Waterfront and saw a matinee of Scary Movie 3 (which I'd give 2 stars out of 4), ate, went Christmas shopping, then saw the evening showing of School Of Rock (4 stars, easy).

In other news, I've been looking for an adult-sized bop bag, since my requests for a heavy punching bag at the office have not yet been taken seriously.

Last night, I found it. If only it didn't take 5 years to inflate...

-Matt

I feel so l33t...

mattriffle — 2003-10-03T18:55:15+00:00

My first patch to bugtraq.

I'm currently getting a flood of bounces and autoreplies from list subscribers...

-Matt

The Plot Thickens

mattriffle — 2003-10-03T14:50:40+00:00

ICANN (finally) formally demands that Verisign suspend it's SiteFinder "service."

I have little hope they'll comply -- if they had any respect for/fear of ICANN at all, they wouldn't have done it to begin with.

-Matt

Hot Tip (Perl Cookbook, 2nd Ed.)

mattriffle — 2003-08-27T19:21:03+00:00

The Perl Cookbook 2nd Edition is now listed as in-stock at bookpool.com. My order has been placed. :)

-Matt

I didn't sign up for this...

mattriffle — 2003-08-26T16:06:18+00:00

Warning: no Perl content to be found within.

So, when we moved into our new (first) house a few months ago, we started fostering* kittens for Animal Friends, where my wife works.

This was sold to me as some sort of utopian access to unlimited kitten cuteness, available whenever I needed a pick-me-up. And, at first, it was. The first four kittens we had were wonderful, so much so that we ended up adopting one of them (yes, he only has one eye; he doesn't realize or care about that, though, and neither do we).

The next three were very young, and my wife spent weeks bottle-feeding them every 3 hours, around the clock. It seemed like they were going to make it, but then we lost them one-by-one over a week's time, due to a virus their little immune systems couldn't fend off. That was really hard. (I made a web site for them.)

At that point, I was ready to step back from this for a bit. However, my wife brought home three more, who, I was assured, were in fine health. Last night we lost one of them, though, again due to sudden illness.

This isn't what I signed up for. :(

I have a funny "bat in the house" story, but I'll save that for some other, less depressing time. Sorry to be so dreary.

-Matt

* - Why would a kitten need fostered? Animal Friends doesn't adopt out kittens until after they are spayed/neutered, and tested for feline leukemia and FIV (feline AIDS). They have to be a certain age/weight to do those things, so they stay at a foster house while they are growing, so as not to take shelter space away from adoptable animals.

Camel Shirt

mattriffle — 2003-07-25T01:26:35+00:00

I accidentally wore my Perl Camel shirt out this evening. I usually don't because I don't feel like explaining it to people.

The waitress at the restaurant was puzzled, but the Cashier at Target just said "Thinkgeek?"

Dunno what to make of that...

-Matt

OSCON Wrapup

mattriffle — 2003-07-12T22:14:00+00:00

The trip to the zoo was excellent. I got to talk with all kinds of interesting people: Allison Randall, Nat Torkington, David Wheeler, Robert Spier, Graham Barr, and Dieter from pobox.com, to name a few.

I came away with several business leads, as well as opportunities for some more sponsorship of Perl-related sites. Plus, Jenn got to see the penguins, which is always a good thing. :)

The trip home was more tolerable than expected. A four hour flight to Atlanta, a 2.5 hour layover there (where we met the world's most cheerful women, who were working the breakfast rush at Popeye's), and then 1.5 hours back to Pittsburgh.

The combination of not sleeping at all overnight and losing three hours to the time zone change has been interesting, though.

Anyway, the conference was great. Can't wait until next year.

-Matt