Tim Hortons (a coffee/pastry fast-food chain owned by Wendys Corporation) is running a contest called "Roll Up The Rim To Win." They've run this contest in the past as well. I really hate this contest. On each paper cup, under the lip, there's text which indicates whether you've won a prize or not.
The reason I hate this contest is I end up just about ripping my nails out try to "Roll Up The Rim." About the only way I can reliable read the text is to take scissors to the cup and cut the rim up and then flatten out the lip using my thumbs on a hard surface.
I've got to think they make it difficult to get to on purpose. In the past month, I've ripped my thumbnail and permanantly damage my teeth trying to reveal that stupid text, all for a free cup of coffee and a donut.
Lately I've been thinking about building a WYSIWYG XML editor to use within a content management. I've never been a huge fan of storing pure HTML as content, because you're extremely limited in what you can do with the content. So, I've been re-reading some information on building an browser-based XML editor. I may decide to tackle creating a cross browser (i.e. IE6+/Mozilla v1.2+) XML editor, in the meantime, here are a couple links:
I'm always a sucker for stories about animals who help to save people.
Explosives sniffer dog Buster unearthed a hidden cache of arms from an enemy camp in the southern Iraqi village of Safwan writes Nick Parker of The Sun, in this shared report from the front line.- Sky News
American troops on Tuesday rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been held as a prisoner of war in Iraq since she and other members of her unit were ambushed March 23, the Defense Department announced.
I've got to confess, I really don't understand this—ok, I understand the words on the page, just not the view points expressed in them. I can understand people not wanting innocent people dying, but Saddam's killed way more Iraqi citizen then will probably end up losing there life during this conflict (provided he doesn't resort to chemical warfare on his own people.)
Relations will be further rent by a second poll, in Le Monde, showing that only a third of the French felt that they were on the same side as the Americans and British, and that another third desired outright Iraqi victory over "les anglo-saxons".
If I happen to be connected to the 'net and I'm running listening to mp3s, you'll be able to get realtime updates on what I'm listening to. I'm sure you're all ecstatic to see what music I listen to, but I thought it might be an interesting feature.
I'm also linking the band name to the Artist Direct web site, so you can read more about the band. I may change it to VH1's site—because I think I can always link directly to the band's page—but Artist Direct generally seems to have more information on each band. If anyone knows of a better universal artist database, post a comment and let me know.
I found a pretty cool Winamp Plug-in on oddsock.org today called "doSomething". The you can set the plug-in up to do a number of actions when Winamp changes songs—one of which is to perform a GET operation on a URL. Unfortunately, there appears to be a bug in the event handler that handles the actions when Winamp is either closed or a playing song has stopped. So, I had to create a hack to indicated when I'm offline by checking the length of the current song and when the song started. If no updates have occurred within that time, then I set the status to "offline"
Download the plug-in here:
US Marines moved into the southern Iraqi town of Shatrah today to recover the body of a dead comrade which had been hanged in the town square, officers said.
Matt Liotta suggested on the CFCDev listserv that a "bakeoff" occur to get some comparison metrics on all the different proposed frameworks and methodologies which would leverage the capabilites of CFMX.
It appears that several developers are game to this idea and the current concensus is for everyone to write a "Blog" application in CFMX. Here's the original message from Matt:
It seems that since the release of CFMX many CF developers have been rethinking how they build CF applications thanks to new abilities through the use of CFCs and/or tighter Java integration. This has led to quite a lot of discussion over frameworks and methodologies as of late. I thought it might be interesting to have a bakeoff to get some comparison metrics on these different techniques.
The idea would be to take one set of application requirements and then build an application using each of these techniques. Metrics like time taken to develop, lines of code, performance, etc could all be captured for each. Obviously, developing all of these applications would take a considerable amount of time. However, if many people were interested we could each take one technique each and then share our results.
- Matt Liotta via CFCDev
How come weekend trips wear you out so much? I guess it's the lack of sleep, but the Monday after a weekend trip always leaves me desiring more sleep. I really miss the days of being able to sleep until 11am, getting up at between 6 and 7am on the weekends really stinks.
The trip to Jenn's house went pretty well. My puppy (Maddie) and Jenn's brother's dog (Sadie) played pretty aggresively, so they had to be watched pretty closely. They both seem to have a blast, but if you don't make them split up from time to time, they'll never stop playing. Maddie definitely demonstrates alpha dog traits—any time Sadie had something Maddie would go take it from her. She's also listening less and less—I think I need to spend more time on training and I'm seriously considering obedience training.
On the drive home last night, my parent's called and said they were in the Hilliard area. We were still about an hour outside of Hilliard, but my parents managed to find something to keep themselves busy until we got home. It was nice to see them. It's kind of sad, 'cause I think my dad was more interested in seeing the puppy than he was seeing me. :) I guess that's what it must be like to be a parent. It was a nice little visit and I'm glad they were able to stop by.
DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE?: U.S. military to expel FOX NEWS CHANNEL's Geraldo Rivera from Iraq after violating rule, rival CNN claimed Monday morning; giving away crucial details of future military operations during live broadcast... Rivera drew a map in the sand indicating the position where the unit which he was embedded with was located, where they were going... Members of the 101st Airborne Division will escort Rivera to the border with Kuwait, said CNN, quoting a Pentagon official... Developing...
A friend forwarded me this link, and I thought it was an
interesting way of expressing your opinion. The site
designer is using a headline from around the world as
inspiration to express his views—while also using it
as a method to improve his design skills.
NOTE:I think understanding all points/sides to any situation is important. The more you read about oposing views to a situation, the more it helps you to understand the overall picture.
Ten years ago, this would have been a dream concert for me. I'm still a big fan of Dream Theater and Fates Warning, so I'm definitely planning on trying to make a show, but I really got bored with Queensryche after the album "Empire." I'd much rather see DT/FW headline, w/Queensryche opening!
Dream Theater/Queensryche/Fates Warning Announce Tour!
Jim Davis over at "The Depressed Press of the Boston" web site recently posted a pretty good guide on ColdFusion and how it handles variables. It goes into a lot of depth and looks like a very good resource—especially for those new to the ColdFusion world.