Just another Halloween…

So last night a kid who honestly was probably too old to be trick-or-treating said, “thank you SO much” very sarcastically when I dropped one small piece of candy into his pillowcase and it stuck very conspicuously near the top, so it was obvious how little I gave him.

I immediately had negative thoughts about his reaction, but I had nothing to say because honestly, he was right. It was pretty stingy. But the problem was, we only bought one bag of candy this year, not knowing how many kids to expect, and it turned out to be a busier-than-usual year. (Most years we buy 2-3 bags and have 2+ bags’ worth left over at the end of the night.)

I started the night giving each kid 2 pieces, but I quickly realized that at that rate I was going to run out before 7 PM, so it was time to dial it back.

So yeah, I guess I deserved to get called out by a snotty 13-year-old for my less-than-copious candy offerings. Some people might say kids shouldn’t act so entitled but honestly, this is part of the social contract we agree to when we decorate the front of our house and turn on the porch light on October 31. Kids are going to come to our door for the express purpose of us putting a reasonable amount of candy into whatever receptacle they happen to be carrying, and one “fun size” Twix is not a reasonable amount.

On a more positive note, not only did it feel like a “normal” year last night, but SLP and I even managed to watch both Halloween and The Shining in their entirety, without falling asleep. (Well… she may have dozed off briefly around the time Dick Halloran was sensing the call to leave his Miami retreat.)

Am I the only person who thinks coaxial cable connectors suck?

It’s no secret that I hate cords. In fact, one of my earliest blog entries, dating all the way back to April 2002, covered the topic. That’s how much I hate them.

But what I really hate, even more than cords themselves, is the craptastic connectors on coaxial cable (i.e. the kind of cable used for cable TV). They suck! They are utterly terrible! The push-on kind are at least somewhat easy to use, but they can slide loose very easily. The screw-on kind, the much more common kind, are just plain absolutely terrible. If the cable isn’t lined up precisely, you can turn it and turn it and it won’t screw on. Other times, the moving screw-on tip doesn’t move freely enough, and when you try to turn it — if you can at all — it causes the entire cable to turn with it. Worthless!

I’m just in the process of mounting a flat-panel TV on the bedroom wall and moving our cable modem to a new room, hence the need to deal with these stupid cables and, as usual, piss and moan about how much they suck. But now, the whole world can know that I hate them! Am I the only one???

More stupid web tricks coming your way…

I realize I’ve been working with PHP for too long when I get an idea like “I wonder exactly how birth rate affects population levels” and the first thing I think of is, “well why don’t I just build a PHP app to figure it out?”

This is the result of such thinking: Population Trajectory Calculator. It’s the newest addition to my Stupid Web Tricks page, and the first that’s not just JavaScript triggering an irritating pop-up.

This is probably just as pointless though, but it was a fun little exercise, and it’s starting to give me more ideas, which is always dangerous. Before long I’ll have built a web-based version of Oregon Trail.

I’m not kidding.

(Well, OK, I hope I am.)