Moving the Blog!

I've decided to move my future blog posts to a new home - Blogger. The new Alan's Place has a few things going for it that this one does not, mostly related to ease of use in regards to uploading pictures and the like. So, if you want to see my future rantings, make sure to check it out.

Zombie Dogs Soon to Rule Over Us All

And on behalf of the entire population of the planet earth, I welcome our new masters and quickly point out that there are many others who are surely more savory and tasty than I. Surely you will need willing and complacent accessories to your dining, so count me in!

In a more serious vein, This story is neat in a real creepy way. Scientists managed to drain the blood of living dogs, replacing it with a near freezing saline solution. The animals stopped breathing, had no heartbeat or brain activity - they were clinically dead. Three hours later, their blood was replaced, and after a quick jump start of the ole' ticker, the dogs were revived.

Human trials "should be realised within a year". *Cue spooky, doomsday style music...*

Instant Classics Library from Amazon

So you have $8,000 burning a hole in your pocket, and and urgent desire to create your own library of the classics - what do you do? Shop around, buying each classic title individually? What a pain in the arse!

Well, you are in luck. You can buy 1,082 classic titles from Amazon for the low, low price of $7989.99. The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection weighs in at over 700 pounds, and the offer comes with free shipping! So hop right on that offer, and let me know how much shelf space those books take up, will you?

Wednesday Double Shot Surf Report

With the wind showing up for my lunch time surf breaks, I thought it might be a good idea to try a dawn patrol session today. To make a long story short, it was the best surf in weeks, and I made the most of it. The water was like sheet glass, with peaks jacking up and offering shoulders to rip on, with lots of speed. Damn, that was great!

Lunch was windy, choppy, mixed up, etc. After the morning session, it was definitely a let down. However, this is the norm here during spring, so perhaps more morning sessions will be on tap for me.

Tuesday Afternoon Surf Report

After being out of the water for almost one week, I was going surfing no matter what the conditions were. And today, they were small and junky, with a bit of wind added in for good measure. I made the best of the marginal conditions and had a good time getting back in the water again. It also looks like we'll be getting a bit of swell over the next few days.

Post Memorial Day Weekend Report

Last week was a bit of a traveling whirlwind for me. On Wednesday, I flew out to Philadelphia, PA for a sales presentation the following day. After the conclusion of our sales presentation, we got back on the plane and made our way back home the same day. Man, does air travel really suck now-a-days. Especially on the way back, when I sat next to a gentleman (and I use that term in the most loose sense possibe) who had yet to figure out what deodorant is used for. Talk about a long flight!

Getting home Thursday night, I had about 2 hours to pack my bags for a family trip out to Phoenix, AZ. We drove it, taking around 6 hours of drive time plus one stop each way - not too shabby when you take into account the little ones. As for Phoenix, well it was freaking hot. But I guess one should expect that in a DESERT. We watched my niece graduate, and then it was back on the road to San Diego, to salvage one day of the long weekend.

On Monday, we all went over to my parents' house and enjoyed some beautiful (not too hot, not too cold) weather, great food, and even better company. I was exhausted, but I guess that is what the work week is for - catching up with the weekend!

Tuesday Afternoon Surf Report

I almost decided to not go surfing today, due in large part to the cloudy, blustery weather we experienced yesterday. However, when 12:30 rolled around, I looked outside and the sun was burning through some low clouds. The wind was similarly low, and so I grabbed my CI single fin, and hoped for the best.

The waves were small (in the 3 foot range), but there were some nice shoulders to ride on, and I had three of the best waves I've had in a while. I'm damn glad I did go out, that is for sure. It looks like the conditions for the next few days will be the same, with a nice and juicy pulse (6 to 9 feet) coming in over the weekend from almost due west - perfect for North County! Keep your fingers crossed...

Multithreaded Programming w/ Delphi 5 on Windows XP

I have successfully solved a very nasty little programming problem which only appears to show up under Windows XP. First, a little backround: At my work, we provide loan calculation libraries to other parties, for use in their systems. One of our potential customers requested that we prove that our 32-bit Windows library is thread safe.

I knew that the library (written in Delphi 5) was currently not thread safe (it wasn't written by me!), but estimated that I could get it up to snuff in about a day or two. Before 'fixing' the library, I set out first of all to write a multithreaded client to prove that it was not thread safe. That way, I could then fix the DLL and then re-run the tests, hopefully proving that what was once broken was now fixed, etc.

Delphi is a great language to program in. It is object oriented, with full support for all the OOP buzzwords like: polymorphism, information hiding, etc. Couple that with a great support library and a lightning quick compiler, and you have a very great combination. So, I quickly whipped up an application that spawns 4 worker threads, each of which compute a different loan 4000 times. Each time through the calculation loop, it checks to see if the results returned from the thread-unsafe library have changed from the correct, base line results computed in a single thread at application initialization.

As expected, the app crashes hard with EInvalidPointer exceptions, etc. It is ugly indeed. So, I then go into the DLL and strategically place some critical sections to protect the vulnerable areas, and then run the multithreaded test again. And it still doesn't work. However, it DOES work on Windows boxes of the flavors 98 and 2000. Very odd.

It is hear that my 40 days in the programming wilderness begins. I write a second, simpler console based multithreaded client in the thoughts that perhaps the vcl thread was creating problems. That didn't do the trick. I simplified the test apps as much as possible, with no luck.

After three days of pounding my head against this programming brick wall, scouring the net via Google, I stumbled upon a reference to a global variable names IsMultiThread, supposedly set up by Delphi in System.pas. This variable is supposed to be automatically set to true whenever you use Delphi's TThread object, and one would guess that it should also be set for DLL projects. I decided to explicitly set this variable to True in the initialization section of the DLL, as well as in the test applications startup.

EUREKA! The problem was solved, and I was able to rest over the weekend. Except that 2 out of 3 kids were sick, but that is an entirely different saga. So, the moral of the story is that when writing a multithreaded library or application in Delphi 5, just go ahead and explicitly set IsMultiThread := true. I hope this post can help someone avoid the same problem again!

Tuesday Lunch Break Surf Report

Driving into work today, I went along the 101 and saw some very nice looking waves breaking all along North Country. While kicking myself for not getting out on a Dawn Patrol, I hoped that the waves and conditions would remain consisten, at least through my lunch.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. The wind kicked up, and the tide was changing during my lunch break surf, resulting in extremely choppy and mixed up waves. It appears as if we may be getting a nice little bump in the South swell near the end of the week, but it may be coming along with some inclement weather as well. d'oh!

Grid Game

The Grid Game is a very simple game that is almost hypnotic to watch once you set event in motion. The object is to see how long of a chain reaction you can generate by rotating one tile by 90 degrees. The game may more accurately by described as a chain reaction simulator, however it is fun none the less.

Does Your Commute Suck?

Here we are in the year 2005, and I still don't have a flying car. If there is one thing that visionary shows (like The Jetsons) have promised for the future that I would really like now, it would have to be the flying car.

Unfortunately, when thinking about it further, I seriously doubt if the flying car will ever be a viable, general consumer product. Think of the number of accidents each day on your local roads and freeways, caused by morons putting on makeup, talking on their cell phones, etc. Now imagine those same morons flying through the air, hitting something, and then careening to the earth in a huge, fiery explosion.

True, the average IQ of the earth may indeed rise for a period of time as the idots are culled from the population. However, the government is in charge of protecting everyone from themselves (especially the idiots), so I doubt this will ever come to pass. Unless they can figure out an automatic pilot functionality to take control of the vehicle out of a humans hands, and which will communicate with other vehicles in proximity, I just don't see this happening.

This article seems much more optimistic, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The Woo-Hoo! Monday Surf Report

Today, the conditions (as one might guess from the title) were extremely clean and glassy, with very little wind. The swell has backed off a bit from yesterday, but the set waves were still about shoulder high, with nice peaks peeling off long shoulders and fun rides. Let's hope these conditions hold or improve over the week!

Here are a few pictures of me from today's lunch:

Thursday Offshore Surf Report

Chest high sets + offshoe winds = fun surf! Mix in some exceptionally beautiful weather, and I can't think of a better way to spend my lunch hour. It felt great to get back in the water again after taking voer a week off due to rain, winds, and a trip to Disneyland. I'm planning on heading out tomorrow morning for a dawn patrol session, and hoping that the conditions hold!

Good Friday Surf Report

Well, another week and another set of storm clouds has passed over North San Diego county, dumping just enough rain to totally muck up the water for the next 72 hours or so. Well hell, at least it is a beautiful day out, and those clouds are gone from the horizon for the time being.

Thankfully, there isn't much swell in the water today, and it doesn't look like the situation will improve muc until Monday, when I'll be back in the H2O again! For those of you more adventurous and daring, the afternoons and evening over Easter weekend may see some wind swell, so you might get lucky.

Happy Easter, and see you all next week!

Thursday Afternoon Surf Report

I have surfed the last four days in a row, and am slowly getting back into shape after the weeks of no surf due to rain, run-off, etc. The week started out with some fairly good sized surf, with set wave heights in the head high range. As the week progressed, a rare pulse of swell activity visited us from the southwest, doing wonders for the beach breaks here in Encinitas. Tuesday and Wednesday saw some of the nicest, peeling waves at the beach since last summer, and combined with the amazing weather we had, brought out a few more surfers than average.

Today, the swell has dropped significantly and looks like it will continue to do so until the weekend, when there is a good chance that San Diego will be visited by rain again. This is unfortunate as it also looks like another nice southwest pulse will be coming in on Sunday and Monday, so I'll cross my fingers for no rain.

Big Day at Swamis

We've had some very large surf over the last few days, with the peak appearing later Wednesday afternoon and through most of Thursday. So, on Thursday I took some time off out of the water to take pictures of those lucky enough to be in the water and enjoying the magical rights at Swamis. Here are my pictures:

This woman was absolutely killing it out there:

One kneelo was in the lineup that I saw:

The set waves had nice open faces on them at first:

And as the wave made its way inside, this is what happened:

The area to the North was a bit more fickle, but a few nice rides showed their faces:

Nice bottom turn, followed by a sweet carve off the top of the wave:

It was definitely a good day for waves:

However, from the following picture you can tell than just about everyone and their mother were out there:

Tuesday Surf Report

Took my single fin out today on my lunch break surf for a change of pace, and hopefully a change of luck as well. Bingo! The waves were around chest high, with sets rolling in around shoulder to head high. Took off on a couple nice rides, and loved the carving feel of the board. Near the end of lunch, a huge cleanup set rolled through and gave my sinuses a thorough rinsing. Best lunch break surf session in a while!

The next few days, a large swell should be hitting our beaches, so take some time and enjoy the show. I hope to snap a few pictures if the swell hype doesn't kill it before it arrives.

The Crackers

Perhaps one of the more anticipated events in the art world for 2005 was when “The Gates” arrived in New York City's Central Park. However, there are other, lesser known artists who have been inspired by this project, and yet lack the recognition of the big names in the art world. “The Crackers” is one such project - enjoy!

This Place Sucks

No, I'm not talking about this place (although due to a lack of updates on my part, it has sort of sucked lately). Instead, I'm talking about this humorous movie sent to me by one of my many intrepid internet humor seekers. The audio is taken from several choice scenes from Office Space, whereas the video is taken from the old Justice League of America cartoons. So just sit back, watch the movie, and relax!

After the Deluge Report

There hasn't been much happening on the surfing front as of late, due to the deluge we've experienced here in SoCal over the last few weeks. To get an idea of just how much rain we have received, San Diego's average annual rainfall is in the neighborhood of 7 inches. This year (which starts in July, I believe), we are about 13 inches OVER that average.

One of the local lakes (Lake Hodges) was down to 20% of its maximum volume in October. Now, it is overflowing (as it is designed to do) for the first time since 1998!

Thus, with all of the runoff from the swollen rivers, the local beaches are a disaster area. The water looks like Willy Wonka's chocolate lake, and to top it off, it would be wise to step carefully if you decide to stroll along the beach for the next few days!