Stuff. And things.
I haven't posted in ages, so to get me going again, 4 random slices of life. In this edition, we have Shakespeare, cookies, soccer, and the Java Messaging Service for your enjoyment. This was mostly written last weekend, of course, but I ended up being lazy again, despite the point of the exercise being to break it.
Shakespearean Adventures
Recently, I've attempted to see a production of Twelfth Night. Note the word "attempted;" it ended up taking three tries. On Saturday, I didn't really look at the map closely, and got lost wandering around Brooklyn where I entered random discount stores. Thursday I had my head on straight more, but a torrential downpour started just around the time I wanted to leave. I'm talking really nasty. This was about the first time I wanted a car since I've been in New York; I like driving in the rain, and it would keep me non-soaked. The idea of getting soaked, going to a hot and steamy underground where the subway would probably be running late, and then getting to get re-soaked when I walked from the stop to the theatre didn't excite- especially when combined with the possibility that the play might be cancelled due to, say, 2 people showing up. So I enjoyed a Magic: Online crash instead that night.
Friday, the closing day, I got to see the production. It was actually quite good; they played it straight, and did the best they could to make it still work in modern times. Good choreography and emphasis on lines to make it clear what they were saying and all. As usual, the Toby Belch / Aguecheek / Feste combination was the most amusing, with all three doing excellent jobs. Feste was played by a woman- which I thought was an excellent choice, and actually works better with a lot of lines ("come to me in my bedchambers later," "By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast," etc.). Plus, the actress could actually sing and did the songs properly, occasionally singing random lines when appropriate as well. Belch & Aguecheek attempted to join in a few times as well, being predictably horrible. Aguecheek did probably the only role that I as an actor could have done, playing up Sir Dork to an extreme. The swordfights were all very silly and played for humor, which was probably the right choice. (In a weird coincidence, the actor for Sir Toby Belch was the same as one I saw in a tiny production in Washington, DC of a different play. Go figure.)
The Viola-Olivia-Orsino main plot is still a bit too ridiculous and lesser, but it works. One of Orsino's stewards- Valentine- was also played by a woman, although dressed and seeming a man. Considering that the entire reason for Viola to play dress-up falls apart if Orsino allows women into his entourage, it merely becomes creepy that Orsino apparently enjoys having a bunch of androgynous men-women around him. Olivia was solid, and still has my favorite line in the play: "We allowed your approach rather to wonder at you than to hear you." I think my boss went off to some interviewees at an agency with pretty much that expectation, considering the quality of the submitted resumes (how can you misspell your high school?!).
Today, I attempted to see the free Shakespeare-in-the-Park version of Macbeth. Unfortunately, due to a combination of not doing the curse-dispelling act in high school along with not researching properly, I did not get a ticket for a free production; I thought you just lined up and got in, first come-first serve. I remember laughing at the "Buy tickets online" button next to the review- "Ha, an artifact! Tickets for a free play!" Oh well, a constitutional through Central Park and back never hurts.
Cookies
So, yeah, I got some Organic Cookie Mix at Whole Foods Market sometime back on a whim. See what it's like and all. Well... they were awful. I don't know if it's just that I didn't cook them enough, or what. But they ended up being like eating brown sugar straight, at best. These organic mixes seem to have problems like that; I didn't like the Organic Macaroni & Cheese mix either.
Luckily, there is a happy ending to this story. But first, an interlude. I had what was perhaps the closest thing to a near-mugging recently; it's hard to tell. I was taking a walk along the East Side riverfront last Saturday- a very inefficient way to go Uptown, but I actually haven't explored the east-of-the-highway section very much. This was a properly dark and stormy moist Saturday night, I'll add. Two guys and a girl- all of them rather fat, I might add- were off to the side; I didn't judge them of much interest. I could have kept going straight, but heck, I'm exploring, so I took the turn off into that part of the park to take a look at the building there. One of 'em asks me if I have a cigarette, which I politely decline- but the person kept on approaching me. Realizing that it's pretty dark and that there wasn't anybody about due to the rain (there'd been a bit more people farther south), I smile, wave, and back off. I mean, sure, it probably didn't matter and I'm probably perpetuating racial stereotypes of being unwilling to interact (the three were Hispanic), but I didn't feel like taking chances. Maybe I should have taken Martial Arts lessons when my parents offered.... nah.
(Side, personal note: Video games utterly failed to corrupt me when I was young. I was a total pacifist back when I was young. This means never fighting back in schools and not being interested in violence in the slightest. I took Square One over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So when my parents got it into their heads that Tae Kwon Do lessons might be a good idea, I vigorously protested, and won. It wasn't until High School that I could vaguely stomach the idea of violence as entertainment. Discounting video games and war, of course. Mmm, World Conquest.)
Anyway, the happy part is that I continued walking north, and the pre-made Whole Foods cookies were on sale this week. 4 bucks rather than 5 and a half. Awesome. Those who know me from Oberlin know that this is one of my weaknesses, and the Whole Foods pre-made versions are pretty much home-made (albeit more expensive than it would be truly do them home-made, but this way, there's no time investment). Yay! I am now stocked up and have a cookie-fort.
Soccer
Argentina-Mexico was a great game, for those that didn't catch it. Aggressive play, lots of near-opportunities and some great saves. That said... Mexico got completely robbed by the refs, much like the US. Now, Mexico, despite playing very well in the first half, did seem to be choking in the second half & in overtime; they are notorious chokers. They're also notorious divers, too.
Doesn't change the fact that the calls just didn't go their way, though. They got up 1-0, and it was a complete BS call that gave the Argentines their equalizer (granted, not directly, but they forced a corner kick, which Argentina DID score off of). Later on, an Argentine player runs up and pushes a Mexican who's trying to get away, then dramatically flops to the ground, and gets the Mexican a yellow card?! Riiiiiight. The Argentines, in general, seemed to be trying to challenge Mexico's reputation for diving by doing it better themselves. Meh.
I will say that the Portugal-Netherlands match was somewhat amusing; you have to wonder if they had a bet beforehand to see who could rack up the most cards. The announcers kept on blaming the ref, but I don't know; it's not the ref's fault if the players decide to go to war on each other. Perhaps he didn't hand out enough cards in the first half, which caused the players to take matters into their own hands. Beats me.
The England-Portugal game was certainly gripping, but I have to wonder if it would have been different if Beckham hadn't been injured. A crazy goal-scorer like him presumably would have helped in a few key places. That said, I'm not sorry at all to see Portugal advance.
And the France-Brazil game? That was an excellent game to watch. France played extraordinarily well; I got the feeling that as long as France stayed on the attack, they were good. They practically never let the Brazilians get in close in the center; the very few times Brazil did, they always seemed as if they were about to suddenly score a goal. Seems about right to me.
I'll just note that it's entirely possible we'll see Germany vs. France in the finals. Germany already defeated Poland earlier in the tournament...
SF vs. JMS
Meanwhile. On the technical side of things, I've gotten to wrangle with the JMS framework. A bit of background. My fairly cool developer co-worker, bastionofsanity, handed in his two-weeks notice three weeks ago. So in the last week he was at the company, we were going over various code only he'd written, and making certain code that we jointly written (but generally tested on his box) worked fine when deployed on my box. Now, JMS = "Java Messaging Service." One way to set up the JMS is a very simple publish/subscribe model: there's a topic, and you can tune in to it. If you subscribe, you get all messages passed on it. If you publish to a topic, all subscribers hear about it. Very simple. Plus, JMS has very very strong delivery guarantees. Heck, with persistent messages, you can theoretically disconnect and unplug your computer, turn it back on, and still get the message. It will do all the low-level wrangling for you to insure messages are delivered once-and-only-once. Worked fine on his machine, when everything was set up in one spot. Unfortunately... when moved to a different computer (i.e. mine), the magical world of non-determinism was entered. Now, sometimes the message gets to everybody. Sometimes not! You can never be sure. We set up watchers on both computers along with the main requester, and often times only one party will see the reply (one of the watchers, or the original requester who's supposed to process the reply). Sometimes nobody sees it! Fun. The only way this makes even a scintilla of sense is if a really short timeout was being set that was around the same time as the processing time. Then random network jiggles could explain why sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. Except it's not; we're setting it to two freakin' minutes, when this takes place in less than a tenth of a second.
This, of course, leaves a bug in OpenJMS as a possibility. But it'd have to be a pretty catastrophic bug, and I'd be shocked if it'd still gone unnoticed by now (it's at version 0.768 or thereabouts, which sounds like you'd have minimal functionality).
So, yeah. Basically... ?????????? This is a puzzler.
Shakespearean Adventures
Recently, I've attempted to see a production of Twelfth Night. Note the word "attempted;" it ended up taking three tries. On Saturday, I didn't really look at the map closely, and got lost wandering around Brooklyn where I entered random discount stores. Thursday I had my head on straight more, but a torrential downpour started just around the time I wanted to leave. I'm talking really nasty. This was about the first time I wanted a car since I've been in New York; I like driving in the rain, and it would keep me non-soaked. The idea of getting soaked, going to a hot and steamy underground where the subway would probably be running late, and then getting to get re-soaked when I walked from the stop to the theatre didn't excite- especially when combined with the possibility that the play might be cancelled due to, say, 2 people showing up. So I enjoyed a Magic: Online crash instead that night.
Friday, the closing day, I got to see the production. It was actually quite good; they played it straight, and did the best they could to make it still work in modern times. Good choreography and emphasis on lines to make it clear what they were saying and all. As usual, the Toby Belch / Aguecheek / Feste combination was the most amusing, with all three doing excellent jobs. Feste was played by a woman- which I thought was an excellent choice, and actually works better with a lot of lines ("come to me in my bedchambers later," "By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast," etc.). Plus, the actress could actually sing and did the songs properly, occasionally singing random lines when appropriate as well. Belch & Aguecheek attempted to join in a few times as well, being predictably horrible. Aguecheek did probably the only role that I as an actor could have done, playing up Sir Dork to an extreme. The swordfights were all very silly and played for humor, which was probably the right choice. (In a weird coincidence, the actor for Sir Toby Belch was the same as one I saw in a tiny production in Washington, DC of a different play. Go figure.)
The Viola-Olivia-Orsino main plot is still a bit too ridiculous and lesser, but it works. One of Orsino's stewards- Valentine- was also played by a woman, although dressed and seeming a man. Considering that the entire reason for Viola to play dress-up falls apart if Orsino allows women into his entourage, it merely becomes creepy that Orsino apparently enjoys having a bunch of androgynous men-women around him. Olivia was solid, and still has my favorite line in the play: "We allowed your approach rather to wonder at you than to hear you." I think my boss went off to some interviewees at an agency with pretty much that expectation, considering the quality of the submitted resumes (how can you misspell your high school?!).
Today, I attempted to see the free Shakespeare-in-the-Park version of Macbeth. Unfortunately, due to a combination of not doing the curse-dispelling act in high school along with not researching properly, I did not get a ticket for a free production; I thought you just lined up and got in, first come-first serve. I remember laughing at the "Buy tickets online" button next to the review- "Ha, an artifact! Tickets for a free play!" Oh well, a constitutional through Central Park and back never hurts.
Cookies
So, yeah, I got some Organic Cookie Mix at Whole Foods Market sometime back on a whim. See what it's like and all. Well... they were awful. I don't know if it's just that I didn't cook them enough, or what. But they ended up being like eating brown sugar straight, at best. These organic mixes seem to have problems like that; I didn't like the Organic Macaroni & Cheese mix either.
Luckily, there is a happy ending to this story. But first, an interlude. I had what was perhaps the closest thing to a near-mugging recently; it's hard to tell. I was taking a walk along the East Side riverfront last Saturday- a very inefficient way to go Uptown, but I actually haven't explored the east-of-the-highway section very much. This was a properly dark and stormy moist Saturday night, I'll add. Two guys and a girl- all of them rather fat, I might add- were off to the side; I didn't judge them of much interest. I could have kept going straight, but heck, I'm exploring, so I took the turn off into that part of the park to take a look at the building there. One of 'em asks me if I have a cigarette, which I politely decline- but the person kept on approaching me. Realizing that it's pretty dark and that there wasn't anybody about due to the rain (there'd been a bit more people farther south), I smile, wave, and back off. I mean, sure, it probably didn't matter and I'm probably perpetuating racial stereotypes of being unwilling to interact (the three were Hispanic), but I didn't feel like taking chances. Maybe I should have taken Martial Arts lessons when my parents offered.... nah.
(Side, personal note: Video games utterly failed to corrupt me when I was young. I was a total pacifist back when I was young. This means never fighting back in schools and not being interested in violence in the slightest. I took Square One over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So when my parents got it into their heads that Tae Kwon Do lessons might be a good idea, I vigorously protested, and won. It wasn't until High School that I could vaguely stomach the idea of violence as entertainment. Discounting video games and war, of course. Mmm, World Conquest.)
Anyway, the happy part is that I continued walking north, and the pre-made Whole Foods cookies were on sale this week. 4 bucks rather than 5 and a half. Awesome. Those who know me from Oberlin know that this is one of my weaknesses, and the Whole Foods pre-made versions are pretty much home-made (albeit more expensive than it would be truly do them home-made, but this way, there's no time investment). Yay! I am now stocked up and have a cookie-fort.
Soccer
Argentina-Mexico was a great game, for those that didn't catch it. Aggressive play, lots of near-opportunities and some great saves. That said... Mexico got completely robbed by the refs, much like the US. Now, Mexico, despite playing very well in the first half, did seem to be choking in the second half & in overtime; they are notorious chokers. They're also notorious divers, too.
Doesn't change the fact that the calls just didn't go their way, though. They got up 1-0, and it was a complete BS call that gave the Argentines their equalizer (granted, not directly, but they forced a corner kick, which Argentina DID score off of). Later on, an Argentine player runs up and pushes a Mexican who's trying to get away, then dramatically flops to the ground, and gets the Mexican a yellow card?! Riiiiiight. The Argentines, in general, seemed to be trying to challenge Mexico's reputation for diving by doing it better themselves. Meh.
I will say that the Portugal-Netherlands match was somewhat amusing; you have to wonder if they had a bet beforehand to see who could rack up the most cards. The announcers kept on blaming the ref, but I don't know; it's not the ref's fault if the players decide to go to war on each other. Perhaps he didn't hand out enough cards in the first half, which caused the players to take matters into their own hands. Beats me.
The England-Portugal game was certainly gripping, but I have to wonder if it would have been different if Beckham hadn't been injured. A crazy goal-scorer like him presumably would have helped in a few key places. That said, I'm not sorry at all to see Portugal advance.
And the France-Brazil game? That was an excellent game to watch. France played extraordinarily well; I got the feeling that as long as France stayed on the attack, they were good. They practically never let the Brazilians get in close in the center; the very few times Brazil did, they always seemed as if they were about to suddenly score a goal. Seems about right to me.
I'll just note that it's entirely possible we'll see Germany vs. France in the finals. Germany already defeated Poland earlier in the tournament...
SF vs. JMS
Meanwhile. On the technical side of things, I've gotten to wrangle with the JMS framework. A bit of background. My fairly cool developer co-worker, bastionofsanity, handed in his two-weeks notice three weeks ago. So in the last week he was at the company, we were going over various code only he'd written, and making certain code that we jointly written (but generally tested on his box) worked fine when deployed on my box. Now, JMS = "Java Messaging Service." One way to set up the JMS is a very simple publish/subscribe model: there's a topic, and you can tune in to it. If you subscribe, you get all messages passed on it. If you publish to a topic, all subscribers hear about it. Very simple. Plus, JMS has very very strong delivery guarantees. Heck, with persistent messages, you can theoretically disconnect and unplug your computer, turn it back on, and still get the message. It will do all the low-level wrangling for you to insure messages are delivered once-and-only-once. Worked fine on his machine, when everything was set up in one spot. Unfortunately... when moved to a different computer (i.e. mine), the magical world of non-determinism was entered. Now, sometimes the message gets to everybody. Sometimes not! You can never be sure. We set up watchers on both computers along with the main requester, and often times only one party will see the reply (one of the watchers, or the original requester who's supposed to process the reply). Sometimes nobody sees it! Fun. The only way this makes even a scintilla of sense is if a really short timeout was being set that was around the same time as the processing time. Then random network jiggles could explain why sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. Except it's not; we're setting it to two freakin' minutes, when this takes place in less than a tenth of a second.
This, of course, leaves a bug in OpenJMS as a possibility. But it'd have to be a pretty catastrophic bug, and I'd be shocked if it'd still gone unnoticed by now (it's at version 0.768 or thereabouts, which sounds like you'd have minimal functionality).
So, yeah. Basically... ?????????? This is a puzzler.