This evening (Saturday evening), I read some of my earlier web page entries out loud to some family members. Eeek! I made a painful discovery! You see, I'm one who appreciates excellent grammar, correct spelling, and good writing. I discovered that this this web page was a perfect example of what I dislike, gross grammar, sad spelling, and wretched writing.

So please forgive me should ever I chide someone else for poor writing skills, or point my hypocritical finger at another web site. And please, feel free to laugh at my mistakes, or if you are generous, point them out to me (see below).

Read the rest of this article...

I am definitely my father's son. Or so my dad told me this afternoon, when I told him how I cut my finger.

While I was visiting at my parents home in Hurricane, Utah this afternoon, my sister pulled her Pontiac Sunbird into the driveway, home from work in Zion National Park. The other day she'd noticed that her car had a small coolant leak. After parking in the driveway, she opened the hood of her car, looking for the source of the leak. Soon she came inside the house and announced she'd discovered the source of the coolant leak. It was a radiator hose -- it had a hole in it, spraying a hot mixture of antifreeze and water into the engine compartment.

Read the rest of this article...

Holy Bananas, it's hot in them, thar, ahem, valleys -- if you mean the valleys in and around St. George, Utah. While I totally love living in this southwestern corner of Utah, a dry but spectacular red rock desert, the summer heat in the 100s and even 110s (degrees Fahrenheit, that is) is just too much. And having recently returned on Monday afternoon from a long, lazy, wonderful Fourth-of-July weekend in the much cooler environs of Pine Valley, the heat seems somehow hotter.

Why am I complaining? I don't actually have to earn my living like my ancestors, trying to eke out an existence from the dry soil, physically laboring each day out-of-doors, exposed to the vicious glare of the desert sun. I have it easy! I work each day in air-conditioned comfort, fingers flying across the computer keyboard. Somehow, just looking out the window into the glaring afternoon sunlight is enough to remind me, it's HOT out there. And somehow that thought offends me, or at least taunts me, whispering to my mind, "Ha ha! You can't come out here, you can't go walking or hiking, or else my mighty heat will swat you down and sap your strength in seconds."

Read the rest of this article...

The U.S. flag flaps in the warm summer breeze in Pine Valley, Utah on the Fourth of July, 2003Here I am in the beautiful community of Pine Valley, nestled against the imposing Pine Valley Mountains. The air outside is cool, cooler than in St. George. Before it dipped below the western horizon, a crescent moon graced the clear, starry sky, a night sky unpolluted by too many street lights, though there was a thin haze of smoke from the Apex fire, still burning in the hills and mountains west of St. George.

About that mountain -- please don't call it Pine Mountain like some uninformed folks do -- the official name is Pine Valley Mountain or the Pine Valley Mountains (even though the name is something of an oxymoron). I suspect the mountain was named after the community, Pine Valley, nestled in the arms, rather than the community taking its name from the mountain. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in my conjecture, since that's all it is, a guess.

Read the rest of this article...

Why is it that St. George, Utah doesn't have a Chinese food restaurant that will deliver? What I wouldn't give for some Chinese food right now, so long as I don't have to leave my house... It's probably a good thing, 'cause I'd scarf down too much.

You see, I just got back from the St. George Rec. Center where I got some great aerobic exercise, and I feel wonderful. You know, that relaxed, pleasant, all-natural endorphine high that comes from exercise. The problem is, after burning off those calories, my body wants 'em back, NOW! And with interest!

Read the rest of this article...

Yes! PHP 5.0.0 Beta 1 is here, and I'm trying it out on this site right now. At last, some decent, real object oriented and exception handling stuff is available with PHP. Check out the announcement over at the PHP home page if you're into geeky stuff like that. I think I'll move my homemade blogging scripts to PHP5 (even though they currently run just fine as is without any changes, at least as far as I can see) before I attempt to add any new features.

Well I've put it off too long. I really, really need to get more exercise and activity in my life. Working all day in front of a computer just isn't a recipe for a healthy lifestyle. So I'm gonna cut this short and head over to the St. George Recreation Center and use the fitness center before it gets any later.

It's late, but I thought I'd write a paragraph or two about Oscar, the 1991 comedy with Sylvester Stalone starring as the 1930s prohibition mobster-gone-straight, Angelo "Snaps" Provolone. What a riot! I was rolling on the floor laughing regularly and raucously. Hopefully my friends didn't mind.

I'm something of a word-play afficionado, or at least one who appreciates a well written word gimmick. Oscar is chock full of 'em, packed with puns and a myriad of malapropisms, and I love 'em all. That's not to mention the well crafted situations full of comedic confusion.

Read the rest of this article...

I've been a fan of Science Fiction author Orson Scott Card ever since I read his novel Ender's Game as a teenager. What a pleasant surprise when I and others in my family discovered his regular columns he writes, one titled Uncle Orson Reviews Everything for a local North Carolina newspaper, The Rhinocerous Times, and another column for The Ornery American web site titled War Watch. His columns are consistently enjoyable.

UPS finally delivered my new speakers for my computer. My old pair had since retired to Hurricane, Utah, to the abode of my parents, since one of their speakers had...

Read the rest of this article...

Way to go, OSI and Eric Raymond, at shedding some light and truth on the utterly ridiculous SCO-vs-IBM lawsuit. Check out the OSI position paper at http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html for an excellent read as to why SCO's preposterous claims should be laughed at and thrown out.

Well I've got my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I picked it up at around 3:00 AM this morning at the nearest Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart beat Amazon's price and I got the book earlier. Sorry, Amazon.com, and sorry local Mom & Pop bookstores. Slow reader that I am, I'm only a bit over a hundred pages into the book. I don't think I'll be doing anything useful today...

Read the rest of this article...

Having read the interesting account of Ars Digita's rise and fall, Diary of a Start-Up (Update: The previous link to the article now redirects to Eve Andersson's personal web site. If anyone knows the address where the original article is still available, please let me know. --Aaron) sometime last year, a story which kept me riveted for some reason, when I stumbled across an alternate account at http://michael.yoon.org/arsdigita, I couldn't pass it up either. I enjoyed both reads, but suspect Mr. Yoon's account is probably nearer the truth. There are some useful lessons to be learned from the experiences, from both viewpoints.

After reading Mr. Yoon's version, I do wonder where OpenACS is today, feature-wise. I could use a good easy-to-use content management system that lets me roll my own applications. So far everything on my site is hand-coded HTML and PHP, and since I don't have free time enough to do it justice, I really dislike my sites. Sure, I like certain parts okay, and some things are quite nice, but I can't help but believe that a good content management system with some custom programming could match existing features and offer a boatload of new ones. I'll have to explore it.