Our New Pi Day Laptop

To commemorate this year's pi day, we've christened our newly purchased laptop PiPuter. It's an Acer Aspire. We were looking for a super cheap full sized laptop with decent spects and found a good deal at the MicroCenter. Vanessa says that our computer has graduated magniu cum laude from its factory and it is currently watching us - watching, watching, always watching.

Septoplasty

I never dreamed that I too would be undergoing septoplasty just a few short months after Joe Greogorio had his operation. It turns out I had a pretty severely deviated septum which likely contributed to the annual sinus infections which I have been experiencing. My allergist recommended I have this operation to straighten the inside of my nose, as my left nasal passage was almost completely blocked near the bridge of my nose. In looking for a possible sinus infection I had a CT scan of my sinuses which revealed just how severe the deviation was. By the way, looking at a slice by slice cross section of your own head is fascinating.

This past Wednesday I had the surgery and I will have the stitches and splints removed next Tuesday. It's been a bit different than I expected. I anticipated some pain but, surprisingly, the part that hurts most is my upper front teeth. I also didn't expect quite so much bleeding. In any case, I'm not feeling too bad and I am looking forward to the long term benefits. Also, this has been my first experience BWOV (blogging while on vicodin).

Two Guys Arguing - Five Questions

I noticed that my friend Ben is participating in a new blog named Two Guys Arguing (in addition to blogs one two and three :-) and I thought I'd piggy back on a recent ice-breaker post.

1. What are you currently hacking on?
2. What are you currently getting better at?
3. What do you do when your computer is asleep?
4. Describe that ‘big fish’ project that’s been stewing in your brain.
5. What are you gonna post about this coming week?

On to the answers:

1. As a small part of my day job I'm currently working on a rewrite of significant portions of the gdata-python-client to support version two of the Google Data API protocol (check out the v2 branch).
2. I've been trying to focus on writing speedier unit tests. Unit testing is great, but sometimes it is necessary to write end to end tests which can take a rather long time to run. Slow tests are run less often, so I've been thinking of some ways to cache some of the more expensive pieces of these end to end tests while still preserving their utility.
3. Playing with Claire is easily one of my favorite non-computer related activities. I have a wonderful wife who keeps me company and there's nothing like relaxing with the family. Aside from the yard work, remodeling, and other house related items, I do very much enjoy playing guitar now and again. I even have a somewhat regular weekly gig.
4. I have a few side projects I like to hack on here and there in my spare time. One of them I've been thinking more about recently is a computer language I've decided to call "Headspace". I wanted to try an experiment and see what the effects would be of applying the rule of seven to programming.
5. I've been planning to write a bit about the surgery I've recently undergone so stay tuned ;-)

Two Guys Arguing seems like it's off to a great start and I look forward to reading along.