2007 Irreplaceable vs. 1951 Unforgettable

Is Beyoncé's Irreplaceable 2007 hit the new Unforgettable? Something about the one-word negative __able word makes me think of the two songs together. And so 2007 that Irreplaceable is a song talking about how her lover is NOT Irreplaceable. Times have changed.

Verizon DSL doesn't like corroded copper wire

We've had Verizon DSL service in our awesome 1951 built house (I assume 1951 phone lines?) for the last 5 years with very little problems. Two weeks ago we had Verizon install a new wall jack and ever since there has been all this static on the line and the DSL goes in and out. My wife threatened to divorce me and move into the Starbucks parking lot which has a working wifi connection.

We called DSL tech support and met a very nice young Indian man. (Oddly enough he had a very American name.) He seemed a little nervous to keep his job though. Almost as if someone else was listening to our call and judging him on his performance. He kept reading stock questions from his playbook and repeating the same questions over and over. "Is the DSL connected directly to your computer?" "Yes." "Thank you sir, now is the DSL connected directly to your computer?" "Yes." "Thank you sir." "Has the DSL ever worked before?" "Yes." "Thank you sir, now is the DSL connected directly to your computer?" "Yes." "Thank you sir."

We were on the phone together for about 45 minutes, turing the DSL modem on and off and trying it on every jack and with every phone line in the house. After 45 minutes I made it past level one (it's a video game!) and was allowed to advance to level two support. "You have been very patient sir, there will be a 3 minute hold period while I transfer you, please feel free to make yourself a nice cup of cocca or hot tea while you wait."

Level two support determined there was nothing wrong DSL-wise and referred us to Residential Phone Line support. They said be home all day Saturday between 8AM and 5PM and we'll come take a look.

http://twitter.com/andrewarrow/statuses/824288472

Well today, Monday they came at 8AM and found the problem. Corroded copper wire in the phone box out back. He replaced it. I heart Verizon.

Update: Verizon gave me a $25 credit for missing the appointment on Saturday.

Coding in java after a two year affair with ruby

I was a professional java developer from 1996 to 2006.  From 2007 to present I've been a professional ruby developer.  This last week I've been forced to work in java again and OMG.  As a co-worker put it "java is like filling out government forms... in triplicate."

Some quick points that make ruby fundamentally better:

1. Having to declare what type a variable is, is pointless busy work.  If I want to say username = 'andrew' it's pretty obvious username is a String.  Why oh why java do you make me fill out that G973-1 String variable requisition form?
2. Having to put a semi-colon at the end of each line is a waste of time;
3. begin end is sooooo much better than { }
4. Having to enclose all if statements with ( ) is dumb.
5. Being able to say username = 'andrew' if boolean all on one line is poetic.  No poems allow in government forms.
6. Single quotes for non-interpolated strings and double for interpolated please!
7. And of course no blocks, no easy loops, no easy arrays with the arrow arrow operator, no built in hash with the brackets, and you have to compile it!

Blackberries are very nice, but RIM only allows development in Java and ONLY on Windows.  I was forced to get VMWare Fusion and a copy of Vista to run on my mac.  Ugh.

The verboseness of Java doesn't prevent bugs or make more maintainable code.  There, I said it.