Reg recently posted an Ayn Rand quote that has got me thinking:

When the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know your culture is doomed.

So very very true.

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Just came across this little surprise on Refactoring HTML while browsing Martin Fowler’s site today… got to say I’m both surprised and not surprised a book like this came out.

First off not surprised since refactoring HTML is fairly common. A lot of times with legacy sites I find myself doing “Replace Presentational Table With Semantic Markup and CSS” (dunno if it’s in the book, I just made it up) refactorings all the time. Also taking display related HTML and breaking it into more semantical markup is a common strategy I’ve done… as well as applying microformats.

Surprised because I guess it’s a daring book to write for the crowd that consumes the Martin Fowler Signature Series books. From my experience the majority of Java, Ruby, and .NET folks usually pay no heed to HTML… they either delegate this task to a designer or dump a bunch of slop (like a table to center some text) that “just works” while focusing on the back end code. These are the same types you’ll find dropping self closing BR tags in HTML 4.01 documents or being clueless about what a doctype actually is. ARGHHH!!! (I’ll stop ranting)

Anyhow, I’m definitely queuing this one up and checking it out. Maybe I’ll find some new useful strategies for cleaning up stinky, fragile HTML.

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I forgot to mention that as of two weeks ago, I’ve added a new member to my household… BOBO!

I picked her up recently from a co-worker who wasn’t home enough for her, and she’s been both a bundle of joy AND a great cause of putting me on the verge of a nervous breakdown!!

The Good

She is for the most part a very good dog. I can let her run around the yard while I’m outside and she stays within the yard (with the exception of running to a neighbor that may come outside) and returns when yelled to do so. She’s also trained and comes up to me and whines when she needs to “do her business,” which is a major plus for me. Finally, she’s just an all around fun dog to play with and very affectionate (she’s a bit of an attention whore though).

The Bad

The first week she would chew everything while I was gone. DVD Remote? In pieces. Magazines left on the coffee table? Shreds. The worst is when she began chewing on my rugs, so I sprayed them with “anti-chew spray”. Not one to be defeated, she one upped me… the next day she chewed the actual carpet!!! I gave her a bit of punishment, but deduced that this was a result of perhaps not having enough chewy toys, so I’ve populated the house with a good 6 or 7 toys as well as a box of flavored “chewables” that each takes her a good 2 hours to go through.

Last week I discovered to my horror that, for whatever reason, she thought the vacant bedroom was perfectly okay to go to the bathroom in… I mean she just walked in there right in front of me and started going… EEEEEEK!!! For now, I’ve been forced to keep her in a crate while I’m gone… only to avoid surprises and train her a bit. Giving her a bath was also a bit of an adventure… it’s not so much fun when a completely drenched dog jumps out of the tub and takes you on a chase through the house… had to air the house out.

A bit of work, but it’s all worth it.

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I just got my laptop back with a fresh install of Windows Vista and it looks like I already have problems. D’OH!!!

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