What about love?
The following essay was part of an exchange I had recently with a friend. I thought it was worth sharing. ------------------------------------------------------- Click to show more. My friend: "I need to express some thoughts? I think so, let's just keep typing and...
When you can’t get a break
If you're down on your luck and doing badly, there's a good chance that it is because you've overextended yourself, and taken on responsibilities and commitments that you can't fulfil. That's why people like to lend money to people who already have lots, but hesitate...
Conservatives, and what they’ve done with the national debt
I have been investigating the Conservative government. There is a lot of ground to cover, so at the moment I'm focussing on the national debt. I understand that the Conservatives claim to have done a good job with the Canadian economy. However, the national debt has...
2001 BMW f650gs clutch lever replacement
So I dumped my bimmer in a parking lot and broke off the clutch lever. BMW wanted to sell me a replacement assembly for $120, which seemed a bit high. I visited 4 motorcycle shops in Victoria looking for a replacement but all of them told me that aftermarket levers...
So we put on a race
We should put on a race, I texted Mat. Ok, he said. What should I do? - Got a tattoo artist named Dave (@artoscience) to paint a poster ($12 for beer) - Made 100 copies at Monk's ($67) - Wrote a letter requesting sponsorship - Distributed the posters around town -...
How to Replace Alternator on a Tercel Wagon
Click here to skip to the tutorial part I lent my car to my parents this summer, so it wouldn't sit and rot while I rode my motorcycle instead. It is an old car - it has a few eccentricities. For instance, the first week after I bought the car last year, I lost my...
Running a Query on Multiple Databases
Our company uses a CMS that we developed in-house, and there are around 60 sites running the most current version of it. That means about 60 sites with mostly identical database structures. When I make upgrades or bug fixes to the CMS, I commit them to a core...
The Spanish Exam
Already today I've dropped my bike twice and ridden out of the mountains in a tropical rainstorm. A bird has hit my shoulder at highway speed. Because of the rain earlier, I am wearing a heavy leather jacket. But it's 28 degrees and sunny now, and I just realized that...
CakePHP Concatenation
I had to concatenate two fields to search them as a single string. Another programmer created a table of phone numbers with the columns area_code (INT 3) and phone_number (INT 7) respectively. But people were searching for all ten digits as a single unit, so I needed...