Dark Side of the Carton

Growing up, eating fast food with your friends was by and large a social thing. We’d head to Taco Bell or Wendy’s and get some grub and head out for some other activity. Every meal was not fast food and it was by and large the exception and not the rule.

Things have definitely changed since then and the increase in fast food consumption is off the charts. People see eating as a waste of time and it’s leading to a massive health crisis in this nation. That’s not what this post is about. This post is  about what exactly we are cramming into our bodies in an effort to save a buck or save 15 minutes so we can rush off to the next important thing on our list.

In my younger years, fast food never made me sick. It wasn’t the greatest food, but it didn’t make me want to rip out my stomach and toss it in the trash. These days, just about everytime I venture out for fast food I wind up paying for it in a big way for the next 2 days or so. I’m currently suffering through one such bout right now.

Just what exactly goes into this food these days that is making me sick? Is my body just so used to not eating that filth that the mere presence of it is sending my body into some sort of trash induced shock? I don’t know, but what I do know is that you can count me out. I am no longer going to be eating fast food except in extreme emergencies where it just cannot be helped.  I am tired of feeling like my insides are running in circles as they try to climb their way out of my body. I just can’t do it anymore. So long fast food.

I’ve got a job application in with a company I used to work for as a developer and the primary technologies we’ll be using are Python and Ruby on Rails. I’ve got a bit of experience with both, but nothing recent. With that said, I’ve really been taking a closer look at what those languages offer and I’m quite excited about getting to build some large scale applications in both of them.

I’m currently working on a basic bank account/ledger application in RoR and some simple pages that emulate the pages of Snackbar Games as a learning experience in Python. I’ve spent the last 5-6 years in PHP and while I love the language because I have a very firm grasp on it, I want to branch out and expand my base of knowledge. After 5 years there are still things I am learning in PHP so the thought of 2 whole new languages/technologies to get familiar with is a bit daunting, but at the same time exciting.

The only downside with RoR is that my hosting account doesn’t support it without an upgrade that I can’t justify right now. It does support Python so maybe you’ll see a few python modules or classes start to pop up over here in the near future.

It’s probably rare that someone who has worked in the IT industry as long as I have managed to wait until 2008 to buy their first laptop. I thwarted the evil deed of dropping lots of money to take my computing on the road, but today I gave in and bought the family a nice little HP Pavilion Entertainment PC. It’s a Costco only model, but is based on the DV9720US model that is available just about anywhere. I’d be surprised if the gas station I filled up at this morning wasn’t stocking the doggone things.

It’s sporting a 17″ widescreen display and a dual core AMD Turion 64 chip with 2 GB of ram. I was leaning towards something a little less expensive and a little smaller, but I fell in love with the bigger display and just couldn’t manage to buy something without that kind of real estate.

The machine’s primary use will probably be for the house so lugging around this 7lb beast is less of an issue. We don’t really use the computer in the office all that much these days so having a nice solid machine in the living room is going to be a godsend.

I’ll post some pictures of this thing later on.

My last post kind of left the story hanging about my adventure in assembling the Sunray 2008 Playsystem. I apologize as life showed up and booted me in the gut with a bevy of far more important tasks.

As a brief recap to the previous adventure, I worked my rump off all day Sunday trying to make some real progress on the assembly of a new wooden swing set and while that did happen, I didn’t make but a dent in the overall construction of this monstrous thing.

Come Monday afternoon, I had about an hour of daylight to work with. After lugging out all my tools and gathering the necessary parts I think I completed maybe a step or 2 before it got too dark to work. Tuesday I left work about 2 hours early and got a full 3 hours of work in. 10 steps or so and I had an assembled roof and half of the vertical slats on the clubhouse portion. It was encouraging to see this thing start to come together. Wednesday night I worked for about an hour outside and then I moved indoors to assemble the rock wall.

The time constraint that I had put on myself was governed by the fact that at 10am the following morning a host of energetic children would be attending a playgroup at my home and this thing just had to be assembled enough so that the kids wouldn’t kill themselves. That was the goal.

After a late night in the garage, I got up early on Thursday and headed outside. I made quick work of the remaining steps, sans the swing assembly, and got to work only 2 hours late. The kids had a great time on the thing and spent the whole playgroup outside.

I spent the upcoming Sunday, also known as Super Bowl Sunday, building the swingset assembly and testing it out. As it stands, there are still a few extra accessories that need to find their home up on the Sunray, but I’m glad to report that the major assembly is done and the kids are loving it. This thing is even heavy duty enough to hold me without shifting. I mean, I’m but a paltry 5′11′ - 165 lbs, but still. Our last set would bow and creak if I merely sat on the swing, much less attempted to swing on it.

All in all, we are very happy with the purchase of the Sunray 2008. The instructions were clear and the included DVD was a big help. My words of advice to those of you considering building one is this:

Separate the hardware into bags or bins the night before. Searching bags A - M or whatever for a screw was a pain in the butt. Going to a bag or bin with the name of the screw or bolt on it would have sped up the process immensely.