With 6.5 months to go, here’s the wedding planning update:
[This entry backdated to when I actually wrote it]
I’m currently sitting in the Atlanta airport as part of a quick in-and-out to visit a sick relative. I’d easily give a digit for a sausage biscuit right now, but alas the best I can do is trail mix.
More evidence that the terrorists have won: while waiting in the security line with 2000 of my closest friends, having disposed of the Purell I forgot to check, they started playing some Glenn Medeiros over the intercom. You know,
Nothing’s gonna change my love for you
You ought know by now how much I love you
One thing you can be sure of
I’ll never ask for more than your love
There, now you have it stuck in your head too.
I’m reading Kitchen Confidential on the strength of this blog entry by “No Reservations” star Anthony Bourdain. It’s a humorous look at how the restaurant industry is much less glamorous than one might think. [Later on the plane, my single-serving friend, a philosophical sheet metal worker, said this is like life: first you want to get with some beautiful woman, then you realize she’s nasty inside, but by then it’s too late because you’re already married.]
In other news, Angeline and I saw a famous celebrity while dining at the White Flint mall the other night: Matthew Lesko, the question-mark-blazer-ensuited guy who exhorts us to get FREE government money. He was in uniform and looked lost. Doesn’t ring a bell? Here’s Andy Dick’s impression of him.
Congratulations, NASA, on finally managing to make space interesting again!
In other last week’s news, bunnie of Xbox hackery fame has a nice rundown on why the ATHF debacle was such a sad commentary on our society. I hope the 2 mil extortion that Ted agreed to is just a face-saving thing and no money actually changed hands.
I can’t remember what I was going to write here, except that I suck at Monopoly. We had a good time in Toronto even though it was crowded with eight people in a 2BR apartment. The weather was nice and warm. Weird, eh? Speaking of “eh,” I only heard one person say it, while we were watching some hockey game in a Queen Street pool hall. I came back with only a few CDN dollars this time. They don’t go quite as far as they used to.
Here’s Christmas 2006, in thumbnails. The rest of my pictures are somewhere in Baltimore.
Angeline & I went up to the not-quite-frozen north last week to visit her fam for Christmas. I shall account for time spent there in a future entry a few days from now, but not right now because the pictures I want to post are on my camera that I left there.
Instead, I’ll continue to post about boring technical subjects. Today: one example of sucky Java performance (a topic which hardly anyone in the Java community cares about, apparently). I had a disagreement of opinion with a co-worker recently, as I was coming across code written by a 3rd person that went like:
public void getBar() { return this.bar; }
public void doSomething() {
getBar().frob();
getBar().xyzzy();
getBar().baz();
}
I remarked that this sort of programming is not only extra typing, but performs poorly because inside doSomething we are now making six method calls instead of only the three we need. My co-worker suggested the Java compiler was smart enough to inline getBar(). I was skeptical for two reasons: first that getBar is public, so in order to allow subclasses to override it, it has to be in the Java-equivalent of a vtable, like every other Java method. Second, I’ve looked at the output of javac and it is really quite dumb.
So, I decided to make it easy on the compiler in a test program to see (excerpt):
private static final String blah="blah";
private final String getBlah() { return blah; }
public void doit() { System.out.println(getBlah()); }
There’s no way for a subclass to override getBlah or the value it returns; however, the code generated is:
public void doit();
Code:
0: getstatic #3; //Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream;
3: aload_0
4: invokespecial #4; //Method getBlah:()Ljava/lang/String;
7: invokevirtual #5; //Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V
10: return
Obviously, the final keyword does nothing. Now, I don’t know much about how the JVM/JIT will further optimize this, but this can’t be more efficient than a simple load of the variable onto the stack. We have to store this on the stack for one thing, and the JVM needs to store a return address somewhere. A small effect, sure, but why throw away performance?
Maybe I’ll be evil and start asking why Java should have the ‘virtual’ keyword in interviews.
While back in Atlanta two weeks ago, Angeline and I toured the one year old Georgia Aquarium, billed as the World’s Largest, perfect for a land-locked city, I hunted around the net the night before for some audio podcasts and found a couple, but the free ones that are on the official aquarium website are definitely the best. We followed the audio tour, looked around at the many fish, got hungry, then ate burgers at the Vortex, and I brought back lousy pictures. Click below for the goods.
I applied for a passport for the first time in mid-October of this year. I was sure that I had waited too long, that I would get one of these damnable passports with the RFID chips in them, and that my next purchase was sure to be an RFID zapper. But it arrived last week, and to my surprise, it lacked the magic you’ve-been-screwed symbol. It’s still not too late to get a non-chipped one! I believe it’s basically luck of the draw at this point, but for what it’s worth, I bought mine at the post office and got the non-expedited variety.
Whew, 10 years until I have to get tagged. I’ll wait in the long line as long as they will let me, thank you very much.
What’s wrong with RFID passports?
How can I tell if my passport has an RFID chip?
Ange and I fulfilled our pre-Cana responsibilities in one fell swoop last week
by attending a weekend retreat. As in, you must retreat from your senses to
endure the silliness of the whole affair. The weekend was set up as a nonstop
series of lectures by a parade of snippy, passive-aggressive Catholic couples
(examples for us all), followed by sessions in which we betrothed would answer
discussion questions and then privately compare notes on the matter. The first
two or three were actually pretty good, touching on our past together, how we
planned to handle various aspects of married life and our plans for the future.
I’m happy to say Ange & I know each other well enough that we generally wrote the same things to each other. Then it got repetitive, and at turns disturbing, at which point we began writing essays with the sole aim of making the other laugh.
Here are some excerpts:
Q. How will our differences complement each other?
A. It helps that you are a genetic male XY and I am a genetic female XX.
On theology:
Open our hearts to God => God is a heart surgeon => God has God complex
On sexuality in marriage, after the 60-year-old couple described their lovemaking-eww-eww-eww-ness:
Tips for keeping the flame alive:
On our future family:
Reasons for having children:
And then there were lots of snarky comments about Natural Family Planning, too. Despite our lack of reverence we graduated anyway, and all in all it wasn’t too bad, but I am so glad that’s over with.
Dear people who pulled the fire alarm at Angeline’s apartment the other evening, causing the fire department to arrive, sirens a-blaring,
Please wait for warmer, non-rainy weather next time.
Thanks.
I’ve been sick the last few days. Meh.
I went down to Georgia last weekend, looking for a soul to steal, as usual. My grandparents have attained their sixtieth year of marriage this year, so I spent 20 hours in the Atlanta suburb in which I once resided.
The lady at the check-in counter told me to have a nice flight, and I said “you too.” I used to enjoy flying, but the soviet checkpoints we must navigate now have really killed it for me. Wearing my EFF shirt, I was surprised to not get the magic SSSes on my boarding pass. The trek through the screening area still sucked, though, even without the special treatment. I expect that for Thanksgiving I’ll be driving my car instead. Thanks, 4th amendment haters.
My grandparents are doing well. My grandfather congratulated me on the engagement news and wished us our own 60 years of bliss. We grandchildren presented them with a scrapbook of various detritus of our lives and toasted their health. Teary tributes were made, and so on. It was a nice visit, if too brief.