The weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the
new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my
new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do
more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep
her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!
While at Home Depot I had trouble finding what I was actually looking for, but I did find everything I needed to terminate the Cat5e cables that are wired in the house. Each room has a wall plate with two RJ45 sockets, both sockets wired to Cat5e cable. One of the cables per plate was already hooked up to a standard phone service punchdown board and the other cables per plate were all hanging unterminated next to the punchdown board. So now I've terminated them all with RJ45 connectors and hooked them up to my hub, wireless router, cable modem, etc. I had the same sort of fun setting all that up as I did playing with model train sets as a child. Hopefully no therapy will be required to figure out why that is.
Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.
On Monday in Germany we went to Marienplatz and wandered around
the Christmas Market, some of the stores, had drinks in a little pub, visited the Toy Museum, and checked out an impressive looking church. We accidentally drew in some other tourists as we stood
gaping at the Glockenspiel tower waiting for the little show to begin at the wrong hour. That night Megan and Oliver came by our hotel and took us out to a traditional Bavarian restaurant and
brewery that had been brewing beer there for hundreds of years. It was fun although we may have kept Megan and Oliver out too late on a weeknight.
The next day we went to the Deutsches Museum the largest science and technology museum in the world. And indeed it is very large, six floors
on a large grounds. I needed to better pace myself: I spent too much energy being interested in the engineering sections with steam engines, mining, aerospace etc. I was completely worn out by the
time we got to physics, chemistry, etc. etc. and we didn't even look in the natural sciences section. Anyway, its very large. That night we ate with Jon at an Italian restaurant. During the meal
two period dressed children came in and began singing then tried to shake down their captive audience in the restaurant asking for money. The man at the table next to us asked one of the children
what charity the money was going towards, the child said they kept the money, and the man said never mind then and sent the child away.
PowerShell gives us a real CLI for Windows based around .Net stuff. I don't like the creation of a new shell language but I suppose it makes sense given that they want something C# like but not C# exactly since that's much to verbose and strict for a CLI. One of the functions you can override is the TabExpansion function which is used when you tab complete commands. I really like this and so I've added on to the standard implementation to support replacing a variable name with its value, tab completion of available commands, previous command history, and drive names (there not restricted to just one letter in PS).
Learning the new language was a bit of a chore but MSDN helped. A couple of things to note, a statement that has a return value that you don't do anything with is implicitly the return value for the current function. That's why there's no explicit return's in my TabExpansion function. Also, if you're TabExpansion function fails or returns nothing then the builtin TabExpansion function runs which does just filenames. This is why you can see that the standard TabExpansion function doesn't handle normal filenames: it does extra stuff (like method and property completion on variables that represent .Net objects) but if there's no fancy extra stuff to be done it lets the builtin one take a crack.
Here's my TabExpansion function. Probably has bugs, so watch out!
function EscapePath([string] $path, [string] $original)
{
if ($path.Contains(' ') -and !$original.Contains(' '))
{
'"' $path '"';
}
else
{
$path;
}
}
function PathRelativeTo($pathDest, $pathCurrent)
{
if ($pathDest.PSParentPath.ToString().EndsWith($pathCurrent.Path))
{
'.\' $pathDest.name;
}
else
{
$pathDest.FullName;
}
}
# This is the default function to use for tab expansion. It handles simple
# member expansion on variables, variable name expansion and parameter completion
# on commands. It doesn't understand strings so strings containing ; | ( or { may
# cause expansion to fail.
function TabExpansion($line, $lastWord)
{
switch -regex ($lastWord)
{
# Handle property and method expansion...
'(^.*)(\$(\w|\.) )\.(\w*)$' {
$method = [Management.Automation.PSMemberTypes] `
'Method,CodeMethod,ScriptMethod,ParameterizedProperty'
$base = $matches[1]
$expression = $matches[2]
Invoke-Expression ('$val=' $expression)
$pat = $matches[4] '*'
Get-Member -inputobject $val $pat | sort membertype,name |
where { $_.name -notmatch '^[gs]et_'} |
foreach {
if ($_.MemberType -band $method)
{
# Return a method...
$base $expression '.' $_.name '('
}
else {
# Return a property...
$base $expression '.' $_.name
}
}
break;
}
# Handle variable name expansion...
'(^.*\$)([\w\:]*)$' {
$prefix = $matches[1]
$varName = $matches[2]
foreach ($v in Get-Childitem ('variable:' $varName '*'))
{
if ($v.name -eq $varName)
{
$v.value
}
else
{
$prefix $v.name
}
}
break;
}
# Do completion on parameters...
'^-([\w0-9]*)' {
$pat = $matches[1] '*'
# extract the command name from the string
# first split the string into statements and pipeline elements
# This doesn't handle strings however.
$cmdlet = [regex]::Split($line, '[|;]')[-1]
# Extract the trailing unclosed block e.g. ls | foreach { cp
if ($cmdlet -match '\{([^\{\}]*)$')
{
$cmdlet = $matches[1]
}
# Extract the longest unclosed parenthetical expression...
if ($cmdlet -match '\(([^()]*)$')
{
$cmdlet = $matches[1]
}
# take the first space separated token of the remaining string
# as the command to look up. Trim any leading or trailing spaces
# so you don't get leading empty elements.
$cmdlet = $cmdlet.Trim().Split()[0]
# now get the info object for it...
$cmdlet = @(Get-Command -type 'cmdlet,alias' $cmdlet)[0]
# loop resolving aliases...
while ($cmdlet.CommandType -eq 'alias') {
$cmdlet = @(Get-Command -type 'cmdlet,alias' $cmdlet.Definition)[0]
}
# expand the parameter sets and emit the matching elements
foreach ($n in $cmdlet.ParameterSets | Select-Object -expand parameters)
{
$n = $n.name
if ($n -like $pat) { '-' $n }
}
break;
}
default {
$varNameStar = $lastWord '*';
foreach ($n in @(Get-Childitem $varNameStar))
{
$name = PathRelativeTo ($n) ($PWD);
if ($n.PSIsContainer)
{
EscapePath ($name '\') ($lastWord);
}
else
{
EscapePath ($name) ($lastWord);
}
}
if (!$varNameStar.Contains('\'))
{
foreach ($n in @(Get-Command $varNameStar))
{
if ($n.CommandType.ToString().Equals('Application'))
{
foreach ($ext in @((cat Env:PathExt).Split(';')))
{
if ($n.Path.ToString().ToLower().EndsWith(($ext).ToString().ToLower()))
{
EscapePath($n.Path) ($lastWord);
}
}
}
else
{
EscapePath($n.Name) ($lastWord);
}
}
foreach ($n in @(Get-psdrive $varNameStar))
{
EscapePath($n.name ":") ($lastWord);
}
}
foreach ($n in @(Get-History))
{
if ($n.CommandLine.StartsWith($line) -and $n.CommandLine -ne $line)
{
$lastWord $n.CommandLine.Substring($line.Length);
}
}
# Add the original string to the end of the expansion list.
$lastWord;
break;
}
}
}
Last Thursday I saw a bunch of college friends that I hadn't seen in a while, despite all of us working at Microsoft, and Saul and Ciera who were visiting. We had dinner at Typhoon! which I haven't been to in quite a while. Daniil and Val brought their cute child. I got to see Charlie and Matt who I'm not sure I've seen since my 25th birthday. There was much nerdiness. I need to remember to organize such a night myself sometime in near future so I don't have to wait another year to see them.
On the weekend Sarah and I went out to dinner at Carnegie's, a former
public library in Ballard, Seattle that's now a restaurant. I saw the restaurant's website in Matt's delicious links and thought it looked interesting. The exterior and entryway look like a public
library, but just inside its redone as a sort of modern version of french classical with a bar and two dining rooms. No pictures since my replacement camera only arrived today, but there are
photos available. They serve french cuisine which was good and
not as expensive as I would have expected. An interesting place, although its a bit of a drive and I'm not sure if we'll be going back soon.
Last weekend while Sarah was up in Canada for a spa weekend with her sister and her sister's other bridesmaids, I went to Saul and Ciera's
wedding in Three Rivers, California near Sequoia National Park. I flew into Fresno picked up a rental car and my GPS device navigated me to a restaurant with the wedding location no where in sight.
"No problem," I thought, "I'll just call someone with an Internet connection and..." I had no cell reception. What did people do before GPS, Internet, and cell phones?
A waitress in the restaurant pointed me down the road a bit to the wedding location which was outside overlooking a
river. Their wedding cake was made up like a mountain with two backpacks at the top and rope hanging down. Ciera's father married them and the ceremony was lovely. The music after included Code Monkey to which all the nerds were forced to get up and awkwardly dance.
Besides getting to see Ciera and Saul who I hadn't seen in quite a while, I got to see Daniil and Val, Vlad, and Nathaniel. Since
last I saw Daniil and Val they had a child, Katie who is very cute and in whom I can see a lot of family resemblance. The always hilarious Vlad,
Daniil's brother, was there as well with his wife who I got to meet. Nathaniel, my manager from Vizolutions was there and I don't know if I've seen him since I moved to Washington. It was fun to
see him and meet his girlfriend who was kind enough to donate her extra male to male mini-phono cord so I could listen to my Zune in the rental car stereo on the drive back.
It was warm and lovely out this past Saturday and Sarah I and went to a
new place for lunch, then to Kelsey Creek Park, and then out for Jane's birthday. We ate at Cafe
Pirouette which serves crepes and is done up with French decorations reminding me of my parent's house. We got in for just the end of lunch and saw the second to last customers, a gaggle of
older ladies leaving. I felt a little out of place with my "Longhorn [heart] RSS" t-shirt on. The food was good and in larger portions that I expected.
After that we went to Kelsey Creek Park and Farm. The park is hidden at the end of a quiet neighborhood, starts out with some tables and children's jungle gym
equipment, then there's a farm which includes a petting zoo, followed by many little trails going off into the forrest. There weren't too many animals out and the ones we did see didn't seem to
expect or want the sun and warm weather. We followed one of the trails for a bit and turned back before getting sun burned. You can see
my weekend photos mapped out on Live Maps.
That night we went out with some friends for Jane's birthday. Eric was just back from the RSA conference and we met Jane and Eric and others at Palace Kitchen in Seattle located immediately adjascent to the monorail's route. The weather was still good so they left the large windows open through twilight and every so often you'd see the monorail pass by.
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The child in front of me kept staring at me.
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From: David Risney
Views: 59
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| Time: 00:07 | More in People & Blogs |
In Toronto we visited the CN Tower, the ROM, and the Bata Shoe Museum. We generally acted like tourists walking around taking photos of things, putting on sun block, and not saying 'eh'. But we could have been worse
like the drunk American college students in front of us in line for the CN Tower asking the guide if the CN Tower is taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We stumbled upon the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit which was really interesting. Sarah in particular recalls the cute stuffed animal
monsters.
After Toronto we drove to Burlington where Palak and Meghal's wedding would take place. We got up early and made it on time to the wedding which was
lovely. I hadn't attended an Indian wedding previously so it was a new experience for me. During the ceremony the child in front of me kept peeking over her parent's shoulder and staring at me. It
lasted all day with a break after lunch during which we drove around and experienced small town Ontario. After the break cousins performed dances for Palak and Meghal and then we all danced the night
away until the wee hours.
In Niagra we stayed in a hotel room with a falls view which was lovely. We went on the Maid of the Mist tour that takes tourists
right up to the falls in a boat and drenches them. We also went on the Behind the Falls tour which was not as fun. In both we are
given rain coats which are essentially glorified plstic trash bags. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant which had a lovely view of the falls. At night the falls are lit up in various colors
with gigantic lights.
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