I’d be surprised if anyone cares, but my site now supports the hAtom microformat.  At least, I think it does.  I couldn’t find an hAtom validator so I’m not 100% sure I’m conforming to the standard.  But it’s pretty simple so I’m gonna say yes.  As far as I know hAtom is only slightly more supported than RFC 1149.  But I think that’s only because of the recent avian flu concerns.

You won’t notice any difference in the site1 (which is how microformats are supposed to work, after all).  Except for what they call the Datetime Design Pattern.  This is where you stick an abbr tag around a human-readable date, and set the abbreviation’s title attribute to a machine-parsable ISO 8601 timestamp (i.e. “2007-11-26T19:57:00-05:00”).  The problem with this is that now if a user hovers over my timestamp, he sees this very unfriendly tooltip.  This is exactly the opposite of what the abbr tag is supposed to be used for!  (And, more generally, what the title attribute is supposed to be used for.)  There is no reason to display this information to the user.  Surely there must have been a better way.  I’m tempted to make a non-displaying abbr tag for the hAtom “published” date.  An XML parser would still read it regardless of its style, but users wouldn’t have to see this ugly timestamp.

So I said over four months ago that I would try to put up some pictures of our new house.  Well when we decorated the house and then cleaned it up before we had company over, I decided I’d take some pictures.  Without further ado, you can find those pictures on our photos page.

Among the highlights is Stephanie’s snowman nativity scene.  Because, you know, most biblical scholars agree that it is likely that Jesus was a baby snowman.  You’ll also see a picture of Stephanie barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  Making dinner no less!

I also want to make some comments about this picture of my messy bonus room/noise room/office.  You can see the following things in the picture, from (roughly) left to right:

• The cardboard cube you see there was going to be a Mario ? block to hang over my cubicle, but I never finished it.  In part because I would need to buy some yellow paper, and in part because I thought it might be too corny even for a programmer’s office.  And I’ll openly admit that I got the idea from someone else.

• You can see the Sumo Lounge bean bag chair that I won last year.

• There is a book of Christmas music for the ukulele that I got last year.  Mele Kalikimaka!

• You can see my big amp, my acoustic guitar, and my Micro Cube mini-amp (which I wrote about on this very blog a while back).

When I went to take the pictures off my memory card, I realized there were still pictures from our Labor Day trip to Lake Lure with Stephanie’s family (we also went there last year).  If anyone is interested, I put those pictures up for your perusal.

Public service announcement

If a carbon monoxide detector goes off in your house, you are supposed to call the fire department immediately, and then go outside.  Do not ventilate the area or turn off appliances: the fire department will be there in about 30 seconds, and they are more likely to be able to identify the source that way.

I put this out here because it’s something I didn’t know.  So when I got home today and the carbon monoxide alarm was going off, I opened some windows, turned on a floor fan, and took Punky, my laptop, and a phone outside to try to figure out what was the problem and what I should do.  Now I knew that carbon monoxide was deadly, but I didn’t know you were supposed to call the fire department.  I figured it was something like a leaky pipe:  if you own the property you’re responsible for diagnosing and fixing the problem yourself.  Eventually I found a website that said to call the fire department.  So I called the fire department, and they were there before I could get the front door unlocked (literally!).  Of course, by this time I had ventilated the house for an hour, so they were unable to detect anything.

Anyway, I thought this was the kind of knowledge that I should pass along.  Because knowing is half the battle.

Update
It seems I may be an idiot, but this carbon monoxide detector’s UI is largely to blame.  Here is what it looks like:

There is one input, labeled both “Test” and “Silence.”  And there is one LED, with a label underneath saying “Move to fresh air.”  But that LED is always on to indicate that the device has power.  Maybe it flashes when there is an emergency?

Then there are the audible beeps, which must be counted.  One “chirp” per minute: replace battery.  Three “chirps” per minute: replace alarm.  Four beeps (no time limit specified): carbon monoxide alarm.  And this information is printed on the side of the device that is plugged into the wall.  I was getting one beep per minute, I think, which means to replace the batteries.  I assumed the slow beeping meant that CO levels were low, and that they might pick up when they reached deadly levels.  I couldn’t find the paper that came with the detector, and I was afraid that if I unplugged it that it might recalibrate itself upon being plugged in (like a joystick?).

For very little cost they could have used three LEDs: one to indicate low battery, one to indicate power, and one to indicate that carbon monoxide is present (maybe that one could flash and be a different color?).  Then the device wouldn’t need to output sound except in the event of an emergency.

In any case, this is still good information to have.

I went to a new Thai restaurant with some people from work yesterday, and I took a business card as I was paying:

I’m not sure what that means.  My theory is that a non-native speaker meant to write something like “premier” instead of “first.”

Any other theories?

A few days ago I was talking to Stephanie and somehow the subject of ear-piercing came up.  Stephanie said she was seven when she first got her ears pierced, which seemed young to me.  I thought most parents didn’t let their girls get their ears pierced till they were thirteen or so.  She said no—for most parents who make their girls wait till they are a certain age, that age is nine or ten.

Afterwards I was thinking about it, wondering why I had an age of thirteen in mind.  I never had sisters, so it’s not like it was a rule I learned from my parents.  All of my friends were boys, and although some had sisters, I never really saw the parenting process per se.  The closest would have been some of my cousins, but even then I don’t recall ear-piercing being discussed.

Then I remembered that episode of Full House where Stephanie wants to get her ears pierced but her dad says she needs to wait until she is in Jr. High (i.e. about 13 years old), because that’s when D.J. got her ears pierced.  All of a sudden it occurred to me: everything I think I know about how to raise a girl I learned from watching Full House.

That’s a little scary.