What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning, my old friend Bret poked me with a stick to get me moving, and I fired up Xcode 6.1 and loaded up my old CryptoQuip solver, and gave it a run. The results brought a smile to my face - again:

  2014-11-10 08:43:42.536 CryptoQuip[87664:8603115] Solving puzzle: 'Fict O
       ncc bivteclnbklzn O lcpji ukl pt vzglcddp' where t=n
  2014-11-10 08:43:42.572 CryptoQuip[87664:8603115] Solution found: 'When I
       see thunderstorms I reach for an umbrella'

and the total run was only 36 msec. Very nice!

Then I decided to convert it to ARC because I know iOS requires ARC, and it should be even faster - right? I mean it's not doing the retain and release, so it should be even faster!

So I converted it to ARC, and removed all the retain and release and autorelease, and rebuilt it and re-ran it:

  2014-11-10 12:30:32.582 CryptoQuip[89789:8710573] Solving puzzle: 'Fict O
       ncc bivteclnbklzn O lcpji ukl pt vzglcddp' where t=n
  2014-11-10 12:30:32.640 CryptoQuip[89789:8710573] Solution found: 'When I
       see thunderstorms I reach for an umbrella'

So with ARC, it's taking 58 msec - that's a real increase. I had to run it several times to make sure that I was really measuring it properly. But there it was... as plain as day - 58 msec. Wow. ARC isn't cheap.

And as I started to think about it, it made sense - at least I came up with a plausible explanation: What if the retain/release version was using the standard Autorelease Pool. Then it wouldn't really hassle with deallocation in the runtime - it'd wait until the work was done to run the collector. However, ARC would see what needed to be done and then do it as it wouldn't wait for the pool to clean up. In that case, all the creation and destruction would come at a cost: Time.

In the end, it doesn't really matter - we have to use ARC for iOS, and it's not horrible for performance, but it does mean that I'm going to want to be careful as we move forward with this to not create all the temporary objects.

This morning I was chatting with Carl (that's not his name) - the guy that used to be my manager, but went to the West Coast, and now is looking to move back to Chicago... We were chatting about an idea he had - of using Salesforce.com as the source of data for sales projection algorithms. Then I remembered that Heroku got acquired by Salesforce and there's a specialized connect platform between Heroku and Salesforce for just this kind of scalable application building.

Heroku also handles Postgres as a Service, and they support clojure very nicely. In all, it sounded like a really nice platform to build this on. I can't way to see what Carl comes up with next.

Well... after the shock of yesterday, I have to admit, it was a very hard thing to get going today. I'm planning on taking the rest of the week as Work From Home, but even then, the crushing fear of being without a job, and having all the responsibilities of my little house - and Liza's and the kids... well... it was one of the worst starts on a day since those first few days in the hotel. It was just horrible.

But I had a feeling that I needed to get up - I needed to run, and I needed to pretend that my life was going to be OK. That I was going to pull through this - I didn't know how, but somehow, someway, I was going to make it. As my Mom was always fond of saying: The motion becomes the emotion - and I think she stole that from her Dad.

So I got up to run, and do my regular morning routine. It wasn't easy, but I tell you, I've never enjoyed Stan and Neil on SportsCenter as much as I did that morning. They helped get the day going. Then it was time to think... what to do? During the rest of my work-out, getting cleaned-up, and dressed, I worked through what I needed to do... the emails that needed writing, the people I needed to reach out to.

So I hit the morning going - emailed the last place that made me an offer, to see if it was still open (nope, not surprising). Then it was chatting with a few friends, pinging them about what's going on, and chatting to a friend that just left The Shop for a West Coast start-up. It was nice to talk to him... it's been a tough couple of years, and he's known me through almost all of it.

Then I chatted with a friend that I worked with a while back, and asked him about anything he's heard. He's still in Finance, and it's been two years, plus, since I've been there, and I do miss it. He said they are hiring, and that I'd be great for the job(s). So we set up some time to talk on Monday.

My hope picked up.

Then I saw that my former manager at The Shop - who left a few months before for another job on the West Coast, and he'd been fired yesterday, too. Wow... I told him I was sorry it happened, and he explained that the CEO got shaken when the company came under a little fire, and my friend was jettisoned. It felt like fate. Same day. Wow.

My hope picked up a little more.

I don't know what the rest of the day will bring - I fully expect to have dark times - I have no future now, so I'm going all on faith, but I have a few glimmers of hope, and if I can just hold on to those, maybe I can weather this storm, too.

Hope so.

Today I did one thing that I missed last year due to the turmoil of the year - Vote. I don't know all the reasons why I love to vote, but I tell you this - I do love to vote. To read all the referendums, all the tax bills, all the choices we have before us on the ballot, and then execute my right to say what I think we should do.

I don't complain a lot about government, because I think we are all flawed - and yet as a whole we have achieved great things. I think it's this bloodless coup that we have every few years that makes this a great nation. It really makes me smile.

I have to say that one of the coolest things about Textual 5 was already in Textual 4.1.8, but I didn't really avail myself of it a lot - and that's the CSS styles for the UI. I've been fine-tuning the CSS for the effects in the window - like the messages from the server, and the messages about why I might have disconnected, and then the line separating the old from the new messages... it's all looking so much better, but it's all just simple pixel moves.

I really love this app. Wonderful support on IRC - no less!

I just noticed that there was a paid update to Textual 4.1.8 - Textual 5 in the Mac App Store. I can't even remember what got me looking in the #textual chat room, but there it was, and that was really good news. I'm a big fan of Textual, and that they had an upgrade for OS X 10.10 is really nice. I do with Adium had one.

The UI changes aren't major - which is nice, and it reads the configuration from 4.1.8, which is also really nice. They got rid of the hidden check box to not restrict the window size, but his concession was to make the minimum "small enough" that it wasn't needed.

Leave it to me to point out that I wanted about 20% less.

So I let him know, and we'll see if there's a change in the offing. It's not horrible as-is, but I would like to have the freedom to make it a little smaller... but I can live for now.

UPDATE: the CSS configuration of Textual is just amazing. I'm able to customize this view to a level that's more than I ever imagined. I'm sure there are lots of others that thinks this is no big deal - but to me, screen real estate is critical, and the ability to customize a view like this is just fantastic. Very highly recommended.

I honestly would have put money on the fact that this would not have happened today. Big money.

I'm sitting on the bus riding to work, and I realize that I'm pretty happy without a pain-causing personal relationship in my life. That was a wow! moment. I've been separated for about 2 years, and the divorce is in the works, but I would have bet real money I'd feel horrible for the rest of my natural life. But today... on the bus... for a few minutes... I didn't.

That was huge for me. Huge.

Then I'm in work, updating a few postings with the results of the tests I'd done overnight, and I'm back into the swing of posting like I used to. It's been a long two years, but I'm back to writing about what I'm doing, and it's really helping. I'm feeling like I'm enjoying myself again.

This, too, was huge for me.

I don't expect this to last all day... but the fact that I have felt this way tells me that I need to keep doing what I'm doing - keep moving forward, and then maybe this will come again. And maybe when it comes again, it'll last longer. Maybe.

Glui - a great tool for replacing Skitch, is having a little problem with OS X 10.10, and it's not that hard to see:

So I emailed the developer, and within 15 mins I got a response that the fix was in the Mac App Store, and I should see the update in a few days. Sweet! I use this for a lot of my journal posts, so it's nice to get it all fixed up, and I am really liking the OS X 10.10 UI, so it's just nice to see them so responsive.

Great tool - Great support!

Turns out that Adium 1.5.10 and Yahoo! IM isn't happy with OS X 10.10 - it's saying that it can't connect to the Yahoo! IM server and erring out. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue for me, but I've got a few friends that I stay in touch with all the time, and because of their employer, two of them have been kinda off-limits to me for a while - but one finally found his way back to me through Yahoo! IM.

While I'm really loving the changes in OS X 10.10, sadly, with the update, the Yahoo! IM connection has failed to work. And it's not at all helpful in any way:

What I've read from the Adium blog is that there is a known fix - but there's a potential security concern, and I'm not at all sure why they are delaying releasing a patch for Yosemite... but they are.

So I'm out of touch with an old friend until I can get an update from Adium. This is one of the issues with Open Source - abandoned software. I'm sure the point is that I can pick it up and fix it, and I might be able to, but it's a pain, and it's something I've come to depend on. In that, I like paying for things.

This morning I just got a little antsy and decided that on my personal laptop, it was time to upgrade it Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I am so glad I did. The flat look - on all the web sites of the reviews - is just what I like. Almost no chrome - no need for it. Smooth visuals on my retina MacBook Pro, but I'm guessing that's the key to this upgrade - having a rMBP. Still... I've got one :), so I'm loving this.

I'm still on the Light treatment as I don't find the transparency at all intrusive or distractive - as I've been using it on MacVim for a while. MacVim was my only concern about working, but that's fine. What I didn't expect was that Adium 1.5.10 could no longer connect to Yahoo! IM. That's not good because I still reach out to Jeremy on Yahoo!.

I looked on the web, and it turns out that this is a known issue with OS X 10.10, and there is a fix for it, but it's not out yet - not even in beta. I'm a little surprised by this as I didn't really dig into what the patch was, but they have been so proactive in the past, I'm surprised that there's no beta out there for this.

After all, this has been out in "general release" for quite a while now, and while they may not want to target each update, it's something else to know there's a fix, and let weeks pass and no beta or update. I guess I'll have to wait.