Author Archives: brad

Shhhhh… don’t tell anybody, but there are some very early screenshots of tangelo here. Everything you see in these screenshots is subject to change, and some things already have.

A few weeks ago, Paul Reubens, also known as Pee-Wee Herman, pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing obscene material.

This is the same guy who was busted for indecent exposure in an adult theater in Florida in 1991.

This is also the same guy who had a brilliant kids’ show on CBS for several years, a hit show on HBO in the early ’80s, and a successful movie in 1985.

Too weird.

I will say that he sucked in “You Don’t Know Jack” a few years ago. The only person aside from the original narrator that could have pulled off that role was David Spade.

Anyway, MSNBC has excerpts from a recent interview, in which he discusses some of what the last dozen years have been like. Great quote: Yeah, I mean, I’m hating to admit that Pee-Wee was healthier than me. But I think in some ways, he was.

On another sad note, Gilligan apparently beat Pee-Wee in a WWWF Grudge Match.

Pee-Wee, I really want to believe that you’re innocent. I really, really do. But it’s tough.

Wow, been a while since I posted last. I’ve been slaving away at Frequency 2.0 and at a very early version of tangelo. Frequency 2.0 was unleashed tonight, so that’s done for a while, barring any unforeseen disasters.

tangelo is coming along nicely. This week I wrote the templating engine, which was harder than I thought it would be, but it’s done and it seems to work great. I also tweaked the RSS feed and added an Atom feed. Last week I wrote a “wizard” to help new users create their weblogs. Hopefully that will make it easy for people to get started.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to, at least during evenings and weekends. At work, we’re beginning a pretty major shift in responsibilities, one that I think will fit everyone a little bit better.

As far as our search for a new church, I think we’ve settled on Lancaster County Bible Church, also known as LCBC. We had also considered the Lancaster Vineyard Church and NewSong Fellowship. Each church has a lot to offer, but at this point we just feel kind of drawn toward LCBC. It’s kind of funny. Vineyard has about 40 people, NewSong about 400, and LCBC about 4000. Orders of magnitude. I don’t know if that means anything or not.

My mother has yielded in the Great Thin Mints Controversy. After seeing my exhaustive research and receiving confirmation from esteemed men like Desktop Joe and Cousin Ron, she has admitted that Thin Mints were probably not always dark in the middle.

But, stubborn is as stubborn does, it seems.

My sister is bound and determined to disbelieve until her dying day. Her husband stands by her side, almost unflinchingly. It’s touching, really, because you can tell by looking at him that deep down inside, he knows I’m right. Although he actually accused me of doctoring the picture, despite the link to the official Girl Scouts of America Web Site. Someday, someday, he and my sister will come around.

Because, honestly, I think I know the difference between cookies and candy.

Since I missed the last two Fridays, here are my answers to a Friday Five from April 4, 2003.

1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?
Five. First was my parents’ house. I lived there from birth until I was 21, when I moved into the tiny house in Millersville where Jen and I lived as newlyweds. In 1996, we moved into the renovated firehouse in Mountville, which was a way cool place to live for a young couple with no kids. Dave will tell you that I was raised there, but that’s not the case at all. In 1998, we bought our first home, a poorly constructed townhome in Mountville. It was a mistake. We took a loss and bought our current home in 2001. We’re very happy here. In fact, I’m going to be buried in the basement when I die.

2. Which was your favorite and why?
I love my current house. It’s a great place to have a family. But I have to admit that the firehouse was cooler. So, it’s a tie.

3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?
I kind of like moving. But I also kind of hate it. You waste a whole lot of money every time you move, switching cable and electric, buying little odds and ends. But it’s still kind of fun to move into an empty house. Jen and I look at that like a blank canvas. In our current house, we bought it about two or three weeks before we moved in, so we took that opportunity to paint every room in the house a different color. Very cool. Drove my family nuts.

4. What’s more important, location or price?
In the end, location. Although once you reach a certain price point, nothing else matters.

5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?
All of the above. Nice, high fence to keep the dog in and prying eyes out. Nice big pool. Hot tub. Huge yard. Daylight basement, all fitted up to be my computer and music room. Island in the kitchen for Jen; she’s always wanted one. Maybe an indoor pool, too. Why not? We’re dreaming here. Incidentally, my in-laws’ former neighbors recently bought a house with an indoor pool. But they don’t like to swim. Man, if I had an indoor pool, I’d be swimming every day. Get up and swim a few laps before work. Get home and float around for a while. Year round. Sweet.

Tomorrow is one of my favorite days of the year: April Fool’s Day. Mike and I have some plans laid, but, for reasons which I hope are obvious, I can’t divulge them at this time.

My favorite joke from last year was John Moltz’s Painfully Serious Dell Rumors Site.

So, what are your best April Fool’s moments? Leave a comment. Let us in on the best prank you can remember, whether you were the perpetrator or the victim.

I’m halfway through day two at REAL World 2004. Last night we saw some great stuff at the keynote last night. I mentioned it briefly in my last entry, but now that I’ve had some time to mull it over and take it all in, it’s time to make some comments of my own, in addition to a recap of some of the specifics.

The first thing Geoff did last night was talk about the company’s vision and history. Their vision is more ambitious than I imagined, and it’s very encouraging. In a SteveNote grid, Geoff outlined the four areas where they want to see REALbasic succeed. Desktop and server apps occupied the first quadrant, perhaps predictably. The second quadrant was web apps, followed by handhelds/cell phones and plug-ins for other apps, respectively filling quadrants three and four. We didn’t see or hear anything about quadrants three or four last night, but the sutff Geoff showed in us the first two quadrants was enough to get all of us pretty fired up. More on that in a moment.

He also talked about the history of the company, which is a really interesting story. In 1998, Geoff found a link to a shareware program called CrossBasic. The link was on Macintouch. He looked at the program, which compiled Mac apps and Java apps. He was impressed with the app and called the author, who was doing it as sort of a nights and weekends project. Geoff asked him if he’d like to work on it full-time, and REAL Software was born. Later that year they shipped REALbasic 1.0, which produced only Mac apps. The Java support in CrossBasic was spotty at best, so it was removed. When it came time to crank out RB 2, it was apparent that compiling to Windows was more important than making Java apps. Version 3 was the first to run natively on Mac OS X. And in version 5, they made an IDE that runs natively on Windows. In the newest release, 5.5, it also compiles for Linux and creates GUI-less console apps.

Which brings us to today. Geoff then gave us a sneak peek at REALbasic 6. The interface has been totally redesigned, with a single-window “browser” type model. At first glance, I despised the new interface, but about fifteen seconds into Geoff’s demo, I realized the genius of it and fell in love. It’s not just flash and polish, it’s a fundamental improvement to the way you interact with the application. It’s fantastic. And it’s written in REALbasic. Wrap your head around that. REALbasic 6 is written in REALbasic.

The big news, to me at least, came second. There’s no official name yet, but they’re calling it Swordfish. It uses REALbasic language and syntax, but it compiles web applications. Stop and fully take that in: it compiled web applications. This is huge and major and big and many other superlatives. I spend so much time rewriting perfectly good RB apps in PHP because people want them on the web. Soon I won’t have to. Which is good, because as capable as PHP is, it’s tedious to write. REALbasic has the best autocomplete system out there, which makes it dead simple to write correct code. With PHP, even with the excellent syntax-coloring provided by SubEthaEdit, I feel like I’m always guessing. Plus I have to create everything by hand, as opposed to designing visually in REALbasic. But Swordfish looks like the ticket. In fact, in a few minutes, I’m going to a discussion session on it.

Tonight is the big Texas BBQ feast and the REALbasic design awards. I might sneak out early and spend some more time writing code.

So here I am in Austin, Texas. This is the first time I’ve been away completely alone. No Jen, no Gracie, not even a Dave or Mike. It’s weird being all alone in a hotel room. It’s so… quiet.

I just got back from the REAL World 2004 Keynote and Reception. Very cool stuff. I’ll probably write some detailed stuff later, but let’s just say there was a ton of stuff that will make my life easier. And Geoff Perlman did a great Steve-Jobs-style presentation, complete with “One More Thing” at the end.

The REALbasic mailing lists are very active. It’s nice to finally put faces with some of these names I’ve seen so many times. Some people don’t look at all like I imagined. Some do, for good or for ill. It’s funny. After you’ve been reading someone’s email messages for a long enough stretch of time, you begin to “hear” their voice, or what you would imagine it to be, inside your head, and you imagine what they look like. Reality so seldom matches up. But that’s a good thing.

And you can be very proud of me. I ate in a South American restaurant tonight. Yes, that’s right, Brad Rhine ate in a non-Italian ethnic place. So what did I venture to eat? I found a dish, whose name eludes me, that basically consists of two sirloin steak, smothered in grilled onions, and topped with two fried eggs. Yummy. Dr. Atkins would be proud. It was really very tasty, and made up for the “breakfast” they served on the flight: a package of Special K with lowfat milk and a banana with the stem removed (for security reasons?) so that I had to chew it open.

But both of my flights were good. On the first leg, from Philly to Houston, the seat next to me was empty. I was at the window, and there was some chick passed out in the aisle seat. “Great,” I thought. “Time to get some work done.” So I pulled out the PowerBook, and the people in front of me decided to recline so far back that at first I wondered if they had mistaken me for their dentist. So I listened to my iPod instead. I actually played the music quiz game for the first time. Pretty cool game.

Lotsa sirens outside all of a sudden. Whoa… the whole block is covered with police cars and fire trucks. Not good.

The second flight was very short: Houston to Austin. We spent as much time on the runway as we did in the air. Seriously.

The hotel is great. Hampton Inn and Suites. High speed Internet access in every room. Wireless in the common areas, supposedly. I haven’t tried it yet. There’s a swimming pool on the fourth floor. I have a great view of it from the window of my room on the 13th floor. If I could enough momentum to break through the window glass and make it about 30 feet past the window, I think I could do a killer cannonball. Oh, wait… “No Diving” sign. Forget that idea, then.

Dan wants me to pee on the Alamo, just to bug the Texans. I didn’t do that, but I did spit on Second Street, for whatever that’s worth.

In accordance with our usual tradition, we gathered at my Grandma’s house for Sunday dinner this evening. Grandma is 80 years old, and still insists on cooking for us. I think she honestly believes that if she doesn’t cook on Sunday, we all go hungry. At least Pop-Pop lets us help put the extra chairs away now.

Anyway, at the close of the main course, Grandma brought out dessert: banana cream pie, possibly the most perfect food known to man. Never content to offer her guests less than an astonishing and/or bewildering variety of choices, Grandma also brought out ice cream and Girl Scout cookies. Thin Mints to be precise.

I bit into a Thin Mint and said, “Remember when these used to be white in the middle?”

My mother and sister immediately scoffed at me. “They were never white in the middle,” they insisted. “They’re chocolate mint. They’ve always been chocolate mint.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I realize that they’re chocolate mint. But the chocolate coating takes care of the chocolate part. The minty cookie part inside used to be white.”

They persisted in their disbelief. Then my beloved and devoted bride entered the room. “Jen!” I called. “You remember. Thin Mints used to be white on the inside, right?”

Jen looked at me as she would a crazy person. “You’re thinking of Peppermint Patties,” she said. “Thin Mints have always been brown in the middle.”

That was just insulting. “I think I know the difference between cookies and candy,” I said. “OK, maybe not white. But off-white. Like a cream color.”

“Sure, they were off-white,” my sister said. “If you call brown off-white.”

Time to bring in the big guns. “Pop-Pop! Thin Mints used to be white in the middle, right?”

He didn’t remember. But he said he’d ask around.

My sister suggested that maybe I was thinking of Peppermint Patties. “I think I know the difference between cookies and candy,” I said. “And I’m definitely thinking of a cookie. It was crispy.”

“You’re thinking of those things my mom used to get out at holidays,” said Jen. “But they were more candy, not really cookies.”

“I THINK I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COOKIES AND CANDY!” I yelled, now getting annoyed. “In fact, I probably know more about cookies and candy than anyone, with the possible exception of him,” I added, pointing to me grandfather.

“Hey!” he said.

“Sorry, Pop,” I said. “But come on.”

Silence.

“I’m going straight to Google when I get home. I’ll prove you’re all wrong.”

Then the sarcasm came. “OK, Brad. You’re right. We’re all wrong. OK?”

“Google will prove my point.”

My mom suggested that not every piece of information in the world is available via Google. This, of course, is just wrong. If Google doesn’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.

This led into a discussion about how page rank works, which led to a discussion of what linking means. Apparently Pampered Chef won’t let consultants link to anyone else or let anyone link to them. Weird.

So I got home and went straight to Google, in keeping with my vow. A few hits later, I came upon this picture (enlarged for your benefit).

As you can plainly see, Thin Mints were, at one point, white in the middle.

I rest my case.

Smugly.

Or maybe, The Sunday Sorry So Late. Anyway…

If you…

1. …owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
Probably pizza. Really, really good pizza. The kind with big, floppy pieces, probably made by some really disgusting looking guy in the back and if you saw him you wouldn’t want to think about the fact that he touched your food but it’s just so good you don’t even care.

2. …owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
I think it would be cool to run either a record store or a bookstore.

3. …wrote a book, what genre would it be?
It would cross genres. Scratch that – it will cross genres. I just need to finish it. I’ve been working on it for twelve years, and I have less than a chapter written. At this rate, I should finish it by… 2525.

4. …ran a school, what would you teach?
Either writing or computers. Maybe tech writing.

5. …recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
Oooh! I did this in 1997! And the answer is: crap. Hopefully, as I re-record some of my old songs in GarageBand, the answer will become less crappy.