Thursday, September 10, 2009

Back...for a while, anyway

feels good to be home. and i have been home for two weeks today. unfortunately, i was too lazy, too busy, too tired and too ill (not all at the same time, mind) to log in here and update my own blog. geh. anyhow, i'm breaking that cycle now. i also hope to blog at least once a week when i get back to Zamfara, since my local government of posting is a nice little place that has no internet whatsoever.

Camp had its good sides. i wasn't the only person from school posted to Zamfara — a buddy of mine was posted there too (not that it did much good; we did see quite a number of times, but...life happens, you know. and in case you didn't already know it, i kinda get prickly when i think people get too close. defense mechanism. what can i say?). i got stuck in the most unserious platoon, managed to escape most of the hard stuff, and even got to play a couple of Scrabble™ games with a pretty good player. met some chicks, didn't get into any relationships, didn't get redeployed, and got posted to a nursery and primary school.

before i left home i started developing an application for a friend, and due to time constraints, i was forced to use an ORM for the project. since getting back i've worked more on the project and what i really want to say is: how in the world did i live before NHibernate and Castle ActiveRecord? it's going to be very hard doing any development and still using SQL queries and data connection calls. if you're never used an ORM before and you're a developer, you should invest some time in learning one. i recommend NHibernate for .NET developers, but since i think the XML mappings are a pain (turned me off NHibernate immediately), you can use a framework that leverages NHibernate without the mappings. Examples include Castle ActiveRecord and Fluent NHibernate(please be familiar with C# 3.0 syntax - it'll help. greatly)

in developing the application i mentioned above, i have become even more convinced that UI development is for idiots. it feels so much like cruel and unusual punishment. must be why my pay was that low — i hardly did any UI development while i was working. simply focused on logic. mostly daemons and console apps in my kitty.

apparently i pissed off some demonic mosquitoes for being far too heavy to carry away to roast over their campfire in Zamfara, so they retaliated by injecting me chock full of malaria parasites. slow-acting ones. for more than a week after i got home, i never realized anything was wrong. and the flies must have had something to do with it too. that place is full of flies. apparently they overheard me asking several times if there wasn't any commercial gain to be had from houseflies, and acted as informant to the mosquitoes. ah well.

my leave's almost up, and i haven't done anything i wanted to do for myself, and i have so much to do for other people *sob*. well, i'll be off now. i'm glad Jeff Lew finally made his dream of creating his own movie come true (bu he lived on his savings for 4 years to make it happen!). since the first time i watched Killer Bean 2: The Party, i was impressed by his work. Jeff's an inspiration to us all, so get off your butt! gotta run now — i still need to bare my butt to a lady to get a shot twice today. see y'all.

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