I am the type of person who likes my weekends laid back and filled with reading, watching tv, and just enjoying myself. This weekend was definitely one of those.

Saturday night was spent with a good sized group of Shell interns downtown. We went up and down Main street checking out the different types of nightlife. Sadly, I wasn’t able to take any pictures as most of the people were pretty spread out.

Sunday turned out to be a lounge around type day with me spending my early afternoon at the baseball fields watching my little brother’s baseball game and talking to some folks I have not seen in 3 yrs.

I then spent yesterday evening watching TV (Family Guy) and messing with my new Motorola WR850G wireless router with Elizabeth.

Just my kind of weekend. No working out, no physical labor, no staring at computer screen (unless I wanted to). Just an all around good time.

I have been reluctant to post anything about Guantanamo Bay and the detainees there. My reasoning behind this is the unknown of what happens there. No matter what the news reports, what the committees find, and what the government says, we’ll never truly know the nature of what is taking place there. To add to that we will never really know if the men held there are innocent or guilty, though a lot of them were captured engaging U.S. and Pakistani troops.

The subject is a touchy one and frankly I’d like to stay away from it. I believe the men there deserve a trial, eventually. We don’t need to try these men quickly by any means. They are not subject to the rights given by the Geneva Convention because they were not in uniform, they tried to blend in with the civilian population, they did not carry their arms openly, and they did not wear a recognizable distinctive sign. They should not be tried as U.S. citizens because:

1. They aren’t U.S. citizens
2. They were arrested on foreign soil by U.S. soldiers

To me their status is in limbo and that’s the best way to describe it.

People say we should set them free or be better to them. Why? Because if we were in a similar situation we would want to be set free… No, I’m sorry, if I committed a crime and attacked innocent people or reigned a country with tyranny then no, I wouldn’t expect to be treated great or even well for that matter. When you commit an act then you have to face the consequences whether good or bad. If I go out and shoot someone then I better be prepared to face the consequences.

Patrick has hinted at starting a podcast. I say go for it Patrick!

I have been listening to a few podcasts lately and I’m excited to see where the one at Pro-PHP goes. I do have a few quirks with podcasting though. A lot of podcasters feel that their background music/noise is ok… It’s not. Give me some introduction music and a little soothing background music but at least check the audio levels before you upload the file. I am listening to your podcast to hear you. I could care less about what elevator music you chose this week.

If you are going to be interviewing someone on your podcast please make sure that you have good software to record the conversation. I know it is hard to conduct interviews with people who are far away but I have listened to a few podcasts where the interviews were conducted over Skype and they were horrid. I couldn’t understand a single thing in some of them and sadly they were people who I really wanted to hear interviewed.

As soon as iTunes 5 comes out and the ability to add podcasts becomes a lot easier the number of podcasters is going to jump significantly. If you want listeners make sure that you create a professional, fun and enjoyable, and creative podcast. People won’t stop listening to you if you’re good.

Weekends go by much too fast. Working a 9/80 schedule I was supposed to have Friday off but things don’t always go as planned. A meeting was scheduled for mid-Friday morning and so I made my way into work, forced to fight the traffic.

Instead of fighting my way home, Elizabeth and I went to the Galleria and looked around. I of course visited the Apple store and with Elizabeth being a fellow Apple nerd had no problems tagging along.

I have spent the rest of the weekend eating mexican food and relaxing. I saw “Batman Begins” this evening and have to say that it is definitely worth seeing. I won’t give any spoilers or ruin anything but it was amazing. From what I’ve read this is the start of a whole new take on the Batman series. Hopefully we’ll see new characters like Clay Face and Madhatter!!

Caffeine has been one of my downfalls for a while now and over the last few months I have been trying to wean myself off of it. Progress has been made but I have always had an addiction to Iced Tea. Coffee was not hard at all to give up, plus I can drink decaf and be just fine, but Iced Tea has a completely different flavor when it is decaffeinated, well, to me at least.

I also have trouble with sodas. With Pepsi being one of my favorite drinks it’s hard for me to just give it up. Over the last few days I have been drinking decaffeinated versions of it as well and while the taste is a little different, it’s not half bad.

So why am I trying to get off of the caffeinated stuff? Lately I have not been sleeping well and I attribute it to using caffeine to keep myself alert most of the day. I have also been drinking everything but water lately and I think I need to get back to the basics and drink more of that, maybe it will make me feel better. Mostly it’s just to have a goal this summer. Give myself something shoot for before I head back to Lubbock and see if I can keep doing it when I get back up there and in my routine.

I am still waiting for MySQL 5.0 to be released before I actually move my data over to PostgreSQL. The reason is the simple fact that PostgreSQL has the advanced features I want and MySQL has implemented a few in its recent 4.1 release, but it just left me wanting more. When 5.0 is released I will evaluate it to see if it fits my needs and has the features and the speed that I want. If it doesn’t then I will be making a switch to PostgreSQL.

My reluctance to switch is the overwhelming use of MySQL on most hosts and by a lot of small/medium application developers. With 4.1 I am able to implement a true relational database with foreign keys and CASCADE statements, I just want more…

I have been looking for a few more blogs to add to my list of daily reading and I’ve compiled a list of the new sites that are now in my bookmarks folder.

• Lunar Adventures – A great blog by fellow Texan Andrew Kaufmann.
• DonnieJeter.com – A simplistic but interesting blog by moleskine addict Donnie Jeter.
• JohnZeratsky.com – A great read for designers. John and I have had a few conversations about an easy to use centralized calendar application.
• NicholasJon.com – I really like the look of this blog and the content is great.

I am always looking for new reading material. Any suggestions? E-mail me! s [at] badice dot com.

After receiving an early release of this dual disc album, I must say that I am thoroughly impressed that the Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl in particular have kept the same sound with a few added twists.

The first surprise is that the album is dual disc. There are twenty songs, making it a true rock album worth the money. None of that eleven song crap… I don’t really need to talk about song quality or type, if you’ve heard the single then you’ve heard the jist of the album. There are a few songs thrown about that spice it up and a few that slow down the album but all in all it flows wonderfully.

The album will be released June 14, get your copy reserved on Amazon!

After reading about Ronald McDonald being made into a fitness guru I’ve decided that McDonald’s should just shut their doors and never reopen. The line that caught my eye was that there are no hamburgers or fries in the new commercials. What?! How can you forget your main business? Your job is not to make people healthy, it’s to be there to sell hamburgers and french fries to the hungry.

Maybe what we need to do is have a limit on how much fast food people can eat. That way we can get rid of these ridiculous commercials… It is not the fact that people eat McDonald’s, it’s the fact that they eat it everyday. Or they eat it twice a day every other day.

Maybe all of the fast food joints should get together and start giving little counters out that after you’ve had fast food for 2 days a week you have to wait another week before you can get more. It’s all about moderation.

The beaches of Normandy were full of gun fire, scared soldiers, artillery, and blood on this morning 61 years ago. Operation Overlord began the night before on June 5th with special forces, paratroopers, and glider troops being dropped behind enemy lines to disrupt the German reinforcement of the beachheads.

The invasion was a huge success and the western front that Stalin had so desperately wanted was finally open.

As we slowly lose the veterans of World War II it is hard for us to understand the horrors that they faced that morning running through knee high water straight into enemy gunfire. To put it into perspective, the average age of a soldier on D-Day was 19. They would be 80 today. The average lifespan of an American is hovering around 76-78.

We are slowly losing what some have called the “greatest generation”.