As of this morning, I've been in the UK for 3 months.
Time flies.
Month: July 2005
I love this feeling
Ever been surprised by a song and just out of the blue think about something nice, or somebody you love?
Hmmm, ya :)
iconage
A walk along the Camb
We went walkies along the Camb this afternoon. It was a glorious day today and the sky was fabjoulus. I took lots of pictures. Those are just a few, there are more here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/cambridge/trinity.html
Hmmm, salad!
ooooh, baby! I made the best ceasar salad I've ever done tonight. A full head of baby romaine, half a cucumber, homemade ciabatta croutons, roast turkey breast, parmesan and homemade dressing. hmmmmm!
Croutons:
half a ciabatta loaf, diced. Drizzle olive oil, sprinkle with oregano and bake in the oven at 400F for 10 minutes.
Dressing:
2 soft boiled egg yolks (the recipe says to use raw, but last time we did that, we had a nasty surprise so I had the brilliant idea to use softboiled), olive oil, vinegar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper.
Serve it with a Katy-sized glass of south African rose and vienneta for dessert. Hooah, food porn!
Busy day walking :)
I just looked at my watch and noticed that 6 hours had gone by. Katy and I went walkies to the city center for some shopping. I got some aftershave (Ralph Lauren Polo Blue) and a brand-spankin' new 4-slice toaster (cause the one I had was possessed by Satan). I got some goodies for other people, and a puzzle mat for Katy.
It was a really nice day to be out.
Life is good
Oh, and I got a teapot for Katy, because she's british and takes comfort in the fact that she now owns a teapot.
Hmmmm, pig
Last night I made the best porc (excuse me, pork) roast EVAR! I used my new grilling pan and made a roast with mustard and sage rub. I also made my first crackling. Now for those of you who don't know, crackling is roasted pork fat. Pure fat. Soooo good, but evil.
So tonight, to make up for it, there's leek, potato, carrot and corn soup.
Hmmm, soup.
You gotta love the british
Quotes from all over regarding London going boom:
———
When the news reporter said “Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea” I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything.
You're a bit cold?
Tea.
Your boyfriend has just left you?
Tea.
You've just been told you've got cancer?
Tea.
Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt?
TEA DAMMIT!
And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out [in soccer].
———-
“It's hard to panic the British. They've dealt with the Blitz, the IRA, the Silurians, the Zarbi, the Daleks, the Cybermen…”
———-
To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: “I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!”
———-
“They did their worst, and they managed to disrupt our transport network and get fatalities in the low double figures. That happens on a fairly regular basis anyway, you twits. What's your next trick – a fiendish weather control device which makes it rain on a bank holiday weekend?”
———-
“Al Qaeda say: 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.' Bitch, please. Osama, you live in a fucking cave. You're like an evil Batman or something. No wonder you have a thing for blowing up commuters, because you will never commute because you live in a cave. You see transport, and you are filled with rage, because you? Live in a cave. You could try forming a political wing to… oh, wait, you can't because YOU LIVE IN A CAVE. Twat.
The BBC paused news coverage to show *Eastenders*. That'd be the nationwide fear, terror and panic, then.”
wish me luck
I just spoke with my landlady about the possibility of bringing Boris here. My lease says no pets, but since all the furnishings are mine and I keep his claws trimmed, added to the fact that he's an indoors cat, I think I have a chance. I also offered to have the apartment steam cleaned before I left, so that might sway her. I'll see. She didn't seem all that chuffed about the idea, but who knows.
On the value of database indexes
Been trying to wrap my head around a bug at work, why a simple database query never returned a result set and crashed the server. The query is a simple left join from a “term” table with 40K records to a “term_synonym” table with 140K records. It should be straightforward. It should work.
It didn't.
For a very, very stupid reason on my part.
I'd forgotten to create indexes on the tables and it was doing full table scans. That comes out to 5,600,000,000 iterations over the term_synonym table. No wonder it was slow.
After creating the index:
mysql> select count(*) from term t left join term_synonym ts on t.term_id = ts.term_id; +----------+ | count(*) | +----------+ | 156746 | +----------+ 1 row in set (1.72 sec)
Um, ya, I suck.