A day in the life of Joe

Windows x64 assembly

If you're writing 64-bit assembly for Windows and it happens to call a function, be sure to read the ABI closely. The Windows 64-bit ABI defines that the stack must be 16-byte aligned, and a function must allocate space on the stack for called functions to save register parameters.

The stack will always be maintained 16-byte aligned...

Note that space is always allocated for the register parameters, even if the parameters themselves are never homed to the stack; a callee is guaranteed that space has been allocated for all its parameters.

So if you are writing 64-bit assembly and are attempting to call a function and wonder why the registers you are pushing are getting trashed, it's because the prologue of the called function is saving the parameters over the registers you've saved.

The first decade of the 21st century

We have ten digits and thus our early arithmetic relies on incrementing the next digit when we count past 9. Sure mathematicians and computer scientist regularly deal with different based number systems. A computer has two states, on and off, and thus it is simpler to represent 9 as 1001, which when incremented becomes 1010. Not terribly impressive. In fact let's take a look at 2009, in binary: 11111011001 or in hex 0x7d9. 2010 is 11111011010, or 0x7da. Personally I'm somewhat excited about 2047 transitioning to 2048 (11111111111 + 1 = 100000000000 or 0x7FF + 1 = 0x800)

However, society and culture continues to put a certain emphasis on the significance of crossing a mod 10 barrier, the DJI crossing 10,000, the end of a decade, football fields are broken into 10 yd increments, and the year 2000. While not much significance should be ascribed to the "end" of a ten year period, this ten year period has been significant in my life.

It is within this ten year period that I completed my undergrad degree at Appalachian State University in Boone NC. I moved out of my parents home and got my own apartment. I met my wife during those years in Boone, and our marriage has been a significant portion of this decade.

While married, we moved to Indiana, and I supported my wife as she completed her master's degree at Purdue University. Somewhat serendipitously, I met Mike Mehlberg through Elaine Mehlberg who Kristen met in her program, and I landed a dream job at Arxan Technologies. I have learned more technical details in the past 6 years at Arxan than in the sum of public school and undergraduate.

I have become a father of four amazing children. Each one brings something special and something challenging to the table. It has been an incredible blessing to share my life and experience with this next generation. I only hope that they may learn from me.

If my experience is any sort of predictor of the experience my children will have, I must accept the fact that much of my teaching will be rejected by the arrogance of youth. It is a necessary form of learning, in that the wisdom of the previous generation is rejected on the basis of a lack of understanding. The irony of course is that the youth lack the perspective that the previous generation has gained. But from the youth's perspective there is no more frame of reference required to make decisions. Whether the wrong or right decision, I remember making decisions on the pure basis that it was my decision. However time and time again, in my life, this wisdom of the previous generation holds where the wisdom of the teenage youth falls away. To that I owe apologies and gratitude to my previous generation. Mom and Dad, you sacrificed so much to give me the best and taught me lessons that continue to guide me.

All along the way, I am blessed by the presence of so many people. In undergrad there are Daniel Babel and Adam Yarborough; the professors; Scott Dula, Aaron Dimmette, and Christopher Coffey; and of course Kristen Abbey. In married life, Mike Mehlberg, Jim Vaught, Aaron Lint, Dan Noland, Brad Woodfin, Fr. Patrick Baikauskaus and many others. From each of these individuals I have learned lessons that cannot be taught, but lessons that have to be experienced. From debugging the code with Daniel to debugging the soul with Fr. Patrick, the stuff I've taken away isn't the stuff of books but rather of the human condition that each one shares.

In the next decade, I'm not sure what to expect other than it will be a decade of parenting. At the end of the next ten years, I will be the proud father of a driving 15 year old, a sporting 13 year old, a caring 12 year old, and an adorable 10 year old. My parental duties won't be considered "complete" until the end of next decade! Of course, I'm reminded that my wife's grandmother continues to take an active role in the development of her great-grandchildren, and as I've come to understand parental duties are never complete.

In summary, I suggest we do not look back at the decade and define it in terms of the creation of the TSA, the creation of the DHS, the attacks on NYC, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the dot-com bubble, the housing market bubble, the devastation of New Orleans, and so many more historical events. While they should not be forgot, they should also not define who we are. We're a people of independence, freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

This decade is so much more for me. I started 2000 at the age 17 and will start 2010 at the age of 27. If you're around my age, then you also had a similar transition from teenager to young adult. And truly I feel that this is the decade of my independence, my freedom, and my liberty.

What defines who I am is that in the past ten years I left my father and my mother and clung to my wife, and my wife and I became one flesh. I have come into my own spiritual understanding and discovery, embarking on a lifelong pursuit of knowledge of God. If I were to talk to 1999 me, it would be a long conversation. A young student with so many questions and yet no clear direction. I would be able to share some answers that satisfy and some answers that demand more rigorous study. As for clear direction, after ten years it is still as clouded as ever.

Remember what you've accomplished, live long, and prosper.

Happy 2010!

Elizabeth Jen�e Abbey

She's here. Today we celebrate the arrival of not only our fourth child but our first daughter. This pregnancy has been dramatically different from the previous three. We were presented with new challenges and experiences that took us beyond what we knew, and we all made it through. From more severe morning sicknesses to three attempts at delivery, our blessed new arrival is worth every minute.

I'd like to sincerely thank all that have made this wonderful experience possible. Particularly my mother-in-law who has been by Kristen's side for the past few weeks. She came to visit us so that she might learn the ropes of taking care of our wonderful boys. While no easy task, she has met the challenge with love and kindness only a grandmother could hope to possess.

We've been lifted up by the congratulations and well wishes that have been received today, from facebook congrats to a beautiful bouquet of flowers. So in short, we say thanks and God bless.

Camera Evolution

I like taking pictures. My first digital camera that I bought was a Sony DSC-P20. I bought this camera while in college, and it did a decent job of snapping shots. The best picture I took with it was one of lightning outside my first apartment. The camera is now used by my son Sebastian, and he fills up the 16MB memory stick quite quickly.

My second digital camera was the Sony DSC-P52. This camera was a step up from the P20, in that it offered 3.2MP and movie mode with sound! Combined with a 2x optical zoom I was able to capture the first few moments with my son's life pretty well. We took it on our first cruise. It was a good camera.

When we found out that we were going to be parents again, it was time to upgrade cameras. Next I purchased the Sony DSC-H1. This camera was a big leap forward in that it was my first introduction to the DSLR form factor. While it was not a DSLR, it had most of the manual adjustments that came with a DSLR. The biggest complaint with this camera was, despite taking pictures that had depth of field, the time between pressing the shutter and taking the camera was sometime a painful 3-5 seconds. It doesn't sound like much, but when trying to capture two little ones in play.. it became cumbersome.

I no longer needed the DSC-P52 so it became a Christmas gift to my parents. They still use it today.

My wife wasn't terribly pleased with the size of the H1. It was not terribly portable, and so when we found out we were pregnant with Dominic we proceeded to purchase the DSC-W90. This camera is still one of our favorites. It has 8.1MP and is able to take shots relatively quickly. Since it is small enough to fit in a diaper bag, we take it with us everywhere. We've capture some great candidate moments on the road, at mass, and wherever. It out-performed the H1 in so many aspect that the H1 has pretty much been gathering dust ever since.

Earlier this year I found out that I was going to be a father of a daughter. After three sons, this is a pretty major parenting shift. I realized that I'm going to be wanting to take great photos now more than ever. The DSLR form factor was always desirable with interchangeable lenses, a wide spectrum of filters, and a large community of users. I was really looking for something to not only take great pictures, but last me several years. After much research and consulting, I went with the Nikon D90. So far the camera has exceeded my expectations and I hope to share some great photos.

Chrome

Hurray! Chrome 2.0 fixed the text edit box painting issue.

Yup it is that time again.

Engineering a Fence

Typically I'm a fan of code more, test more, doc less. I've had an experience that changes this perspective.

I went to the local hardware store and got the pricing for the fence and asked about installation. I was recommended a man who checked every box on the Contractor Referral worksheet. After speaking with him on the phone he explained he'd installed fences before but never PVC. He came by our house and checked out the backyard. I mentioned what I'd like the fence to look like. He noted we'd need to have the backyard marked, and then we discussed a price but never formally agreed on him. FWIW, I didn't have anyone else lined up. Anyway the next day he's out back digging holes. No contract, no written agreement, no design. The back line angled such that if you looked down the line it wasn't even with the neighbors, and ~150 sqft of the back yard wouldn't be fenced. I asked him why? He wanted to keep the posts 6' on center. I said why can't we divide a fence panel? He said, oh. So then he had to re-drill the whole backline. Last night my wife asked where the gate would go in the back. The contractor had a hole for the gate dug in the back corner, not the middle. This meant due to the playset with landscaping timbers in the back corner, I'd no longer be able to use a wheelbarrow in the yard. I asked him to move the fence in the middle. He replied the machine had already been returned, but he said he'd make the adjustment manually. It's been raining solid today, so that's where the story ends (for now).

Lessons learned?

Well in this case I have the benefit of a customer who isn't changing requirements. My wife wanted a PVC picket fence with a gate in the middle of the backline. So I can only imagine how stressful it would be if my wife suddenly wanted a wooden fence.

Biggest lesson learned, I have an overzealous delivery team who is acting quickly without direction. I gave "the team" an oral description of what I wanted, but nothing written. The team had to make a decision and didn't consult me. Initial releases had defects. Had a drawn layout been available, we could have avoided the re-digs. He's got plenty of initiative, but making some mistakes that are psuedo-costly. Now I have some patches of lawn that will take time to grow back. He's going to have to dig the hole by hand now that the rented machine is unavailable.

This experience, especially since I'm the one handing out the $$$, has changed my perspective on software engineering, and I'm trying to learn as much as I can from it.

It's a girl

Had the 20w ultrasound today.

It's a girl.

Bernoulli process FTW.

Day 10

10 days ago, on April 13th, I started a simple goal:

"Run 3 miles a day, no excuses"

Yesterday I finished day 10, which means I've run 30 miles.

What have I noticed:

Although I'm not measuring, my pace has begun to improve. On the first day, I was jogging very slowly the entire time. Now, I'm able to sustain small sprints, and maintain a decent pace. I've been listening to an album on my iPod shuffle, and am finishing before the last song.

My weight has not changed, it has only been 10 days and so I'm building muscle. This in combination with other eating habits explains the relative plateau in weight. I'm not gaining weight. According to my half-marathon training data, this is expected. I hovered around 205 for the first month.

3 miles is just enough to get a good sweat, without injury. When training for my half-marathon I was constantly stepping up the mileage, which resulted in some mild injury.

I will post again when I hit 60 miles.

Plants

I have plants again, and in addition an automated watering system. With much help from Aaron Lint four plants can now receive water from the command line. I've got a camera setup on one of the heavily pruned plants. Maybe new videos soon?

Cheers,

Joe

BFC

Want to sleep, but can't.

It was a game night tonight. My neighbor and I went to the convenient store in search of beverages. He wanted an energy drink, which made me think this was a good idea. I started to go for red bull, and then though no, for this game night I should have a monster energy drink. Now these jolts of productivity have been quintessential to the successful delivery of many, many features at Arxan. I can attest to the fact that these do make one more alert and jumpy. While browsing the cooler, we happened upon the BFC. As if 16oz of caffeine loaded liquid weren't enough, how bout 32oz in a convenient form factor. Why not? So at 8:30pm we cracked them open. I consumed mine in two hours, and my neighbor made it halfway before suffering a headache.

Nonetheless, I'm still awake.

Still alert.

A sign of the times

With the economy in rapid recession, one of the most noticeable signs (if you are a gamer) is the prevalence of Wii systems at retailers. I went to Wal-Mart and Target today and saw the systems actually in the store. Launched on November 19, 2006, the Wii rapidly sold out anytime a retailer received a shipment.

TODO: post pictures of Wiis in stock.

Epiphany at 3am

There's really nothing quite like waking up at 3am with a solution to a problem. Even better is when you test the solution and it is correct.

I woke up at 3am this morning and realized that I wasn't incrementing my section header pointer and that I was copying the same section multiple times. At first, I didn't want to get up... it was 3am! By 3:15a I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I got up, started the VPN, remote desktopped to my machine, typed in:

sh++;

compiled, and executed the program. By 3:20a it was properly iterating over the sections copying the data I needed. Waking up with the solution was hard to believe.

I fell back asleep, and got to sleep in a bit (Thanks Kristen!). When I got to work in the morning sure enough it had really happened. Usually I wake up with the solution and fall back asleep and forget about it by morning. But this morning was different, and the solution remained. Has this ever happened to you?

The Faint

One of my favorite bands Ladytron will be touring with The Faint. I'd not heard of The Faint until recently. I bought their album Fasciination, and the track "Machine in the Ghost" stands out to me. Here's the lyrics:

there's no ghost in this machine 
i make my own mistakes
we seem like skeletons with bone head beliefs
history's been crucified
humans supernaturalized
we hope we're not alone
exploded stars and space debris 
taught itself to make some things like us
was that all?
what was there before the bang?
how did nothing come to end at once?

let's ask the atheists, the astronauts,
the mystics of the amazon,
the priests, the cults, the witches, the pope, 
the crystal ball, the fear of god, 
the tarot cards, the dowsing rod
theologians, alchemists, black magicians, physicists say, know,
say, "we don't know"

cults arise from ego
sick with poltergeists and demons

tune your TV to the snow
watch the first thing ever known - it's always on
when nothing's over what was there?
how did nothing come to end at once?
let's ask the atheists
let's ask the astronauts
let's ask the priests, the cults, the witches, the pope, 
dice, the monks, shamen, the nuns,
buddha, the holy ghost, satanists, the philosophes,
meditators, pyramids, mathematicians, acid heads,
theologians, alchemists, black magicians, physicists say, know,
say, "we don't know"

cults arise from egos
sick with poltergeists and demons

Number of 32-bit Primes

Just so you know there are approximately 98182656 primes between 2147483648 and 4294967295, or 0x5DA2600 primes between 0x80000001 and 0xFFFFFFFF. You have a 4.5% chance of randomly picking a prime number, between 2 and 4 billion. I've been trying to find this number all morning and calculated it brute force using a Miller Rabin primality test. I say approximately since Miller Rabin is "probabilistic". I test each prime 5 times which means there's a 1 in 2^40 chance of a false positive. That's 1 in 1099511627776, or 1.1 * 10^12, which means you are 128 times more likely to be killed by lightning today than have this test fail.

Have a day.

Edit Feb 18, 2009: Found a flaw in PrimeSearch. I was testing each prime once with Miller Rabin. Revised the search to test 5 times.

Happy New Year

Life got remarkably busy in August, and just kept being busy. I spent most of my time working trying to get a deliverable out the door. In October/November, there were significant restructuring changes to the company. In late November early December, there was a major customer to support. And over the holidays, I had a very nice three week vacation, from NC to SC to the Caribbean. Anyway, things are still busy with my wife entering the workforce and my boys in daycare. Maybe I'll find some spare time for an interesting project to blog about. Maybe.

5+ Naga Jolokias

After many months of waiting, the flowers appear to be pollinating and there are several peppers growing. There are two peppers that are approximately two inches in length, and at least three more that are just starting. Looks like we'll be able to cook some incredibly uncomfortably boiling lava hot food.

I'll post some pictures soon of the mammoth plants and their brood.

Inheritance



#include 

class RichOldGuy
{
  public:
    RichOldGuy()  { printf("I'm a Rich Old Guy\n");}
    ~RichOldGuy() { ExecuteWill();}
    virtual void ExecuteWill() const {printf("I leave my money to my family\n");}


};

class GoldDigger : public RichOldGuy
{
   public:
     GoldDigger()  {printf("I'm in it for the money\n");}
     ~GoldDigger() {printf("Finally after two weeks of marriage\n");}
     void ExecuteWill() {printf("I ain't messin' with a broke bloke\n");}
};

int main(void)
{
   RichOldGuy * theOldGuy    = new GoldDigger();

   theOldGuy -> ExecuteWill();

   return 0;
}

Who gets the money?

Before I forget

What has happened?

May 1st: Water Softener inlet plumbing breaks spraying water in utility room causing water damage. Repair people are called and they tear up the floor.

May 7th - 14th: NC trip to visit over Mother's Day weekend. Saw Kristen's parents, sister and family; my folks, brother and fiance; my old college buddies; and Clay Suddreth a friend of mine for 15 years. While on vacation the repair people tore up the rest of the floor leaving bare concrete.

May 17th - 19th: Put in new laminate floors. The 18th was a 24 hour workday starting with running, church, flooring until midnight and then plumbing until 6:00a on the 19th. Floor looks great.

May 27th: Theology on Tap

Jim and I eat a Naga Jolokia

She got me

So our evening was winding to a close. As Kristen was brushing her teeth and I was browsing the internet, she was fumbling with something. She says "Am I reading this right?", and I say "Reading what?" That's when I turn and the something she was fumbling with was a pregnancy test. We have some dialogue, and I come to get a closer look as I'm taken aback. The test clearly indicated pregnancy. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the thought of the fourth Abbey, but realize that we can handle the new one and it is such a blessing. We embrace and then she says:

"Happy April Fool's Day".

Peppers?

After the move back in February, I haven't found the time to setup a webcam on the peppers... Please hold.

Hard water

The plants have recently shown an affinity for gravity. The leaves are drooping, although they have sufficient water. After examining the base of the stems, I noticed a white buildup. I thought it was fungal but it feels more like a calcium buildup. I'm going to go back to feeding the plants filtered water, but I'm afraid it might be too late for the plant that is bearing fruit.

If anyone knows about fungal buildup, or if calcium can clog plant, or even better how to resolve the situation, that would be of great help!

NagaOne growing

Naga Jolokia Batch 3

Here's a more complete look at the current life of Batch 3:

The proof of concept w/ green peppers

I'm actively working on a video of the first Naga Jolokia, but of course it will take time.

Naga Jolokia Pepper on its way

I walked in to the office this morning to find Jim in a surprisingly good mood. One of the flowers that he pollinated appears to be producing fruit. Now it seems it is just a matter of time before we've grown one of the world's hottest peppers.

Brief update on the Jolokia

We've got quite a few blossoms now, but seem to be suffering blossom drop. There's really not enough pollen to use a q-tip for fertilization, so I decided to pluck one of the blossoms for direct pollination. Hopefully one of the flowers will take.

Defa Jolokia

The first bud has bloomed with blue stamen. This is definitely a Naga Jolokia.

Naga Jolokia promotion

Jim has purchased the new pots for the next round of Naga Jolokias. The pepper farm is bigger!

Oh and our pepper guardian has returned.

Naga Jolokia about to bloom

The first Naga Jolokia is continuing to show good progress. There are quite a few buds getting ready to bloom. Probably within a week we should seem some blooms.

We're getting more and more convinced that this is a Naga Jolokia. The flowers should be fairly definitive... not to mention the fruit.

N days of Christmas

On the Nth day of Sprint M my company gave to me:

12 failing testsuites
11 bugs to fix
10 different platforms
9 scrummers scrumming
8 devs a' devving
7 QAs testing
6 cups of coffee
5 hour builds
4 perforce timeouts
3 syntax errors
2 bleeding ulcers
and a task that could be done by monkeys.

Get back to work.

Death of a Naga Jolokia

Yet another Naga Jolokia Germination video

More Naga Jolokia Time Lapse

Even more "Proba" Jolokias

We caught these from the beginning:

Naga... Naga.. Not gonna Jolokia?

We've been monitoring the "first" Naga Jolokia, and we're a bit startled. The plant looks nearly identical to the sweet peppers we've been growing. We're beginning to wonder if it is a Jolokia at all, or if it is in fact a misplaced Sweet Pepper seed... If anyone knows what the leaves and plant structure of a Naga Jolokia is /supposed/ to look like, please send me an email.

The good news is that we've got two starts that we are nearly 100% certain they are naga Jolokia seeds... After only being in the soil a week, these two came up over the weekend much to my surprise. We changed quite a few variables to get these starts, so I'm not sure what caused them to germinate so quickly. I should have a post-germination video soon. The video should allow us to compare the behaviors of the two plants. Most noticeable in these starts is the length of the initial sprout. The hope here is that the depth the seeds were planted played the role in the sprout length.

Again if anyone has any info on what a Naga Jolokia /should/ look like, it would be much obliged.

Edit 12/17/07 2:06pm:
Josh Fuhs, a co-worker, points me here. We may have a Naga Jolokia after all?

Preparing for the Naga Jolokia

Jim and I wanted to prepare for the Naga Jolokia by eating something less spicy. So we tried orange habaneros. These are rated between 100,000 and 300,000 units on the Scoville unit of heat scale. In comparison, Naga Jolokia's are roughly 1,000,000. The orange habaneros are the 5K to the marathon that will be the Naga Jolokia. I've never run a marathon, but Jim has. He notes that the marathon (40K) is a lot harder than a 5K. We now look at our little plant in a much different light. There have been at least two surprises after eating the pepper. The first 45-60 seconds of chewing were easy. Then the heat built and built and built. Even 2 cups of milk didn't seem to quench the incredible burn. The next surprise was the abdominal agony. My stomach hurt, like pitch fork in the gut kind of pain, for at least an hour. It has finally begun to subside... ouch.

See the full gallery here

Happy Halloween

Aaron Lint and I decided we should dress up for Halloween. Best costume idea... ever.

Second batch of Naga Jolokia begin

After only getting 1 of 9 Naga Jolokias germinating, I've decided to start a second batch going this morning. They are being started in the same manner as the sweet peppers which had a better germination rate.

I've purchased a new light that appears to be working well. It's a 2 foot shop light that has 2 17W bulbs in it. Meijer had them on clearance for $4 so it was hard to pass up. We'll see if these lights help out.

Go peppers go!

Significant growth over the weekend:

Fruit

Here's a picture of some developing fruit

New camera angles

Hand-pollination:

Watching the development of fruit:

Up close and personal:

Naga Jolokia Germination Video

Naga Jolokia Germination

Front row seats:

Stop banging wiki words

We use Twiki at work and I frequently use PolyCaps class names that turn out to be wikiwords. Too often I find my self having to write:

!PolyCaps

Granted WikiWords are a fun feature but sometimes I get really tired of all the PolyCaps? links that surface.

To turn off auto linking of WikiWords in a TWiki topic try:

Growing Peppers 2

More pepper goodness:

Good news, we've got some flower buds developing.

The Naga Jolokias have been planted for nearly two weeks now and no sign of germination, however germination may take up to five weeks for Capscicum Chinense. More videos to come...

Growing Peppers

The ultimate goal is to grow at least one Naga Jolokia at the office. What you see above is an initial proof of concept from 09/01/2007 demonstrating that we can at least germinate sweet peppers indoors. The sweet pepper plants are quite a bit larger now.

I'll discuss more later.

Cleaning gallery2 comments

I just found out today that my gallery was the source of comment graffiti. Lots of comments used to no doubt boost a page rank of some site. Most of them had words interesting words. Regardless, I tried to delete them using gallery2's interface, but there were so many it was time consuming.. so I whipped up an SQL delete query. It's pretty safe as long as noone comments with urls:


delete from g2_comment WHERE g_comment ~ '.*url.*';

This time a cross.

TODO: post pic of positive pregnancy test.