Author: Aren Cambre

Played dodgeball for first time in 15 years

Today I played dodgeball for the first time in 15 years. (The last time was at Groves Middle School.)

I played in a tournament at my church. Six teams entered: four teams were mostly teenage boys, one was the church’s media department, and one was my Sunday school class (mostly in their 30s).

The tournament started with double elimination: each team played twice, and teams that didn’t lose both games got into the finals brackets.

My team was the only non-youthful team to make it to the finals!

In the finals, we quickly spanked a first youthful team in the first round. We waited through two more rounds, then we played the very last round for the trophy.

A brief note: up until this point I just played defense. All I did was stay away from balls and hand balls to teammates who were better throws than me.

The last round progressed normally. Both teams slowly picked each other off. We got down to 3 on our side and 2 on the other side.

All of a sudden balls flew and it was a 1 on 1 game, and I was one of them! Suddenly I was on offense! The opponent chunked three balls in succession, and I barely missed each of them. Then I managed to get two balls. I threw one high (unintentionally), distracting the opponent, and shortly nailed him on the legs.

I threw the winning ball! Today was my the best dodgeball performance ever!

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!!

For the past two days I have been banging my head against the wall with an ASP.NET problem.

I created a custom WebControl composite class, meaning that it contains other WebControls.

I overrode its render method and used the provided HtmlTextWriter to spit out the code specific to my WebControl and the HTML code of the child WebControls which, by the way, were dynamically created in my WebControl’s Init event handler.

Anyway, what confounded the heck out of me is that if I would push a button on the ASPX page, thereby triggering a PostBack event, the ASPX page forgot all of its dynamically created controls. In other words, a richly populated page became a blank page just by me hitting the submit button!

After a lot of research on this problem, I stumbled across an article at http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/2129.aspx that didn’t directly provide the answer but proverbially slapped me across the forehead and jumbled the facts into place. I needed to add these child controls to my parent control’s Controls collection! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I removed my custom render method and added the controls to the Controls collection, and it works like a charm. View state is preserved!

Bad Kitty

Meet Amelia:

Amelia is an 8½ year old Himalayan cat.

Amelia is a very bad kitty.

About three months ago, Amelia no longer wanted to use her litter box. So she has taken to pooping and sometimes peeing everywhere but the litter box: Alec’s bedroom, the mat in front of the box, the rug in front of the garage door, and other random places. (I’m sure I’ve missed some places because Sugar thinks cat poop is a treat.)

I’ve tried several of the tricks in the book to get her to back into her litter box. I’ve ensured that the litter is usually no more than a week old. I’ve used the fine, scoop-able litter. I’ve removed the litter box cover. I’ve watched her diet.

I have only had limited success. She still poops outside the box more than she poops inside the box, but at least she poops within eye shot of the box.

I now don’t know what to do with her. I have never seriously considered getting rid of a pet, but the thought crossed my mind today as my stockinged foot mushed into a pile of gooey poop on the back door mat. (She pooped on that mat so much that I just tossed it. It was just a cut up section of carpet.)

Stupid, idiot cat! I wish you could train or restrain them like dogs.

Incorrect Understanding of Wright and Shelby Amendments

My understanding of the Wright and Shelby amendments, which regulate air travel out of Dallas’s Love Field airport, was incorrect. I was in good company: even the Dallas Morning News has it wrong!

According to a 1998 US DOT news release, it appears that the 1979 Wright Amendment permits passenger air travel from Love Field, partially upending a then-11 year old agreement between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Under this agreement, Dallas and Ft. Worth will not use their respective airports to compete against DFW Airport. The 1997 Shelby Amendment enhances the Wright Amendment’s permissiveness by allowing flights to go to 3 more states and also allowing no destination restrictions on flights using planes with fewer than 56 seats. (It is humorous to note that Senator Richard Shelby, the amendment’s namesake, is from Alabama, one of these 3 additional states.)

So without the federal Wright or Shelby Amendments, there may be no passenger air travel out of Dallas Love Field.

Edit: See the comment left in the comments section below. (Click on the Comments link.) Simply repealing the Wright Amendment is not enough; that would invite another round of local lawsuits from Fort Worth, American Airlines, and DFW. Congress needs to clearly say that there shall be no restrictions on flights on Love Field.

Two Finance Books

A few years ago I read The Millionaire Next Door (see chapter 1). I was fascinated by this book. It showed that, in general, the people who act rich are not rich, and the rich usually don’t “act rich.”

A good measure of wealth is this: if your income was cut off, how long could you survive without changing your lifestyle or taking out additional debt? By that measure, an amazingly high percentage of those living in your area’s silk stockings district are fakes. They are consuming so much of their income that their net worth is a fraction of what you might imagine.

I also read part of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That book was such hooey that I didn’t even finish it. A good analysis of the book and its author is at http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html. I think this guy is practically a fraud.