weekendish activities!
Mood: blah
Posted on 2006-05-08 09:59:00
Tags: dallas ruby palmtogooglecalendar
Words: 475
So djedi and I went up to Dallas this weekend to visit his sister and two nephews. I had a good time, despite the long drive and somewhat awkwardness (since I don't know them too terribly well). The kids are really cute, though, and they were pretty well behaved. I played with the older one (Donovan) a fair bit and he called me "Uncle Greg" once near the end, which really made me feel good. Man, I don't know how they keep up with them - they're ages 5 and 3 and bursting with energy!
I did take some pictures, but didn't have time to put them up last night. Maybe tonight...
Saturday night we went out to see "Ice Age: The Meltdown" which I wasn't terribly impressed with. It was clearly aimed at kids, but unlike "Shrek" and, oh, every Pixar movie made so far, there wasn't much there for adults. I chuckled a few times, but that was about it. The kids really seemed to enjoy it, too - they're old enough to mostly sit through a movie at the theatre, which is neat.
I hate Dallas. This is not news to many of you, but there it is. While driving up there, I discovered another reason I hate it. So the interstate system has some pretty neat features, one of which is that interstates ending in 5 are roughly parallel across the country (i.e. I-5 goes through California, I-35 and I-45 go through Texas, and I-95 goes along the East Coast, etc.), and interstates ending in 0 are the same thing, but east-west (i.e. I-10 goes through Texas, I-90 goes through, erm, North Dakota or something). However, Dallas totally screws this up - not only do I-35 and I-45 meet in Dallas, so do I-20 and I-30! It's making a mockery of this beautifully designed system. Screw you, Dallas! (the floor is open for more reasons to hate Dallas)
Ooo, might Futurama be coming back?
So I stayed up late last night and made some more improvements to my Palm to Google Calendar importer. I fixed some irritating timezone issues (thanks to the TZInfo module) and, instead of deleting all existing events and adding all new events, now it compares the new ones with existing ones and only deletes and adds ones it needs to. Sort of like a diff/patch type thing. I also went ahead and split up repeating events into individual events so the calendar could handle it - hopefully they'll fix that someday and I can go back. Anyway, once I improve the Palm parsing of events, it'll be pretty much feature-complete and I'll put a web interface on it so anyone can use it. (at least maybe fairydust1 will find it useful) But even if nobody else does, it's very useful for me, and I'm learning more about Ruby and such. Whee!
14 comments
Comment from onefishclappin:
2006-05-08T10:26:22+00:00
Quibble: I-35 doesn't exist in Dallas. I-35E is in Dallas & I-35W is in Fort Worth. I had a loud argument with Chris Zalesky once when I told him to go south on I-35E (spoken as "south on eye thirty five east") and he didn't believe that these directions make sense, did I want him to go south or east? Why was I saying east when the road when north/south?
And I-35 & I-45 don't meet (unless it's significantly outside of Dallas). They do come within a couple of miles of one another and are connected by Woodall Rodgers (which is never refered to by name, except on surface streets and traffic reports, never from the exit signs - they mearly say "To 45/75". Oh yeah, if I forgot to mention, 75 is 45 in Dallas. They are too good to call 45, 45. They call it 75. Or Central Expressway. Traffic reports in Dallas suck. (Austin is guilty of the multi-naming thing too, but I've learned most of those...)
I lived in Dallas for 18+ years and have still never figured out Dallas' interstate system.
Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-08T10:28:59+00:00
Oh, right, that's another reason - two I-35s?? Guh.
And though they may not actually meet, they do get extremely close to each other, which is good enough for me. I-20 and I-30 don't actually touch either, but they're also very close together...
Comment from destroyerj:
2006-05-08T10:31:44+00:00
And don't even get me started on Hawaii!
Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-08T10:33:36+00:00
Huh? No one hates Hawaii. Nice try, troll!
Comment from destroyerj:
2006-05-08T10:37:46+00:00
But have you seen the crazy interstate system in Hawaii?!? It's not a reason to hate Hawaii, no, but man, those interstates.
Comment from tehfanboi:
2006-05-08T11:13:32+00:00
That is not a troll.
I don't see many parallel lines in there. Also look how many East-West roads exist on the East Coast versus the West coast. Notice how I-20 runs into I-10 in west Texas? Also look at the mess around Chicago. I propose your hatred for Dallas is unfounded when using the interstate system as a justification.
Proper hatred of Dallas stems from years of living there. It is more subtle than highway signs.(9 years from 4th grade through leaving for college).
How is that for trolling?
Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-08T11:17:38+00:00
No, but the 5's and 0's are at least don't run into each other the vast majority of the time. And of the few exceptions to this, Dallas has them in both east-west and north-south directions. (what I really want is an overview map of just the 5's and 0's, but that map doesn't seem to exist)
Well, I hated Dallas way before this interstate thing, don't get me wrong! (just a beginning of why I hate Dallas)
Comment from onefishclappin:
2006-05-08T10:49:20+00:00
Ok, we will agree that "parallel" roads which start life hundreds of miles laterally away from one another (Houston & San Antonio) come near to crossing.
And we will agree that Dallas highways are confusing and suck.
(Oh, loop 12 - isn't a loop. Isn't a road. But god help you if you want to get directions and they start from "get on loop 12").
Comment from cifarelli:
2006-05-08T10:56:06+00:00
Loop 1 in Austin isn't a loop, either. :P
(but we won't start on Houston -- I've finally learned all the freeway names, I think...)
Comment from medryn:
2006-05-08T11:54:20+00:00
I-20 and I-30 meet a few miles west of Fort Worth.
Comment from brittongregory:
2006-05-15T10:02:30+00:00
There's actually a Woody Allen movie set in Houston where at one point someone is giving directions to go south on the west 610 loop or east on the south loop or some such, and much confusion and hilarity ensures. So know that such things are part of a fine and longstanding tradition.
Comment from medryn:
2006-05-08T12:02:24+00:00
Both I-20/I-30 and I-35/I-45 are at least cases of odd- or even-numbered two-digit interstates merging into one another. A more egregious violation occurs when two same-parity two-digit interstates actually cross. The list of all such violations shows that there are none in Texas.
Comment from fairydust1:
2006-05-08T19:10:07+00:00
OOOOH! I can't wait to see this Palm/Google patch thingy-ma-jig! I'm really interested in the capability of a web calendar that I can put a link to so people see my obligations (especially during ASMC production times, but also if I go back to Austin Civic Chorus in the fall for the Bach B Minor Mass). Keep me posted on that! OH, and Jay says "he did it in rails? COOL!" *grin*
Comment from gregstoll:
2006-05-08T22:30:55+00:00
It may not be as cool as you think - at least my part! Google Calendar is pretty neato, though.
(and technically I'm not using Ruby on Rails, just Ruby the language. Although I guess I will be doing a web app...maybe I could try Rails...)
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