Jeremy's Blog

So, work has gotten a lot more hectic since I’ve returned from Alabama. As a result, my brain has been rather … scattered. In trying to keep up with all of my obligations at work, I’ve committed yet another disastrous mistake with regards to my financial situation.

I’ve been behind on my car payment, because of lack of cash, and I got called and practically harassed about paying what I owe. Of course, that’s nothing unusual … Everyone wants their money, after all. The mistake was in paying the entire car off completely in bulk when I went to make a payment. That was $700 … and now that the money’s gone, I really need it. Rent is going to be $938.82, this month. That’s granted we can get Shawn’s money transferred over to my account and get a money order from the bank, tomorrow. In all of our running around and my getting pulled over the other day, we didn’t get back in time to make the payment on time, so it was late. And they’ve changed their policy to where they’ll only accept money orders after the rent deadline, which really pisses me off. I could’ve written the check today and put the rest of the money in the bank tomorrow or whenever I could to keep the price of the rent from climbing even higher.

So, tomorrow I’m going to have to get out in really crappy weather conditions (it snowed again today) and drive to the bank to get money from Shawn’s account transferred over and deposit some more cash that we kept out. Also keep in mind that I still have no tags on my car, and my license hasn’t been renewed yet. So, if we get pulled over a second time, I doubt the officer in question is going to be as friendly as last time.

BUT! That money will be just enough to cover the rent. We still won’t have enough to cover the other … oh, approximately $350 worth of other bills that have to be paid this month. Shawn and I are both already broke, and it’s only the freaking 5th. We’ve still got a whole month to go through. And I didn’t spend any of my money, in Alabama, except for a little bit to eat here and there.

We’ll survive though. The important thing is that we get the rent paid so we don’t get kicked out of the apartment. The rest of the bills I can fend off until next month, when nobody is getting any of my money, except for rent, groceries, and bills. Everyone else can kiss off, because I don’t have the energy to waste on you people, any longer. Just leave me alone.

Moral of the story? Don’t succumb to pressure from people that “want their money” … I’ve got to survive too, you know. Next time something like this happens, I’m telling them to take a freaking number, because there’s plenty of other people wanting to get at my check book.

So, during our trip to go get groceries today, we got pulled over.

Let me put this into perspective for you. My car’s temporary registration expired on the 14th of November, so I have no tags. At the time, I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt. And my license expired on the 26th of December. Yeah …

I explained to the officer the situation with the registration expiring and my license expiring and how I was out of town when it did and such. Luckily, he let us off with a warning … Phew. Wonder if it scared Ruzena … She was on the phone with me, the entire time.

On that note, she helped me buy groceries … So, we’ve actually got real food (and plenty of it!). So, we’re not going to starve anytime soon.

Back to work …

I was just going through my RSS Feeds and I stumbled upon 81.4 is evil through Planet PHP. I invite all of you developers to try this for yourself.

The original code:

<?php
$total = 100 – 81.4;
//$total should be 18.6
echo “18.6 == {$total}? ” .
($total == 18.6 ? ‘yes’ : ‘no’) .
“\n”;
var_dump(18.6 – $total);
?>

You’ll get a “no” and var_dump will give you float(-7.1054273576E-015) … Talk about the precision being a little awkward.

Now if you thought that was weird, check this out.

Look at what happens when you type-cast $total to a string before doing the arithmetic:

<?php

header(”Content-Type: text/plain”);

$total = 100 – 81.4;
echo “18.6 == {$total} ? ” . ((string) $total == 18.6 ? ‘yes’ : ‘no’) . “\n”;
echo (string) $total – 18.6;

?>

For me:

18.6 == 18.6 ? yes
0

Does type-casting float variables to strings before performing the math actually increase floating point precision, in PHP? I found this kind of odd …

First of all, Happy New Year from here in Alabama. Every year, at the beginning of the year, I’ve privately made some New Year’s Resolutions to myself. Some I’ve kept, some I’ve not. But, this time I’m going to put my resolutions out here in a public place (mostly so I can come back and read them so I don’t forget them). Hopefully, this will keep me motivated to complete them. So, without further ado …

Start Regularly Attending Church

I’m still working on the Spiritual Growth entry, because I haven’t sat down to have that talk with my mom, yet. But, we’re going to tonight, when I take her out for dinner. After spending a small portion of my life as an Atheist and a larger portion as Agnostic, being around some influential people has allowed me to really see a clearer picture of Christianity as a whole, and some of the occurances in my life over the past year has really gotten the wheels turning in my head. Beyond just Church, I will be seeking to glorify Christ in my life in all things. It’s taken quite a lot, but I now realize how blessed I am to have such talents bestowed upon me, and I now praise and thank the Lord everyday for taking care of me even when I shunned Him from my life completely.

Overcome Some Bad Habits

I’ve got a few bad habits that I’d like to nip in the bud over the course of next year. I’m not going into any specifics here, because they’re not anything extraordinary like stopping smoking or any other addictive substance. These are just things I’ve gotten into the habit of doing that I know are not right or healthy and I just want to stop doing these things.

Make Progress on my Side-Projects

Due to the extreme workload that I have, almost all of my side-projects have come to a screeching halt. Journey of Souls has suffered the most from this. As things with work start to calm down, at the beginning of the year, I will be returning some of my focus to these projects. My goal is to get at least a working version of JoS up and running by my birthday, this year. We’ve also got something new in the pipeline that will hopefully make an appearance sometime after March. I also want to continue writing PHP-related articles, but no longer here on this site. I’m going to start contributing to the Zend Developer Zone by way of technical writing. As much as it would be nice to work on the Zend Framework, it kind of competes with my Engine, so don’t expect any code contributions there from me. Sorry, guys.

Continue to Expand my Knowledge in my Field

As with every year, one of my first and foremost goals is to continue expanding my knowledge in the field that I work in: Technology. Not specifically programming, but all things technology-related. As has been my hobby since 2004, I’ll continue to study software architecture and putting together my own concepts to make software applications easier to use and more user-friendly while still retaining a powerhouse of functionality that doesn’t bloat the software package.

I have one more that I’m not going to put up here, because it’s a personal thing between me and one other person. But, I’ll say this: I love you, Ruzena. I’m not afraid to tell anyone that, and I don’t care what anyone thinks of it. Nothing is going to change that.

Happy New Year, everyone.