Ken Newquist

I’ve recently been considering the question of how best to display random information from a database. Specificially, I’ve been working on a randomizer for Nuketown that would display a random banner ad every time one of the PHP driven pages was loaded. This blog entry details my attempts to create a random generator via MySQL … and how I ditched that solution in favor of PHP.

The government (or those who want to run it) has been doing so many stupid things lately it’s hard to focus on just one thing. On the one hand, we’ve got Bush’s idiotic marriage amendment proposal, while on the other we’ve got Democrats failing over themselves to proudly proclaim they intend to do nothing to prevent Social Security entitlements from crippling the economy. Oh, and then we’ve got the whole Howard Stern suspension thing, which while not directly related to the government, was undoubtedly prompted by the FCC’s recent heavy breathing over Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple.

It truly staggers the mind. But since my normally apolitical wife Sue mentioned the marriage thing the other night, I’ll go with that.

I was driving home on Friday when I dug my Palm Tungsten C handheld out of my jacket pocket and nearly dropped the thing in surprise. It was hot — excruciatingly hot. It was so hot that that I literally couldn’t hold it in my hand, at least not the portion where the computer’s battery was. I half expected it to start uttering a self-destruct message. Visions of the Enterprise exploding above the Genesis planet flashed before my eyes.