Matt McDonald’s Website

So, the UFC can’t sign Fedor, and when another organization signs him, Randy Couture calls it quits.  Like a lot of MMA fans, I was shocked at the news.  At the time, I thought “I guess he really wants to fight Fedor”.  The only problem was, he had a contract with the UFC for 2 more fights, and I doubt he’ll be able to get out of his contract just to go fight the guy everyone considers #1 in the world.

To make things interesting, Randy holds a press conference, where he goes on about how the UFC doesn’t pay him enough, doesn’t treat him with respect, doesn’t promote him, etc.  At this point, I feel sort of bad for Randy.  It sucks working at a place where you aren’t treated with respect.  I took issue with a few things - who cares if they pay Fedor more than you - most people think of him as the #1 fighter in the world, and I completely disagree the UFC doesn’t promote Couture.  But all in all, if he wants to leave, good for him.

Yesterday, the UFC hold a press conference of their own, in response to Randy’s.  In it, they bring along proof of how much Randy was actually paid- which turns out to be over $250,000 more than Couture claims.  So why is Randy claiming differently?  I don’t get it.  Up until this point, I was a big Couture fan.  Now he just looks like a big baby, crying for more money, crying because the UFC can’t sign Fedor.  No one forced him to sign a 4 fight contract.  If you really want to fight him that bad, finish your contract with the UFC then move on.

Blogged with Flock

I recently installed Flock, the hottest new browser. It appears to be a version of Firefox with tools added for blogging, uploading photos, etc. The first thing I did after loading flock was tell it about my blog. Painless and easy. After logging in, I put a test post up, which was a piece of cake.

I try saving a blog post as a draft, and re-opening it. It’s a little annoying there isn’t a quicker way to open a draft - plus it opens a draft in a new window, so you have to close your old editing window. Also, it would nice if you could access drafts in Wordpress, apparently they are only saved offline.

Step 2 - see how flock integrates with del.icio.us, where I keep all my bookmarks. I need to log out and log back in to get all the features. When I do that, I am sad to report the integration is not nearly as nice as Yahoo’s del.icio.us plugin. Though it seems to be a bit faster.

I went to install Yahoo’s plugin, and went through the warnings - this is a firefox plugin, it might not work with Flock, etc. But it installed ok. The only problem was- none of my links were showing up in the sidebar. I was considering writing off Flock at this point (I use that plugin that much) when out of nowhere, it just started working. Firebug works, too, so that covers all my must-have extensions.

At this point I notice the search bar in the upper right hand corder defaults to Yahoo, not Google. What is more, any search you do, it will automatically put Yahoo search results in a drop down. It shows recently searched and visited results as well, but it does not do Auto Suggest, which I use constantly in firefox.

Unlike a lot of hipster techies, I don’t do photography, so I can’t really comment on the flickr tools, other than to say they look spiffy.

Overall, it seems to run a lot faster than firefox on my system, though strangely enough, it leaves a bigger memory footprint. I think I’ll try it out for the next few weeks and see how it goes.

Blogged with Flock

Testing this new flock browser.

Blogged with Flock

Awesome fan-made movie:

Someone posted on the devshed boards recently regarding memcached:

“I can’t fully grasp the idea of how i could use this to perform faster queries.”

It’s actually quite simple - it’s faster to retrieve something out of memory that out of a database. You just need a unique identifier for that item.

function run_test() {

$memcache = new Memcache;
$memcache->connect(’localhost’, 11211) or die (”Could not connect”);

//see if the result already exists in memcache
$data = $memcache->get(’tests’);

if (!$data) {
$data = array();
//the result was not found, we have to run the query
$result = mysql_query(”select test,test1 from tests”);

if (!$result) {
//error doing the query
return false;
} else {
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$data[] = $row;
}

//now we’ve got the data stored in an array $data, save it to memcache
$memcache->set(”tests”, $data, false, 60); //save it for 60 seconds, uncompressed
}
}

//return the array
return $data;
}

This does make the assumption that this is the only place the key “tests” is saved to memcache. The key must be unique for each query you want to run like this.

As a side note, the code highlighters I installed for wordpress really sucks.

These are my links for October 23rd:

• Scorched Earth 2000 Main Page -

While nothing seemed to go according to plan for me this weekend, all I can say is, it could have been worse.

First, I road with a couple of friends up to the VS Elite series in Towson, MD.  I piloted my VU/X deck to a 3-2 record.  I’ll try to write up a full report later, lets just say the matchups where I had to draw perfect to win I drew terrible.

Sunday Lisa and I went to see “Into the Wild”.  An excellent movie, but somewhat depressing.  Afterwards, we hit up Moe’s for lunch, picked up a new video game, and played some tennis.   After two years, I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of tennis.  While I don’t have the serve down just yet, I can actually place the ball where I want it with some speed and accuracy.  I’m starting to get some consistency in putting spin on the ball.  Tennis is much more of an art form than other sports.

I watched a bit of football, the redskins are really lucky to get a win.  My fantasy teams weren’t so lucky, I lost in both leagues.  I was pretty amazed to lose in my public league, with Wes Welker scoring 31 points for me.  My opponent’s team is a who’s who of people who got lucky weeks - Willis McGahee?  Jerricho Cotchery?  13 receptions for Ernest Graham???  Unbelievable.

There was also a UFC this weekend, none of my picks seemed to work out.  It wasn’t the worst UFC in memory, but it certainly wasn’t the best.

Finally, this morning I was driving to work and a car in the HOV lanes hit a deer.  I saw him out of the corner of my eye - it was one of those “what the heck was that” moments, then he comes spinning into the road right in front of me.  I had a split second to glance to my left lane - thank goodness, no cars were there, then swerve to avoid him.

All I can think was, it could have been a lot worse.

These are my links for October 16th through October 19th:

• svn-time-lapse-view - Google Code -
• Super Mario 64 Walkthrough - IGN FAQs -
• Portal the Flash Version -
• anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript -

For a long time now, I’ve thought that if the Redskins just got a decent QB, we’d be ready to make a playoff run. Yesterday they proved me wrong. Jason Campbell is not a pro-bowl QB, but he’s good enough to get the job done. He doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, has pretty good speed, and is great at throwing down the field. Now if only if the rest of our offense could hang onto the ball.

I decided to try writing a PHP extension. My C is pretty rusty, this will help me get back into shape. Plus, it would be nice to get my work out there in a place like Pecl. I thought it would be nice to keep track of what I am doing in my blog.

First things first - check on how other people are doing it. I found some nice tutorials on the pecl site. Almost al of them reference php4, but I found out writing a php extension in php5 is exactly the same.

There was just one hitch. All of the tutorials assume you are downloading php and compiling it by hand. Because I have been running Gentoo, I’ve just been using Portage to install everything. I spent a bit of time trying to figure out if I could still use the tutorials with Portage, but being unfamiliar with the portage engine, it was a difficult task. I’ll probably come back to it once I have my extension working, but for now, I decided to go back to the manual compile method.

That brings me to today. I downloaded php, compiled it with the same flags Portage uses, but it wouldn’t install. I see this message:

washingmachine php-5.2.4 # make install
Installing PHP SAPI module: apache2handler
/usr/lib/apache2/build/instdso.sh SH_LIBTOOL=’/usr/share/apr-0/build/libtool’ libphp5.la /usr/lib/apache2/modules
/usr/share/apr-0/build/libtool –mode=install cp libphp5.la /usr/lib/apache2/modules/
cp .libs/libphp5.so /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so
cp .libs/libphp5.lai /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.la
libtool: install: warning: remember to run `libtool –finish /root/php-5.2.4/libs’
chmod 755 /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so
apxs:Error: Config file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf not found.
make: *** [install-sapi] Error 1

Simple enough to fix - Gentoo names the apache config file httpd.conf instead of apache2.conf.  Not sure how to set that during the install, so I just create a link file:

ln /etc/apache2/httpd.conf /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

And we’re up and running.  Now time to get to the dirty work.

I was predicting bad things for last week’s FF matchup, but amazingly, I won both games. This week is another tough one, as my best receivers, Roy Williams and Marvin Harrison are out. I also noticed I am running low on running backs, I’m starting every one I have on my team ( LT, Ahman Green, and Derrick Ward). LT is the only guy I have faith in scoring more than a few points.

I do have an abundance of QBs. I took Carson Palmer in round 2, Eli Manning in round 9, and Jason Campbell in round 14. All of them have proven to be good picks. After week 1, Brett Farve’s owner let him go, so I picked him up. Yes, week 1 was bad for him, but he sky-rocketed after that. So now I’ve got more QBs than I know what to do with, and no one seems to want to trade for them! Is it because there are so many RBs out with injuries right now? Seriously, the 2 QBs on my bench are gonna score more points than 1/2 the QBs people have starting, what are you people thinking?

Why is good customer service so hard to find?  Find out what the customer wants in order to be happy, then tell him ASAP if you can deliver that service to him or not.  Don’t wait go for weeks with empty promises.  I wanted to send a piece of registered mail in August.  I still don’t know if the company I was sending it to received it.  Here is the email I just sent the USPS:

On August 31st, I sent a piece of certified mail from Herndon, VA.  I actually requested it be sent registered, but the clerk talked me out of it, saying that since I was just sending legal documents, I should be sending them certified instead.  So I sent it certified with a return receipt.

After 3 weeks had passed, I still had no confirmation the documents were received, so I went to my local post office to see what could be done.  One of the clerks there said they would help me, he said he placed several calls to the Tulsa post office, where the documents were going, but no one would ever call him back.  So then I went to the post office where I sent the mail from.  They told me to call 1-800-222-1811 and file a report there, so I did that.

The next day my local post office called me, saying they were sending a fax to Tulsa with my request to find out what happened to my mail, and someone would call me back within 24 hours.  I gave them 48 hours, still no one called.  So I called the 1-800-222-1811 number and explained what happened.  They finally gave me the number for the Tulsa office so I could call them myself.

When I called the Tulsa office on October 5th, they said someone would look up what happened to my mail and get back to me.  The person who handled this sort of thing was not in, and would be out until Tuesday, October 9th.  If it was discovered they messed up, I could get my money refunded.  I waited till the end of the day on Tuesday, no one had called me so I called back.  The said the person still wasn’t there and I should call back the next day.

I called back on Wednesday at 10:30 am.  Now they told me the lady in charge of it was already gone for the day.  They even had the nerve to tell me “why don’t you call back at 2 am when she arrives”.

Today, Thursday, October 11th, I called at 8:30 am.  They said the lady who was in charge of it was there, and they were going to look up what happened to my mail.  I waited 15 minutes on hold, they came back and told me sorry, their records don’t go back that far.  We don’t have any information for you.  So I asked how I get my money back.  I basically paid $5 for absolutely nothing.  They told me I couldn’t, and the person who told me that on the 5th was wrong.

So now I’ve paid $5 for a piece of mail, and spent hours on the phone and in the post office for absolutely nothing.  The workers in my area seemed to try their best to help me, but everyone in the Tulsa office has either blown me off or treated me like dirt.

I rented “We are Marshall” last week. I thought it was ok, but not fantastic. Pretty high up on the list as far as football movies go, though. A lot of football movies go too far trying to make the action on the field exciting, lots of people jumping through the air to the point where it is just plain silly. Anyway, I thought I would make a list of my 10 favorite sports movies. Here is what I came up with:

1. The Natural
2. Field of Dreams
3. The Karate Kid
4. Friday Night Lights
5. Hoosiers
6. Rudy
7. Ali
8. Chariots of Fire
9. Rocky
10. Miracle

I got tired of my old design, so I found a template off the web that I liked better. I made some major modifications, but I think it is coming along nicely.

Last week I spent the week in Austin for work, installing new software.  Overall, things went well, though I was wiped out at the end of every day.  I was able to read Slaughterhouse Five, I plan on picking up another Kurt Vonnegut book as soon as possible.

This past weekend, Lisa and I traveled to see some friends in North Carolina.  The trip only took 6 hours, and the beach down there is fantastic.  Much better than we were used to in Corpus Christi.  On the way back, we stopped at our favorite Indian restaurant for dinner.   Since we spent most of the day driving, I wasn’t able to catch any football, but the Redskins weren’t playing anyway.

This coming week is going to be a tough one for fantasy football.  In the league I am playing with my friends, I’m going up against Frazier, our projected score is 86-86 with him on top.  I need to add a WR/RB sometime this week to replace Derrick Ward.  He’s served me well, but it’s tough to say how many points he will put up with Brandon Jacobs returning.  In the random league I joined, I’m taking my 2-2 team against the guy who is 4-0 and has the highest points scored.  No surprise really, since he has Tom Brady and Randy Moss, who have been amazing this year.  The only good news is, his running backs are Laurence Maroney, who sat out last night with an injury, and Adrian Peterson, who is on a Bye week.