First Day of Junior High

I pulled another all nighter, but I couldn't go to sleep this morning because today is a special day for my son.  He just left on a bus to go to his junior highschool (6th grade, wow…almost a man).  It was his first ride on regular bus and alone at that.  This morning he barely ate breakfast because he was excited as well as nervous.  I thought I should just pretend today wasn't special so I was in bed when he left our house.  I didn't last more than a few minutes.  I grabbed my camera and ran out after him.

My son riding samTrans to junior high

Since I haven't posted much pictures lately, how about a couple more?

Happy to be buried alive!

Above was taken just a stone throw from our campsite at Lake Tahoe.  Camping and hanging out at the beach at the same time is the best kind of camping.

Neighborhood racoon after tasting our grapes

I was working at night when I heard a loud noise outside.  When I looked out, I saw this racoon going through our small patch of grapevines.  It sat on the wooden support and ate all the grapes, one by one, while I was staring at it.  Racoons must have special kind of nerves.  Above shot was taken when it got up to leave.  So long and thanks for all the grapes, it seemed to be saying.

Next year, I know what it will be saying, Hmm.  These grapes taste different from last year.  How do I know?  Because I'll be marking my grapes the same way as dogs do with fire hydrants.  Hah!

Where did the computer go?

From News.com

"Everyone is going to be asking, 'Where did the computer go?' The entire computer (now) floats in the air," said Schiller. Apple, he said, is aiming for a machine that people will be "proud to have in their den, their living room or in the front of a small business."

Yeah, right.  *eyeroll*  Aside from the joy of pretend surprise, why would anyone want to buy an oversized batteryless laptop with detached keyboard?  Wait a minute.  It just might work.  I can ducktape it to a small powerboat battery and use it as a laptop.  Wow, a laptop with 24 hour battery life and replaceable keyboard.  I am starting to like the idea.

While I have the ducktape at hand, I can attach some table legs so it won't break my leg and some small wheels so I can drag it around.  And how about those three fans?  What's next? iceMac model with a little cup that slides out when the CPU overheats so you can drop ice cubes into it?  How about an iAngel model that opens heat-dissipating wings at the back?  Cool!

BadPaddingException

If you are a Java engineer who ran into a BadPaddingException and ended up here by googling, here is the clue:

BadPaddingException is thrown not because padding was actually 'bad'.  The exception is thrown because the data you are trying to decrypt is malformed, usually by errors in transport-related encoding/decoding code (i.e. BASE64).  Check your encoders and decoders.  Also check to see if you are doing questionable conversion between byte array and String.

For the rest of you, nevermind.