Father Ted

One weekend we tuned in to BBC America, I think it was about five years ago, and we saw some weird looking low budget show with Irish priests as the main characters. I was turned off by the looks of it and went into my office to go surf or play a game on my computer. A few minutes later I heard a peal of raucous laughter. My wife was laughing and bouncing off the walls. I ran back into the TV room. Shortly we were both unable to breathe. We skipped the DVR back to the beginning so that I could watch my first full episode of Father Ted.
I can still remember the exact scene that had us on the floor, I've since watched it again probably twenty times. The episode was A Song for Europe from season 2, and the scene had a chain smoking Father Ted going mad attempting to write a winning entry for the Eurovision song contest.
If you've never seen this, and your a fan of brit-coms, lucky for you. Now you can watch all three seasons for free on Netflix streaming. Nearly every episode is hilarious. Don't miss the episode Hell, guest starring Graham Norton before he began starring in his popular late night talk show.

Year's Best Books on Software Development

via Jolt Awards:The Best Books


The Jolt judges picked the best books this year on the subject of software development. Here is the short list, where number one is the Jolt Excellence award winner, followed by the runners up.

1. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler))
2. Mining the Social Web: Analyzing Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites
3. Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages (Pragmatic Programmers)
4. The Joy of Clojure: Thinking the Clojure Way
5. The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4A: Combinatorial Algorithms, Part 1
6. Domain-Specific Languages (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler))

And see all the Computer Programmer Books.

A new cat

Cuddle me
On Friday, December 4, we adopted a tabby kitten from a local shelter. The kitten is about 4 months old. Alexander has spent his last few days chasing the cat all over the house. We've never heard him laugh so hard. And so long.

We found Alexander taunting the cat with a long cardboard tube. Wondering where he found the tube, we suddenly discovered all the Christmas wrapping paper in a crumpled up pile, and all the inner cardboard tubes removed.

The following day the victim was one of the lower hanging Christmas tree ornaments. In amongst the endless laughing we heard the sound of breaking glass.