Stuff I learned this weekend...
--It gets technical - I promise
Last night, Kim and I rented Open Water. I actually wanted to see it when it was out in the theatre but didn't get the opportunity. Scuba divers that I've met with very few exceptions tend to be amongst the most annoying people I know. I don't really know how to describe them but there are certain characteristics many of them have like, for some reason it becomes their primary identity. Back in college, one of my frat brothers insisted on wearing a shirt/hat with our letters, everywhere we went. If he wasn't wearing out letters, he was wearing a t-shirt with sorority letters he got from some party. It was lame in college - but 4 years later - it was too lame for words. That's what many divers remind me of. Like, do you really need to have a frigging Diver Down license plate on your car and 12 bumper stickers? Do you really need to preach to me about how 'nice' sharks are? So anyway, I was a little reluctant to see this movie b/c I thought it was going to be the Twister of scuba divers but figured it might be pretty cool. Ok, it wasn't like Twister at all. I won't spoil it for you, but if you took a Perfect Storm, made it much more boring, and had much lamer stuff going on - you have Open Water. This movie sucked so bad I can't really describe it other than it's so bad that you NEED to make sure you don't have a pen or pencil anywhere near you b/c you'll invariably get overwhelmed with its suckiness and gouge out your eyes. It almost sucks as bad as Lex and Terry.
Anyway, I've been trying to pimp my game with Design Patterns for a while, and i ain't exactly over on the pimp side yet. I was at Barnes and Noble though and, although I avoid stuff that even looks like this as though it were Open Water II - i bought it . “Head First Design Patterns”. I can't say much about it yet b/c I'm only a few chapters into it but so far I like the content. The layout though - let's just say that there's 0% chance that the person in charge of the layout is not a Burning Man attendee. But, the one thing it does well is just throw code and examples at you. If you've ever read any of the Jesse Liberty “From Scratch” series, it's reminiscent of them - but with some LSD mixed in with it and Terrapin Station playing in the background.
As such, this has totally reinvigorated the “.NET For Strippers” initiative and that's actually what I'm using as my examples to teach myself the material. “Bill, you really need to grow up” True.
So, in so doing, I was hitting a few roadblocks. For a “Stripper Factory”, what would one use? A hospital or a trailer park? Or would it be better to implement a StripClub factory and let the “Sleazy Owner” class handle the creation of strippers? Got a lot of thinking to do on this, but heck, if it works, it works.