It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve decided to quit smoking; however, I suffered a minor setback this week and smoked a 1.5 packs. I fell off the wagon. Unfortunately, I’ll have to start from square one again today, 1/17/05.

Got off with a good start and did 2.06 miles on my elliptical trainer doing 50 minutes straight without stopping. The last 30 minutes were easy. It’s the first 20 that are hard. Hint: watch a movie while exercising, the time flies by!

This answers a few questions…

The Guys’ Rules

At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down. Finally, the

guys’ side of the story.

(I must admit, it’s pretty good.)

We always hear “the rules” from the female side. Now here are the

rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note… these

are all numbered “1″ ON PURPOSE!

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put

it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us

complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports. It’s like the full moon or the changing of the

tides. Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it

that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints

do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work!

Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every

question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s

what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In

fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

1. If you won’t dress like the Victoria’s Secret girls, don’t expect

us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are. Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the

ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it

done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it

yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during

commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did not need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.

Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit.

We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say nothing,” we will act like

nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the

hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, expect an

answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is

fine…Really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to

discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or monster

trucks.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the

couch tonight; but did you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like

camping.

Here’s a quick fix when working with command line parameters in Perl that will take paths, absolute or relative, as an argument.

For example you execute your script like so:

$./foo.pl -path ./my/path

$./foo.pl -path ../../some/path

$./foo.pl -path /absolute/path

All of which could be possible paths entered by users, you want to support all of them and convert them all to absolute paths in your script. This ensures you script can be called from anywhere, and accept any path given.

– begin scrip –

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Cwd ‘abs_path’;

my $root = $ARGV[1];

$root = abs_path($root);

print “$root\n”;

– end –

Should always print an absolute path, ie- starting with the full path “/some/path”.