Had an exciting morning in Texas: fifteen new-to-me bird species seen this morning on the lagoon/intracoastal waterway side of Padre Island across the bridge from Corpus Christi:

• Long-billed Curlew
• Marbled Godwit
• Vermilion Flycatcher
• Brown Pelican
• Willet
• Tern (Royal or Caspian, unsure)
• Laughing Gull
• Reddish Egret, white-morph
• White Ibis
• Snowy Egret
• Osprey
• American White Pelican
• Little Blue Heron
• Roseate Spoonbill
• American Oystercatcher

Also seen: Great blue heron, great egret, ring-billed gull, double-crested cormorant, northern mockingbird, great-tailed grackle, song sparrow.

It's about time. That was my first thought when I heard, late last year, that the Bahá'í International Community had endorsed the Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change. My next thought was: when will this trickle down to us, the people, as a meaningful directive to change our habits? A few weeks ago, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States sent a letter to all American believers, calling their attention to the Declaration, and to a Seven Year Plan of Action on Climate Change. They encouraged us to actively incorporate sustainable practices into our community life, in a manner more direct than ever before.

One should work hard to avoid Cursors in T-SQL — for instance, by using recursive common table expressions &ndsh; but when you need to call a separate stored procedure in a loop, you're stuck with them. I recently came across an excellent guide to the subject, Performance Tuning SQL Server Cursors, which includes the following enlightening piece of advice:

This is why it is so important to buy meat raised without antibiotics. Buying cheaper meat, that used antibiotics, is literally poisoning our future by helping to breed this horrible strains of bacteria — accelerating their evolution. Nick Kristoff, New York Times, The Spread of Superbugs.

A while back I received an e-mail: a Spanish-speaker in my area had called 1-800-22-UNITE to learn more about the Bahá'í Faith, could I return the call? I got in touch with the individual, and nervously chatted for a few minutes in a mixture of Spanish and English (her English was better than my Spanish). She had already read about the Bahá'ís online and wanted to know more. So we agreed to study a book called Reflections on the Life of the Spirit together. This small but profound workbook is composed of three units: Understanding the Bahá'í Writings, Prayer, and Life and Death. Each one contains a number of passages from the Bahá'í writings as well as questions designed to help the person remember and apply the text.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a tool called Pex from the Microsoft Research Labs: "Pex finds interesting input-output values of your methods, which you can save as a small test suite with high code coverage." Not having much time to spend exploring it, I was fortunate to have time to attend a Twin Cities Developers Guild meeting tonight and hear a talk on on how to use the tool, which now has me jump started. First a few highlights of what I learned (without cribbing too much from Jason Bock's presentation), and then sample results from the method in my last post.

Finished Dune Messiah (2nd time, read 6-7 years ago too?). We all recognize that Tattoine is more than a little Dune-like, and the Sarlac pit is a great nod to Shai-hulud. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice that Annakin had some level of prescience. His prescience warned him of his wife's death. But he accepted the bargain, became a tool. Thence the jihad and establishment of empire. Slightly twisted — Annakin is right hand, rather than Imperator, and jihad occurs post-death rather than ante-. And then I remembered the twins.

No television show in recent memory has been so thought-provoking and forward-looking, in a real-Earth-future sense, as The Dollhouse. At times it waxed smarmy — but the point was more than just titillation, it was classic sci-fi exploration of what might happen when technological innovation and amorality come face to face and embrace each other.

Now the Dollhouse is gone. Few were spared, the story is over, it is time to put down the book. Return to real life. But think. Continue to think, continue to be aware, continue to push yourself to be the best a human can be rather than allowing yourself to sink to the worst.

Most inappropriately-timed commercial ever: OnStar showing how they can remotely slow down your car if it is stolen. I expect that there were an awful lot of Dollhouse fans who immediately swore never to purchase a vehicle with OnStar.

My team often starts Tuesday morning status meetings with a round of win/learn/fun - a team-building exercise where each person gets to mention an exciting "win", something they learned in the last week, or just something fun. Several weeks ago someone brought up C# Extension Methods as a learn. I could see the potential, but I didn't immediately think of any practical examples.

They are the aliment of imagination,
The wellspring of delight.
They turn stars into heroes,
Bring peace to the night.

Fear they can banish,
And in good measure bestow.
All good stories teach;
Even heroes they bring low.

Words are more than letters,
As letters are more than lines.
In the mirror of darkest tales,
Verily even sorrow shines.

When polished in contemplation,
The reflection you will find,
Far eclipses all that
The narrator had in mind.

Inspired by Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie