I encountered a problem today with the Ruby on Rails application that I’m working on. It involved something that I haven’t found much information on-line about: many-to-many-to-many relationships.
In northern Virginia, an area dominated by the fast-growing suburbs of Washington, inventories are up 26% from a year earlier. “Sales have slowed down for sure,” says Tip Powers, president of Realty Direct Inc., Sterling, Va. He says home prices have flattened out and speculators are starting to shy away from the market because they no longer can count on quickly unloading properties at a profit.
A series of crank calls I got last night at 5AM:
Crank call 1: “Hey Carter, what’s up buddy, just callin to see what time your kickball league is going on this weekend” (fades in giggles and laughter)
Crank call 2: “Hey, sweetie, I was just callin to let you know that that i’m the one your mamma let, like warned you about, and I’m just lettin you know that I did take that test the other night, and, yeah, hate to tell ya, but um… you’re gonna be a daddy!” (laughter)
Crank call 3: (bad German accept) “This message is for Carter Rabasa, this is Hans with Volkswagen Financing of America, you are three months behind in your VW Jetta payments. You need to turn your car in immediately… or we seek you out and KILL you”
I’d explain the course of events that lead to these calls, but you wouldn’t believe me. I may try and get the voicemails up here in MP3 format, stayed tuned!
I thought I’d share the skeleton of some code I had to write for PayPal’s backend IPN API.
This method exists inside of a controller class. I’m certainly not saying that this is the best or most elegant way to handle this, just that I couldn’t find any examples to rip-off myself. 
Let me know if you have any suggestions. WARNING: this code does not communicate with PayPal’s servers over SSL.
Last night my kickball team, the Fockers, played their first DCKickball playoff game. We had been blessed with an 8-2 record (with both losses coming as bookends to start and end the season) and were feeling good being the number 2 overall seed. We were playing the 15 seed, Spring Break Shark Attack. Despite this, we almost managed to blow what should have been an easy first-round game.
I knew we were in trouble from the outset. SBSA seemed very focused, got to the fields early, and were practicing. My fears were confirmed when they jumped out to a 4-1 lead at the close of the top of the 3rd inning. We were the home team, so we had 3 more innings at bat to come back, but I wasn’t feeling too good about our chances. They kept kicking singles and advancing their baserunners. We weren’t.
I managed to work my way over to third, with a runner on first and no outs. Dan was my third base coach and said something like “no outs? oh, i’m sure you’ll score”. JINX! We proceeded to get to straight outs. We were screwed. If we didn’t score this inning, we would be finished.
I decide I’m going to run no matter where the ball gets kicked. The next batter (can’t remember who it was) kicks a dribbler straight to the SS. (shit) The minute contact was made, I’m off and running. As I make my way down the baseline, I feel the infielder gather up the ball and start chasing me down. For reasons I can’t explain, I sense that he’s about to peg the ball at me. At that exact moment, I put on the brakes and slide to the ground, JUST as the red, rubber ball whizzes over my head and careens out of bounds. I scramble up and lunge at home. SCORE!
The rest, as they say, was history. We went on to score FOUR MORE runs that inning, despite the two outs. SBSA was clearly flustered, and couldn’t pull it back together. We closed out the 3rd inning up 5-4 and went on to win the game 9-4. It was a pretty amazing game. We retired to the venerable Millie and Al’s to celebrate our victory.
