The-Daily-Wtf

Another Daily WTF article up: “SELECTing Valid SQL.” I used up my single Joss Whedon reference  card this time, yet I’m also getting flack for including a Lord of the Rings reference as well. Such is life.

I finished my rewrite of The Red Flood last Saturday. I started in early February; overall, I estimate I took 45 days, working 2 hours each day. Besides a couple of substantial storyline changes, I also cleaned up a lot of the action and did some line editing. It’s turning into a proper novel, and while it’s not the most ambitious at 55,000 words, it’s the tightest story I’ve written so far.

“Internet.toLowerCase.” A developer learns the hard way that parsing HTML is no walk in the park. You can read it here.

A computer catches a human virus. You can read it here.

A most curious way of creating date strings. You can read it here.

On Schwarzenegger, ISO country codes, and a giant crazy corkboard. Read it here.

In September, the IT humor site The Daily WTF took applications for potential contributors. I submitted the following story, “King Tutankhamun,” to their editorial staff as part of my application. They enjoyed it. I’ll be contributing regularly to the site, starting around February 1st.

Here’s the original call for submissions, which includes the core WTF that inspired the story.

Steven’s legs wobbled as he leaned against the service counter at one of FruitTech’s premiere retail stores.  He glanced around the store, looking for his supervisor Brenda to relieve him for the union-mandated fifteen-minute break.  Just as he found her, he spotted an old man push open the glass doors, carrying a black trash bag under his arm.

“I have a warranty!” The old man shouted, anticipating what he thought would be his first question.  It wasn’t even Steven’s sixth.