I’ve heard a lot about Perl::Critic, and it has always sounded neat. Chris Dolan gave a talk about it at YAPC, and I decided I should give it a go. I didn’t get around to it until this week. I went through and installed a perl-critic.t in all my distributions, then started testing them. Nearly all the violations it found were in a few groups.

Shortly after getting back from Florida, I started to get a little sore throat. This quickly blossomed into a seriously sore throat and two swollen, bloodshot eyes. I usually avoid doctor visits when I think I can wait it out, but I was having a really hard time sleeping, eating, and talking, so Gloria gave me a lift to the weird little EmergiCareClinic or whatever it’s called. The name and concept remind me of something I’d expect in a cyberpunk novel, but I guess that’s just because I don’t know anything about how normal people get medical care.

Hooray for being home! Gloria and I had a number of good experiences on our trip to Florida, but it’s always nice to get home. Some people (mostly those who don’t know me very well) laugh when I say that I’m a boring homebody, but it’s really true. Since we returned home, Gloria and I have enjoyed lounging around the house, watching the TiVo backlog, and cuddling with our guinea pigs.

Today was my first full day in Pensacola, visiting Gloria’s parents. There was a lot of sitting in the car and walking around an outlet mall. I got approximately nothing done, which put me in a grumpy mood for most of the day.

I might go ahead and write a few tests, just to ensure that everything that I think works, works, now and forever. Apart from that, I think I’ve spent enough of the last few days writing obsessively silly code to support my RPG.

I have long avoided DateTime. It’s not that I had any specific reason to dislike the module’s interface or offerings, except that it could not be easily installed via PPM on ActivePerl. When I was developing code that I deployed onto Windows via PPM, this was a major problem, and so I stuck to other Date:: and Time:: modules.

This weekend, my brother was in town and offered to help me with some house work. I took almost all of his aid in the form of wallpaper removal. I got some scrapers, a paper tiger, a few spray bottles, and two gallons of vinegar. As things stand now, the third floor is mostly depapered, except for some hard-to-reach areas high above the stairwell. I would say that on average, Steve was about ten times as productive as I was.

We have had no end of trouble managing branches, lately, and for no clear reason. This is how we generally introduce a big change:

The new house is three stories, and gets lots of natural light. Sadly, none of its third story windows is well-placed for stargazing. If one was, I’d have more time to look through my telescope and more inspiration to write silly astronomy code. Maybe when we overhaul the third floor, we’ll put in a window on the slant of the roof. Probably not.

Today, I got an instant message from Gloria saying, “Guess where I am!” She was at home, but also on the Internet. It’s pretty amazing what technology can do these days.