Edge Induced Collision

A geek's view on technology, life and stuff.

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Sticks and Stones

As a child, I remember that age old adage that “sticks and will hurt your bones, but names will never hurt you”. I am of the belief that it is rubbish. I am a more of a believer in a quote by Phyllis McGinley that states, “Sticks and stones are hard on…

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Understanding Is a Three Edged Sword

There is a television show that I watched with great pleasure. The name of the show was Babylon 5, and there was a specific line that has stood out in my memory for a great many years. It is, “Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side,…

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Why Am I Different

It is an odd thing to be viewed as intelligent but also have attention problems. As long as I am properly medicated, it seems like I am a normal if very animated person. However, when I go off my meds, my brain is a rush of ideas and thoughts that washing…

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Boundaries

bound·a·ry

[boun-duh-ree, -dree]

noun, plural bound·a·ries.

1. something that indicates bounds or limits; a limiting or bounding line.

Boundaries are interesting things. They delineate property lines, territorial areas and usually understood to dictate…

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To Be or Not To Be (In the Sprirt)

I wish everyone a happy holiday season to those who believe in them and happy salutations to all who are reading this.

  Today I wish to talk about this wonderful time of year that we find ourselves in now. Growing up, my family didn’t believe in…

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Sending emails through applications

Good morning boys, girls, men, women and programming creatures of all kinds. A lot of programmers believe that you need to have access to your own smtp or exchange server in order to send out emails from applications. This is not the case.

All you really…

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What Sarah Said

On the way home from work yesterday, I plugged my phone into my truck’s radio and started playing songs from it. This is something of a tradition for me, as I know all the songs on it by heart and I enjoy singing to help me relax in the rush hour traffic…

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Multi-threading in .NET 3.5

I realize that with AJAX, multi-threading is something that is seldom needed in the world of web programming. "Matthew, why are you wasting my time with this pointless post?" You may ask. Well, creating a web or windows service might require it. Let me give you an example.

You work a job as a programmer (shocker, I know). You get handed a task to create a service with a 30 minute heartbeat. Alright, no biggie, that should take a couple hours depending on the complexity needed. Wait a sec, Mr. Programmer, we need you to process 5000 records and send them via a third-party web service. *gulp* When you do the calculations for how much time it takes to process just one record and multiply it by 5000, you realize that there might be an issue because it will take around 45 minutes to process everything. *headslamdesk* The sky is falling, the world is ending and bring on the zombie apocalypse, right? WRONG!!! You know why? This is not a problem because there are people that beat their heads against the wall and have found a way to take care of this for you.

First off, instead of hand-feeding you something that could have disastrous results, let me tell you a bit about threading. Normal services or application rely on one thread, namely the Main thread. It goes about its business and does what you tell it to do. The memory usage is for it should be relatively low as long as you know what you are doing and when the thread ends, the service usually completes or the application is shut down. In the past, multi-threading was very attractive because the processing power was…well…not as fast or as inexpensive as it is now. You had a single core that needed to do things but you had to be very careful to free up the resources you used when multi-threading because there was no automatic cleanup of the memory being “reserved” for the threads.

As with all things, there is good news and bad news. The bad news…you still have to be careful about how you multi-thread. There are some tools that make things very easy to program *cough* semaphores *cough* but the problem with those is the inherent issue of trapping exceptions. Semaphores allow you to reserve a chunk of memory to process all of the threads, and be able to tell how many concurrent threads you want. (I usually go by the rule of four concurrent threads per processor because I work with production servers that have other applications and services running and I do not want to create a massive lag…I learned the issues of that while working at my previous job for a company that shall remain nameless) So you program in a semaphore and say that you want a maximum of four threads and a starting count of four threads locked. You assign the worker threads and tell the service to start…and you wait. The service completes and you tell it run again. It completes and you tell it run again. Do this a few times and you start to realize that the service is taking longer and longer with each iteration.

Why? Ahhhh…the issue is that, in .net 3.5, the memory being reserved for the process is not reusable and doesn’t free up at the completion of the service…oops. This is an issue.

In 3.5, .net still hasn’t fully worked out the bugs with multi-threading so we have to do it ourselves. I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to programming and I like to be able to insert a breakpoint and be able to see what has been completed, what needs to be completed and what the average process time for each record. Sound familiar? If you are a programmer, it should!

Today, we will be working with:

System

System.Collections

System.Data

System.Threading

I will add each individual clock of code and explain it. At the very bottom, you will see a full version of my code. You will have to add your own processes to it and it will be generic because I cannot add too much of my actual code because of a NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement) I signed, but it should be enough to get you started.

using System;

using System.Data;

using System.Collections;

using System.Threading;

namespace MyMultiThreadingService

{

    static class MyMultiThreadingService

    {

        static Queue q;

        static DateTime start;

        static DateTime finish;

        //I like to know the start and end time so I can get an average process time per record

        static DataTable dtISend;

        static DataTable dtISent;

        static DataTable dtIResults;

         private static ManualResetEvent resetEvents = new ManualResetEvent(false);

So, in the above block, I am setting up the objects I will need for my service. The only part that should look odd is the ManualResetEvent. Without getting too much into it, We need to have this inorder to use the threadpool. We have the option of an AutoResetEvent or ManualResetEvent. With the ManualResetEvent, I am setting the initial mode as false to show that it has not signaled that it is working. If I had set the initial value to true, I would have to change it later in order for the worker threads to know that it is not in the middle of a process.

static void Main()

        {

            start = DateTime.Now;

            CreateDTSent();

            CreateDTResult();

            WorkerFunction();

            int iFiles = dtISend.Rows.Count;

            iToDo = iFiles;

            ThreadPool.SetMaxThreads(5, iFiles);

            for (int i = 0; i <= dtISend.Rows.Count - 1; i++) ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new          WaitCallback(SemFunction), (object)i);

            resetEvents.WaitOne();

        }

The above is the main thread. The two voids that are used first (CreateDTSent and CreateDTResult are shown below. They create the two datatables that will house what files need to be sent and what the result was. There is a lag between when SemFunction is called for each worker thread and when it is completed so I wanted to be able to add a row to DTSent in order to keep the threads from duplicating their work, plus, since the path of the file is a primary key, I am trying to keep the errors from piling up. The WaitCallback object allows the item to be put on hold until thread is available to complete the next item. You will see that the parameters being used for the WaitCallback function are SemFunction and the index of the row being converted to an object. You will see SemFunction later on.

        public static void CreateDTSent()

        {           

            DataTable dt = new DataTable();

            DataColumn[] key = new DataColumn[1];

            DataColumn column = new DataColumn();

            column.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.String");

            column.ColumnName = "file";

            dt.Columns.Add(column);

            key[0] = column;

            dt.PrimaryKey = key;

            DTSent = dt;

        }

        public static void CreateDTResult()

        {

            DataTable dt = new DataTable();

            DataColumn[] key = new DataColumn[1];

            DataColumn column = new DataColumn();

            column.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.String");

            column.ColumnName = "file";

            dt.Columns.Add(column);

            key[0] = column;

            dt.PrimaryKey = key;

            dt.Columns.Add("time");

            dt.Columns.Add("response");

            vrbls.dtResult = dt;

        }

Yup, the above code creates the datatables and sets the primary keys. Since I set up the datatables as static Datatables, they will maintain their values until the whole service is completed. Pretty cool, huh?

        public static void WorkerFunction ()

        {

            DataTable dt = new DataTable();

            q = new Queue();

            dt.Columns.Add("path");

            dt.Columns.Add("file");

            dt.Columns.Add("xmlpath");

            dt.Columns.Add("imgpath");

            string[] paths = Directory.GetDirectories(@"C:\Documents and Settings\matthew_albright\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\XML\Upload");

            foreach (string str in paths)

            {

                string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(str);

                DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();

                string[] strSpl = str.Split(new string[] { "\\" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

                dr[0] = str;

                dr[1] = strSpl[strSpl.GetUpperBound(0)];

                dr[2] = files[1].ToString();

                dr[3] = files[0].ToString();

                dt.Rows.Add(dr);

            }

            dtISend = dt;

            for (int i = 0; i <= dtISend.Rows.Count - 1; i++)

            {

                q.Enqueue(dtISend.Rows[i][2].ToString());

            }

        }

In WorkerFunction, I am looking for all folders in a directory. Then I am looking in each of the folders for the first two files in them. I know that the first will be a .tiff file and that the second will be an .xml file. I getting their path and adding them into a datatable (dtISend). In my example, there are a total of 1876 folders, 1876 .xml files and 1876 .tiff files. At the bottom of the void, I am creating my queue. The Enqueue function adds items to a queue. Since I will only be sending the xml files, my queue will consist of 1876 paths, each to an .xml file.

        private static void SemFunction(object o)

        {

            int i = (int)o;

            if (q.Contains((object)dtISend.Rows[i][2].ToString()))

            {

                string file = (string)q.Dequeue();

                try

                {

                    if (i == 0 || !vrbls.dtSent.Rows.Contains(file))

                    {

                        ISendFile(file);

                    }

                    else return;

                }

                catch (Exception ex)

                {

                    string err = ex.Message;

                }

            }

            if (q.Count == 0) return;

    }

Here is the SemFunction I promised that you would see again. I wanted to make sure that I showed you how to create the q and add items to it first because, here, we will be removing records from the queue. The main function here is Dequeue. This cool function calls the next item in the queue item collection and removes it.

This is the part that is a little irksome. It doesn’t remove it right away. Instead, it waits until the void that calls it is completed, THEN removes it. I added some checking to make sure that the path that the path from dtISend (or the path in the index of dtISend) is in the queue. If it is not in the queue, it has already been completed and the string exits the void and opens up for the next item to be completed. There is also the problem that the item might in the process of being worked on, so I added in the next part. Before the record gets sent to the third web service, I am creating a record for it in dtISent. That way, even if the item is in the process of being worked on, if the next thread tries to work on it, the record already exists in dtISent and the thread exits the void to work on the next item. The only problem with this is when the first item gets worked on. Since there is nothing in dtISent, this would normally cause an error…so I accounted for this by allowing the first record through without checking. When the queue is empty, all threads exit the void.

static void ISendFile(string file)

        {

            if (dtISend.Rows.Count > vrbls.dtSent.Rows.Count)

            {

                try

                {

                    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

                    doc.Load(file);

                    DataRow dr = vrbls.dtSent.NewRow();

                    dr[0] = file;

                    if (vrbls.dtSent.Rows.Contains(file)) return;

                    vrbls.dtSent.Rows.Add(dr);

                    UpdateResults(SqlHelper.SendXML(doc),file);

                    if (q.Count == 0) resetEvents.Set(); finish = DateTime.Now;

                    file = null;

                }

                catch (Exception ex)

                {

                    string err = ex.Message;

                    DataRow drSent = vrbls.dtSent.Rows.Find(file);

                    drSent.Delete();

                    q.Enqueue(file);

                }

            }

            else

            {

                return;

            }

        }

        static void UpdateResults(string response,string file)

        {

            try

            {

                DataRow dr = vrbls.dtResult.NewRow();

                dr[0] = file;

                dr[1] = DateTime.Now;

                dr[2] = response;

                vrbls.dtResult.Rows.Add(dr);

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                string err = ex.Message.ToString();

            }

        }

In ISendFile, I create a record for the file being sent so that the next thread won’t inadvertently try to send the same file. It then gets sent and the response is captured in UpdateResults. If there is an error, I remove the record from the dtISent datatable and add the path back to the queue so it can be worked on again. Only do this after you know the code works, because the error might be something serious that needs to be captured.

When the queue count is zero then we call resetEvents.Set() which tells the threadpool that the tasks are completed and locks the ManualResetEvent. If you have any questions or need help, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, happy coding and enjoy the world of multi-threading.

[matthewbalbright-blog]

Kindness

Lately, I have found myself in an odd position, but hear me out as it gets better. I am used to surrounding myself with people who knew that they are smarter than me. I have grown accustomed to never wanting much success or money for fear that it corrupt me. I have learned, over the years, that I cannot trust others and that I will always fall short of everyone's expectations and that I am a generally unworthy person. Kindness was something like a hoarded treasure with my Pennsylvania family during my years there.

Some of this was indoctrinated into my head, some of this was figured out through pain and some of this was the result of some very bad lessons that were taught me by people who didn't know about the sheer power each person has on the people around them.

I will start off with an interesting story. As some know, I am training for a half-marathon in December. I live in a relatively quiet area of St. Petersburg, FL and have figured out numerous routes that will get me up to my goal of 13.1 miles before December but will never take me more than 2 miles away from my house because, in case something <b> does </b> happen to me, I want my fiancee to be able to find me easily.

I usually run with my mp3 player playing happy, upbeat but slower songs. Of late, I have kept the volume turned lower then usual so that I can greet and hear the people that I pass. When I started this training, I usually zoned out and didn't really care about the people around me but I struck on an idea one day started seeing if a simple smile had much power. I know the stories about the world today:

"We live in bad times."

"People cannot be trusted."

"Be careful where you go or you could be mugged."

"Don't talk to people you do not know."

"Do not make eye contact."

Well, I tried an experiment. As I run through some...not so good areas, with my well-kept appearance, tattoos and new running clothes, you would think I would be ripe for the picking. However, as I run, I greet each person I pass and bid them a good day/night/morning/evening, depending on the time of my run. It is amazing, but, not only do I see happy expressions from their previous dour faces, a lot of them remember me when they see me on the sidewalk again in totally different clothes. The truly odd thing...I have noticed that my heart rate, even while running, fluctuates when I do this. It slows my heart rate down, calms me and gives me a little rush of joy that makes my tired limbs feel lighter and my steps more springy.

Kindness...simple, unselfish, unbidden kindness. It is a truly powerful thing. More powerful than any drug, better received than any handout. It is something that we are all entitled to. It is a responsibility that we all have. While the person giving it may feel better, to the person receiving it, it may just change their day, if not their life.

At a time in my life, I was depressed. I know that my mother and step-dad love me, but I never really felt good about myself. It seems like, through my life, I always looked to other people to define how valuable I was. In a lot of my life, the people that were supposed to be my examples showed me little kindness. As a result, I grew up trying to constantly give it, in hopes that it would be given to me. Rather selfish, in some respects but I needed others to make me feel like I had value. When I drank, and I drank a lot, all the worst feelings that I thought I could keep bottled up, would rise to the surface and I would end up lashing out at the people around me. One thing led to another (I never thought I needed help in this problem) and a suicide attempt ensued.

To this day, I do not remember much of that night. I know that I had people who helped me. I had people that showed me kindness but were also firm with me. I had people that allowed me to foster, in myself, a sense of self-worth. All because of kindness...simple, unselfish, unbidden kindness.

I listen to the news and it is filled with death, sadness, treachery, meanness, crime and depravity of all kinds. I think what people need to hear is about the acts of kindness that are done. People watch the news and hear only bad things...why? I do not think that it is because the world is more evil then before. I think that the world is just so much more interconnected that the news, which only used to report the local or the national level are now reporting at the global level.

I read a book a few years ago and I am trying to reread it. It is a short book that is long in wisdom. Part of it goes:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. These are the things you already know: Share everything. Play Fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

I think things need to be added to this but it makes me think. Where did we go wrong? There are more answers to this than there are people in the world, but I think the answer is simple, even if the meaning and the way to put it into action are not:

At some point we thought that world was not fair. Instead of being an example of how we want the world to be, we started playing by the rules we thought the world had:

Make money.

Take shortcuts.

Only worry about yourself because no one else will.

These are two lessons I have recently learned:

There’s another thing not everyone figures out right away: It’s almost impossible to go through life all alone. We need to find our support group — family, friends, companion, therapy gatherings, team, church or whatever. The kindergarten admonition applies as long as we live: “When you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together.” It’s dangerous out there — lonely, too. Everyone needs someone. Some assembly is always required.

I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings. And so it has been to this day.

I hope the day will come when we stop thinking the worst about people and go out into the world to do good things for strangers without even knowing about it...maybe I am reverting back into childhood, but I think that, in some ways, children have the right idea.

**I will add that I do know of people that already do this. I admire them, but will not add their names. I had a mentor in Pennsylvania that did this and I am marrying into a family that personifies the lessons that I am only recently relearning. I love them, I am proud of them and they will always be the people that I hold in high regard and will take great pride in the simple fact that I have been a recipient of their kindness.**

[matthewbalbright-blog]

Using { get; set; } in Web Applications

Good afternoon, boys and girls. Today, I will be talking about something less philosophical and something of a more technical nature.

I view session variables and viewstates as a necessary evil, but a lot better than using hidden fields to maintain values between postbacks and redirects. Part of this is because is because of the possibility of abuse and lots of memory usage on the server and part of this is because I hate having to remember what session variable does what. Since I routinely jump between anywhere from three to ten different projects at any given time, this was a bit of an issue until I started to think of something my old mentor taught me…if you have something used multiple times, do something that:

1.       Minimizes the number of lines used to do said something

2.       Decreases the time it takes you catch up on the project, if it has been a while since you have worked on it

3.       Groups the types of values together so that you can easily call and set the values

With that being said, enter the wonderful world of the *drum roll* class. In this example, I will be creating a class, creating { get; set; }, and showing you how to implement the class and the properties for the class. Keep in mind, I am a C#.net programmer working in Visual Studio 2010 using the .NET 4.0 framework (in this example, at least).

 First, I create a class in the App_Code folder of my project and name it “Test.cs”.

NOTE: If you do not have an App_Code folder, do not fear! You can create it by right-clicking on the base directory (the very top object in the Solution Explorer, if you are not debugging) and mousing over “Add ASP.NET Folder” and selecting “App_Code”.

In the newly created class, you will see the following:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

/// <summary>

/// Summary description for Test

/// </summary>

public class Test

{

                public Test()

                {

                                //

                                // TODO: Add constructor logic here

                                //

                }

}

Where you see “public Test()”, change it to “public string Name” and clear out the commented lines in between the opening and closing brackets under it. Next, put the following lines in between those same brackets:

        get { return (string)HttpContext.Current.Session["Name"]; }

        set { HttpContext.Current.Session["Name"] = value; }

NOTE: You will notice that referencing session variables is a bit different inside of a class then it is in a code-behind page. This is due to the code-behind page inheriting namespaces and properties that are not available in a class.

Save the class and close it.

Open up the code-behind file for Default.aspx, as long as it is in the same project as the class you just created. Under the using block, you should see something like “public partial class [name of web form] : System.Web.UI.Page”. Under the opening bracket, type “Test test = new Test();”. In the Page_Load void, you will notice that, when you type in “test.”, the intellisense opens up and you see “Name” as one of the options. Click on it and make the property equal to “Matthew Albright”. Your new file (unless you have other code included in it) should look something like this:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{

    Test test = new Test();

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    {

        test.Name = "Matthew Albright";

    }

}

Congratulations! You have set the value of session[“Name”] and call it whenever you want. Better yet, you do not have to worry about that name of the session variable is or having to re-type it. If you need to change the name of you, all you have to do is change it in the class file. If you want to reference the value in the code-behind, all you have to do is use “test.Name”.

NOTE: Since session variables can expire, I would recommend you capturing a possible null exception or checking to see if test.Name has a value before referencing it.

Let me know if you have any questions! Happy Friday and happy coding!!

[matthewbalbright-blog]

The Road

We all have heroes. Most times they are famous people that have done something unbelievable or amazingly difficult that we look to them in times of weakness and think, what would they do? Mine is my grandfather. He was a great man and one that I still look to for strength in my darkest hours. Sometimes I know that my own actions fall amazingly short of the decisions he would make but he was always there for me, never judging, always accepting and loving me with the patience of a saint and the love of a true father.

The fact of the matter is that life isn’t fair. Life is not a fairytale with the story ending all wrapped up in a little bow and a little moral learned where the bad guys lose and good guys win. People cannot be split up in black and white. Even heroes that people put up on a pedestal have made mistakes. To think that, just because they have done some very good deeds, it somehow makes them infallible is only setting them and their believers up for failure.

I lived on a little farm (okay, most of you will think this is big, but I still view 180 acres as being a small farm ) in Pennsylvania while growing up (I use that term lightly because I still do not think I have really grown up). As such, I was a fan of the Nittany Lions (probably better known as the Penn State Nittany Lions). Joseph Paterno was a hero for a lot of my friends and this recent scandal left a lot of them disillusioned. He did a lot of good things…he brought pride and notoriety to Penn State. He led their football team to 24 bowl victories, 2 national championship victories and 5 undefeated, untied seasons. Whatever he overlooked, did not see or was/wasn’t party to, those by themselves are major achievements. They do not make someone perfect. They make someone a great coach, sure, but he was still a human being with all the faults, imperfections and mistakes that go along with the human condition.

Lance Armstrong was a professional road racing cyclist. In October 1996, he was diagnosed with having testicular cancer with a tumor that had metastasized to his brain and lungs. He underwent brain and testicular surgery in addition to extensive chemotherapy. Three years later, he went on to win the Tour de France and won it ever year until 2005. It goes without saying (I will say it anyway because I am long-winded and want the point to be made) that this is a major achievement especially in a sport that is riddled with people who dope (use steroids). In June of 2012, the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) officially charged him with the consumption of illicit performance enhancing drugs. I will not presume to know if this is true or not but, last night, he gave up his fight against them and allowed the USADA to strip him of all titles and awards. People will say that he let them down, that he let down the sport, that he destroyed the hopes of future generations of riders but the fact remains that he did great things, spend a lot of time and money contributing to charity and continually beat the odds while maintaining an amazing work ethic. In spite of all that, he was a human being. He made his mistakes. It was not his fault that people put him on a pedestal. If people want to believe someone is perfect simply because he does great things, they are free to do so, but should also realize that all people will make mistakes.

There is a quote from Spiderman that I think of from time to time, “But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you.” Along those lines there is another quote from Batman: The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” While both quotes are cynical, pessimistic and jaded, there is a certain measure of truth to them. We live in a society where the mistakes that normal people make from time-to-time become the thing of tabloids when a famous person does them. Their every move is watched and their lives get put under an electron microscope. No one can live up to people’s fantasies and hero worship when they are examined so closely.

If I ever became famous, no one would want to put me on a pedestal and I am happy about that. I have made a lot of mistakes. I suffer from depression, battled eating-disorders in high school, stolen from my family, lied, hurt loved ones, let people down, and far worse. I would be a tabloid’s dream. That doesn’t mean I am a bad person, it means that I am a human being. I dare anyone to be able to say that they have never made a mistake. People may say, “But I am not famous. They knew what they were getting into when they became famous.” I will counter that by saying that they went into their fields and tried to become the best they could. The few lucky ones do become famous, but that does not entitle them to have their life dissected and analyzed. People are not characters in fairytales and they are not infallible. Fairytales aren’t fairytales because they never tell the whole story. They end on a happy note and never tell the story of what happens after the villain is defeated.

I know my hero made mistakes. I know that at one point in his life, he was rough, judgmental, harsh, hard to love and, sometimes mean. I experienced some of that and, at points, thought harshly about him for it. The fact of the matter is that I accepted those parts of him and realized at one point that he was a human. He made his mistakes and spent a good part of his life trying to change. I wonder if his own children knew this about him, but he once confided in me saying, “When we are young, we know what we are doing is right. We are headstrong and think that we need to teach our children how to do the right thing. As we get wiser, we realize that we are here to guide them to do the right thing but must be there when they fall and help them back up.” I haven’t thought about that in a while and still sit back and wonder how much wisdom he tried to pass onto me when he was alive that I was too young and too headstrong to be able to learn, but, while living, he was always there to help me up…I never realized that until a couple days ago.

Life is life. Mistakes will be made; people will choose the wrong things and sometimes take the easy way out. We are all humans, regardless of our stature, notoriety or fame. A wise person once told me the following:

“None of us has the right to define the other person by a single critical incident - the number still bothers me some, but my "63 years" has taught me that we take a critical incident - a worst moment - seriously, address it head on and move on positively with the work of healing - usually something that is more of a marathon than a sprint.  As you have surely noticed, [we] are passionate people, prone to outbursts of emotion, some angry, some loving and some hurtful to others, some self-harmful. We all need to improve, but we share those qualities in common.

We do not heal by pretending that a critical life incident didn't happen, but rather, we love each other in spite of it, accepting each other and ourselves as broken and needful of self-love and the love of one another to move on in our human condition.”

This was said to me after I made a very bad mistake; a mistake that would have hurt and crippled a lot of people around me if I had succeeded. It was an act borne of selfishness and of ease. I do not want to have my life defined by one act and will spend the rest of my life living it down and trying my hardest to be a better person. Each us has moments where we come to a fork in the road. To the left, we see a path that is easy and will feel good. To the right, we see a difficult path that is paved with sharp rocks and lines with thorny bushes. Everyone sometimes takes the left path, and should not be judged for it. Judgment is not for us to make, but, rather, we are a part of a whole. I believe we are meant to live our lives symbiotically with the ones around us; each person giving something to those around them and passing the good things on. It is how we grow and become strong.

I will end this rather verbose post with a poem that we all need to learn from and think of when choosing our actions in spite of what other do or how they make us feel:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

        5

  Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

        10

  And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

        15

  I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

        20

                                                                -Robert Frost

[matthewbalbright-blog]

The Game of Life

Last night, my fiance and I sat down to a game that I have not played in ages. Growing up, I always loved The Game of Life, but I always seemed to think that it was unfair and based too much on luck and not enough on strategy. Last night, however, was the first time that I had played the game since I was 15 years old. I was amazed to realize that the game was a pretty entertaining version of the real game of life.

You roll and sometimes you can avoid speeding tickets if the cop doesn’t notice. However, the cop can speed, and not get caught because he can refuse to “notice” that he did speed and not have to pay the penalty. You can decide to go to college or get a job without doing so. Going to college means you start your game in debt, but you have a chance of making a lot of money. Not going to college means that you can get money and pay days right away without getting any debt, but your annual income isn’t going to be as high as a college job.

As we played the game, we learned the rules, often times too late to make use of them. This is true in real life sometimes. A lot of times we bumble and fumble our ways through jobs and relationships without realizing that there are some very abstract rules. A lot of us have to learn them through blood, sweat and tears before we finally understand what they are. A lot of times, we learn them too late to make use of them to avoid earlier pitfalls and possible payouts we missed.

In the game you have the opportunity to buy a starter home and a real house of your choice. You can get an expensive one, but that might stretch you too thin financially. Getting a less expensive house means you cannot sell it back for much when you retire. Since it was a game, there was some competition as to who would win and this is sometimes true in real life too. I realized that there are always going to competitions. Sometimes with parents, other times with my fiancé and sometimes with her family.

I hate fights. It has not always been this way. At one point, I felt like a grenade without a pin or a jar of nitroglycerine. I was just waiting to blow up at someone. Usually, it was my brother that was on the receiving end and, in retrospect; I probably was one very bad brother. I tried to defend him as much as I could, but I never thought about defending him from me. Some of my ex-girlfriends has been on the receiving end of my rather sharp and, sometimes, evil tongue. However, somewhere along the way, I started to eschew fights. I hate them. I hate the way I feel while in the middle of them and I hate the way I feel when they are done. I can remember every fight I have gotten into and they still make me squirm on the inside. I hate it when I allow someone to goad me into a fight and I hate the loss of control I feel when I get angry, though I know I still hold back because I have learned the amount of dame that can be caused with a sharp tongue often hurts more and takes longer to heal from then a well placed punch.

So, I know it seems that I got off topic, but when playing games, there is that competition and that feeling of one-upmanship when you land on a square and get money from your opponents. There is that sense of jealousy when your opponent gets a better job or is able to make more money on something. I guess the key to playing life is the same as when playing The Game of Life…it isn’t fair. Sometimes someone is luckier than you and sometimes the spinner favors the bold. The thing to remember is that you are playing with people you care about and their wins are your wins. Their downfall is yours. Competitions end and jalousies cease but they are still your friend/significant other/family. That will last longer than any fight or any game and when those end, I guess we have to remember that no spinner, dice, card, win or loss can take away that they are who you want to have fun with and spend time with. The big thing is just to sit back and enjoy the game.

[matthewbalbright-blog]

So, does this mean you are for the gays?

Let me start off by saying that I am not a religious person by nature. I have my beliefs and, though they may not be shared by others, I am serious about them. I come from a religious family that has their own personal beliefs about some subjects, but I tend to get along with them, for the most part.

I believe that everyone has a right to be what they want and live the way they want, provided they don't hurt anyone. I am not gay but I know people who are. I have never been beat up, but I know people that have been because they are gay. I am not married (I am engaged) but I do know others that are told that they cannot get married because it would be against the law.

My fiance has told me in the past that I am a white/blue. Without going too much into the psychology behind it, it means that I am a peaceful person but also care very much about fairness. Sometimes this puts me at odds with those close to me, but I believe what I believe and believe that everyone should have the chance for happiness.

That being said, yesterday I posted a picture on Facebook of, what I thought was, a good message. It was:

I hate the word homophobia.

It is not a phobia.

You are not scared.

You are an asshole.

Someone I knew from my younger, more religious years posted a response. It was, "So, does this mean you are for the gays?" I read this right before going on my run, this morning. I do not know why, but this really bothered me. As I was running, I wondering why this was the case. It seemed a little accusatory, but nothing that should bother me. I kept coming back to that simple, nine word question. I was starting to get tired when I realized why that bothered me so much. It was so close to questions that bigots have been asking for hundreds of years. As if, by believing that all people should have the same rights, it means I am against other people.

It was so close to, "Are you for the black people? Are you for the Jewish people? Are you for the [insert group of people here]?" It bugged me because the person that asked that was a religious person and should know that there are so many rules of the Bible no longer apply. Rules like:

Don't let cattle graze with other kinds of Cattle (Leviticus 19:19)

Don't have a variety of crops on the same field. (Leviticus 19:19)

Don't wear clothes made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19)

Don't cut your hair nor shave. (Leviticus 19:27)

Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. (Leviticus 20:9)

If a man sleeps with his father's wife... both him and his father's wife is to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:11)

If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be "cut off from their people" (Leviticus 20:18)

Psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death.  (Leviticus 20:27)

If a priest's daughter is a whore, she is to be burnt at the stake.  (Leviticus 21:9)

People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God (Leviticus 21:17-18)

Anyone who curses or blasphemes God, should be stoned to death by the community.  (Leviticus 24:14-16)

If anyone, even your own family suggests worshipping another God, kill them. (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)

If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of it's inhabitants... even the animals. (Deuteronomy 13:12-15)

Kill anyone with a different religion. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)

This scares me a little because if one is to use the Bible as a weapon, they should also realize that it is a slippery slope. The same Bible yielded as a weapon, could very well be used to smite not just the target, but also the person trying to use it to smite others. No one is perfect. I break rules and laws more than I like, but I also realize that and try to be more understanding when others hurt me. They may not be trying to hurt me, but, even if they are, I have done things in my past to hurt others and would like to know that those I have hurt forgive me.

Basically, only one who is perfect should have any right to judge others but there is something else to think about:

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. (Luke 6:31)