John Lamansky

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘[', expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in _____ on line 30

What a strange PHP error message indeed! I did some googling... er, that is, I searched the web using Google -- in case there are any Google lawyers reading ... and I found the following:

Turns out it’s Hebrew for '::'. You learn something new every day.

[Read more at source]

On the line number to which the error message referred, I was referencing a PHP variable without a dollar sign. Oops.

I don’t know what “paamayim nekudotayim” or two colons has to do with it though. (Shrug.)

Whee! Upon making my reentry into the blogosphere today, I discovered I have exactly 900 spam comments in my moderation queue. Yep, it’s been quite a while!

Yep, it happened. Much to my dismay, however, I was not present at the time (I was out helping some of my trick-or-treating younger siblings, who were in saint costumes, of course). This happened just a few minutes after we left.

So earlier this evening, our doorbell rang. Hmm. My mom opened the door, and lo and behold, there was a trick-or-treating boy, who happened to be on the local T-ball team this last summer along with two of my siblings.

As usual, our porch light was not on on Halloween (in our town, having your light on means you’re accepting trick-or-treaters). So my mom, not really knowing what to do, explained to him that only those houses with illuminated porch lights were offering candy. In sharp contrast to the rudeness of last year’s uninvited trick-or-treaters, he was very sweet about it; he said “okay,” and walked away.

A short while later my mom discovered the culprit: our garage light had turned on when the van, occupied by my dad, two of my siblings, and myself, pulled out of the driveway several minutes earlier.

First it was the paperboy, now the van. Ugh, those bothersome motion-sensitive lights!

Long-time readers will probably recall the post that I wrote on October 31, 2005 titled Uninvited Trick-or-Treaters concerning something that happened about 365 days and 10 minutes ago. This evening I’ve been keeping an eye out sequel material (The Return of the Uninvited Trick-or-Treaters!), but nothing so far yet.

When I wrote that post last year it was suggested to me that I “put it to tape,” that is, make a podcast about it. Hmm… I might just do that. I’ll see if I have time to do it later tonight.

Yep, this is my first blog from Windows Live Writer! It’s looking good so far.

According to a CNET News.com article:

A team of Russian and American scientists have discovered a new element, number 118, in experiments conducted in the first half of 2005. The announcement, however, is just being made now.

[...]

This is the fifth element discovered by cooperation between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from Dubna, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Russia. They also discovered elements 113, 114, 115 and 116.

Although the article says, and I quote, “there is no fancy latinized name for the new element,” I’d imagine it would be named Ununoctium, following the current naming scheme for the 112-and-higher elements.

By looking at Wikipedia’s Periodic Table, it seems that element 117 is the only element left that hasn’t been discovered or synthesized yet.

So it looks like we’re just one away from discovering the whole periodic table — assuming, of course, that this claim doesn’t become yet another element discovery retraction.

On Wednesday, October 11, 2006, my maternal step-grandpa unexpectedly passed away while in the hospital for a chest cavity infection. It was a peaceful death, and it was time for him to go home; he had been through a lot. Please keep my grandpa’s soul and his family (especially my grandma) in your prayers.

(P.S. This is one of the reasons I haven’t been posting recently. So no, in case you’re wondering, this blog isn’t going to be another victim of “blog burnout,” if I can help it ; there have just been a lot of things going on around here lately. Thanks for staying subscribed! I hope to get back into routine posting soon.)

On December 30th, 2005, I posted my 100th post. Well now I’ve reached the 200 milestone. Wowee!

As always, thanks for reading!