I read this article with interest:


To me, it represents a global dilemma. Would you rather live in the past and insist that change is disturbing because you don't quite understand it (or want to take the pains to understand it) or would you just accept that the future is here and evolve with it?

The way I have phrased it above makes it sound as if the right answer is choosing the future and evolving. That is because I want to choose that answer. I want everyone to choose that answer. But sometimes, there is no right answer to a question like this. The article about Moroccan cuisine cookbooks illustrates this point so well.

On an aside, I really want to make this bread someday:


Maybe I can this weekend.

What I want to do is match strings with regular expressions.

^ : start of string
[ : beginning of character group
a-z : any lowercase letter
A-Z : any uppercase letter
0-9 : any digit
_ : underscore
] : end of character group
* : zero or more of the given characters
$ : end of string

Now I can't even write code for matching a variable length sentence or phrase in curly brackets for example:

{A quick brown FOX jumps over a sprightly hare}

Hmm... this does not work
(\{)[.*?](\})

This doesn't work
(\\{).*?(\\})

This doesn't work either.
\\{.*?\\}

ARRRGH.
It's funny how it's called regular.

---

References

1.
2.
3.
4.

80% of my inbox.


And still not done.

The cold, fever and chills got out of hand so I had to go out in the rain to Walgreens at around 1:00 AM yesterday night. It was like one of those descriptions in the Wuthering Heights of wild rainy miserable nights but without any of the fun.

The Walgreens on North has undergone some kind of ludicrous rearrangement of shelves. It took me a whole 5 minutes to realize that everything had been shuffled around. The cold and flu medications are not with the other medications on the far wall anymore. I finally found them in the next aisle. It made no logical sense. I am convinced the whole point of the rearrangement was to make sick people suffer even more in their misery.

And that was not all. The walgreens brand was nowhere to be seen. The shop is aggressively promoting some new hippie form of the Nyquil concoction called Nature Fusion I looked at the ingredient list:

Acetaminophen
Dextromethorphan
Doxylamine Succinate
Citric Acid
Flavor
Glycerin
High fructose corn syrup
Honey
Polyethylene Glycol
Propylene Glycol
Purified Water
Sodium Citrate

Basically what I had been eating along with "flavor" (surely a taunting joke on people with colds), two different glycols, high fructose corn syrup AND Honey. I got it anyway.

And Walgreens was out of Biscoff Speculoos. How unbelievably unkind is that??

When I came home I couldn't open the stupid Nyquil bottle. I tried so hard for nearly 1/2 hour. It was the hardest bottle to open. You need to press down the lid while twisting it anti-clockwise. You can tell it's not going to open because it makes this annoying rachet-like noise. At that point I was almost livid with rage. I took a knife and ran it all round underneath the rim of the hideous cap and tore it off. It probably won't close well again, but who cares at this point?

I think I must have gone past 104 degree F with all that anger. When I was brushing my teeth later, my eyes looked completely bloodshot. They are still kind of murky now. I can only guess that I must have split many minor vessels in my conjunctiva. When I finally got at the syrup, it was extremely sweet. Sweeter than any other cough syrup I have ever had my entire life. This is what happens when people think that honey is not enough and go ahead and lay on the high fructose corn syrup.

So the point of this post is that NyQuil's new bottles are so hard to open that you need a knife. At 3:00 AM, anger got the better of me and I composed a nasty letter to Vicks, but in my hurry, I didn't save it and it got deleted. I have no idea now what I wrote in it. All I can remember that it was a page long before the Nyquil knocked me out. Now it seems silly and trivial but I was so unbelievably wretched and murderous last night. Illness does strange things to people, especially to me.

Update: 26th February, 2012

I received this message from a guest:

21372 02/26/2012 @ 21:08 guest @ 75.142.240.232 says:
Nature Fusion Drama
I loved the previous NyQuil drama. Walmart must have pulled all of the regular stuff off the shelves so you were guided to purchase the new (green) version of cough syrup. Got it home to my ailing husband and heard him cussing and grunting and whining about getting the damn thing open. Thinking he was inept and just felt to crappy to get it open. I asked to try.....needless to say I wore my hand out and tried using the can opener notches on my kitchen shears and only managed to strip all of the outer lid threads. So I went to the web to see if anyone else was so inclined to cut the top off. Oh boy! There is a ton of folks that would like watch the makers of Vick's products open their own designs. After reading NyQuil Drama and other similar complaints, my husband used a knife to break the child protection and was able to finally take the dosage.

So it's not just me!!!!! Vicks should be ashamed of its design team. Making sick people suffer even more in their misery! I am glad I was able to spread the hatred around. ;-)

I have a temperature of 103 Degree F and a pulserate of 97/minute . I am shaking with chills even though I am wearing a sweater and woollen stockings AND drinking a hot cup of tea. My nose and throat are burning as if someone has put in hot embers into them. To add to the irritation my nose is also dripping like a broken faucet. It's not pretty at all. I tried to lie down to sleep but my head hurts with dull pains in a supine position. I am also very dizzy when I get up from a sitting position even though I am fairly certain I am well-hydrated. I can feel that my chest is congested with some really thick mucus. Not much is coming out, which is worrying me. Whatever little comes out once every 2 hours or so is a greyish yellow in colour and very thick.

So here I am typing my detailed symptoms into the new wide (e:strip) text area that I like very much!

Seriously, this is the worst cold at the worst possible time. My work is suffering because I am making a ton of mistakes and I can't go to see my brother.

My flat is littered with lozenge drop wrappers and soup bowls. I can't wait for this cold to go away but it seems like it never will. I am on

• ibuprofen 400 mg X 4-6 hourly for the pain,
• Co-trimoxazole BD (12 hourly) for the secondary infection and
• Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) for the fever.
• Guaiphenesin (oral) 1 tbsp X 2 hourly - expectorant
• Dextromethorphan 1 tbsp X 2 hourly - anti-tussive

AND none of it is working in expected ways!!!!

WHHHHHHYYYYYY do I have to be sick now?? I have so much to do and can't do anything effectively. I hate being sick.