Tony Sartain, mba, ne

niche programming and process control

Good morning, and welcome. All the information on this site was current at the moment you arrived. The content updates continuously (per load) without the help of Internet monkeys. Absolutely everything you're seeing is generated by code developed TOTALLY inhouse. No commercial website software is in use. NOTE: You can click on the bright spot inside the lens flair to swat the fruitfly. If it doesn't annoy you, perhaps you're weird.  [ more in the Technology section... ]

Today is Sunday, the 1st day of November and the 304th day of 2026. Most of the contiguous United States is observing Daylight Saving Time (DST) at the moment. It will end on November 1st at 2:00 AM when clocks "fall back" one hour. While many countries observe DST, the beginning and ending dates and times vary, so as to add another layer of confusion to the scheme. Dates and times on this site are for the Central Time Zone in the United States.

On the Jewish calendar, today is the 21st day of Heshvan in the year 5787. We are under a last quarter moon. At the time you accessed this page, its exact age was 21 days, 5 hours, and 24 minutes. We will be under a new moon again on Monday, November 9th at 10:24 AM. The next full moon will occur on Tuesday, November 24th at 4:46 AM. For now, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are visible in the night sky. Mercury can be seen in the eastern sky just before dawn. Looking into the night sky, far beyond our Solar System neighbors, we see that we are under the sign of Scorpio for today, our sunrise and sunset times (at -96.852/32.847) are 6:36 AM and 5:28 PM, giving us 10 hours and 52 minutes of daylight.

We are in the 39th day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer has ended, but not the hot weather. The autumnal equinox, which occurred on September 23rd, marked the end of summer. On the day of the equinox, the sun could be observed to be directly above the equator, and the night and day were the same length. The actual crossing of the sun over the equator takes approximately two and a half days. The equinox occurs halfway through the transit when the center of the sun is directly over the equator. Winter will begin on December 21st when our days begin to grow longer. It's weird, but longer periods of sunlight is when our weather becomes colder... more details as we get closer to the date.

Today we celebrate the birthdays of Benvenuto Cellini (1500), Étienne de La Boétie (1530), Antonio Canova (1757), Stephen Crane (1871), Laureate Carlos Saavedra Lamas (1878), William James Matthias (1934), Gary Player (1935), Robert Foxworthy (1941), Larry Flynt (1942), Dan Peek (1951), Lyle Lovett (1957), Fernando Valenzuela (1960), Jenny McCarthy (1972), Aishwarya Rai (1973), LaTavia Roberson (1981), and Penn Badgley (1986).



Art imitates life. Occasionally, prime time television gets pretty close.

This country has always been a beacon to the world for liberty and justice. That's why we keep our borders open. But we're also a beacon for another kind of people, for criminals and con men; we rely on the law to protect us from them. Sometimes, that's not enough. Do we need more law, less freedom? Do we cross out parts of the Constitution? I've learned that's not the answer. The answer is that each one of us is responsible to everyone else. Not one of us can afford to turn a blind eye. By respecting the laws we do have, by living up to the true meaning of the word "citizen," we preserve our common good.

Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy at the closing of the
final episode of the ninth season of Law & Order (NBC)



The Technology

This site is a working demonstration of on-demand PHP scripting. The code tightly integrates computed data with text, spewing forth natural-sounding narrative output with flawless grammar and syntax. The narrative sections--which all change daily--are from an in-house database. The real time data is derived [and rendered] primarily by PHP code at the time the output is generated at the Linux/Apache server.

About the fruitfly: Whether the fruitfly in the margin entertains or annoys, it serves a very real and useful purpose. The fly uses recently developed sentinelware. In short, the image is generated by the output of many, many active server monitoring processes. When abnormal server activity is detected by the "fly system," the fly's appearance deviates from the default, and a system exception raises a flag that is immediately addressed by the humans who monitor the server via the fruitfly's movements and morphology. Until fairly recently, server issues weren't always obvious, and if so, isolating and mending them was an arduous exercise. The fruitfly technology has made the plight of the server technician much more bearable. If the fruitfly annoys you, click in the center of the lens flare to swat it.



Contact Information

Email: tony@tonysartain.com
Cell: 903-360-0002

These links will take you to other things on this site.

[ Microwave Slide Rule ]
[ Art Lamps ]
 
 


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