All Posts

Everyone Needs a Great Editor

One of the things that I'm most enjoying about my move back to development is regaining mastery of the text editor. There is nothing like wielding a powerfu...

Getting Angular

Tomorrow I'm flying to frigid Salt Lake City, Utah to attend ng-conf. I'm so excited! I haven't been to a conference in several years (I think WWDC 2009 was...

When It's Time to Change

My former boss—a mentor that presided over my entrance into management—recommended Jack Welch's Winning and it really resonated with me. His inj...

Unholy Abomination

This commercial (and the whole series of them) are very disturbing to me. Not only do the anthropomorphized cereal squares eat each other, they somehow have...

New Digital Digs

I've finally gotten my new MacBook Pro laptop for work. It's an 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, with 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. As I handed my old MacBook Pro to...

Defining History

I realized after listening to Scott Powell's interview about history that my own definition of history was buried on this site. Definitions are vital becaus...

English Nuttiness

One of the many things that having children has taught me is that English is a very difficult language. If they weren't totally immersed in it from birth, I...

Impressive Digs

Yesterday I finally had the chance to take a tour of our main data center. I have been in server rooms before, but never a modern, massive complex so I was ...

Two Videos Worth Watching

Reading through this Hacker News thread, I came across dozens of great talks to check out in the future. So far I've watched two and I think they're worth s...

Drastic Actions

I've had a great idea for an iPhone app for a couple months now and even created an Xcode project for it, after spending a bit of time planning it. It's one...

Feed Shop

Google recently announced that it is discontinuing its Reader product after July 1st, 2013. Naturally, the Internet went bonkers. It was a timely confluence...

The Right Way

It has come to my attention that some people dispute my way of replying to email threads. I elide all but the minimum necessary to supply the context. Be ...

Thoughtful Reading

I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to...

Previously on Lost

Speaking of Lost, you absolutely should watch the epilogue included on the Season 6 DVD's bonus features if you haven't already. It's entitled "The New Man ...

People Chow

A Web developer in Atlanta has developed a meal replacement called Soylent. This drink seemingly achieves what I wanted many years ago. There are a couple...

Little Bits of Review

Here are some brief thoughts on what I've watched lately. Lost: I swore off Lost entirely after the series finale. I thought it was a terrible end to an o...

Reviews in the Small

I used to review movies here all the time, giving them a sentence or two and capturing my opinion briefly. I liked the format, but I just never kept it up. ...

My First Aphorism

Code belongs in production. I have had this as my mantra for as long as I've been developing software professionally. Tonight we released a new version of...

Time to Shed

Winter is normally the time when I lose the weight I gained over the summer. Unfortunately, I did not take advantage of the cooler temperatures nearly enoug...

Build Your Own Audiobook

I'm a fan of Instapaper the service and the iPhone app. Lately, though I have accumulated a queue of quite-long articles that I can't seem to decrease. I re...

A Little Employee Love

Today's our EAI at work: we're going to have lunch at Food Truck Friday and then go cruising through the desert with Green Zebra Adventures. I even get to d...

Postbox AppleScript to Create Message

Every morning at work we have a standup meeting on the phone where we take turns talking about what we did yesterday and what we're going to do today. It's ...

First-World Whining

I've heard sentiments like these before. People overspend on things they can't afford or don't need and then bemoan that fact. It might feel like you were d...

Times the Times Tables

My nine-year-old daughter is really slow at addition, subtraction, and multiplication—she often needs to use her fingers to do simple calculations. Th...

Gmail Hell

I got my Gmail invitation back in June 2004 and was able to register my preferred username with no trouble. At the time, I was supremely excited to a) get a...

Disappointment is Not Entitlement

Google acquired Sparrow. People took to their Twitter clients and started whining about how unfair it is. iOS developer Matt Gemmell decided he'd had enough...

WRT54G Notes

I'm having some trouble with my Linksys WRT-54G router. It's a very old router—I think I bought it at least eight years ago. Basically, my wife is com...

Not Your Father's Go Daddy

When Warren Adelman took over the CEO reins from Bob Parsons, he did a roadshow outlining his big plans for the company. I was giddy with excitement since j...

Please Learn to Think

Jeff Atwood's blog entry "Please Don't Learn to Code" has triggered a huge number of responses. Among the better ones was Michael Lopp's "Please Learn to Wr...

Peet's Ancient Trees Pu-erh Review

Peet's Ancient Trees Organic Pu-erh is a decent take on pu-erh, which is easily my favorite variety of tea. It is packaged in little, individually-wrapped c...

Advice on Advice

Reading through this advice from John Steinbeck about writing, his warning about advice really hit home: If there is a magic in story writing, and I am co...

Review of "Smart Thinking"

The premise behind Smart Thinking by Art Markman is using the principles of cognitive science to better your life by improving your thinking. I was very imp...

Thoughts on a Modern Career

We're living in very interesting times. I think we're seeing a fundamental change in organizations as they move more and more towards knowledge work. Nothin...

My Turn on the High Horse

Reading yet another article bemoaning the terrible state of Internet surfers today, I once again grew weary of the self-righteousness of that whole genre. ...

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand!

If you're worried about the public perception of Objectivism and its adherents, Randsday is a lot more damaging than Checking Premises. (I linked to Harry B...

Hands-on Reality

Back when Steve Jobs died, I found this quote in an interview with him from 1995. There were many important things that he said over the years, but this one...

Intellectual Nostalgia

Tonight I was absolutely delighted to have found an archive of James Sedgwick's The Certainty Site. It is an excellent, accessible guide to the Objectivist ...

More Thoughts on Boredom

Since I included little background in my previous entry, let me begin by saying that I was identified as gifted in kindergarten and spent my entire educatio...

Sometimes Authority is Authoritative

Chip Joyce's "Subjectivist Objectivist" essay is barely up and the usual suspects are already branding it as "anti-independence." To them, his argument is t...

In Favor of a Little Boredom

School can be boring. Let me put the emphasis where I mean it: school can be boring. So can work. So can life. I'm not going to say that the purpose of ...

The Philosophical Origin of Numbers

Numbers are a vital part of everyone's life, especially at this time of the year when calculators are broken out and taxes are computed. Few people, however...

The Antidote to Misanthropy

On the other hand, the fact that the Foundation for Economic Education still exists 65 years after its start and recently hosted Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand...

Why I Trend Misanthropic

This is hard to watch. I am generally very bullish on people. But looking at the utter ignorance on display in that video worries me greatly.

We Love to Party

Last night was the annual Go Daddy Holiday Party and it was the best one yet! The theme was USA and it was held at Chase Field, where the Arizona Diamondb...

Doing Business

Reading about Google X and now Google's attempt to horn in on Amazon Prime, I have to think that this is a result of their culture. It's really great that t...

North Dakota and Colorado

There's been a lot of talk in the last couple years how prophetic Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is. Many have noted the parallels, but one that I haven't seen m...

A Life of Ease

It's really tough: I read Steve Yegge's description of the perks of working at Google Kirkland and I'm torn. On the one hand, damn! Can you imagine working ...

The Case Against TDD

I have been following TDD since the days of extreme programming, as I am always interested in better ways of doing software development. At first blush, tes...

Dabbling with Linux

I've finally decided to take the plunge: I'm installing a Linux distro as a VM on my Mac. I have resisted doing this for years and years and years. I've l...

Why I'm Still on Movable Type

After leaving Blogger years and years ago, I tried many different blogging engines (even developing my own, so to speak). None of them were as safe as my ol...

Malware Done Got Me!

I apologize to anyone who has visited my blog in the last five days. I was running old Movable Type and someone exploited it. I got added to Google's malwar...

Schooled about School

My wife was an elementary school teacher prior to having our children. She said that she considered starting a new career instead of going back into educati...

I Hate Concerts

Concerts suck. I go to them to support the obscure musicians I enjoy but I don't relish the event like many do. The music often overpowers the singing, it's...

Why I Still Have No Posts in Google+

I belong to a lot of social networks. Pretty much any time I hear about a new one, I sign up for the "bbrown" username. I have learned my lesson about waiti...

Pet Peeve - Social Network Edition

Pascal's Wager of Social Networking: setting up integrations so that posts on one social network automatically get cross-posted to every other social networ...

Number 5 is Alive!

MC Frontalot just released Solved, his fifth album (CD? Set of downloads?), and it's an excellent piece of work. (If you're in Phoenix, you simply must atte...

The Frontrunner

I am very excited by Gary Johnson—he's the best candidate I've come across since Steve Forbes. Moreover, he has all the pedigree you'd want in a presi...

No Comments

In moving my blog from Quick Blogcast to MovableType, I had a chance to revisit my decision to enable comments. Comments are always a mixed bag: the price o...

Mano-a-mano

I read Michael Lopp's book Managing Humans shortly after being promoted to development manager back in February 2011. At the time, I was really excited at t...

Modern Marvels - Potato Edition

Modern, massive-scale manufacturing is a sight to behold. When you go to a grocery store or a retailer like Wal-Mart, there's such an incredible diversity o...

My Favorite Steve Jobs Quote

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in y...

Reformation of a Speed Demon

After more than four years—incredibly—I got caught speeding. I got a 2011 MINI Cooper S Convertible back in October and it is way sportier than ...

(Barely) Birthday Wishes

Every year, I have a ritual I do about a week or so before my birthday: I make my birthday private on Facebook. The reason? I don't want the onslaught of ho...

Get Short

Inspired by this helpful post about Alfred, I thought I'd share a quick and easy way to shorten a URL with X.CO using Alfred. First thing you'll need is y...

Log Your Work to a Text File

I read about the virtues of logging what you do all day long ago, but a recent article re-kindled my interest. (Sadly, I can't locate that blog entry and it...

Kindle Keeps Burning It Up

Today's new version of Kindle for iPhone/iPad adds support for page numbering. I was wondering how to cite a "location" of text from a Kindle e-book: this u...

What I'm Up To

I used to blog more frequently about working at Go Daddy. My silence has not externally imposed, I can assure you. The dearth of entries is the result of wo...

My Current Take on Inbox Zero

I once was an Inbox Zero fiend, but I’ve long since tempered that. This comment sums up my current attitude towards mail handling:

Politics as Usual

I have a very low opinion of politicians in general. Every election is, for me, an odious experience wherein I vote for the candidate that disgusts me the l...

Work Happenings

I haven't written about work in a very long time. It is really a shame, too, because I have done so much in the 18 months or so since my last blog entry abo...

Presumption

In a better world, Senator Charles Schumer's open letter to Steve Jobs would receive one of Jobs' famous curt responses like: "Mind your own business. We'l...

Quality Control Ain't What It Used to Be

I am really enjoying reading books on the iPad. So far I've read Garet Garrett's The Driver and Henry Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back. Both were free ePub ver...

Thoughts on the iPad

Now that I have an iPad, I can honestly say that my previous entry was spot on. This computer has really replaced my laptop almost entirely and I couldn’t be...

The Indian Problem

The recent Navajo-Hopi land deal illustrates an "Indian problem" of a different sort than commonly thought. When most people talk of an "Indian problem," th...

Hillary's Big Mistake

It is frequently asserted nowadays that every American has a right to affordable or free health care and that the government must somehow ensure this fundam...

Obstruction of Justice

The Systematic Harassment of Michael Milken The eighties have been called the decade of greed, the "Me" decade, and the decade of excess. Never in all these...

The Mind in American Regional Development

In the decades prior to the War between the States, the North and the South took very different paths. The North, with a long tradition of merchants and man...

The Equal Distribution of Wealth: Moral Perspectives

The issue of income inequality has been a pernicious social problem in every country, except for the United States. Most nations have resorted to socialism ...

The S&L Crisis: Public versus Private Solutions

A Literature Review The massive savings and loan failures of the late eighties and early nineties did not go unnoticed. Thousands of pages of testimony at c...

The Development of the Individual

A Comparison of Renaissance Views Introduction The Renaissance represented, more so than nearly any other previous era in European history1, the pinnacle of...

The Lessons of the Robber Barons

Despite one prominent politician's statements to the contrary, the era of Big Government is not over. It is difficult in today's society to imagine a limite...

In Defense of Junk Bonds

MCI, Disney, News Corporation, RJR Nabisco, Revlon, Wynn Enterprises, Mattel, Viacom, TCI Cable, Time Warner, Barnes & Noble, CNN. Each of these corpora...

Thoughts on the iPad

As the Mac guy at work, many have asked for my opinion of the new iPad. In a nutshell, I think this is an astonishing device that truly represents a revolut...

That's a Pickle

Here's the problem I had: tapping on any third-party iPhone application opened it and then immediately closed it. All Apple application opened and worked as...

JFK: A Critique

Oliver Stone's production of JFK in 1991 represented the final word on the Kennedy assassination for many Americans. Through the practices and devices avail...

Thomas Jefferson, Abolitionist

Next to Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the most revered man in American history. He was an inventor, statesman, architect, lawyer, farmer, pol...

Perceptions of Indians in the Territorial-Era Phoenix Press

Our perceptions of the perception of Indians in the Old West are colored by countless movies depicting Westerners as Indian haters, innumerable books positi...

Immigration and the Railroads

The last half of the nineteenth century experienced a level of immigration unprecedented in American history. America at the time was a land of opportunitie...

Global Warming Report

If you read only the major newspapers and watched only the network news, you would believe that global warming is unquestioned and as certain as any other s...

It's a "Girls Gone Wild" World

I've been working on my thoughts about the trend for women and girls towards skimpier, more revealing clothing for over a week now but I haven't been able t...

The Federal Budget Process

Initially, there were no such animals as budgets in American legislatures. The various appropriations committees simply spent money. When they ran out of mo...

Closer

I am ecstatic that Netflix is coming to the Wii. This is the closest I've gotten to my perfect setup, but it's still missing something: viz., Hulu, YouTube,...

Inherent in the System

The Federal Reserve and the Great Depression Introduction With few exceptions, every theory expounded regarding the cause of the Great Depression is wrong....

The Path to Freedom

What to Do About Eastern Europe The nations of Eastern Europe finally have the opportunity to experience what Americans have long taken for granted: what it...

Dunster's Rebellion

Harvard College's Distinctive Beginnings The sailing of the Mayflower and the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were an early portent of the eventual...

Liberalism Versus Collectivism

The Single Most Important Battle in American History The history of the United States of America has been plagued by clashes between two warring factions. B...

The Truth about Anti-Cloning

When the news first swept the world about the cloning of a sheep, a wave of science-fiction reading journalists postulated that soon we would be cloning Mic...

The Catalyst of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution remains one of the most controversial episodes in American history. Many scholars have vilified the entrepreneurs of the time as "...

Atlas Shrugged and Me

If I had not read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I can honestly say that I would not be standing before you today. For me, Atlas Shrugged put into words the im...

The Nature and Function of Art

A Quick Look at Aesthetics Throughout the ages, art has played a crucial role in life. Today, when you speak of culture, thoughts of expensive paintings, be...

Essays

Atlas Shrugged and Me (1997) The Catalyst of the Industrial Revolution (2000) The Development of the Individual: A Comparison of Renaissance Views (199...

The Forgotten Depression

A Look at the Causes of the 1893 Depression In his last address to Congress, President Benjamin Harrison wrote, "There has never been a time in our history ...

iPhone Keychain Encryption Revealed

I just got the definitive word on the algorithm that the iPhone uses to encrypt Keychain items and it's Triple-DES. I was flabbergasted that they didn't go ...

The Quest for Feed Bliss

I've recently switched to Google Reader for all of my feed reading needs. This is the latest iteration in a long line of trying to find the perfect feed rea...

Curse You, URL Shortening Services!

I now have a horse in the URL shortening drama. My Meme Obfuscation Machine doesn't work for tweets. Try as I might, I just can't get something by Twitter's...

Lessons of a First-Time WWDC Attendee

In the interest of contributing to the wealth of tips on WWDC, I'd like to share what I learned this week about the event itself—I can't talk about t...

Redmond, Start Your Pricing Guns

One of the most exciting aspects of the WWDC keynote announcements was the pricing of Snow Leopard at $29 and a five-pack family pricing of $49. I've purcha...

Email Fun

In speaking with a co-worker, I mentioned a couple email tips that he hadn't heard. Thinking that others may be in the same boat, I offer them here: Gmai...

WebException and the HttpWebResponse

The following code is used to make a request and get the results: HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://bbrown.info/");HttpWebRespon...

Resolutions for 2009

It's time to announce my goals for the coming year. Apparently, I missed last year (even though I did a recap on New Year's Eve). I love making resolutions ...

Amen, Joel Spolsky!

I couldn't agree more: I don't understand why this "leaving the industry" thought process is so predominant in this little corner of the universe. This...

Music to My Ears

“Are we at the point now where it’s politically incorrect to be successful? At the end of the day, we didn’t make any bad mortgage loans, we are not building...

Grateful

I have much to be thankful for this year. Honestly, every year of my adult life has been great even with the ups and downs. My wife and I work very hard at ...

Announcement

To those of my readers who are tired of reading my political writings, have hope! I am working on a new blog where I plan to do all of my political blogging...

Hope's Residue

The students at an elementary school spontaneously asked for their school to be renamed Barack Obama Elementary School. At least, some fifth graders who hel...

Link Dump-President Obama Edition

Interesting news is coming furiously since the election and I just can't muster enough wherewithal to write whole entries about it. So here's another del.ic...

Thou Mustn't

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help little men by tearing down...

SQLcached

I have to agree with Dare Obasanjo's latest blog entry about in-memory caching. After working on high-transaction, heavy database-using Web applications for...

My Golden Years Might Just Be Pyrite

A House committee is considering nationalizing 401(k)s but you wouldn't know it from the press release they put out. Luckily, the Carolina Journal, a publica...

What's Red, Black, and White But Not Green?

I just took a survey from QuikTrip about environmental perceptions. Here are the questions: Do you sort and recycle your trash?How concerned would you say yo...

Do People Really Fall for This?

I just got an email from Wells Fargo saying that my account was deactivated until I faxed some information to them. It was done to prevent any unauthorized t...

The Onion Never Fails Me

Hilarious. {via}

The Flake We Need

Jeff Flake's editorial in the Washington Post today is exactly what I needed this morning. It's exactly what I would have liked the losing presidential cand...

The Out-of-Touch-O-Meter is Off the Charts

Let's compare how I voted to how the rest of my Arizonans voted. Outside of my district and county, I pretty much am out of step. I'm glad they voted down t...

Loser Talk

Barack Obama is president. I listened to John McCain's concession speech with disgust. It succinctly summed up McCain: a pragmatist and compromiser to the...

Them, Robots

I've been searching for the perfect word to describe Barack Obama fanatics. Portmanteaus seemed to be the perfect neologistical type but all the ones I have...

Walking the Walk

With all of the linking I've been doing lately, I have noticed that it's really hard to go directly to a particular quote or part of a much-longer essay. My...

Link Dump: Week Before Election Edition

Election fatigue has really set in this last week. I have started several blog entries only to feel dispirited and end up canceling them. I have dutifully c...

Bravo! Bravo!

“All I ask is that you restrict them to ‘layout-only’ check-ins. In other words, if you want to do some source code reformatting and change some code, please...

Why I Voted for McCain

I voted for John McCain. I'd like to think it was a vote against Barack Obama, but that's just kidding myself. I've heard many Objectivists, conservatives, ...

The Coming Depression

Much has been made about how the nine largest banks were coerced into accepting the federal equity purchase, but it appears that regulators will also decide...

The Reports are Greatly Exaggerated

Something's going on over at The Washington Post. First, they publish an article entitled "Don't Blame Capitalism". Now there's an unsigned editorial affirm...

The Empire Builder

If you're more interested in the subject of James J. Hill after reading my mention of him, I would encourage you to read this series of blog entries that doe...

Power Hoarders

"It's not the proper role of government to prop up stocks, housing or any other market. Yet like the vaudeville performer on the old Ed Sullivan show, polit...

We're All Venezuelans Now

Statists may want to tiptoe around the N-word, but when the federal government buys equity stakes in private firms and dictates how they should be run, that...

The Panic of 1873 and the Current Crisis

I read an article on the parallels between today's financial crisis and the Panic of 1873 with considerable interest. I got my bachelor's in history and am ...

From the Horse's Mouth

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. My attit...

Why I Voted for John Shadegg

I am a longtime fan of John Shadegg. I have voted for him in every election he's been on my ballot. I was heartened to see his name in opposition to the bai...

Not So Unregulated

"Well, it's [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] really an incredible case study in regulation because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the...

How I Voted Today

Here's how I voted, starting at the top of my ballot and working my way down: President: John McCain U.S. Representative, District 3: John Shadegg St...

Wells Fargo Gets It

I haven't had a chance to fully digest the recent turn of events that have seen the Senate pass the massive bailout (and then some) one day, the House of Re...

Shadegg Explained

“Without a doubt, politicians and others continue to make principled noises on occasion—for the simple reason that the rhetoric of principle still sells. Sou...

Galloping Socialism

Many have asked me who I'm voting for this November. My stock answer is "I'm voting against Obama." We all laugh and then I get to disparage McCain while to...

Timely Advice

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that socie...

Wayback Bill

Google's made their 2001 index available for a month to see what the Web was like back when Google was first starting out. It was like a trip down memory la...

Ch-Ch-Ch-CheckBot

Yesterday I released my latest project at work. I call it CheckBot and it is a Windows service that pulls down messages from a third-party service, checks t...

Instapundit, I Am Not

That last entry marks the 37th post this month. This is the most frequent posting rate I've maintained since October 2003! I am pleased as punch by this bec...

Hey Mister Congressman!

The bailout plan failed to pass the House. I didn't have a chance to comb through the text of the straight-out-of-Atlas Shrugged-named Emergency Economic St...

Thoughts on Android

Last week saw the introduction of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. I've been following Android's progress with interest because it seems to be the ...

Gone Frontin'

I went to an MC Frontalot concert Saturday night with a friend and had an incredible time. Let me preface this all by saying that I am not a concertgoer: I ...

jQuery On the Rise

Wow. Microsoft will bundle the jQuery library with all ASP.NET MVC projects, enhance its interaction with Visual Studio through IntelliSense, use it in futu...

A Hard Decision

I've been a consumer of the Facebook.NET framework for a few months now as I've developed several Facebook applications in ASP.NET. I chose that framework i...

A Different Perspective

The Antiplanner takes on some meltdown myths. His perspective is microeconomic so it's a little more like Allison's than much of the other economic analysis...

WaaaahhhhMu

Washington Mutual was just closed down and its assets sold to JP Morgan Chase and Company. This means that I am once again a Chase customer. Is there no refu...

When John Allison Speaks, I Listen

John Allison, chairman of BB&T, has publicly opposed the bailout plan in a letter sent to all members of Congress. I'm a big fan of John Allison and I c...

Start the Presses

So much for Congress being the last bulwark to the Paulson plan. It sounds like the end result is going to be even worse than his blank check on the Treasur...

Wait, What?!

“It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.” – Treasury spokeswoman, “Bad News For The Bailout”

A Perfect Move Gone Awry

I was going to write something about McCain's "campaign suspension," which I regard as a brilliant, shrewd, and disgusting ploy, but then I saw Dave Galanter...

Reich's Indecent Proposal

In the space of a couple of days, public opinion on the Paulson plan has shifted from grudging acceptance to incredulity. That is good: Congress should not a...

What a Crock(ett)!

This is a fascinating, though likely apocryphal, story about Davy Crockett as Representative entitled "Not Yours to Give" that seems highly appropriate give...

True in 1974, True in 2008

“It is at a time like this, in the face of an approaching economic collapse, that the intellectuals are preaching egalitarian notions. When the curtailment o...

A Sensible Representative?

“To have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail. Any solution to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic freedom. Congr...

Watch. Enjoy. Repeat.

The A.V. Club had a feature asking a bunch of people I've never heard of the question "what's your most-rewatched movie?" Their responses were interesting&#...

Just Keep Digging

The New York Times has obtained a copy of the proposal of the Treasury Department's bailout plan. I am not a lawyer nor am I an economist, but this strikes m...

The Gradual Made Visible

I'm a sucker for time-lapse sequences. Maybe it's my inner historian, but I love seeing the effects of time without taking a lot of it. I can still remember...

Not a McCain Supporter

In case my recent entries have given anyone the impression that I'm a fan of John McCain, I am most assuredly not. My vote will go against Barack Obama, not ...

Science Gets Crowded Out

“Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.” — Paul Johnson, “The Nonsense of Global Warming”

The Not-So-Free Market

When the federal government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I thought little of it since they were both quasi-governmental corporations anyhow. There w...

Review Nuggets

Time for some more Netflix queue reviewin' (long overdue from the looks of it): Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): a great adaptation of Austen's most famous...

Wiki Wild Wiki Wiki Wild

My team just got moved to another group within Go Daddy on Monday. We had put a lot of information up on the old group's SharePoint Wiki and needed to put i...

Self-Serving Meddling

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington.” — Iraqi Forei...

Meepin' Funny

“The truth is that the Muppet you know as ‘Beaker’ actually spoke perfect English. The sound you think of as his voice is just the sound that the censors use...

Not So Swift

“Swiftboating is not going to work this time. And the reason it’s not is, No. 1, I’m going to smack ‘em right square in the chop...

That's Another Way to Go About It

I generally don't like to showcase other's inelegant code, but this couldn't be more timely given yesterday's Twitter created_at parsing tip. There's always...

How to Parse DateTimes from the Twitter API

If you were wanting to interact with the Twitter API under .NET, you might find yourself trying to convert a date value from the XML results over to a DateT...

Just Words

“In the first 100 days of our administration, we will look at every agency and department and expenditure of the federal government and ask this simple quest...

Replacing the Shopworn

In the spirit of Matthew Baldwin's Cliché Rotation Project, I offer the following: "can't see the forest for the trees" "can't see the directory fo...

Did We Do That?

Much hay has been made of McCain's ignorance of economics, but I submit that neither candidate has any grasp of the basics. Both bloviated today about the la...

This About Sums It Up

{via}

Sarah Palin's Speech

Sarah Palin's speech tonight (transcript) was electrifying. I can't think of a campaign speech I've heard (and, sadly, I've listened to far too many of them...

Substitute Capitalist for Republican Please

“I’m not a Republican because I grew up rich, but because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.” — Mike H...

'Cargo Cult' is Really Useful

This article on cargo cult management really struck me. I can't say that I've seen much of that sort of thing at Go Daddy—that's the part where Go Da...

The Land of Unicorns and Rainbows

“This shit is too pedantic, too convoluted, and violates too many preconceived notions of how authentication works. Instead of trying to figure out your bull...

Polishing the Chrome

I've just finished reading Scott McCloud's comic book introduction to Google Chrome, Google's new browser that will be released tomorrow in some fashion. I a...

Live-Blogging Obama Speech

Here are my observations on what is sure to be a real fun time (à la Matthew Baldwin): 7:13 PM: Shots of people crying at the sight of Obama. None of...

"This has nothing to do with what's going on now"

"Because, once you've decided you're 'right,' it only makes sense to employ the tactics you loathe in your adversary. That always works out." — Merlin Mann,...

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

“If I catch Senator Obama’s drift, then, our failure to ‘lead by example’ was the liberation of Iraq. And if he really thinks that, by liberating Iraq from a...

Not So Humble Pie

"Indeed, no one within a light year of humility wants the kind of power and gaudy glory that Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain so desperately seek." — Don Bou...

A Little Longer Review of The Dark Knight

In my off-the-cuff quick review of The Dark Knight, I said that I would write up a lengthier one after I had seen it a second time and could focus on a coup...

Control Freaks

"When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political l...

Goldwater Institute Challenges Clean Elections Law

The Goldwater Institute just filed a lawsuit calling into question Arizona's Clean Elections system and I'm very excited to see how it turns out. It is but ...

Review of "What I'd Say to the Martians" by Jack Handey

Jack Handey's What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats is easily the funniest book I've read in recent memory. If you're familiar with Deep Tho...

The Fatigue of Ambition

Go Daddy's bringing Merlin Mann out to give a new talk tomorrow and I'm pretty jazzed. You may recall that he came out for an earlier event just this May fo...

A Gulag By Any Other Name

“Speaking of China, it has announced that during the Olympics, protesters will be allowed to assemble in designated protest areas. … Or, as they’re commonly ...

Bravo, David Friedman!

Today, a co-worker and I, both fans of the iPhone, were discussing how to do text selection and cut/paste operations. I'll confess that I didn't have much o...

A Review of OmniFocus

For years, I've struggled with finding a decent set of tools to practice Getting Things Done. I started with the Hipster PDA and moved on to some notepads a...

Just Say No to Obama

Myrhaf just posted a list of reasons why Obama might not be so bad. Myrhaf's list follows a similar train of thought that I heard from a conservative co-wo...

The Jerk Store Called...

I was at QuikTrip tonight when some teenaged girls bought some Red Bulls. This apparently offended the gentleman behind them (and in front of me) because he...

Pay to Play

Facebook released a bit more detail about its Application Verification Program today. While it did not offer specifics, there is one big piece of news that ...

F8 Wrapup

Prior to attending F8, I believed that the new Facebook profile redesign was motivated by de-emphasizing third-party applications, making more room for ad sp...

Dennis Miller on Barack Obama

"The only thing I worry about Barack Obama is his reaction whenever he's chided. I don't even notice the color of his skin, I do note the thinness of it tho...

Feed and Social Distribution Session

Talk with Jerry Cain, Ari Steinberg (Manager of News Feed Team), and Tom Whitnah. Use the right channel to deliver the right message. Overview of the old ...

Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More Session

Talk by Ruchi Sanghvi and Josh Elman. Here are my rough notes on the presentation: The never-ending profile was the motivation behind the redesign. Emphas...

Benjamin Ling Presentation

Benjamin Ling, Facebook's Director of Platform Program Management, gave a talk about the state of the platform. Here are my raw notes while listening: Eco...

Zuckerberg Keynote

Here are my notes on the Zuckerberg keynote. Start: boring. Important to have a purpose behind the mission of the movement. *snore* He calls it a "vacatio...

Off to F8

I'm getting ready to fly out to San Francisco for the F8 Conference put on by Facebook. We're leaving Phoenix at 7:20 AM and returning to Sky Harbor by 10:3...

Quick Review of The Dark Knight

I saw The Dark Knight on Friday morning but I don't feel comfortable reviewing it just yet. I want to see it again just to make sure of a few salient points...

The Future of Conservatism

This presidential election feels significant to me and I've stepped up my political blogging because of it. But I just can't shake the sense of futility of ...

Guess I'll Google

The 404 page for Apple's search forums helpfully offers a link to search their forums. If you click it, you get this less helpful screen: I thought I h...

Garnered a Chuckle

I love it when I come across evidence of a sense of humor when reading technical documentation. I bet someone at Apple had a good time crafting this: List...

Review of Wall-E

I expected Wall-E to be an anti-materialist, anti-capitalist, and environmentalist piece of tripe that I was going to regret seeing or exposing my children ...

Movie Reviews, Twitter-Style

Here's the latest installment of my quick reviews, slightly larger than normal because I had forgotten to do this sooner. For a change, let's limit the revi...

My New Favorite Show

I got home late on Tuesday, so I didn't have a chance to see Wipeout live. I just finished watching it online and my earlier anticipation was well-rewarded....

I'm Expecting It

As an atheist, I'm very conscious of the need for the separation of church and state. It's not just because it's enshrined in the Constitution, though that ...

Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater

At a recent Goldwater Institute event centered around the recently-released Pure Goldwater, Mike Renzulli asked Barry Goldwater Jr. and John Dean whether t...

Wishing We Could Be California

Right now, there are three amusement park projects going on around Arizona: a Wild West-themed one in Williams, a rock and roll-themed one in Eloy, and an e...

A Glimmer of Hope

My ambivalence towards John McCain as president is well-documented. But a thought just hit me that makes me think his presidency might be a net good (but ba...

Gas Gougers and Gas Thwarters

With prices going over $4 per gallon for the first time ever (in America), the hue and cry has become deafening. But the ignorance surrounding the economics...

The End is Nigh?

ABC is thinking that we're starting the last century of civilization {via}, which coincidentally is the subject of their upcoming special entitled Earth 210...

Go Go Daddy Dashboard!

I just deployed my latest effort: the Official GoDaddy.com Domain Search Dashboard Widget. I know, it's not a terribly catchy name but it's quite descripti...

Let's See the Polished Draft Now

After reading Andy Ihnatko's tweet about Apple's announced solution to the lack of background processing on the iPhone, I realized that I had been taken in ...

Microsoft Distributed Cache Services née Velocity

Microsoft has unveiled its new project code-named Velocity {via}, which is a .NET version of memcached for the Microsoft orbit. It's not at this point baked...

Dashboard Widget moveTo

If you find yourself whipping up a widget in Dashcode and circumstances have moved that widget (during the running and testing) off the screen so that you'v...

It's Just to Put It Before the Citizenry

I left a store the other day and was accosted by one of those signature gatherers trying to get some initiatives on the November ballot. This one was a litt...

What to Expect That I'm Expecting

This iPhone-related patent application just surfaced today. Combined with the rumor that Apple will unveil the iPhone App Store at the Worldwide Developer's...

Summer Shows

Watching the Lost season finale, I got excited by a couple new reality shows: Wipeout and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. The latter reminds me of an episo...

Still Missing

Jim's comment on my screed about Netflix reminded me that I left an important requirement out. "All I know is that I want to be able to watch streaming vide...

Movie Night Out

I stumbled this weekend across an intriguing Ask Metafilter post about backyard theaters. With the idea of community building on my mind, visions of neighbo...

The Way Things Ought To Have Been

I was looking through my del.icio.us links when I came across this op-ed from Rudy Giuliani about health care reform. I miss ol' Rudy. Damn you primary vote...

Drive-By Obama Bashing

"Obama's Growing Gaffe": this isn't a gaffe, but his turning an offhand remark about meeting with evil into a platform plank is going to come back to bite h...

Armchair Architects

In case you haven't heard, Twitter's been having some alarming downtime due to scaling issues. It's become quite popular and continues to grow significantly...

The Long-Awaited Indiana Jones Movie

I just got back from a midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Overall, I liked it. It is primarily action-oriented and Shia...

Missed It By That Much

I'm a big fan of Netflix. One of the few reasons why I even bothered with dual booting via Boot Camp was so that I could "Watch Now." So purchasing their ne...

TechFest 2008

Today was Go Daddy's first annual TechFest, which brought together all of Go Daddy's IT staff from around the nation for a conference. It was a chance to me...

A Lost Train of Thought

I just finished watching the first hour of the season four finale of Lost. As is customary for me, I immediately open up the Lostpedia Theories for the epis...

Moving To a Small Town

This weekend, Sandi and I were watching television when we saw an advertisement for a new show on CBS called Swingtown about a married couple that decide to...

Reclaiming My Surplus

I was reading Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and the Social Surplus" today and came across this paragraph that really spoke to me: Did you ever see that ...

Three Years of Going Daddy

Today is the third anniversary of working at Go Daddy. In my time there, I've seen it grow from 600 employees to over 1,900. A similar level of growth has a...

Reviews A-Go-Go

Here's the latest crop from the Queue, capsule-style: Becoming Jane (Netflix): Anne Hathaway stars as Jane Austen in this biopic. I'm not sure of Austen'...

Memcached Developments

Today I discovered that there's a new port of memcached for Windows! This one reflects memcached v1.2.4, which added a bunch of new features like multi-get,...

Lock-In

Google recently announced its AppEngine initiative and I can't say I get who would want it. It strikes me as too inextricable from Google. Amazon Web Serv...

Talking 'Bout My Integration

I deployed my most recent project at work today. It's a Facebook application that allows Quick Blogcast customers to link their accounts to their Facebook pr...

On Eudaimonia

"… eudaimonia is the human entelechy." — Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 349 I can vividly remember the first t...

ReSharper *IS* All That

Longtime readers may already know that I am a big fan of JetBrains' ReSharper add-in for Visual Studio. I recommend it highly to any .NET developer, but esp...

Earth Hour Can Bite My Ass

Today is the day of Earth Hour, where everyone is supposed to turn off their lights for an hour tonight in a pointless show of support for global warming. G...

Rick, Rick, He's Our Man

Over at Found on the Web, I've made my first April Fool's joke. As you might expect, it's Rick-Roll related. Here's the Javascript I used: <script ty...

A Future of Architecture

Tonight I attended a lecture on "Algorithmic Architecture" by Kostas Terzidis at Taliesin West. Terzidis, a Harvard professor and former software engineer, ...

Bill Goes Capsule

With credit to Diana Hsieh for the inspiration, here's some quick reviews of movies I've recently watched: Bee Movie (Netflix): dreadful. We didn't watch ...

The Shotgun Approach to Recommendations

I went to Netflix just now to rate a movie I watched. On the front page, the image at right greeted me. You may or may not know, but Netflix is offering ...

My Contribution

I've finally contributed something original to the Internet. I've chronicled many interesting things over at Found on the Web and I always felt like I neede...

Contributing to the Growth of the English Language

I think I just coined a new word today—encomp (verb): the act of getting an application to match the comprehensive design provided by the designers. ...

Web.config and Virtual Directories

At work today, I ran into some trouble trying to set up a virtual directory as an application in IIS. My two applications, the parent and the child, occupied...

The Things I Do For Money

Pardon me while I vent for a few minutes. I'm doing some contract development work for a non-profit—cleared long ago through my company's legal team ...

PayPal Pwn3d

I was balancing my checkbook this morning when I discovered two charges I didn't recognize. My wife does her fair share of online transacting, so I asked he...

The Royal Treatment

Apparently, Prince Andrew is visiting my workplace today. They've cordoned off a huge swath of the parking lot and there's some signs for media parking, so ...

Presidential Complications

I just read John McCain's remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference and I'm conflicted. I had written off John McCain nearly my entire politic...

Priorities

My wife and I were discussing politics today as we often do and I discovered that while we agree on the issues—surprisingly almost entirely—we...

Back to Lesser of Two Evils

Great. My man manages to blow an early lead by adopting a strategy of focusing on one state for most of the primary season. I guess there was some sense to...

On a ReSharper Kick Lately

I've been tweaking ReSharper something fierce lately. I've talked about it before, but some day I'm going to write up all the things that make me love that l...

Full to the Brim

I put 4 GB of RAM in my MacBook and 2 GB of RAM in my iMac. I don't know why I hesitated for so long in spending the $150! Everything is so zippy and I can h...

My New, New Thing

It's done! Today at 12:45 PM, I submitted my latest project to the Google Gadget Directory, marking the final step in the deployment process. It's a Domain ...

Resolution Recap

A year has passed so it's time to look at how I did resolution-wise: Get things done: I've finally figured out my system. It's a modified version of Zen To D...

Javascript Splice Ain't Remove

I wanted to remove an item from a Javascript array and looked in vain for a remove function. I did find an implementation of remove using the Array.prototype...

Review of High School Musical

Frequently, I find myself shaking my head at kids today. I'm not quite to the point of requesting them to stay off my yard, but it's getting closer and close...

Poof Goes the Ads

When they finish the process of better and better targeted advertising, that's when the whole idea of advertising will go poof, will disappear. If it's perf...

Our New Addition

As regular readers of my family blog already know, I'm in the process of adopting a baby boy from Ethiopia. Since I'm confident that "regular readers of my f...

Pushing My Buttons

I'm not normally into Fisking, but this column in Virginia Tech's Collegiate Times has my blood boiling. A commentator described the column as fatuous, but i...

Managing Content

So I'm looking for the best open-source .NET CMS out there. Here's what I've found for options: CuyahogaUmbracoRainbow PortalAxCMS.netSharp CMSmojoPortal Thi...

All for the Lack of a Cable

I bought a 250 GB external hard drive awhile back and I even bought SuperDuper, which I have to say is one helluva backup tool. But I stopped making regular ...

Atlas Shrugged and Me

I wrote the following essay for a speech class in 1997 and am publishing it now because today is the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. I encourage...

Unrewarded Persistence

Boy, do I really want to love this technique. I mean, who wouldn't prefer this: [PersistField(Location = PersistLocation.Session)] public bool IsLoggedIn...

Scalping Ain't Easy

John Gruber recently wrote: Peter Kafka, at Silicon Alley Insider, claims the "obvious solution" to Hannah Montana ticket scalping—wherein $67 tick...

Pepsi Puke

Today, I had some Pepsi Summer Mix. And I really mean some: I couldn't sip more than three distinct sips. I ended up pouring it out it was so awful. A co-...

Mr. Conservative

Last night was the Mr. Conservative screening at the Goldwater Institute and I had an absolute blast! First, the Goldwater really knows how to put on an e...

Bourne Loser

Bourne Ultimatum was a big disappointment. One reviewer that I generally enjoy lauded it, so I had some good expectations that it definitely didn't meet. ...

An Inconvenient Uncertainty

It's time to make up my mind about global warming. I'm sure that that statement is leaving many of you scratching your heads—most people I know or en...

Sounds About Right

I switched from Netflix to Blockbuster a month or two ago. I changed, despite my considerable misgivings about entering into a relationship with Blockbuster...

Mr. Conservative

The Goldwater Institute is hosting a screening of Mr. Conservative on August 16, 2007. It sounds like an excellent documentary and you certainly can't beat ...

Sweet Release

And now you can see why I haven't been blogging around here all that much. I've been hard at work (really hard at work) getting a new version of Quick Blog ...

Honor Thy Killer

I read this article {via} today about a truly disgusting act by a Virginia Tech student. The student in question placed, under the cover of night and anonym...

On the Side

I've started working on a personal project using Python and the Django Web framework. I'm still at the very beginning, but I really like the philosophy and ...

Rudy is My Man

Reading over this informative article on Rudy Giuliani, I am now more than ever certain that he's the best Republican candidate out there. I've been describ...

Decision 2008

With the announcement that Steve Forbes has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for Republican candidate for president (and, what's more, joined his campaign), I'm now f...

Don't Be a Turtle

The blogosphere is afire with repudiation of offensive speech, catalyzed by Kathy Sierra's decision to stop blogging forever (or, presumably, until such spe...

Regular Expressions Aren't the Devil

I love regular expressions. Okay, I love the challenge of crafting regular expressions. I do not enjoy reading regular expressions that I have not created o...

The Ultimate in Keyboard Shortcuts

I've been using Quicksilver since it came out. I was once an avid LaunchBar user but it just couldn't compare to Quicksilver's slick user interface and incr...

Spoken Like a True San Franciscan

I've been reading Antenna for forever but this entry forces me to comment. "20% beautiful, 80% ugly?" Hah. "Capitalist geography at its most misanthropic?" ...

Five Things I Hate About C#

Inspired by Brian D. Foy's entry and Titus Brown's one for Python, here are five things I hate about C#:You can't have methods whose signatures differ only i...

Cutting Back

I just saved $20 a month by switching to Family! I'm actually quite excited by this because the 40 channels in the Family plan (plus locals) represents ov...

Gots to Get Down

In the course of preparing this entry for Found on the Web, I came across this video by aleprechaun AKA Emily. I'm hooked! I'm still trying to decide what...

Full Auto

The Page_Load event was firing twice—inexplicably. If I removed the explicit declaration in the code-behind class, then it fired once. That pointed c...

Road to Bagdad Fun Run

Last Saturday, I went on my second actual fun run with the Dynamic MINI Collective. Approximately 30 MINIs made the trek from Wickenburg at 9:30 AM up th...

Not-so-Apple-script

Neato way to replace Applescript with Ruby.read more digg story

Traffic Facts

Google Maps now has real-time traffic data. I checked Phoenix and I see lots of green. I assume that it means "go" but I have absolutely no context for what...

Costco Changes Its Tune (Ever So Slightly)

I know someone who bought a large-screen TV at Costco and returned it two years later to buy a bigger-screen TV and then returned that one a year later for ...

The Newest in New

I bought a MacBook last night. I am a laptop person; I fought it when I bought a 20" iMac last year and I always end up carting it around the house. I just ...

Gadget Lust

It never fails. I buy a BlackBerry 7250 and I think it's the cat's meow. Then the Pearl comes out and I can live with it by dismissing its reliance on predi...

But It Feels Snappier!

Something gets posted to Digg about a preference setting that supposedly makes Safari load Web pages faster. People report that it does, indeed, go faster. A...

Book Finds

Today was the annual VNSA book sale. This year I went for quality over quantity. I also made a pact with Sandi that I wasn't going to go crazy; I was only g...

Up in Arms

Last week, Flickr announced that they were going to be converting "old skool" members over to the Yahoo authentication system. As one of those users, I'm no...

Come Again

I just got an email from actress Jessica Alba: Boys grow mammogram homeless, possible, lawsuit bird? Opencube internets css drop. Technical report misuse r...

All Chin

So, Allchin's retired now. It was probably just Vista that did him in, but you never know what lies in the hearts of men.

Permission to Link Considered Harmful

The nature of the Internet is decentralization and an attendant lack of control. I think this is one of the reasons why it has become as popular as it is&#x...

Harsh Thoughts, Frequently Delivered

I've been reading Violent Acres for a bit now and I'm really torn about it. On the one hand, it's very well-written and takes controversial sides. That's re...

Affordable Bead Jewelry

My wife and I have finally gotten the initial rough draft of our online store out there, Need2Bead.com. The layout and design still need a lot of work, but ...

Un-forgivable

I am so tired of the "un *pause* believable" phenomenon. In nearly all the times I've encountered it, it seems to be a form of unexpressed emphasis. In my m...

Revisiting the Past

Today I finally had the chance to revisit the first service I ever wrote. I christened it Pingarooni and it handles all the outgoing trackbacks and pings fo...

Review of Idiocracy

Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy, is a dystopic comedy about two completely normal, average people who are forgotten in a top-secret Army hibernation exper...

Humorous Anecdote

Yesterday as I was egressing from the parking lot, I pulled up behind a Cadillac something or other that had the license plate "IBSHARP". I chortled because...

Job Satisfaction

This entry by Jeff Atwood made me realize why I like working on Quick Blog so much. It's not just that it mirrors my own interests or that it's challenging ...

Working Theory

Brown's Theory of Multitudinous Object Cleanup: After cleaning up seemingly all of the objects, there will be one remaining unretrieved on the periphery of ...

Grammar Girl

I discovered Grammar Girl awhile ago but thought nothing more of her at the time than "Oh, she's using Quick Blog." Then a co-worker brought this CNN articl...

Checking In

Status: so tired

My New License Plate

I finally got my personalized license plate! I've never had one before in my 16 years of driving mostly because I couldn't afford it and I regarded them as ...

Confessions of a Speed Demon

I just completed defensive driving class last Saturday and it's time for my biennial reformation. I'm hoping I can make it stick this time because tickets a...

Health Link

Adam Bosworth, bigwig at Google, is interested in tackling health URLs. As soon as I saw that term, my mind exploded with possibilities. Imagine no more cha...

Respect Your Daddy

The good thing to come out of last night's meeting was a newfound respect for Go Daddy, my employer. Now don't get me wrong, I love my job and think Go Dadd...

Social Media Clubbing

Last night I attended my second meeting of the Phoenix branch of the Social Media Club. The first meeting was utterly useless and I gave the club three strik...

Peace

Happiness is …

The iPhone

That iPhone is hot. Buried among the announcements was a name change to Apple, Inc. from Apple Computer, Inc. and the playing of a Beatles song. As this Sla...

Defense Values

I encountered a pregnant concept in Edwin Locke's article "The Educational, Psychological, and Philosophical Assault on Self-Esteem" in the most recent issu...

Blogging By the Numbers

After resolving to blog more, I thought it would be interesting to see how my blogging frequency stacked up in the past across all my blogs. Blog 2000 20...

Parsing Quantifier {x,y} Following Nothing Considered Harmful

If you normally do a Regex.Escape(string) in C# to get some text ready for use as a regular expression, be aware that a string like ^Lijit (+http://ww...

New Year's Resolutions

It's been a while since I had any real New Year's Resolutions. I haven't been sloughing it off, goal-wise, though. And I think New Year's Resolutions are a ...

Spent the Afternoon in Congress

This morning we decided to break in the new year by going on a road trip. To be more exact, we decided it the night before but I was in no position to parta...

Ralphing in the New Year

Last night my wife and I had our New Year's Eve tradition where we invited her best friend over for the night and played games to ring in the new year. This...

The Big Giveaway

As I mentioned previously, Bob Parsons gave away a bunch of money at this year's Christmas party. I wasn't really sure how much was distributed because I ju...

I Wish It Were Fake

If there is one thing I cannot stand at work it is wrestling with my tools. I've got two Web projects in Visual Studio 2003. I hate Web projects, hate 'em&#...

From the Top

One of the best things about working at Go Daddy is that our CEO doesn't do this kind of pussy-footing. I know I'd rather have someone at the top that occas...

Remembering Jimmy

I got a Christmas card from my high school friend Steve Franson yesterday and it contained a bombshell that left Sandi and I speechless: my high school frie...

Can't Pull the Rug Out From Under Yourself

I found another big gotcha in .NET today. When iterating over a Hashtable, you might want to change something within that Hashtable, like say change or clea...

Does Type Implement an Interface?

I've wasted far too much time on this issue, so I'll make an entry for future frustrated Google searchers. You're welcome. If you need to see if a particu...

Limerick Challenge

My boss's boss issued a call for limericks around the theme of software engineers or engineering. Naturally, I was intrigued. Here are my entries thus far: ...

Good Press

This article about Bob Parsons in Business 2.0 is fascinating. From mention of his Jeep Rubicon that he calls Mad Max—I can't believe I haven't seen ...

What's Going On

Did you see how often I've been posting lately? That's unprecedented on this blog for the last couple years! I'm going to try to keep it up; I think I was j...

Amazon Isn't Always the Paragon of Usability

I bought a gift for my friend from Amazon. I think I ended up using the "Pay by Bank Account" option because they said that there was a $1,000 raffle for do...

Time to Party

Last night was the Go Daddy Christmas party at the Desert Ridge Marriott and it was quite a shindig. I was feeling lucky because a) MINI of North Scottsdale...

The Wonder of a Child

I was relating an anecdote to a co-worker yesterday about how it was so incredible to watch a child grow and develop. (Side note: it really is.) I told him ...

The Idea that Never Was

Damn! There goes my one patentable idea I've had since working at Go Daddy. I wasn't going to have any noise and basically make it look like a static image....

Go Daddy Go

"Go Daddy to add center in Tempe": we're expanding ever larger. I can't believe we'll be at 1,900 employees in 2007. When I started, we were just a tiny outf...

Avoid a Ticket

Attention, fellow Scottsdale-portion-of-the-Loop-101 commuters: you must subscribe to this Google News alert. That is all.

Breaking APIs Considered Harmful

If you’ve got any responsibility for an API, please please please do not break your API. OOP has a lot of neat things like overloads, encapsulation, and, hel...

A Parable

Once upon a time there was a tree near a forest. This little tree, we'll call him Ernest because we don't want to make any decisions about proper pronouns f...

No E

That's it? Gets easier? Super duper top secret? Talk about hype. I can remember when this was a super cool brand new feature. Let's see, it was Blogger ci...

Blowhard

At our company quarterly event today, Representative J.D. Hayworth gave a campaign speech. I'm not in his district so I can't get the pleasure of not voting...

It's About Canines, Right?

This looks to be a pretty cool package for Reservoir Dogs, a movie that I've never seen. Apparently, I'm the only one who hasn't, a fact made painfully clea...

Choice Quote

“One of the cool things about being an optimist is that quite often I believe I have come up with an idea that will change the world. This is a wonderful fee...

Internet Exploder

With the imminent release of Internet Explorer 7 and my MetaWeblog feature in the can, it's time to start taking care of a few visual glitches in IE7 with m...

Blogging Outside Yourself

Just finished deploying the latest release of Quick Blog today and boy was it a fun development cycle. My feature was implementing the MetaWeblog API. This ...

Hold Your Nose and Vote

I'm filling out my vote by mail ballot this evening and I am once again reminded how far afield from contemporary mores I am. Every race, every candidate re...

GooTube

So Google's going to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion. This really doesn't surprise me. Oh sure, there's thorny copyright issues to overcome and YouTube's reve...

An Honor

Former co-worker Dave pointed out to me that Mike Volodarsky has started a blog using Quick Blog. He's the Program Manager for Microsoft's IIS development t...

VoIP Follow Up

Last May, I discussed my voice over IP experience. A lot has happened since then. Actually, a lot has happened in the last two weeks. I finally activated my ...

Angelina as Dagny

Wow, Angelina Jolie has officially signed on to the movie version of Atlas Shrugged to bring Dagny Taggart to life. The rumors were true! Jolie is exactly...

Apple Beer

Think root beer, not beer beer. It's very apple flavored, as you'd expect. It does have a slight sour aftertaste, but it's not unpleasant. It's something I'd...

Orangina

This one was another of the bought because of the name sodas. As Wikipedia correctly notes, the soda is pronounced "ore on zhee nuh." As Wikipedia also notes...

Too Quick

I've been noticing lately that I am too quick to make judgements. I first learned of this problem from Aaron T. Beck, who called it "catastrophizing." In a ...

Manhattan Special Vanilla Cream

Coming on the heels of the Waialua Vanilla Cream, this was something of a disappointment. Perhaps if I had tasted prior to that exquisite one, I might have r...

10 Cool Features of the MINI Cooper

Since I bought my MINI Cooper three months ago, I've regularly noticed new design touches that have made me appreciate the car more and more. Only a few of t...

Cheerwine

I hesitated drinking this because I remembered that I had had it before but I couldn't for the life of me recall my evaluation. I don't generally like colas....

Waialua Vanilla Cream

Absolutely delicious vanilla cream soda. I enjoyed it profusely. I can't say that Hawaiian sugar cane made the difference, but it certainly couldn't have hur...

How Not to Program

Uh oh, Leon Bambrick has spilled the beans about how to be a programmer. (Just kidding, that’s programming by coincidence.)

Moxie Orange Cream

Orange creams are so wonderful: they remind me of 50/50 bars and summer. I could drink them all day long—if I were interested in becoming a diabetic. ...

Lorina French Berry Lemonade

I have a thing for lemonades. I'm also, for reasons that I can't seem to introspect successfully, a Francophile. Oh, and I adore berry-flavored drinks. So th...

Sisi

This is another soda I bought because of the name. I don't know if it's pronounced "See See" or "Sissy" or some other way entirely (it's Dutch after all), bu...

50 by 50

I have really been remiss in setting goals for myself since my three lovely daughters arrived in my life. My wife just did her 50 goals to accomplish by 50, ...

Ramuné

First off, any soda with instructions on how to open it (6 steps!!) is a point ahead in my book. Second, any soda whose cap is actually a marble held firmly ...

Litefeeds SUCKS!

I recently got a BlackBerry (7250 if you’re wondering and I’ll gush about it later) and I’ve been trying to find both a good feed aggregator (ReBlog is great...

I Love a Challenge

Before I do the S-1 analysis, let me just tell a funny story about the announcement Bob made the other day. We had a quarterly meeting in our parking lot wit...

Hold the Silence

Phew, that was rough. [UPDATE (8/9/2006): Okay, that wasn't very clear. I meant that the quiet period was rough. There is so much I wanted to say, especially...

Bad Day

Today was a bad day.

Jerome Fun Run

Today I went with the Dynamic Mini Collective on a fun run to Jerome, Arizona. I'll admit that I was a little hesitant about joining an organization that a) ...

Imagine Me

This is me, by the way… <img src="/images/34-25/bbrown.jpg”>

Vimto

This is an English soda given to me by my boss, who wanted to see my review of it. Between its national heritage and its billing as a "sparkling grape, black...

The Command Prompt

This is going to seem like yesterday's news to my fellow Mac OS X and Unix readers, but I just got something working today that is pretty impressive in the W...

What's New in 2

List of .NET 2.0 and C# 2.0 New Features: nice to have it all in one handy place.

Eat Different

Someone else has had my same desire to be free of mealtime variety. Monkey chow, that was the missing link! Sadly, the “experiment” has been rather glib, res...

Buzz Buzz

I finally got rid of my 1999 Toyota Camry. I've had it since 2001 and I'll be the first to admit that I haven't treated it as it deserves. I half-assed its m...

My Experience

I noticed an interesting trend today: this blog has had 6 legitimate trackbacks and 36 spam ones. It's also had 200 real comments and 0 spam comments. The bl...

Get Thee to Thy Browser and Download

ReSharper 2.0 is out and the rumors were correct: it is a free upgrade for 1.0 users! Awesome! Thoughts later.

Hype-Free

I like my job. [The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

Back Blogging?

I've just deployed v1.2.3 of Quick Blog and I feel relieved. I haven't been blogging much either here or at Found on the Web because I've been furiously dev...

Indian Wells Orange Creme Soda

A passable orange cream soda. Unfortunately, there's just too many incredible varieties of the stuff to give this one a higher rating. Official site 2 of 5 s...

Brangelina as DagnyJohn?

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are contemplating roles in the perenially in pre-production film version of Atlas Shrugged. Such star power, I think, would be e...

Pangleheimer's Sparkling Gourmet Blush

I'll admit that I only bought this soda because I liked saying "Pangleheimer's." I still do. I'm not really sure what a blush is but this sort of tastes like...

Dr. Brown's Original Cream Soda

This is one fantastic cream soda. Extremely pleasant first impression, no aftertaste. It's sugary without being overly so. I found myself savoring every last...

Kickapoo Joy Juice

Sold to me as a Mountain Dew knockoff, it is anything but. I guess that it's in the "citrus soda" genre but so is Fresca. While I question the wisdom of basi...

Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda

This bottle drew me in. First, the name was kind of weird and different from all other Dr. Brown's flavors. As I read the label more closely, I saw the words...

Gordon's Oranges 'n' Cream

I'm a sucker for orange cream drinks. There, I'll admit it. I could drink them exclusively all day long were it not for the fact that they're far too sugary ...

Bubble Up

Kind of like a harder Sprite. I'm not a big fan of that soda genre, but this one was definitely the best of that bunch. No offensiveness at all and no aftert...

Frucade

Also known as "Orangenfruchtsaftlimonade," this fruit-based soda is hard to pin down. There's definitely hints of a lemonade, but the carbonation and other f...

Elliott's Amazing Orange Juice

Blech. This is unsweetened, all-natural orange juice and I don't like it one bit. The only thing amazing is the notion that the "Amazing Facts" on the side o...

For My Future Reference

I've created a new category called "Soda Reviews" that will chronicle my explorations through the aisles and shelves of Pop the Soda Shop. Pop the Soda Shop ...

Jeff's Orange Dream Soda

Delicious, too rich for regular indulgence. All of their egg creams are fantastic (though I still haven't tried the chocolate one). Official site4 of 5 stars

The Switch Lemonade

Easily the best lemonade I’ve tried. It’s carbonated, which really makes a difference. I love how they put “No mystery ingredients” on the label. Official si...

On Second Thought

At first blush, I was intrigued by the anomaly that happened recently. I was certainly not alone. The blogging world was abuzz—isn't it always? The pe...

Drop and Give Me X

Today Apple announced their BootCamp feature for Mac OS X, which allows Intel-based Macintoshes to install and boot Windows XP. Holy ska-moly! This is a huge...

Shopworn But Not Forgotten

I love it when a cliché gets twisted up and acquires fresh life. I've come across this "remix" before, but it never fails to bring a smile: "Give a man ...

Moving On Up

Slashdot is abuzz about the story that Go Daddy has moved to Windows from Linux. The comments range from frothy to dismissive. The latter is the appropriate ...

Slow as Government

What?! Windows Vista is delayed again? This time past the invaluable Christmas buying spree? The hell you say! It just can't be because XP was released in Oc...

Gender Chores

This post from FoldedSpace.com about how men and women view chores differently is spot on. That's me and Sandi to a T. [UPDATE (3/23/2006): Scott Adams weigh...

Ultracool

I just spoke to my friend Mike Finkel last night and he told me that he's deeply involved with the ultramobile PC initiative at Intel. How cool is that!

Stormin'

This web application called Spark is awfully close to a cool brainstorming application I developed at my last job. It was one of those flash in the pan ideas...

Re: reBlog

I read Matt Haughey's overview of reBlog on Lifehacker with considerable interest. I am a Bloglines user too and it often is hard to keep up with the 280 or ...

Building Trust

The other day I was at the neighborhood QuikTrip and I got $5 over on my transaction. The next day at work I went to use the money but it wasn't there. It se...

Service Hydra

I recently had occasion to create a Windows service that was actually two Windows services within the same process. It was quite an ordeal because there is p...

Build at a Glance

Continuous Integration using an LCD-TV: considerably more advanced than an Ambient Orb. Showing the face of the developer that broke the build is a nice touc...

Woo Hoo

Our team blog is now up and ready for business! It's called Quick Blogging, which is the name I came up with for the time being, and I've got the second entr...

Plus One

The absence of Dave certainly didn't last too long! We're moving Dan Esparza over from our WebSite Tonight team and I couldn't be happier. Well, strike that,...

Good Deal

The worst part about travelling for me is the renting of hotel rooms. I abhor it mainly because I know exactly how variable the rates are. It's always made s...

Sweet Release

Ahh, the 1.2 is out there. This is definitely the biggest release since 1.0 and I am very proud of both how much is packed in there and how cleanly the relea...

Minus One

Yesterday my co-worker announced that he's moving to Idaho and leaving Go Daddy's employ. It stinks because he was the second developer on board and he's bee...

Making Widgets

So Wordpress now has Widgets and a sidebar editor, available depending on the theme. I tried to drag and drop like they said but I couldn't get it to work on...

A.J. Stephan's Raspberry-Lime Rickey

I’ve wanted to try one ever since Mr. Burns scolded someone for interrupting his lime rickey. Carbonated, but not overly so. Can hardly taste the lime. Zero ...

Schartner Bombe Orange

Tastes like a carbonated orange drink. Close to seltzer water or ginger ale. Ahh, there’s orange juice and carbonated water listed on the label. That’s it. S...

Sanpellegrino Limonata

Very lemon-y. What did I expect? Something more akin to lemonade than lemon with some flavoring to take the edge off. No real aftertaste, just sourness.2 of ...

Napa Valley Soda Company Vanilla Cream

Moderate flavor, perhaps sweeter than most. Slight vanilla aftertaste, but nothing bad. I'd rate this a middle of the road vanilla cream. Official Site3 of 5...

Sanpellegrino Chinotto

Smokey flavor, citrus-based drink. Best sipped. Hits hard at first sip, leaves a bit of an aftertaste. Somewhat unpleasant. Review2 of 5 stars

Sanagria Strawberry Soda

I've long said that I've never met a strawberry soda that didn't suck. They're invariably too sweet. This one, however, isn’t half bad. It’s got a distinctiv...

Stewart's Ginger Beer

Ginger beer strikes quite a contrast with root beer. It’s a little more spicy, a little more ker-pow. Not sure I like that in a beverage. Burns the throat an...

Fitz's Dr. Fizz

Dr. Pepper knock-off. A microbrew soda from a restaurant called Fitz’s in St. Louis, MO. A little bit more cherry-flavored than Dr. Pepper and definitely low...

Sanpelligrino Aranciata

"Sparkling orange beverage." Pretty tasty. No negatives. No aftertaste. (Second taste report: liking it more and more.) Pop the Soda Shop | Wikipedia4 of 5 s...

New Camera

In other news, I received my brand new digital camera, the Casio Exilim EX-Z750, and I couldn't be more excited. (Side note: what the hell is with that name?...

Red Letter Day

Today the Quick Blog team moved into our own office. With a door. And one wall that's a window! Yeah, it kind of stunk having to move all my crap again but c...

Rumor Confirmed

Think Secret is posting a rumor about a brand new iPod Video coming out April 1st. I can officially confirm it. How, you ask? Well, the 60 GB iPod Video I bo...

The Day Has Come

I've been glancing through some of the blogs that we host at Quick Blog. Most of the time I am filled with warm feelings at families planning reunions, stude...

Movement

I got moved to a new section of the building so that our entire team can be in a single row. Overall, I'm pleased with the move. I was in an extremely high-t...

No Apologies

To this editorial in Der Spiegel, I say "Hear, hear!" The reaction of the Islamic world to the Danish cartoons has been wholly irrational and consistent with...

Google and China

Google can try to whitewash its decision to offer a censored version of Google to the Chinese, but it's not going to fly. It's just too naked of a capitulati...

Four Things

I hate memes. There are so many out there that I have passed over, but since I'm in the new digs I may as well do the four things thing. Four Jobs I've Had ...

Free Idea

I bet you could make a mint selling a comforter that was split into two sections but still connected at the bottom. Then one bed occupant could have the comf...

Google Web Analysis

Web Authoring Statistics: I can’t believe how incredibly interesting this is. Google analyzed the way over a billion Web pages were composed and distilled it...

NKOTB

We found out yesterday that we've added another developer to the Quick Blog. Additions like this always fill me with trepidation because they have great pote...

Do No Evil

Google's response to the Justice Department's request for search data is exactly what a company that pledges to do no evil would do. I hope this convinces th...

The Newest in New

The newest version of Quick Blog is out. We deployed it yesterday afternoon and it's got loads of new features including unlimited blogs and multiple authors...

Review of The 40-Year-Old Virgin

It's not often that I find a movie that is irredeemable. Normally, I can eke out some pleasure or positive out of just about any movie. Strangely, I've enco...

Screening

Johanna Rothman has an intriguing idea for a screening question: ask for a paragraph detailing the candidate's most significant accomplishment in the cover l...

The Year in Cities

Since Jason Kottke did it, I guess I’ll throw my travels in there too: Scottsdale, AZ * Mesa, AZ * Apache Junction, AZ * Surprise, AZ * Tempe, AZ * Queen Cre...

Corporate Mantras

New blogger Guy Kawasaki doesn't fail to deliver. His entry deriding mission statements in favor of mantras is spot on. Here at Go Daddy, I've seen neither o...

Fate Perhaps?

My iBook G4—affectionately called Whitey—gave up the ghost last week and refused to boot. I hooked it up to another computer and put it in target mode to mov...

For Sale

Pssst, wanna buy a house?

Personal Holidays

Scott Berkun, he of inestimable software project management wisdom, offered up an idea that I think is absolutely wonderful: personal holidays. As of the tim...

Welcome to the Blogging World

Guy Kawasaki now has a blog. I’ve read all of his books, starting with The Macintosh Way, and I have tremendous respect for him. Sadly, he’s now brought my f...

Funniest. Writing. Ever.

I love Dilbert and I always have. I am continually amazed at how well Scott Adams depicts office culture despite being so long removed from it. Perhaps his e...

Out of Beta

Web Developer, easily the best extension for Firefox, has hit 1.0. The new features are impressive and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with in the futur...

Celebration Time

I just realized that I didn't blog about the recent Go Daddy holiday celebration. It took place on December 15th at the Camelback Inn, where, sadly, my last ...

Mac Attack

My prayers—such as they are—have been answered. I’m getting a Mac for my desk for testing purposes. All you Mac Quick Blog users are going to get some suppor...

Pack It In

Uggh, my Bloglines queue is up to 5,191 items unread. I was caught up before I hit crunch time working on Quick Blog but now I’m beginning to think it’s hope...

Archives Coming Soon

I tried importing my archives on Friday after we launched, but there was something wrong with the handling of line breaks. It's not a tough fix, so they'll b...

Birth Announcement

Bo Thompson, Dave Levitt, John Paxton and I are proud to announce the birth of a new blogging service: Quick Blog! There were so many people involved over th...

I Can Feel It

Ooooo, we’ve fixed all of the little environmental bugs that cropped up as all the components warmed up in production. Just waiting on the call to turn this ...

Logging the Bad Stuff

Scott Guthrie posted some code that can be put in your Global file’s Application_End event handler that will log the reason for the event’s firing to the eve...

Deeee-layed!

The inevitable delay in deployment has occurred. I guess too many ducks had to be in a row and a couple strayed. Tomorrow afternoon is the new target for whe...

Anticipation

Tomorrow’s the big day (barring anything really nasty) when we release version 1.0 of Quick Blog. I can’t wait! It’s been a roller coaster of deadlines for m...

Distracting Work Environments

Visit to the Googleplex: how does anyone get any work done in that environment?!?! {via}

Best Places To Work

Go Daddy came in at number 14 on the Best Places to Work in the Valley. Bob Parsons gave the keynote speech at the reception announcing the list and ran thro...

Shopping Spree

Yahoo Buys del.icio.us: sweet mama pajama! Yahoo is buying everyone. Congrats, Joshua and crew!

We Made Slashdot

I checked out Slashdot.org this morning and saw Go Daddy in one of the main stories. Awesome! Err, not so much.I know some people on the shared hosting team ...

Tipping the Scales

The 37Signals crew recently advised against worrying about scalability when designing web applications. It’s the latest in their series of thought pieces on ...

Wallpaper is the Devil

I was always on the fence about wallpaper. I had seen a lot of horrid uses of it, but I’d also seen some great walls that were great because of it. I am now ...

Tweak Tips

This list of tips compiled from TweakUI is simply amazing! I never would have thought to drag a folder to the screen edge (though, truth be told, I’m not su...

The Taxonomy of Bloggers

Blogging Styles and Traffic Stats: as a blogging engine producer, this is very fascinating stuff to me. The comments are just as worthwhile also. My product ...

False Sense of Security?

These pictures sure speak to me:{via}

Transients

I just found out that the idiot who made my life a living hell at my last job is leaving. Apparently, he had been interviewing and trying to get another job ...

Public Service Announcement

I had a vasectomy today and, as a public service, I’ve written it up over at my other blog. Executive overview: shot hurt like hell, rest was no big deal, re...

When You Dream

Google Box: Cringely’s new column on what Google’s up to is out. I thought he was stretching for the datacenter-in-a-shipping-container column, but this one ...

Developer/CEO

My cube neighbor just showed me some Javascript code from July 2000 written by Bob Parsons for our WebSite Complete product. I can’t even imagine the work en...

Web Analysis

Okay, this is all over the blogs this morning but I have to talk about it because it’s a subject near and dear to my heart. As some of you may know, I track ...

Long Time

Wow, I was just looking on eBay and I discovered that I’ve been a member since December 6, 1998. Curious about some other sites that I’m a member of, I found...

Found on the Web is Lost

Apparently, Dreamhost’s free web registration is only for one year as opposed to the life of the hosting account. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that the...

About

This is the site of Bill Brown, a Web developer and father of four, born and residing in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a longtime Objectivist, which means he prac...

I See The Light

We’re in the home stretch for the new blog product. The good news is that there will be a free and paid version so all of you readers that don’t want to shel...

Blast from the Past

Today was a very disconcerting day at work for me.

I Love Web Developer

Chris Pederick, he of incredible Firefox extensions, has released a beta of the next release of his stunning Web Developer extension.This isn’t some piddly l...

My New Dream Host

As regular readers may know, nearly all my sites are hosted with Dreamhost—this one’s hosted at Uplink Earth but that’s only until the blog software is relea...

All Your Google Base ... Aww, Forget It

Google Base is coming soon, apparently. From the screenshot, it seems like some sort of Craigslist knock-off. It makes a lot of sense, but I mostly can’t wai...

Talk This Way

I don’t normally do those inane profile-type quizzes, but the regional differences in American English has always been an interest of mine. So I took it and ...

Wonderfalls

I just finished watching the last episode of the TV show, Wonderfalls, which has been playing on LOGO for quite some time now. I've been completely enamored ...

Article Roundup

Here’s some excellent articles and blog entries I’ve been collecting:<ul><li>“Complete” and “Freeze” Aren’t: an elaboration of the problems with ...

Too Late By Four

So I’ve long said that I’m not going to buy another Macintosh until they went quad processor. It seemed to me that if they could have two CPUs they have coul...

Wait and See

One of the best things about this new blog product is that we had the second mover’s advantage. By that I mean that we could learn from the earlier competito...

Waiting to Move

Suffice it to say, I will be moving this blog over to the new product as soon as it’s publicly available (well, maybe a little bit before that ;-) instead of...

Running with the Big Blogs

I’m happy to say that I can finally discuss what I’ve been working on for these last four months. Bob Parsons, my employer, spilled the beans on his blog in ...

Yoda Programming

This blog entry by Matt Warren on the next version of C# after 3.0 had better be a joke. I just flashed back to Applescript reading the example.

Buzzword Compliant

Marchitecture: ooo, I love this term for an “architecture produced for marketing reasons, normally by a vendor.” At my last job, this would have been so usef...

Sprinting

I’m doing a final sprint this weekend to complete the project by Monday. I’m going to work a regular shift during the day, work from home tonight, and then w...

Reading Google

So Google’s added an online RSS aggregator to their Google Labs. I was excited to say the least and quickly imported an OPML version of my Bloglines subscrip...

Searching the Past

Educating Others: I wish Mark were blogging again. I’m poring through Dive Into Python and I am constantly reminded of how enjoyable a writer he is.[UPDATE (...

Note to Self

Burn this into your memory, Bill Brown: null is not a comparable value in SQL. “ null” IS NOT true. Grrrr.[UPDATE (10/20/2005): Uhh, “= null” is just as bad....

Bring On Da Crunch

One last burst of crunch time. We’re due to have the new application complete by Monday. That’s aggressive, but feasible if we all pull together and do the w...

Quickies

Here’s a couple of interesting articles I’ve read recently that you might enjoy as well:<ul><li>Unit Testing is Teh Suck</li><li>Why ...

448

Deadline came and went yesterday. I put in 12 hours on Monday, 14 on Tuesday, 15 on Wednesday, and 8 on Thursday. That puts my grand total at 132 for the 11 ...

Forehead Smacking

While refactoring a stored procedure, I came across this comment I left back in July:(If you're squeamish, don't continue reading this stored procedure.)I sh...

Holy Work Week, Batman!

As of midnight, I will have worked 83 hours since Monday, 9/12. If I work 15 hours a day through Wednesday and take a relaxing 12-hour day on Thursday, that’...

Oh the Crunch!

Boy, four days into crunch mode and I’m dragging. I worked 15 hours Monday and 12 hours every other day this week. That’s a lot of hours, but it’s worth it b...

Captain Crunch

Well, the product I’m developing is slated to be complete by the next next Thursday so that means that we’re entering crunch mode. I think it’s a good thing ...

The UI is the Application

I had a weird confluence two weeks ago. Early in the day, I read this blog entry over at CodingHorror.com—great blog by the way—about how the user interface ...

That's a Keeper

Code Keep: nice code snippet repository that features a VisualStudio.NET add-in and RSS feeds. I like what I see so far. {via}[UPDATE: It seriously needs a b...

Milestone Here

This entry is the 1,000th one I’ve written. There’s actually only 997 available on the Web: I’ve got three draft entries waiting to be finished. There’s a re...

Cheap Lunches Aren't

Last week, I mentioned that we were going to be getting Subway subs for $1 thanks to Go Daddy’s treat.Today was the first day that they offered it. Unfortuna...

Google Talk

There’s some buzz this morning around the fact that talk.google.com attempts to start an XMPP session—the indications of a Jabber server. We use Jabber at wo...

Milestone Elsewhere

I just hit a blogging milestone this morning over at my other blog: I posted my 2,000 entry!It’s been a very busy year: I left Blogger as my host on May 9, 2...

Service with a Smile

The last few days I’ve had an opportunity to create two Windows services for the product I’m working on. I was surprised at how easy .NET makes these things....

FOO on You

The best response I have seen to all the grousing about FOO Camp is this one over at O’Reilly’s Radar. And the best thing to come out of FOO Camp that I have...

Cheap Lunch

During this morning’s quarterly employee appreciation, Bob Parsons announced that Go Daddy is going to be subsidizing employee lunches. Subway and Meatballz ...

Modicum of Recognition

Today was a red-letter day for me. This morning, I saw a referrer on my link blog, Found on the Web, to a Kinja account. Naturally, I followed the link back ...

Directly

As a big-time del.icio.us fan, I can’t believe I didn’t start using Delicious Director when I first saw it a month ago. It’s a different kind of front-end to...

Textpattern Est Ici!

Man, three days spent caring for three sick kids and I totally miss out on the Textpattern 4 festivities. In related news, I have decided that I’m going to j...

Hosting Industry

I love my current host, Dreamhost, for so many different reasons, but this blog entry about their business model made me grin. I’ve never seen a business act...

The Source is Open

Awesome news! Michael Schwarz has released the source of the very useful Ajax.NET library, which I’ve used to great effect in the application I’m developing ...

Slaps

A hospital in Houston is renaming its tower after a local lawyer. He contributed $25 million to the hospital and so they do what hospitals everywhere do. The...

Bowl-a-Rama

Today is a bowling trip at work for the development staff. I have been excited about this for weeks. There’s even a graphic: how cool is that!“Go Daddy Engi...

Permissions

I’ve spent the last few days working out a permission model for the application I’m developing. I’ve always wanted to use bits and bitwise operators for some...

Security By Obscurity

Since I was granted VPN access at work, I decided that it was time to update my home Windows computer. Previously, I had an Intel Celeron processor running a...

Today in History

2004, 2003, 2002.

Review of Trustee from the Toolroom

Ayn Rand’s benevolent universe premise posits that the universe isn’t against us, that other people are a source of pleasure, and that life is worth living. ...

Hey Foxy!

For developers contemplating switching to Firefox, be aware that there’s much more recommend the browser than awesome standards compliance. With the addition...

On the Phone

Today I spent an hour listening in on phone calls in our call center. Every developer is supposed to spend one hour a week doing that or answering customer e...

Unleash the Fun

At my last job, we used VisualStudio.NET deployment projects to reasonable effect. There were problems with installing and uninstalling web applications via ...

Don't Blink

Wow, someone made an ASP.NET control to reproduce the <blink> tag. I want to hate it, but I just can’t. {via}

Review of Freakonomics

There’s several books that have made their way through the blogging world with surprising alacrity. The Tipping Point, Blink, Collapse, and Everything Bad is...

Speedy

Wow, I thought I’d take this speed test at work since the connection always seems zippier than any other I’ve ever experienced. The results: 11,832 kbps down...

Review of The Automatic Millionaire

My friend Larry has often said that he doesn’t know how anyone in this day and age can’t be worth a million dollars at retirement. He’s right because it does...

On the Way to the Forums

Vanilla: Vanilla is a brand new open-source forum software that’s stated goal is to “the mold created and followed by just about every other forum on the web...

DictionaryBase and Repeaters

I’ve been struggling to databind a custom collection built off DictionaryBase to a Repeater. In my other custom collections that used CollectionBase, I could...

Democrats and Businessmen

Project FAZR: I remember reading about something like this in Atlas Shrugged. How did that turn out in the book? Oh, who is John Galt?

A Different Vista

No more Longhorn. The new release of Windows, due in third quarter 2015, will be called Windows Vista. So the product name will be Microsoft Windows Vista. H...

Meeting the President, Sort Of

Today when I was leaving work, I went out the back way since it was closer to where I parked my car. The door is a little sticky so I gave it a good heave. U...

Looking Sharper

Oh yeah, ReSharper just hit beta for version 2.0.This feature—“Support of ASP.NET (almost all features implemented for C# and VB.NET for code inside ASP page...

The Worst Gets Worse

At my last job, we used a crappy help desk ticketing application called Magic—that was anything but. I’ve complained about it here before, but today’s Daily ...

Learning Python

I’m 80 pages into Learning Python in my quest to Python proficiency so I can try on some Django for size. So far, the book seems great: comprehensive, though...

Commenting

It appears that no comments can be posted here without my approval. I have no idea why this is so since I’ve completely turned off any such requirements. I’m...

Python on Rails

I’ve been intrigued by all the hoopla surrounding Ruby on Rails. It’s a web application framework that is described by its practitioners in exactly the same ...

Hanging Out (and Up)

I noticed yesterday that someone had installed a hook or hanger on the urinal wall in our bathroom at work. Now I can understand such a device in a stall on ...

Learn by Disexample

“Exception Disfunction” is a hilarious entry over at The Daily WTF. If you’re a programmer, you’ll get as big of a chuckle at this daily visit as you might a...

High Praise

One of my new co-workers had a chance to look over the source code and the code layout yesterday. This morning she came in and told me that she was impressed...

Database Projects

Database Projects in VisualStudio.NET: I had no idea that there was such a thing. After reading the article, I’m sold. Working with, editing, and adding stor...

Best Practices Aren't

I read James Bach's essay entitled No Best Practices today and I loved it. I have always abhorred the "best practices" meme, which I regard as a substitute f...

Second Month at Go Daddy

Phew, work has been crazy! The powers-that-be (I have no idea who that might be) decided that they wanted the new product sooner than later so they’re pursui...

Scribe and OmniWeb

Scribe: a Firefox extension that allows you to save form fields, such as a blog entry post, as a local file. As someone who has lost at least a dozen blog en...

Associated

If you use the incredible Firefox browser, you may want to make sure that you don’t have the “Print This!” extension installed. This marginally-helpful exten...

Dreamy Host

Wow, I got this month’s Dreamhost newsletter today and I excitedly opened it. The newsletter isn’t your standard fare: it’s chock full of cool new features a...

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

I just finished listening to an audio version of Richard Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Overall it was pretty mixed in its content, but what w...

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day! I could write a paean to America and the American way of life, but I won’t. If you’re interested in some vaguely Independence-Day–the...

Touching Fenders

Today at lunch I went to Home Depot to pick up a few things for around the house and McDonald’s to have a Big Mac since I haven’t had one in I-don’t-know-how...

LIKE @whatever

Phew, just spent some time trying to get a parameter to work with a LIKE and wildcards in the WHERE clause of a SELECT. I’m creating a stored procedure for S...

Not Everything in Caps is an Acronym

I just read a statement that the scanner protocol called TWAIN stood for “Technology Without A Name” and I thought, “Wow, that’s an awesome fact.” Being the ...

Free Earth

Google Earth is now available and it’s free. Only for Windows right now, though the download page says that they’re working on Macintosh support.[UPDATE: Ooo...

Giddy Up, Little Domains

Wow! At one point just before it became a domain registrar, Go Daddy was located in a house on an old ranch in Cave Creek. Another choice tidbit from that me...

Delicioso

I <3 del.icio.us and I <3 PDFs, so you’d think that Yummy would be a natural match for me. With the advent of del.icio.us filetype matching, I don’t se...

Kelo-co

I spoke with my friend Larry yesterday and the conversation turned, as it seems to inevitably do, to property rights and eminent domain (what, you don’t talk...

Copying, Er, I Mean Innovating

Separated at birth?Safari RSS and Internet Explorer 7 RSS{via}

Online Outlining

I can’t believe I never mentioned Sproutliner before. It’s a free, online outlining web app that’s surprisingly robust. It gets even better because its creat...

That's Debatable

FYI: an argument is moot when those arguing should be mute. If you can’t get these straight, may I recommend the lovely “debatable?”[UPDATE (6/17/05): “Irrel...

Laptop Pwn3d

Bringing new meaning to the words “intel inside”, Dell has apparently been installing hardware-based keyloggers for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS ...

What's the Diff?

Curious about the differences between Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows XP? Having trouble explaining how one is better than the other? I always do and I just found ...

It's Starting

Today I started development on the app I’ve been designing for the last couple weeks. I had forgotten that feeling of starting from scratch. That moment wher...

Three Types

In my life, I’ve met quite a few programmers, developers, and engineers. I’ve also read a lot of source code. In my experience, I’ve seen three types of prog...

Scottsdale AIRpark

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last month wandering around the “park” aspects of the Scottsdale Airpark but I hadn’t at all checked out the “air” parts.So t...

Upgraded MovableType

Just upgraded MovableType from 2.661 to 3.17. It looks like ass. Luckily, there’s finally some useful features in there like checkboxes for batch actions.In ...

It's Not Working, Sorry

I've tried to enjoy and appreciate QuikTrip's unique approach to handling lines of customers, but I just can't. For those unfamiliar with QT's way, they've g...

First Month at Go Daddy

Yesterday marked the end of my first month at Go Daddy. To state my assessment right off the bat, I can’t think of a single negative thing to say. Well, okay...

Lunchtime Observations

Random observations on the passing lunch scene:<ul><li>I ate at Chick Fil-A again today (breakfast and lunch) because I had two free chicken sand...

Eat Mor Chikin

Today is the grand opening of the Chick Fil-A at Raintree and 101.I went there for breakfast at around 6:15 am and it was surprisingly busy. Apparently, they...

All Spec'ed Out

So I’ve finished my requirements specification for the new product that I can’t discuss. It was a real learning experience for me.The thing came in at 34 pag...

Productivity Blackhole

I think I’ve found a way to increase business productivity considerably by adding a single line to employee policy manuals:<blockquote>All discussions ...

Security Wiki

Patterns and Practices Security Wiki: awesome resource for securing .NET and ASP.NET applications. It promises to be updated more regularly than the great Pa...

First Shovelglove

So this morning I did my first shovelglove routine and I’ve got to say that I feel great! It was easy, took only 14 minutes, and worked out my upper body con...

New Exercise Regimen

To buy: one sledgehammer.[UPDATE (6/7/05): I posted this and the No S Diet over on MetaFilter recently.]

The User Does This and This

I found some great resources for use case production. My favorite was “Use-Case Model: Writing Requirements in Context” by Craig Larman. It provided a easy t...

Resize Me

Resizable Text Area Extension: this Firefox extension makes the edges of any textarea get those little arrow cursors for easy expansion in realtime. OMFG, th...

Transactions

Not that transactions in .NET were super hard, but .NET 2.0 is going to have a System.Transaction library. Transactions will be invoked with a using statemen...

Intel Inside?

It’s really weird: As Seen on TV’s last comment (under that particular nickname) was on May 23rd and that was just to say that he hadn’t posted lately becaus...

What's the Best Use of My Time Right Now?

Webolodeon: delightful Greasemonkey user script for Firefox that asks what you’re doing every five minutes. It’s a helpful reminder that you need to be aware...

Swinging

For lunch today, I went back to Northsight Park because it was such a nice day. I worked on the requirements a little, shot a few hoops, and swung.Oh yeah, h...

I'm So Excited

I just got back from a short meeting with my boss. The new product that I mentioned previously has been approved for design and requirements gathering. I sti...

Windows Keyboard Shortcut

Pressing CTRL+SHIFT+NUMPAD ‘+’ in Windows Explorer resizes the columns to fit the contents. Try it. This is so handy. {via}

Changes Afoot?

The Bush administration will nominate Representative Christopher Cox to be the next chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission. Since he’s a sitting Cong...

Donations

Google’s Summer of Code: now that is an interesting way to fund open-source projects.

Stop the Copying, People

Longhorn will shed the “My” in all of those special Windows folders. So “My Documents” becomes just “Documents.” Let’s see, do I make the joke about Mac OS X...

VoIP Report

When I got DSL, I mentioned on this blog that I was probably going to get VoIP service from Vonage. I did end up getting VoIP service, but it wasn’t from Von...

My First Feature

I finally finished my feature today. I actually finished it last Friday but we decided to take it in a different direction during the code review. It was the...

Not So Smart

“Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas”: I think this is an important essay for me to digest in understanding people. Here’s the part that I found most pregnant ...

I Won't Pay A Lot for This Content

Why are people such cheap bastards? This guy clearly found Idea Champion’s product worth the effort of stealing it from their web site and making a Palm vers...

Juj Up Your Amazon Image

Abusing Amazon Images: interesting research about how Amazon uses URL manipulations to dynamically-build the product images. It’s quite an impressive feature...

It's Piggy All Right

The new Firefox extension Piggy Bank sounds like a good idea. The Semantic Web is a grand vision that has altogether lacked a sufficient implementation. Pigg...

Bandwidth Theft Dilemma

I’ve had plenty of experience with bandwidth theft, mostly from youngsters using my daughters’ pictures in comments on MySpace. I’ve replaced these pictures ...

Debugging in Style

I know this is going to sound hopelessly naive, but today I discovered the power of a great debugger. I’ve read extensively and the advice is always to get c...

Cheekiness

I found the following gem in the comments of a recent Mike Zornek blog entry about whether he should bring his camera to a U2 concert:“If you treasure that t...

At the Theater

Waiting for the movie to start. we’re going to see it in the Valley’s only DLP theater. I hope this is good.[UPDATE: Ho hum. I’m not sure that the DLP experi...

Now That Ain't Right

We're Number Three

We just got notified this morning that Go Daddy has taken the third spot in the shared hosting market. Apparently, Go Daddy has over 670,000 shared hosting a...

Wha?!

My Google?!

Bought the Tickets

Well, I now own the right for two to sit in the Harkins Arrowhead 18 theater with the digital projector on Saturday, May 21th at 8:50 am. What am I going to ...

On Taxonomies

Clay Shirky has a new essay up about tagging, which he believes is as revolutionary as the Web itself since it casts off the taxonomical pretensions of the p...

Random Thoughts

<ul><li>I got some change back from my usual Rooster Booster Lite refill at QuikTrip and in it was the new nickel. That is one beautiful coin. I’...

First Week

Yesterday marked my first week at Go Daddy. The euphoria is still going strong, though tempered by some configuration hassles. I made my first checkins yeste...

Trumping Pataki

I’m not a big fan of Donald Trump. Oh sure, he’s a repeat self-made billionaire and that definitely earns him some respect in my book. However, his crass, se...

Wanna Buy a Report?

This is an intriguing publishing model.[UPDATE (5/16/05): For those keeping track, this is entry number 900. Not the 1,633 I’ve done over at Found on the Web...

Airpark Park

Now that I work in the Scottsdale Airpark, I figured that today was the day to start exploring. My previous place of employment was in a prime area to wander...

Veeerrry Interesting

Yesterday’s I, Cringely offers an analysis of Apple’s forays into video that makes total sense once you read it and relies on the testimony of one As Seen on...

Three's a Charm

Today was the Quarterly Employee Appreciation Event at Go Daddy. They really went all out for it, putting up a huge tent in the parking lot and bringing in a...

Codec Love

I wasn’t sure what all the hoopla was about the new H.264 codec for QuickTime until I saw this excellent comparison of it with Sorenson 3. A larger-sized vid...

New Phone

I recently had to buy a new cell phone since my previous one was provided by my employer. I shopped around for the plan and provider that best suited me—not ...

Go Daddy Day Two

Today I wore some tan shorts, an MC Frontalot t-shirt, and my sandals. It felt so weird being comfortable at work, but I definitely think I’ll get used to it...

Hostile Work Environments

And this is the kind of asshole that I had to put up with at my last job—he’s a testament to making snap decisions in job interviews. I sure wish this had co...

First Day at Go Daddy

Wow, today was absolutely incredible. There was the traditional fumbling awkwardness of getting everything set up but, by and large, Go Daddy really has its ...

No Video iPod

The latest As Seen on TV comments indicate why there won’t be a video iPod and where Apple is going with video distribution over the net, how he’s probably n...

Too Busy

Didn’t I say I wasn’t going to blog anymore for awhile? Like eight entries ago? I said that I was going to try to focus on my s00per sekrit project, but our ...

This Time with Less Subtlety

As I hinted at in an earlier post, I’ve accepted a job at GoDaddy.com as a Senior .NET Engineer in the Starfield Technologies division. I start on Tuesday, M...

Rank Lust

Kinda sad.

Automation

I discovered that I really like Automator. I’ve always wanted to download all the PDFs in the Hayden Pioneer Biographies collection, but all the web sucking ...

Here Comes Tiger

Well, my copy has shipped and is currently sitting on the FedEx loading ramp at Sky Harbor having just arrived eight minutes ago. Two minutes ago, I discover...

Getting External

I was going to buy a Mac Mini with some side money I’ve made lately, but I realized that what I really wanted the Mini for was a cheap backup and DVD burning...

Speak Easy

The Say Command: here’s a Terminal tip that reads a text file using your default voice and outputs an AIFF file ready for conversion in iTunes to MP3. Cool!

Nearly Eleven Years

And now I do.

Apple Employee on Spotlight's Direction

I know I said that I was going to take a hiatus, but I think that this comment and this comment on the Slashdot story about Tiger’s new features deserves the...

bblog Goes Dark

It’s been nearly a month since my last post. I’ve started and stopped perhaps half a dozen entries and thought about posting at least a dozen more. I have a ...

Paperblogging

Papercasting: this is certainly easier to follow than podcasting. I can imagine that it suffers from the same basic affliction: most people’s handwriting is ...

Big Talk

There’s been a lot of controversy lately up north because of Snow Bowl’s decision to use snow machines at the prominent Flagstaff, Arizona ski resort. The pu...

Big Brothers

The British government has an agency called the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that regulates infertility treatments of all kinds. It has the p...

Google Dock

Google X: a version of the home page for the Mac OS X owners. Note to Windows users: it’s the Dock-like rollover tab replacement.[UPDATE: Here’s the backgrou...

Bandwidth Theft Part Two

Geesh. Regular readers may remember last month’s prank on some punk kids stealing my bandwidth by using an image of my daughter. If you don’t feel like readi...

Dam Shame

I had my own weeping Indian moment Friday afternoon on my lunch break.I hiked down to the Salt River like I often do: down 48th Street, over the railroad tra...

Major Outage

I apologize to anyone who tried to access this site yesterday and today. My current—soon to be former—host seems to have misrouted my domain for some unknown...

Ugh, Windows.

I’ve long been proud of Mac OS X’s lack of viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, and adware. Compared to Mac OS X, Windows is like the bad part of town that is c...

Park of Four Waters

Saturday I went to take a tour of the Park of Four Waters at the Pueblo Grande Museum. The site, located perhaps a half mile south of the museum, isn’t open ...

Blahcasting

There’s a subculture of the blogging world that’s gaining some traction called podcasting. In a nutshell, bloggers (and it’s only bloggers at this point) rec...

The Revolution's Soundtrack

Royal We 1984: awesome video parody of the original 1984 ad from Apple where the instrument of brainwashing isn’t the corporate monoculture, it’s the iPod. V...

Ant Skis

Skiing Game in Ant: if you can believe it, someone created a skiing game that runs in the build tool Ant. That is freakin’ cool! I can’t wait to try it out i...

Forget Welcome

Sorry about the lack of updates. I’ve been working feverishly on migrating this beast to TextPattern and watching Law and Order. (Last night, Sandi had enoug...

Googlebar

Google’s got a new toolbar version out and it’s got a lot of nice features. Of course, I’m a Mac guy at home so I can’t use any of them and a Firefox user at...

Bell Road Toyota

I wanted to skewer Bell Road Toyota for a recent experience I had there. I've already left the same review at Dealer Rater, but it's worth it to leave it h...

Personal Uptime Record

I had to restart today at work. I’m using Windows 2000 and I haven’t restarted once in the last 66 days, 7 hours, and 26 minutes—a personal best!My second be...

Pattern of Procrastination

Long-time readers will know that I am slowly moving my sites from UplinkEarth to DreamHost—way too slowly, in fact, since I am paying $29.90/month for one an...

Happy Statehood Day!

I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day and neither is my wife. Our annual tradition is to go to McDonald’s for dinner (replaced with In ‘n’ Out once it came to...

uControlled

For all you Mac OS X laptop owners out there, there’s a new version of uControl out for 10.3.8 since the old version got broken by the update.While you’re ev...

New Man in Town

I decided to go to the Phoenix Zoo on my lunch hour today to do some rollerblading. It’s been awhile because I’ve been busy with work and running errands on ...

The Mini-Van Man

We bought a 2005 Toyota Sienna LE last night. It took awhile for me to become comfortable with turning into a mini-van guy because my parents owned a mini-va...

Google Can Do Anything

I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know about Google’s every move—that’s what fanboys do.But you would be remiss if you didn’t check out Google Maps. It i...

Announcing LogZipper.NET

I took my first real stab at open-source development today when I made LogZipper.NET available to the world. It’s a console application written in C# and req...

The Virtues of Paper

Why do I use index cards instead of my Palm? It’s not the sensual experience of curling up with them, I can tell you that. Index cards ≠ Moleskines.I use ind...

Passwords Revisited

Matt Haughey offers up a few other password-generating schemes that I hadn’t thought about before. I like them better than passphrases, which seem to almost ...

You Stole My Bandwidth

There’s a longstanding tradition among the Web savvy that when someone uses your images on another page without downloading them to their own machine—in effe...

Seeing Without Seeing

This story about a blind painter who gets surprisingly close to reality is astounding. He paints shadows, gets perspective right, and paints animals that he ...

She Would've Been 100

I let the Ayn Rand Centenary pass without comment yesterday. I just didn’t think I could add anything substantive to the celebration. I have stated my gratit...

What Other Options Are There, Really?

“Hide Your iPod, Here Comes Bill”: Apple’s iPod is prevalent on Microsoft’s campuses, garnering something like 80% share of the Microsoft employees who own p...

Google Daddy

Google is now a domain registrar. Given Google’s history of making inexpensive things free, this doesn’t bode well for current domain registrars.On the other...

Medical Developments

Longtime readers of this blog—I don’t necessarily have any proof that such entities exist so I am speaking hypothetically—may know that I had a disease calle...

Parsons' Principles

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a big fan of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons. Well, not such a big fan that I knew he had a blog. Perusing its content, I found his...

They're So Into It

Intuit, makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, are apparently discontinuing support of Quicken 2002. That’s nothing particularly unusual: Microsoft rec...

Spampossible

Today I had a thought about a way to solve (or, more realistically, limit) email spam. I was thinking that my new blog, Found on the Web, could use my email ...

Getting Things Done Update

So I’ve been using the Getting Things Done system for a few months now to a varying extent. I think it’s time for an update on my progress. Am I getting thin...

Broadband Bill

DSL: installed.Wireless: active.Bill: happy.

WRT54G Fun

So I got the Linksys WRT54G yesterday—two business days after I ordered it with free shipping. The price is phenomenal: $49.99 after a $10 mail-in rebate. I ...

Baghdad's Big Dig?

“$80 Billion for War in ‘05”: among the tidbits in this story is that the new American embassy in Baghdad will cost at least $1.5 billion. I say “at least” b...

Water Problems

In case you didn’t know, the City of Phoenix has issued a warning directing residents to avoid using tap water that hasn’t been boiled. The mayor urges us to...

Mini-ize Me

I really love the idea of the Mac Mini. Getting a new Macintosh for only $499 makes it almost a no-brainer. With an impending huge tax refund, it seems like ...

All Spin Zone

I find the spin in the article “In One Night, Iraqi Turns From Friend to Foe” to be outrageous. The writer tries to paint Imaad as a normal, middle-class per...

Taxing Developments

Today I filed my income taxes for both Arizona and the federal government. This is a milestone in my life (and I have Sandi to thank for the impetus) because...

Entering the Information Age

Today I did it. I placed an order for DSL. That’s right, Bill Brown is finally joining the broadband revolution.I’m sure most of you reading this have your m...

Watch for Falling Excuses

I knew that it had been quite some time since my last blog entry, but a quick trip to Technorati revealed that it’s been 64 days. That is, as far as I can re...

Shredder Bliss

Yesterday, we got a shredder at work. “Woohoo,” you’re thinking. You would be right if there wasn’t any sarcasm in that thought. This is one bad-ass, killer ...

Public Transportation Without the Freaks

I’m not a big fan of public transportation since it has limited endpoints and has plenty of incentives to be inefficient. Of course, it’s also an illegitimat...

Google.edu

Google Scholar: the Deep Web just got a little shallower. If they can broaden this, this could be the most useful thing since Google.

If Only He Practiced It

Quote from John Kerry’s concession speech: “But in an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next ...

Vote or Don't

Vote or don’t: I don’t really care since most people vote the opposite of me.[UPDATE (11/3/04): Bush won. Hooray.]

Les Belles Lettres

Just Letters: this is the coolest thing. It’s amazing to watch how people move from just moving letters around to trying to achieve tasks. Once the task beco...

Boston Mobs

Is this a modern-day Boston Massacre? One occurred because of strained tensions between an oppressed populace and an occupying army and the other occurred be...

The Future is Now

“Metcalfe Says that Zigbee Rocks”: I’m intrigued and the inventor of Ethernet should know a thing or two about networking.The idea of my cell phone talking t...

Did They Get It in Writing?

“Released prisoners commit terrorism”: I can’t believe it. They promised to not become terrorists, we released them, and they broke their promises. I guess y...

Rat Packer

I'm no expert in campaign finance, but aren't you supposed to refrain from treating your election committee funds as a personal checking account? If I were a...

Election 2004

I mailed in my ballot last week. It was nice to be able to take my time and research just about every issue—I still can’t bring myself to vote one way or the...

Thanks, Christopher!

Happy Columbus Day!

Date Night

Tonight we had a date night. Sandi arranged for her parents to relax at our house while The Girls slept so that we could go out to have a private dinner. We ...

I Like

MacGeekery: ooo, I like it!

Resource Overload

I love Resource Shelf because its maintainers do an awesome job of compiling great sources of information. I used to follow it daily, but I stopped because i...

First-Class Bummer

I recently ordered some PhotoStamps with pictures of The Girls and they turned out to be adorable! Unfortunately, that service is at the utter mercy of a leg...

Discourse Off Course

Debates? Not really. These were presidential debates.What kind of a political world do we live in where debates require a 32-page contract? It’s a shame and ...

Google Indexes Everything

These sensitive documents found via Google searching were a real eye opener. I know that Google indexes everything that’s publicly accessible; I guess I just...

Forward March

Why do people forward hoax emails to everyone they know? I just got this little gem from a teller at a distant branch who in her infinite wisdom decided to f...

Self-Organized

I’ve owned a copy of Getting Things Done for at least a year or more and I’ve read it several times. Soon after getting the book, I had a fitful start strugg...

Music by the Megabyte

AllOfMP3.com is a music service based in Russia that sells music by the megabyte. It starts at 500MB for $5 and offers the music in a variety of formats (inc...

Heard on the Radio

I just heard the following advertisement from 1948 on a CD of old radio programs:<blockquote><p>And in our brief intermission, there’s just time ...

Posturing

Iran says that the massing of troops along the Iran-Iraq border is to deter the “great powers” from moving into Iran, but something tells me that the Iraqi t...

Remastering on the Cheap

Using iTunes as an Audio Processor: I’ve got a lot of records and tapes that I want to convert to a digital format but it’s such a chore to edit out noise, c...

Getting It

I’ll confess right now: I never got del.icio.us. It’s caused quite a furor, but I never could quite get it. I understood why you might want to have bookmarks...

Lesser of Two Evils 2004

For my future reference, C-SPAN’s 2004 presidential coverage sans spin.

Grossest Cheese Ever

I was sweeping around my kitchen, when I noticed a little yellow something in the crevice between my refrigerator and countertop. I swept it out and it looke...

Busy Spammer

Wow, some comment spammer just left 816 comments! Holy crap! I’m glad that I’ve got MT-Blacklist. It made pretty short work of that spammer’s droppings.

Duke of .NET

In case you missed it, Duke Power is giving away its application framework for .NET development. I was intrigued because my work is to the point where we’re ...

Wrong Side of the Tracks

While vacationing in Los Angeles (specifically, Manhattan Beach) over the Labor Day weekend, my wife and I were reminded of an observation we had previously ...

My Friend the Inventor

I’m always asking friends and people I know about what’s new in their lives. I’ve probably asked my friend Michael Finkel that question several times since 1...

The High Tech Dive

Yesterday, I was jonesing for some pho and planned on going to Saigon Healthy Deli. I drove down Mill Avenue but couldn’t find it. So I stopped at a Circle K...

Dog Food? Yech!

Need another reason to switch to FireFox from Microsoft Internet Explorer? Microsoft’s Security Program Manager switched.

Smarter Than Thou

Marc Hedlund has an excellent essay on the evils of Microsoft Word in particular and software that second-guesses the user in general. Anyone who develops so...

Not WinFS

So there’s not going to be WinFS. The newest in new filesystems—even though WinFS wasn’t really an FS—has to be GmailFS. Astute readers out there are probabl...

Stop on Red

Someone at work mentioned that schools were discouraging the use of red pens to indicate errors, but I didn’t believe it. I guess I was wrong. Two anecdotes ...

Windows Next

Shorthorn: good one, Allchin; I hadn’t even thought of that. Notable: next version of Windows will ship sometime in 2006 and WinFS won’t be in it. Oh and eve...

Review of Kill Bill Vol. 2

If Kill Bill vol. 1 and Kill Bill vol. 2 were released as a single movie as originally intended, then it would have had a lock on the best movie I’ve ever se...

For Me to Poop On

I just rented The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I’ve been a fan of Triumph since his first appearance—prior to The Girls, I was a regular Conan O’Bri...

Criticizing Critics

There’s a book coming out on the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth (February 2, 1905) about the criticism her philosophy of Objectivism encountered over ...

WordPress Limitations

I’m evaluating WordPress for my family web site and I am amazed (read: incredulous) that it can’t handle multiple blogs from a single interface. All other bl...

Olympic-Sized Hyperbole

Andrew Bernstein’s recent op-ed entitled “The Olympics Represent the Best of Western Civilization” misses the mark by a touch because it focuses on the wrong...

Pay It Forward

Tonight I was effectively part of the road team for an obscure Seattle hip-hop group. I was in the drive-through at McDonald’s pumping out some Optimus Rhyme...

Entranced

Generation Trance: lots of great looking trance music here, but I haven’t been able to successfully get a torrent going at greater than 9k/s. At 9 hours per ...

Really Stupid

I wrestled a little bit with the issues surrounding Real Networks vs. Apple in the former’s reverse-engineering of Apple’s Fairplay DRM. On the surface, it r...

I Want More

Reading snippets quoted from and comments about this redacted job posting, I wish I could see what it was originally—it sounds like a real hoot.[UPDATE: Foun...

Favicons

Favicon from Picture: for my future reference. {via}

BS, Eh?

The Business Software Alliance is looking for a new name for its new mascot.I wonder what other animal mascots were under consideration before they chose a f...

On Languages

My earlier entry got me to thinking about language in general. Learning a new language is extremely difficult for adults because it requires a completely new...

OmniWeb 5 Est Ici Finalement

Je suis content à vous dire que l’application OmniWeb 5 est fini! C’est une jour que j’avais attendu depuis six mois. Félicitations à les programmeurs d’Omni...

Die Spammers!

I’ve been valiantly fighting those dastardly bastards who would attempt to use my PageRank for their own profit. I’m speaking, of course, of the pernicious c...

Do You Know Gobo?

Awhile back, I encourage everyone to sign an online petition to encourage Jim Henson Corp. (or whoever owns it lately) to release DVDs of perhaps the best pu...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today I’m 1E!

Big Ass Scanner

For my future reference, the Mustek ScanExpress A3 USB Scanner can scan up to 11.7” x 22”. For when you just need to scan in something really big.

It's Hard Being Google

Here’s an interesting presentation entitled “Challenges in Running a Commercial Search Engine” by Amit Singhal, Google Senior Research Scientist. It’s a 3.2M...

Quaint Yet Squalid

I like finding culinary diamonds in the rough—quaint little places that have solid, delicious fare at good values without being the talk of the town. In this...

Review of Bubba Ho-tep

I must preface this review by stating that I am a big Bruce Campbell fan. If you haven’t seen Army of Darkness or Evil Dead II, I can’t recommend them enough...

Review of The Last Samurai

I’ve got a soft spot for samurai movies. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but something about the discipline, the focus, and the prowess of the samurai reson...

Exciting News

I just found out some exciting news but I can’t share it with anybody. Grrr. This entry is just so that I can have a record for when I can talk about it. Mov...

Retro Google

Here’s Google as it appeared in the Sixties. {via}

Terrorists and Planes

This + this = scary.[UPDATE (7/21/04): Apparently, the Syrians in question were members of a band. Doesn’t explain the erratic behavior, but their cover stor...

The Ivy League

Steve Ivy, master of nigritude ultramarine, has finally finished importing the archives and they stretch back to June 2000. As a fellow Phoenician (transplan...

Corporate Ricochet

Looks like Ricochet Networks was just sold again to YDI Wireless for $3 million from its previous owner, Aerie Networks.For those of you not following the Ri...

Copyright Is Alright By Me

For my future reference, Cornell Training Programs on Copyright.[UPDATE (7/15/04): More good resources: Project Gutenberg’s Copyright Clearance, UPenn’s Onli...

Decade of Employment

July 5th marked the anniversary of my starting at Desert Schools. The year was 1994 and I was moving from being a swing manager at McDonald’s (Pima and India...

Stylish Litter

I think that every use of “! important” in CSS is like admitting that you’ve lost control of your inheritance design—you are the cascade’s bitch.

Vi vs. Emacs

The perennial debate is VI versus Emacs. Someone’s skirted the issue by crafting a VI editor for Emacs. Funny stuff.

The Origins of IKEA

Since IKEA is opening its first store in Phoenix soon, it’s worthwhile to understand the retailing giant better. This recent article (and its similarly lengt...

Cosby v. Jackson

Bill Cosby’s remarks about the source of black’s economics woes must have caused some internal consternation at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition conference....

Photoshop Tips and Tutorials

For my future reference: Photoshop Elements Tutorials and Photoshop Elements for the Web.

Gadget Sneak Peek

Someone’s posted the source for some of the gadgets from Tiger’s Dashboard, which is not a rip->off of Konfabulator. Very nice implementation: I could see...

I Heart Mac OS X

Steve, you had me at 10.4.[UPDATE: There are going to be a lot of widget makers throwing hissy fits today.][UPDATE 2: Core Image looks awesome. It figures th...

Sir iMix-A-Lot

I don’t normally surf through the tons of iMixes, just like I don’t look through Amazon Lists. There’s just not enough time in my life. Tonight, however, I f...

What's My PageRank, Bitch?

Want to know your PageRank, the vital ingredient of your site’s Google search ranking? Of course you do, why wouldn’t you?Here’s the steps:<ol><li&g...

Father's Day

So today was my first Father’s Day and it was a blast. Unfortunately, Kimberly woke me up at 5 a.m. and so it started a bit earlier than I would have liked. ...

Gmail Invites

Loyal readers, I have five Gmail invitations available looking for a good home. First five get ‘em.[UPDATE: Still four left. I thought these things were hot ...

Crappy Feeds

I apologize for the state of this site’s feeds. I hadn’t looked at them in Shrook lately and so I didn’t see that they were being presented in escaped XML wi...

Scanners

I just bought the Canon CanoScan LiDE 80—is there a better example of a braindead product name than that?—from Amazon for $124.39, which is a smoking hot dea...

Funny Headlines

Funny headlines from this week’s The Onion:<ul><li>Heinz Factory Explosion Looks Worse Than It Is</li><li>Michael Moore Kicking Self ...

Review: Uptown Girls

We recently rented the movie Uptown Girls starring Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning. I’ll admit that I wasn’t the one who chose this title since, from the ...

Request For Comments: Titles

I’ve been using the same basic template for a few years now and I’m thinking that I might want to freshen it up a bit since I’m now a MovableType guy. My wif...

FireFox Extensions

FireFox 0.9 is out now and it seems like a pretty solid release. Unfortunately, it disables all of your old extensions and makes you re-install them. That’s ...

The Two Things

Two things: this has been making the rounds, but it didn’t really fit the profile over at Found on the Web so I’ll post it here.I don’t agree with the premis...

Codethink

I just realized that I had been developing too long when I closed out a sentence in email with a semicolon instead of a period and it took me a second to rea...

Taking a Good Picture

For my future reference (perhaps more immediate than that implies), digital photography composition tips or “How to Take Better Pictures.”[UPDATE (6/24/04): ...

Maximum RegEx

For my future reference, here’s a good resource on regular expressions and ASP.NET, including a useful library of prebuilts. {via}[UPDATE (6/15/04): The Tao ...

Testify AB!

Seen at Alton Brown’s Rants and Raves:<blockquote>The fact that “Dr.” Phil has the number 1 cookbook on Amazon.com makes me want to end it all.</blo...

Wedded Bliss

If you look closely, you’ll see that today is a milestone in my life.

Reagan Is Dead

Sadly, former President Ronald Reagan died today at the age of 93. It’s not at all surprising, given his long bout with Alzheimer’s, but it’s still a good ti...

Commercial Trompe l'Oeil

Two new commercials developments in technology and visual cognition debuted recently: Nokia’s Wave Messaging {via} and subway ads in Japan {via}. Both rely o...

String.Format

For my future reference, here's an excellent explanation of the String.Format possibilities in C#.

Misanthropy

As a recovering misanthrope, it’s very difficult to stay on the wagon when you see humanity’s inanity laid bare. Well, that and the terms I see people using ...

Freaking Busy

I’ve been trying to post more lately, but they’ve been pretty brief posts because I’m knee deep in a project at work. “Knee deep” means 50-60 hours a week. I...

Bush Satire

It’s like The Onion meets Michael Moore.

GarageBand Updated

For my future reference (when I ever get a chance to use GarageBand), the new update has an undocumented feature that allows you to use instruments available...

A Mac-Less Apple

Robert X. Cringely is at it again, banging the Mac-OS-X-on-Intel drum. The new twist on this is Apple’s announcement on May 19th that it was forming a separa...

Mixed Feelings

There is something simultaneously infuriating, pathetic, and amusing about someone breaking something of yours, accusing you of breaking it, and then waiting...

Empty Exposé

Microsoft Windows has traditionally played catch-up with the Mac OS, favoring growth through partnerships rather than innovation. Generally the features swip...

Figures

It figures. The day after I switch over to MovableType because of Blogger’s poor features, they add many of the new features I wanted. I guess I’ve still got...

WTF

You may have noticed some funkiness in these blogs today (and maybe last night, I can’t remember when I started). You may also have noticed that there’s no B...

The Unseen

This could have been a post over on Found on the Web, but it seemed generally interesting:Watch this video and count the number of times the people in white ...

There's Nothing Like a Good Font

After I mentioned on Found on the Web the plethora of free fonts available over at Dinctype, I found the perfect coding font: ProFont.It’s free and available...

Because We Can

I heart CSS, but some people take that affection a little too far.The about page indicates that the image on that page was created with 1,452 divs using colo...

Google's IPO

The amount Google is trying to raise via IPO—$2,718,281,828—turns out to be the logarithmic base “e” times a billion. That is so cool.

Latest Project

If it seems like I’ve been remiss in my blogging, it’s probably because I’ve been hard at work on Vanishing Phoenix, my new site devoted to Phoenix history. ...

Money Well Spent

Rafe Colburn asks if this is money well spent and I’d have to say it’s amazing the obviousness of the request. It’s especially funny that the questioner aske...

Phew!

So I finally made it into the Gmail beta test program. I was very concerned that I wasn’t going to get my favorite userid, “bbrown,” and would be forced to c...

Moving Day

If you’re reading this, then your ISP has already received the new DNS instructions for UplinkEarth. It’s been a pretty smooth move and the support folks at ...

The People of Phoenix

I'm always interested in famous people who make metropolitan Phoenix their home. My wife used to serve Jack Lemmon coffee at Paradise Valley Mall when we bot...

Yesterday's Adventure

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a mountain—Buffalo Ridge for the curious—across the street from my subdivision had a dirt road girding it that I had nev...

MM

I can’t stand the guy, but you can’t beat his creativity.

To the Moon!

Google’s April Fool’s joke for this year—a lunar datacenter—is hilarious. I don’t think Gmail is a joke, though.[UPDATE: On a subsequent page in the joke, it...

Eudaimonia

Some thoughts about today’s tagline (“eudaimonia’s home on the Web” for RSS feed subscribers and future readers) and the field of psychology from Martin Seli...

Hosting

So I cancelled my Zettai hosting for the time being because a) I wasn’t finding the time to learn Plone/Zope and b) my host reaffirmed his desire to be a hos...

Grave Hopping

Today at lunch I found a cemetery. The oddest damn thing about it is that it’s directly across the street from my work. I’ve passed by it hundreds of times w...

Piestewa Controversy Redux

Looks like the Squaw Peak controversy rages on (and a great site gets taken down by the PC squawkers). The usual gang of blubberers has descended on the Capi...

I Want My Childhood Back

Sign the petition to Jim Henson Corp. to make Fraggle Rock available on DVD and help me bring back my fond childhood memories. Thanks!

Shrook 2 Goes Final!

The long-awaited (by me, at least) successor to Shrook has gotten out of the beta stage and hit final today. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this event because th...

iPod Bud Replacement

If you’re looking for a great earbud replacement for your stock iPod earphones, look no further than the Etymotic ER-6. I use my pair every day; it’s great f...

Oooo!

Alton Brown, my favorite cooking show host, has a blog entry up on his Rants page about Martha Stewart (dated 3/14/04 since he doesn’t have permalinks). He o...

Google Rocks, Reason No. 38

Google unveiled Google Local today and it is everything I would have hoped it would be if I had remembered that they were exploring this space.It takes Googl...

Thank You, OmniWeb!

I had just finished typing that last entry when my browser crashed. Ugh! That’s happened many times in the past and I was dreading having to rewrite it. Luck...

Capital Ideas

I’d like to bring a pernicious problem to your attention in the hopes that you may a) commiserate if you too have noticed the epidemic or b) stop your vile b...

I've Done My Part

iTunes Music Store hit the 50 million songs downloaded mark on Monday. Looking at my Purchased Music playlist, I see that I’ve downloaded 184 songs.I’ve done...

The Heat Almost Killed Me

Today I went hiking further up the Salt River riverbed at lunch. It was an incredible experience until I nearly died of a heat stroke. Okay, I don’t know if ...

Can't Wait

This movie came out of nowhere for me. After reading more about it, I see that it actually did come out of nowhere.

Tax Time

Phew! Got my defunct corporation’s income taxes done today since they’re due tomorrow. After doing them, I was amazed at how much easier they were than my pe...

Down at the Salt

Today I spent my lunch hour walking around the Salt River riverbed near the intersection of the Loop 202 and SR-143 and I had an incredible time.First, the a...

OMFG!

I’m speechless about this article.I’m pro-choice and I believe that a fetus has no rights until birth, so I believe this lady did not commit murder. But I st...

On PowerPoint

I’ve found some more articles on the perils of PowerPoint. The first one has an interesting idea of using pictures in your presentations with very little tex...

It's a Good Thing

Ahh, I’m in heaven. Now I just need to see if Pei Wei has a gluten-free menu.

Study in Contrasts

In the last week I have endeavored to get a Social Security Number for Kimberly because I really want to use her on our taxes. My first thought was to go to ...

Oompa Loompas

Oompa loompa, doompity dooI’ve got a great software idea that’s new.

No Child Left Ahead

If ever there was an indictment of George W. Bush, this article is a resounding one. His “No Child Left Behind” initiative is one of those things that he hai...

No Updates This Week!

I’ve got a pretty busy week planned, so there won’t likely be any updates on bblog or Found on the Web.I’ve got some ASP.NET training to attend from Monday t...

TOC Flight

Things aren’t looking up for The Objectivist Center. As noted by Noumenal Self, they’re suffering from a budget crunch and general lack of interest in what t...

Public Service Announcement

I debated about posting these two articles I found because they’re somewhat out of character for this blog (though I’ve blogged the subject before). Ultimate...

Guaranteed Winner

MacMerc suggests a way to guarantee an iTunes song with every Pepsi bottle you purchase. I wish someone would figure out how to do this for the 7-11 cups. I’...

Source Code Commenting

There’s a fascinating look at the Win2k source code comments over at Kuro5hin today. I’ve written plenty of source code (only several thousand lines as oppos...

RSS/ATOM/Whatever

I’ve been avoiding RSS/ATOM/Whatever like the plague for the last couple of months. I tried paring down my subscription list from 180+ to 102 at present, but...

When Stupid People Congregate

Brian Carnell was in Michigan recently and chronicled what happens when stupid people start making protest signs.(Side note to Brian: I notice the URL for th...

Nerdiness Ensues

My adolescence was shaped profoundly by rap. I listened to Public Enemy, Geto Boys, NWA, Young MC, EPMD, Sir Mixalot, KRS-ONE, the Beastie Boys, and probably...

RIP WebMonkey (1996-2004)

Wow, WebMonkey is dead. And it was an ignominious end, too; a throwaway line in a larger article (someone in a list noted with a chill the sponsored links at...

Presenting Better

Jeffrey Veen has a great entry about making better presentations with a bunch of great comments left by visitors. I would second his suggestions and add that...

I don't normally enjoy forwarded

I don’t normally enjoy forwarded emails or humor-cloaked misandry, but the list below did highlight some of the differences between men and women:<ol>&...

Geetard

For my future reference, learn to play guitar online. I’ve got an interesting story to relate about my guitar lessons thus far, but it’ll have to wait for an...

Where I've Been

Since everyone’s been doing it lately, here’s the places I’ve been (in red):If you think that Alabama was an aberration, you’d be right. I “visited” there wh...

Banner Month

January 2004 was a banner month for The Bill Brown Information Center. We had a total of 21,752 page views for the month and 10,036 RSS feed hits.

Happy Days!

I’m excited today, not because of this—because of this. Yep, that’s right, tomorrow the public beta of OmniWeb 5 becomes available.If you’re on Windows and h...

Apple's Market Share

This month’s MacWorld contains a tribute to the Macintosh for its twentieth anniversary and I found a fantastic quote from Roger Ebert with a unique perspect...

GM Goodness

This is so innovative and amazing. Stuff it, genetic engineering bashers!

Resumes, Interviews, and Things Careerwise

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Joel Spolsky’s recent article on writing résumés, so I thought I’d chime in with my experiences and another article I ...

Amazon Referral Fees Update

Thanks to all of you who ordered stuff that I recommended using my Amazon Associates ID! I just got my quarterly report and it was a gangbuster quarter:<u...

Orkut: It's Not the Risk Country You Could Never Pronounce

Google has recently launched its Friendster-killer, Orkut. It’s very similar to Friendster except that it’s invitation-only, lightweight, and not crashy. The...

Political Re-Education, American Style

Under Communism, political re-education meant torture and brainwashing. In America, it meant Hayek and consumer goods. The contrast is delicious.

Squaw Peak Soon?

Apparently, the state legislature is just as unhappy about the political renaming of Squaw Peak as many residents are. They’re working on enacting a law that...

Heuristics

When I was a kid, I loved books about heuristics—rules of thumb, aphoristic laws, and the sort. I’ve still got probably a dozen of those books and I think I ...

Resolution #9

The second edition of Learning Python is out and this review of it over at Slashdot makes it sound really great. I’ve read Dive into Python, which I didn’t c...

The New Cold War

Reading this speech by Dick Cheney and some color commentary, I can’t help but be a little glum about the future. The Cold War was great in hindsight because...

Interview with a Plone Developer

O’Reilly conducted a brief interview with the Plone developers after their Comdex win as one of the five best open-source software programs. Plone, for those...

iLife '04

Just got home to find my iLife ‘04 package waiting for me. I just finished installing and converting my iPhoto library. Holy moly! iPhoto 4 is as fast as it ...

Fixing IE/Win

Sigh, where to start.[UPDATE: Hmm, maybe they should do what they did with Internet Explorer for the Macintosh.]

Brochure Design

Interesting analysis of National Park Service brochure design over at PeterMe with elaboration at the Corporate Design Foundation.

Resolution Reference

Towards the end of numbers 5 and 6, “How To Select Perfectly Matching Color Combinations” and CSS Vault.[UPDATE (1/15/04): The Daily Standards is another rep...

At the Apple Store Biltmore

I’m watching the MWSF keynote at the Apple Store Biltmore and it’s mostly just recap of 2003 so far (except the Xserve G5 and Final Cut Express 2.0—got to re...

Library 2.0

Chronopath has released Library 2.0 and it’s a doozy of an update. There’s still a lot of niggling issues, but the fact that it now supports movies, music, a...

Once Upon a Time

I recently got the DVD version of Sergio Leone’s epic Once Upon a Time in the West. I had the VHS version, but I figured that the DVD would be the only way t...

Two Earthquakes

I’m not normally a big fan of Thomas Sowell (but he’s a value of yours, you might ask…that he’s my favorite editorial columnist and I can say that I’m not a ...

Piracy

I hate piracy. I own all my software, music, and movies. I don’t traffic in those goods either: if I know someone’s a pirate, I won’t lend him or her any of ...

New Year's Resolutions

I’ve never really made or kept New Year’s resolutions, but I think that goal-setting in general is a good idea. The beginning of a new year is a great symbol...

OmniWeb 5.0 Beta is Coming!

Just got a word of warning from the OmniGroup people that OmniWeb 5.0 will enter a public beta on February 2, 2004!!!Quoth the PR lady: “We WILL, however, be...

Curmudgeonly Things

Food for thought. I wrote a curmudgeonly version entitled “It’s a Girl’s Gone Wild World!” earlier this year.

Red Hope

I’m hopeful that these proposed amendments aren’t mere words appended to an ersatz constitution. “Private property obtained legally shall not be violated” is...

Despair

I like it. [from Rule of Reason]

Faith-Based Parks Initiative

PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) has recently assailed the administration’s ostensible faith-based parks initiative. I’m not a big fa...

Happy Festivus!

That time rolls around again this year. We all celebrate it in our own way; there’s even some dispute about its origins.Happy Festivus, everyone!

Dude, Where's My Gnome?

There’s a strange ad on Yahoo! lately indicating someone named Bill’s displeasure at the loss of his lawn gnome and an accompanying web site that is painful ...

Google News

Google now can track packages, find patents, look up FAA plane IDs, and look up FCC equipment numbers. I have no idea why they’ve added the last two, but the...

Naming

Good section on the process of naming a company and good tools as well.

Cows!

Last night, we were driving down the Carefree Highway due to the necessity of a horrible detour caused by a fatal accident that closed Cave Creek between Dee...

History

“History is the laboratory of philosophy.”That’s a pregnant and profound thought. It’s what got me into history after I couldn’t complete my philosophy degre...

Windows Security

After reading this article about security on the Mac being no better than Windows, I can’t help but note this recent vulnerability that allows a site visited...

35 Heroes of Freedom?

Reason just posted a list of “35 heroes of freedom.” It’s definitely the only list where you’ll ever find Dennis Rodman listed after Ayn Rand outside of some...

Road Rage

As I was transitioning from the Squaw Peak Parkway to the Loop 101, I had to merge with the other lane. I saw a space in front of a souped up Bronco and so I...

Lunchtime Blading

Today I continued my lunchtime activity of rollerblading—err, inline skating—and I saw a lot of interesting stuff.For any Phoenicians reading this, I work at...

Wiki Up

There’s an insightful interview with Ward Cunningham on wikis over at Artima. I can’t say that I’m fond of wikis, but I’m beginning to understand them more a...

Episode 3

Okay, Episodes 1 and 2 sucked bad. By the swirling rumors about Episode 3, I can’t see how it could be any worse and it sounds a far sight better. I wasn’t s...

Liberal Arts Majors

As a liberal-arts major working in a field unrelated to said major, I second Alex Tabarrok’s advice. Well said! Many of my colleagues constantly lamented the...

Long-Term Goal

Looks like my long-term goal of living to be 200 isn’t as far-fetched as everyone I’ve ever told it to seems to think. “They laughed at me the first time I w...

Feelin' the Love

Buy your digital camera and media now while they’re cheap because things are going to get a little more expensive soon. Microsoft, everybody’s favorite (by d...

Passwords

I’ve been thinking about passwords lately since we’ve been needing a lot of them at work and I’ve been registering at a lot of sites. I want to make my passw...

Internet Identity

Sorry about the lack of postings lately. I’ve been very busy with the two girls, trying to learn Final Cut Express to justify my DV camcorder purchase, and w...

Dotfiles

Cool repository of dotfiles for your perusal and downloading. Why make your own .tcshrc when you can start with someone—presumably more adept—else’s?

Jacko the Sicko

After reading this deposition regarding Michael Jackson, I can’t help but be sickened. I can’t even enjoy jokes or Top Ten Lists about this pedophile: he’s a...

Photo Tips

For future reference: photo tips.

Audi Here

A new Audi concept car was unveiled at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September: the Audi Le Mans Quattro. The pictures are incredible, as are the amount and var...

Ingenious, I Say!

A guy has put up a page that allows you to see what your site looks like in Safari. It uses a 400 MHz iMac running Mac OS X 10.3.1 yet it is surprisingly spe...

Pigeonholes

I was eating lunch at Baja Fresh today, I had my usual nachos, and a pigeon walked up in its head-bobbing manner. Having an abundance of chips and feeling a ...

My Best Idea Ever

The best business idea I ever had was grand in scope, beautiful if executed properly, and could have revolutionized the IT industry. I had it about two years...

The Other Superpower: Wal-Mart

This article about Wal-Mart is incredible. I knew that the retailing giant rode its suppliers hard—witness the RFID mandate and deadline—but I didn’t really ...

Nigerian Spam

Now this is a first! I just received a Nigerian spam email—you know, the one from some African who needs you to help him get $15 million out of the country—t...

MacJournal

MacJournal 2.5, by Dan Schimpf Software, is now out. The award-winning freeware has gotten significantly better since it now can post entries to Blogger, exp...

Questions of Science

25 Questions of Science, with answers (or at least thoughtful essays explaining the questions).

Multiple IEs on Windows

For future reference: setting up multiple Internet Explorers on one Windows box. This is the reason why I never installed IE6 on my boxes and I’m glad to see...

Moore is Less

Na na na na na,Na na na na,Hey, Hey, HeyGoodbye!

NUnit Templates

For my future reference: NUnit templates for VisualStudio .NET makes adding NUnit classes a breeze. Will definitely need this later.

The Matrix Revolutions

James Lileks offers an very good review of The Matrix Revolutions as well as a dissection of Harry Knowles’ vapid review.

Old Time Music

Back before there were CDs, there were records. Wait, those were the LPs (Long Plays). Before that there were the 45s. And before that were the 78s. Before t...

Digital Photography

Still printing out your digital pictures like a sucker? Wal-Mart offers digital photography printing for 29¢ per 4” by 6” print. You bring in a CD or your fl...

The Man Behind the Curtain

I just finished watching the episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio featuring the cast of The Simpsons. It was incredible to see the actors who voice the vario...

Siracusapalooza!

John Siracusa has done it again with his new review of Panther over at ArsTechnica. In this thorough review, Siracusa grinds his usual metadata ax but detail...

GooseQuill

For my future reference, GooseQuill and GooseQuill WriterWare. These are fascinating ideas, but I’m not so sure about their implementations. I wish they’d pu...

Greenhouse Hot Air

John Daly’s a Tasmanian dedicated to getting a balanced view of global warming. The site has an, um, interesting design, but yields volumes of intriguing inf...

Panther Highlights

Ken Bereskin is finally updating his blog about neat features in Panther. He hasn’t updated much this year after his self-announced goal of featuring all 150...

Alternative History

If you’re reading this within half an hour of posting (it’s 5:53PM here in Phoenix), you might want to check out It Happened Here on Turner Classic Movies. I...

Longhorn

Thoughts on Longhorn: I agree with most of them. Aero/Avalon seems like Apple’s Quartz and Quartz Extreme, both of which are nice but not revolutionary. They...

IMDB

I’ve been using IMDB for as long as I’ve been using the Internet. I just recently noticed that when you view an actor’s page the birth date and place of birt...

Got the New iBook G4!

Sandi and I decided a couple of days ago to purchase a new iBook G4 before her educator discount (worth $100) ended. This machine is awesome! I got the 1 GHz...

Logo Design

Good article about fifteen trends in logo design.

jpg2ascii

I just found an amazing JPEG to ASCII converter. Here’s one of my favorite pictures of me in text. Wicked cool!

Ballmer the Missing Link

What if Steve Ballmer did an iPod commercial?

Hypocrisy

Dave Winer recently posted a link to his rant about Google News not including weblogs in its news crawl. He posted the exact text of Google’s rejection email...

Quirks Mode

Quirks mode is the Mozilla term for non-standard markup. QuirksMode.org is a great repository about the differences between browsers in rendering HTML and CS...

Phew!

I’ve got to tell you raising two little girls aged 4 and 16 days is a whole lot of work! I thought that I’d be able to keep up this blog thing even with the ...

Corporate Paranoia

I’ve long documented the slimy and stupid things that Microsoft does from time to time. Add two more actions to the laundry list: implementing a feature that...

Blog Vacation Day

I’m taking a blog vacation day today and possibly tomorrow. I imagine that I’ll be pretty consumed with taking care of two little ones. If you want to know a...

Plone

For future reference: Plone Conference Archives. Plone is built on top of Zope and Zope is a free, open-source content management system.

AppleScript

AppleScript for Absolute Starters, a free e-book, comes highly recommended from several sources. I haven’t read it yet so I can’t add my accolades, but it lo...

Pair Programming

Simon Willison has a great list of reasons why pair programming is such a great idea. This is another link I will be passing along to the boss man.

Good Interview

There’s a good interview with Evan Williams up over at CNET. Evan is the founder of Blogger—the software used to power this and the other blogs at the Bill B...

OmniWeb

Does anyone know if OmniWeb has a feature, preference, or option to prompt before quitting? I’ve inadvertently pressed CMD-Q a few too many times, thinking I...

Why Not?

I thought that I had already posted an entry about WhyNot and its accompanying book, but I can’t find it after looking through the archives. Damn! It’s a rea...

Acrobat Tip

Sanjay has a great tip to speed up your Acrobat 6 startup for Windows. I don’t know if it works for Mac OS X as well—it probably should—because Panther’s Pre...

The Case for Python

I’m trying to decide what language to learn next and I’m really leaning towards Python. I figure that I can master C# at work since the big project relies on...

Review: Pulp Fiction

After seeing Kill Bill Vol. 1, I thought that it would be a good idea to see Quentin Tarantino’s other major film, Pulp Fiction, so that I could get a feel f...

Panther

Well, my wife’s water broke this morning and FedEx suggests that my Panther package is on the truck. I hope they don’t require a signature…In other words, I’...

Amazon Search

Amazon has unveiled a feature that many are heralding as useful: full-text search of 120,000 books (thus far). It allows you to preview the text so that you ...

FileVault

Apple’s new version of Mac OS X is going to provide a new feature called FileVault, an automatic, configurable system that encrypts and decrypts your entire ...

Holy Oversights, Batman!

A SEARCH FOR GULLIBLE ON GOOGLE YIELDS NO RESULTS. FREAKING INCREDIBLE![NOTE: THIS ENTRY IS IN ALL CAPS ON ACCOUNT OF INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. DID YOU FO...

Winer Fun

Steve documents some more Winer wackiness. He’s so … volatile.

New Google Feature

Sweet. Google has added a new feature to its main search interface. Entering define before your search term will conduct your normal search as well as provid...

Microsoft and Online Music

If Microsoft did decide to compete with Apple in the online music arena, this “innovation” would certainly be helpful in driving sales. In Microsoft’s world,...

It's Not Supposed to Be Like This

Thankfully, I haven’t had to be outside too much because it’s been over 100° F for several days now. It’s freakin’ October, Phoenix! Something must be done.

Holy Crap!

Three days till Panther is released and I still haven’t preordered. Crud.[UPDATE: Fixed that. It’ll be here in the afternoon on October 24th. Phew, that was ...

Lack of Updates

I’m sorry about the lack of updates the last few days. I’ve got three things I’ve wanted to reviewPulp Fiction (hated), Getting Things Done (loved), and The ...

It's 2 o'clock and all is well

Phew, this every three to four hour feeding thing is weird. I think I understand why everyone always jokes about sleep deprivation with new kids. But you kno...

Blog Vacation Day

I’m taking a blog vacation day on account of my first baby’s birth. Kimberly Rose Brown will be born around 12:30 p.m. today. Updates improbable, though poss...

iTunes Music Store Updates

I went to the Apple Music Event today—well, half of it due to an unfortunate time zone miscalculation—and was impressed by the announcements overall.What imp...

Wha?

cough hack puke. You’ve got to be kidding me. Wow.

Joe Schmo

Last night’s episode of Joe Schmo was exciting yet unfulfilling. Taking a cue from Fox, the producers ended the show with one vote left and announced that th...

Longhorn in 2006!

Microsoft has officially stated that Longhorn, the next version of their consumer operating system, will not be released in 2005 like they had hoped: instead...

Kill Bill Vol. 1: Forgot Something

I forgot to mention that the fight scene in the garden of the House of Blue Leaves tea house was one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen in film. It’...

Columbus Day

Columbus Day: A Time for Celebration. I was going to write up a whole essay about how I think Columbus is not worth the vitriol that has been sent in his dir...

Review: Kill Bill Vol. 1

I just saw Quentin Tarantino’s new film Kill Bill Vol. 1 after having spent years avoiding his films because of the hype surrounding them. I know it’s crazy,...

Dittohead Shop

Not too long ago, the National Enquirer broke the story of Rush Limbaugh’s drug habit. Everyone sort of dismissed it then because it was the Enquirer after a...

Digital Retailers

Looks like the Barenaked Ladies are coming out with a new CD on October 21st. Looks like it’ll be available through “digital retailers” on October 14th. How ...

Review: Anger Management

I haven’t liked an Adam Sandler movie since Happy Gilmore and Anger Management certainly did not break that streak.The story, as you no doubt figured out fro...

O'Reillypalooza

Doc and Dave linked to O’Reilly’s Foo Camp, a meeting of the minds this weekend. The FAQ indicates that campers can sleep either inside the O’Reilly campus o...

Lexical Thoughts

One of my biggest pet peeves has to be diction-related. Choosing the right words is half the battle in communication—the other half being arranging them into...

Windows Tip

I just found a tip for Windows that I never knew about. You probably know that pressing the Print Screen button places a screen capture onto the clipboard so...

OmniWeb Greatness

Today I was reminded of a feature that I take for granted in OmniWeb that I have never seen in any other browser on any platform. It’s Address Bar search and...

Mac Popularity

“Mac would have more viruses if it were more popular. The only reason virus writers target Windows is because there’s more impact because it’s more widesprea...

I'm Snoopified

bblog Snoopified and Doggy-d up.

Kill Bill

Kill Bill sounds like an interesting movie. I’ve never seen a Quentin Tarantino film (I avoided Pulp Fiction like the plague) and the hype-o-meter is off the...

Googlebot

For future reference (when I move from Blogger to my own blog software ahem whenever that might be): Help the Googlebot Understand Your Web Site.[UPDATE: Don...

Hubris

Mr. Bush, fix your RSS feeds. “I wish someone would explain to me why a user like the President of the United States has to have such a jumble of formats.” U...

Enter the Preneur

I’ve recently discovered the StartupGarden.com, a site by Tom Ehrenfeld about starting your own business. I’ve devoured it, going incrementally through the a...

Maggot Uses

We’re watching a program on Discovery Health about the use of maggots in healing wounds. Apparently, their use is becoming more prevalent in the United Kingd...

Review: The School of Rock

Jack Black’s new movie The School of Rock is as funny as it looks. If you like Black’s frenetic comedy, you must go see this movie as soon as possible.The mo...

iTunes

I don’t normally link to blog entries, but this one about different iTunes usage styles is incredible. I had no idea about all of the interesting ways in whi...

The Worst

I’ve used a lot of software in my computing life. I’ve used a lot of “enterprise” software as well since my employer is quite willing to purchase software to...

Slashdot Review

I had my review of The Map of Innovation published on Slashdot yesterday. If you’re here because of that, welcome and thanks for visiting!The ensuing discuss...

The Sound and the Fury

Dave’s been on a vigorous pace lately, wound up with talk about BloggerCon and presidential candidate blogs. His puffery reminds me of an earlier entry of mi...

Apple Packaging

This article comports with my experience opening Apple packaging. For those unfortunate enough to have never opened a package from Apple and who won’t theref...

Job Security

I would never do this, but it amuses me greatly. If layoffs are imminent (i.e., management starts asking for thorough documentation of everything after a bad...

EgoCon

Ultimate conference, new vocabulary? No and no. Lots of prior art there.

The Next Green Revolution

Jonathan Rauch has a new article up in next month’s The Atlantic Monthly on the subject of genetically-modified foods. If you’re not familiar with the subjec...

Review: The Map of Innovation

The heady days of venture capitalists funding any idea with a Web presence and IPOs without business plans are long gone, but entrepreneurship existed prior ...

Dropping Like Flies

Donald O’Connor died yesterday at age 78. That’s too bad—I’m going to have to find some of his old movies and see what he did besides Singin’ in the Rain, my...

iCal Appointments

For my future reference: how to create .ics files dynamically. I had wanted to do this when I owned the pottery studio so that I could make our calendar avai...

Blogging vs. Journalism

There’s a perennial debate whether blogging is better than journalism. I’ve avoided talking about it or really delving into the matter because it’s nonsensic...

Awesome Stationery!

Knock Knock is a stationery site with an attitude. From its Gesundheit cards to its line of report cards, Knock Knock embraces style while offering something...

Last Post of the Day

This is the last post I’ll have today because I am going to some ASP.NET training at the local Microsoft office and tonight is all birthday all the time.Norm...

Happy Birthday!

Today my wife joins the Brown Family 29 Club. I couldn’t ask for a better wife: she’s kind, generous of spirit, demanding, and even-tempered. Oh, she’s also ...

Bill Likes to Drive Fast

Oh boy! It is opening directly across from my work. Oh boy!

YACGC

I propose a new acronym: YACGC (Yet Another California Gubernatorial Candidate). Incidentally, I’ve found another one. His motto is “Maximize the Economy, Mi...

Where Eagles Dare

Awesome: Where Eagles Dare is available on DVD! This is a great WWII commando flick starring Clint Eastwood that you should definitely consider watching if y...

The Reagan You Never Knew

Intriguing. This is a book I’ll have to check out.

Tools for a C#'er

Sam Gentile has a good list of tools for the .NETer that builds on Scott Hanselman’s original one. They’re both generally good lists for Windows programmers,...

People in Glass Houses

When I first heard of David Blaine’s, well, idiotic cry for help, I asked who was paying for this pathetic display. I never got an answer until I read this a...

Independent Radio

Apparently, there’s an independent (read: non-Clear Channel) radio station operating mysteriously out of Florence. It’s commercial-free (for the last eightee...

Talking about Friends

After reading this inscrutable essay on friendship, I thought that I should share my ideas about friendship. Aristotle said that friendship is “a single soul...

Where Have All the G5s Gone?

Where have all the G5s gone? Far, far away.

Animal Behavior

I have two dogs (a Dalmatian and a golden retriever/shar-pei mix) and two cats (an Oriental shorthair and a domestic tabby/Persian mix). We’ve had them anywh...

Python Pitfalls

For future reference: Python Pitfalls, the gotchas of Python.

Apple Ad Parodies

You’ve probably seen all of the Switch ad parodies in the past. Apple has a new ad series about the new iPods. Astute readers will see immediately where I’m ...

I Want a New Drug

I like the extra pick-me-up that caffeine brings, but I can’t stand the side effects like headaches, addictive symptoms, and edginess. Modafinil sounds like ...

Oh brother!

I knew it was bound to happen. It was only a matter of time. The precedent is just too well-established. The product was just too successful to not be copied...

A Different Kind of Pirate

As mentioned earlier elsewhere, today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. For those of you who only speak gangsta, here’s a helpful conversion dictionary. En...

Beastie Boys References

I own the Beastie Boys CD Paul’s Boutique. In fact, I’ve purchased that particular CD twice in my lifetime. If you’re not familiar with the Beastie Boys, the...

Stop the Google Hating!

First Google Watch, which beget Google-Watch Watch. Then Jeremy Zawodny’s rant. Then Steven Berlin Johnson assails Google’s methods. Finally Microdoc News cl...

What We Need More of is Forbes

Today I was reflecting on my recent comments about the Bush disappointment. Well, it’s not exactly disappointment because I expected that this would happen s...

Help! I need Oxygen!

I finished listening to Michael Dertouzos’ book The Unfinished Revolution: Making Computers Human-Centric this week and I was intrigued by his vision. It did...

Fresh Breath is Not a Crime

My wife, a third-grade teacher, told me yesterday about how her principal was suspending a sixth grader for spraying cinnamon Binaca in ten kids’ mouths at r...

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

It’s hard to believe that Conan O’Brien has been on for ten years! That means that his show debuted three months after my wife and I were married. In other w...

9/11

I was going to write up an essay on America’s War on Terrorism for 9/11 but a lot of things got in the way. I still have plans to write something up, but her...

Art and Man

If you are not an art lover, you’re really missing out because art serves a very important function in man’s life. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by art becau...

From the Inspiration-to-Get-Wealthy Department

I know this article has been making the rounds lately, but I just got around to reading it. Those are problems that I want to have!

Analysts

Jupiter Research has a bunch of blogs available from their analysts. I guess their bleating is as good as anyone else’s in cyberspace. Maybe we’ll get some i...

Apple's Dark Ages

This article on Wired is about the internal machinations of Apple Computer from 1987 to 1997. As a devoted Mac user for most of those years, it’s good to kno...

Identity Theft

In an interesting column on identity theft, Robert Cringely concludes with this paragraph:<blockquote>This sort of crime is eventually going to happen....

Dilemma 2004

After reading this opinion piece, I’m more annoyed than ever by George Bush and his presidency. He’s more profligate than the Democrat that preceded him with...

Protect Yourself

For my future reference: Protect Yourself from Lawsuits.

Funny Point

Good point.

Blogger Pro is No More!

Just got an email from Blogger/Google announcing that Blogger Pro is going away. In other words, all of the stuff I paid $35/year for is now available for fr...

Wal-Mart

Hilarious Onion article from the perspective of a Wal-Mart store.

Berkeley Breathed is Back

According to an article in the Washington Post—though there’s nothing on his official site, Berke Breathed is developing a new Sunday comic strip that will s...

A Thing of Beauty

The PowerMac G5 has really grown on me, but I didn’t consider it beautiful until I went through Bill Noll’s photographic expedition over its surfaces.

Two Articles I'm Pondering

I’m reading two articles right now on two very different subjects, but they’ve both got me thinking that they’re related in some way. One is about personal f...

Ostracism

Someone recently downloaded 721 pages from my site. I ask you, “Why the hell would you want to download all that?” I really can’t think of any good reason—ev...

It's a "Girls Gone Wild" World

I’ve been working on my thoughts about the trend for women and girls towards skimpier, more revealing clothing for over a week now but I haven’t been able to...

Style Matters

Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies, has a new book out on style entitled The Substance of Style—those links credit Virginia Postrel if yo...

Double-Clicking on My Mizz-ouse

“Weird Al” Yankovic made what I think was his first concert appearance in the Valley of the Sun last night at a surprisingly packed Dodge Theater. Having bee...

Start-Ups

For my future reference: articles on starting up a business from Barry Moltz.

Data Organization

Slashdot has an excellent discussion about data organization, a subject about which I alternate between caring too much and too little. My hard drive is in a...

Interested in Mac?

If you’re interested in the Macintosh—and you should be if you’re not—go to CompUSA and get their no interest till March 2005 deal. 20 months is plenty of ti...

I'm an Alhead.

I am mere hours away from attending a “Weird Al” Yankovic concert at the Dodge Theater. I have been a fan of his music since I was a wee one and I’ve never s...

Mousetrapping

Just when you think the Internet couldn’t get sicker, it does. I cannot express how diseased a mind would have to be to come up with this idea, implement it,...

Racism Bad

Hear, hear!

Clueless 2.0

My friend Larry and I were talking on the phone last night and the subject of general cluelessness came up. I argued that the popularity of the personal fina...

Misanthropy

I’m gradually losing my ability to suffer fools, tolerate boneheads, and not lash out at inanity. As you can imagine, this will probably turn out to be a car...

Begging for Relevance

I’ve encountered lots of online begging, but I’ve never seen a request as shameless as this one. He actually thinks that getting an increased ranking on Dayp...

The Most Corporate Kiss Ever

I didn’t see it (and I’m really not interested in watching it, thank you very much), but I like the idea of Madonna and Britney Spears’ kissing as “the most ...

Morning Laugh

Allah Is In The House: “A-double-lizzle-to-the-A-to-the-hizzle”—spit take.

Autobahn

This American wants an American autobahn. I’m not normally enamored of German things, but I crave this sort of exaltation of driving.

Richie Rich

Greenspun has it right on. It makes me want to be rich more than ever!

Thanks for visiting!

August’s results are in and traffic is almost double July’s and three times what it was in April—I’m not even including the RSS feed traffic in those totals ...

Peeling Layers

If you don’t read The Onion, then you’re missing out. Actually, you’re a dork and need to press ALT+F4 (Windows) or CMD+W (Mac) tout de suite. The Onion is a...

Apple Site Redesign

I’ve been out of town—and thus largely out of touch—for the last week, so I didn’t know that Apple was hiring Jeffrey Zeldman to redesign its site. That’s ve...

Power's On

Today I spent some time at the local Apple store in an attempt to get a new power brick for Thor, my trusty Rev. A PowerBook G4. I succeeded because we could...

Rendezvous

Doesn’t this trademark conflict seem odd? Rendezvous is a French word for meeting that has been completely integrated into English. How can it properly be tr...

Windows Security

After the recent Windows security blowup, Richard Forno suggests a security bulletin that Microsoft should release.I always read the latest Windows security ...

WebForms

Speaking of WebForms, they blow. I figured that the company that produced the major disaster known as FrontPage and Word would create a WebForms that was bot...

WebForms and Guerrilla .NET

All that we’ve got left to cover is “Win32/COM Interoperation” and so I figure I’m far enough along to assess the quality of this training (heck, I’ve alread...

OpenCourseWare

Two years ago, I read about MIT open-sourcing its coursework and thought it was a great idea. I went there immediately and saw practically nothing of interes...

Last Day in Torrance

Yesterday’s ASP.NET stuff was most illuminating. I can’t wait to do this stuff for real! Today we’re going over WebForms and events, security, and COM intero...

Need Power

Like the East Coast, I am without power for Thor, my PowerBook G4. Yet another power pack burnt out yesterday and so it’s off to the Apple Store to beg and p...

Like a Cruise without the Boat

When the DevelopMentor guys said that the food in this class was like a cruise, everyone chuckled. I understand why they said that, couple the buffet-style m...

Investigating Zope

My free time at this training experience has been occupied with learning about Zope for a possible future business idea. That is one sweet application and it...

Training

I’ll admit that I thought the 9 to 9 schedule of the training was a gimmick and wouldn’t actually transpire. Happily, it wasn’t and it does. We worked until ...

In Training

I had my first experience with SuperShuttle yesterday. Wow! I didn’t think that a big-ass van would be able to be driven like a cab in Mexico. I was very wro...

Going to Cali!

I’m packing for my trip to Torrance, California right now and just about ready to head off for the short hop to LAX. I’m not entirely sure what my connectivi...

Review: The Millionaire Next Door

I just finished reading The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. This is a book whose hype has long passed—I consciously avoided ...

Great idea!

I like Kevin Kelly’s new idea of a recommendations blog. It’s not a new idea, but I think it’s new to aggregate and focus on them. I wonder if a MetaFilter-s...

Love that Commercial!

While watching the X Games last night, I saw a commercial for Joe Boxer that I hadn’t seen before that featured a dancing, ebullient Vaughn Lowery. I had see...

RSS Diffs

Brent Simmons is putting HTML diffs into NetNewsWire. Shrook, any plans?

Heheh

I have a very cool boss. Yesterday, I told him that “in a pissing contest between [him] and me, I’d be all wet” and he laughed considerably. I’m thankful for...

Amazing Race Ends!

Chip and Reichen won on The Amazing Race and the race terminated in Phoenix! They visited the anchor of the U.S.S. Arizona right near the Capitol, Sun Devil ...

Bill Brown Sighting

Wow, I’m on MSNBC’s Weblog Central—search for Bill Brown on the page to find me. Interesting, though not terribly important.

Citizen Kane

A new review of Citizen Kane over at Kuro5hin makes the movie sound a lot more interesting than I thought it was when I saw it. Attention, TiVo, please recor...

PowerPoint

I can’t stand PowerPoint presentations. Edward Tufte, longtime PowerPoint critic, has written an article in this month’s Wired on his hatred of PowerPoint. T...

Somethin' Fo' Nuthin'

There’s a good discussion going on over at Signal v. Noise about piracy of all varieties and the cultural significance of the attitude that inspires it.I am ...

Filled Her Up

Tonight we were driving home from the Red Lobster stuff-your-crab-hole dinner and we saw that the QuikTrip had regular unleaded! My wife had been sans essenc...

Big Case of the Crabs

Ooohhhh, I had all-you-can-eat Alaskan snow crab at Red Lobster tonight. I thought I overdid it, having four plates at ½ pound each plate. Our waitress let m...

Good for Him

I’m sure his little cart won’t last much longer (unless he’s filled out all the necessary permits and licenses), but this guy’s got a great idea. I’m sure ma...

Making Internet Explorer Usable

For all of your Internet Explorer lovers out there (hey Todd), MyIE2 seems like it would make using Internet Explorer worthwhile. Since you don’t seem to wan...

Nothing Personal

I thought I disclosed a lot of information about myself until I came across this guy’s about page.

Career Calculus

Another awesome entry from Eric Sink today: this one’s on what he terms career calculus. It suggests that you should focus on the things you can affect in fu...

CSS Three-Column Layout

For my future reference, three-column layout without hackery. I’ll get to this one of these days (probably subtracting out a column).

Good to be Mac!

After reading this article on Microsoft considering installing updates automatically, I’m glad that I use a Macintosh. This paragraph reminds me of the Slash...

Politicians

I wonder how much squawking would be coming out of the government if there were special gas stations for those in power à la Soviet Russia.

PerversionTracker

I don’t normally write about PerversionTracker, the parody site of VersionTracker dedicated to stupidly-conceived software. There’s just too much good stuff ...

Got Gas

I was out scouting for gas at 3:15 a.m. and I lucked out! The second closest station (SuperPumper at Cave Creek and Rose Garden) had special and premium avai...

Gas Shortage Hits Closer to Home

The Valleywide gas shortage I talked about earlier is getting closer to the Bill Brown Information Center as the Durango’s got the flashing gas indicator bee...

Next Week's Training

I just found out who will conduct next week’s .NET training from DevelopMentor: Kevin Brown, Mike Woodring, Fritz Onion, and Jason Whittington. Looks like a ...

Gas Shortage

We’re in the throes of a full-on gas shortage in Phoenix. I don’t what it’s like elsewhere in the country, but here there’s tons of gas stations that have no...

New Hope for the PowerBook

My 500 MHz PowerBook G4 has always felt a little pokey—quite natural given its 4200 rpm 20 GB hard drive and 100MHz FSB. I’ve looked into upgrading the hard ...

Youth

I was rereading some past essays this evening as I was marking them up and it struck me how far I’ve come as a writer. Oh, and how far I still have to go.I’v...

Minor Outage

Looks like the minor outage is over. From the logs, it appears to have lasted from 5:00ish to 11:00ish! If I had to pay for my hosting, I’d be pissed. As it ...

Macs in the Schools

My wife has gone back to school after a restful summer off and she was offered (as was every teacher) an iBook with Mac OS X and wireless. She opted not to t...

Little Known Gem

For those into marketing—and I count myself peripherally into marketing, by the way—Reveries is a magazine that you’ve probably never heard of (I hadn’t). Ap...

Macs Not Wanted

I’ll agree wholeheartedly with Cringely’s conclusion that Macs are persona non grata in the enterprise, but I disagree with his argument about the motivation...

Interesting Thought

Yesterday I made a comment in the meeting about something being like “speed limits, only a suggestion”—one of my favorite aphorisms (keep in mind that this i...

IKEA IS COMING!

IKEA is coming to Tempe! No more driving to LA!

Power Outage

I keep hearing about how the massive power outage is a failure of the power grid system and that private enterprise failed us. Hogwash! Anyone who thinks tha...

Free Idea

A couple of weeks ago I was feeding my dogs like I do every morning and I thought of an idea. Dog Chow contains everything a dog needs nutritionally. It cost...

Meeting Over

Had a meeting at work today with QBT and Corillian about the future of our enterprise applications. The meeting was very illuminating, but I’m not going to t...

Shrook News

There’s a new version of Shrook available. 1.2 adds searching, synchronization, and performance enhancements (yay to that one!). I think it’s UI is better th...

Blackout

This sort of blackout has happened before. The electric industry learned a lot, but apparently not too much. Slashdot, of course, has some great discussion a...

Blogging Forecast

The blogging forecast for today is light to no entries in the morning and early afternoon on account of meetings. There’s about a 10% chance of a posting pri...

Der Bookenspiel

Got the edits for my book proposal and sample chapter back from the agent. Nothing major—apparently, the editor prefers “because” over “since” and likes to c...

Bummer

My moneymaking dreams (as far as this site goes, at least) are dashed: Google has rejected my AdSense application. Apparently, this site is too personal. You...

Hmm...

I’m a big fan of Eric Sink’s, repeatedly likening him to Joel Spolsky—a pretty positive assessment in my mind.But this is beyond weird. It strikes me as vain...

Interview with Steve Jobs

BusinessWeek has an interview with Steve Jobs.[thoughts later]

Disgusting

WorldNet Daily reports that an official in the Department of Energy was awarded $13,000 after and $7,500 before sending an intelligence report to Congress de...

The Bloggerati

Regular readers may know that I am disdainful of the A-list, bloggerati mentality that pervades the blogosphere. I could never quite articulate what I dislik...

One Old Cat

Our main cat, Francisco, turned 10 years old today. If you ever see a stoned-looking, orange cat in my pic o’ the day, that’s him in his younger days (probab...

Arizona Flash Mob This Thursday!

Flash Mobs have hit the Valley of the Sun. Read more at:http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/azflashmobs/INSTRUCTIONS - MOB #1Start time: Thursday, August 14th, so...

GoogleCalc

Dave Winer notes that Google now has a built-in calculator. I’m sure anyone reading that will immediately think, “Enh. Windows and Mac OS X have readily acce...

Bug Tracking

For future reference (and eventual installation): CVSTrac, a Web-based bug tracking application that integrates with CVS. It’s free and uses a file-based dat...

Silliness

If you ever want to feel really silly, wear a button-down dress shirt and a tie with some shorts. It is comedy gold, baby! (I’d post a picture, but my wife i...

Vacation Day

Today I am taking a day off work to help my teacher wife set up her room for the new school year. It’s something I do every year and it pretty much takes up ...

Ahh, Free Beverages...

A QuikTrip just opened up near our house at the intersection of Cave Creek and Deer Valley, just down the block and exactly on my way to work. This is an imp...

Weirdness

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so weird. Normal life must be simpler.

RSS Goodness

For future reference: Chris Pirillo, the veritable geek empire builder, has unveiled a RSS resource page. Could be useful.

Blog Ethics

Thoughtful piece on weblog ethics over at Jonathon Delacour’s blog. It made me realize that I haven’t explicitly stated my blogging policies, though I’ve bee...

Suckers!

Someone at mtl-hse-ppp201519.qc.sympatico.ca pulled down 163 pages from 7:03–4 a.m. today. They were the entire gallery of pictures of me and all of my value...

Almost Done

I’m almost done with my sample chapter for the publisher. Why I agreed to do an entire chapter in less than a week is beyond me! It’s shaping up to be about ...

Geek Gauntlets

Eric Sinks has a new feature up entitled “Geek Gauntlets.” I only had time to skim it, but it looks like another great article. Between him and Joel Spolsky,...

OmniWeb 4.5 is Out!

The final of OmniWeb 4.5 is out! It’s one sweet release and has been my default browser since an early sneaky peek.Why use OmniWeb instead of Safari? Did Omn...

Training Trip: Approved!

Just got confirmation that I will be attending the Guerrilla .NET training in Torrance, CA on 8/25! The training sounds extremely challenging: class runs fro...

The Power of Blogging

To illustrate the power of blogging, three days ago I carved a paean mixed with homily about my favorite shirt. Today, I receive another shirt of the same br...

Pope Gives Blessing to GM

The Pope has given his blessing to genetically-modified foods. 1 down, 722,509,069 to go!

Slashdotting

Here’s my particular statistical Slashdotting:<div align="center"></div>Can you figure out which day my review got posted on Slashdot’s front pag...

One Year Ago

On this day last year, I turned 28.

XP Isn't Just a Windows Version

Halfway through my sample chapter (yeah!) so I can’t do much more right now than link to this article on five lessons from extreme programming. I really like...

Outboard Brains

Giles Turnbull has an excellent article about notetaking software for Mac OS X up at O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter. He calls the software “outboard brains.” It’s a...

New Blog on the Block

Hermaphroditic weasel Todd Defrane now has a blog. He’s a friend, my host, and now a fellow blogger. Congrats to finally making the leap and I hope you can k...

Itching for a redesign

After seeing this awesome cross-browser, cross-platform, tableless, three-column layout tutorial and its liquid brother, I’ll confess to a serious itch to re...

Apple -> Sony

BusinessWeek gives Haddad’s thesis a more thorough treatment in this month’s issue, this time adding in the idea that Apple is trying to become Sony.Didn’t b...

National Prayer Day for the Death of Bill O'Reilly

Leave it to Larry Flynt for the funniest vitriol about Fox News Channel IgnoPundit Bill O’Reilly. Wait for the image to completely load because the prayer is...

Atkins and Car Dealers

Two informative articles on Kuro5hin today: “Low Carbohydrate Diets: Revolution or Quackery?” and “Selling cars in the U.S. - the inside scoop”.I’ve long bee...

Atheism vs. Agnosticism

There’s an interesting discussion taking place between Tom Coates and Emma on the subject of atheism vs. agnosticism with two followups.I agree with Tom abou...

Paean to a Shirt

Today I am wearing my favorite shirt (pictured left): a red checkered button down made by Nautica. I wear this shirt every laundry rotation that I can since ...

Bill Maher's Back

I watched Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher when it was on Comedy Central. When the show made the jump to ABC, it started pulling its punches and didn’t ...

RSS Controversy

News.com has an article up this morning about the RSS controversy that strikes a tone I haven’t seen since the brouhaha over Winer Watcher. Tim Bray, quoted ...

bblog's 1!

Today is a milestone in the annals of bblog history. I’ve now been bblogging for one year, though I created bblog in March 2000 and never did anything with i...

Urban Legends

If you’re a fan of urban legends—ugh, not that one—then you’ve got to be familiar with Snopes. If you’re not, go there right now and I’ll see you in an hour ...

Where's the beef?

I’m working on a new site today: an Web presence for my in-law’s wholesale ceramics business. It’s so much more exciting than my retail ceramics studio site ...

Funny Definitions

I am not a big fan of forwarded material and, thankfully, the only person who consistently forwards me stuff is my dad so it’s completely manageable for me. ...

Gosling on Java, Mac OS X, and jEdit

James Gosling, father of Java, responds in his blog to a troll with considerable insight into the design decisions he made when creating Java. As a bonus, he...

Pet Peeves: Yeah, Baby!

Watching The Amazing Race tonight, I realized that I had moved from dislike to sheer hatred of the phrase “Yeah, baby!” It came on the scene a year or two be...

Google's AdSense

Google AdSense is a program whereby Google supplies personal Web sites with text ads relevant to the pages content. I’m thinking about doing this.What do you...

Excellent Tutorial

Here’s an excellent advanced tutorial on Colonel Angus. If you’re a guy with a partner you love, you owe it to yourself (and your partner) to read through th...

Tech Work is Grueling

Tech work can be very grueling. Many people completely change their careers after the experience. The former boss of my department became a dog groomer. Othe...

Giddiness Redux

The waiting game is over: I just got word that the proposal was pretty good, requiring only a few changes. Unfortunately, the agent wants a sample chapter to...

Sony's House of the Future

I feel sorry for my cousin Jake, who has to live in a state-of-the-art apartment with no bathroom.

Idea Futures

I stayed away from the idea of the idea futures market that’s generated a lot of controversy lately. (Quick aside: You’ve got to love the title of Pravda’s a...

Thinking Outside the Sink

Kohler’s got a new line of interesting bathroom fixtures called the Purist Suite. The most interesting one to me is the Purist Wet Surface Lavatory, which is...

Inscrutable Weirdness

From BoingBoing comes the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. I love the caption for the first image: “From a Dell computer box. I believe the caption...

eBay Hilarity

A co-worker sent me a link to a feedback page on eBay that is hilarious because it mocks the inane comments typically left after an auction is successfully c...

Copyright != Theft

I’m a big fan of copyright and property rights in general. I had long equated software piracy and file sharing with shoplifting those same items, but this ar...

Giddiness Ensues!

My review entitled “A Tale of Two Java Books” was accepted by Slashdot for publication. Okay, so it’s not the New York Times Review of Books—and I generally ...

PHP5

If you’re even marginally interested in PHP, you need to check out Harry Fuecks’ 19-page introduction to PHP5. It’s excellent and comprehensive. Since my int...

Go big or go home!

I’ve used Kevin Maney’s columns in USA Today to illustrate points twice before, but his recent one about Louis Borders is of a different piece. He always wri...

Neat0 Product

James Duncan Davidson linked to this Kensington WiFi Detector in his blog and it looks really handy. It’s range is kind of limited and it doesn’t talk about ...

Umm, huh?

Which is stranger: hosting a RealVideo of Bea Arthur doing the Urkel dance, Bea Arthur doing the Urkel dance, or creating a page dedicated to Bea Arthur doin...

Right and Left Hands

Funny situation: Ask Yahoo! answers a question about the Volkswagen Thing and provides some helpful links and information about the Jeep-like car whose actua...

Sony's Gone in the Crapper

Yahoo! News reports that beleaguered computer maker Sony’s second quarter profits are down 98% from last year’s quarter. Better enjoy those TVs while you can...

X-Plane and Obsession

I read an article about Austin Meyer’s and his beloved flight simulator X-Plane in this month’s Popular Science (also discussed over at Slashdot) yesterday. ...

Etc.

Good interview/article about venture capital for small businesses. Also, here’s some guerilla marketing suggestions.Just some links I’ve accumulated about tw...

One of these days

One of these days I’m going to replace the badges in the left navigation with some of these cute little buttons. The funny ones are, well, funny. If you like...

Prank Phone Calls

As a child, I used to make a lot of prank phone calls. I don’t know how I ever pulled off most of them because I had a very youthful voice. Unfortunately, ti...

Top Secret

The book proposal is done and submitted. Now we play the waiting game.Forget the waiting game, let’s play Hungry, Hungry Hippo!

When in Rome

For Sandi, who teaches a bit about the Roman Empire: Roman coins and Guide to Ancient Rome. Anyone else interested is welcome to visit them as well—the Guide...

Bush Leagues

Hate Bush and his presidency? Too Stupid To Be President.com is the site for you. The lists are pretty funny and so are the Flash movies.

Iraq is Peachy

Intriguing article in the New York Post available through Front Page Magazine—whatever that is—that discusses what’s really happening in Iraq. It’s conclusio...

FOAFY

Joi Ito’s recent entry sparked my interest in FOAF—I missed the meme the first time around (well, I saw it but I just didn’t care at the time). Quite coincid...

New Meaning to Typesafe

Bizarre typeface game done in Flash in which you smash Arial characters with Helvetica ones. I’m pretty sure that there’s a message here, but the developers ...

Programmer Song

An Apple engineer has written and performed a song entitled “Model, View, Controller” that is both educational and funny. If you’re not clear on the benefits...

Leggo My Logo

Top 250 logos as rated by readers over at goodlogo!com. This is interesting to me because my employer just settled on a new logo. I’m not sure how much I lik...

Back in Heathenville

So I got back from the land of Brigham Young safely. Contrary to some people’s belief, we were never in any mortal danger on the ride back. We kept the cruis...

No posting today

I shan’t be posting today. I know I said earlier that blogging would be sporadic and then I blogged quite a bit, but today is all driving and tonight is all ...

Age Limits?

My personal goal is to live to be 200…for starters.

Move Over, NetNewsWire!

NetNewsWire is great and definitely a pioneer in the Mac OS X aggregator field, but I think Shrook is poised to kick it to the curb. Granted, it’s about $19....

Robb is Back!

Throw away your milk cartons, John Robb is back. The erstwhile CEO of UserLand still isn’t talking about the strange circumstances of his displacement, but I...

Community Watch - Internet Style

Awhile back, Steve Wozniak was said to have founded a new company—Wizards of Zeus—that was developing a product that would use GPS. No further details were r...

Insipid Security

Ever since September 11th, I’ve been rankled by stupid security policies that couldn’t possibly catch terrorists but introduce inconvenience to whatever area...

Change

It’s very strange. I haven’t been to my grandparents’ house since I was probably eleven or twelve. I’m 28 now. The house hasn’t changed much since then—thoug...

Salt Lake City

I’m in my grandparents’ basement in their Salt Lake City abode writing this. We made it in to SLC yesterday at about 4:30ish after leaving at 6:30ish that mo...

Sycophants

If there’s one personality type that I hate most, it’s sycophants. These people are constantly trying to ingratiate themselves with you through flattery, pra...

"Weird" Al on VH1

I’m watching “Weird” Al Yankovic on VH1. That’s right, Al-TV—Al’s spoof MTV-like network compressed into hour-long shows—is back. I hadn’t seen it for a coup...

Important Notice

Blogging will be sporadic until July 24th. We’re going on a mini-vacation to glorious Salt Lake City to visit my grandparents in their native habitat. I’ll h...

Cool PDF Tip for Mac OS X

Peter Merholz has a great tip on how to set up your Page Setup in Safari (or any browser) so that you can get web pages as one continuous page instead of bei...

Dish Network Sucks Ass

Okay, I’m nearing the finale of my months-long struggle to end my relationship with Dish Network. I just got off the phone with an assistant to the executive...

Saddam's Uranium Deal with Nigeria

I’ve been sent proof that Saddam Hussein was trying to get uranium. Bush wasn’t lying.[UPDATE (7/21/03): Someone else picked up my idea and did me one better...

Bush's Presidency

I’m not a fan of George Bush by any stretch (I voted for him because I could not vote for Al Gore ever) and the caliber of our federal representation continu...

New Commercial for Apple's G5

Apple just posted the commercial for their new PowerMac G5 and I have to agree with As the Apple Turns’s humorous take on this one. It seems like a weird com...

Review: Pugzie's

Today, I ate at Pugzie’s Sandwich Shoppe, which is owned by someone who’s got celiac disease. I was expecting quite a selection of food for us celiacers, but...

For Larry: The Oyez Project

For Larry: The Oyez Project has just opened. It’s a site dedicated to the Supreme Court, offering up mp3 recordings of Supreme Court arguments.

Jackass

I’m watching Jackass and I can’t believe my eyes. I’m no prude about these sorts of things—I am, after all, actually watching this stuff—but this stunt seems...

Ants-Eye Views

This documentary sounds incredible. I’ve long imagined what the world must look like to an insect crawling through a grass forest. The closest this filmmaker...

I Snooze, I Lose

157 pages into Head First Java with the full intention of reviewing it for Slashdot and some guy beats me to it. PISSER! Why couldn’t I speed through it for ...

Celiac

As noted in my bio, I’ve got celiac and have a generally rough time eating out. In listing ingredients, menus are imprecise at best and lousy at worst. Askin...

Dancing Purple Hippo Sighting

Watch the oddly-hypnotic Kozo get her groove-thing on. [from MemePool]

Firebird's Value Revealed

I recommended Firebird awhile back and I’ve just discovered a page that tells me my recommendation is sound. There’s a lot of really cool stuff there.I espec...

Kids and Science

I found out yesterday that Bertrand Brinley wrote a novel about the Mad Scientists Club called The Big Kerplop that has been out of print for quite some time...

Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing was one of the few things I really enjoyed about my former pottery studio business—the other being the Web site itself, duh. We did some ...

Review: Down with Love

Down with Love is the second movie from the director Peyton Reed, the first being the fascinating cheerleader comedy Bring It On. Down with Love falls into t...

Yahoo is buying Overture!?!

The Register reports that Yahoo is buying Overture for $1.63 billion.Aside from the obvious Yahoo already uses Google for its search engine, this move is als...

Segway

I was just visiting Amazon and I noticed the Segway HT icon at the top left corner—I know it’s been there forever, but I just saw it again. I decided to clic...

The Little IDE That Could

I just got done reading a JavaWorld review of jEdit, a open-source, Java-based IDE. I’ve been using it for a long time now and I swear by it. Why? First, it’...

Spider-Man on MTV?

I’m watching a new animated version of Spider-Man on MTV. Very strange: I’ve heard absolutely nothing of it, but it’s visually impressive. I came into the ep...

Final Entry on Dave Winer

In a comment on Andrew Grumet’s blog, Dave Winer announces that he’s going to build a new RSS validator that will be open source and outside the control of M...

Harry Potter

I’ve only read the first Harry Potter book and I considered it quite derivative. It wasn’t anything particularly special, but I have pretty high standards wh...

Blog Census

The stuff over at BlogCensus.net is pretty neat. They’ve made available their raw data files for anyone’s data mining. They also expose their tool’s data thr...

Flaming

Does this seem like I’m flaming Don? I’m starting to think so.If so, then I declare this my first ever Web-based flame! (NOTE: I’ve flamed a lot when I was a...

Back from Bingo

Just got back from a midnight bingo session. Yes, it really is this late. I’ll use this entry to reflect on what bingo means to me. Umm, absolutely nothing!T...

Funny Joke

Funny math joke at Uncertain Principles, found via Brad DeLong.

NADD: Nothing to do with those, BTW.

Rands in Repose published an exposé of that little known or understood syndrome known as NADD that I found via Steve.As a content-fire-hose drinker myself, I...

NED: Okily-dokily!

I read Kevin Maney’s column in USA Today—remember when USA Today was a junior upstart reviled by the established newspapers? You’ve come a long way, baby!—ab...

New Blog

There’s a new blog called Crooked Timber that just struck my fancy—it’s aggregator-worthy—run by a group of academics. It’s probably going to become a lot of...

More on Dave and Mark

The blogging world’s two biggest opponents are scraping it up again in the comments section of Don Park’s post on the Winer Watcher. I’m participating more t...

Drudge Interview

Matt Drudge has been off my radar for some time now. I think sometime during the Clinton era was the last time I read his Report with any consistency. I foun...

Reality TV Channel

A Wired interview examines the inception of a new cable channel set to debut this summer called Reality Central.I should pitch them my own reality show conce...

Winer Whines

Dave Winer crows about Mark Pilgrim’s Winer Watch page that hits Dave’s site every five minutes. The Winer Watch basically compares some baseline entry pulle...

Hmm,

Just got the following email:<blockquote>Gud day to you! I saw your cooking on lifestyle channel and it really is great!!! My mum opened a small coffee...

The Science of Cooking

I want to learn how to cook. So, in my usual geeky way, I’ve been delving into the science behind cooking and watching every bit of Alton Brown I can. (Thank...

Beautiful Layout

Keri’s wedding site is visually stunning. Having been married when the Web was just branching off of Gopher, we never got to do anything like this. Maybe I’l...

Why Blog Part II

Chris Locke has a new blog entry along the lines of my earlier entry about why I blog. Well, the point of the entry is along the lines of mine, but the execu...

Talk Sex with Sue

Sandi and I have been watching Talk Sex with Sue Johanson lately. No, we’re not looking to get into any perversions. It’s just a call-in show about sexuality...

Nigerian Scams

Hate Nigerian scams? Many have taken to baiting these con artists to see what happens.This guy has taken it to another level. He takes the character of porn ...

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Awhile back, I recommended an application called Library 1.0 for book cataloging. I said that paying my shareware fee of $10 would help with future developme...

Another Business Article

Along the lines of yesterday’s entry about Sam Walton is a brand new article from the Harvard Business School about successful management practices. The auth...

Wal-Mart Rules

Stumbled across Sam’s Rules for Building a Business over at Wal-Mart.com today. It’s a distillation of the wisdom offered up in Sam Walton’s Made in America,...

Stock Photography

For future reference: stock.xchng. This site offers over 19,000 royalty-free free photos. Cruising through a couple of categories, I was amazed at the number...

Pull Quotes

For future reference: Pull Quotes and the Web. These would really spice up my essays. Hmm, how to make them database-driven… [from Zeldman]

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter’s done it again! The conservative columnist has just come out with a new book entitled Treason, that’s a sort of follow-up to her bestselling Sla...

Blogs in the Workplace

From Dave Winer: The New York Times examines “Blogs in the Workplace”. I have to agree with the article’s sentiments—I could see the value in my company of e...

Hacking Away

Phew! I’ve been hacking away at this site’s code off and on all day. Now I’m sitting here watching TV and hacking still more. What’s coming up on this site?W...

Legally Blonde 3

This should never see the light of day.In related news, it’s trilogy week at Greg’s Previews née Upcoming Movies which means that he’s got a bunch of updates...

G5 Benchmarks from NASA

An engineer at NASA has put up a page describing the tests he’s conducted using a dual-2.0 GHz G5, a dual-1.0 GHz G4, a dual-1.25 GHz G4, a 2.0 GHz P4, and a...

Now if only I liked Hello Kitty!

From Christian Cantrell, I see that Sanyo makes a Hello Kitty toaster. The best feature is that it toasts Hello Kitty onto every piece of toast you make. If ...

OmniWeb Sneaky Peeks

OmniWeb 4.5 has a new sneaky peek out today—finally!—that incorporates the latest WebCore changes. It doesn’t use WebKit, unfortunately, so it’s still of nor...

Byte of the Apple Returns

Charles Haddad’s “Byte of the Apple” column for BusinessWeek returned yesterday with a theme along the lines of one of my previous entries. [Side note: Doesn...

Clever Advertising

You’ve probably seen the commercials for Axe body spray—I think that means deodorant, but I’m not exactly sure—where use of the product results in random wom...

Chernobyl. Wow.

From RageBoy, I got a link to the Chernobyl disaster’s Web site and especially the one about the sarcophagus currently encasing the Chernobyl site.All you ca...

Review: Legally Blonde 2

I saw Legally Blonde 2 last night with my wife and a friend.[UPDATE: I had a full review ready to post when OmniWeb 4.5b2 crashed. I tried everything to reco...

Obligatory Shirky Post

It’s almost trite, but I’ve still got to do it. Clay Shirky—the social pundit with the funny name—has a new column out entitled “A Group Is Its Own Worst Ene...

Chautauquas

Reviewing this book abstract, I’m struck by what we’ve lost. I know that the Web and cable television exposes us to far more lectures and information distill...

Library 1.0

In other software news, I purchased a license for ArcaneWare’s Library 1.0 yesterday after a quick preview. I’ve considered options like ReaderWare and BookT...

Photography

Don Ellis is a photographer in Hong Kong; Kleptography is his showcase site of his digital photography. He has some galleries that focus on infrared shots, s...

Interesting text editor

Billing itself as “the text editor for writers,” Blue:Tec’s new Ulysses application looks promising. Running through the screenshots, it looks like no other ...

Home Networking

If you’re at all contemplating a home network, you must read this article over at Tom’s Hardware. It is dense and informative, worth printing or filing away ...

TiVO Love

This article in Business Week suggests that advertising agencies aren’t feeling the love for TiVO right now.<blockquote>TiVo can also pinpoint where an...

Q&A with Dan Gillmor

ComputerWorld, a magazine I read regularly, has a Q&A session with Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News regarding the new announcements from Apple. I...

In Memoriam: Painting in the Park Pottery Studio

I didn’t post on Sunday because I was busy closing down the pottery studio that my wife, her parents, and I owned for the last two and a half years. As we we...

Apple and Developers

Interesting. Tim O’Reilly has a new blog entry regarding Apple and its developer community along the lines of my previous worry. The discussion taking place ...

They're back...

After a nice weeklong respite, the asshat neighbors are back full throttle. The patio cover looks nice, has been stucco’d, and is completely painted. All nic...

Acme

From Biz Stone, I present to you the Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products. I don’t know if there were earlier ones, but ACME has to be one of the first mega-...

Schadenfreude

Boing Boing hit it right on the head about WreckedExotics.com: pure schadenfreude.The site is dedicated to showing off wrecked, expensive cars. I don’t condo...

Java Learning

I have repeatedly voiced my frustration with learning Java. I’ve bought more Java books and read more online tutorials than you would probably think necessar...

PowerMac G5

In a AppleLinks article, John Farr argues that the new PowerMac G5 is so powerful that many users won’t be upgrading for the foreseeable future. In other wor...

Why Blog?

Yesterday, I didn’t feel like blogging so I didn’t. But it got me to thinking about why I am blogging at all. I mean, what is the point of composing entries ...

Yesterday's Postings

I don’t mean to give the wrong impression with yesterday’s blog entries. I think all of the stuff Jobs announced yesterday were completely pants-shitting goo...

WWDC Issues

I wasn’t there and IANAD, but the software announcements made at the keynote struck me as worrisome. When Apple pre-empted Watson with its Sherlock program, ...

Reflections on WWDC

I think that this keynote cements Apple’s status as thought leader for the computer industry. The new G5 and Mac OS X 10.3 aka Panther represent the culminat...

Watching Streaming Keynote

I’m watching the stream of the keynote and I just saw the most hilarious part so far:Jobs says here’s where we are for 2003 and a panther stalking through th...

Review: 3:10 To Yuma

I watched 3:10 To Yuma this morning. The movie stars two Western greats: Van Heflin and Glenn Ford. It’s an obscure Western, overshadowed considerably by its...

Blast It

Stupid illness. I’m going to be watching the keynote via ASCII stream—heheh. I’ve got coverage from MacMinute, MacRumors, and MacNN. Between the three, I sho...

By coincidence, I am sick today.

In case that last post and the time of it didn’t tell you, I am quite sick today. Of all days, I have to be sick for the WWDC. I hope I’m well enough by 9 a....

Weirdness

This morning I had a dream that I was reading Tesugen, Peter Lindberg’s cogent and pregnant blog. Specifically, there was an entry about artificial intellige...

Harrison Ford's Finger

Gallery of Pictures of Harrison Ford Pointing in Movies. No comment.

Review: Late Night Catechism

Last night I saw the play Late Night Catechism with my parents and wife. I only call it a play because that’s what they call it. In reality, I believe it’s m...

Apple Job Opening

MacTeens notes the recent availability of a Web Publishing Manager position at Apple. Among the responsibilities is “manag[ing] day to day publishing require...

Computer-Assisted Journalism

Computer-assisted journalism is just a fancy way of saying that journalists can use computers to more effectively report on a subject—and not in a Jayson Bla...

iPhoto Tips

For my reference, How to Manage Large Libraries with iPhoto 2. I’ve got well over 3,500 photos in my library and it’s becoming unwieldy for Thor, my 500 MHz ...

Great Googly Moogly!

Okay, whether this leak was intentional or not—and I’m leaning towards intentional—these specs are absolutely astounding. Slashdot, in keeping with its newfo...

Amazing Art Site

The Art Renewal Center is an amazing Web treasure! I cannot believe how many high-quality renderings of great art works they have (23,376 images) and the bre...

UGH!

Blogger doesn’t seem to want to publish my Amazing Art Site below in my RSS feed. Stupid Blogger! I was just singing your praises since you enabled a non-IE ...

Anticipation

The latest news from Mac OS Rumors—did I just say news regarding that site? Reminds me of So I Married an Axe Murderer—is simply amazing. A dual-processor G5...

Bit o' Funny

Two funny things I found on the Web in the course of my surfing:<ul><li>Big Things in Canada: an online catalog of big, gaudy monuments in the la...

A rose by any other name...

50 worst business names. Note: these are actual companies.

Neologism

I am hereby adding something to the jargon world from which I have so frequently drawn: one-finger discount. It means stealing software through Kazaa or othe...

Hydra

There’s a new version of Hydra out now: 1.1. Here’s what’s new.

Funny

DownWithWhitey.com reminds me a lot of Chris Rock’s skit on Saturday Night Live called “The Dark Side with Nat X”. Okay, so it’s pretty racially charged but ...

Top Ten Digital Video Tips

For my reference (since as a soon-to-be new daddy I want my home movies to be cinematic masterpieces, not drudgery to be endured. You’re welcome.): Top Ten D...

Post-It Gallery

Finally, a gallery dedicated to Post-It art. It’s about freakin’ time!

New Kling Essay

Arnold Kling asks if he’s overstating the importance of his most recent essay at TechCentralStation.Reading it, I immediately thought that the file server he...

Funny, funny stuff...

Steve turned me on to Red vs. Blue, an online sitcom. Online sitcom? I know, that’s so late 90s but this one’s different. The people responsible used the cha...

When Will Day Come?

Like Jack Miller, I am super excited about the WWDC Keynote given by His Steveness. I was especially excited after reading this report from MacRumors. Note t...

Steve Jobs is cooler than I thought.

After reading this account of Steve Jobs at the presentation of the Segway HT née Ginger, I am even more impressed with him than I was before. That sort of t...

Review: Finding Nemo

I went into this movie not expecting to like it. I was not impressed by Monsters Inc. and the trailers for this one didn’t portend anything better. I decided...

Wow!

Remember the eighties? Yes, but hazily? Check out this large archive of 80s commercials. Being on dial-up, I couldn’t possibly download the commercials to an...

Heard on Good Eats

As you may know, I’m a big fan of Alton Brown and his show Good Eats. While archiving a bunch of shows to VHS tape from TiVO, I caught a particular formulati...

Two Interesting Contrasts

Two situations came up this week that neatly contrasted each other. My conclusions follow their elaboration.Some regular readers may remember when I added a ...

Thinking about Computer Jobs

Bruce Eckel’s blog Thinking about Computing has a great post about computer jobs that everyone should read.It covers the current computer job market, why com...

CompUSA

After reading Bill Palmer’s account of his visit to CompUSA, I may actually want to check back in. How heartening!

WWDC Keynote Broadcast

MacRumors notes that the WWDC keynote will be broadcast in participating Apple Stores, including my home base. With my $5,000 Apple Loan open and idle from d...

Packet Tracing

From Damian’s blog, how to do a packet trace using tcpdump—for my future reference.

CSS Bookmarklets

Super interesting bookmarklet ideas for CSS. I guess it’s time to ditch Camino and install Firebird.

Weirdness

Weirdness I saw today: a red DeLorean, a postman with enormous mutton chops and a pith helmet, and a lady standing in the open door of her running car being ...

Union Hills Entry is a Go

In today’s commute, I went ahead and tried out my earlier suggestion. It saved me at least ten to fifteen minutes! Holy moly! Goodbye interchange (except for...

WWDC

Jack, I think that News.com confirmation should settle your “faint rumblings”.[UPDATE: Yee-haw! I got a mention in today’s scene on this one. As they say in ...

Review: Etymotics ER-6 Isolator

My sweetheart bought me a pair of Etymotics ER-6 Isolator ear phones for our decennial. Those of you who know us know that I had a hand in both the selection...

Bleh.

My love affair with the Loop 101-State Route 51 interchange is over. It was a short, torrid event but she’s not what I thought she’d be.Every morning is a li...

Carpe Taurus!

Carpe taurus! Seize the bull!Deloitte & Touche Consulting is offering a plug-in buzzword detector for Windows called Bullfighter. It adds a toolbar to yo...

Shareware Authors Take Note!

Those of you developing your own software (ahem, Steve) would do well to read through this collection of articles on the subject I found via Joel on Software...

Wal-Mart Enters Netflix's Business

Since I submitted the story to Slashdot about Wal-Mart entering Netflix’s online DVD renting space, I thought I should probably clarify my statement that “At...

Effective Meetings

Good article on making meetings effective. Thankfully my boss hates meetings and only holds them if he has to.

Review: The Tuxedo

I watched The Tuxedo last night. It was everything I thought it would be; I can take consolation in the fact that I didn’t pay the rental fee.The story, loos...

Printer Fun

Upon the advice of these computer pranks, I played around with the printer at work—an HP LaserJet 4000M—and changed the default “READY” message on the front ...

Credit Card Prank

The folks—err, folk? I can’t really tell—at Zug.com prove in a recent prank that signature lines on credit cards are virtually useless as security devices. O...

SpamBayes: Mail.app for the rest of you

For you Windows users out there (hi, Dad…I know! My own father! Luckily, the apple did fall far from the tree—no pun intended), you might want to check out S...

Back in Business

I’m back from not-so-sunny San Diego. The vacation was great, but we spent way too much money. Eating out for every meal at hotel and Sea World prices is a q...

Blog Hiatus on Account of Vacation

Thursday, June 5th, marks the tenth anniversary of my marriage to the incomparable Sandi. To celebrate this decade of wedded bliss, we’re going to Sea World ...

Review: Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

As promised yesterday, I watched Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Cartoon Network’s interesting new adult cartoon show, last night. The show’s premise is tha...

Blogging Lapse

I think I’ve been pretty good at keeping up on my bloggery, but this weekend was just jam packed with family, friends, and reading. I apologize for the slack...

New Blog Feature

Thanks to Haloscan’s recent reinstatement of registrations, I’ve added the ability to comment on all blog entries. If you’ve got a blog hosted by Blogger, yo...

PowerPC in the Sky with Feathers

Today’s As the Apple Turns scene features the PowerPC 970 CPU in a pile of feathers. I sure hope IBM’s got something better than this for promoting the chip;...

Review: Bruce Almighty

Jim Carrey’s latest movie, Bruce Almighty, suffers from trying too hard. The first few times Carrey qua God uses his powers, it’s pretty funny. After the two...

Great comment on AOL-Microsoft deal

Arnold Kling has a great comment in his blog, The Bottom Line. The irony is smile-inducing and is the natural result of our twisted, asinine anti-trust laws.

Wow! Awesome workplace.

The Salt Lake Tribune published today a tour of Pixar. “We have fun here at work and hopefully the fun will rub off into our work.” Amen to that, sister! It ...

A Different World

Imagine how different the computer world would be if feature karma were practiced (from Twelve71).

Interesting Slashdot discussion

The title is “Is the Seeking of Lost Skills/Arts a Hacking Analog?” and the discussion is fascinating. The article suggests that the temperament that further...

New Addition

I just added a page to hold some lists. The current lists available deal with recent movies I’ve seen, books I’ve read, and books I’m reading. Eventually, I’...

Review: Portland, Oregon

Last week, I was in Portland, Oregon for some training. I commented a couple of times on the training itself, but I never collected my thoughts on my experie...

Review: Run Silent, Run Deep

I finally saw Run Silent, Run Deep—thanks TiVO—the last in my submarine flick click. I guess I still have to watch K-19: The Widowmaker for com...

Presentations

I have an utter disdain for Microsoft PowerPoint, and I’m not alone there. Edward Tufte, the famous information design author, just came out with a booklet e...

IDEs and TDD

I’m always on the lookout for a good development environment. I’m presently using jEdit, but I’m considering evaluating Eclipse to replace it. Dave’s recent ...

VisualBasic

In my class we’re working in VisualBasic. What a wretched language! It’s not as bad as AppleScript, but it’s verbose and seemingly without structure (or the ...

Good Thoughts

Good postings on Peter Lindberg’s blog today on becoming a better programmer. He suggests doing a mind map of what you regard as important; I’ve got to look ...

Day's Events in Portland

Today I went to Powell’s Books, specifically the main City of Books location, and bought a lot of books:<ul><li>The Onion: Dispatches from the Te...

I'm not sure I want to know...

This site showed up in my log files. There are times like this that I’m glad I don’t speak or read Dutch.

Training Comment

My trainer is in his own little world. He’s completely abandoned any pretext of guided instruction and started writing code at the pace you would do during d...

God-Awful Morning Shows

What is it with morning television shows? You know, the ones with a trio of anchors aflutter with the need to chit-chat publicly. I thought the Phoenix ones ...

The Matrix Reviewed

I saw The Matrix Reloaded last night. This, for those of you just coming out of a coma, is the second part of the story of Neo (Keanu Reeves, luckily speakin...

Dang!

Just when I get excited about Java again, James Duncan Davidson rekindles my interest in Objective-C.I think I’m just going to stick with Java and move to Ob...

In Training

I’m at Corillian for some training (as I’ve mentioned before) and this place seems like a typical dot-com environment, except that it’s survived the dot-com ...

The Matrix Reloaded

I think that tomorrow or Tuesday I will go see The Matrix Reloaded. I’ve seen enough crap on TV and read enough reviews on the Web to want to see what all th...

Good Article

There’s a good article on Java performance myths at developerWorks. Slashdot provides some interesting context.My favorite is myth #3 that immutable objects ...

In-flight Entry

I’m currently writing this while flying high (35,000 feet) over Nevada en route to Portland, Oregon for some training. I’m also listening to Superchic[k] on ...

TiVO at Last!

The guys from DirecTV—actually Ironwood Communications (no link), a subcontractor—are here and they’re getting me hooked up. The TiVO unit looks breathtaking...

Corporate Spammers

If there is a hell—and I don’t think there is—then I think an especially putrid level should be reserved for those moronic cow-orkers who use corporate mail ...

Good Comment

I just made a good comment about a post in the Signal vs. Noise blog. I’d repost it here, but you should really see in its original context.

Becoming Gruntled

I’ve spent the last day and a half in a series of requirements-gathering meetings with our online banking vendor. Normally this would be the part where I exp...

Crazy/Beautiful

I just got done watching Crazy/Beautiful and I am really impressed. I think Kirsten Dunst is an underrated actress who hopefully has a very long career ahead...

The Matrix

I know that today is the release of The Matrix Reloaded and that many people really, really like it, but I watched The Matrix this weekend and I didn’t care ...

Installer Hell

I’m in currently in the depths of installer hell. On my second attempt to get DirecTV installed so that I can have TiVO—ahhghhahhgggh, TiVO—and end the Dish ...

The VC

I just recently encountered a comic strip produced during the height of the dot-com boom, The VC. It’s pretty crudely drawn, but spot on in its humor. I espe...

Work Stuff

Today, my co-worker and I received our finalized itinerary for our impending trip to Portland (Hillsboro actually) for some training. I haven’t really mentio...

TiVO Fodder

I’m getting my TiVO installed tomorrow (hopefully) and I’ve already got the first program to record lined up:Late Night with Conan O’Brien in ClayThat Conan,...

First Batch of Rice Report

Mmm, tasty!

Latest Addition to Cubicle

Below is a picture of the latest addition to my cubicle; I think we’re going to have a lot of good times together:<div style="text-align:center;"></...

Worst. Banking Site. Ever.

I cannot believe my eyes. In fact, my retinas are only now adjusting to the non-suckage as I close the site. At first, I thought it was one of those well-con...

Last Night

Last night, Sandi and I ate at a small French restaurant in Cave Creek called Le Sans-Souci. The restaurant was cute and the ambience was well-crafted. Our w...

Google News

Google, the search engine of choice at the BBIC, is set to offer a blog tab on its main search page. The Register has more details.I think that this is a ver...

Blogger from Baghdad is Back!

Salam Pax is back with an entry from Baghdad. Still reading through it…

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

I’m a prankster by nature. One of the most fun pranks is making a sign and hanging it somewhere, waiting for the fun to occur. In general, I’ve had to use Wo...

Weird Searches

It’s time to select a smattering of the weirdest search requests I’ve received:<ol><li>can dustin hoffman play the piano: Amazingly, I’m the tent...

Interview with Eric Schmidt

Regular readers of this blog (Hey Steve and Google!) know that I am truly a Google Friend and avidly follow any news of my favorite search engine.Happily, I ...

Apple Ads

In support of its new iTunes Music Store, Apple is, of course, preparing some ads for television. They’re very Switch-like and feature various people singing...

How to Get Rich

I’ve decided that I want to be wealthy. I want to have enough money to live virtually debt-free, buy cool things without thinking about them, support my grow...

"iTunes Man"

Reading through the comments on Slashdot about Apple’s press release announcing 1 million downloads from iTunes Music Store, I came across one entitled “iTun...

Entrepreneurship

Excellent article on entrepreneurship from Eric Sink.I really like the idea that competition isn’t an automatic barrier to entry. That’s easy to remember fro...

Onion Article

OMG: "I've Got To Stop Taking Lives So Seriously"

Safari Bug

I just found a whopper of a Safari bug that reveals your Keychain password in the address bar in plaintext. I don’t know if that makes it programmatically ac...

We've Gone Piestewa Crazy!

This madness has got to stop. It was one thing to rename Squaw Peak, but to name the Squaw Peak Parkway the Lori M. Piestewa Freeway is wrong-headed. As I sa...

More Winer Badness

Mark points out how abusive Dave is. Dave gets pissed off and asks Sam to “prevail” on Mark to mend his ways. Mark gets sassy and Dave gets snippy.Funny, in ...

Power4 Tribute

The most recent issue of eWeek features an analysis/paean to IBM’s Power4 chip. The quote that lept off the page and floored me was the following:<blockqu...

Second-Class iPod Holders Unite!

I agree completely with Robert’s sentiments about iPod v2.0. If this is a temporary oversight, then I can live with that.What I fear is that we’re seeing a g...

AppleMusic

I’m too tired to blog all of the buzz about the new iTunes Music Store, but there’s a ton out there.This entry is to focus on one particular comment and one ...

In honor of my friend

In honor of my friend Stephanie’s taking home of her bunny, here’s what happens when rabbits meet cables. <via boingboing>

Squaw Peak Controversy

I never weighed in on the whole Squaw Peak controversy as it was unfolding because I didn’t have the time to prepare a thoughtful, well-reasoned response.I s...

Rushmore Review

Before leaving for work this morning, I watched the movie Rushmore (Criterion Collection version). After seeing Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson’s other collabor...

Graveyard Shift

I’m pulling the midnight to 8 a.m. shift today so that I can apply some patches and enhancements to our online banking site on top of the normal month-end do...

More Apple Music Stuff

Yesterday I compared mp3 (192kbps) to AAC (192kpbs) to CD (???kbps) in an effort to decide whether I should re-rip my music collection. Through my tiny iPod ...

iTunes 4 is out

You can download the new iTunes here. Also, iPod software update 1.3 is out.

Demo'ing iTunes Music Store

Jobs is demoing the iTunes Music Store and it is incredible. The layout and thoughtfulness is absolutely amazing and indescribable. Sorry, you should’ve seen...

Apple Music Store

Bashing Napster, Kazaa (“Best not to mess with karma.”), PressPlay, and Rhapsody, Steve unveils the “acquire” portion of Apple’s new “Acquire. Manage. Listen...

iTunes Update

iTunes 4.0 is out!Added AAC decoding, Rendezvous support (!), DVD archiving, and album artwork (bummer Clutter).

iPod Software Update

Software-wise, they’ve added AAC decoding, on-the-go playlist, main menu personalization, alarm clock, and two new games (Solitaire and Parachute). Sweet!

iPod Update

Wow, Apple’s sold 700,000 iPods.He’s announcing third-generation iPods: 10GB (mine), 15GB, and 30GB. They’re thinner and lighter than two CDs! They’ve also g...

Four minutes late to start

I hope His Mercurialness wasn’t wrestling with demo bugs. Oh, now he’s on the stage.Bleh, review of Apple’s achievements this year.

At the Apple Store Biltmore

Phew! Just made it to the Apple Store and I got a front-row seat. There’s probably 10 non-Apple Store employees here right now. I am so stoked about the Appl...

Moist Towlettes

Do you collect moist towlettes? If you do, you probably already know about Modern Moist Towlette Collecting. If you don’t, check out that site to find out wh...

Words etc.

I’m a big fan of words, especially nouns, and I am fascinated by the ways in which the English language evolves. It’s said that there are over 600,000 words ...

Change Your Environment

A former co-worker of mine sent me an email yesterday after a year of non-communication (which I was happy about, incidentally). In defending the actions tha...

Interesting Project

I love the idea behind Seamless City. I’m big into taking pictures; I especially love panoramics because they capture what is visible to a person rather than...

Windows User's Take on OS X

Steven Garrity, an ardent Windows user, decided to give Mac OS X a try for a week. Naturally, he did it on a graphite iMac (400MHz G3) running 10.2.5—in othe...

Panther Marketing

Continuing on my Panther—aka Mac OS X 10.3—blogging kick, here’s one Apple employee’s take on marketing Panther.

Interview with Bob Parsons

I register all of my domains through GoDaddy because you can’t beat its price: $8.95/year. I equate it with Southwest Airlines since it is profitable, custom...

Apple Event in 7 Days

Describing the event as “music to your ears,” Apple recently sent invitations for an Apple Event to be held April 28 to MacCentral. Slashdot has the story wi...

Piles

The Mac rumor community has been abuzz with talk about a potential upcoming feature of Panther—Mac OS X 10.3—that Apple patented long ago: Piles. Someone’s c...

Funky T-shirt Entry

There are tons of funky t-shirts available on the Web.If you’re an ardent breastfeeder, BreastOrBust has got apparel to flaunt your chosen baby-feeding metho...

Mac OS X Tip

Do this little experiment:<ol><li>Navigate to your Applications folder in the Finder.</li><li>Click on the iTunes application icon.&l...

Iraqi atrocities

Absolutely repulsive. I don’t know what’s worse, the brutalities committed by Hussein’s regime or the fact that CNN knew about them but didn’t report them. I...

A Sad, Sad Day

Today it was revealed that E.G. Ross, the editor of The Objective American Daily and a magazine of the same name as well as a prolific author, died of a cere...

Scottsdale Culinary Festival

I went to the Scottsdale Culinary Festival today and spent $30 stuffing my pie hole (and Sandi’s, natch) with comestibles. Aside from the good food, we got a...

Apple to buy Universal Music?

There is a lot of talk making the rounds about Apple buying Universal Music Group for upwards of $7 billion.Why would Apple spend all of its available cash (...

After The Gold Rush

If you like Steve McConnell’s books, including Code Complete and Rapid Development, then you have got to read the second edition of After the Gold Rush that ...

The Myth of Interference

David Weinberger recently wrote an article entitled “The Myth of Interference” for Salon—better visit it while it’s still around—in which he claims that the ...

Kevin Maney

Kevin Maney’s columns are normally a little too flippant for my tastes, but his most recent one featured this gem:<blockquote>The prince used to own a ...

Site to Check Out

If you’re a regular visitor to VersionTracker, you should visit PerversionTracker—a parody site that highlights actual stupid software, paying special attent...

Funny Top Ten

Top Ten Things Iraq’s Information Minister Has To Say About The War. Heh.

OmniWeb

Sneaky peek #2 of OmniWeb is available. After a day of use, I can’t see any difference from 4.2 except that pages render quicker than they used to and my pag...

Mac Browser News Aplenty!

First, Apple is working hard on Safari. The rumor mill has it that public beta 2.0 is due soon! I can’t wait. I’m all goose-pimply. Well, no. But I am excite...

New Blog News

In a move that is long overdue, Philip Greenspun has started a blog. Philip, if you didn’t know, is the man behind Photo.net, a MIT professor, and author of ...

Who Knew?

Who knew dull could be such fun?

Fantasy blog stock market: Enh.

Fantasy blog stock market:Enh.

Fiestaware

Sandi and I have been collecting Fiestaware for several years now, amassing both the place settings as well as various serving accoutrements.It’s hard to fi...

Digital Photography

I’m an avid taker of digital pictures and I’m always looking for ways to get better. I recently found a site dedicated to just that end: TakeGreatPictures.co...

Simicide

TechTV offers up a guide to killing your Sims. I’ve done each of these. My favorite variation on the theme of deprivation is to get the Sim outside and build...

The Things I Get Myself Into

I’ve agreed again this year to grade essays for the Ayn Rand Institute’s essay contests. You get a small honorarium, but mainly you get to see students in va...

Oh boy. I forgot my

Oh boy. I forgot my power supply at work on Friday and my battery’s only got an hour of juice left—ach, 58 minutes! I’ve turned my screen brightness to as lo...

Lunch with Redmonk

Hi, I’m Steve Ivy and I just ate a meatloaf wrapped in pizza crust. This smile is a post-Oregano’s grin. By the way, go to BlogShares and bid on me.Just kid...

Triumph

It took a long time, but I’ve finally dethroned the Yahtzee handheld queen from her long reign.Since “accidents” happen and batteries get unplugged, I’m docu...

Finder Bashing Redux

John Siracusa is at it again, this time leveling his sights on the Mac OS X Finder. This article, which I’ve just started, is just as thorough and thoughtful...

Hydra: New Programmer's Text Editor

Redmonk Steve turned me on to Hydra, a programmer’s text editor that focuses on collaboration.Now I’ve got no one with whom to collaborate—though I hope to s...

Get Out

Get Out is the local Tribune newspaper’s entertainment guide for east metro Phoenix. It recently had its annual dining options issue and it was both thorough...

April Fool's Day

Today was one of my most boring April Fool’s Days ever (well, last year was probably worse). All I did was do the old desktop-as-wallpaper trick, though it w...

Peter Arnett Ousted

Long-time media correspondent Peter Arnett was fired from his jobs at NBC, MSNBC, and National Geographic for giving an interview on Iraq state television. I...

Interesting Pictures

David Crawford’s Stop Motion Studies are interesting photographic compositions, as long as you don’t read the pomo captions he’s attached to make them sound ...

An Apology

Man, what a week! I took Monday and Tuesday off to clean our house (shampoo the carpets, do the traditional spring cleaning), worked a half-day on Wednesday ...

A couple of months ago

A couple of months ago I learned that Craigslist had a Phoenix subdomain. Craigslist is more than classified ads and more than bulletin boards, but along tho...

Iraqi Blog

Where is Raed? is a blog maintained by someone living in Baghdad, Iraq. That’s a blog I’ll be following for awhile.

Wal-Mart Goodness

Fortune.com has an article about Wal-Mart up entitled “One Nation Under Wal-Mart”.I have always admired Wal-Mart for its ruthless application of reason to re...

Dual Monitor Goodness

At right is a picture of a blessed event at my work: the installation of a second video card to my Dell computer. This blessed event allows me to use the sec...

Google Growth

Here’s yet another article about Google that seeks to understand why it’s a success, this time from Fast Company: “How Google Grows…and Grows…and Grows”.It’s...

I just discovered Cox&Forkum, a

I just discovered Cox&Forkum, a site for editorial cartoons by Cox and Allen Forkum. The cartoons are currently about the war with Iraq—isn’t everything ...

World of Ends

Arnold Kling has responded to Doc Searls’s and David Weinberger’s essay “World of Ends” in his TechCentralStation article “Geeks and Suits.”I first encounter...

SNL's Envelope

Saturday Night Live never fails to astound me. It’s been on TV for over 28 years now and it’s still shocking sensibilities.The week with Christopher Walken w...

I am using v64 of

I am using v64 of Apple’s Safari browser and I am completely stoked about the prospects of this browser! The “Open in Tabs” option in the bookmarks bar is st...

Eulogy for my Grandfather

Today I attended the funeral of my grandfather, Levi Ralph Stockton. He lived 88 years. At the funeral, I didn’t really speak up about him or share any of my...

From The Chronicle of Higher

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science” by Robert Park, who wrote Voodoo Science—an excellent elaboration of the t...

The Los Angeles Times broke

The Los Angeles Times broke the story about an upcoming Apple-branded online music service. The Merc has a friendly version of the story—no registration, sam...

A couple days ago the

A couple days ago the editors at NewsScan Daily asked for readers who had blogs and I responded with the three I run—thinking that they would be used for agg...

Since I pointed to Dave

Since I pointed to Dave Thomas’s blog, I should probably be fair to the other pragmatic programmer and point to Andy Hunt’s new blog.

In light of the recent

In light of the recent 12:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. work session after a full day of work and before having to get up to open the pottery studio, I think it’s app...

Apparently, the Objectivist-oriented art magazine

Apparently, the Objectivist-oriented art magazine Aristos is back online. The magazine—though I guess e-zine would be more proper—is edited by Louis Torres a...

You've all heard a reference

You’ve all heard a reference to “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” but you may not know that it came from Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Hump...

My friend Larry recently visited

My friend Larry recently visited New York City—it’s the February 18, 2003 posting (I’d link but he doesn’t have permalinks. D’oh!)From Kottke.org, I visited ...

With tongue firmly in cheek,

With tongue firmly in cheek, I present to you BlackPeopleLoveUs.com—a site dedicated to the yuppies who have black friends and aren’t afraid (or hesitant) to...

Go read the hilarious diary

Go read the hilarious diary of Grammy Watching from ESPN’s The Sports Guy.For those of you too lazy to go and read it yourself, here’s the highlights:<blo...

Unreal Reality

From The New York Times: “Networks Plan Flood of Reality Shows for Summer”<blockquote>The four big networks are preparing to unleash at least two doze...

I'm watching the Grammy Awards

I’m watching the Grammy Awards and the two awards just presented illustrate a striking contrast in our culture: John Mayer as Best Male Performer and Eminem ...

I've finished reading A Reader's

I’ve finished reading A Reader’s Manifesto by B.R. Myers, which was originally an article in The Atlantic Monthly. It is an indictment of co-conspirators: th...

IEEE Spectrum picks its "10

IEEE Spectrum picks its “10 Techno-Cool Cars”. The Chevrolet Trailblazer that switches between using 4 and 8 cylinders depending on load is especially intrig...

I'm almost done reading A

I’m almost done reading A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose and I’ve got a lot of thoughts about it.

Apple's Safari browser just keeps

Apple’s Safari browser just keeps getting better and better. I can’t wait to see where this is heading!

I just got back from

I just got back from seeing Shanghai Knights. I went in with the expectation that it wasn’t going to come close to Shanghai Noon in originality or quality. R...

I am watching One Hour

I am watching One Hour Photo, a thriller starring Robin Williams. It is creepy—that word doesn’t quite do it justice, perhaps chilling is better. Its world-v...

I totally called it. Today's

I totally called it. Today’s DaveNet essay—Comments on the Google-Blogger deal—is rife with self-serving comments (“… the blogging developer community was fo...

Commercial Breaks

I’ve been enjoying several commercials lately.<ol><li>Toyota Camry: it’s got a great background music track and the guy is doing all sorts of thr...

Miscellaneous tidbits: Buttload of Homer

Miscellaneous tidbits:<ul><li>Buttload of Homer Simpson quotes</li><li>Account of dinner at 33, secret Disneyland restaurant</li&g...

The best Switcher story I've

The best Switcher story I’ve ever read (excerpt):<blockquote>And I want to do better, want us all to want to do better. I don’t know what you do, but b...

Is it pathetic that the

Is it pathetic that the vast majority of search terms are to an obscure page containg a posting about Trading Spaces?You’ll notice that I don’t include any r...

Blogger Acquired

Wow, Google has bought Blogger. I’m not sure what to think of this. If you didn’t know, this blog and its sister, Found on the Web, are run through the Blogg...

Funny cartoon.

Funny cartoon.

I just stumbled on to

I just stumbled on to a photo tour of Larry Salzman’s domicile. It looks like an Ikea catalog.

I'm going to make a

I'm going to make a frank confession here. I watch reality shows. I watch a lot of them. Way too many, in fact. I watched Joe Millionaire last night. I'...

What Mars might have looked

What Mars might have looked like when it had water. Whoa.

Book Dealing

Today I went to the annual VNSA book sale. I normally avoid the Saturday craziness in favor of Sunday’s more relaxed atmosphere and half-off pricing plan. If...

Visual contrasts of individualism versus

Visual contrasts of individualism versus collectivism: North vs. South Korea and Earth at Night. Note: these are not perfect comparisons since Australia and ...

Dave Thomas—no, not that one—wrote

Dave Thomas—no, not that one—wrote a great book that you absolutely must read if you want to be a better programmer. The book’s site also has some great reso...

I've added pages for my

I’ve added pages for my formal writing, like essays and reviews. You’ll notice that everything is, at present, available only in Adobe Acrobat format. That i...

It's taken awhile, but I've

It’s taken awhile, but I’ve finally completed the rough draft of my people section of the values area. I’ve finished Part II of The Skeptical Environmentalis...

If you read my write-up

If you read my write-up on P.J. O’Rourke—and a quick scan of the logs shows that no one has—you’d know that I’m a former fan of Dave Barry. In my comments, I...

My deepest sympathy goes out

My deepest sympathy goes out to the families of the seven astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia on Saturday. It is terrible to lose loved ones and ...

Immigration Red Tape

OMG! The INS is easily one of the most bureaucratic agencies of the federal government. I’ll have to find out if my friend routed through Laguna Niguel, Cali...

DVD Impermanence

Apparently, DVDs aren’t the permanent storage they’re cracked up to be. This was a major reason why I’ve been switching from VHS tape to DVD. I had already e...

I'm watching Late Night with

I’m watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien right now. There’s a pre-recorded sketch where Conan takes pity on the people waiting in line in the freezing cold...

Oh yeah, can't forget about

Oh yeah, can’t forget about parody.

I know a lot of

I know a lot of Starbucks coffee drinkers. I’ll have to subtly query them and run their orders through this personality quiz—for scientific testing purposes ...

The Gettysburg Address as PowerPoint:

The Gettysburg Address as PowerPoint: classic example of satire. But the Web’s full of such things.

Wow, I never knew that

Wow, I never knew that the Olsen twins were interested in nanotechnology. Or were worth $76 million collectively. Or scored 1600s on their SATs. Or that Mary...

Vulgar, yet catchy.

Vulgar, yet catchy.

Busy week. I didn't have

Busy week. I didn’t have a chance to read one word of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Feh.

I don't know exactly how

I don’t know exactly how to categorize this site. At first, I thought it might be some sort of modernist “art” and then I thought it might some sort of commu...

Links Just Want To Be Links

Note to self: remember to read “Links Want To Be Links” thoroughly. Also, comb through the author’s site for other such pearls.Note to anyone else: It’s an a...

I'm not exactly sure what

I’m not exactly sure what to make of this article. I really need to read more about neuroscience.Favorite quote, about early testing of the device on the res...

Interesting article in Scientific American

Interesting article in Scientific American entitled The Reality of Race. This is something that I’ll have to think about seriously. I still don’t think it’s ...

Ahh, the hook up. I

Ahh, the hook up. I am by no means a prude—though I’m sure plenty will disagree—but this inicipient nihilistic cultural of casual sex (“buddysex” in kidspeak...

The American Dialect Society has

The American Dialect Society has posted its Words of the Year 2002 list. The winner: weapons of mass destruction. Ugh. I have grown to completely hate this w...

I must remember to check

I must remember to check out Overlawyered, a site that showcases the high cost of our legal system and the excesses that it sometimes spawns, more often.

I finished Part I of

I finished Part I of The Skeptical Environmentalist last night (total of 42 pages of two-column text). Part I—entitled The Litany—is divided into two chapter...

Very interesting article on scalability.

Very interesting article on scalability. This site, getting 15 page views on a great day, probably wouldn’t benefit from such an article. My employer is curr...

Three entries for the Darwin

Three entries for the Darwin Awards:<ul><li>Eight develop botulism from eating beached whale</li><li>Man builds guillotine, kills sel...

I am really digging this

I am really digging this list of reasons why Java is better than .NET.

I've always thought that radio

I’ve always thought that radio contests were stupid, but in merry old England they’re positively dangerous. It’s hard to figure out which party is stupider: ...

Before I comment on Part

Before I comment on Part I (The Litany), I can address some prefatory remarks by Lomborg. He embarked on this project after reading some comments by Julian S...

Freud's a fraud and/Skinner's of

Freud’s a fraud and/Skinner’s of no use/Read Marx and Lenin/It’ll really turn you loose.In completely unrelated news, I’m reading TSE and will post my though...

Speak of the devil, I

Speak of the devil, I went to the library to return some movies (Clerks and A Town Like Alice) and what should I encounter while browsing but The Skeptical E...

I don't know if my

I don’t know if my friend Larry is reading this right now and I don’t know how much he’s got saved, but he better get his ass over to eBay in the next three ...

As a general rule, I

As a general rule, I can’t stand project managers. In my profession (web development), they are totally irrelevant—the last bastions for deposed managers. Ed...

Today I spent the afternoon

Today I spent the afternoon planting the bulbs that I bought my wife for Christmas. In a couple of months, we should see hundreds of flowers blooming in our ...

This is definitely the question

This is definitely the question of my day.

It probably would have been

It probably would have been better to ignore the findings for the sham that they are. Reason has a nice take on the problem. I must remember to get his book ...

In my rant of 7

In my rant of 7 January 2003, I noted that Safari lacked deep hierarchy in its bookmarks organization. As is the case with the status bar, it’s actually a no...

I must have an engorged

I must have an engorged entrepreneurial gland in my body somewhere because I am obsessed with becoming wealthy and being my own boss. I’ve had all sorts of i...

Oh yeah, end result of

Oh yeah, end result of last month’s fertilization vacation: ectopic pregnancy. We’re back in the zone so to speak, so I might have good news to report later ...

After two weeks with Dagny,

After two weeks with Dagny, my wonderful iPod, I've come to realize the true greatness that she is. I always knew owning an iPod would be neat because I list...

365 days of interesting mp3s.

365 days of interesting mp3s. Good stuff so far, but I can’t imagine 365 days of continued excellence. We’ll see.[UPDATE (6/25/04): The 365 Days Project has ...

The one major keynote disappointment

The one major keynote disappointment that I had was an upgrade for AppleWorks. There are some things that you absolutely cannot do (or maybe cannot do well) ...

I've had more opportunity to

I’ve had more opportunity to use Safari since downloading it earlier. I really, really like it. The interface simplification will yield substantial time savi...

I'm at my local Apple

I’m at my local Apple store, having just watched Steve Jobs’s keynote. I just downloaded Apple’s new browser, Safari, and I must say that my experience using...

I have had a busy

I have had a busy week, as has most everyone I’m sure. You may be thinking that atheism and Christmas don’t mix well, but they do when you’re an Objectivist....

Interesting and large gallery of

Interesting and large gallery of photos from Washington, D.C. from another LS: Lee Sandstead. There’s some stuff that you don’t normally see.

I was a big fan

I was a big fan of Trading Spaces on TLC until I read this story on Plastic. There’s also a great discussion at MetaFilter. Now I’m just a fan.Suffice it to ...

This one's for Sandi: the

This one’s for Sandi: the twins from The Amazing Race and a brief interview.

Tonight I saw Maid in

Tonight I saw Maid in Manhattan (IMDb.com). I was surprised at how much I liked it.I’m not a fan of Jennifer Lopez, but not for any particular reason. I’ve n...

Someone at MIT installed a

Someone at MIT installed a sculpture with a duplex telephone link in a common area. You can call (617) 253-6237 and speak through the AgoraPhone to everyone ...

Cool Apple kiosk in Japan.

Cool Apple kiosk in Japan.

Sorry for not posting yesterday,

Sorry for not posting yesterday, but I took my wife on a romantic outing and blogging just didn’t fit into the picture. We stayed at my favorite hotel, The B...

Sherlock is Apple's version of

Sherlock is Apple’s version of Watson. Recently, Apple made the Sherlock SDK available and everyone’s wondering where all the newfangled channels are.Enter S...

Whoa. This is simply unbelievable

Whoa. This is simply unbelievable and great. Great googly-moogly. Froogle=frugal.

I'm blogging here from the

I’m blogging here from the Mac OS X Users Group meeting in Phoenix. It’s at the Coffee Rush cafe and this place has wireless Internet, which is really cool! ...

Google Labs has two new

Google Labs has two new experiments up: Google Viewer and Google WebQuotes. I’m still not sure about the latter, but the former is awesome!

No post yesterday because I

No post yesterday because I had class (my big presentation) and work at the shop. Lots to talk about. Watch this space.

Gots to love technology: camera

Gots to love technology: camera in a pill and tornado in a can. What’s next, an ass-kicking machine? Oh.

These thongs make me laugh.

These thongs make me laugh. Such irreverence on such a small piece of cotton. The geek in me finds this one especially amusing.

Apple is known for its

Apple is known for its innovative designs, but they can’t hold a candle to this guy’s gourmet blend of utility and beauty.

It's 12:30 and I'm about

It’s 12:30 and I’m about two-thirds of the way through my paper. Luckily, I’m on the part where I tie together the ninty-plus articles I found in the territo...

I need to remember to

I need to remember to check up on LiquidMetal periodically, just like I do for Moller. Both these things are technologies that excite me for their potential ...

On the Mac kick, you've

On the Mac kick, you’ve probably all seen the company’s Switchers campaign. In true Mac fanatic style, there’s been dozens of parodies of the ads featuring H...

Speaking of beautiful apps, check

Speaking of beautiful apps, check out YourSQL, the subject of a recent review at OSDir.com. This app is like Enterprise Manager for MySQL on Mac OS X. It’s a...

If you're using Mozilla or

If you’re using Mozilla or Chimera, I apologize for the look of this site. I’m going to be working on this site over the winter break and I’ll definitely be ...

Quinn is a Cocoa version

Quinn is a Cocoa version of Tetris for Mac OS X. I’m a Tetris fan from way back. If you use Mac OS X, you must get this program. Best of all, it’s completely...

I'm in the throes of

I’m in the throes of a major paper due on Monday. You know the kind: twenty pages, original research, boring topic. I say throes because writing is an agoniz...

I'm currently procrastinating on a

I’m currently procrastinating on a book review. I got to an interesting part of the review: what is history? I guess that’s a surefire way to derail a book r...

So I don't forget, here's

So I don’t forget, here’s a funny joke I read on CF-Talk:There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.

I've been reflecting on the

I’ve been reflecting on the events of last year. I can honestly say that nothing in my life has been affected by the terrorist bombing. Oh sure, airport “sec...

I've since gone racing two

I’ve since gone racing two more times and have improved my times each visit. I’m up to 34.04 seconds to complete a lap, but I think I’ve plateaued. Next time...

Yesterday, my posse and I

Yesterday, my posse and I went to Speedway Raceway, an indoor cart racing track in a warehouse in south Phoenix. For only $16—because I got a membership for ...

Looks like the gift is

Looks like the gift is a mousepad. Oh yeah, and the chance to stand in line in front of an Apple Store.

I have filled out the

I have filled out the entry blanks to possibly win an iMac, so I’d like to believe that this line to drop off the blank. We’ll see.

I'm standing here in line

I’m standing here in line near the Apple Store at Biltmore Fashion Park waiting for who knows what. There is probably 200 people ahead of me in line. This is...

Recently, I listened to an

Recently, I listened to an audio book version of Dave Barry’s Dave Berry is Not Taking This Standing Up. It reminded me why I stopped reading his column: his...

Over the course of the

Over the course of the homeboundedness, I had a chance to read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Let me start by saying that I love her Hercul...

I've been using AdWords Select

I’ve been using AdWords Select for the last week to advertise my pottery painting studio and it has been working well. Click-throughs are at 1.5% on the term...

Ugh, I have to use

Ugh, I have to use Internet Explorer to post these entries instead of my preferred browser, OmniWeb. For some reason, OmniWeb’s not posting forms well or not...

It's been a pretty rough

It’s been a pretty rough couple of days. On Monday, my wife and I suffered a miscarriage. My life has pretty much been on hold since Monday at 2:15 p.m. when...

My friend Larry and his

My friend Larry and his friend (I’d consider him my own too, now) Sean just left this morning. (This morning is more of a conceptual notion since this post i...

I don't usually do this,

I don’t usually do this, but I rented a movie based on Roger Ebert’s recommendation. I don’t do it because Ebert’s view of movies is not mine: he likes natur...

Shallow Hal had an interesting

Shallow Hal had an interesting premise. What if a superficial, obsessed-with-breasts bum saw pretty women as ugly and ugly women as pretty. Okay, it’s not a ...

Watched Shallow Hal and The

Watched Shallow Hal and The Claim over the weekend. I’ll update this entry with my thoughts about each later today.

Neat Invention Alert

Neat Invention Alert: the Hypersonic Sound System broadcasts sound in a tight narrow beam that only those in the path of that beam can hear. And no one else....

ColdFusion Best Practices from Benoit

ColdFusion Best Practices from Benoit Hediard. This page covers some of his personal guidelines on using CFCs, custom tags, UDFs, and cfincludes. Site has so...

Watched U-571 last night. For

Watched U-571 last night. For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of war movies lately—Das Boot, Crimson Tide, and The Caine Mutiny most recently. I think ...

Review of The Caine Mutiny

Last night I watched The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart and Fred MacMurray. It was shown on TCM’s Essentials series. The series, hosted by Rob Reiner, sho...

Today is my birthday. I

Today is my birthday. I can’t believe I’m 28. Wow.

As you can see, it's

As you can see, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted last. I kept the first post to both document my early entry into the blogging world and to show that I oft...

Well, here it is. The

Well, here it is. The initial public offering of my own thoughts.