Wednesday, September 29, 2004

AP Wire | 09/26/2004 | 'Wikis' Offer Knowledge-Sharing Online

Article on wikis. They are starting to become somewhat mainstream. Mentions a few public wikis, which should be easy enough to find with google. I think they are very cool.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Monday, September 27, 2004

What’s So Extreme About Extreme Programming?

Although we don't follow the XP methodology, we use some of its practices and techniques.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Man arrested for going 140 mph over limit - (United Press International)Wow

Wow... 205 MPH on a motorcyle. Cool. :)

And another link.

Creature of Habit

Its amazing sometimes to me to realize what a creature of habit I am. I usually have about 15 to 20 windows open on my laptop at once. I'm on XP and using titles that cascade, i.e., all xterms take up one spot in the task bar, all Outlook windows take up one spot, etc. I usually open these in a particular order. This morning I did not, and it has been confusing me all morning. Sure... the icons look totally different, but if I want to bring up a mozilla window, I by habit start to click on the icon that is in the first few positions... but today it is at position 6. This has been throwing me off all morning.

So... yeah, the difference in icons is a visual clue, but one that obviously (for me) takes much more thought than just "knowing" what position the task is in.

Monday, September 20, 2004

The New York Times > Business > Executives Say MCI Is Looking for Buyers

MCI and its advisers are considering whether to try to sell the company whole, or to sell it in parts by splitting its more attractive business services

Well I'm not going to start worrying about it. Life would go on. Whether better or worse, it just depends on who bought us...

Two new recipes

As promised, I added two new recipes on my recipe blog: Fresh Tuna Cerviche and Grilled Pork Loin with Asian Peach Sauce. Served both of them last night, they were a big hit. Not that they are something you'd usually serve together, but we usually play cards on Sunday night and its just a mix of foods. I also made Brushetta... so yeah, quite the mix. Italian, Costa Rican and Asian. :)

And it was the first time I've used my hand-held blener. It was sooo cool! :) And as noted on the peach sauce recipe, the sauce could have easily been turned into a soup. I'm thinking that with my new found joy in using my hand blender, I might be making a number of soups this fall. Both cold and Hot. Peach, pumpkin, butternut squash (which they had a ton of at the Farmer's Market last weekend). Yum!

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Virtual life influences real life

About a month or so ago I was talking about sushi on Pern. We started talking about ways of eating fish and so I made up a Tuna Cervichi recipie - made with fresh yellow fin. I've had cervichi before - canned tuna and also shrimp, but never with raw tuna. Well a few folks tried it and they all loved it. Since that was all in a virtual world, I figured I should really make my recipe, just to see if it tasted any good. :) Its "curing" right now.

Also Tif was talking to me about an idea for Pern where they would have a surplus of some food item and then make all kinds of dishes with it. "How many ways can you serve peaches." Just some ideas we were kicking around.

So today I bought some peaches at the farmers market.... What to do with them. Didn't want to do cobbler... and I'll probably be grilling some pork loin tomorrow... Hmm...! A Peach BBQ Sauce! Yeah!

So I cooked up the peaches with some leeks, garlic, ginger, five spice powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Let it simmer for a while, then blended it up a "boat motor" (as Emril calls it). Made into a nice puree. Tasted it. YUM! Actually it would almost work well as a soup... I might have to try that - leave out the leeks and garlic, add in some cream.

All of a sudden Pern has me in a cooking mood.

I copied down what I put in all of this, so I'll post it on my recipe site... within the next week or so. (Maybe tonight, we'll see...)

Thursday, September 16, 2004

W00t - Wikipedia

Just in case you wonder where w00t came from. :)

Scammers use Gmail invite as phishing hook | CNET News.com

Scammers have caught on to the allure of Gmail and are using the Google e-mail service for a "phishing" scam to harvest e-mail addresses and passwords.


As always... don't away a password just because someone asks. Also, if anyone has used gmail for a while, they know what an invite looks like, and it never comes in the form of an email msg.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Yahoo! News - Student Collects Fake Parking Fines

A fraternity member has been busted for apparently finding a unique way to supplement his college income — fake parking tickets.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Cold Smoked Halibut

A friend and work went on a fishing trip to Alaska. I'm sitting here eating a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese and cold smoked halibut. Yeah... life is good. :)

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Wow

I lost a button off my shirt and Tina is sitting there sewing it back on. Wow... what a cutie.

Knowledge Engineering

Knowledge Engineering is so important to writing a good rules system, neural net, etc. And because it is a people thing, rather than a computer thing, it can be hard.

One of the hard aspects is getting reliable feedback. We have discussed it before. Sure, you can put up some dialog box or something for manual feedback... but then you are relying on the human.

User1: So, when I edit this screen I select an importance between 1 and 10.
User2: Really? I just always take the default.

And so there is the rub... You can only do so much with a computer, and then it is up to the human to do the right thing. Or course you can spend tons of software development time trying to make this as reliable and painless as possible...

Monday, September 06, 2004

I'm a sucker for a lemonade stand

Show me a lemonade stand with little kids and I'll stop just about every time. Driving down the road today and there are two little kids sitting there with an awesome looking stand. (Some parent probably spent an hour making it). They've got their little beach umbrellas over it, Beanie Babies and Dolls everywhere.

I pull over and their eyes light up.

"I'll take a lemonade."
"Would you like a Beanie Baby, their only 25 cents?"
"No thanks."
I hand them a buck and start to walk away,
"Would you like your change?" (it only costs 25 cents)
"No thanks."
"THANK YOU".

Made a couple of kids day, well at least minute, by giving them a whole dollar.

Yeah... so me some kids dreaming of getting rich, sitting out in the hot sun trying to sell lemonade, and I'll stop every time. Its worth the look on their faces. :)

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Amber Alert

The Ambert Alert was just messing my color scheme up way too much. I still have it on my blog, but I've moved it to the bottom. I just don't have time to mess with the colors right now...

Also, noticed that Blogger is no longer putting ads on the top of my blog, but has a nav-bar. I changed it to grey.

Things seem to be settling down at work some, so hopefully I'll be around more, catch up on some of the blogs that I haven't followed forever, etc.

Well... gotta meet someone at Starbucks for coffee (yum). Later...

Whole Foods

I went to the Whole Foods store the other day. Wow, what a great place. They have some very cool, and very fresh, stuff there.

Last night we had Heirloom Tomatoes with Fresh Basil and Fresh Mozzeralla cheese. Drizzeled some Olive Oil on them and sprinkled them with Kosher Salt, Pepper and Oregano.

We also had Shrim Cocktail with Celery Sticks and grilled Shrimp dusted with St Louis Chicken/Rib Rub, dipped in melted garlic butter.

Its been so rainy/cool this summer. But yesterday was sunny and hot. It was a great summer / cook-out meal. Yum.

Oh, and I also had a small seared Garlic Sesame Seed Tuna steak. :)

That store is dangerous, I always buy tons of stuff when I go in there.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Yahoo! News - Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All

I would love it if the Springs offered this. I have WiFi in my house, but being able to access from anywhere would be so cool. :)