Monday, August 29, 2005

Wired News: Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!

Google seemed to do this just fine with its google portal, gmail and Blogger. When Blogged was bought out by google, we weren't forced to start logging into google to get to Blogger, or log into our gmail account, etc.

I understand the underlying idea - from the company point of view, but it doesn't seem necessary.

That's just crazy!

I'm proceeding down the checkout line with my lunch at work, and I overhear the following conversation between the cashier and a friend of hers, as she rings me up.

W: Well maybe if they just played the music and didn't sing the words.
C: I don't know
W: Well maybe it would be quiter that way
C: I don't know. Originally they wanted to do Knocking on Heaven's Door, but she said that was too loud - so told them they had to do a song by Gun 'n Roses.
W: What? That's just crazy!
C: I know. I've never heard anything like it before. Its just crazy!

Friday, August 26, 2005

Tarragon Roasted Chicken

Made Tarragon Roasted Chicken a week ago Tuesday. Jaime told someone at work and she keeps asking me to post the recipe. (Well she asked me to write it down, but what would be the sense in that, when I can post it? ;) ) So - I finally got around to it today, while taking a break from working on the yard.

Or course now I'm really hungry and thinking how good it would be for dinner! :)

Home Depot is alright

Any place I can get a freshly grilled brat at 9:30 in the morning is alright in my book. :)

(/me grabs new weed-eater line and goes back to working in the yard).

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Yeah... its just a Def Leppard kind of day.

As you can tell from my previous post... its one of those days. Well really weeks. I can tell quite a bit about what kind of mood I'm in, by the music I listen to. I go back and forth between things like Evanescence, Avril Lavine (sp?), etc.; Worship music; and hard rock like Def Leppard, Van Halen, Aerosmith, etc.

I'm currently in a hard rock frame of mind.

Rarely is doing the wrong thing, the right thing to do

Living mostly in a technical world (as a Software Architect), and having a certain amount of control; I can almost always do "the right thing". And even when I have to maybe let something go because it isn't pure or perfect, I have a good enough reason for doing so. But it is vary rare.

I don't get the management philosophy that doing the wrong technical thing, is the right thing to do, because it appeases more people. "We know that is the right thing. And you know that is the right thing. But some people are having issues with pursuing that course... so tell them their way is right. Even though all the senior level people know it is wrong. It will make them feel better." And then there are the explanations about how polictically or feel-good or group-dynamic wise - it is right, even though it is wrong. I just don't get it or buy it. I think that just promotes people continuing to do the wrong thing, and not learning.

But what do I know... I'm not in management. And part of me hopes I never get pointy-haired enough where I understand it either...

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Monday, August 22, 2005

Scenes from a rain storm

Driving home the other day, the rain is POURING down.

  • Man bent over on his bike, pedaling for all he is worth, trying not to get blown over. - reminds me of Tif getting swept off her bike in a storm.
  • Man waiting for the bus, hair slicked to his head, water pouring off his clothes, looking up the street with a "I just know its going to be late" forlorn look on his face
  • Pulling up to the stop light, Teen jumps out of his Jeep, no shirt, and quickly tries to get his top on before the light changes
  • flashing lights, sprinkles of broken tail/head lights everywhere, watch out for the wreak - and then a boom of thunder that makes you almost jump out of your skin - as the entire scene is highlighted by the lightening. Sigh of relief as it fades into the background, having made it past another wreak in this weather.
  • Double rainbow - for every bad thing, there is a good thing
  • Looking over at the empty seat, where my jacket laid for a week, but then I'm finally took it into the house becase, hey... who knows when it will rain again. Sigh

Flashback

Driving down the streat the other day... I notice a woman walking on the sidewalk, baby on hip, looking down at something. I glance down and there is a little, blonde, curly haired 2 - 4 year old, leaned over, pointing at some trash on the ground and then turning to look up at her mom.

In a flash I remember back to Ann Arbor... Tina telling me that her and Tif were walking to the store. Walking on the sidewalk, chainlink fence along a field, all kinds of trash blown up against it. Tif looks at the trash, then looks up at Tina with her "intent - I'm only 4 but I say things from a 30 year old" look pouring out of her piercing blue eyes.
Mommy, does it make God sad when people litter?"
Then I'm back in my car driving down the street again. Man... what makes a 4 year old "get it" so much, and ask such a question. I don't know. But I'm glad she did. One great thing about your kids - they can be such cool people.

Love ya sis.

RUP vs XP

A very good article (well actually a chapter in a book) by Robert Martin on the Rational Unified Process vs XP. In addition to the comparison, it also contains the Developer Bill of Rights and Customer Bill of Rights, which is cool.

As an aside... I accidently posted this to my photo blog. Sometimes BlogThis just seems to pick the wrong page... and I'm hardly ever paying attention. Oh well.

defective yeti: PIC 20

defective yeti: PIC 20: "I dunno -- this doesn't seem like the target demographic for Gibson. If we were guitar players we would have had girlfriends in high school, instead seeking solace in our Commodore 64s."

That cracked me up. I've been on reading mailing lists quite a bit, and haven't kept up on blogging. Erika mentioned there was some good stuff on DefectiveYeti. I'm glad I checked it out. :)

Sunday, August 21, 2005

An Extreme Stake in the Ground

Although the XP mail list is very active, its well worth belonging to. I can't read every entry, but I'm trying, and I'm finding great things like this.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Meteor 'Outburst' Expected Friday Morning - Yahoo! News

Meteor 'Outburst' Expected Friday Morning - Yahoo! News: "For as long as records exist, the Perseid meteor showers have always been strong. This summer's Perseid shower will be exceptional. The moon is mostly out of the way later in the night, and higher-than-normal activity rates are expected over the United States."

Athought it was the best this morning, maybe it will still be good for a number of days. I didn't hear about this until just now... And I've been up before dawn every morning. I'll have to read this in more detail to see what hours.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Ex-WorldCom CFO Gets 5 Years in Prison - Yahoo! News

Another one bites the dust

Unhappiness drives open source adoption - Computer Business Review

Unhappiness drives open source adoption - Computer Business Review: "A common reason why more governments and enterprises around the world are moving to open source software is unhappiness, it was revealed during a panel discussion at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday"

Monday, August 08, 2005

CBC Arts: TV anchor Peter Jennings dies at age 67

CBC Arts: TV anchor Peter Jennings dies at age 67: "
Tributes were pouring in Monday for Peter Jennings, the Canadian-born anchor of ABC's flagship network news program for more than two decades, who died from lung cancer over the weekend."

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Qwest and Public Safety Officials Encourage ''ICE'' (in Case of Emergency) Entry on Wireless Phones - Forbes.com

Qwest is encoraging people to put an ICE entry in their cell phones. Started in England. Which is cool in that it is a world wide (or at least not just US) idea. So could possibly be of use when travelling internationallly.

I'm so aware

I'm so aware of my surroundings. I usually work in the dinning room, sitting at the end of the table and working on my laptop, over WiFi.

In the past, on the weekend, when I've left the machine on for extended periods of time, its gotten pretty hot and weired out a bit. So I come up with this enlightened plan this morning (as I'm about to head out for a massage).

I'll jury-rig it by sitting it on a cooling rack, which should let some air under it. (This is where the chef/hacker connection comes together ;)) - But that might dent the pine table... so I'll stick the rack on a placemat. That should help things.

I figure I'll pull a place-mat off the bar, so I grab the cooling rack, look over at the bar and just kind of stare at it for 30 seconds... "OK... there are no placemats on the bar. That is weird. Tina always has placemats on the bar." And then I start getting flashbacks of me preping food on the bar, or filling plates off the bar, for the LAST FEW MONTHS or so - and realize. "Hmm... she stopped putting placemats on the bar months ago. Weird that it just now registed it self with my conscience."

Yeah... there are lots of little details that my brain captures and stores away, but fails to make me aware of.

Happy Birthday to Me - Part 2

Last Tuesday Jaime and I went out on the town for my birthday. We went to Jun's and had sushi, then went and saw The Island, then went to Cold Stone after and got ice cream.

And she *paid* for it all. The coolness of having a daughter who now has a good job. :)

It was an awesome night. Just hanging out, having sushi, going to the movies, etc. We need to do it more often, it was so fun. And just a great "daddy/daughter" time. :)

We both thought The Island was pretty good. And we both enjoyed the sushi. Although it was the first time we had a Spider Roll. It looked interesting, but we didn't realize it was *soft shell* crab, not just regular crab. First time either one of us had that... and it was a little strange. I think the mutual feeling was, "Well that was interesting, but not sure I'd ever get it again."

Anyway - a great time. Love ya babe!

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

What Business Can Learn from Open Source: "If you could measure how much work people did, many companies wouldn't need any fixed workday. You could just say: this is what you have to do. Do it whenever you like, wherever you like. If your work requires you to talk to other people in the company, then you may need to be here a certain amount. Otherwise we don't care."

Once again, I'm lucky enough to be in a pretty good position. While perhaps not as much freedom as the above, I have close to it. Other than when there are scheduled meetings, I can pretty much come in when I want. Probably conditioned by years of working in a large company, I do show up before lunch and stay until at least 5:00 or 6:00, but no one is telling me to. And if I'm being fairly productive and home and in the middle of something, sometimes I won't go in at all.

Its kind of amazing "what you can get away with", if you are really productive. :)

Wired News: An Insider's View of 'Ciscogate'

Wired News: An Insider's View of 'Ciscogate': "Lynn knew that Cisco had fixed the problem he found and stopped distributing the vulnerable code, but he was deeply concerned that the company did not do nearly enough to persuade its customers to upgrade promptly, or to explain to them why upgrading was necessary."

Well everyone knows now. Now that they sued him, its the hot topic.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Enter the infobot

We just starting running an infobot at work on one of our irc channels. So far it is just amusing. But I can see how it could be helpful.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Whitedust: VoIP Security: Uncovered

Whitedust: VoIP Security: Uncovered: "VoIP insecuritywill most likely progress to the point where answering an incoming call could infect your OS with a VoIP enabled virus."

Article on VoIP, giving some backround on what it is and security wrt PSTN, etc. I thought the above statement was interesting. I hadn't really thought about that.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Soft sell

A discussion by RMS on software pattents, something he is very opposed to. I'm not sure how I feel about it - given I have 3 of them. :) - Mostly I think it is cool for the recognition factor, i.e., ego I guess. "Hey... I've got 3 patents, that's cool." - He is against them, in my understanding, because they take software copyrights a step further. Not only can't you copy the software, but you can't even re-engineer it. So for instance I see a program that does some cool thing - and I can't copy it, but I don't want to pay for it. Or I want to add some stuff to it and decide - we'll its not Open Source, so I can't get the source, so I'll just rewrite it and add in my stuff. With a copyright you can do that. With a patent you can't. A patent says you can't even write something similar. So... given an "open source" / "free software" philosophy, you are pretty hosed.

I'm kind of in the middle. I'd probably rather have something be open or free then it copyrighted without a pattent. The main thing again is probably ego. We work hard on our stuff, and it is sometimes irritating if someone just goes and rips it off. I'd rather give it to them, letting them update it and keep the copyright that says I wrote it. :) - But then again, I don't get paid for the use of software, I get paid for writting it. So I don't have all the business concerns. But thinking about this stuff lately has made me start thinking about contributing to some open source stuff. We'll see...

Monday, August 01, 2005

Connexions - About Connexions

Connexions - About Connexions: "Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons 'attribution' license."

More free course materials, software, etc. on the web. Very cool.

Windows-NT is VMS re-implemented

Some cool Windows-NT and VMS stuff...

Oh yeah, its a *virtual* world

Logging in this morning, and CCM pushed some junk to my machine, so it took a while. So I finally get in and I'm moving a window from my primary screen (my monitor) to my secondary screen (my laptop). As I wisk it across the screen, a sticky stuck to the front of my monitor falls off. "Oh, I guess I moved the window too fast and the breeze blew the sticky off my monitor."

Oh yeah, blush. Its a virtual system. Grabbing a window and moving it "really fast" doesn't cause wind which effects the *physical* world.

So many little things in the day that remind me that I tend to blur things between the worlds. :)

Reading ban on leaked Harry Potter

Canada makes it illegal to read a book that you legally bought. Yes.. you walk into a store, you buy the book, you take it home - whoops, it wasn't supposed to go on sale yet. So if you read it, you are breaking the law.

How bizzare.

Found this on RMS's web site. I don't agree with most of his political views... - but I'll point to his site anyway, since that is where I found the story. And he is RMS - and whether I agree with him or not, he is still a great hacker.