August 2004 Archive
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August 2004 Posts
While in Seattle I had a chance to see some friends including Robert Scoble, who gaveme a cool Channel 9 figure. Don't know what Channel 9 is? Read on:
What is Channel 9?
When flying cross country or international flights you can sometimes listen to the cockpit transmissions if youtune into the audio channel 9.It can be interesting tolisten in and hear the pilots speaking withairporttowers and other planes.
Channel 9 is the Microsoft's equivalent, where you can be a voyeur into Microsoft's development process.Watch videos, interact on the Wiki, post on the message board, and witness other "behind the scenes" views of products you will likely be using in the near future.
Some of myfavoritevideos are the Microsoft Research tours. That place seems like a geek's version of Q's lab in theJames Bond movies. Lots of cool stuff being developed there.
I believe nearly every company would benefit from havingtheir ownChannel 9.Ofcourseyou don't want competitors stealing your ideas, so there's a limit of what can be shared, but if what you are selling is the overall big picture, and not just a faceless product, then I believe a Channel 9 should be considered as an important facetfor acquiring and keeping customers.
I took off work all this week just to move from the place I was renting to my new place about 10 miles away. It's going well, I already have all the big stuff moved except my TV, computer desk, and computer.
One nasty side effect of moving is that I'm without an Internet connection in either house right now, so I'm catching up in email and writing this blog entry at a Panera that happens to be right between the two houses. Free WiFi!
Meanwhile it's incredibly hot outside, so I better hurry up before the clothing and other junk in my car spontaneously combusts.
I 
bought my first house today!
- It's in Falls Church, off 66 and 7, just south of Tyson's Corner.
- It's about 15 minutes from DC on 66, and just off thebeltway, first exit on 66East.
- Here's a mapand satellite photo (the thumbtack is on the wrong side of the road).
- It's a one story rambler with a finished basement.
- It was built in 1953, and has been renovated here and there and has been kept in great shape.
- I bought the house with Chris Donovan, co-worker and friend since the days of Doomand Warcraft at Maryland. He'll be taking over the basement.
- We'll be moving in over thecourse of the month. We have BrickFest this weekend and I'm going toSeattle for a work trip next week. Just got to get out of my place before September becausethat's when my lease is up.
- I don't have a house phone yet.
- Here's photos!
Yes, there will be a housewarming party, on Saturday, October 30th, which happens to also be our annual Halloween party and my birthday. Clear your calendar now, and start thinking about your costume!
Part of an email from a Papa John's employee:
I don't know how responsible he was for the new F****-UP computer system, which loses pizza orders and is otherwise incredibly stupid, like some screens saying "Press CONFIRM Key" when they use standard PC keyboards with no such key - while other screens say "Press F10 key" or whatever real key is necessary. The pizza order screen, the most used screen on the system, shows what several F keys do, but does NOT show what F key to go to the next screen. Go look, in any Papa John's. Remember lots of hs dropouts are working there all over the country. The computer system is losing orders and that contributes to the 6% drop.Lesson: Test your software with your users. It doesn't matter how smart, cleaver, or budget-minded you think you are, if you are not using real users, or personas based on real users, you are designing for a mythical user that does not exist.
From an AP reporton Bush's visit to Virginia yesterday:
Bush criticized Kerry's plan to eliminate the tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year, saying that the "the rich in America happen to be the small business owners" who put people to work.
I don't see what the two have to do with each other. Are most people with personal income over $200k/year small business owners? I'm a small business ownerbutI don't make $200k/year. How about giving the tax cut to the small business instead of all rich folks?
Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."
What wonderful logic! Instead of fixing the problem, shift the responsiblity to those who don't have the resources to get around it.
If this is true, the spirit of the Olympics has officially been drained, bottled, and sold to the highest bidder, and I don't want any part of it.
Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games.
Sweltering sports fans who seek refuge from the soaring temperatures with a soft drink other than one made by Coca-Cola will be told to leave the banned refreshment at the gates or be shut out. High on the list of blacklisted beverages is Pepsi, but even the wrong bottle of water could land spectators in trouble.
See the full article.
Found this on AdRants.
I typically hate flash-based sites, but the European site for Crumpler is so unique that I had to blog about it. Go check it out. What other shopping site shows their products worn by a nude woman?
My next camera bag might be from them, partly because their bags look great, and partly to support their creativity.
By comparison, the American Crumpler site looks like any other shopping web site. Even if I liked the bags, had I not seen the link to hte European site I wouldn't have blogged about it.
I first saw the link on the Other Blog.
For the month of July, the Bush Administration estimated that their tax cut plan would generate 200,000 new jobs.
The US Labor Department reported today that the number was a paltry 32,000.
DOH!
Great idea: Instead of that normal bulky asthma inhaler, this cool design from Adam Bates, a student in the UK, fits nicely a wallet.
It holds less doses, 50 instead of 200, but for those that have to take their inhalers everywhere they go, size matters. The cost is expected to be the same.
I haven't seen any articles that mention if any companies are planning on using this unique design.
Guess who said this yesterday:
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
Of course this quote came from Bush. Was it a Freudian slip? That wouldn't surprise me. So who still trusts this guy to run our country, and lead us at a time of war? Even if he just mixed some words up, he sure doesn't make me feel safe. What else is he messing up? What crazy things is he saying to other world leaders?
Whitehouse.gov has the full speech, which Bush gave after signing a $417 billion Halliburton contract defense spending bill.
MoreBush quotes:DubyaSpeak.com& Dubbia.com.
As I write this my two lucky brothers (Trevor, Jared) are in New York at today's taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. They're in New York with my dad on vacation. Realizing the Daily Show was taping, they head to the building, and got in the stand-by line for those without tickets. Well there were just two open seats, so my dad gave them the honor and is hanging out in New York until the show is done taping.
Natalie Portman and Tom Cruise are both there according to my dad. Sometimes they tape more than one interview in one day. Tom's interview will be shown next week. Knowing my dad he'll wait by the stage exit for autographs and photos.
Games are more than pretty pictures - they has to be fun.
This humorous and "offbeat" review of Doom 3 sums up what a lot of people are now saying about the apparently much-hyped beautiful yet boring game.
Glad I don't need to spend time or money on that game. Now I can go back to waiting for Half Life 2 and Halo 2.
Here's a quote from the review:
Although it's built from an impressive engine, Doom 3 is ultimately a soulless derivative rehash of tired, tried, and true motifs. It is a bauble that reminds us of id's triumph when it comes to technology and their abject failure when it comes to imagination.
I found the review at my favorite bipartisan gaming site, Evil Avatar.
So the SEC found that from 1998 to 1999 Halliburton pulled an Enron on the public, reporting higher earnings by changing accounting practices and not disclosing those changes. Guess who was the CEO at the time... Dick "Go F*** Yourself" Cheney.
Result: Halliburton must pay $7.5 million to the SEC to settle the case. Dicky Cheney gets off free - his testimony won't even be made public - and he gets to continues to be our illustrious Vice President.
Some role model we have!
From eWeek:
David Coursey shares his wish list of features he'd like to see in the next release of Microsoft Outlook.
These features all seem obvious, lets hope Microsoft is listening.
Ever since I was a kid I thought model trains were cool. But now that I'm older, they just seem, well, slow... That's why now I want to build a model roller coaster.
CoasterDynamix has released a working model reconfigurable model coaster called The Dragon. It looks cool, but at $500, it's beyond my toy budget.
Here's John Kerry's health care plan...
These all seem good, but I'm already a Kerry supporter, so I want to hear why Bush supporters think these are not good ideas.Up to $1,000 of health care premium relief. Our plan will provide relief for employers who offer their employees health coverage by helping out with high-cost health cases -- saving families up to $1,000 per year.
Tax credits to make health insurance more affordable. Our plan will provide tax credits to make health insurance more affordable for people between jobs, Americans ages 55-64, and small businesses.
Health care for every child. Our plan will pick up the full cost of more than 20 million children enrolled in Medicaid. In exchange, states will expand eligibility for children's health coverage and low-income adults and enroll every child.
More affordable prescription drugs. Our plan will cut the cost of prescription drugs by requiring the government to negotiate better prices and by allowing Americans to re-import discounted drugs from Canada.
Control skyrocketing costs. Our plan will reduce health care costs by cutting administrative costs, waste, fraud, and abuse; enhancing disease management efforts; and reforming malpractice insurance.
A real Patients' Bill of Rights. The Bush administration sent its lawyers to the Supreme Court to stand with the HMOs and against patients. John Edwards and I support a real Patients' Bill of Rights to ensure that patients have the right to see the specialists they need without interference from bureaucrats.
Microsoft Visio 2003 is an extremely powerful product. So powerful in fact, I could use it to remodel my kitchen, re-arrange my cube, re-organize management, re-think my thought process, re-examine my decisions, and re-optimize my chip designs. But I don't want to do any of those things!
All I want is to collect ideas in a tree visual manor. Ideas will have sub-ideas, which in turn will have sub-sub-ideas, and so-forth. Anybody who has access to the file must be able to add their own comments to the ideas and rearrange the ideas as they see fit.
White boards work, but my handwriting is messy, and they don't work well over email or over long periods of time.
So problems I'm having with Visio at the moment:
- Headache #1: I'm not sure which Shape library to use. I started with Organization since I'm I'm trying to do a hierarchal organization of my ideas.
- Headache #2: The lines that connect the boxes are going all over the place, and even under-lapping the boxes.
- Headache #3: Comments added aren't sticking with the boxes, so when the boxes are moved around, the comments just sit there acting dumb.
I'm lost... Can you figure it out?
