I seem to recall – and not too horribly long ago, either – that people used to at least approximate being polite. I’m pretty sure we as a nation used to encourage being polite, sharing, and thoughtfulness. We used to try to make our kids be those things starting before kindergarten (Sesame Street pops to …
Continue reading am i the only person who *didn’t* skip that day…
Category:commentary
it’s a great start
Today the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Washington DC’s handgun ban, by upholding the plain text of the Second Amendment to our Constitution stating that gun ownership is a personal right. CNN story: cnn.com/2008/US/06/26/scotus.guns. The full text of the decision: 07-290.pdf. Hopefully this will start a trend across all of our courts …
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’tis a sad day :(
A ‘Modern Man’ has passed from our midst (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_dRzaBoUM): I’m a modern man, A man for the millennium, Digital and smoke free. A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist, Politically anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been uplinked and downloaded. I’ve been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing. I know the downside of upgrading. I’m …
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what’s your business strategy?
There only seem to be about two strategies that work: you can try for growth (like most companies seem to do), or you can try for the niche that will consistently pay for your product. I don’t know if there are other models out there that work, but these two do. The growth, aka ‘monopoly’, …
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i love traveling
I hate not being home. I travel for a living now, performing site installations, upgrades, customizations, and on-site support for our customers. The travel’s a blast – see new places, try new food, drive different car. But not being home except weekends does kinda cut into one’s social activities. At this point, I wouldn’t trade …
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burma allowing help… finally
I read in the Wall Street Journal this morning that, 5 weeks after the cyclone that devastated their country, the Burmese (“Myanmarish”) government is finally allowing UN relief helicopters to bring food to the needy.It’s truly sad. The government sent the US Navy, who wanted to help, away. And they’ve disallowed UN relief efforts for …
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bridge cafe
From 273 W 38th St to 279 Water St in Manhattan is a bit of a hike. The way I walked was about 5.4 miles. Yes, I walked. If I’d known better how to get there, I could have done it in 4.2 miles. But I didn’t, so I walked the long way. The only …
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metering bandwidth
A horrible comparison has been drawn in the following AP article about TimeWarner: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jwm8wu3jZWZLcKfIlycqFqFegknwD9126HN8A. “You’re used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?” There’s a problem with that statement: lots of cell phone users …
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queuing the next generation
Like many people, I work for an under-staffed segment of a remarkably under-staffed company. Before transitioning to professional services, I worked for support, and they are even more under-staffed. I see a simple solution to this problem, but the company is too short-sighted to implement anything like this, sadly. Problem: We need new people. Desperately. …
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preparing for change (part the second)
As with knowledge capture, so must any successful organization pursue training. Training need not be formal. It can be self-paced, on-the-job, as-you-go, or formal. I know that I have learned the most about the product I support not from formal training, but from actually supporting it. Part of that is because we have had a …
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preparing for change (part the first)
I have recently been preparing to change jobs within my company from Support to Professional Services. This has lots of caveats, concerns, and corners to shine light into, alleviate, and circumvent. The first thing that I did when I found out that I would, in fact, be able to move to ProServe from Support was …
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if i ran the zoo…
…or, more accurately, the apartment complex. I was talking to a couple friends this past weekend, and told them I’d like to offer a per-minute lease on an apartment. It turns out that $0.02 per minute is $864/30-day month. For another penny a minute I’d include all utilities. Ok, so it’s a little off the …
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what if google took the day off?
A few of my co-workers an I were chatting recently, and wondered what kind of economic (and physical) impact Google could have if they chose to just shut down for a day. There’s no Service Level Agreement between Google and the world that says they’ll be there, at least none that I’ve seen or heard …
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there is no perfect candidate
I have determined there are no perfect political candidates. I like parts of what several folks stand for, and will end up voting for the one I think to be the best, but none of those running for President of the United States fully lines-up with what I want in an elected official. In 2016 …
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computers were made for americans
Or at least, they were built for people who speak English. Evidence for my claim: the first electronic computers were built during WWII by the British and Americans for code breaking; the first programming languages were designed, written, and implemented by Americans and British; the transistor, which led to the IC, was developed by Americans; …
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that’s right – we’re not falling behind
There was an article recently on Business Week (here) on how the US is not falling behind in math, science, and technology. In fact, we seem to be turning-out more technologists and engineers than we can use. I disagree. The problem seems to be that those technically-minded people that US schools are churning-out won’t work …
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the inanity of ‘special’ lanes
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not …
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i know why search is broken
Search is broken. Google, Yahoo, Ask, Alta-Vista, and on, and on the list goes. Hundreds of companies, thousands of individuals. I know why search is broken, and I know what needs to be fixed. Now to figure out the how of fixing. When you’re looking for information, you search on keywords. Google’s been nice enough …
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the future of interfaces
Apple recently introduced a convergent device that is a media player (iPod), cell phone, wifi device, and widget player (mini OS X) – I’m going to call it the iCon (since the current name is under trademark dispute). There’s one whole walloping button. Everything else is done via hand motions. Want to zoom in on …
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flat budgets are a good thing
To quote “Science in the News Weekly”, Issue: 3 Volume: 5 – “Federal Budget Freeze Straps American Science The incoming 110th U.S. Congress has decided to keep most federal agencies operating under their current budgets until the fall, calling for an unexpected belt-tightening that could mean potentially grievous effects for American science, federal and private …
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the vagaries of memory
I doubt mankind will ever figure out how our memories work. Think about it for a second: you’re sitting in your car, listening to some radio station playing songs popular when you were a kid – a young kid. And then, lo and behold, you’re singing along with the radio – to songs you either …
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stupidity is your right
I was in Hawaii this past weekend for my friend Jay’s wedding. While there, I discovered that Hawaii is a helmet-not-required state. Yippee. It’s also a state in which you can ride in the back of a pickup truck with apparently no worries. Fantastic. Though they don’t have everything right – Hawaii is also a …
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an article in elon university’s school paper
This post is an extended response to Daniel Shutt’s “Something to think about before voting” [original: elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/Issues/2006/11_02/opinions/voting.xhtml] I think it’s unfortunate that the College Republicans didn’t submit a response/rebuttal to your article in this week’s Pendulum – especially with Election Day occurring before the next issue of The Pendulum hitting the press. And though I …
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it’s not my problem
Security, air quality, water potability, land use, and the list goes on and on. When any one thing is too big to be one person’s problem, it becomes a problem for the populace, and once it’s everyone’s problem, it’s no one’s problem. Securing airports is too complicated for one person to do, so a committee …
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is plagiarism really so bad?
There has been a lot of talk recently about the huge issue of plagiarism among students. Ars Technica had an article about it on 20 October [arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061020-8041.html]. I have also heard the issue discussed on radio talk shows, and been lectured on the consequences of being caught plagiarizing by almost every professor I’ve ever had. …
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