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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growler’s pub
I’ll be coming back to Growler’s Pub next week (the one at 783 Old Ballas Road). To date (and I haven’t been to S’Mac in Manhattan, yet), Growler’s has the best macaroni and cheese I’ve had out. Yesterday afternoon I was discussing where to go for food with Mike, and started searching for pubs near …
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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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dishdash
Dishdash is a small mediterranean restaurant on Murphy Avenue in downtown Sunnyvale California. I went there last week with some of my coworkers at our bootcamp. Their menu offers a wide variety of choices, though I only sampled their lentil soup and mohmoh. Their lentil soup was very filling – the medium-sized bowl really was …
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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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mysql auto-changes data types
I was making a change to a small table today: adding a field that wanted to be a varchar. The other fields that were of type char all magically changed to varchar when I was done with the alter statement that added one field. I don’t know if that’s supposed to happen, but it was …
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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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cascal
I love paella. Whoever it was that thought to harvest crocus pollen for flavor was a genius. Last night after arriving in Sunnyvale CA for a training class, I started Googling for tapas places nearby. I had been looking forward to going to a restaurant in San Francisco, but driving an hour for dinner, when …
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fire from the sky
While flying to Sunnyvale yesterday, I had the “privilege” to see a small wildfire from the air. It was very small, on the order of a couple acres, and somewhere nearish to Monterey, and close to the coast. The orange smoke was quite striking from the air. Hopefully, firefighters have been able to get it …
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boot camp
I’m off to Sunnyvale CA for a week for some intensive, advanced product training for the software I install and handle on-site support for. Should be a long, tiring, fun week.
cash cab
I’m a huge fan of the Discovery Channel series, Cash Cab. While in New York this week, I kept looking for the elusive 1-in-13000 cabs that Ben Bailey drives, hoping for the opportunity to hop in and play the game. Well, I didn’t have a chance to get in, but I saw the cab Tuesday …
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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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we interrupt this regularly-scheduled lunch…
…to bring you this update: I just saw a guy climbing the side of the New York Times building here in Manhattan. Not sure if it’s the same guy who climbed the Eiffel Tower, but it was interesting. Definitely not something you see every day.
why i’m not moving office spaces
I follow Joel Spolsky’s blog/news site, joelonsoftware.com. His most recent addition is “Adventures in Office Space“. Apparently, they’ve run out of space in their 8th Avenue office, and will be moving to 55 Broadway in a couple months, once their renovations are in-place. The reason I mention this is that I interviewed with Fog Creek …
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charley o’s
I’ve now been to 1611 Broadway twice. Once last December when I was interviewing at FogCreek, and then again Tuesday this week after hitting the Museum Mile Festival in Manhattan. As a side note,walking down the middle of 5th Avenue is a blast – what’s normally a bustling, jam-packed 20 blocks was cordoned-off by the …
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virage
Continuing my new theme of including restaurant reviews of places I have been, I must praise Virage in Manhattan. On the corner of 2d Avenue and E 7th Street, is a self-proclaimed “mediterranean-style” restaurant. I ordered their Monday special, which on that visit was lamb chops with roasted gnochhi and a charred tomato and pepper …
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god bless the lugs
I’m a member of TriLUG – the Triangle Linux User Group. Mostly I’m on the mailing lists as a lurker, sometimes as a contributor. But this week I asked a couple questions which the friendly community jumped-on to assist me with. Thanks guys!
directions
I met a friendly girl (Shelly) today at the subway station at 40th and 8th in front of the New York Times building. But the only reason I bring this up is because she asked me how to get to the number 7 subway. There I was, calmly reviewing the subway map so I could …
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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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allora
Since I now have a job that involves traveling quite a bit, I am going to start writing about the better-than-good places I find when I’m traveling. Allora Ristorante, Marlborough Massachusetts. 139 Lakeside Avenue. Entree prices range from $15-market (for fresh-caught lobster, etc). The first night I went, I had a fantastic lamb milanese. Lamb …
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haircut
I just had the best haircut ever. I’m in Manhattan this week for work, and on my way from the customer I’m working with to my hotel, I was accosted by a very friendly black guy who wanted to give me a haircut. Now that sounds pretty wierd, but he was standing in front of …
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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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my first act as president…
…will be to eliminate the TSA. I was in Chicago this week for work, and on my way back the TSA gerbil found a knife in my briefcase. The same briefcase that made it through RDU without anyone noticing a knife. When I am elected president in 2016 the first thing to go will be …
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email catharsis
I use Google’s free mail service. And each account gets the privilege of having over 6 gigabytes of storage, if needed. However, I don’t use anywhere near that much. I go through my old email about once a month and delete stuff I no longer need. For example, I’m on the TriLUG mailing list. But …
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squirrels network *like* facebook?
Discovery News reports that squirrels network like Facebook users. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that Facebook is a heluva lot newer than squirrels. Shouldn’t the comparison be that Facebook users network like squirrels do? I could see being accommodating to modern society and not compare Facebook networking, to, say… how …
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