The New Road

Best Part of the Day

When I went home yesterday between work and the night's fun activities I had a little time with Megan. I got her socks, shoes and jacket on so that she could go outside. As we were playing I went over to the bushes that were in bloom with a fragrant smell and I bent over to her level, sniffed them and let out a long, "Mmmm..."

She gave me a curious look and then walked over and slowly moved her nose up to the bush, all the while keeping an eye on me, as if to ask, is this the right way? She took a sniff and then gave me a big smile.

I love these days.

Secret Window

I saw Secret Window with Mel last night. It was awful. Half way through Mel turned to me and said that he could leave at any time. When it thankfully ended I was struck almost dumb by the stupidity of the ending and mumbled, "It didn't end that way. Tell me it didn't end that way." Mel was silent.

The best part of the evening was Poker. I was up 700 units, Mel was down 1,500. My gains were hard fought. We played for about two hours and I was on the short stack just from the blinds when I went all in and scared everyone off. That was my first win. My second win was on a flush win over a straight we had gone all-in on. My third win was a two way split of a three way all-in pot. Terry and I had identical hands. We both had the kind of hands that make you want to drive a forklift into the chip factory to get enough units into the pot.

More pictures of Megan with the new Canon. I came back at 4PM to bring Lori some dinner. I was bringing the camera back from work. I took about fifty pictures while she ate and she took about 150 after I left. We spent about half an hour pairing the list down to forty. I took another stab at it this morning and paired it down to eight or so that would go on the site. I put a bunch of the others on Shutterfly as hopeful candidates for prints.

William Shatner on Practice II

According to Aint It Cool William Shatner will be starring in the new The Practice spinoff. Ugh.

Best... Purchase... Ever...

Um, yeah. So the new Canon arrived today. It's a crime against physics how sharp the pictures are, how gentle the flash is, how low the light level can be to get clear shots, and how fast it is.

I'm kicking myself for not getting this sooner. I'm just glad I got it while she was still in the ridiculously cute phase.

Anyway, check the shots out for yourself. I just can't say enough positive things about this camera. It's just freaking insanely great. Done.

I think Lori liked it too. I handed it to her and she took 120 pictures in the space of about five minutes and we were both just giddy about how ridiculously easy it is to get awesome shots.

This camera is to life what TiVo is to TV.

The picture at the top of the blog doesn't represent the true output of the camera. It has been twice compressed to get it into web-ready weight. It does show the camera and lens' ability to capture realistic flesh tones and to operate in low light without a flash.

More Principle of Thirds

Here is a helpful tutorial on the Rule of Thirds. I've learned it a couple of times and I always find myself amazed as I look around and see how much is done with this principle in mind. I was watching Alias with Lori last night and all of the shots were composed in this manner.

Madonna Inn

I had never heard of Madonna Inn. They have theme rooms. Each one is unique and it looks really cool.

Principle of Thirds

I've started composing and cropping pictures based on the principle of thirds. Which is what I probably should have been doing all this time. Anyway, let me know what you think.

Mach 7 on air

Lori and I geeked out after she returned from her movie and watched the NASA briefing on the Mach 7 scramjet test. Amazing stuff, a jet engine that runs on oxygen! That can propel a craft into space in an affordable and reusable manner! Unless we destroy ourselves in the meantime we will see commonplace space travel in our lifetime.

Clarke, Iraq and 9/11

Somehow I think that this Clarke thing is going to have more legs for the DNC than gay marriage had for the RNC. Note the low level of gay marriage coverage in the media during the past two weeks.

Safe Shop Equipment

Wow, this is amazing. These shop tools can stop when they see flesh. That's incredible.

Pork Tornado - Album covers

The pork tornado blog has the ten worst album covers ever. The pictures are funny enough. The text is funny but is definitely not kid safe.

Against All Enemies

I just finished Clarke's book Against All Enemies. It would be gracious to call this an unbiased account. It's obvious that Clarke worked really hard, and effectively, primarily during the Clinton administration, and felt snubbed by the Bush administration. That being said, his points are very cogent. His primary points are that the problem started with our funding of the muj rebels in Afghanistan, and was exacerbated by our prolonged stay in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. That during the Clinton administration we finally started to take al Queda seriously, but the effectiveness of the administration was hampered by the pit-bull tactics of the Republicans looking to exact revenge for losing the election to Clinton.

He then goes on to say that Clinton briefed the incoming Bush administration on al Queda and they essentially ignored it. All things Clinton were bad. The crazy terrorism thing was Clinton's stuff, since it hadn't been around with Bush Sr. So it was best to ignore it.

Jumping to the current time he says that the current administration has squandered the good will we had after 9/11 by going into Iraq when that country had nothing to do with 9/11.

There were some stunners. The assertion that al Queda could have had insurgents in Somalia during the Black Hawk Down period. That there are some strings connecting Terry Nichols to al Queda. The rest I knew or at least assumed. From day one Wolfowitz, Cheney and Bush were focused on Iraq. That only 5% of the troops committed to the "War on Terror" are in Afghanistan, where we are actually fighting al Queda. Etc. Etc.

Definitely worth the read. It's a quick read. I picked it up at around 4PM yesterday, didn't start reading it until around 7PM and finished it this morning.

Dog Test

Following up on Lori's smile test, here is a match the dog to the region test. I had trouble with the Basenji. The rest I got in one or two clicks.

Boilermakers

Macromedia donates $7,500 to the boilermakers robotic team who is heading to Atlanta to compete in the nationals. Very cool.

Enterprise Plot

I dreamt a plot for Star Trek Enterprise last night. It starts on the Enterprise twenty years in the future. T'Pol and Archer are walking down the corridor, obviously older, Archer much more so, and discussing the diplomatic mission with Ambassador T'Pol. They get into the elevator and talk as if they are in a now cooling relationship. We cut as they agree to meet up for a game later.

Cut to the future Enterprise later in the day, where Archer, Trip, T'Pol and some other folks are playing poker like they did on The Next Generation. T'Pol looks absentmindedly at her cards (pocket aces) and is daydreaming...

Cut to the current timeline Enterprise where Trip and T'Pol are doing their usual massage thing and then getting pretty steamy. A distortion field waves across the ship and suddenly it's clear that the older T'Pol is now in the body of the younger T'Pol and vice versa. The old T'Pol now in the body of the young T'Pol quickly breaks them embrace as they both looked shocked at each other.

Cut back to the new Enterprise where the rest of the people are oblivious to T'Pol who is now the younger T'Pol. Not knowing poker she asks what to do. Archer is a little stunned and then says she can always fold. She flips up the two aces and folds. They all looked stunned and then the klaxon sounds as we go to commercial with 'Captain to the bridge'...

That's the teaser. The second act would follow the old T'Pol now in the current timeline as they also get into trouble because of the distortion wave. The third act would be in the future with the young T'Pol. The last act would bring the two together and restore the T'Pols. The younger learning a little of the wisdom of her older self, and the older coming to grips with her past and lighting a fire in her relationship with Archer.

(BTW, I know I said the Blog was on hiatus. It's on hiatus in that I won't feel the requirement to blog for the next three or four weeks. If I get one in mind I'll put it up. Like I did today.)

RSS

I keep trying to get everyone on RSS, because it's great. And folks are just like, "Nah... I don't like computers." Or, "Me be luddite." Or some such. Anyway, don't take it from my nutty self. Even Wired thinks RSS is cool.

Blog Hiatus

I really need a break from all of my network work, mainly the Code Generation Network, but also this blog. So I'm going to take a breather from it for three weeks so that I can concentrate of getting a healthier and trying to find a better balance of love and work in my life. I may post here or there, but I don't plan on getting back to whatever the future me will mean by full swing for about three weeks or so.

Besides, I like where the blog paused. The Jay Kurtz posting was the type of thing this blog was meant to be about and I need to find a way to get it there on a consistent basis.

Jay Kurtz

I've been thinking a lot about Jay Kurtz recently. It's probably because I was around the Fremont Hub a lot recently and that place has a vivid memory for me. We had just bought the house and Lori was in Florida with her Mother. Jay had come over to help with some home stuff and we decided to go to a movie. Problem was that I didn't know where anything was at that time. We went to Newark Java and got a coffee and read the paper to find a movie time.

We decided on The Game which was playing at the Fremont Hub on some street called 'Mowry'. We only had about twenty minutes to get there so we jumped in the car and headed south. Thankfully he had a map so we were able to get there in time. We got some popcorn and watched the movie, which was ok. We had dinner afterwards at Denny's and then after he dropped me off at the house he went back to the city.

It was so normal at the time I didn't realize how special it really was. In the space of the following ten months the cancer would come back with a vengeance, he would live to come to my 30th birthday party (where he would admit that he thought the house was a mistake but that we had done well), Molly and Jon's wedding, and shortly after, die with all of us circled around his bed.

And time and change move on. The theatre we went to closed and then was reborn as the Naz Indian Cinema, only to fold once again and now stands as an empty shell. The Denny's we went to I never have gone back to, but now it's for personal reasons. Newark Java is still there. Paddy learned his skills at Newark Java and now has his own cafe where we sit with laptops and blog on the wireless Internet. Axon went public, Eve was born, Lori's Mother died, Megan was born. I have moved between three jobs, written a book and have three web sites. All in the five years since Jay died, and somehow with all this movement nothing has moved at all and when I sit in that parking lot of the theatre I am then and I think about how precious those moments are and how little we think of them at the time. I think about how simple those times were even when they weren't simple at all, and I know that. But what I really want is Jay back. I want to know what he would think of today.

I hold Megan in my arms in the hallway and we point at pictures of people. We look at the old me in the photos and I say "Dad". We look at the current me, the new me, the old me, and I say "Dad." When we get to Jay I point I say his name and think about how all of us move on but Jay has just stopped.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Perhaps it's just that I need to remember that these little moments are precious and to stop and to let them sink in. Like the time just recently when I got home in the mid-afternoon from work and took Megan to the park. The sky was crystal blue and Megan was happy. And we rolled around like kids. I was on my back. My eyes were filled with the blue of the sky and Megan came up, laughed and then crawled over me. Kids understand. They live for the moment. It's adults who learn to glide through the years.

Cool NASA Stuff

NASA has a way to control stuff with thought.

More OmniWeb 5

There are some problems with the beta of OmniWeb. The auto form fillin is a little flakey and I think the application is trying to do to much threading and gets itself into a twist now and again. The being said, it is a very cool application. One of the cooler features is the ability to add extra sites to the search menu. If you use Safari then you know about the Google field right next to the URL edit field. You type a keyword in there, press return and it searches Google.

OmniWeb has the same thing but you can pick one of many different search engines to use. Actually the term search engine is inappropriate because some of the sites are very specific, like weather, or the W3C, or the Internet Movie Database. You can even add your own.

To make it even easier the OmniWeb guys have added a keyword feature. So that all you really have to do to search Google is type 'google', into the address field, followed by a space and then the search term and press enter. I edited the Google entry and shortened 'google' to just 'g'. I also added more sites; the C2 Wiki, the Code Generation Network, the CIA World Factbook, Feedster, Mutt Mansion, PHP Functions search, Froogle, Google Images, Google News, and the Wikipedia. Now searching all of these resources is at my fingertips. Love it.

Hello Kitty

Yep, I need one of these. I like how it moves with your keyboard.

Spartan

Saw Spartan last night with Mel. The title of the piece was a fitting description for both the plot and the characters. Val Kilmer did a competent job. I was at a loss to connect with his character, but then again I was at a loss to connect with any of the characters. William H. Macy, who was excellent in The Cooler was a supporting actor who made only token appearances and didn't fit into any of it. A bad film, view at your own risk. Reasonable rental.

100th Strongbad Email

The 100th Strongbad Email was posted on Home Star Runner. It's pretty funny, and it's in w i d e s c r e e n. ;-)

Using a business email service might not be as fun as Strongbad's emails, but many companies find business email solutions very important.

OmniWeb 5

I started playing with OmniWeb 5 which is a commercial browser that uses the Safari render engine. It's tremendous. I love the graphic tabs on the side panel. I also like the per-site preferences and the ability to store groups of sites as a working set that I can flip back and forth between.

Spotless Mind

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Mel at a Sneak Preview. It was amazing. I can't really talk all that much about it because that wouldn't be fair to Lori. That being said, I can say that is the best Jim Carrey performance I have ever seen. Kate Winslet is also at the best I have ever seen her.

Honestly, I don't know where Charlie Kaufman comes up with these great movie ideas. They are never the standard drivel so they stay with you. This one in particular not only tells a great story, it also conveys life lessons in a unique way.

Spamfire

I wonder about how many people find email useful when I have to have three levels of spam protection just to stem the tide. I get almost 1,000 spam messages per week. I only get about 100 legitimate pieces of personal mail. So that means that less than one in every ten messages is something that I actually want to read.

I'm an engineer, which means that by in large, I am ok with technology. Even so I find the need for three filter excessive. Hell, I find the need for a single filter excessive. I don't see why I should be paying to rid myself of this crap. The email is worthless, to anyone. I can't see one in a million even responding to it. It can't be worth the hassle to send out this much crap.

I also think that Viagra, Cialis and the other drug makers should stop selling to pharmacies that use email blasts, as they are known in the industry. What I think is funny is that the people that I have known who have paid for email blasts are also the people that complain bitterly about the spam in their email box.

New Tufte Books

Looks like Edward Tufte has a new book in the works.

Megan Pictures

From her playgroup and just around the house and park.

Sedna

Turns out there is another planet in the Solar System.

MacXWord

I was intermittently watching a movie called Marathon, which lead me to a brief (300ms) interest in crossword puzzles, soon sated by MacXWord. My lack of interest no withstanding this program is beautiful and well executed.

Black Ships

An MIT on-line course about the Black Ships and the fading of the Samurai culture.

Funniest Thing

The fact that all of these robot vehicles ran off the road, crashed, or stalled is hilarious.

I can just see Cheney trying to run a reasonable meeting, in his Oval Office, about the mounting losses in Iraq when he is interrupted by W, "Why can't we put 'puters in dah trucks?" Cheneys rolls his eyes and says, "You get right on that. Have Rove help you out." Cut to the desert months later where trucks are running into barbed wire seconds after leaving the starting gate. It's like a scene from The Simpsons.

Re-skilling

The administration keeps touting re-skilling as their solution to outsourcing. Without ever actually saying what new skills we should learn. So when I was reading an article on Greenspan's profound statements about protectionism there was a link to an article on re-skilling. As usual he compares today's outsourcing with the movement of blue collar textile jobs. I really wonder what advice Greenspan gives to his nieces about their careers.

Turns out it was from IBM who said that the skills they thought we should learn are open source technologies. Which is funny because it aligns exactly with their technology strategy. And stupid, because open source technology jobs are fleeing just as fast as anything else. A spokesman for one Indian firm I heard on the radio said that any work that is done on the wire can be outsourced. That includes IBM's open source jobs. BTW, IBM's consulting services are all backed by Bangalore.

In a show of sympathy for American workers displaced by outsourcing the IBM spokesman took the opportunity to also talk about their silly on-demand strategy.

Alien vs. Predator

The first real trailer is out for Alien Vs. Predator.

Book Sell-off

I decided to sell most of my book collection. Most of the books are mid-range. They aren't first editions of significant books, they are second or third editions of reference books that are aging quickly. The fact of the matter is that most of the time I go to online sources to get syntax and reference for what I need to do. Mainly I use books to give me a direction and a perspective on a particular technology, then I use the online reference in my day-to-day work.

The only exceptions are the Perl books, which I want to have a whole set of. And my first editions of significant works.

Art Community Metaphor

Here is an extended metaphor for what I see as going on the valley.

You have a small but thriving arts community. They make enough money to get by, but they aren't millionaires. One day an investor comes by and is so impressed he gives some of the artists some money and starts a little company. The promises are great, we will take your fine art and show it to the world!

The presence of a new shop starts a ripple and soon all of the artists are now working for little shops. The little shops start to compete in the marketplace and soon more art is required. So the artists need to work a longer for the same money. What looks good from the outside (productivity is up) is hell on the inside (long hours, lots of stress, flat salary).

But that isn't enough. The companies, now gone public, are looking for better numbers on the street. So they supplement the artists (now called resources) with external resources off shore who work for pennies. Again, the numbers go up, investors and happy, the CEOs are rich, and the resources are even more unhappy because they know their jobs are in jeopardy.

Management catches wise that the local resources are overpaid so they lay them all off and go strictly overseas.

Which brings us to the end of the story. The thriving arts community which created unique crafts and was a pleasant and peaceful home to a culture of creativity has now been replaced with a bunch of stores selling cookie-cutter art made in other countries. The land value went up so much that the original artists have all gone. Worse yet, few continued with the practice of art since it became such a pressure cooker that they lost all interest in it as a creative activity.

A few CEOs have become rich by plundering a community of people. The community is gone, the CEOs are rich, and so the American Dream continues.

There needs to be a balance. As investors, where do we think the productivity numbers are coming from? If a company makes more product without extending it's payroll it has either; hired external consultants, had the existing employees work more hours, or found a better way to do things. I would like to think it's the latter, but in my experience it has always been hiring consultants and working longer hours. Especially in the valley where "executive indecision = engineering long hours".

The whole country needs to learn the work/life balance. And we have to stop this consumer culture of keeping up with the Joneses. We work harder because our investors want the numbers to relentlessly increase. But we are the investors. And we want our investments to do well because we have to keep up with the Joneses. We have made our own hell.

That being said. Bush is not making matters any easier. His exclusively pro-business policies have set a precedent that all of this is ok, or even desirable.

And it all comes around to the Americans have been getting a lot fatter in the past two years thread. Why? McDonalds has been super-sizing fries, sodas and shakes for years. So it can't be that. The problem is the overwork. If you have to work longer because you are doing the work of three because two other people got laid off, then you are probably going to have to give somewhere else in your life. And that will often be diet and exercise. McDonalds is just an enabler. It's not the culprit.

I saw a 60 Minutes where the talked with the CEO of SAP who said that he was keeping his company private because he didn't want to live under the pressure of the street. I can see exactly what he means. We need to focus on how to create sustainable companies that have a healthy workplace and workforce. That is how you have a thriving economy and country.

Totally RSS

I've gone totally RSS for my morning news. I used to have to check both the RSS feeds and use Safari to go to about 10 sites to check out the new stuff for the day. I found RSS feeds for about five of the ten. Then I wrote my own feeds for the other five. Now all I have to do is bring up the feed reader and I get all of my morning dose of news and nonsense. Woo hoo!

Deloresnet

They haven't found Deloresnet yet. ;-)

Local Stumbling

I was coming home a little early yesterday so I decided to have some fun and stumble around the neighborhood. What that means is popping open a laptop with an application like MacStumbler running, which will tell you what wireless networks are around and how strong they are.

The first surprise was that DeVry, which is a registered free hotspot was putting absolutely nothing out on the airwaves. But a little company across the street was broadcasting in the clear and very strong. I could have easily parked, switched to their network and surfed for free.

Another place I checked was the set of $800K executive homes across Union City boulevard from us. When that set of home was built they brought in fiber to serve it. Wow, the second surprise wasn't that it had some Wi-Fi, but that the Wi-Fi was glowing. At the stop-light across from the Fire Station, which is a little outside the group of homes you could get a strong signal off of a Linksys router and it got even hotter going in. At one point I had four reasonable quality service from four different routers in the middle of the street. Almost all of it was un-secured.

Another thought I had was, "Can I take my laptop to the park and surf while Megan plays (when se is old enough)?" Answer, yes. The local park is hot from one of the nearby houses and service is un-secured.

It's fascinating stuff. If you want to try it yourself just download the software or pick up one of these gizmos. If you want some more signal strength and you don't mind directionality try this productized Pringles can.

The net effect is that you can buy your coffee at Starbucks then drive around, find a free node, and save yourself the T-Mobile Hot Spot day charge ($9.95).

BTW, I went to see Hidalgo last night and I took my machine with me because I was running a little early. The theatre was flat dead for Wi-Fi. Oh well.

Tech Jobs

The tech market is tough. I know you may not think so because it sounds super cushy to work sitting down all day pecking away at a computer, but it is a really competitive job market and work place.

I was thinking about it this morning and it looks a lot like a lilly pond that you have to get across. In the beginning the lilly pads were large and weren't moving very fast. Now the stream has a constant current and the lilly pads are small, unstable, and set wide apart.

First, the hiring market in tech is now all about the details. In a response to a flood of resumes employers have become increasingly picky. They use programs to sift through the resumes to look for just those that match very specific criteria.

Counterbalance that with the constant demand in the industry to change. Now, I am a huge fan of life-long learning. I read books and try new stuff constantly. But that isn't enough. You have to be an industry analyst because it's important to pick the right small experience niche. If EJB/BMP is going to be next years big thing you better find a way to get your employer to use that now because you will need experience in it next year.

It used to be that the computer industry was so small that employers were happy to train you in their niche. That way you could jump from pad to pad and learn lots of new skills. Now, they want you to have everything and more, specifically relevant to them, the moment you walk in the door. Which makes those pads really small and the risks of jumping a lot larger.

Plus there are the personal considerations. For example, I would like to retire by the time I'm sixty, and I don't want to jump each year, twenty-five more times. Plus there is the commute, moving and the kids to think about. So while you job may require pervasive change, your outside work life is probably change averse.

Which brings me to kids. We expect a love of change in our workforce, but yet we teach kids using constant repetition. And we consider a stable consistent environment important for proper development. These two goals seem at far distant odds. So where do we expect this love of change to come from? "Happy 18th birthday Johnny, here are the keys to your new car, and a love of change." "Thanks, Mom".

Again, I'm blessed with a hankering for knowledge, a passion for life long learning. But that appears not be enough. Or is it? I question the value of constant change in the workplace. If anything, the applications I have worked on could use more consistency and rigor, not more of the constant play of requirements. In fact, I can't think of a single market place that would find constant change desirable. Can you imagine if you went into your local bookshop and every day they had a different setup with the books all re-arranged in different ways? You would never go back.

But hey, your local bookstore isn't a startup, right? Well, I've worked at startups and what passes for constant change is really just the CEO reading the WSJ every morning and coming in with some hair brained scheme about how to capitalize on some market initiative. Which is silly because even tech companies can't move fast enough to change with daily trends. This constant change activity simply means that the person at the tiller of the boat is constantly being distracted and it's up to the grunts to steer the steady course. The end result is that if you want to ship products in your life time you need to embrace constant change for appearances sake, but in the end hold the course fast on your project so that you can actually get something done.

Anyway, I'm not sure how this went from a job rant to a who moved my cheese rant. But I hope you see the Lilly Pad metaphor, since it's a good one. The slow but steady pace of change in the industry, the outsourcing, the ageism, and the narrowing of job skills make for a treacherous environment. And one false step can put you in the water, where, if you stay there too long the pads will move on without you and you will never be able to get back up again.

For the critics

I've been trying to get my reviewer ranking on Amazon into the sub-10,000's, which means doing a lot of reviews (in the technical world). So I went to Borders and just read books off the shelf for a couple of hours and reviewed them. One of which was Wireless Hacks, which recommended MacStumbler. Which is an application that sniffs out wireless networks that you perhaps need a WEP to get on. It's pretty cool.

On the negative side, I recently tried Shrook, which is an RSS reader for Mac OS X and it was extremely crashy. I think I will keep my NetNewsWire Lite.

Megan Pictures

The ubiquitous, this will keep the blog happy because I'm too tired to think of anything really cool to say, set of Megan pictures. She is really really cute though. I like the one where she is in the window of the Apple Store next to the Mini iPods.

Megan Pictures

Pictures of Megan from playgroup.

Postfix Enabler

I've been able to make an entire copy of the Code Generation Network on Claudia and debug it locally. Which is the reason that I have been adding lots of new features. I can add them without fear that I might break the running site. Once the feature is debugged I can put it up on the site and go.

One problem remained. I couldn't test features that mailed me stuff. For example, the survey system mails me a record of the survey results. Claudia's sendmail system doesn't work by default, it's disabled. But I'm adding some email features, so I needed it to work. The only problem is that it's usually a fifteen step procedure to enable it. But that turns out not to be the case anymore. Now there is Postfix Enabler. Which configures it with just a few clicks. Woo hoo!

Not only can I test the email features of the CGN, but I can also change my local mail program so that I use the local mailer instead of the Hurricane Electric mailer. Which means that as soon as I move the Ultimate Chordbook I can dump Hurricane Electric! That is great news because that is like $25 a month, just so that we can send mail.

Megan Pictures

Megan was too cute for words at the playground last night.

Bad Editing

I can understand bad editing in, oh say, this blog. But I don't understand it in an interview with a political candidate in our local paper. Both the candidate and the paper want to look good, so why is it that there were blatant typos and grammar errors? The publication in question is the Tri-City Voice, which, while small, is still a lot larger than the Swarthmorean, which seemed to at least have basic editing skills in-house.

Hah, this is great, the article is here, check it out for yourself. It's a disaster of editing.

Lieutenant Governor appointed meto the Prevention of Hate...

I am a property management and entrepreneur.

I'm not bagging on Ash Bhatt. He sounds like a nice guy and he certainly knows what he is talking about. Everybody needs an editor though. ;-)

Except this blog, or maybe this blog needs one twice as much. Either way, it's a factor of two.

Split on Gay Marriage Timing

I'm completely in favor of gay marriage but I have to wonder if now is the right time to be driving this issue so hard. We have a White House to take back from a madman and his gruesome administration of evil. Now it looks as if we have handed him an issue to run his entire election around in order to avoid sticky questions like his vendetta war in Iraq and his utter failure in his economic package. (Or should I say his success at subsidizing the rich while the other 99% of American's suffer.) So while I am all for anyone of consenting age getting married if they want to, I have to wonder why it's critical to bring this issue up now.

The Passion of The Christ

I saw The Passion of The Christ last night. Wow. It was very well done. It's the kind of movie that leaves me wondering how some scenes were filmed. It was almost over the top graphic, even for me. I had a thought to leave the theatre at one point, but I stayed until the end. It's not often that you see Hollywood this uncompromising. It's a good trend that Hollywood is starting to take some risks again with some material that is possibly very offensive to some.

Gopher Broke

The best commercial from the Oscars was definitely Gopher Broke.

Library of Congress

I don't know why, but I think it's cool that the Library of Congress has a copy of Code Generation in Action.