Category: blog

I’m slowly making it through the day after a somewhat ill-advised late evening with Joseph. As usual there were rampant discussion about philosophical and scientific theories, effects of the Internet on humanity, the many uses of a nail gun, and a brief history of Scandinavian mythos.For some reason people avoid us at the bar. There were more personal topics broached that had necessitated the evening of drinks, but the big finale was a breakthrough discussion on the movie Lost in Translation.

Lisa and I absolutely loved the movie, but Joseph and his companions left the film somewhat disinterested. Fortunately, around 2 AM this morning he finally got the chance to truly discuss Sophia Coppola’s masterpiece with me 🙂 . I don’t think I’ll be revealing any spoilers here, but if you haven’t seen the film you might want to skip the next paragraph.
Continue reading “Lost in Discussion”

A rather unsettling news report has come out saying that former Cardinals safety Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. I’m not one to say that it’s more upsetting when a famous person dies, but you have to understand that Tillman walked away from a $3.6 million contract to join the military. That takes a lot of courage and strong convictions. I may be against the war and all for its politics, but I still respect the men and women who are over there fighting for what they believe in.

Also noted is the fact that his brother, Kevin, was also a professional athlete and decided to join the Rangers (not the ball club) in the conflict.

It looks like Mozilla Thunderbird will not be undergoing the ephemeral naming process that has plagued Firefox. I say this because the Thunderbird icon has also undergone a redesign. Check it out. I like the look and it’s rather fascinating to take a gander at the design process itself. Indeed, the name Firefox itself is most likely going to stick after the last stellar release, which helped considerably in solidifying its overall look and feel – including a new icon. Firefox will also be the final name of the standalone browser, and Jon Hicks (part of the design team) also showed some of that design process. Sometimes it truly is in the details, and the entire Mozilla Foundation feels like it is headed in a stronger direction thanks to these efforts in branding.

This site has had several identity crises during its relatively short life. More accurately, I’ve had several identity crises relating to this site during its relatively short life. I have scribbled countless redesigns and overhauls on napkins in bars and restaurants all around New Jersey, yet I rarely bother to follow through. But this time I have some real plans that matter – and some of them are simple enough to be done immediately.

This begins with the links you may (or may not) notice to your right. Last week I removed a few outdated links to friends – primarily those who had completely abandoned their Diaryland accounts for the safety of LJ.
Continue reading “And what exactly is the point of this site?”

As many in the WP Community already know, Nuclear Moose Candy (website of WP user, fanatic, and team member Craig Hartel) is no longer available. Apparently driven by incompetence, dotCanada has determined that WordPress is the cause of their server woes and discontinued their hosting of his site without giving anyone a chance to fix it. They now have the distinction of being the first host listed under “Bad Hosts” on the WP site. Not that many of you wacky neighbors to our North are out there listening to me, but I figured I would add my support by letting people know to avoid this host. I am also offering use of my server to Craig, although I’m sure he’s had enough people do that as well.

Courtesy of Lisa (co-worker, not girlfriend) comes this “Lying Action Figure” of Bush. Sure to amuse all (particularly Mike and Mark), this has probably already made the rounds. Enjoy.

Mmmm… vino! Last night Lisa and I headed down to Philly to meet up with some of my family for dinner at my sister Suzanne’s house. She, Alex (her husband) and their kids moved in there quite a bit ago and I have yet to actually see the place. When you have a large family you tend to all meet centrally (at, say, your parents’ house) rather than each others’ houses. It was great to see them and dinner was of course wonderful, but afterward was the real treat. My mom, sister Kathleen, Lisa, and I all headed out to the Chaddsford Winery for a tasting of the lastest vintage (and some older award winners).
Continue reading “Gimme more of those bacon thingies”

So in game 3 of the Montreal/Boston playoff series a bunch of Montreal fans booed The Star Spangled Banner. Obviously I’m not gonna bite on major stereotypes (ok, maybe I am) but that’s incredibly classless and something you’d more or less expect from sports fans over here. So how did their American counterparts respond. Aside from a few boos, Bruins fans cheered the Canadian national anthem. Wow, I never expected a group of Americans to actually take the high-road, especially in an incident such as this.

Hmm, a website that provides quick access to webcomics you say? Perhaps I will look into this. Seriously, I have no real clue how this works, but I’m very disappointed at the lack of RSS feeds (at least clearly marked ones) for webcomics. I’m not trying to get out of using my browser anymore, but SharpReader is probably my only chance at really keeping up with the oh-so dynamic web.

Michael told me to:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From Computer Systems Validation for the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industries by Richard Chamberlain (Alaren Press):

But it is important that one exist and that the users and developers of these systems be aware of it and understand it.

Now let me just add two quick thoughts: This quote seems almost transcendent on its own and boring in the actual context. This book is now selling for $180 used on Amazon – not sure why considering it comes with 5 1/4″ disks.