October 2011
4 posts
Linked blog post
(Marie-) Arzel was gracious enough to give me the green light to cross-post something from her chef-oriented blog. Power to the People…with Passion! Btw: If you read take the time to read the “bitter” post, it’s worth your while to check out the more upbeat, and very practical stuff that keeps it company. The fact that she can rebound from a dented dream to craft...
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Frivolous Friday, 10.14.2011: Gaming the system
At work, the conferencing software’s reach definitely exceeds its grasp. This was ably demonstrated on Monday’s “Area Staff Meeting,” originating in the Chicago office and streamed out to the provincials in the region. What you need to understand about our office’s “big conference room” is that: 1.) “Big” is a relative designation, and...
A humbling thought for content creators
The end of an NPR segment—to which Dennis & I were tuned in on the way to see The Ladykins on Sunday—ended with a clip from Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” single. Serious as the segment’s topic had been, I (naturally) couldn’t help but smirk, thinking of Weird Al’s send-up. Exposing yourself to parody is, doubtless, a mark of...
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Frivolous Friday, 09.30.2011: Nerdery is a...
I’m finding I comedy works best to keep me from dwelling on how much longer I’m going to be on an elliptical machine, treadmill or what-have-you. So earlier this week it was an old standby, Office Space. (If you haven’t seen it, suffice it to say that it’s sort of a cult classic for programmers.) Coincidentally, this was also the same week that someone decided to...
September 2011
10 posts
Ultimatum
Maybe it’s that I’ve been reading too much non-history, non-fiction lately. Or maybe the topics are just too…shall we say…inbred. But I’ve bumped into enough mentions of a game called “Ultimatum” that it’s stuck with me. The word “game” is a misnomer, at least in the sense that Ultimatum is nothing you’ll find keeping Monopoly...
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Frivolous Friday, 09.23.2011: Close enough for...
Slashdot today ran a piece about the U.S. Government paying its own programmers half the going rate for contract programmers. The comments, at least early-on when I read them, tended to focus on the premise that contract programmers are paid extra to, well, go away on short notice. (I’ve worked as a “temp”—high-tech flunkie as well as office minion—and, frankly,...
"Training the Trainer," revisited
Those Who Know Best asked me to train our Client Services folks on “my” application. Cross-pollination, to be sure—just more in the sense of folks in lab coats and latex gloves brushing pollen off carefully selected plant and brushing it on on an equally selected other plant. But those were the extent of the specifications, leaving me to fill in the details. Which,...
No Friday post
Company’s coming for at least part of the weekend. Hope yours is a good one.
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Attention inflation disorder
We had an interesting bit of “training” over the lunch hour today. One of the deep-thinkers wired himself into our large conference room via two-way webcam, and—unloaded a couple decades of experience on us, which included the pendulum-swings between centralized and distributed computing fads, and also the dead-wrong predictions/assumptions committed by even the most...
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Silly Sunday, 09.11.2011: A reorg. poem
The rumor mill is humming As it’s running at full bore: Word from the grapevine says that A reorg. is in store. And soon The Powers That Be Are citing “re-alignment,” Which for us can only mean One thing: Reassignment. So boxes now we scavenge, Then we pack up all our stuff And sneeze amidst the haze Of dust and lint and fluff. Windex and compressed air At each cube make a stop:...
Post post-poned
Home from work now, headache in tow. Tomorrow is another day, still busy, but hopefully more in the pro-active sense. Cheers, all!
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(Yet another) Sign of the times
I tried to log in to Twitter earlier today, only to be greeted by the trademark Fail Whale and the uncharacteristic (of late, anyway) message that the web’s foremost ADOS application was “over capacity.” But rather than immediately roll my eyes over scalability growing-pains, my first thought was to wonder where the earthquake/tsunami/hurricane/tornado/revolution had hit. ...
No post tonight
I’m afraid I haven’t been feeling too frivolous the last few days, and tonight is anything but the start of a languorous three-day holiday weekend. Hope everyone is back home by Tuesday, safe, sane and not too sunburned. Cheers, all! Doreen
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Update to last night's post
Apparently, when you block a post from a third-party application in Facebook, you’re then given the option of blocking all subsequent posts. That raises the comfort level a bit, as the application continues its lumbering waddle into platform-hood.
August 2011
13 posts
Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away
It’s clear that Google+ has changed a bit, simply because Facebook has adapted by allowing its users to, erm, “curate” their audience. Meaning that previously, anything you posted was either public or to your circle, whereas now you can cherry-pick who can read your comments, links, etc. So that rant about your work life goes only to your friends; your parents know nothing...
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Frivolous Friday, 08.26.2011: The Geek Workout
During the last few weeks, I’ve rationalized not going to the gym with the argument that packing boxes, schlepping them, wrestling a carpet cleaner and mopping both walls (for painting) and floors (for the usual reasons) was plenty of strength-training, thank you very much. But as much as certain muscle-factions might have protested, that’s exercise I prefer to the hothouse flower...
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Why "internet time" doesn't matter so much anymore...
Back in the summer of the post-dot-com-bubble-pop (a.k.a. 2001), fellow tech. writer—let’s call her “A”—and I drove from Rochester, MN to the Minneapolis Convention Center for a tech. expo. She was looking for work—and tchotchkes. Whereas I’d talked my first line supervisor into letting me put 8 hours into this junket on the pretext of research, ...
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Danegeld 2.0 *
Earlier this week, I was wickedly amused to read that the makers of the Abercrombie & Fitch line of clothing were offering to pay the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore to refrain from wearing their togs, citing concerns about their brand’s image. (Cue Billy Joel: “Where have you been hidin’ out lately, honey? You can’t dress trashy ‘till you spend a lotta...
Free for the giving
There’s a phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the Commons,” which—in the proverbial nutshell—says that if there exists a limited source of something valuable that is available for free (or next to nothing), sooner or later some jackhole will take more than her/his fair share. This emboldens other jackholes to do the same, until the thing of value is gone and/or...
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No posting this week
It’s already clear that this week is booked, inside work and out, so I figured it’s be a little less lame to get the heads-up out before the last minute. Have a productive week and fantastic weekend, all!
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Frivolous Friday, 08.05.2011: Computer Camp
Don’t ask me why, but last night I realized that thirty years ago, Mom sent me off to computer camp, offered by the local University. A magical place of wonder and discovery in the camaradarie of fellow fledgling geeks. Where, even with all the excitement and exercise of the day, there was still plenty of energy left for a good sing-along by the light of our laptops’ monitors. ...
Another yardstick of "progress"
At Dennis’ family reunion, one of our newest Kewpie-doll cousins—at least twice removed—was running about the jungle of adult legs, Mamma’s cellphone in hand. Mamma, understandably enough, was in hot pursuit of her—or, perhaps more aptly, the phone. I leaned close to Dennis and observed (sotto vocce, of course) that the little blonde cutie-pie will probably grow...
July 2011
12 posts
No blog post tonight
Preparations for a family reunion have called dibs on the evening, and tomorrow will come earlier than even most weekdays. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
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Touche
The “car doctor” for my 15 year-old beastie changed ownership somewhat recently. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to notice no difference in the faces nor the service since then. But, as the courtesy van driver—somewhat older than I—schlepped me to work, I made conversation by asking how things had changed. Naturally, I was expecting a diplomatic answer. But he...
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Frivolous Friday, 07.22.2011: Computer wizardry
For me, it’s the end of an era, really. When I had first moved to La Crosse, but was waiting for Dennis to join me, I picked up a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at Quillins to pass an evening or two. Normally I have an allergic reaction to that sort of phenomenon—particularly as the movie was due to come out. This turned out to be the exception. I...
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Ringing half the bell
Pop Quiz: What would you do if you knew that 50% of your potential competition doesn’t actually exist? Maybe it’s one of those unquestioned conventional wisdom things—an old wives’ tale of capitalism, if you will—that bit about “Half of success is just showing up.” Or maybe it’s that I’m still somewhat crabby that a contractor dude postponed...
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Frivolous Friday, 07.15.2011: BFAQ
An atypical first night of “babysitting bees” at the La Crosse County Fair, by many measures. The rain was mostly responsible for that. When I arrived shortly after 7pm, the Dairy building (where they sell the malts and ice cream) was packed. And—with all due respect to the talented wood-carvers, bees have a certain Fierce Creatures appeal that sometimes keeps people away,...
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Revisited wisdom
About a decade and three employers ago, my team’s intern signed his email with the slogan “Efficiency is intelligent laziness.” I was reminded of the truth of that today, while being pleasantly surprised at how J. had consolidated a somewhat Rube Goldberg patchwork of code into an impressively streamlined VB.Net executable. “Pleasant,” because it’s good...
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(belated) Frivolous Friday, 07.08.2011: The...
(In honor of the last day of publication for News of the World—don’t let the door hit’cha where the Good Lord split’cha, hey?. And in fervent hope that the public and Fourth Estate will jointly raise the standard of “journalism.”) Hackin’, got my soul cashed in, just hackin’, working for The Man A raccoon more or less tipping society’s...
"Frivolous Friday" postponed
A late start tonight, with a bunch of dishes to do, and—much more importantly, helping Dennis set up a demo. website on my Ubuntu laptop b/c setting up concrete5 on a Windows server has been giving him static all day. By which I of course mean, seducing him over to The Light Side. ;-) He started installation sometime after 7 tonight, and the prototype of the new website is already...
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Hierarchy of Lead(ing)
Apparently, Those Who Know Best decided that it would be a good idea to encourage folks in the office to donate blood. An effort that’s of a piece with earlier efforts to field a team for the local ACS Relay for Life (something which—I might add—I did a subpar job in managing when it was my turn). With that disclosure, two things struck me about the email that was...
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Frivolous Friday, 07.01.2011: Founding hackers
I snagged Dennis’ copy of John Adams and snarfed the bulk of it while under the weather last weekend. (Exhaustive depth and breadth of research aside, I guess I was expecting more impartiality and less hagiography. Although Abigail was pretty badass, ripping Jefferson a new one by mail—while he was in office, no less! I knew she had to be a force of Nature, but I never knew...
June 2011
10 posts
A rooster worth crowing about
Kudos to Rooster Andy’s for the verbiage I saw on their sign during yesterday morning’s commute, which publicly congratulated one of their employees for moving onto another job. That’s pretty outstanding, and thought it deserved a shout-out. I only wish I liked BBQ chicken better…
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Frivolous Friday, 06.24.2011: Geek bar jokes
An J2EE JDBC connection walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “What’ll it be?” “Nothing right now, thanks,” replies the connection as it makes a bee-line for the billiard tables, “I’m just here for the pool.” Richard Stallman walks into a bar. Recognizing him, the barkeep asks, “Hey, Richard! What’s GNU?” A memory slot walks...
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Short-selling the dinosaurs, or "Here we go...
With the rise of the smartphone, the attendant hype has included some talk about the “ghettoization” of the internet—in the sense that “the internet” is defined as content snarfed from one or more web servers from a laptop or even horrifically retro desktop computer. Yet, as I read yet another “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” ...
Blog post Wed. night
Beekeeper’s meeting followed by “Date Night” takeout from Gracie’s Gyros over a bottle of retsina. And suddenly it’s nearly 10:30. Which, on a “school night,” means that tomorrow will be Blog Night. P.S.: Gracie’s is lovely this time of year…no fighting college students for tables!
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Frivolous Friday, 06.17.2011: Winged muses
For the last few months, I’ve been either getting a project out the door, fighting fires or tying up the proverbial loose ends on nearly six years of my working life. Which doesn’t leave much time for in-cubicle “play-time.” Outside of work, the joy in coding—particularly having my head handed to me by another language—just wasn’t there. So it was ...
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Living in a three-party system
Dad wanted to review the photos on his camera’s memory card. Dad’s a Windows user, and I don’t have an SD slot on my XP desktop. So the only option was to fire up the Ubuntu laptop, log in, and hope for the best. Now. What you should understand about my Dad is he’s Mister Fix Anything, thanks to being in medical maintenance since before I was born in the hospital that...
No blog post tonight
Prepping for a family reunion and having company over has called dibs on my weekend and beyond. Hope that my gentle reader’s Friday is sufficiently frivolous without my contribution. Cheers, all!
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Lopsided metaphor
Apparently, hyperopia is a hipster condition…at least in the sense that I’ve never heard of it—not that this is much of a touchstone, mind you! (The less fancy name for those of us lacking a degree in opthomology is “farsightedness.”) It occurred to me to look up the word while I was testing a fix, and realized that I was doing so with full God-Emperor-of-Dune...
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Frivolous Friday, 06.03.2011: Funny money
It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long since the birth announcement, but online pal A.’s daugher Z. is now old enough for visits from the Tooth Fairy. A. tweeted that $0.50 had materialized under Z.’s pillow. I twitted him that clearly imaginary beings are not subject to the laws of inflation, because that was the going rate in “my day” —an epoch ...
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It takes a tribe to raise a member
I’m not sure I want to perpetuate the analogy of “tribes” to a work environment, because, going on my career so far, I’ve rarely seen the necessary level of cohesion extend beyond, say, three co-workers. But Best Friend H. was chunking out code when I was still struggling to parlay a Liberal Arts degree into a “real job,” so I tend to trust her instincts. ...
Testing...testing...
…still spot-checking a code rollout to the production server. Blog post tomorrow night.