Ola Amigo Que Pasa

The Old Grey Lady

2009-12-16T20:42:00.001-07:00

"Gail Collins: Well, the good thing about New York is that only half the conversation at any party is about politics. The other half is shop talk, which I really do like, particularly when it’s not my shop and I get to hear gossip about which restaurant is closing next or who’s sleeping with who in the world of post-post Freudian therapy." - Deck the Halls With Joseph Lieberman. Gail Collins, NY

Nice new thing -

2009-11-28T23:57:00.001-07:00

The Adam Carolla podcast. Great stuff.

What the economy looks like in my neck of the woods.

2009-11-28T19:08:00.005-07:00

The AppleBee's across the street went out of business a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they weren't doing enough business, though when I walked by it looked popular enough. I saw people in there. Not enough I guess. A couple of months ago the Mexican restaurant across Hampden from Whole Foods went dark too. Both of these businesses had been in the neighborhood (Tamarac/Hampden area) at least as

L'affair D'Polanski

2009-10-04T19:38:00.002-06:00

Apparently some people think Roman Polanski should be let go and have charges against him dropped because he's an accomplished film director: http://www.sacd.fr/Le-cinema-soutient-Roman-Polanski-Petition-for-Roman-Polanski.1340.0.htmlFuck him. I liked some of his movies. No movie is so great that I'm going to excuse you for rape though. Fuck him and fuck everyone who thinks *artistes* should be

Michael Moore sucks.

2009-09-22T22:43:00.006-06:00

I'm against the Iraq war. I want socialized medicine in the US. So I agree with him on at least some policy. (Though I think anyone who ever voted for Ralph Nader is an idiot.) I don't like his shtick. He takes serious issues, like plant layoffs, and tries to make a joke out of it. I recall in one of his flicks, forget the name, where he gave some coporate spokes-woman a big check for 58 cents (

Letting school kids choose the books they read.

2009-09-20T13:18:00.004-06:00

The NY Times article - A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like, by Motoko Rich 8/29/2009, talks about some schools where the teachers are letting the kids pick which books they want to read and there's some discussion about whether this is a good thing or not. On the one side the students should be more motivated to read books if they pick them. On the other side, they'll just read Harry Potter.

Maintenance Developer's Dilemma.

2009-09-19T11:45:00.002-06:00

Too many bugs will make management angry. Too few bugs and they don't need developers.

Fall is Coming - Yes!

2009-09-10T00:56:00.003-06:00

Damn. I'm looking forward to Football, cool weather and shorter days. Nice stuff.

What is wrong with the NY Times?

2009-09-06T20:23:00.005-06:00

Thumbing through the mag online this weekend I ran across this headline:The Self-Storage Self By JON MOOALLEMWhat is it about Americans that makes us store elsewhere all that stuff we accumulate?Why does the MSM always stucture articles like this - Who is this 'us'? I don't store shit. Most people don't actually.Why the emphasis on Americans? People in other countries never store anything?6 pages

Can I talk to you about the report?

2009-07-14T08:10:00.003-06:00

So I talked to the Director about the report I had been worried about. He came by my desk, sat down, and we went over what stored procedure we were going to use and how the thing should be layed out, and I pointed out a tricky pivot table like section that was possible technical snag. We were in agreeance pretty much for all of this. Turns out the team lead misunderstood what the issues were.

Derision And Mockery As A Sales Technique.

2009-07-11T20:48:00.002-06:00

Over the past like two weeks I've had salesmen try to push something on me and they have both used the same technique. They make an inquiry, asking me if I want something free, I say no, and they act shocked.The first instance was at Wells Fargo. I was despositing a check and making a withdrawl. The teller typed in the info then stared at her computer screen for a minute or two. Usually I do this

Misc.6/28/2009

2009-06-28T15:55:00.002-06:00

Not much going on. Work is going fairly well. We have stuff to do but we aren't getting slammed. I'm working on an upgrade to an existing report. The director had some ideas about how this needed to be done. Implementing his ideas will make the project harder, less reliable, and will not imho, add much value to it. But, he's the type of guy who doesn't gets pissed when people disagree with him.

Paradise Lost

2009-06-07T15:48:00.006-06:00

It was going along pretty good then I got to Book 9. Not sure if I'm going to be able to get past this. I am having a hard time figuring out what is going on. I have Spark Notes to help me though. Haven't given up yet though. I've found the criticism of PL to be interesting. There's some speculation on who was the model for Satan - Cromwell? They talk about what life was like back in Milton's day

Dis-aggregation.

2009-04-24T14:13:00.009-06:00

Read an article in Vanity Fair last night about Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the NY Times, by Mark Bowden. It was very interesting. The article talks about how Sulzberger has not been able to make the Times financially successful in the internet world. Former editor Max Frankel had some ideas about the future role of newspapers, "“The second idea was much more important, and came a little

Denver Blizzard. Friday April 17, 2009

2009-04-19T12:43:00.004-06:00

Nice. We can use the water. Plus they let us out of work at three. It's Sunday now, sunny, warm, and the snow is melting fast. When I went out on the patio to see how cold it was I noted it smelled like pine trees. It had kind of a fresh quality. Reminded me of camping out. Very nice. Now I'm thinking of going camping this summer. Hmm. I have next week off. Maybe I'll go for a hike. El Dorado

Paradise Lost

2009-04-04T21:41:00.007-06:00

I'm on book 4, around line 160. I'm kind of enjoying it. I like the writing style but I am having trouble following the action. For example:164: Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league 165: Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.166: So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend 167: Who came their bane, through with them better pleased168: Than Asmodeus with the fishy

Masterpiece Theater

2009-03-21T16:22:00.008-06:00

Let's see how this goes. I've got 3 books - The Art of the Tale - An International Anthology of Short Stories (~800 pages), Gotham Writers Fiction Gallery - Exceptional Short Stories Selected by New York's acclaimed Creative Writing School (~300 pages) and Paradise Lost, by Milton. I'm going to try and read them all cover to cover over the next few months. By the end of the summer I guess. So far

RIP - Rocky Mountain News

2009-03-01T21:22:00.008-07:00

The Rocky Mountain News had it's last edition last Friday. I feel for all the people who are now out of a job, in particular the ones who weren't the writers, just the average Joe printer or whatever. That said, I didn't generally read it. They were offering damn near free subscriptions last fall. Actually had people going door to door in my apt, (which is against our rules and possibly illegal)

Black History Month.

2009-02-22T19:11:00.002-07:00

In honor of black history month, enjoy this slice of history about the Old Negro Space Program.

Yes We Did!

2009-01-20T18:42:00.005-07:00

Listened to the radio at work as Obama got inaugurated today. Awesome. Best possible way to start the new year.

Hasta Bush.

2009-01-17T14:51:00.002-07:00

If I could go back in time and tell Bush supporters what the world would be like after 8 years of his presidency I wonder what they'd say.

Fiction

2009-01-15T08:07:00.006-07:00

The NY Times had an article recently with some stats from the National Endowment for the Arts saying that fiction reading is increasing for adults. In 2002 the % of adults in the US reading literature was 46.7, in 2008 it was 50.2. 1982 was kind of a high watermark with 56.9. I'm kind of surprised it's that high. I know a few people who haven't read any fiction since school, where they were

Best Reads of 2008 - in no particular order.

2009-01-04T16:46:00.018-07:00

Fiction---------------------------------------------------------------------------Fences - Play, August Wilson. An African American family in what might be Pittsburgh in the 50s.'Until Gwen - Short Story, Dennis LeHane. Mystery. Hard boiled. Contemporary lowlifes. The Fishing Boat Picture - Short Story, Allan Sillitoe. A marriage and divorce seen from the distance of years by the post office

Definitions

2008-12-28T18:39:00.003-07:00

A few = 3-7A couple = 2-4A handful = 3-10Several = 5-10One = 1A lot = more than 5Almost = > 75% of the way thereNot bad = better than the medianAlways = undefinedNever = undefinedForever = undefinedSometimes = more than once, less than 100% of the time

Random Thoughts on Moth Balls

2008-12-28T18:12:00.008-07:00

I was just checking out my closet. Wanted to clean off my glasses so I went in there to get this cloth I use to clean them, it's some special micro fiber thing. Anyway. I got a whiff of mustiness. Didn't really smell bad and I thought about how I don't really clean the closet, at most I just throw shit out of it. Then I remembered moth balls. I remember running into them sometimes poking around

Timothy Egan VS Joe the Plumber - "I don’t want you writing books."

2008-12-25T06:22:00.014-07:00

Wow, Timothy Egan's op-ed/attack on Joe the Plumber was the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. From the first few paragraphs, "The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet?I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books.

Existentialism

2008-12-21T02:49:00.005-07:00

"I like “Milk,” which has a strong, showy, often moving performance from Sean Penn as Milk and one gorgeously directed and choreographed sequence — shot by the great cinematographer Harris Savides — in which Josh Brolin, oiled in flop sweat and hair grease as Milk’s killer, Dan White, walks alone through a series of grim institutional corridors that put the killer’s existential isolation and

New Senator Kennedy

2008-12-18T04:03:00.005-07:00

Fuck No. Biggest thing Caroline Kennedy ever did was have a father who was a president. No more Bush's, Clinton's, Kennedy's or the rest. At least Hillary and G.W. had to go through an election, CK just wants to get appointed.

Whither Local News?

2008-12-05T03:34:00.010-07:00

Tough times in the Denver area for the news crowd. The Rocky Mountain News is going on the auction block and Ernie Bjorkman is getting laid off. Bummer. I don't generally read the Rocky Mountain News. Well, I read it sporadically, but I never subscribed and haven't bought it in the stands in some time. They used to have copies at Duffy's and when I'd go in for Happy Hour I'd read it there. I read

Denver Open Media

2008-12-02T19:38:00.004-07:00

Mostly I think it's lame. Tonight I caught a bit of a show that seemed be about health insurance and people in Colorado. Interesting. Just had interviews with people who had health issues and were dealing with how to pay them. One woman had cancer and was out of work and was spending a big chunk, if not most, of her money on treatment. I liked the fact that it was just these people talking. No

Yes Man

2008-11-30T00:58:00.008-07:00

"A man signs up for a self-help program based on one simple principle: say yes to everything... and anything. At first, unleashing the power of "yes" transforms his life in amazing and unexpected ways, but he soon discovers that opening up his life to endless possibilities can have its drawbacks. "God that sounds bad.

Lunch cheap and easy.

2008-11-29T23:49:00.017-07:00

1. Homemade bean and cheese Burrito 1 tortilla. Cost - $.13, Calories - 170 1/5 can of beans. Cost - $.30, Calories - 80 1/20 package of Mexican Velveeta cheese. Cost - $.19, Calories - 70 Total - Cost $.62, Calories 320.2. Ginger Ale Cost - $.40, Calories 1403. Bag o' Carrots 1 Carrot, julienned (cut into sticks) Cost $.10, Calories 30Totals Cost - $.62 + $.40 + $.10 = $1.12

Circuit City - Update

2008-11-16T13:42:00.003-07:00

Last year I posted saying I was going to boycott Circuit City over their policy of firing employees who had too much seniority. Looks like it worked, they are going into bankruptcy.Too bad for the honest people working there, but this is what happens when you pay people like Phil Schoonover, their (now ex) CEO, millions and fire the people who actually do the work. If the market is supposed to

President Obama.

2008-11-04T22:07:00.002-07:00

Yes! Imagine Etta James playing At Last in the background and you get the vibe. Kind of hard to believe.

What's Goin On.

2008-10-05T18:29:00.005-06:00

Not too much. Let's see. I am reading The Making of a Chef, by Michael Ruhlman. I'm probably half way through. It's good. It's about the Culinary Institute of America which is kind of like Harvard for cooking schools in the U.S. Interesting stuff. I learned one thing - if you want to make a sandwich that doesn't get soggy, keep dry stuff, like cheese, against the bread and put the mayo somewhere

The Mortgage Backed Securites Bailout. A Denver Bloggers Perspective.

2008-09-24T19:12:00.006-06:00

Bush is on TV now. I caught a couple of minutes of him explaining why their buyers of mortgage backed securities are going to be bailed out. His answer was, more or less, cause if not, the financial system would break down. According to him 'the markets did not work'. Didn't catch why they didn't work. Don't think he said. Random questions:What did Bush mean 'the market didn't work'? What should

Whats Playing

2008-09-18T21:39:00.004-06:00

Here's what's playing at the theaters in the hood right now (not great):Get Smart Hancock Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Iron Man Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Kung Fu Panda Meet Dave Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The Space Chimps You Don t Mess With the Zohan Bottle Shock Frozen River Mamma Mia! Vicky Cristina Barcelona Burn After Reading I Served the

McCain. Uggh/Fuck.

2008-09-16T21:17:00.003-06:00

By MICHAEL COOPERPublished: September 16, 2008VIENNA, Ohio — On Monday morning, as the financial system absorbed one of its biggest shocks in generations, Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were “strong.”Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers, whom he described as the backbone of the

DNC 2008

2008-08-30T14:14:00.003-06:00

I went downtown Thursday afternoon to see what was going on with the DNC. It looked like pretty much the whole thing was over except for the speeches going on at Mile High. No riots, no protests. There were more people around than usual but other than that I didn't notice much. Supposedly there were quite a few actors and such around town. Didn't see any. Not that I minded.I did see a few bums,

Nice

2008-08-16T16:28:00.001-06:00

It's been real hot recently. Like in the 90's over the past few weeks. Yesterday a cold front came in and it barely got into the 60's. It's been cloudy and rainy and in the mountains it's snowing. I'm totally enjoying it.

Happy Solstice

2008-06-22T22:58:00.002-06:00

Went out for a walk tonight. It was excellent. Been a little warm recently so I went around/just after sunset. It was cool then. Lilacs are other flowers are in bloom so it smelled great and there there was a nice breeze going on. Good stuff.

Amazon on the Fritz.

2008-06-09T14:03:00.002-06:00

Wonder whats going on at Amazon. I read they were having problems and when I was navigating around there today I got, "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" a few times. I don' recall ever having technical problems with them after being a customer for years. Very impressive reliability. Kind of glad to see they have they're fallible too. Wonder what the issue is though.

Speed Racer.

2008-05-11T14:47:00.003-06:00

I checked out the trailers for this flick on Yahoo Movies. The movie looked awesome photographically/computer graphics wise. It was very colorful. It also seemed like it would be dull, some guy driving a car around a track for an hour or so. Wonder if he wins? You go see it and tell me how it is.

Errol Morris is a bit of a flake.

2008-05-11T14:13:00.002-06:00

I was listening to Errol Morris on Christopher Lydon's podcast show the other day. I'm a big fan of Lydon's and in general I think Errol Morris is a decent documentarian though somewhat pretentious. Anyway, Morris said that he talked to some honcho at MPAA (or whatever, the movie ratings guys) and she said that since 911 horror movies had changed, emphasizing humiliation more and being nastier

Tom Friedman - Thanks Fool

2008-05-04T22:44:00.004-06:00

From Tom's latest NY Times blather, "Who Will Tell the People? We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country."Particularly if we don't get involved in wars cheerleaded by the NY Times and it's crusading columnists. Thanks. BTW, tell Kristoff if he want's to save Africa, he's going to have to get a

Top 80s Songs

2008-04-26T00:49:00.004-06:00

Our Lips Are Sealed - The GoGos / Fun Boy ThreeCome On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight RunnersNew Years Day - U2Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran DuranBack on the Chain Gang - The PretendersCome Dancing - The KinksJust Like Heaven - The CureShe Sells Sanctuary - The CultHow Soon Is Now - The SmithsBlack Coffee in Bed - SqueezeNo particular order. But, I would say Our Lips are Sealed and Come on Eileen are

How Do You Sleep at Night?

2008-04-16T19:22:00.006-06:00

Two assholes Bouldarians, Richard McLean (a former district court judge and former Boulder mayor) and Edith Stevens his female, lawyer, sidekick, claim they have been using their neighbors backyard for so long that they now own it. Using some legal tool called Adverse Possession, they claimed the rights to the property of Don and Susie Kirlin. They want it, don't want to pay for it and think they

New Guy

2008-04-02T00:44:00.006-06:00

One great thing about Obama that can't be said about McCain or Hillary is that Obama had to make his own road. He was not married to a former Pres, like Hillary, he was not a child of an Admiral who went into the Navy, like McCain. He made his own way and he deserves credit for that.For those who think connections are important, I will refer you to G.W.Bush. End of discussion.

MicroSoft Sucks.

2008-03-30T20:09:00.003-06:00

I have Office 2007 Standard Edition installed on my computer and I have been using it successfully for months. Now, for some reason, when I click on a .doc file, Windows tries to install Office 2003. So I can't even open my files by double clicking on them. Was I supposed to buy to versions of the package or is this a bug?Thanks for nothing Redmond.

Don't Damn the Poudre

2008-03-23T18:27:00.002-06:00

According to this article, they're talking about creating a new damn up by Fort Collins and using Poudre water to feed it. That sucks. Some of the best attributes of Fort Fun are the Poudre river and the proximity to the Poudre Canyon. They're going to mess it up so people can grow rich blue grass lawns in semi-arid climate? The argument was made that water demand is growing so they need to build

Is GTD a cult?

2008-03-23T00:11:00.002-06:00

I read about 60 pages into Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and I got bored and gave it up. After hearing such strong claims for it, I figured I would have gotten some insight after a while. Oh well, what can you say about productivity anyway? Do your job as best you can, try to fix things if you can, keep your files organized, let your coworkers know something if it's

The Voice.

2008-03-22T16:52:00.013-06:00

I listen to NPR and various other podcasts alot. Some of the hosts, reporters, commentators, guests, politicians, shills, have excellent speaking voices and some don't. Got me thinking of people with excellent voices and people with bad voices.People with excellent voices (in no particular order):Christopher LydonTom AshbrookRay SuarezMichael GoldfarbDominic WestClarke PetersPeople with bad

Heros Happen Here (Denver edition).

2008-03-21T20:56:00.011-06:00

3/20/2008.I went to the Denver session of MS's 'Hero's Happen Here' Visual Studio 2008 promotional tour on Thursday. It was a very nice day out. (Sunny, 60 degrees, somewhat breezy). I hadn't been Downtown in a while so I took the time to grab some Bruegger's bagels on 17th, and some Anthony's pizza on California. Yum!I took the light

Movie Reviews

2008-03-17T10:28:00.002-06:00

Saw Charlie Bartlett and Juno over the last couple of weeks. Both were about teenagers incidentally. Juno was pretty good. One of the criticisms of Juno was that the dialog was a little sit-commy, which was true in places I thought, but that wasn't a huge problem for me. Charlie Bartlett was not so good. I didn't get into it all, thought the main actor had a weird speech pattern, plus I thought

What are you getting at?

2008-03-09T16:13:00.005-06:00

We were having a meeting and we were reviewing issues we had been having with the performance of our application for one of our customers. Sometimes these guys used 'air cards' on their laptops which are really slow. (I don't think any of our customers use them anymore.) I mentioned that their network performance might be a problem. One of the senior consultants said, 'No. We know that's never an

Colorado State University Library

2008-03-07T16:35:00.008-07:00

That's a mistake right there. CSU rebuilt their library, well expanded it, in the 90's because they needed more space. The design was post modern. I guess they thought it looked cool. It reminds me of the new Denver Art Museum. It looks goofy and pretentious and it's not entirely functional. The 3 story glass wall in the picture faces the West. It gives you a decent view of the foothills, and the

Things I Hate, Continued.

2008-03-06T18:05:00.004-07:00

Lack of specificity. Example, at work somebody asked me for, 'that script'. 'What script?' 'Steve said you would know the one.' 'Sorry, I don't know what he's referring to.'Steve came by our area later and I still couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Why not name the thing? Check it into source control and then send out an email describing what this script does, would that be too

Another Thing About Michael Clayton

2008-03-06T18:03:00.005-07:00

If the company's product was poisonous, eventually, it'd become obvious to people. It's not like people wouldn't notice that they were dying when they used it. It would have been in the company's financial interest to kill off any murderous herbicide/pesticide.

Michael Clayton.

2008-02-25T02:40:00.002-07:00

I saw that Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for her role as a big company lawyer in the movie Michael Clayton. Overall, I kind of liked the movie, but the plot involving her and some hired killers struck me as preposterous. << SPOILER ALERT >>. Basically she hires a couple of assassins to kill some other lawyers her company has hired. One of them being George Clooney who figures out the scheme and

Run Ralph Run!

2008-02-25T02:15:00.001-07:00

Looks like Ralph Nader might be running for President yet again. Go for it dude! It'll show people what your all about.Nader reminds me a little of Bono. They are both trying to save the world. Bono sells t-shirts and CD's, and Nader as far as I know, doesn't do anything period(though he might have got people to wear seat belts or something once). But their going to save us somehow. Thanks Guys!

Nothing new.

2008-02-25T02:09:00.004-07:00

Which is good. Work has been busy, but not too dramatic or fucked up recently. Think this is the way I like it. There is too much actual stuff to do for the boss's to come up with something completely stupid to really screw things up.

Clemens on Capitol Hill.

2008-02-15T22:35:00.003-07:00

Did Roger Clemens take steroids - congress interrogates.Good thing they don't have anything else, like war, the deficit, the lack of renewable energy, to worry about. I'm voting against next November. Go Obama!

The Wire

2008-02-09T22:56:00.001-07:00

I got the first season of 'The Wire', the HBO show, on DVD from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome. Best thing I have have seen on TV in years. Only other show I liked anywhere near this much was The X-Files.

The next Republican Nominee.

2008-02-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like McCain is going to be the Republican nominee for President. Fuck. At least I know who not to vote for. I think he's a jerk. He once made the joke, "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." Cheap shot and lame joke. He must surround himself with people who laugh at whatever he says.He wanted to outlaw Ultimate Fighting. He doesn't think it was a mistake to

Remind me not to get arrested for murder.

2008-02-02T15:47:00.001-07:00

I was wondering what the jurors thought when they found out that Masters had been exonerated by DNA evidence. The Rocky Mountain News talked to one of them. The guy said that he felt the jurors had been manipulated by the prosecutors and hadn't been able to see all the evidence. He also said, "As the deliberations continued, Turner said he was disturbed by the drawings and writings taken from

Fun Stuff - 3 D Tetris.

2008-01-21T01:44:00.001-07:00

Fun 3D version of Tetris. I haven't been able to get one single layer to collapse yet. But it's nifty.

Tim Masters.

2008-01-21T01:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like Tim Masters, the Fort Collins version of the West Memphis Three, is going to be liberated this week, in part due to exculpatory DNA evidence.Very cool.(I wonder what the jurors who convicted him have to say for themselves.)

Get er done.

2008-01-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

At a team meeting last Thursday, the Director of IT said, 'Blah, blah, blah....That's why when you say you can do ten reports, I say, "make it 15". It encourages you to extend you abilities, it gives you something to strive for.'Right. And this is why when we think we can do 10, we say we can do 5.Our Director is famous for saying things can be done much quicker than they actually end up taking.

What I like about You's.

2008-01-12T14:38:00.001-07:00

Anyone can be negative. Here's what I like about the current crop of Presidential candidates:I like that both the hard left and the hard right can't stand Hillary. She strikes me as pragmatic. She's for national health care (or whatever it's called these days).I like that Obama actually wrote his own book instead of hiring a ghost writer.I like that Edwards talks so much about poverty and that

Labeling is a bad thing.

2008-01-06T22:08:00.000-07:00

J. Hoberman, the movie critic, in writing about There Will Be Blood said this, "Plainview is a visionary materialist and the loneliest of lone wolves, not to mention a self-invented entrepreneur and the very embodiment of D.H. Lawrence's formula for our essential national character: 'hard, stoic and a killer.' "The part that gets my attention is the phrase 'essential national character'. I

Best Reads of 2007

2007-12-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

1. Where's My Money - Play, John Patrick Shanley2. A Study in Scarlett - Novella/Mystery, Arthur Conan Doyle3. Troilus and Cressida - Play, Shakespeare4. Joe Egg - Play, Peter Nichols5. The Search for Justice - Play, Bertolt Brecht6. Guts - Short Story, Chuck Palahniuk7. No Exit - Play, Jean-Paul Sartre8. Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - Novel/mystery, John Mortimer9. Action Will Be Taken

Boycott Circuit City.

2007-12-30T15:35:00.002-07:00

Circuit City has a policy of laying off employees after they've been there a few years and replacing them with lower paid new employees. This strikes me as a fucked up system. If you've been a good employee for them, put in your overtime without bitching, cheerfully helped out customers, etc, after a few years here's your reward - Take a Hike.Nice place.Interestingly, this scheme doesn't seem to

Nifty Wikipedia link.

2007-12-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

Figures of speech

Random things I learned from flipping through the channels this weekend.

2007-12-29T18:22:00.001-07:00

1. Rick Steves is a twat. Who wants to watch this dork eat food in Europe? This is a good use of your time? Good gig for him though. 2. If it's a made for tv movie, on the Hallmark channel, and you see Mary Steenburgen dressed up in some period, salt of the earth costume, I'll just assume it sucks.3. I liked Tom Hanks more when he did comedy, before he became Mr Serious Actor.4. Paula Deen needs

Phone number entry.

2007-12-24T03:12:00.000-07:00

Whenever I am filling out an online registration and the system asks for my phone number, I always put my phone number but with the last digit off by one. So instead of xxx-xxx-xxx9, I put xxx-xxx-xxx8. I do this all the time. When I signed up for AAA, for example, I used this trick.I don't want to be on any fucking phone list and get telemarketed.That said, I get still junk phone calls all the

Xmas commercials.

2007-12-23T20:35:00.002-07:00

Caught a few Xmas commercials this past weekend. Looks like some people are going to be getting cheap perfume as a present.

That's cold.

2007-12-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the past week was the first time I have turned on the heat in my apartment for real this season. The lows have been in the single digits. When I went to work today I wore a double strength hat, and a long sleeve tshirt, plus a flannel shirt over that.Totally digging it.

2gether

2007-12-14T23:36:00.001-07:00

Browsing through youtube recently, I dug up a favorite 'band' of mine from, I think the late 90's, early 00's. The one and only: 2gether.

Sweet.

2007-12-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

Michael Vick gets his just desserts: Vick Gets 23 Months in Dogfighting Case.

Don't make me repeat myself.

2007-11-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

I was at work last Wednesday and just outside the wall of cubes I sit in was the General Manager of our company. She was talking to a potential customer. We have 2 products that can be used together, one of which is the product I work on. She had just come out of the server room with this guy, who I didn't get a chance to see and she was telling him about the people who do use our product.'I know

Nice night.

2007-11-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

I went out for a walk/jog around 5 this afternoon. It was cool and the sun had just set. There is a park about half a mile away from where I live and circumnavigating it is about a mile so the whole shebang is roughly two miles. It was really relaxing. The whole route was empty, which it wouldnt' have been if it wasn't dark so early now and somebody was burning some firewood and it was quite the

Perks

2007-11-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

For my companies 20th birthday, they bought all 1000 of us iPod shuffles a couple of weeks ago. Very nice. Then, we had a 'health fair' and there were free massages, flu shots, lectures on nutrition and a plethora of schwag such as pedometers and bags of trail mix. (I got a flu shot and some raisins and nuts and skipped the massage bit, not my thing.)Perks are always nice. We still haven't

One killed, 7 wounded in LoDo shooting

2007-11-04T20:35:00.001-07:00

Guess there was a shooting in Lodo last Sunday morning, after the bars closed at 2. Sounds like a couple of groups of guys got into some drunken dissing match in a bar, one of the groups got kicked out then waited for the other group came out when the place closed. And one of the gang pulled out a gun and started shooting. Nice. Drunken people talking shit and one of them happens to have a gun.

Candidate.

2007-11-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

The Director of IT came by our cube area last Friday and was talking to the one guy left on the other team. He had done a couple of interviews. One of them was with a guy who wanted 'more money than I'm making!' This guy had apparently got less than half the technical questions right. 'These were simple questions! I haven't been programming for years!' the Director said, then laughed loudly,

A Time To Reap

2007-10-21T01:21:00.001-06:00

I was at Whole Foods tonight around 7 or so. I figured that most people would be done shopping and that it would be relatively uncrowded. Generally I go there late and there's no crowd. It was really busy tonight though.The girl who was scanning my items said 'Thanks for your patience'.'It's a little more crowded than usual for Saturday night isn't it', I said.'Yeah. I think it's because it's

A Word For Our Sponsors

2007-10-15T00:23:00.000-06:00

Watching the baseball playoffs, I have been treated to the Chevy commercial with Bob Seeger, no, uh, Bruce, uh, no, uh that Little Pink Houses dude singing over a montage of Americana, including, I think, Mt Rushmore, various construction sites, the great plains etc. I get a few seconds of it before I change the channel or put the tv on mute.If I was in the mood for a truck, or any auto product,

IT Worker Shortage.

2007-10-10T19:19:00.001-06:00

Here's a link to a Business Week article on the supposed shortage of labor in the Tech Market.Here's a quote: 'With a B.S. in computer science, an M.A. in information systems management, and 20 years of experience, Rennie Sawade would appear to be a strong candidate for a job as a software development engineer. But all the 44-year-old can find these days are short-term, temporary jobs -- like

Rudy VS. Hillary 2008.

2007-10-07T00:24:00.000-06:00

Fuck. If it's a choice between these two, I guess I want Hillary. Giuliani has an adviser named Norman Podhoretz who wants to start a war with Iran. He strikes me as just another shill for lobbyists, Republican interest groups, though he is pro-choice and relatively socially liberal, and his administration did preside over a significant decrease in crime.Still, Hillary strikes me as being more

'Everything we have said here needs to stay in this room.'

2007-10-06T22:19:00.000-06:00

Huh?My project manager said this at the end of a meeting we had last week. To be honest, I am not really sure what the meeting was all about. The fact that we were asked not to discuss it bothers me though.According to the Boss's Boss, the Director of IT, we have only completed 8 pages this year between 3 developers and 'you make your own bed' (whatever that means). This isn't a very good way to

Fuck Bush.

2007-09-28T02:48:00.000-06:00

There has been a little flapdoodle up in Fort Fun recently. The Collegian, CSU's campus newspaper wrote an editorial as follows:'TASER THISIssue date: 9/21/07 Section: NewsFUCK BUSHThis is the view of the Collegian editorial board.' function goPage(newindex) { currentLocation = getThisPage(); cleanedLocation = ''; // If this is an SHTML request. if (currentLocation.indexOf(".

Work - What is going on round hea?

2007-09-26T08:30:00.000-06:00

The senior programmer, a guy who worked on the other app, quit on Monday. Tuesday the director came by our work area to point out that we were not using the infragistics data grid consistently and that we should create a template and use that. (He said the same thing 5 times. No joke. When he says something he will say it over and over. Someone came in late on a Friday, (which was expected

Heirloom Tomatoes

2007-09-23T21:58:00.000-06:00

Got some heirloom tomatoes today from the Whole Foods across Hampden where I live. Pretty tasty. Hadn't had 'heirloom tomatoes' before. They just looked funny. But I had heard they taste good because they are pre-industrial or something. There old seeds and they have more flavor because they haven't been hybridized or something. I think I get the idea. I can often taste the difference between

Work.

2007-09-23T21:51:00.000-06:00

Last Sat, 9-22, was the 2nd Sat in a row that our team has come in to work. The thing is I think we missed our original release date but I am not sure. It might have been mid Sept. It would have been obvious to our manager that we weren't going to make it, but I don't recall hearing anything about us pushing the date. That's very typical. I don't want to ask how far behind we are, and I don't

What's with this 'We', asshole?

2007-09-23T21:29:00.000-06:00

I listen to streaming radio alot of the time at work. I was listening to Michael Pollen, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, on On Point last week, and he was talking about contemporary food culture. It sounded kind of interesting, and it was a decent enough show, all in all. What bothered me about it was how he kept saying 'we' to indicate, from what I can tell, the entire population of Americans.

Student Loans

2007-09-23T15:33:00.000-06:00

There are 2 types of student loans - the ones that come from the government (direct loans) and the ones that come from a bank. The ones from a bank are guaranteed by the government, so if someone defaults, the government pays the bank back for them. The question I have is why aren't all loans direct? What do the banks provide here? Nothing. I think it's a rip off and any politician who supports

Fraggles.

2007-09-13T22:44:00.000-06:00

From the old muppet show Fraggle Rock. The main characters were (in no order):1. Mookie2. Goober3. Gobo4. Wembly5. Red.Not sure what brought that back to my attention. I recall a guy in 8th grade giving me that breakdown, which I still recall. The show was on HBO, which was gotten sporadically where I lived.File this under random recollection.* Actually, I think #2 should be Boober, not Goober.

Day At Work.

2007-09-12T23:39:00.000-06:00

Check email. Talk, briefly to coworkers. Manager says HR rep is 'moving on'. Half assed banter ensues regarding what we will do without HR in local office. Liked HR person. Mention to Manager that this isn't' a good thing.Spent most of day fixing one bug. A report was giving me a screen break in test. It was a PDF report and the error said that Adobe reader didn't have enough data to draw an

Upcoming movies that sound good.

2007-09-12T23:33:00.000-06:00

Eastern Promises - some sort of thriller by Cronenberg with Viggo Mortenson as a Russian mafia guy and Naomi Watts as a Doctor or something. Guessing he's the bad guy who reveals a good side after the trials good girl Watts endures in her quest for .The Brave One - Jodie Foster meets Charles Bronson. Question - how does this differ from straight up Death Wish, assuming that this is looking like a

Ciao Luciano.

2007-09-08T23:19:00.000-06:00

I went to iTunes and got La Donna E Mobile, which he did with the London Symphony Orchestra. It's an ebullient 2.5 minute song, or Rigoletto, (not that I know what that is). Great stuff.

Things I Hate.

2007-08-20T18:37:00.000-06:00

1. Microsoft Word2. Musak3. People who talk on their cell phones in cafeterias/restaurants.4. People who talk on their cell phones on public transportation.5. Door to door salesmen.6. Telemarketers7. The fact that MS Outlook always uses aliases so if you want to email someone with another tool, you have to hunt down what the actual address is.8. The false cheerfulness/sincerity of television