Skimping on free soft drinks, a completely standard benefit at most high tech companies, is a great way to send your employees and potential employees the message that you just don’t care about being an attractive workplace.
Continue readingIf you’re gonna interrupt everybody with an ad, it had better be something everybody wants to buy.
Continue readingOne reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
Continue readingConstant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.
Continue readingApparently nobody cares what you had for lunch. Nobody wants to hear about your bodily functions (or so I hear). So what else is Twitter good for?
Continue readingIntroverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic… Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.
Continue readingThe problem with driving the same section of road too often is that you start to do it on autopilot.
Continue readingIf you could fire the worst segment of your customers, would you do it?
Continue readingPeople say “I’m just being myself” … That’s not an achievement, that’s not honesty, it’s lack of imagination and cowardice.
Continue readingIf I live my life in indecision because I’m paralyzed by the fear of failure, my choices are made by default. The wrong decision is better than no decision at all. If I take a shot and fall short, at least I took the shot. I am a better man for my failure.
Continue readingThere are products and services I love that are annoying, but that’s okay, because that’s part of being in love. And there are products and services that are annoyance-free, but I don’t love them. That’s okay too. I like them just fine.
Continue readingIf someone makes a digital version of your popular board game, don’t sue them. If someone ports your software to a new platform, or creates a wildly popular knockoff, don’t sue them. Don’t instinctively reach for a DMCA notice or a lawsuit. These developers aren’t your competition, they’re your fans.
Continue readingWhen you struggle with an OOP problem, your program still works, it’s just sort of hard to maintain. Allegedly. But when you struggle with pointers, your program produces the line Segmentation Fault and you have no idea what’s going on, until you stop and take a deep breath and really try to force your mind to work at two different levels of abstraction simultaneously.
Continue readingCheck out this new Wordle to see everything I’ve bookmarked on Delicious in the past couple of years. (Click on a word to see the links).
Continue readingSome of you might remember that I tried to start a grassroots movement a year or so ago. After a brief moment of success, my campaign backfired spectacularly. Within a week or so I became the target of exactly the effect I was trying to cause to cause for my friend Jacob.
Continue readingThere are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.
Continue readingInbox count: 22
Bacnbox count: 6
Active/overdue RTM tasks: 19
Partially written blog posts: 5
Available software updates: 3
Facebook alerts: 6
New LinkedIn network requests: 3
Side projects on the back burner: 7
You choose your words so tentatively when you tell me you’re dating someone new. But you don’t even use the word “boyfriend”.
Continue readingThe probability of being dealt a royal flush in a poker hand is around 10-7. You have a 10-10 chance of dying on any given 5 mile bus trip. Your next Powerball lotto ticket has about a 10-16 chance of winning.
Continue readingIf you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you’re doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.
Continue readingThou mayst as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. ‘Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigor to the mind.
Continue readingWho has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree.
Continue readingSlightly devious. Someone entertain me, please.
Continue readingI think Twitter is a huge experiment in human interaction. What does a group of users do when given a service (for free) which does essentially nothing, with no real direction or constraints on its use? They play. Yesterday I got to witness a Twitter microevolution firsthand.
Continue readingIf you buy my product but don’t read the instructions, that’s not your fault, it’s mine.
Continue readingBeware — if you like maps or data visualization in general, you could waste a lot of time at Strange Maps.
Continue readingGordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died today. He was a good man. I’ll miss him.
Continue readingA noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man by one which is lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other, ambition. Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Continue readingMy bicycle doesn’t have a freewheel, or any way of coasting. It doesn’t have gears. It doesn’t have brakes, or brake levers, or cables.
Continue readingA couple of thoughts on National Blog Posting Month.
Continue readingEvery man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all for him to bear; but they are so, because they are the very ones he needs.
Continue readingMy impression, growing stronger every year, is that sleep is partly a matter of habit — and of slackness. I am convinced that most people sleep as long as they do because they are at a loss for any other diversion.
Continue readingThere is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect.
Continue readingContinue readingA couple of hours ago I would have sworn that I knew and understood the algorithmic approach to changing the base in a difference equation. It’s unfortunate that tests, while great for establishing application of a memorized algorithm, do so little to show understanding and internalization of the concepts which that regurgitated problem solving strategy actually represents.
a.k.a. no matter how much I fiddle with the terms, it appears that I have forgotten the formula :-(
I got a credit card offer today that was printed on “50% post-consumer” recycled paper. Forgive me for not being excited.
Continue readingApparently the going exchange rate is two chihuahuas per pug…
Continue readingApparently I’m 88% addicted to the blagosphere. I think that might be an underestimation…
Continue readingI just got a great spam message. It’s kinda zen if you can get past all the stuff about Microsoft office. Almost poetry.
Continue readingIt seems like the real tech success stories are short term.
Continue readingI’m sitting here trying to muster up an opinion about the trade off between rights and protection. To what extent can a governments infringe on the rights of its citizens to protect them from potential harm? I’m coming up short. Indifference like this is why our individual rights are slowly eroded from beneath our feet.
Continue readingBrian Regan points out that Pop Tarts® are the culmination of our impatient society. In addition to the traditional toaster-centric instructions, they have microwave instructions. Who is so busy that they don’t have time to toast a Pop Tart®? Who needs to be awake and out the door in seconds? I would ask who doesn’t? Who can afford to spend more time on something as trivial as a Pop Tart®? Microwaving is almost always better.
Continue readingFor the last hundred years or so, perspective in the United States has been shifting from a focus on the rights of society to the rights of the individual. When society as a whole has perceived rights, each individual has a responsibility toward the community. Whenever the perceived rights of an individual surpass those of the community, anything bad that happens to a person is seen as cause for punishment. This leads to the current state of our judiciary system.
Continue readingI’ve been pondering what it is that makes a person a geek. It’s definitely an identity. But is geekiness inherent, or is it acquired? Which came first, the chicken or the easter egg?
Continue readingA Calvin and Hobbes strip once concluded that “Verbing weirds language”. I would disagree. Since the advent of the digital age, it seems to be an indicator of success and popularity.
Continue readingWhy do teachers give an assignment before telling their students how it should be done? Is there any reason not to share expectations until after the submission deadline has passed? It may be true that, when left to their own devices, most students are terrible writers. But when that natural [dis]ability is paired with an unclear understanding of the requirements of an assignment, failure can be the only expected outcome.
Continue readingContinue readingPeople tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.
Current mood: Pensive…
Continue readingI focus my entire being on whatever ugly little mole pokes its head out. That’s my nature. If I think about the other moles, I won’t get to the current one before it’s too late.
Continue readingAnd I am in the third grade all over again… Why do I think this is so funny?
Continue readingIt’s interesting how even though people change, they stay exactly the same…
Continue readingAccording to this reciept, I just saved 50% on my groceries by shopping at Albertsons!
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Someone you will never see again. Maybe it’s an amazingly beautiful girl. Maybe you had the best dance of the night at a venue in some city on the other side of the continent. And might never get a chance to visit again. Maybe it was some guy you just connected with. Someone who’d be your best friend forever, if only you had more time.
Continue readingSo I was on a red-eye flight to New York last night. I was in an emergency exit row (an extra inch of leg room!) so I started flipping through the little comic strip “emergency instructions”. Being a responsible passenger, knowing the requirements of my seating location. (Yes, I am willing and able to assist other passengers leaving the plane. Yes I am over 15. Yes, I can figure out how to pull that red lever that says “PULL” on it…)
Continue readingEver feel like you met someone a little too late? I think I did.
Continue readingSummer is an entirely separate dimension. My organized, metered, cluttered existence fades into dim memory and my life is consumed with blissful carefree summer days. Anarchy.
Continue readingThere’s something about stringing up thousands of white icicle lights for someone else’s wedding reception that reminds you that you haven’t even held hands with a girl since before Christmas. So despite this being the happiest day ever for one lucky couple, it just makes me melancholy.
Continue readingI suck at girls.
Continue readingAlthough our acquaintance was brief, he will be missed.
Continue readingDriving at night is a beautiful dance of moving lights, a kaleidoscope in white and red and amber…
Continue readingMy single serving friend of the day is Jason.
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