Led Zeppelin, without John Henry Bonham, got together and did a concert in London last night.
Reviews have been pretty positive. I'm sure it was an awesome show.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Dec 11 2007 06:22 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
I ran across the Greater IBM Connection today, and its blog. This organization is for former and current IBM employees and features a LinkedIn Group as well as a Xing network. Sigh. Time to join another social networking site.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Nov 15 2007 04:34 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Seems like I'm posting nothing but videos lately.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, May 29 2007 07:50 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
(Hat tip to Signal vs. Noise.)
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, May 22 2007 09:44 AM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
Speaking of ironies, the Dean of the prestigious MIT's admissions office was found to have lied on her resume about her three degrees, and that same admissions office routinely does not accept into college those who are found to have lied on their admissions materials.
Marilee Jones is said to be a great person, who struggled to turn-around the expectation that massive overloads are required in school to obtain admissions to elite colleges, but that will all be overshadowed by yet another case of resume inflation via faked degrees.
She did write a book, though, on stressless college admissions.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, Apr 27 2007 09:18 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
A couple of personality tests making the rounds:
Which Political Leader are You Most Like?
Which Historical Military Leader are You Most Like?
My results after the jump.
Political leader: Andrew Jackson
Military leader: Teddy Roosevelt
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Apr 3 2007 07:01 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Rather than focus on today being a celebration of a (three?) martyrs, one can focus on the original festival of Lupercalia, honoring Juno, Queen of the Roman gods. Per Wikipedia Plutarch wrote this of Lupercalia:
Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.
Is this better than sending flowers and cards to celebrate the martyrdom of a cleric that conducted illegal marriages? Well, usually it's pretty cold in the US this early in the year, so I think running around naked is out. Cards and flowers it is!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Feb 14 2007 02:45 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
According to Inside Higher Ed Middlebury College has barred citing Wikipedia in academic works, referring to the frequent problem of inaccurate or incomplete entries. However, this raises a serious issue: academics are supposed to cite any reference or work they used to develop their own publications. Anything less is dishonest!
I would never advocate Wikipedia as a single source of information, but it's a good source to get started on the search for more information. While some entries are controversial, for the most part the information there is a decent summary and a long list of additional references to go explore. If a student used this as a starting point, it deserves credit in a paper!
The academics have their heart in the right place, though:
He [Don Wyatt] stressed that the objection of the department to Wikipedia wasn’t its online nature, but its unedited nature, and he said students need to be taught to go for quality information, not just convenience.
While people shouldn't solely go to any encyclopedia for their information for academic writing, places like wikipedia are often a better source for discovering the underlying controversies present in a particular subject area, or disagreements amongst sources or experts. That sort of information in invaluable in research, and should be cited if used to direct one's study.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, Jan 26 2007 09:24 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Possibly some of the worst television ever made, the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is online: part one, part two. Where else can you find a show that inexplicably starts with nothing but Wookie dialog, features the first appearance of Boba Fett (in cartoon form), and a drunken singing Carrie Fisher (prompting a Star Wars don't drink and drive commercial?).
There is more detail than you could possibly want about this special on wikipedia.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Dec 21 2006 08:36 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
While in general the Penn Jillette Radio Show is not kid-friendly, I was struck by this extremely funny item in the November 30, 2006 show on iTunes (time 16:53):
Like in CSI, you know, they're doing DNA tests without hair nets, so they're looking down at the petri dish going, “Wait a minute! I did this crime too!”
I've never been a big fan of faux realism on television, and while other's like it, I don't enjoy ER or CSI. Real life emergency room and forensic investigations are not like that, folks. Just like people in real life don't always have the snappy comeback. (My best snappy comebacks are usually invented a day or so after the conversation.)
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, Dec 1 2006 02:24 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
I got my PMP packet from the Project Management Institute yesterday and I wasn't impressed. It came with a welcome letter, a special pin, a promise for a newsletter to arrive quarterly, a copy of the code of conduct to sign and keep in my folder, a CD with a copy of the PMP logo to be used only on business cards (not resumes or web sites), and a crumpled certificate.
I'll get the certificate replaced, but it wasn't the gold-plated experience I had hoped (warning, project management pun).
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Nov 29 2006 08:58 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Announced over the weekend, we discover that since Peter Jackson decided to audit profits from The Lord of the Rings they are seeking another director for The Hobbit.
Peter did a really good job with LOTR, but they did take some liberties with the source material. One is left to speculate whether another director would take more liberties, since it was clear that Peter and his team were unabashed fans.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Nov 20 2006 08:33 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Today I passed the Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional exam, the final step in PMP certification. Therefore I may refer to myself as “Josh Poulson, PMP.”
It may not excite you folks, but I needed to do it to maintain my status at work.
Update: They quickly listed me as certified.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, Nov 10 2006 05:23 PM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
I've been added to the Unofficial List of IBM Bloggers at Elias Torres. Thanks for the welcome!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 10:39 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Friend Howard Abrams writes about evolution and I felt a need to respond.
Are we so vain and arrogant that we can assert evolution is not God's plan in the first place? On what basis? It all boils down to definitions and the inadequacy of language and metaphor.
All living organisms on earth have traits dictated by a genetic structure. The theory of genetic drift explains that mutation and other factors can lead to random changes in genetic codes in offspring. The theory of speciation is that inheritable traits in species that can produce viable offspring eventually lead to new species from different ones. The theory of natural selection is that certain traits are more desirable in certain environments leading to the triumph of species good enough to thrive there over those other species who struggle to produce viable offspring. The theory of universal common descent is that because of the massive common sequences in the genetic code of current and historic species that all life on earth derives from a common ancestor (that appeared on Earth approximately 3.5 billion years ago). The theory of evolution takes these concepts together to conclude that the long life of the Earth and the diversity of environments has led to the diversity of species we have today.
Since all religious myths must be taken as metaphor, how could any religion not claim that God's plan to create the modern world was not accomplished in this way? The Bible says God created the beasts, why is it not possible that the way God created those beasts was through evolution? The Bible says God gave man dominion over the beasts, but why is not evolution of sentient tool-using man a way to implement that plan? The Bible says man is made in his image, but with the commonality of genetic code amongst all life is not all life in his image (with enough diversity to make things interesting)?
So, why is is distasteful for those who are religious to understand and acknowledge evolution as a suitable explanation for the diversity and change of species we now observe on Earth? Because the explanation offered above does not ascribe special meaning and uniqueness to human life. It is simply a variation that developed attributes that allowed it to thrive. This is what I feel is vanity and arrogance. We are God's chosen so we must be different than everything else around us. We must be special.
To me all life is special, and we are just as special as life. Treasure it more than the minor differences in genetic code that make us capable of being smart enough to argue about it. Treasure more the experiences that allow you to argue about it standing on the shoulders of giants that brought us this rich diversity of thought in the first place.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 10:39 AM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
Well, one always expects the first scratch soon after getting a new car… but I just found out the “Top Banana” was backed into and had the driver's side all crunched up. First estimate back is $2500 of damage.
Wah!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Oct 18 2006 05:17 PM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
I'm scheduled for a PMP Exam on Friday, November 10th. Pre-tests have me passing, but just barely. I'm officially in crunch mode.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Sunday, Oct 15 2006 09:37 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
I love Cowboy Blob's photoshopping (it's one of the reasons he's on my blogroll, another is frequent submissions to the Carnival of Cordite), he's not always safe for the kids, but he always has some gems:
Keep it up!
Update: Oops! It wasn't one of his photoshops!
Here's one of his for sure:
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, Oct 13 2006 08:25 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Sep 18 2006 09:35 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is coming October 6th, and the folks at the SciFi channel are giving us a preview (and backstory) via video from their web site until then.
So far we have just the first installment. We get new ones every Tuesday and Thursday for the next month.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Sep 5 2006 12:05 PM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
A series I enjoy from Harvard Business School Press is “The Results Driven Manager” series and I'm seeing some promise in the Harvard Business Review “Management Dilemmas” series. However, when one tries to find these series on Amazon.com misspelled titles makes it hard to find items.
For example, some titles are “Results-Driven” others are “Results Driven”. Some have the series title in parentheses. Others do not. Some have “The“ others do not. Then there's miserable examples, such as “Business Etiqeutte: The Results Drive Manager” (not just a dropped letter from the series title, but a misspelling of “etiquette”).
Switch to HBR's series and you find three titles with dilemma spelled incorrectly: “When Your Strategy Stalls (Harvard Business Review Management Dilemas)”, “When People Are The Problem (Harvard Business Review Management Dilemas)”, and “When Marketing Becomes a Minefield (Harvard Business Review Management Dilemas)”. Sure, it's spelled “dilema” in Spanish, but I'm looking for the English ones, thank you.
I have these books. The titles are spelled correctly on them. I just don't get it. I have used Amazon's feedback mechanism and it doesn't seem like things are getting fixed. I'm not used to this level of error in Amazon entries, so it bemuses me that a bunch of Harvard stuff is so broken.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Aug 31 2006 04:52 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Firing the Canon with an axe:
Clearly a classic!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Aug 29 2006 07:18 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
What intelligent designer runs a sewer through the middle of a recreational area?
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Aug 22 2006 03:18 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
The international conference in Prague is likely to vote for this definition of a planet:
A planet, they decreed, is any star-orbiting object so large that its own gravity pulls in its rough edges, producing a near-perfect sphere.
So, Pluto remains a planet, but we get three new inductees to the club:
Start coming up with a mnemonic:
Update: Most Voluptuous Earth Mothers Can't Just Stay Under Ninety Pounds, Can't Xena?
8/29 Update: I should have updated this entry earlier. They voted the other way. Pluto is now a dwarf planet, a second-class citizen of the solar system, along with the others that should have been destined for greatness.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Aug 15 2006 09:28 PM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
A dark matter discovery destined to be announced August 21:
Astronomers who used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 21, to announce how dark and normal matter have been forced apart in an extraordinarily energetic collision.
Gee, have I become the astronomy blog this week? No, but I'm always curious about such things. I am a Science Major after all.
Update: I suppose I should explain that the reason they call it “dark” matter is because we do not have tools to detect it, yet we theorize its existence in order to explain the observed behavior of planetary and galactic systems. It's not dark just because we can't see it. It's dark because we don't know how to see it. This discovery may change that.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Aug 15 2006 03:09 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Another battle on the edges of science. How do you define a planet?
At a 12-day conference beginning Monday, scientists will conduct a galactic census of sorts. Among the possibilities at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in the Czech Republic capital of Prague: Subtract Pluto or christen one more planet, and possibly dozens more.
Will 2003 UB313 become Planet Xena, or will Pluto get kicked out of the planet club?
Lots of scientific inquiry gets into a shouting match over definitions. Astronomers, however, are likely to be quietly debating this in Prague.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Aug 14 2006 11:22 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Way back when I was a huge Art of Noise fan, and the latest Ann Althouse vlog lead me to this:
That takes me back a few decades…
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Saturday, Aug 12 2006 10:41 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Last night we had a 3.8-4.0 earthquake, enough to wake us up and wonder what the noise was. The quake was centered between Ridgefield, La Center, Battle Ground, and Cherry Grove. We happen to live between Ridgefield and La Center ourselves.
Update: Located at N45.80 W122.61 and 14.1km underground.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Aug 3 2006 07:33 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
According to ASLET Updates, the American Society for Law Enforcement Training has filed for bankruptcy.
It took a long time for the mortally wounded ASLET to succomb, but we were pointing out the damaged financial condition of the organization a year ago. I have posts here from 2004 indicating serious financial troubles at the organization, before my appointment to the Finance Committee. Of course once I was a committee member I had to be circumspect in what I said about ASLET Finances.
I have a huge email trail of warnings and dire predictions. I guess they weren't taken seriously enough by many who should have known better.
Farewell, ASLET.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Jul 20 2006 02:39 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina thirty-four patient deaths at the New Orleans Memorial Medical Center raised suspicions of mercy killings. Rapid investigation of the bodies was delayed by their decomposition. Today they have arrested a doctor and two nurses and charged them with “principal to second-degree murder.”
According to Fox News, conditions were bad at the center after Katrina:
Memorial had been cut off by flooding as the Aug. 29 hurricane swamped New Orleans. Power was out in the 317-bed hospital and the temperatures inside rose over 100 degrees as the staff tried to tend to patients who waited four days to be evacuated.
Even so, it certainly doesn't sound like things were so dire that mass euthanization of thirty-four patients was justified in those four days.
One has to wonder what it would take to justify such a thing. Perhaps no hope of rescue and constant suffering would be key justifications. Perhaps the doctors and nurses were watching the pronouncements of doom in the major media at the time and came to that grisly conclusion. Most of those pronouncements, of course, just weren't true.
Does that mean the cliché “Society is to blame” is actually true in this one?
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Jul 18 2006 08:48 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
My folks were visiting this past week in order to attend my graduation. At the same time we worked out a bit of the content for the website for his legal practice. I'm hoping that we can leap ahead of the web presence of other lawyers in Hillsdale Michigan and it's off to a good start!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Sunday, Jun 4 2006 08:57 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
I've been using Google Mail (gmail) for about a month when an offer came to beta-test moving all the mail-handling for my domain to the system. I get to keep the same email address I've been using for nearly two decades and I get to manage the accounts for my household. Sounds great, right?
Well, as you can imagine, having the same email address for that long means I'm on an awful lot of spam lists. For the most part, Google Mail handles spam pretty well. I was using a combination Amavis and SpamAssassin before, but they don't benefit as much from me training them as Google's userbase training its spam filters.
However, in one particular case it falls hard on its face: spam that has been marked as spam by the Yahoo! mailing lists. Yahoo! mailing lst owners have Yahoo! email aliases, and so they benefit from Yahoo!'s spam-filtering. What Yahoo! does is add “[spam] ” to the beginning of the subject line, allowing most mail clients to filter them accordingly. I am an owner or moderator of many mailing lists at Yahoo! and I get a lot of spam through this channel. I appreciate that Yahoo! performs the service of pre-filtering this email and marking it for me.
Aggravatingly, Google does not recognize mail with “[spam]” in its subject as spam and deal with it accordingly. For over a month I've been training their filter and it hasn't picked up on this pattern. I get 20-50 of these annoying messages a day. Not only that, because spam that gets this kind of treatment is relatively infrequent on Google, individuals training the filter are not likely to have much of an effect. (Google spam training benefits most from mass mailings that are all alike and the votes of thousands of mail readers.)
So I tried to create a filter to find these, but Google's search ignores my brackets! A quick reading of Google's basic and advanced search information doesn't lend us any help either. I tried my normal regular expression stuff I would expect to work and it doesn't work either!
I hope spammers don't figure this out. They could send targeted emails with “[spam]” in the header and escape the filter! I will look into a way to tell the google team that like “ADV:” subject lines, anything with “[spam]” should be autofiltered into the spam folder.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Apr 3 2006 09:02 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Humor via email…
Do you have feelings of inadequacy? Do you suffer from shyness? Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Tequila.
Tequila is the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions. Tequila can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you're ready and willing to do just about anything. You will notice the benefits of Tequila almost immediately, and with a regimen of regular doses you can overcome any obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want to live. Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past, and you will discover many talents you never knew you had. Stop hiding and start living, with Tequila.
Tequila may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use Tequila. However, women who wouldn't mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it. Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration, erotic lustfulness, loss of motor control, loss of clothing, loss of money, loss of virginity, delusions of grandeur, table dancing, headache, dehydration, dry mouth, and a desire to sing Karaoke and play all-night rounds of Strip Poker, Truth Or Dare, and Naked Twister.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Jan 30 2006 09:26 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Amazon.com has posted their best of 2005 lists. I'm not surprised that I'm horribly behind on my science fiction reading, but amused that a lot of my picks for non-fiction made it to the Editor's Choice lists.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner comes in at the top of the editor's choice list. I enjoyed the book, although I found some of the links to be strained. I appreciated the humor, but I have most of my doubt reserved for the claim that easier abortions caused a decrease in crime in the past 25 years.
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman is another set of interesting cloth-bound claims. Much of what he says rings true, especially with respect to the spread of knowledge work around the globe. Where the book loses steam is when it moves from descriptive to prescriptive writing. Friedman has three Pulitzer Prizes for his work at the New York Times, but I won't hold that against him. (Despite his association with the NYT, I recently purchased Friedman's Longitudes & Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11.)
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is a great exploration of snap decisions, and how to train them, and when to trust them. I haven't actually purchased this book except in Audiobook form. The other two above I have in both hardback and Audiobook.
As for books I haven't bought, but I've read summaries and articles about, number one on my list and appearing on the Editor's Choice list, is Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. I've read my share of Harvard Business Review coverage of this book, and I need to add it to my shelf.
The book I think should be on the list and didn't appear? The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun, hands down. If I ever need to teach Project Management, this book will be on my list. Far more down to earth than most books on the subject—and I've read more than my share—I heartily recommend it to anyone thinking they understand how to manage the business of making software, and a few others besides. Other picks from me would include Database in Depth by C. J. Date and Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror by Richard Miniter.
We'll see how the new year works out. I'm done getting piles of books for class, unless I start taking new classes in April—unlikely after the two year push to finish my MS. I suspect I'll finally have time for fiction again. I have a ton of Harry Turtledove to read (he is quite prolific, and two years of downtime has buried me in unread novels from his various series). I've always wanted to read the Results-Driven Manager series from Harvard Business School Press. And, based on a great start, O'Reilly's Theory In Practice series (of which Database in Depth and The Art of Project Management are the start) is probably a must read. I guess I'm going to be busy.
Amazon.com links:
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Jan 3 2006 07:19 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Ever wonder about sushi? this video explains it all, but it's rather silly.
(Hat tip to Joi Ito.)
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Dec 19 2005 08:17 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
One problem with my new situation of working from home most of the time is that I no longer have two or three hours in the car to listen to audiobooks. I haven't even ventured out in my car in a few days. Suddenly my subscription to Audible.com went from vital to a burden. I now have several books in my queue to be “read” when I used to be hungry for new material.
Amazing what a little change makes.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the fact that I'm not spending a fortune on gas, raising my stress level fighting traffic, and so on. I get two hours of my day back, but I'm not spending it listening to books.
Part of that might be that at home I'm the only one interested in listening to books. We'll have to see how this pans out. In the meantime, every month I get two more books from the folks at Audible.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Nov 30 2005 07:28 AM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
You can now get Firefox 1.5 from mozilla.com.
I have been a beta tester for this new release of Firefox and I have greatly enjoyed its new speed and new features. I strongly suggest checking it out. I certainly prefer it to Internet Explorer. I am addicted to tabbed browsing and IE didn't add that feature until very recently. Now the only reason to use IE is for web sites that were designed poorly.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Nov 29 2005 07:38 PM | Permalink | 4 comments | No trackbacks
Well, long ago I posted on the problems with my satellite Internet service and finally it is solved. I have partial T1 to my rural home. Sure, it costs more, but not that much more since I can now work from home. Changing my status to “working from home” saves me from having to pay Oregon Income Tax.
Thus, my T1 is already paying for itself, thanks to Electric Lightwave, Lennie Green, and especially Dan Sweet.
I'm going to call Direcway and cancel service now. 23 months of horrible latency and weather sensitivity are over.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Nov 16 2005 10:47 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Numenorean
To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Saturday, Nov 12 2005 03:35 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Many out there have probably already seen the “Trunk Monkey” advertisements, but for those that haven't, I highly recommend them.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Oct 24 2005 08:17 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Snowball went into the vet today, who determined she was dehydrated and suffering with a fever of 106. She had been getting less and less active, and was starting to hide instead of being social like before, so Misty's instincts kicked in. I was surprised that Snowball was that sick (she had even lost weight since we took her into the vet 3 weeks ago). She'll be there overnight why they try to get her liquids and food up and her temperature down.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Oct 19 2005 05:55 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
I've shown up in Google Print, here and here.
Of course, I recommend Jackie Hamilton's books, CGI Programming 101 and CGI Programming 201 as well as the other book floating around the net with me in it, Zen and the Art of the Internet by Brendan Kehoe.
Amazon.com links:
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Sep 21 2005 09:00 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Via Doc Searls Weblog article “Creepy” we hear that the is a “slow seismic slip event” occuring in the Pacific Northwest. More from LiveScience:
The slip began Sept. 3 on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State and has migrated north to the Vancouver Island area, Cassidy wrote. Victoria moved 0.12 inches (3 millimeters) to the West over the course of two days. The events are thought to last six to 15 days.
Not a lot, to be sure, but it means that the potential for a mega-quake is elevated:
“The probability of occurrence of a megathrust earthquake is about 30 times higher during this approximately two-week window, than during the rest of the 14.5 month cycle,” [geologist John] Cassidy told LiveScience. “Having said that, 30 times a small number is still a small number.”
If that's not enough slow-moving geologic events for you, we also have a volcanic bulge near Bend, Oregon, as reported by the US Geologic Survey (email, 9/13/05):
A large, slow-growing volcanic bulge in western Oregon is attracting the attention of seismologists who say that the rising ground could be the beginnings of a volcano or simply magma shifting underground.
Scientists said that the 100 square-mile bulge, first discovered by satellite, poses no immediate threat to nearby residents.
That bulge is growing 1.4 inches per year.
Since I live 40 miles from Mt. St. Helens, all these tectonic happenings, however slow, are of considerable interest. Alana's favorite books are about volcanoes. Ryan often talks about “hot lava” insisting the adjective is important, since cold, tepid, or even warm lavas are boring.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Sep 15 2005 09:50 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
(Taken from my desk…)
With Apple's introduction of the iPod nano it appears that they have silently discontinued the iPod Mini.The old dedicated web page now redirects to the Apple store. With two of these in my house, both of which being somewhat quirky (Misty's still has a “just turns itself on” issue, mine sometimes gets errors starting up making it lose my bookmark on the current song), I think I'll still miss them.
The iPod nano sure is tiny though:
(Taken from the apple.com website…)
However, now that I've filled with Mini with books from audible.com, I was hoping to see a 8GB Mini.
Update: I forgot to mention that the iPod nano uses flash memory instead of a tiny little hard drive. I suspect my freezing issue won't be there (it sure seems like it takes time to spin up the disk and cache the song I'm trying to play.)
Amazon.com links:
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Thursday, Sep 8 2005 09:35 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
Per Glenn's flood aid posting:
I'd like to have a link to an Amazon.com honor system page, too, but apparently they don't think Katrina victims need that sort of organized support.
Update: Amazon.com apparently changed their tune, but I'm leaving up my earlier comment because of the long delay in getting even this link.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, Aug 31 2005 02:22 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Paul over at Wizbang has proposed a personal boycott of the Drudge Report until Matt removes all the annoying popup advertisements. Judging by all the comments Paul's posting received it's a popular idea. Matt's site remains a great source of unusual links, but it's clear that he has ruffled the feathers of his readers.
I use Firefox and still get popup ads from Matt's site. As a result, I added the Adblock extension to Firefox and filtered a bit more. I put in the Tabbrowser Preferences extension to at least open popups in a new tab and in the background. As a result of using all these tools I have not seen popups from anywhere except the Drudge Report and I've filtered a ton of other ads. Matt has managed to reduce the revenue of other web sites because of his tactics!
This arsenal of tools still isn't enough, though. I'm still getting obnoxious popup windows from Matt's site. Drudge is the only site left that still manages to have “cheater” popups appear for me. It's aggravating, so I'm joining Paul's boycott.
Update: petebevin.com tells us how to disable popups from plugins.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, Aug 15 2005 09:42 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | 1 trackback
Today in 1777 the Continental Congress approved the Stars and Stripes as the national flag. However, it's first use as an American battle flag was (probably) not until September 11th, 1777. Remember that Francis Scott Key didn't write his song about the flag, then called the “Star-Spangled Banner” until mid-way through the War of 1812, quite a bit later.
My favorite flag is the Gadsden Flag, with the snake and the legend “Don't Tread on Me.” A slightly different flag was used by the Culpepper Minutemen who added the slogan “Liberty or Death.” The version pictured above has been flying at our home (along with the modern US flag) since the 2003 Independence Day barbecue…
You can find more early American Flag clip art here.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Tuesday, Jun 14 2005 08:22 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
The latest Star Wars grossed $50M on opening day. We all wish we could do so well with wooden acting, poor dialogue, a plot known in advance but amazing special effects.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Friday, May 20 2005 12:24 PM | Permalink | 2 comments | No trackbacks
25 years ago today a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused a massive slide of material off the north side of Mt. St. Helens releasing a tumult of pyroclastic flows and ash that devastated 150 square miles of beautiful Washington wilderness.
I live a little over forty miles from Mt. St. Helens now, but when it blew it's top I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. I missed out on the ash that covered everything out here. I also missed out on the beautiful red sunsets that the midwest enjoyed.
May 18th sticks in my mind as well because May 18, 1995 was also the infamous “Day 10,000” for Pick-based databases. At the time I worked for ADP Dealer Services, which used Pick databases for its turnkey systems for car dealerships. I was part of a cross-functional team that found and corrected any Day 10000 problems in our products (it turns out there weren't many). This was a dry run at Y2K problems later on.
I've been up to visit Mt. St. Helens since I moved here, including the eerie Ape Caves lava tube on the south side of the mountain and the tourist traps on the north side. It's worth taking a look if you're visiting the Portland area.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Wednesday, May 18 2005 09:25 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks
Over at Lileks' Bleats James Lileks opines about all thinks Star Trek combined with an analysis of the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. his analysis is enough to make me consider actually watching the series. I gave up on the modern TV series somewhere in the middle of the third season of Star Trek: Voyager and only watched the last couple of seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on DVD.
Misty is as much of a fan as I am of the series, but had never really seen it end-to-end like I did by buying all of the DVDs and watching the shows in order. There are some episodes that are not on syndication. There are definitely some that shouldn't be.
There's a lot of funny moments in his bleat so go read the whole thing, but only if you are a Trek fan. Otherwise much of the humor will go over your head.
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, May 16 2005 03:58 PM | Permalink | 4 comments | No trackbacks
The Carnival of the Cats is posted at Aptenobytes. This carnival has thumbnails of every cat. That's a lot of work!
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Monday, May 16 2005 03:31 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks
Today my father graduates from Ave Maria School of Law.
Congratulations Dad!
(Now on to the bar exam…)
Josh Poulson
Posted in category “General” Sunday, May 15 2005 10:07 AM | Permalink | 3 comments | No trackbacks