Fantasy Death Row. twisted. via memepool. 01:18 pm

well, i finally dug through 75% of the portal backlog. it only took about 5 hours. 02:18 pm

i wouldn't call it a weblog (which is why it's not going into the portal), but salty.org is certainly funky. 01:18 pm

ernie assumes no responsibility for the time wasted on these Paint by Numbers puzzles. but, i still blame him. 11:41 am

just say no to jsp. the title of this article isn't supported at all by the text. i expected to read something that would tell me why using servlets was a better approach than using jsp. all i got was an article describing how an application could be built with servlets. the only clear reason that i could find was that it is is "more supportive of my style of work." i won't even go into how offensive i find the generalization that "User-interface designers (and their tools) view web applications as static data, composed of HTML text held in files." 11:16 am

taylor does an excellent job of describing the appeal of rpg, sim, strategy games.

"So now we have video games, which is closer to imagination than any of our other art forms."

taylor's job request sounds a lot like my ideal job. if only i'd gotten that graphic design job at ea 7 years ago, i might have that kind of job. or, i might still be designing their boxes, which is what i would have been hired to do. 10:37 am

Erotigo: Sex in the Palm of Your Hand. now instead of having sex in the palm of just one hand, you can be double-fisted. 10:30 am

Marimba cuts 20 percent of work force. this is not something you want to see about a company at which you're planning on interviewing. 10:18 am

i finished evil islands the other night. it turned out to be a really complex game. if you want it to be. the distribution of abilities and skills, the item constructor and the spell constructor adds a huge amount of variety. or, you can just buy pre-built stuff. you can bring people on to build a team, thus controlling and enhancing multiple characters. or, you can just solo. you can do all the little side quests and kill lots of creatures. or, you can just focus on the main ones. very enjoyable, very addictive. i could probably play it again, but if i don't feel like doing the same old quests, i can just play multiplayer. 10:11 am

How to fail at business without really. *shudder* this is very familiar. 09:44 am

Who Let The Blogs Out? the yahoo! internet life article is finally up. the fact that all you could see was a list of the links not the article made me much more curious than i otherwise would have been. the article's finally online, and, surprisingly, it's a really good article. wait a minute. that's 2 recent weblog articles that i actually found to be worth reading! what's the world coming to? via rafe. 06:12 pm

wow, i almost feel alive again. i've had not 1, but 2 recruiters contact me. and here i was beginning to wonder if i'd just been delusional for the past couple of years. instead of being brilliant, maybe i was worse than mediocre. phew! and i bet you were thinking that the last few depressing months had brought my ego back down to a reasonable size. hah! 05:53 pm

well, i posted my resume again on dice yesterday. after editing it to include the south bay. amazingly, i actually got a call from a recruiter this morning. it's for a webmaster job, not a ui job, but hey, at least someone called! 02:14 pm

ok, i changed my mind. as i was typing in the letter, i realized that i do have something to say. i've constantly said - well occasionally said, but often thought - that i have no idea why people read my weblog. i still think that. but, it's hard to describe the wonderful feeling of knowing that you've touched one person. despite the fact that this weblog is made of personal ramblings, poor writing, consistently stolen links and sporadic updates it meant something to someone. it justified to me the fact that i'm subjecting the whole world to it, rather than just tucking it away in a drawer. 02:11 pm

back in march, i got a letter (and a book) from dylan. at the time, i was touched, both by the letter and the thoughtfulness of the gift. i knew i wanted to put it up, i just didn't know what exactly i wanted to say about it. so i procrastinated. i'm good at that. i still don't know what to say about it. only that it meant a great deal to me. thank you dylan. for writing it and letting me post it. 02:02 pm

Ketogenic Diet Program. 10:42 am

philip greenspun wrote an article about the ArsDigita Bust-Up. reading it, i couldn't help being reminded of what happened at clip2, another greylock funded company. a greylock employee was "acting" ceo, then became ceo. the business direction was changed. one of the founders left/got kicked out because of disputes over the business direction... 04:54 pm

Taking Stock of Gen X: It's Fallen. there's a long thread on this over at metafilter, mostly disagreement. call me shallow, but i related to that article. 02:04 pm

Logo Design Contest Call For Entries. $10,000 isn't a bad prize. then again, maybe i'm just thinking that because i'm out of work. usually i abhor these kind of "design contests". via metafilter. 10:16 pm

i think that the stool fairy link is extra amusing purely because i spent the early evening bar hopping along the wharf with our neighbor. then again, as liz always said, "there's nothing funnier than a fart." 10:00 pm

Stool Fairy. just go for the mouse sound effects. metafilter. 09:59 pm

a comparison of php, perl and java. via flutterby. 09:55 pm

why i write 09:36 pm

mmmm. a cadbury creme egg recipe. i'll stop drooling in a minute. thanks alice. 03:55 pm

well, i didn't get the job i was interviewing for. amusingly, i had assumed that there wasn't a chance of anyone being better qualified technically than i. apparently, that wasn't the case. sigh. now i have to start looking in the valley :( 03:48 pm

alice put a stop to my hair pulling by pointing out that i had a line-height in my td's. sigh. now i'm positive i don't pay enough attention to my style sheets. 03:44 pm

ok. this is driving me crazy. i know i tested this site in all browsers. it worked just fine. now there's spaces below all the images, and for the life of me i can't figure out why. it's not the obvious space/return after the image tag. someone save me from ripping my hair out. please. 12:18 pm

i realized yesterday that i'd fallen into a destructive tivo trap. even tho i was recording stuff as "filler", for those times when i *really* wanted to watch tv but had watched all the really interesting stuff, i felt obligated to watch those shows. so i'd waste an hour in the morning watching stuff that i didn't really want to watch merely because i thought i should clear it off the disk. stupid. 10:15 am

well the novelty of black & white didn't last. i guess it's not really novelty, it was a good game. i think the enjoyment came from learning to be a god and the quests that let you choose between good and evil. in the later levels there were much fewer quests and the game just became more tedious village management and creature training. as jason said "no staying power". so, we're moving on to Evil Islands. 04:37 pm

john actually put down in words what i was thinking about john dvorak's latest column. i just found it too inane to link to and comment on. if there hasn't been copyright issues for the last 20 years of vcrs recording tv shows, why should there be copyright issues with the tivo and replaytv? 12:08 pm

on the topic of going back to school. back2college.com has quite a bit of information inlcuding an article about clep exams which give you credits for passing their exams. no actual coursework required. 11:56 am

what do you want to be when you grow up? that question always stimulates in me a period of thorough self-analysis. sometimes, it's short and the answer is quickly forthcoming. this time, the conversation has been going on for several days without any conclusion. maybe i should be concerned with my sanity since talking to oneself isn't usually considered "normal".

a year ago, the answer was simple, i wanted to work on the web, follow whatever direction it took. six months ago, it was still simple. i wanted to be my own boss and continue to work the web. now, i just don't know. web work is still easy and enjoyable and there's still a huge amount that i could learn. but, i'm not obsessed anymore. i used to say that web design is my hobby as well as my career. i still say that. only now, i'm not so sure that's true.

is that a bad thing tho? i mean, most people's jobs aren't a hobby as well. have i just become more normal? or have i become apathetic because i've done very little work over the last four months?

even tho i haven't even come close to answering the question, a second question naturally springs from the first. if i didn't go back to web work, what on earth would i do? go back to school? while it would be interesting, it's not really financially feasible and i certainly don't have the committment to go to night school. go back to print design? shudder, no thanks. is there something obvious that i'm missing?

i don't know. i suppose, it doesn't really matter since it only becomes important once i've answered the first. besides i spent the first 10 years of my adult life wondering what i was going to be when i grew up. it's rather familiar. 11:27 am

i'm currently tearing my way through tanya huff's blood series (blood price et al.) which i finally got around to ordering. amazon's reviews once again proved useful. i wouldn't have bought them merely because amazon recommended them, some of amazon's recommendations are crap. but one of the reader reviews billed them as a close second to laurell hamilton's anita blake series. the reviewer was right. although, they're not as good, they do have a very similar character setup. strong, agressive, self-confidant woman, vampire lover competing with another lover, detective/mystery/horror plot line. thoroughly enjoyable. 11:01 am

we had an exceptionally large credit with pg&e because we were stupid enough to go with green mountain energy who were charging us $600/mo while pg&e credited us $400/mo. thankfully, we moved and green mountain stopped serving california. given the wonderful situation pg&e is in right now, i figured we'd never see the $800 they owed us. so, i was shocked to discover a check in the mail refunding our money. i suppose i shouldn't have been too surprised when the check bounced. 10:46 am

a famous, obsessed p.i. theorizes that o.j.'s son should have been prime suspect for the murders. via metafilter. 11:23 am

Porn Star or My Little Pony? i'm sad to say, but i only guessed one of these right. it's scary what they named those ponies. 11:07 am

The "Computer as Assistant" Fallacy. dan explains, in a very well thought out argument, why the computer isn't going away. 04:49 pm

The Great Internet Money Game. instead of investing in tech stocks, maybe we should all be investing in investment banking firms. assuming, of course, that we actually have any money left to invest. 03:34 pm

the first really good article on weblogs that i've seen in a long while. Firms underestimate power of 'blogging' is an article on weblogs and how useful they can be rather than focusing on pyra, ev and blogger. thanks sanj. 10:29 am

Road to Dystopia. poetry. it made me want to cry. 03:44 pm

you know what i *really* don't understand? why is pbs a channel that you have to pay extra for with directv? it's under their family package. i don't want the disney channel, i just want to watch stuff like mystery!. 11:44 am

build your own racetrack. via metafilter. 11:38 am

today our vet said that we might want to look into dog health-insurance. maybe because we just spent $235 on shots and an exam. maybe because maddie has a cyst/tumor. if it doesn't go away within a week, they want to operate. this isn't exactly in my budget right now. i'm still trying to figure out how we're going to pay supplemental property taxes. at least we have enough money socked away to pay the government. as zeldman says "i'm buying the government a volkswagen." i hope they enjoy that new beetle. sigh. 11:26 am

oh god, the boxer incident made number 2 in the Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History article. is it to late to pretend that i didn't work there at the time? thanks andrea for pointing it out. 11:09 am

as liz says I did not write this, but I wish I had. if california seceded from the union, we'd be rich enough to build more power plants. 11:05 am

one interesting thing about my interview the other day were the questions that i was really surprised to hear and never expected to be asked. such as:

"how many websites have you done?"
"um, i'm not really sure. i've been doing it for 5 years..."
"more than ten?"
"well, yeah... probably about 50... or more... i think... i've never really counted."

or

"i notice you don't use caps very often...is that a stylistic thing...?"
"well, yeah. it's a stylistic thing." *thinking to myself... what did you want me to say? wow, there's a reason for the shift key other than to make a <...* 10:40 am

thankfully, the dsl installation came off, despite the minor problem of the ip addresses not working properly. i am now back to always on. no promises, but you may be seeing more posts from now on. 09:50 am

thankfully, the dsl installation came off, despite the minor problem of the ip addresses not working properly. i am now back to always on. no promises, but you may be seeing more posts from now on. 09:50 am

lance wants us all to be great. the irony being that most people who are great don't think they're great which sets those people up for a feeling of constant failure, since they can't ever achieve (in their own minds) that greatness they are striving for. not that i'm saying people shouldn't try, but, if you expect that you'll wake up one day and say "hey, i finally did it, i'm great!", you'll be sorely disappointed. 09:40 am

heh. cute little 5k entry. thanks dylan. 09:14 am

i always have a self-censorship conundrum whenever i give out my site and my weblog. how much do i write? how will it be taken? if it's taken badly, is that a good thing? as usual, i don't have the answers, so i take the safe route. at least for now. 09:55 am

had an interview yesterday which i think went well. i always enjoy introducing weblogs to someone who immediately sees the possibilities for their application in a business environment.

talking about my hobbies/interests made me realize that weblogs are still very high on my list. despite the fact that my posts have been rather sporadic. i won't even go into the huge (ahem...300 or so...*cough*) backlog of weblogs i have to validate for the portal.

i completely blame it on dsl. we signed up for dsl, brought our computers home, and discovered that only one computer was able to get online at a time. turns out we needed to upgrade the service in order to get static ip's. they're supposed to be installing it this morning. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.
09:36 am

We're all temps now. these articles and stories are much too familiar. although in some ways, i feel much better knowing that it wasn't necessarily a marketing failure on our part. 09:36 pm

There's now an official download site for Black & White. not that there's anything to download right now. supposedly, a patch will be available soon.

and yes, i know no one cares about black & white. but, i've got to find this stuff later. 09:38 am

Playing God. more on black and white. thanks sanj. 09:37 am

i'm completely addicted to black and white. i haven't stopped playing it for the last three days. it's a game that is completely unclassifiable. it's a strategy game since you have to manage villages and resources. but, then there's the whole creature training thing. very good. 02:09 pm

as dylan so kindly reminded me, blizzard is taking applications for beta testers on Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. you've got until wednesday. 12:15 pm

well, we brought our computers home monday. then we packed up half the office yesterday. it's rather sad. although, being able to get up in the morning and go check email while drinking your coffee is kind of nice.

i'm still getting used to the whole neighbor thing. this morning i walked outside to get the mail. our neighbors on the left, tony and barry, were in the process of smoking out the gophers, while our other neighbor, victor, was watching. i've been a recluse for too long, it just seems weird to me.

i finally got my first bite after three weeks of looking. had a phone interview today which went well. i'm excited about actually getting back to working a real job. it's getting boring around here. unfortunately, the trade off for being able to work in scotts valley is an ~30% pay cut. i think it's worth it. which says how much i've changed over the last year. i do *not* want to commute over 17 ever again. 04:00 pm

kirsty is visiting from new york this week, hence the lack of posts. 08:53 am