On the radio I heard a person say, “I’m glad the mayor is thinking of housing as the solution for homelessness.” (Editor note: duh!) She wasn’t being sarcastic and making a joke. She was being a talking head that stays on message and tries not to say anything controversial. I recently interviewed a candidate that also…
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring except for the loudest three little monsters you ever saw. My goodness, my 3 boys were a terror today. I should have made them run a few miles in the park. They were wound up and fighting like crazy. If they weren’t…
I love holiday lights. They are bright and festive and make the cold dark times of the year more fun and bearable. One movie that really inspired me was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. He decked out every inch of his house. Growing up a family had put blue lights all over their house and it was…
Imagine you received this letter: Dear [You], I am about to graduate high school and have been accepted to several good colleges. However, I believe that the cost and the potential benefits of the college life are no match for real world experience. Drinking, partying and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on books, room/board…
Worst Remake Ever. Previously, this honor was held by Willy Wonka with Johny Depp; what an abomination. However, my current winner of the prize was the recent remake of The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. The plot shifted from a 16-year old New Jersey kid moving to Southern California to a 12-year…
make-work [meyk-wurk] –noun work, usually of little importance, created to keep a person from being idle or unemployed. Origin: 1935–40, Americanism ; n. use of v. phrase make work Sadly, I see this every day. The building I am in just had the outside repainted. It wasn’t in disrepair or dirty. I looked at it before and looked at it after. Looks the same to me. Oh wait…the pinstripe used to be red, and now its black.…
I had several interesting experiences yesterday. In all of the cases, the subject of my work was much more or much less complicated than what I initially thought. Some examples: Case #1: I was working with an engineer who had a problem with CSS. He is only loosely familiar with CSS, so he was freaking…
Imagine that Toyota (or some big car manufacturer) came out with a standard interface to the stereo system. It looked like a tray above the center dash that could hold your cell phone or ipod or small device. At the bottom of the tray was a removable interface. You could plugin a iPod adapter or a Zune…
It’s not everyone, but there are alot of people who have particular phrases that they say all the time. Some examples: Kevin, a guy who used to work for me, said “Essentially” about 20 times per sentence. Another variant was “Basically” which several people I know say in every sentence. At least 1 in 40…
Google ranks pages according to really strange algorithms. I don’t do any active SEO on my blog. However, Google ranks me very high for certain searches. They often distract me from understanding my traffic. See illustration below: You can see all the traffic in the middle was when my posts on Windows 7 and Office 2010…
Check out this sneak peak at what Rock Band 3 will be like: A real keyboard, more realistic drums and a guitar that is a real world guitar. This takes learning music to a whole new level. I am very excited to get this for my kids. Currently, only the drums are a close analog…
After 30 days of having ads on the right of my blog, I now have data that shows how much money I could make with Google. It was really difficult getting analogous information on the web, so I hope this is helpful to other people. I am going to disclose the exact stats and money…
I actually found it a bit difficult and confusing to answer this question. There are many variables including traffic, audience make-up, page rank, ad size, placement and more. The numbers are all over the map. I am happy to share my stats with this experiment. My prediction originally was $2 a month. I wasn’t very…
Sometimes, I lend a treasured book to a friend or even an acquaintance. Through some happenstance, I end up not getting the book back. I hate this. I am one of those people who like to keep the books I have read around because they remind me of what’s inside and also because they make…