Thursday, July 22, 2004 Thursday, July 22, 2004On the NewsHour tonight, the SBC advertisement says, "At SBC, impatience is a virtue."
Well, yeah, impatience with 56K dial Internet access will encourage you to purchase a DSL line. I'm sure there're other things which make impatience virtuous.
Or, as this service notice announces,
In order to improve the quality of service available to our Members, SBC Internet Services is making important system enhancements. During this time, SBC Yahoo! DSL Members may experience hold times in excess of thirty minutes when contacting our customer support centers. We apologize for this temporary inconvenience.
8:19:36 PM # Google It!
via ResearchBuzz, this gateway to Appalachian treasures, hosted by Ohio University, has some interesting links I'll have to point out to my parents, who like to point out that I could buy a mountain for what we're asking for our house.
8:10:00 PM # Google It!
categories: Place
Wednesday, July 21, 2004Windows NT 2000 XP 2003 is a multi-user operating system. It is not DOS. Do not develop software as an administrator. It may be annoying, but you will become accustomed to working with least privileges.
12:09:03 PM # Google It!
categories: Security
We've not done too well with pets. We've lost three hermit crabs and four goldfish, and just last night, a tadpole.
The tadpole's death is my fault. He'd been living off of his tail in a goldfish bowl, slowly growing legs, and doing well with our benign neglect. Then we got another goldfish.
I bought a 2 gallon tank with a filter and circulation system, so we wouldn't have to clean the bowl as much. The goldfish don't like dirty bowls, but the tadpole didn't seem to mind.
But I moved the tadpole into the new tank with the goldfish. He seemed fine Monday and most of yesterday. The water was not calm, like before, so I think he became tired. It looked like the suction got him, and tore out his intestines, unless this a Case of the Vicious Goldfish.
The incident reminded me another sad case.
10:51:58 AM # Google It!
categories: Family, Sadness
Tuesday, July 20, 2004I'm cleaning out my naggregator inbox as the first step, in twelve, to stopping this addiction. While I haven't found an aggregator that I'm entirely comfortable with, at least this way I'll be standing on the platform without baggage.
Reading over some of the things I missed from earlier this year, I see that Joe Gregorio pointed out some idiocy over at the W3C. I don't follow the W3C lists, or get into the details of the arguments, but it seems to me that they've made some really bone-headed decisions in extending this web of ours. And this short list is only those things I'm aware of.
3:58:50 PM # Google It!
Monday, July 19, 2004We recently subscribed to the deadtree edition, weekends only, of the New York Times. I read the paper in a different manner than I do the web edition. On the web I jump around through the site, depending on what catches my interest on the front, but I rarely do that. More often I just read an article that someone else links. With the print edition, I flip through each page of each section, looking for interesting articles. It usually takes a few beers to get through it all.
This weekend I'd like to note the following items.
In an editorial on the daughter of Strom Thurmond and Carrie Butler, Brent Stapler writes By showing that families who appear to be white at one time can appear to be black at another, she is underscoring the fact that race is a more elastic concept than most contemporary Americans understand.
The Sunday business section has an article on a call center for McDonald's drive through. Place your order in Missouri (or Minnesota or Massachusetts), have it taken in Colorado, and fulfilled 12 feet away from you. IT matters.
In the fast-food business, time is truly money: shaving even five seconds off the processing time of an order is significant. Mr. Bigari said he had cut order time in his dual-lane drive-throughs by slightly more than 30 seconds, to about 1 minute, 5 seconds, on average. That's less than half the average of 2 minutes, 36 seconds, for all McDonald's, and among the fastest of any franchise in the country, according to QSRweb.com, which tracks such things. His drive-throughs now handle 260 cars an hour, Mr. Bigari said, 30 more than they did before he started the call center.
Just below that article, Ben Stein talks about blame.
Middle-class people can largely control what they earn. Their children can very largely control what they earn. They can control what they spend, above a certain floor. If they are "squeezed" on their mortgage payments because they bought more house than they could afford, whose fault is that? [link mine]
Is it your fault, or someone else's? Whose responsiblity is it? Are you a victim of circumstances, or the actor in your own personal morality play? Or is it both, loser?
11:31:29 PM # Google It!
Those who've been following the adventures will know that we've got our house on the market, and have been looking around for an acceptable substitute, assuming we find a buyer. The New York Times notes that local property values have outpaced the national average, with properties in Putnam County increasing by 219%.
We like this newer house, and I like this older house, in Beekman. I like the location of this one in Pawling, but Deena says it would be a little cramped. And then there's the school system issue.
4:03:11 PM # Google It!
categories: Place
Sometimes the weekly newsletter from work is interesting. For example, last week two technicians rescued a four-year-old who was playing in traffic.
And there's always some marketing material, because we do try to sell our service. This week's recommendation contained an interesting observation.
[T]he best coverage of the upcoming political conventions will be on the Internet. Most TV networks will offer only brief highlights; to follow all the action, customers will turn to the Web and they'll want a fast connection for smooth video transmission.
And they'll need the speed to upload their video and photographic commentary. It's pamphlet season!
10:18:27 AM # Google It!
