"Bush has now tied Richard Nixon's worst rating ever [of 24 percent], taken in a poll just before he resigned in 1974, and is only 2 points higher than the worst presidential approval rating in history, Harry Truman's 22 percent mark in February 1952," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Obama widens lead in national poll

"Bush has now tied Richard Nixon's worst rating ever [of 24 percent], taken in a poll just before he resigned in 1974, and is only 2 points higher than the worst presidential approval rating in history, Harry Truman's 22 percent mark in February 1952," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Obama widens lead in national poll

Unregistered voters in Travis County have until Monday October 6, 2008 to register for the upcoming presidential electons. Register online here.

You can verify your existing voter registration here.

If you have moved or changed your name, you can update your registration here.

Early voting starts Monday Oct. 20 and continues through Friday Oct 31. Here's the full list of early voting locations.

I finally found a cheap ($20) wireless router that has built-in QoS (quality of service) support, it's the Airlink AR430W. With QoS, you can set up rules based on service type (http, etc.) or by IP address, so you can say "traffic from computer X should always get priority over traffic from computer Y", or "game traffic should get priority over web traffic", etc.

I just set it up over the weekend, very straighforward, great features, good web admin tool, signal strength is better than my previous D-Link.

Fry's does special pricing on the AR430W from time to time, lowest I've seen is $20. I know people out there spend $50 or $60 on the Linksys WR54GT (or whatever) but I don't want to learn nerdy details about what patch, version, blah.. is required to enable this or disable that, and the Linksys seems to require this. I might be totally wrong, but the small amount of info I found suggested the Linksys does not offer plug-and-play QoS, whereas the Airlink does.

Atlassian just announced "personal licenses" for Jira, pretty cool. There are some limitations of course... no support, 3 users max. But otherwise you can set up and use your own instance of Jira, even Enterprise, all for free.

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So nice.

Best. Ringtone. Ever. It's the theme song from Arrested Development.

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My all-time best game of Brickbreaker came to a depressing end when the ball shot off the screen. I could still control the paddle, but with no ball it effectively ended the game in a way that prevented me from submitting my high score. This photo is all that's left.

I guess McCain is going to win Ohio
Missing votes spark lawsuit Columbus Dispatch Politics

I've just discovered something enormously entertaining - digging through the "missed connections" section of craigslist personals. If you haven't seen it, it's like... I guess I can't really compare it to anything I've ever seen, but here's an analogy: "missed connections" is like putting a message in a bottle, throwing it in the ocean, and hoping it finds its way to one specific person.

Here are some highlights from the "women 4 men" section.

This one is pretty mushy. Assuming the guy found it, what the heck would he do? "Damn baby, I know things didn't work out between us, but I did not know you cried for 3 days. And then you ate a Kashi bar! Clearly, I have done you wrong, and for that I am sorry."

I still don't know why you had to end it with us. I thought we were happy in our little routine of skating and bowling and all the things we both love to do. My only thought is that maybe you are going to follow your dream, the one you told me about that night when we stayed up all night over at your place and I cut my foot on the broken piece of glass on the driveway and you held me all night. I wish you knew that I would not have ever tried to stop you from that. I would have supported that dream. But all that is over now. You have moved on and and I did nothing but cry for three days straight until finally my landlord had to come over and bring me cranberry drink and a Kashi bar. I don't hold it against you. I can't make you love me if you don't. But it doesn't change it that I still love you no matter what you do or where you go.

This is just the epitome of pointless. Every dork who thinks he's hot, or likes blondes (or both) will write back to her.

You are smokin' hot That's all. -the blonde.

This one is just stunning... just go talk to the guy!

I saw you today. You look right through me! I know you don't know me, but you are really attractive. I don't know what these feelings are, but everytime I leave I have to sit in my car for a second and calm down. The feelings over take my body and I feel like one day it will be real. I know your only a gas station attendant, but sometimes you find love in the simplest places. I love you. I don't know what this is. Maybe it's love. Maybe it's lust. Maybe its you, you see me, I see you. See you everyday, until I wake up to you.

In 1986, the Cray 2 supercomputer was the first computer to calculate 1 billion floating point operations in a single second - 1 gigaflop.

In 1997, the Intel ASCI Red became the first computer to calculate 1 trillion operations - 1 teraflop.

Now, in 2008, the IBM Roadrunner became the first computer to calculate 1 quadrillion operations - 1 petaflop - in a single second.

I think it's difficult to wrap your head around how large a number that is. Take a million, already a very large number, one thousand millions is a billion, one thousand billions is a trillion, one thousand trillions is a quadrillion. That's a petaflop. 15 zeroes.

1,000,000,000,000,000

Increasing calculation speed by a factor of 1,000 has happened every 11 years. If that trend continues, we'll see the first exaflop-capable computer in 2019. Another 11 years later, in 2030, we'll see the first zettaflop - one million petaflops. 21 zeroes.

Supercomputer sets petaflop pace

The toilet on the International Space Station has been fixed, and Hillary Clinton is finally giving up.

This keeps showing up in the news, today noticed a link to Te Papa, the museum in New Zealand where the squid is being inspected. Lots of photos and info there. Also found this link with more stuff: Colossal Squid.

Does anyone make food using Red Bull as one of the ingredients? Like, chicken pasta with Red Bull sauce, or maybe snickerdoodle cookies with Red Bull. Surely someone has tried some stuff like that.

I think this is an untapped market, especially for the raver party crowd. You get hungry partying all night, right? But what can you eat? How about a nice piece of Red Bull cake to go with your Red Bull + vodka. Or maybe bar peanuts dipped in Red Bull.

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I've spent the past 4 weeks living+working in Fresno, California, and found myself repeatedly explaining to outsiders that Fresno is in fact nothing more than a big, huge ghetto. People just don't seem to get it, so I took this photo while driving on one of the freeways. Totally normal. All freeway signs in Fresno look just like this.

i just subscribed to make. It's a print + online magazine that's filled with all kinds of cool shit for geeks.

I thought we had seen the end of refrigerators with built-in Internet browsing, but Whirlpool just announced a new contribution to the otherwise dumb idea.

Instead of making a fridge with a built-in computer system (which they apparently agree consumers don't want), they're instead making a fridge with a platform for other vendors to make computer and iPod hookups. Somehow, this is better.

From A Chilling Idea at C.E.S.:

In a press release, Whirlpool said that 30 percent of laptop computer, digital photo frame and digital music player owners use their devices in the kitchen - making the centralpark(TM) connection a natural step in appliance evolution.

That's as dumb as finding out that people take laptops with them into the bathroom, so they should have a toilet with built-in web browser. Seriously, people don't browse photos, internet, etc. in the kitchen standing in front of the refrigerator. They're probably sitting down, or least leaning over the counter.

Why even be in the kitchen in the first place?
Because that's where people congregate.
But why there?
Because everyone eats, snacks, drinks, and the kitchen is the heart of that.

So I'm supposed to believe that you should now hang out in the kitchen, glued to the front door of the very thing which contains exactly that (food & drink) which attracts people there in the first place? Not a chance.

Whoever tries to surf the web on that stupid fridge is gonna get beaten up for being in everyone else's way.

This table shows the different quadrants associated with the Strengths Finder 2.0 personality test. They're mostly identical to the v1 quadrants, but a few themes were renamed.

Striving: Working Harder Achiever Activator Adaptability Belief Discipline Focus Restorative Self-Assurance Significance	Thinking: Working Smarter Analytical Arranger Connectedness Consistency Context Deliberative Futuristic Ideation Input Intellection Learner Strategic
Impacting: Influencing People Command Competition Developer Maximizer Positivity Woo	Relating: Assisting People Communication Empathy Harmony Includer Individualization Relator Responsibility

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I never watch any form of broadcast news, and I typically don't read mainstream news websites either. Once in a while though something pops up and I end up on a news website reading something I probably didn't know about. It's almost always something I could (should?) have skipped.

About 3 or 4 months ago there was that big bridge collapse, don't remember where exactly, maybe Minnesota? Clearly it didn't leave much of an impression, I don't even know the state let alone the city or any specific details. Anyway, I had no idea it had happened, literally knew nothing about it. That day I was at lunch with some co-workers and they were talking about it. Completely lost, I had to ask for clarification and their reaction of pure shock was quite amusing. The three of them were genuinely stunned that I knew nothing about the bridge collapse. How could this be? We have computers to keep us informed of every little thing! Who doesn't know about the bridge collapse?!, they seemed to say.

But if you think about it, aside from being on the news why else would I know or care about a bridge collapse?

I'm much more interested in reading about the continuing conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and how many tens of thousands of people have died fighting on both sides. Or maybe that the French President is all chummy with Qaddafi and doing multi-billion dollar business deal selling planes and other stuff to the Libyan goverment. If a bridge collapsed in Libya and CNN wasn't there to tell you about it, would you care?

After my wife sent me an article about the tiger that just ate a guy in San Francisco, I went to CNN.com and took this screenshot of the current front page. I added emphasis to show the general theme.

This guy did the most badass thing with the Wii Remote. Full video here: Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote. If you're impatient, skip to 2m 44s.

I guess it's getting kinda cold at night.

I saw an Audi R8 on the drive home tonight. Wawaweeewa! So nice.

The Planet Earth series is fascinating. I keep trying to watch it in the background while I work, but it's too distracting and amazing. I end up staring at the screen in stunned disbelief. How did they capture that footage? I've only just started the series, but it's well worth watching.

Foreclosure wave sweeps America shares chilling details about the sub-prime mortgage problem.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the "sub-prime capital of the United States", one in ten homes is vacant. Thousands of homes are vandalized and boarded-up. Crime is increasing as a direct consequence, and the city is now responsible for clean-up (demolishing abandoned homes) which will cost more than $100 million from taxpayer dollars.

From January to August 2007 - just 8 months - there were 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings across the US. As many as 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years.

This is also kinda interesting, stories from people who work in the mortage industry: US mortgage crisis: Readers' stories

Not a word. Look it up.

It follows that the expression "a whole nother" is nonsense.

I found this website a while ago, Blade Your Ride. It's a physical device that bolts onto your tailpipe that both reduces emissions and improves fuel economy. Seems reasonable, the emissions reduction part anyway. But improving fuel economy?

The only thing the Blade can do is restrict exhaust airflow, which in turn should have the effect of reducing power output from the engine. I combed through their website for any mention of power loss, but found nothing. So I emailed customer support, and today they wrote back with this:

Thank you for your interest in the Blade. Our tests showed that we lost 4% in horsepower which effects the top speed of the vehicle, but in the operating range 2000 to 4000 RPMs it showed an increase in torque.

Their website mentions an average fuel economy savings of 11 to 34%.

Based on variable driving conditions when using the Blade, vehicles achieved 11% - 34% increases in fuel economy.

I'm not sure if the fuel economy vs. power output reduction numbers agree with each other, but I'm glad they conceded there's a reduction in power. The laws of physics do still apply. :)

After watching Undercover In North Korea, I've also found several other free online movies about North Korea...

• Welcome to North Korea
• Children of the Secret State
• Nuclear Nightmare: Understanding North Korea
• Undercover in the Secret State

We just found www.moviesfoundonline.com

There's a section of documentaries, including this oddball film - Guys and Dolls (2006) - which is about the relationships guys have with their Real Dolls.

Weird, weird, weird.

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As part of the 10-year anniversary for Slashdot, they're selling a bunch of stuff online to raise money for EFF. And one of their coveted items is a 3 or maybe even 2 digit UID on Slashdot.org. Current high bid: $2,000. And that's with 7 days 22 hours remaining. Unbelievable.

This is such a weird, weird thing to sell, and even weirder to buy.

The power of a low user id is that it proves you've been around a long time, and it carries with it (in /. discussions, anyway...) a sense of respect. Low user ids tend to make comments only when they have something really important (or funny) to say. And whoever wins this surely will not fit that stereotype. Basically they're just trying to buy coolness.

I've got a 5-digit user id - around 89,000 I think - and cannot imagine spending any money whatsoever to lower that number. Anyone signing up now will get a 7-digit id, as they're over the 1,000,000 mark for registered users.

Update: As of Oct. 20, the auction is up to $2,813.00, bidding closes in 5 days.

Update: The auction closed on Oct. 25 with a winning bid of $3,050.00.

There's been a flurry of news about Medtronic's implantable heart devices. Apparently there are some serious problems, and not just with the devices themselves. The oversight, regulation, testing, and overall necessity of an ICD does not appear to attract as much attention as it should.

We talked to a cardiologist about this stuff and he told us about a patient with an ICD that fritzed out and shocked him 50 times before the battery finally died and it couldn't shock him anymore. As a result of the impromptu Medtronic-induced shock therapy, the man was so upset and freaked out that he spent one month in a psychiatric ward.

I found another article in The New York Times explaining that a woman in Palo Alto had 25 shocks in a one hour period before it stopped (not sure if the battery died on hers or not). She opted to remove the ICD altogether, only to have her doctor recommend a replacement a few months later.... with the exact same thing.

Last year, there were 296 patient reported injuries in 2006. During the same period in 2007, there have been 1,194 reported injuries. It's possible that the overall number of ICD patients increased but the rate of injuries stayed the same. Of course, it's also possible that the number of patients was similar and the failure rates increased, but I doubt it.

Medtronic heart device injuries up in 2007

I keep ending up in chats about North Korea, how odd they are, etc. A friend just sent this video link: Undercover In North Korea. I haven't watched it yet, but apparently it's fascinating.

Update: I've watched it now, and I can confirm that it is indeed fascinating.

I recently read in The Economist that the national flower of North Korea is a type of begonia named "kimjongilia". It's almost too absurd to be true!

When the Nordschleife is open to the public, you can take any street legal vehicle (car, motorcycle, bus, van), but the common car rental companies (Avis, Hertz, etc.) do not allow their vehicles to drive on the track. There are lots of stories where they (Avis or whoever) somehow found out and charged the driver a 2,000 Euro penalty. Check out Ben Lovejoy's page for more car rental info: http://www.nurburgring.org.uk/carhire.html

Anyway, if you don't have your own vehicle, or want to rent one for some other reason, check out Rent-Racecar (www.rent-racecar.de/gb). The owners - Theo and Heide - are very nice and just a pleasure to deal with, and they both speak English very well so there's no language barrier (assuming you speak English...).

They have a huge selection of cars including a BMW 318, BMW 325, BMW M3 (both E36 and E92), Nissan 350Z, and Porsche Cayman S. Check out their website for pricing details, and send email for vehicle availability.

I recently rented the BMW 325i E36 race car and had a great time. I had to change my reservation thanks to bad weather and they were very helpful in lining up another car for me on short notice. Also, they allowed me to take one extra lap in a 2nd car (a non-race car with back seats!) so I could take my wife and kid along for one lap of the Nordschleife.

I'm already looking forward to the next time I can take a trip out there, and I would gladly give my business to Rent-Racecar again.

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We just got back from a trip to Germany which included a day at Nürburgring driving on the Nordschleife. I also picked up a few stickers from the gift shop for a cool 6 Euro each (it's like they've invented their own form of currency, it seemed like everyone in the gift shop stopped by the sticker section and bought a few).

Since we all drove on the track (including one lap with the kiddo!), I think we've earned the right to put a sticker on each of our cars. :)

Despite ongoing drug problems, random behavior, negligent & dangerous parenting, and generally all-around sucking, Britney Spears is still in the news. Even the BBC is covering her latest goings on (Britney is dropped by management).

She just got busted for committing a hit-and-run, in broad daylight, in front of paparazzi who took photos and video...

I don't get it. Why do we care about Britney?

Kinda old news by now that Vista doesn't let you listen to music without cutting your network performace from 100% down to 10 or 15%. Instead of of 1 mb/s download, you'll get 0.1 mb/s. Quite significant.

This is a serious, serious design problem. We can safely assume that all users make heavy use of their internet connection, and many (most?) play music through their computer (mp3, etc.). So for sake of argument, let's just say "this problem affects everyone".

The new bit is a response from Microsoft about why Vista can only do audio or networking, but not both ( » Microsoft responds to Vista network performance issue).

Here's my favorite part:

"In certain circumstances Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback. This is by design"

What in the hell? Even old computers (running old versions of Windows) are capable of multimedia playback + normal network performance.

This is like saying, "if you drive your car above a certain speed limit, your radio won't work, so if you have the stereo on we'll just limit how fast your car drives to 20mph and your music will play normally."

Seriously, it's that absurd.

I'm a software developer and I'm fully aware that there are often trade-offs we must make between performance and usability. But remember, this will affect everyone so knowingly proceeding with a car that forces music listeners to drive 20mph makes no sense. Microsoft's claims that this only affects lan performance or downstream transmit only are irrelevant; it's still really bad.

Did they deliberately cripple it?

I just got kicked out of the Starbucks on Anderson Lane, apparently as of May 21 it's no longer open 24-hours. I think that was the only 24-hour Starbucks in town, so now we have none. I guess I could go to some coffee shop near campus (but not Spiderhouse). Blech.

If you have to fix it with a computer, quantize, pitch correct it and overly inspect it, then you can't do it and I can't get behind that! -- Henry Rollins, "I Can't Get Behind That"

On the drive home tonight, I turned on the radio and heard Don't Phunk With My Heart (Black Eyed Peas, audio soundbyte here). But the version they played was edited to use "mess" instead of "funk", so the line became, "no no no no, don't mess with my heart".

W
T
F

This is exactly why I can't stand mainstream radio. Most of the time it's a bunch of overplayed, lifeless, corporate bullshit, but the few songs that are any good get edited so they suck.

The word is FUNK (with an "N" not a "C").

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I finally started using Flickr to host / share my photos, and I've christened my photo stream with some photos of my Stratocaster.

I recently replaced my manual-focus 50mm prime lens with a much nicer auto-focus 50mm. A fixed lens is not versatile by any means, but can produce striking results for the right shot. I'm pretty happy with this shot.

I was talking about headphones today with a co-worker, and I got all fired up about the Grado SR 60. I bought a pair about 6 years ago and absolutely love them. The only thing that's a negative is that they use an open earcup, so exterior noise is not blocked out, and people nearby can hear your tunes - so they're a bit distracting in an office environment. Other than that, they sound great, look cool, they're comfortable and lightweight, they pack easily, and they're much cheaper than just about eveything else out there.

I modified my blog setup to generate topic-specific RSS feeds, so it's easier to keep tabs on certain things I post (like Apple stuff, without reading the Wal-Mart stuff).

Here are the links to the individual feeds:
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_apple.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_articles.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_blah.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_cycling.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_fun.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_info.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_movies.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_news.xml
feed://blog.erdener.org/archives/rss_walmart.xml

The Wii is still dominating the market, which isn't too suprising news since most people I know either want (or hopefully already have) a Wii. The other consoles just aren't that interesting. On the other side of it, the PlayStation 3 is trailing everyone, even the PlayStation 2 - their own console from 2000. Yikes. More info here.

console	# sold in May 2007
Nintendo Wii	338,000
PlayStation 2	188,000
Xbox 360	155,000
PlayStation 3	82,000

This doctor lady keeps showing up in my junk mail folder, enough times that I'm starting to get curious about who she is.

Does she know her face is delivered along with millions of spam messages every day?

Does she care?

And most importantly, is she really a doctor?

We may never know.

I run a site using WordPress, and it was recently hijacked by spammers. The result was the page content was deleted and it showed their garbage instead.

After doing some digging around, I discovered that numerous verions of WordPress have had serious security problems. Sadly, this is nothing new.

Note to self: never use WordPress again.
Excellent alternatives: MovableType or Nucleus.

So after much digging + reading, the official "fix" basically amounts to backing everything up, including database content, then installing a new version, then testing stuff, then possibly having to roll it all back if things don't work right.

Freaking waste of time. I don't want to do all of that, I want a damn patch so I can do other stuff and quit screwing around with WordPress!

So here's my quick, easy fix:

Rename your "wp-admin" directory to something else (like "wp-admin-hidden"). Do this through ftp or ssh.

Bad: your admin interface is now completely unusable.

Good: spammer jerks can't screw with your site content, it only took you 5 seconds to make this change, and it's completely reversible in another 5 seconds.

When you need to make content changes, just rename that directory back to "wp-admin", make your content changes, then name it "wp-admin-hidden" again.

Presto.

Your next task is to migrate your content out of WordPress into something un-shitty, like MovableType...

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Some friends are doing a weight-loss challenge, and I was gonna participate.

But then I realized I would rather eat cake.

And not just today, but continually.

So instead of starting the weight-loss challenge today with the guys, I bought a piece of cake and taunted my buddy Rob with a photo.

Love that internet.

Dear MPAA and movie production companies,

Please make movies that do not suck.
Box office and DVD sales are not affected by piracy.
In reality, most films today aren't worth watching.
At all.
Even for free.

I recently found an amusing take on the MPAA secret HD-DVD encryption processing key mess. At heart is the MPAA's claim that a single number is legally protected by the DMCA. Nobody can know about it, talk about it, copy it, store it, repeat it, etc. Anything that messes with their number is off limits.

Hmm.

If that's true (please suspend reality and go along with it), then it is also legally protected for me to have my own special number that's protected by the DMCA, too, and www.freedom-to-tinker.com helped me out.

Here's my super-secret, don't-copy-this-or-I'll-SUE-YOU number:

D4 C1 96 CA 0F 69 E5 42 4D 26 B8 2A E9 59 F9 A7

So www.freedom-to-tinker.com will generate a new number, just for you, and then use that number to encrypt a copyrighted haiku. So what? By encrypting that haiku, your number is then considered a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. But then immediately, the site owner gives all rights to you to decrypt the haiku. That means the DMCA should now make it illegal for anyone to mess with, copy, publish, etc. your special number.

Stupid, isn't it?

The whole situation is made even more ridiculous when you look at the landscape of cinema today: movie viewership isn't down because of theft or piracy, it's down because most movies suck.

This nonsense with the MPAA shutting down websites (for printing their secret number) is just silly, and it's only fanning the flames. Sites like 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.com (whoa! could that be the MPAA's super-secret number? as a website name?!) are popping up with huge lists of other sites, all of them are determined to print that number, just to be a thorn in the MPAA's butt.

(Please, just try making movies that do not suck....)

Follow-up to the drunk driver who smashed our car.

In total, 5 vehicles were involved:

• driver's Ford Explorer (totaled)
  
• neighbor's Ford Ranger (totaled)
  
• our Honda Civic (totaled)
  
• our Subaru Outback (at least $3k in damages)
  
• neighbor's Nissan Murano (at least $2k in damages)

We still don't know if the guy had insurance, but officer's told us on the scene that he had a previous DWI conviction. The penalty for 2nd offense is 30 days to 1 year in jail.

I found the police report online today, it shows the driver's name (Paul Keenan) and that he's 19 years old.

So he's got a 2nd DWI on his record, while being underage, possibly without insurance, and he just destroyed 3 cars + wreck a young woman's face.

Nice going, dumb ass.

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Last night around 2am, a drunk driver (some dumbass kid) smashed 4 cars right in front of our house, including my Honda Civic. The cops told us he has a previous DUI conviction on record, so it's not his first time. The whole situation is ridiculous in so many ways, and all I can say is it's a damn shame the driver wasn't injured (or worse) in the accident. He certainly deserves it.

First time offense is one thing, but this guy has already been busted for drunk driving, so now he's just an irresponsible jerk. He was driving a Ford Explorer, none of the airbags deployed, and the front passenger smashed her face into the dashboard in the collision. Her jaw is broken, she lost a bunch of teeth, and bled all over the place (her friend came to our house today, gave us an update). Last we heard, she had gone to the emergency room for surgery. I guess they'll try to put her face back together.

Why do we allow drivers like him back on the road?

Now that he's had a second DUI (the cops showed up and took him to jail), how long until he's behind the wheel again?

How long until he smashes up another 3 or 4 cars?

What if he gets in another wreck, but instead of killing himself in the process, what if he takes someone else's life instead of his own?

Here are some photos from last night, taken within an hour or so of the accident.

I went to a user group meeting tonight; I won't say which one, because I don't have anything nice to say about it. It was my first time to attend, wasn't really sure what to expect. Maybe I would meet some people with similar interests? Maybe learn something new? Anything's worth trying once.

After 2 ¹/₂ hours I was kicking myself that I didn't walk out early. I kept thinking it would end! I've since vowed to never again attend a meeting for this particular group.

What a waste of an evening.

... but sold it a few hours later.

The Wii is still pretty hard to find in stores, so when I found one today I was both happy and torn at the possibility of selling it for a small profit. The console itself retails for $250, and after sales tax the total comes to $270.

I ended up finding someone on craigslist who was willing to pay $350 in cash. We met up earlier today, done deal. So I no longer own a Wii, but have an extra $80 in my wallet.

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I'm looking at getting a new rubber sheet for my ping pong paddle (yeah, I know, what kind of nerd owns his own paddle? And buys upgrades for it? Well, I do.)

So I was looking for info about the "Hammond Pro α" by Nittaku. I found their website, and it includes this super-informative graphic (which explains, um, something... in Japanese...), and this awesome product info.

This sure helped me make up my mind! No more questions from me! I can't stand the "durability to become bad", and want to ensure that "seat and sponge invent big repulsive force".

"Rubber and medicine are combined at the time of rubber generation"... what?! Rubber and medicine?? This shit sounds like magic!

A rubber seat was 20-30% in the past rebellion became so good that the ratio of the rubber substitute to natural rubber became high but for the durability to become bad. A seat of a HAMMONDseries is to set rubber substitute to about 2 times of 60% while maintaining the durability, and high repulsive force is being shown. Highly precise rubber generation will be possible by nanocomposite technology, and Hammond-Xis also combining rubber substitute 70% in a sponge. (In the past, for rubber substitute 0, HAMMONDand professional ?, 50%) these seat and sponge invent big repulsive force. (More energy losses will be small.) if the batted ball process is expressed, flexibility of the natural rubber (catches a ball tightly and makes) them rip, and the ball repulsive force of rubber substitute caught is driven to the batted ball direction, said, it'll be (figure 1 referring).

* Nanocomposite technology (figure 2 referring)
A raw material of rubber and medicine are combined at the time of rubber generation. Perfect dispersion was fact possible which disperses difficult medicine to the nano level (1 n = 1/1,000,000 mm) in the past, and rubber generation which is high-quality and excellent in elasticity became possible by a more efficient chemical reaction.

I just read "Why affordable housing at Mueller will fail" and it makes a lot of sense.

Affordable housing is supposed to provide opportunity for lower-income home buyers, that part's fine. But once a home has been sold to lower-income family (basically at a discount, funded by the city government), there is nothing that prevents that family from turning around and selling their home at current market prices. In the above post, he argues that within 5 years, that's pretty much what will happen.

For example, say home #1 normally sells for $150,000, but the affordable housing version (home #2) sells or $120,000. That's great, if you qualify, you can buy home #2 and basically save $30,000. But if you were to turn around and sell home #2 a few years later, you could easily sell it for much more than your purchase price. In fact, if home #1 goes on the market for $160,000 (up $10k from original price), why wouldn't you sell your home #2 for $160,000 as well? You would. And by doing so, you've basically converted the city government's charity from a housing discount into real money.

So what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that it won't take long before "affordable housing" home owners figure this out, sell their home for huge gains, and then... you're left with a housing development that looks a lot like what you would have if you had started out selling everything at current market prices (i.e., without any "affordable housing" homes at all).

Whatever your initial goals were (diversifying the home owners, creating opportunity for lower-income families, etc.), you'll end up with something different.

It would probably just be easier all around if the city held a random drawing among lower-income families and handed out $25,000 sacks of money.

I just found Shirt-a-Day (www.shirtaday.com) - they sell a different t-shirt every day, and the price goes down in real-time as more people buy it. At the end of the day, the final price is what all customers are actually billed. Interesting pricing model.

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We're getting closer to the 44th Eeyore's Birthday Party in Austin. It's the last Saturday in April which falls on April 28th this year.

44th Annual Birthday Party
Saturday April 28, 2007
11:00am until dark
Pease Park

You can get to the park by taking a free shuttle (shuttle bus info here) or drive/bike/walk - here's a map to the south end of the park, that's where most of the activities will be.

If the weather is bad on the 28th, listen to KLBJ (FM) or check eeyores.sexton.com. If it ends up being cancelled because of rain, it will be moved to the following Saturday (May 5th).

Bring something to bang on and find the big drum circle. I'll be there with my 5-gallon water jug.

So yeah, I apparently posted the same thing two different times, over two separate days. And had no idea until my wife told me. Maybe I'll wait another day or two and post it a third time.

While shopping around for a used macro lens for my Pentax SLR camera, I managed to get a used lens physically stuck on my camera. What to do? Various options, but ultimately I used a hacksaw to chop it off. Several people I talked to over the weekend were quite interested in how things would turn out, so I took lots of photos and put this page together.

Read about it here (includes photos)

If you live in Austin, and noticed that you felt like total crap today, I might know the reason why.

My wife and I usually keep an eye on the various pollen counts, and we're pretty sure the cedar count is usually around 100. That's more or less "normal" according to News 8 Austin's website, which groups tree pollen counts into these ranges:

• 0-14: Low
  
• 15-89: Moderate
  
• 90-1,499: High
  
• 1,500+: Very High

A few weeks ago, it was around 1,000 and many people (including myself) complained and dragged around all day. Once you start paying attention, you'll quickly notice a strong correlation between absurdly high pollen counts and lots of co-workers calling in "sick" (can you call in "allergic"?).

Today, the cedar count hit 3,617 (again, from News 8 Austin's website). You'll notice that the cedar pollen count today is somewhere on the order of 30-35 times higher than normal.

So yeah, if you feel/felt like crap today, you're probably allergic to cedar.

Welcome to the club.

I've recently been interested in how Alexa Traffic Rank works. They keep data over time and maintain a website ranking system for millions of websites. At any point, you can see how a particular website is ranked and see changes through time. For grins, here is the Alexa page for my domain.

At some point a few months ago, my site had a ranking of about 3,600,000. So according to Alexa, there were 3.6 million other websites that were more important than mine. Oh well.

But in the past few weeks, my ranking has gone crazy. My overall site rank is now somewhere above 220,000 (the current 1-week average says 220,201, but it used to be higher, so the assumption is my actual "right now" ranking is higher than 220,000). Anyway, my Traffic Rank improved more than 10x. What does that mean?

Apparently, not much. The most important detail is how Alexa gathers traffic data. They do so when users install the Alexa toolbar inside their browser, and it silently gathers web surfing data over time. So for starters, we're looking at a cross-section of all internet users - namely, only the people who have this toolbar installed (and that means only Internet Explorer users, so the cool Mac and Firefox users don't count).

This raises some important questions. How much does the Alexa user community represent all internet users? Does my site really "matter" if Alexa says it does? Contrast this ranking system with Google's Page Rank and an important difference pops up. Page Rank is a function of website relationships (site A points to site B, that's a relationship), and has nothing to do with what a user does (or what their browser choice is). That is, Page Rank works off of the website content itself, whereas Alexa Traffic Rank works off what users click. Presumably, you could have a website with nothing on it (literally a blank page), but if enough Alexa users click on that website name it would receive a high Traffic Rank. So what would that mean? You could have a Page Rank of 0 (really low) with a Traffic Rank of 200 (really high) for a website that has absolutely no value to the world. I'm tempted to devise a plan to drive traffic to blank web page with the sole aim of skewing Alexa ranking data.

So while it's exciting to see my Alexa rank jump way high, it doesn't seem to mean much.

Screenshot taken from www.zune.net
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This is too funny... Microsoft's new "iPod killer" - the Zune - is currently not compatible with Microsoft's very own operating system, Windows Vista. It is true that Vista is not yet for sale in stores, but it will be soon. How soon? Well, after 5+ years of development, they're currently working toward an early December 2006 releaes date. So that's a matter of weeks.

It is laughable that the Zune does not support Vista. If Apple had ever claimed anything as ridiculous about the iPod and OS X, they would have been mocked and ridiculed incessantly. And why not? Two products made by the same company should be expected to work together. And so it should be with the Zune and Vista.

But it isn't.

I took a screenshot just in case they change their website.

HBO produced a video called "Hacking Democracy" where they show how easy it to cheat an election using electronic voting machines from Diebold (the company who builds the electronic voting machines). This movie is so powerful that Diebold demanded HBO not air it at all, or at least include a disclaimer that the movie is factually incorrect. HBO said no, went ahead and aired it on tv, and took the extra step of releasing the entire movie online, for free, so that everyone can watch it.

Whoever you are, regardless of your political affiliation, you should watch Hacking Democracy.

Watch "Hacking Democracy" right now (runtime 1 hour 22 minutes)

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Someone just sent me a link to a video on Microsoft's new video sharing service, they call it Soapbox. How hard can it be to share a video?

1. give me the url
2. click url
3. watch video
4. close window

The first two steps worked fine, although those don't have much to do with Microsoft doing anything correctly. But the last two were lame. The video started playing before it had fully downloaded, and also before enough of the clip was buffered. The result was choppy, shitty video. I clicked "pause" about 9 times before it finally paused the video, and then I let it sit there a bit for the whole video to load before un-pausing.

Eventually, I watched the video.

Then I tried to close the window, and it popped up a warning dialog! "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" What? You can't be serious! Another fine example of "bad interface", courtesy of Microsoft.

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Will there ever be a day when government agencies move beyond producing horrible things like this "map"? It's from http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/court/loc_no.htm, which I'm only looking at because the 6-page speeding ticket I recently acquired is a stunning pile of bloated crap. Why is this so complicated? You get a ticket, go here to pay it. Want to do defensive driving? Go here instead. What in the hell do I want with 6 pages of junk? I've read it all, and it doesn't answer my questions. Ugh. Well at least they gave me a map! So what if they put North going off to the left for no good reason. The rest of the planet designates North as "up", but not the police department. It's almost like they're... French.

Well, after using various beta versions of OmniPlan over the past two months, I can actually say a bit more about it than, well, two months ago.

For an application that's still in beta, it's very usable. In fact, I've been using it at work for project management for two months. Yes, it has crashed. Yes, there are bugs. But they keep fixing bugs, making improvements, and adding new features with each successive beta release.

They've got an AppleScript library to allow automated actions on a project plan, and plenty (10 or 12?) export options, including Microsoft Project. Without much effort, I built a custom html export template, and have been using that to publish project updates online for my team. The only things I want are extended AppleScript support (specifically to automate export to web page), and fewer / no crashes.

Over the past two months, I've sent a dozen emails to their team with feedback / bug reports, and they've actually responded to many of them. They're also taking lots of feedback in their forums. All good stuff. I'm looking forward to the official, non-beta launch of OmniPlan.

The word "macchiato" means "spotted" or "marked" in Italian. My drink of choice lately has been a double espresso macchiato, which is a double espresso marked with steamed or foamed milk. If it's made with steamed milk, it's "wet"; otherwise it's "dry" with foamed milk. Ratio-wise, my favorite coffee house makes it 1:1 ratio of espresso to milk, but other places use different amounts.

I'm sitting in Starbucks (not my favorite coffee house) right now. I got into a bit of a discussion about how to make this drink for me, since it wasn't part of their regular menu, hence the quick read-up and this post. Anyway, once I sat down, almost as though on cue, the barista walked around asking if anyone wanted a free caramel macchiato. Somebody made the wrong drink, I guess. I don't really know what's in a caramel macchiato, but I think it's a made-up, Starbucks-only drink.

So... nobody was interested, and she swore she was throwing that poor drink in the trash! For shame! Can't let that happen! It's now sitting here beside me, waiting for me to digest the double espresso macchiato I just drank like 4 minutes ago. I suspect I'll be awake late tonight...

This is brilliant! A group of scammers contacted AT&T claiming to be the owners of a pizza restaurant who were having phone problems. They asked AT&T to please forward all incoming calls to a new, different phone number. So all the scammers had to do was sit back, wait for people to order pizza, and insist they pre-pay for over the phone. Whaddya know, it worked like a charm. And why not? The customers initiated the call!

Pizza fraudsters get a slice of the action

When I was a kid, I idolized Steve Vai (along with several other guitar heroes, most of whom I don't listen to anymore). As an adult, I listen to very few guitar shredders, but if I do it's likely to be Vai, and even more likely a track off Passion and Warfare.

Anyway, I randomly stumbled upon vai.com and found the Video Vault. They've got a big ol' notice saying not to link to the individual videos, and it says they rotate videos often, so who knows what's up there right now. Go check it out for some whizbang guitar hero goodness.

Jamie Madden at 37 signals just wrote a post today called Getting in too-much touch (interruption is not collaboration), and it really hit home. I can't speak with any real authority about productivity other than my own experience and intuition, but there's definitely something to the notion that increased "collaboration" is really just more interruption. Email, instant messengers, phone calls, voice mail, sms alerts on your phone. And there's always meetings, calendar reminders, co-workers, office noise. Blech.

When I'm being gently needled by small (or large) amounts of these individual distractions, it amounts to a single, giant hurdle between me and productivity. In fact, I tend to get most of my best work in the middle of the night when everyone else is offline/asleep.

Interruption is productivity's biggest enemy

The other thing that I've grown more aware of over time is the ability to recognize when I'm "in the zone". Whatever that really is, all I'm aware of is that it's a state of mind where I'm really focused and capable of being ultra-productive. When I'm in the zone, I get away from distractions and find that I can sit for hours and hours just cranking out big chunks of work. It's energizing and satisfying, and the only downside is that I'm unable to induce it on my own.

I've known a handful of people who were absolutely brilliant; like, way high on the IQ scale. Just so incredibly smart that they spend most of their waking hours frustrated and annoyed that the rest of the world is much dumber than they are. I imagine that for people like that, they're in a kind of perpetual "zone" of ultra-productivity and ultra-focus, because they seem to never get tired mentally and never wear out.

An accountant named David Canada wrote the following comment about Google spreadsheets:

As an accountant myself, I see [Google spreadsheets] as a major collaborative tool that will change workflows in a way that Excel cannot. There are thousands of Excel spreadsheets on corporate networks that nobody knows the relevance of because windows file systems have no indexing or search capability. 99% of business spreadsheets would be served by the Google functionality.

Comment originally appeared in the discussion area of Forward Thinking: Google's Stealth Spreadsheet

This morning, I received my invitation for Google spreadsheets, and thought I'd do a brief write-up of the pros and cons.

I'll start with the bad.

• Google spreadsheets is very, very new. As such, there are kinks. Not too surprising. For example, while I was working on a shared spreadsheet (I was an editor, but not the owner), the owner renamed the sheet, which resulted in the entire contents vanishing from my browser window. Big deal? Not really. I just refreshed the browser and everything was still there, no data lost.
• The spreadsheet functions are no match for Excel. But functionally-speaking, what is better than Excel? Probably nothing. Excel has features I've never even heard of, and I probably couldn't even guess what they actually do.
• Google spreadsheets has no charting capabilities, although this can't be far off, given Google's excellent charting seen on Google Finance and Analytics.
• I use a Mac and use Safari as my default browser, but Safari is currently unsupported. I'm sure that will change. Google Maps started out like that, too.

And now, the good.

• Sharing. This is by far my favorite feature, and quite possibly reason alone to use Google spreadsheets. In fact, at every job I've had in the software industry, somebody ends up sending around a spreadsheet that we're supposed to look at, maybe give feedback or suggest changes. Happens everywhere. The author sends out an email with an Excel attachment. Some of us can't open it or get errors, others of us lose the attachment (Exchange problems?), but then invariably the author forgot something so he sends a 2nd version, but some people are unaware of version 2 and still using the 1st version, everyone gets confused and out of sync, etc. Basically, spreadsheet use in the business world is commonplace, and in practice, it's a klunky mess. In stark contrast, I used Google spreadsheets today with a co-worker to sort through lists of data, and it worked extremely well. And even though I was using a different operating system (Mac vs Windows XP on his computer), and even different web browsers (Camino on my computer, Firefox on his), we spent literally no time going from 0 to productive. I was shocked at how simple it was to create a new spreadsheet, invite the other editor, and start working. Prior to Google spreadsheets, we would copy/paste things back and forth across an IM window.
• Simple, clean interface. Despite being a powerful application, Excel has an awful interface. Microsoft has an excellent track record of creating horrible, confusing, overwhelming interfaces (for example, I read a while back that most users of Microsoft Word never use 80% of the features even one time, and the one they use most often is Mail Merge - a feature that hasn't changed in many years). This is widely known, and yet every time Microsoft tries to "fix" one of their terrible interfaces, they do so without the assistance of anyone who really understands HCI principles. Interfaces should be clean, clutter-free, and easy to discover. For someone who has never used Google spreadsheets, the last thing you want to do is "learn" a new interface. Thankfully, Google spreadsheets is simple and clear, everything I tried to do was immediately accessible and easy to find.
• Supports import and export for .xls and .cvs files. This is huge, because it will make it very, very easy to migrate out of Excel-bound hell.
• This is just me taking another jab at Microsoft, but Google spreadsheets didn't show me any annoying pop-ups or error messages, or do anything dumb and confusing. I cannot say the same for Excel on my Mac. I'm using a fully-licensed copy of Office for OS X, and even after a full, clean install of Excel, I still get r