dave

Fracking TWC

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:51:48 GMT

Dear Triangle Time Warner Cable,

Thank you so much for still not providing the SciFi channel (and thus the Battlestar Galactica premier) in HD. Of course, why would I want to watch Battlestar in HD when I could be watching Sell This House on HGTV instead?

Thanks,
-Dave

P.S. Please DIAF.

Danny Boy

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:20:50 GMT

Spitzer was brought down by financial transactions...

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:04:38 GMT

and I helped!

Or not. Per the article it's not as if I could really know for sure.

Class actions are a lawyer's best friend

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:03:01 GMT

Have any of you folks out there who were ~~suckered~~ caught up by the diamond thing for your weddings seen the DeBeers Class Action page? I usually just ignore class action suits, but I've actually read about people getting a good response from this one. It's very hard to get over the feeling that it's one level below a scam to make money for some law firm.

Found while house hunting

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:46:05 GMT

Another reminder that others are way more creative than you

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:29:36 GMT

I haven't had a chance to really read up on his site, but this guy is pretty much guaranteed his pick of jobs after completing his PhD. This is so rad.

His site

Because clicking is hard

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:52:58 GMT

Has anyone actually read an article on Forbes.com and found the automatic slideshow to be helpful? "Thank you automatic slideshow! How ever would I have progressed to the next picture without you?"

Now I can start rebuying my DVD library!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:11:04 GMT

<mild happiness>Yay, now I only have to worry about one format becoming obsolete.</>

I love the fact that the HD-DVD entry on Wikipedia has already started having the battles over "was" vs. "is" in the writeup. Sounds familiar.

All hail the Google van

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:57:09 GMT

Woohoo! Google has finally added Street View for the Triangle. With our upcoming house hunting, it couldn't come at a better time. Now I can easily see if a neighborhood has been stripped of trees by the developer and mark it off our list.

From the images of my house it looks like it was done sometime in the fall, though I know that it might have taken months to do the entire region. I haven't had a chance to find anything interesting yet other than the fact that my lawn looks like crap in their pictures.

The world without people...even Will Smith

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:01:46 GMT

I'm not sure what it is lately with all of the end of the world stories out there, but I finally got around to watching The History Channel's Life After People over the past couple of days. I have to say that I wasn't that impressed overall. The interviews with the various experts in biology, structural engineering and the like were well done, but the computer animation and overly dramatic narration really took away from what could have been a neat show. Also, you can really tell which animated scenes they spent their money on (hint: it wasn't the scenes involving animals roaming through deserted cities).

That said, it did certainly dovetail nicely with my current reading, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. I've found it to be far more depressing than anything in the History Channel's show. For me it's not so much an issue of "how sad, all humans are dead" or anything involving the abandoned planet, but rather the implications parts of the book have on the world right now. Reading about the sea of plastic debris and how long it will take to degrade (nobody really knows at this point) as well as all the various metals that are now cover the Earth is kind of a downer.

Speaking of metals in the atmosphere and soil, the book did remind me of one of my favorite Wikipedia finds. It turns out that one man, Thomas Midgley, Jr., was primarily responsible for developments that would lead to both the addition of tetra-ethyl lead to gasoline and the widespread use of CFCs. The Wikipedia article contains this quote regarding his contribution: "(Midgley) had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history." That's quite a legacy.

From the boy: Merry Christmas!

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:13:28 GMT

Or whatever you may celebrate. Or not. That's cool too.

Yin Yang Otters

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:14:50 GMT

So tired

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:39:26 GMT

Yeah, so having a kid has taken my LJ posting from almost-never to no-really-never-I-mean-it. Everything's been going really well, but it's amazing how much it takes out of you. Christopher has been doing great and seems to be getting close to crawling. Now if he'd just sleep through the night we'd be good. Anyway, my first post in a while isn't going to be a long one, so I'll leave you a cute pic.

Have fun at work, eat candy

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:50:20 GMT

My group has a full time job posted at SAS if anyone's interested. From the posting:

* Experience with Perl
* Experience with XML
* Experience with Java.
* Experience with CVS or other source management facilities.
* Web client development and deployment experience.
* Experience with SAS, particularly BASE SAS and Macro language.
* Experience with Open Edition.

Enter job number 07002097 at http://www.sas.com/jobs/USjobs/search.html

What I imagined the people around me were saying as a kid

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 03:30:08 GMT

This is a great entry from The New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs section (which I read because I'm so cultured and not just for the cartoons).

There is no God

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:42:50 GMT

Proof:

Also, Dear Jason Lee, WTF?

Hooray for technology (not really)

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:12:50 GMT

Is it asking so much to be able to have a single music library that iTunes/WMP/Winamp/whatever can all play and all make use of the same meta-data so that I have song data and album art? This seems to be nearly impossible, at least according to what I can find in five minutes of Googling...

Hooray for pair bonding!

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:10:14 GMT

As of today I've officially been married for four years. I'd like to thank my wife, Tonya. I couldn't have done it without you.

Father's day

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:06:46 GMT

Sure, it's a made-up holiday like Valentine's day or Christmas, but my first Father's day as a father is pretty cool. Christopher "made" a framed picture for me in daycare, which is pretty impressive given that he still has no fine-tuned motor skills or the ability to spell "Daddy".

RIP Mr. Wizard

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:36:38 GMT

Don Herbert 1917 - 2007

Dammit. That sucks. I think only my parents know me well enough to know how much I loved Mr. Wizard when I was a kid and it was on Nickelodeon in the 80's. Oh well, another bit of childhood lost to time.

US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:58:03 GMT

Kinda cool. NC's listed at $371 billion. Take that Belgium!

Dave-is-tired quicky post

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 02:16:18 GMT

We saw Knocked Up tonight while the folks babysat. It was really good, especially given current events for us. I was expecting a little more comedy to drama ratio, but now that I don't have to pretend to be a man anymore, I can say that I enjoyed both aspects. mtcrotty and niamhncsu, you should definitely go see it (if you like that kind of thing).

I also really enjoyed the cast. I believe about half the cast of Freaks and Geeks were in it.

Anyway, enough for now. Time for "bed", or as I like to call it "100 minutes between screams".

Talk to me

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:53:04 GMT

Finally dumped AIM (yes, yes, I know) today in favor of Pidgin. For those keeping score, GAIM + AOL lawsuit = Pidgin. Now that I use Skype to video chat with the family I had no more need for AIM. Now if the Pidgin guys would just get video chatting merged into the codebase I could drop Skype as well. Maybe some day.

Otherwise things are going well. I spent some time today looking for programs to generate UML database diagrams based on SQL schemas or direct connections to databases, but didn't get very far. It looks like MySQL has a new Workbench project in the pipe, but it's still really alpha quality. If you have any suggestions let me know.

Your brain + parenthood = DUMB

Tue, 22 May 2007 03:26:53 GMT

No, not you specifically, but in general.

Today was Christopher's first day in daycare. He was only there for a few hours, but everything was great nonetheless. I was a little worried about how we would feel leaving him there (even though we've had parents babysit several times already), but everything went well. The only touchy part was when he gave us a "what the hell?" look when we actually left. He ended up sleeping some, eating, and generally being a good monkey. They even gave him a report-card-type-thing to tell us everything he did. Pretty damn cute.

Speaking of cute, I wanted to give a word of warning to any of you out there who are thinking of having kids. All of that wit, sarcasm, and general snobbery you've built up over the years? Yeah, out the window once your child is here. Well, maybe not completely, but a large part of it. I find myself "dawwww"-ing over baby clothes in Target. "Got Milk?" on a onesie? Hilarious! Winnie the Pooh on something? Throw it in the cart! What am I supposed to do? They don't make uncute baby clothes! Old me never cared about that kind of thing.

I even found myself enjoying Notes From the Underbelly for a moment the other evening. What have I become?

FOX's The Sarah Connor Chronicles Trailer

Sun, 20 May 2007 01:26:38 GMT

Interesting...

And by "interesting", I mean "lame".