michael coates, a pragmatic evangelist
June 11, 2007 Leave a comment
Not the "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" or Hormel Spam variety, either.
Wired reports (2007) "May 1, 1978: Spam, From Novelty to Nuisance in a Couple of Decades". Over Arapnet, no less. In 2010, Wired posted “April 12, 1994: Immigration Lawyers Invent Commercial Spam”.
June 8, 2007 Leave a comment
Tchotchke, swag or gift bags; whatever you call them, they’re the heart and soul of conferences.
The best goodies usually come with the highest prices: providing your email address, sitting through a mandatory presentation or completing surveys.
Technical conferences tend to have techie-ish toys: balls that light up, USB ‘things’ and the like. But what about psychiatrists?
Wired stepped up to answer this one in "Psychiatric Pharmas Lay Out the Loot". From the post:
The next time you reach for a tissue in the middle of a weepy therapy session, don’t be surprised to see this reminder that depression is nothing to sneeze at. Effexor, an antidepressant, not only provides the tissue, but warns on the dispenser about rare side effects like life-threatening serotonin syndrome, sustained increases in blood pressure and "discontinuation symptoms" when people stop taking the drug.
With all that stuff, is there even room for a slip?
May 21, 2007 Leave a comment
Strike that. While I’d like to go into a pile of half-witty one-liners about it, I’m glad it’s here.
May 17, 2007 Leave a comment
I just celebrated my second year at Microsoft (see "Redmond Monsoon Season / Some New Directions").
That aside, no one ever tried this bit of hazing on me when I joined Microsoft. However, I heard about it from multiple sources: despite that, it could be a thing of Redmond legend.
As I heard the tale, you’ve just joined Microsoft, been through new employee orientation (NEO; your first week onsite is in this three-day meeting) and you’re settling in your office or cubby. You’re setting up your shiny new PC with all the MSIT stuff on ProductsWeb and the phone rings:
"You have a meeting in Building 7 in 30 minutes!"
You grab the nearest map of campus (online or printed; it doesn’t matter) and note the group of ‘X" shaped buildings, 1-8 in the center. You realize it’s walking distance, so you set out straight away.
Not that you would know this in your first week, but there is no building 7.
The thinking person would assume it’d be in the group of buildings 1-8, but it isn’t.
CIO says more in "The Mystery of Microsoft’s Building Seven Lives On".
April 23, 2007 Leave a comment
Poor little guy .. he was quite a trooper, though.
April 23, 2007 Leave a comment
I went on a field trip of bugs, bugs, more bugs and Grossology at the Pacfic Science Center with Cassie’s class.
Team Caterpillar and the Grossology exhibit (just in case you thought I was kidding):
March 16, 2007 Leave a comment
How did I miss ‘Pi Day‘?
Well, I did. It was yesterday. Actually, the day before, as it’s after midnight.
March 14th (3.14, pseudo-Euro sense; while ‘they’ use periods to separate months and days, our European friends state DDMM versus MMDD).
The phrase ‘May I have a large container of coffee’ is how I approximate (they’re still calculating) the value of Pi (count the letters in each word, yielding 3.1415926).
Clever, eh? 😛
Along those lines, you could approximate ‘Pi Second’: March 14 at 1:59:26 pm (although I’m not geeky enough for that).
Celebrate Pi Day with your fellow math geeks!
In the news:
This has had me going around in circles.
December 30, 2006 Leave a comment
I miss "Serenity" and the "Firefly" series. I just took this quiz (linked below). Turns out, I’m:
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)
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Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.  |
December 30, 2006 Leave a comment
We’re planning a very quiet NYE celebration; some sort of a movie marathon, one bottle of nice champagne and four bottles of sparkling apple cider.
Some picks from the web:
What are you doing / watching?
OpsanBlog 