Tue, Jun 24, 2003 It looks like there is more to the G5 benchmarks than meets the eye.  My favorite part are the flames toward the bottom of the page.  [via SlashDot]

Mon, Jun 23, 2003

Apparently, man cannot live (long) by bread alone, according to this Straight Dope column from 1978 (and it's online!).  However, do you think that man can live on Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch Clif Bars and Diet Code?

Sun, Jun 22, 2003 Rachel, my wife, has another great doctor story on her blog.  You should mentally prepare yourself before reading this though.

Sun, Jun 22, 2003

I'm packing up to move back to Seattle, so don't expect a lot of posting over the next week.

Telecommuting was fun, but I'm really feeling out of the loop at work.  I miss my friends and living in a big(ger) city.  I'm looking forward to everything except the real commute across 520 every day.  Oh well, I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

Tue, Jun 17, 2003 Check this out.

Tue, Jun 17, 2003

I freakin' hate ticketmaster.  I just had to buy a baseball ticket -- just one as we have another person going to the game.  The base ticket price is $16 but the total ended up being $22.81.  That is a 43% service charge.  That is more than I pay in income tax.

Beyond this, I had to actually use the phone instead of doing it online because I wanted to get a seat as close to my other tickets.  In addition to ripping me off they:

1. Asked for my email address to send me confirmation and then asked me if it is okay to sign me up to some random spam list.
2. Tried to give me a trial subscription to sports illustrated.
3. Tried to give me a trial subscription to entertainment weekly.
4. Tried to entice me to some other offer that I didn't catch because the poor guy in their phone center was mumbling.

Selling tickets can't be that hard a business to run.  Are these guys just money hungry?

Tue, Jun 17, 2003

You are The Merovingian, from "The
Matrix." Wit and danger, with a French
twist. You are adamant about the slightly
materialistic things- power, wealth, posession.
Dominating, aren't we?

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I wouldn't consider myself Senile...

Mon, Jun 16, 2003

I got some email from someone who calls himself "RAD Moose" (blogs offline...) on an easier way to take a snapshot from a video file.  This might come in handly later.  Here it is:

1. Download Movie
2. Open WindowsMovieMaker2 (feature not in WMM1)
3. Import Movie
4. Scroll thru movie in Preview Window
5. Select "Take Picture From Preview Window" item in Tools Menu

Very cool!  I'll have to download Movie Maker 2 and give this a try!

Sat, Jun 14, 2003

I just don't get the excitement around 802.11a and 802.11g standards.  Sure -- 5 times as fast would be nice, but in reality, I'm not using my wireless connection for anything that requires faster speeds.  God knows my broadband connection can't keep up with 11Mbps.  And if I do (like copying GBs of photos around) I just plug in to an ethernet cable. I know, eventually we'll get video on demand and all sorts of other high end services over these wireless links.

802.11b strikes a great balance of speed and range.  The build-out is happening.  Why is the press trying to make such a big deal of it?  Or is it not the press and there are people who are really excited about this stuff?

(10Gb ethernet might be more interesting as this means the network is approaching bus speeds.)

Sat, Jun 14, 2003

You have to own a guinea pig to appreciate this.  Make sure you actually wait and watch the ad.  Here is a direct link to the ad video file in wmv format (other formats are available on the site).

I was busting a gut on this.  They even say "Moo" at the end.

(Getting that snapshot of the video was a total PITA.  Because of video overlays, PrintScreen didn't work.  I had to turn off all of the video acceleration features via the display control panel so that the video went through the normal display pipeline.  Overlays suck -- and they don't work with a desktop compositor.  Hint, hint.)