Company Party

Company parties always have free alcohol, and The Knitting Factory had amazing Scotch tonight. Amazing Scotch, an empty stomach, and no food. It takes surprising willpower to know you've had enough and walk away.

Words of Wisdom from an Ice Climbing Instructor

Words of wisdom from my ice climbing instructor: swing like your screw, step like you pooh. You'd understand if you gave ice climbing a try. You should.

Five Worst Web Sites

After ranking my five favorite web sites, the five worst seemed the logical next step. I won't link them; on judgment day I don't want to be guilty of facilitating a visit. MySpace easily takes the top slot, with auto-playing music close behind.

Five Best Web Sites

A friend got me thinking about the five web sites I most depend on: Google, Wikipedia, IMDB, xkcd, and Fark. Wikipedia is the closest thing we have to a real Hitchhiker's Guide. Slashdot gets an honorable mention. Got anything better?

No Animals Allowed

Signs reading "No animals allowed except seeing-eye dogs" are a little asinine: the exclusion is printed text aimed at people who, by definition, can't read it. There doesn't seem to be much need to reassure the sighted.

Ice Climbing in Adirondack Park

Three days of ice climbing in Adirondack Park, which is amazing if you're into the torture-for-fun thing. I climbed over a flowing waterfall on thin ice, and my guide's advice when it looked soft was: don't hit it hard.

MacBook Air Complaints Visited

Revisiting the standard MacBook Air complaints one by one: internal battery, low resolution, no optical drive, cost, footprint, mono speaker. My responses range from "so what" to "it doesn't have a toaster, either."

Philosophy vs. Demosaic in Postmodern Dichotomy

A beautiful discourse on our recent company party, not written by me, though I did research the cost of our Scooby Doo. The original LimeWire URL is long gone, so here is the Wayback Machine archive.

Eclipse Interface Failures

I organize information spatially, which is exactly why Eclipse drives me up the wall: it crams everything into a single window full of tabs, forcing you to memorize file names instead of remembering where things sit. And no, Emacs isn't the answer either.

In the Name of the King

I have famously low movie standards; suspend my disbelief for two hours and I'm happy. In the Name of the King still failed. The king's death scene had the theater laughing. Then I saw the director was Uwe Boll, and it all made sense.