Sometimes technical, sometimes not, never a kitty

(note: this came to me as an e-mail with a thousand forwards, so if you know the original copyright holder, please let me know)

1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
2.SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
3.ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success, and advancement by kissing up to the boss, rather than working hard
4.SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
5. CUBE FARM : An office filled with cubicles.
6.PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls, to see what's going on.
7. MOUSE POTATO : The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
8.SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. That Yuppies get into when they have children, and one of them stops working to stay home, with the kids.
9.STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
10.SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that  has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
11.XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies, from one's workplace.
12.IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are Annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.
13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
14. ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the admonisher are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
15. 404 : Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message '404 Not Found,' meaning that the requested site, could not be located.
16. GENERICA : Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same, no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.
17.OHNOSECOND : That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize, that you've just made a BIG MISTAKE. (Like after hitting send on an email, by mistake).
18.WOOFS: Well-Off Older Folks.
19. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas, while passing through a Cube Farm.

I've had hosts offer all sorts of free components on their servers you can use, or install, but Lunarpages takes the cake this month.  They negotiated with some fine software vendors for free tools or free advertising credits.  All told, you can claim $775 worth of goodies just for hosting with them!

All the free goodies are detailed in the June 2008 Newsletter, but here are some highlights:

Parallels Workstation - I'm stoked about this one.  Similar to Virtual PC or VM Ware, but much lighter.  Free for Windows and Linux users, only a discount for the Mac crowd.  Honestly, I didn't know they had a Windows version, so their promotion worked on me.

WinSettings - There's a lot of crap built up in my startup.config I need to clean out, and I'm always looking to boost performance or speed the boot process.

The Logo Creator - I'm a sucker for pretty logos.

Also, they offer bunches of components with their hosting plan, and some additional free tools for managing your site.  Lunarpages has been a very stable and affordable host for me, so if you're looking for a host and wnat some free stuff, too, chek out Lunarpages.

I got 3/10 correct.  I need to more closely scrutinize my colleagues:

Can you tell a coder from a cannibal?  Try to work out which of the following spent their time hacking computers, and which preferred hacking away at corpses instead.

http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/

In the beginning, Community Credit was fun.  Make some blog posts, answer some forum questions, and get a geeky prize (don't judge me, swag whores).  After a while, some folks figured out how to game the system a little, and some seriously major participants also signed up.  Not sure how some of these people got all those points.  It wasn't fun, because you couldn't even come close.

Recently, David has made some changes.  Some of the top contributors were promoted to the Hall of Fame, point values have been changed, and a negative curve is applied to winners for two months.  Suddenly, stupid prizes are readily available again.  I'm awaiting my 10th place from July.  Woot!

I'm sure this isn't what they meant to say, but that's how it looked on my Treo 700w.  Doh!  Death by cliche!

MySpace.com is attracting its share of tech-savvy criminals who are brazen (or dumb) enough to brag about their criminal exploits online. Needless to say, law enforcement officers are finding MySpace.com to be a true goldmine of information for closing out criminal investigations.

Full story at: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=103009GRG8Z6.  It’s a good laugh.

Update: Part 2 at http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=111003KKYNW3

Kevin Remde is reporting that as of 9am PST (noon Eastern), VPC 2004 SP1 will be released free of charge:

Now, like Virtual Server 2005 R2, you can download and use Virtual PC 2004 (SP1 version) for free.

Chris Sherman at Search Engine Watch has an overview:

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3598681

Holy cow, nice ballpark. Pirates vs. Brewers, 1-0, bottom of the 2nd. 18 rows behind Pirates' dugout. Sweet!

If you're an avid blogger, prolific article author, guru of some forum, etc., then check out Community Credit at http://www.community-credit.com.  You can earn points for each answer, article and activity; at the end of the month, those with the most points win swag.  This month's grand prize is the very cool Projector Keyboard:

We're getting a new Chili's here in Butler, and trust me, that's pretty big news in this small town. The pepper went up this week, and my mouth is watering. The general contractor is from Ohio, but the excavators and pavers are local companies. Thanks for that, Chili's, I know you'll get a lot of business from this town, and we appreciate the support back. Now, if you ever need flowers, call that nice shop practically across the street...

Spammers are annoying, but the incompetent ones make me laugh:

Now playing: Georgia Satellites - Battleship Chains

Very cool: http://television.aol.com/in2tv

AOL is streaming episodes of classic TV shows for free.  Shows include Wonder Woman, Eight is Enough, V, Perfect Strangers, and more.  So far, only select episodes are available from each series, with more to come according to AOL.

My friend Cathy Rulloda from Avante Gardens had an interesting promotion this Valentine's Day--they replaced orders of disappointed Proflowers customers, for free.  Complete with pictures, she shows what a rip-off Proflowers really is when you compare it to real florists.  Check out the full post at http://floristblogs.com/blogs/avant_gardens/archive/2006/02/18/88.aspx.

My search referrals are filling up with this, for a smattering of reasons.  To make it easy, here’s the answer in one spot:

The song in the Saturn commercial is “Home” from his “Carencro” CD.  This is the commercial where the sides of the buildings fold down for the Vue.  The rest of the albumn is good, but this song is different from the rest.  If you want it in iTunes, click the link below on a machine that has iTunes loaded.  If you want the whole album via Amazon, click on the album cover.

BTW – Carencro is his hometown in Louisiana.

Now playing: Marc Broussard - Home

Click here for the album at Amazon

The Seahawks took the field to The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony", while the Steelers took the field to Fat Boy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now".  What could be more bittersweet than making it to The Big Game, and then losing?

That was obviously a subliminal message to the Stepford referees as to which team should win the game.  Gillette was in on it, too.  See, Proctor & Gillette needs a new commercial for its new razor, and Hasselbeck wasn't as likely a candidate for a shave as Roethlisberger was.

I love my hometown of Louisville, KY (a.k.a., Louavull), and I love my adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.  The Louisville Courir-Journal's RSS feeds helop me stay in touch with the news back home, and today's issue had a great article on one member of the Steelers Nation, and his lucky leg:

Four weeks ago, in the first round of the playoffs, Pittsburgh trailed Cincinnati 17-7 in the second quarter. Gray decided to kick-start the Steelers with his prosthetic leg -- the one with the Steelers helmet on the shin.

"I just popped it off and started banging on the table with it," Gray said. "Everybody was like, 'What is that?' I said, That's my lucky leg!'

But why does our man have a prosthetic leg festooned with Steelers logos?

"I was thinking about getting a Steelers tattoo," Gray said, "but I was like, I need a new leg anyway, so why not get a Steeler leg? That'll kill two birds. I'll have a tattoo and a leg -- and I won't have to worry about the pain of the tattoo."

You have to appreciate the thought process, there.

Full article at http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060203/FEATURES/602030329/1011/rss05.

I would claim that the image says it all, but I'm not quite sure what it's saying...

Now playing: Southern Culture On The Skids - Galley Slave

but I always wanted to be Aquaman... Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 100% Green Lantern 70% Superman 65% The Flash 65% Iron Man 60% Hulk 55% Catwoman 55% Supergirl 45% Robin 40% Batman 25% Wonder Woman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Color me curious.  I heard about Yahoo! Publisher, and I figured I’d see how it works.  I know how AdWords works from both sides—we use AdWords for the flower shop, and I know many of my fellow bloggers make gadget money from the program.  But I have to be different.

Yahoo! Publisher is still in beta, but you can sign up at http://publisher.yahoo.com/.  It was pretty simple—fill out a form and wait a couple of days.  I got my enrollment message today; I completed the registration and inserted my first ads a few minutes ago.  Setting up the ads is extremely easy—you pick any of the standard color schemes (or create your own if you’re feeling spunky), choose an ad size, create a reporting category, and copy a small JavaScript.  The script was an absolute cinch to insert into the default dasBlog template, and I’ll add ads to the other skins when I get some more time.  You can blosk ads from specific domains, and choose category ads to provide more general targeting to your site visitors.  You can even insert ads into the RSS feeds, but currently only on Movable Type or WordPress.  No big deal since the half banner fits nicely in the ItemTemplate anyway.

In addition to the ads, you can add additional services like Yahoo! Maps, Add To My Yahoo! and Y! Q, which is a contextual search (for instance, if you’re looking at a page about Apple computers, and you search for ‘apple’, results will be slanted to the company and not the fruit or child).

So far, I have to say this is a lot easier than I thought, and I’m going to try not to be annoying as I mess around with the different ad types and templates.

Now playing: Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband - Even Superman

I just picked up my new letterhead, and it looks great.  Ed Lackman at Guideline Printing was incredibly helpful in selecting the papers and working with Lynn Capestrani at Advertising Concepts to get the colors and bleeds just right.  It's amazing the variety of papers available today, and how much technical information on each Ed has stashed in his head.  Lynn also designed the PowerPoint template I use (you can see that in my SAF 2005 presentation).  Lynn and Ed's expertise made the whole process incredibly easy--I just had to pick a few things I liked, and they handled the rest.  Painless.  If you need design and print services in or around Pittsburgh (well, anywhere for that matter--they're digital), I definately recommend both of them.

Everything features my logo (which you can see on my homepage at http://www.rjdudley.com).  The original logo concept was designed by Molly Masood, but she got swamped with other work, and so Lynn and I traded some work with one another to polish it off and get everything printed.  You can see the proofs below; the bright blue was toned down to a more navy-blue for the actual pressing.

Business Card Proof

Letterhead Proof

Envelope Proof

Congratulations, Richard!
Your IQ score is 135

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator. This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years. You've got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.

Not to pick nits, but the second sentence should start "You have a remarkable..."

Here's the link: The Classic IQ Test.  You'll have to create a free profile, but that's what GMail is for.

I'm thrilled to be selected as a Galley Reviewer At Large for "Naked Conversations", a forthcoming book by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble (yes, that Scoble, as if he needs the link).  "Naked Conversations" looks into how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with their customers.  I'm speaking at the Society of American Florists convention in two weeks on using a blog as a marketing tool, so this is very exciting to me.  In addition to this very blog, I also run The Weddings Blog at http://www.bloomeryweddings.com/blog, and my new site Florist Blogs at http://www.floristblogs.com.  I'm stoked, thanks to Shel and Mr. Scoblizer (can I call you that?) for the opportunity.

The date for the Philly VS 2005 / SQL Server 2005 has been changed from December 13th to Nov 17th.  More info as it becomes available.

I'm clearing out The Stack, and here are a couple of nuggets from the December 2004 Fast Company I've been meaning to blog about.  The article focuses on Innovation (and the perceived lack thereof) at Microsoft

• Venture capitalists typically look at 50-100 deals to find a good $20 million investment.  Microsoft, with its $6.8 billion R&D budget, would have to cover some 35,000 ideas to keep on the same pace.
• Google's $1.5 billion in revenue would lift Microsoft's top line by just 4%.
• In the software industry, a research project is considered successful if it produces 10-15% annual revenue growth.  By this standard, Microsoft would have to create the third or fourth largest software company in the world each year to be considered innovative.
• From its $37 billion in annual sales, Microsoft generates $9 billion in cash flow and $8 billion in profit; that's twice as operationally efficient as GE and better than twice as profitable as IBM.
• Microsoft spends $6.8 billion each year in R&D.  IBM spends $5 billion.  The annual R&D budgets of Oracle, HP, Dell, Apple and Sun combined are less than Microsoft's.

That's big.

Technology Usage Improves Businesses - Butler Economy on Resurgence

Butler, PA - Butler's business climate has been on a steady upswing since September, 2005.  Analysts attribute the improvement to better usage of technologies based on Microsoft's .NET platform, among other products.

This technology transfer has largely been through the efforts of consultant Richard Dudley.  Dudley, co-owner of a local flower shop (The Bloomery Florist - www.bloomery.com) and a former molecular biologist, is seemingly a direct pipeline from Microsoft to local businesses both large and small.  Aside from direct interaction with clients, Dudley shares his knowledge and experience through his blog (at http://www.rjdudley.com/blog), articles authored for ASP Alliance, presentations at the Butler Area Dot Net User Group (www.badnug.org), and in the ASP.NET forums and Microsoft newsgroups.

"PDC (Professional Developers Conference) 2005 was great timing for me, " says Dudley, "I was implementing a multi-portal SharePoint Portal Server solution at one company, and participating in the Maestro beta program with another company.  The PDC sessions were invaluable material for both current projects and future planning."

It didn't take Dudley long to bring his PDC-gained knowledge to a large group of small businesses.  In another stroke of lucky timing, Dudley was already scheduled to speak at the Society of American Florists (SAF - http://safnow.org/meetings/convention.cfm) national convention in late September by the time PDC was officially announced.  Dudley's presentation focused on marketing through blogging (something he does with his flower shop’s blog at www.bloomeryweddings.com/blog), but his interactions outside of his panel were just as valuable.  "At SAF, I interacted with a number of businesses that could benefit greatly from Microsoft Point of Sale solutions, Small Business Server, and Microsoft's new Small Business Accounting product.  I was able to make recommendations to my fellow attendees, and help locate experts in their geographic areas.  Being exposed to these products at PDC enabled me recommend appropriate technologies based on the business needs."  Dudley also favors wider adoption of Microsoft's .NET platform.  "The floral supply chain is very international, with products coming from a number of different countries.  The .NET platform's globalization capabilities make it a superb development tool for our industry."

Back home in Butler, Dudley's understanding of business processes and technology have had a positive impact upon his clients.  More than one client cited his ability to automate time consuming tasks.  Replacing a manual process with an ASP.NET and SQL Server-based solution saved one client 9 man-days per month.  "That was huge.  Sometimes, automation is seen as a threat, so it's also part of my job to point out the benefits of what we're doing.  One of my favorite quotes comes from a recent Fast Company article, 'PrairieStone's finely tuned system uses automation in a particularly sophisticated way -- not merely to cut costs or speed up processes, but to free workers from the routine parts of their jobs so they can offer their highest and best contributions.'  It’s a great thrill for me to enable knowledge workers so they can offer their best contributions."

Note: the following is opinion, based on my personal experiences over the last 20 years in the corporate and academic worlds, using Macs and PCs alike.

In the early days of the Mac, Apple had a chance.  A very good chance.  Many big businesses were already accustomed to the slick interface of Xerox ViewPoint workstations, and the Mac offered a very good facsimile of them.  People found them easy to use, they were comparably priced, and they ran all the popular software (such as WordPerfect and Quattro, and even some Lotus 1-2-3 variant).  But then something happened that made business communication look respectable.  HP brought out a relatively inexpensive laser printer that worked only with MS-DOS or PC-DOS machines.  It's not that HP didn't want to work with Macs, Apple wouldn't open the architecture to let them.  Up to this point, most business printing was done on 9-pin dot matrix printers, which looked crappy.   Quality printing had to be done via a huge client-server beast that had a central printer somewhere in the basement.  HP brought that quality printing to the desktop.  But only for the platforms that wanted it.  At this time in history, PCs were still relatively rare, so being able to communicate from your PC and have it look as good as they IBM Selectric was very desirable.  Business wanted the high quality laser printing in a bad way, but it would be another couple of years before Apple would bring out their first LaserWriter.  By then, it was vastly inferior to its counterpart, the veritable HP LJ III (some of which I'm sure are still being used somewhere).  Even though it would be many more years before Windows 95 would be released, DOS and OS/2 -based machines were already deeply entrenched in businesses.  It would be nearly 10 years before HP's laser printers could be used with Macs that weren't on a network.  And by then, it was way to late.  Was Mac a better interface than DOS?  Hell yeah.  But DOS had better printers.  Say what you will about Microsoft's backroom deals, but IMHO, it was really a combination of a printer and a very closed technology that kept Apple out of the business market.

Sad day in Geek-land:

LOS ANGELES -     James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and movies who responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty," died Wednesday. He was 85.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20050720/ap_on_en_tv/obit_doohan

Dear Parent-Spammers, Sibling-Spammers, Friend-Spammers, etc.,

If you really loved me, you wouldn't have every e-mail message on auto-forward.  Instead, you'd evaluate the content of the message, maybe check out its claims, and discard the crap.  To wit:

1. There is no spider lurking under toilet seats that will bite your rump.
2. That isn't a computer from 1954.  It's an entry in a Photoshop contest.
3. Mars was closest to Earth in 2003.  That was two years ago.
4. Starbucks says they love our troops too, and I need caffeine, so I'm still stopping there.
5. Everyone's kidneys are safe.

You can check any of these out at www.snopes.com.  Please do so.

Additionally:

1. I know it says it's from your bank, but it's not from your bank.  Trust me, delete it.
2. Don't open the screensaver.  Ever.
3. Microsoft does not send updates via e-mail.  Never have.
4. If I don't personally deliver it on a CD, you shouldn't install it.  If you do install it, and weird stuff starts happening in the middle of the night, don't call me.  I'll hang up on you.  You have been forewarned.
5. You are far from the first person to send that to me.
6. I have two dogs.  They are cute.  I do not need any more photos of cute dogs, especially ones whom I do not even know.  I especially do not need several megabytes of photos and/or video in a single e-mail message.
7. No one from any third world country has any amount of money for you.
8. You can't get off their mailing list, and asking them to take you off only makes it worse.
9. You, and 50 million others, have been specially selected only because they have your e-mail address.  It's not real, just delete it.

So please, before you mash that Forward button, think about what you're about to do.

rich

Your IQ Is 115

Your Logical Intelligence is Above Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Above Average Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

Ken LeFebvre, our Evangelist/Champion of some flavor, is dust in the wind again.  Today is his final event in Bethlehem, PA.  Ken was the guy who originally sowed the seed of BADNUG, and helped get us pointed in the right directions at the very beginning.  I know we'll miss you, Ken.  Now that you have some free time, how about presenting at BADNUG?  We are right on the way to Ohio...