Categories
General News Travel Work

Travel news, and stupid ants

So something I didn't write about earlier like I should have, Kelly and I booked our flight to London late Sunday (yup, after I ate two full plates of meat, maybe that had something to do with my complicity?) We're leaving Saturday, April 28th, flying British Airways direct from Seattle to London, and will return on Monday, May 7th. We're both really looking forward to the trip, despite Kelly's recent unemployment. This all seems so familar. Perhaps this means Kelly will find a kick-ass job and start shortly after our return. It just seems so weird. See Kelly's post for all we plan to do while in London. All of that aside, we'll also make it over there a couple months before the smoking ban that will take effect in July. My last chance to enjoy a pint and a fag in an English pub. Hooray for me!

Now for the downer, Kelly yesterday pulled a beeping smoke alarm from the ceiling only to get covered with ants. Here we thought we'd solved our ant problem, only to discover hundreds of them in the walls. We have an exterminator coming out tomorrow, but dammit, so annoying, and potentially a very expensive issue. Grrrr. Stupid ants.

Categories
Entertainment News Politics

Bill Moyers at NCMR 2007

I was listening that old school form of media, something called radio, just now, NPR, and they started playing a slightly truncated version of the journalist Bill Moyers' speech at the National Conference on Media Reform. Found them on YouTube, you should watch / listen. It's very interesting.

Part 1 and Part 2 

Categories
General News Work

Buy AMD

So, today Kelly learned she lost her job at… well, a major competitor to AMD. While this major microprocessor company has been undergoing a lot of "headcount reductions" recently, this particular turn of events shocked us both, and the circumstances around it are (to me) a bit suspect. I know from past experience that a layoff can result in a very positive change. But since this company was paying for Kelly's graduate school (which we will now have to cover ourselves), the layoff has a more significant financial impact. Grrr. If anybody knows of a fantastic job opening at a great company in the greater Portland area, let me know. In the meantime, buy AMD.

And yeah, I've got friends and family still employed at said AMD competitor, I'm still feeling a bit spiteful. 

Categories
Entertainment Movies News Technology

iPhone… very nice!

Ok, I'm not going to go on about this, but I will say that I saw the Apple page for the iPhone today and it is, as Borat would say… "Very nice". It's a slick device (as you would come to expect from Apple), phone, mp3 player, and wifi-enabled web device. I'm not decided if I really want one, but it is pretty sexy. There are some user interface designs that I find interesting, such as "pinching" a photo to shink it's view and "stretching" to enlarge, and it's cover art 'flip' view of your music collection. I also appreciate the built-in Wi-Fi, web browser, and the simple integration with Google maps. Overall it's a very neat device. I'll be curious to see how real-world use shapes up once it's available.

Categories
News Politics Technology

Lunchtime links

During lunch, while eating a delicious chicken sandwich and scanning my usual lunchtime news sites (Digg and Slashdot) I found the following tidbits that I thought I'd share.

Web developers, just say no to Internet Explorer
An interesting little read from a frustrated developer (presumably, doesn't say what he does for a living, just what kind of company he works for), a site dedicated to trying to make 2007 and 'IE-free year', given it's poor standards-compliance. I know first-hand the pain that IE causes. Anyway, Read it! (www.nomoreiehacks.org)

Pentagon: War on terror in Iraq, caused more harm than good
From an article of the Sunday Herald on December 26th, 2006, the Pentagon has been attributed as admitting that the war on terror in Iraq has done more harm than good in terms of the objective, to win the hearts and minds of the people, removing the power from terror goups. Read It! (findarticles.com)