MS Silverlight gets hopping endorsement

This is truly a great sign of Microsoft technology moving in the right direction: up and coming! (I really, really, could not help myself!)

Article here.

I love this part:

It's also possible to search the full text of the articles -- which is no doubt the feature that gets the most use.

HEEHEE (snickering like a 12-year old)

Dow's up almost 500 points!

Recession over?

Hardly!

But we'll take it!

Bad Driver Story

So I was driving, minding my own business the other day on a four way freeway (two lanes each way). I was in the left lane, and traffic was backed up, so we were moving at a really slow pace. A car in front of me but in the right lane looked like they wanted to merge to the left, and made a move that almost caused an accident with the car in front of me directly. Then the driver, who was a woman, and this by no means is a representation of how I view women drivers, so don't butcher me on this, she went back to her lane and then gave a turn signal. So I slowed down and let her through. Once she was in the lane, she didn't acknowledge me or thank for stopping and letting her in. When we got to the traffic light ahead, we stopped next to each other and I looked at her and she gave me the meanest look as if I was the one who did anything wrong. Mind you, I surely did not give her a mean look at all. Worse, she was on the phone. Worst, she had two kids in the back while she was driving and talking on the phone. So:

1- Very rude
2- Very dangerous
3- And illegal

Whoever that lady is, hope you have a great time passing through this life as you. Oh, and get over yourself.

Follow Up on Last Blog Post

I really do recommend everybody use Twitter. It is a very simple and easy way to stay in touch and a fun way to let everyone know what you're up to, and quick thoughts, all within 140 characters. Come on, you know you want to. You've heard all about it, all over the TV, radio and internet. Check it out. It's fun. The coolest thing about it is that there a lot of celebrities and companies that have signed up to Twitter that you can follow and communicate with, because there are no restrictions. Of course you can block a few people from following you, if you so choose, but otherwise it's pretty wide open.

I myself had a back and forth communication with David Gregory of NBC's Meet The Press, and I felt giddy! So try it out. It's cool.

Are we Human, or are we connected? REDUX

There was a lot of talk that started a while back, and still ongoing, about something called Web 2.0. As soon as I heard that I was thinking, great! Another upgrade that we have to pay for! Turns out, it wasn’t an upgrade, but in reality it’s a redistribution of wealth, in a sense.
See, in the old days of the internet the users, the people who surfed the World Wide Web, were cruisers. Passers-by. It was the big companies and outlets and newspapers and sports sites that ruled the internet. People would check out the websites, and move on to the next website, and then the next, and so on. True, we did bookmark a few websites that we went back to more often than others. The New York Times. ESPN. Yahoo! Hotmail and later Gmail. Of course, many, many others also, that I’m not going to mention them all.
There were other people who were more internet and technology savvy, who hacked other websites! But, not all of them were hackers. Other started experimenting with things like MSN Groups and Geocities, to present themselves to the world. There was an industrious group that started doing something strange. They started writing what was called a web log. Basically, accounts of what they were doing, their thoughts, their aspiration, observations. Any topic they wanted to talk about. And they shared all of those thoughts with the rest of the world, or, anyone who was interested in following those people.
Slowly but surely, that community started growing. The web blog became a blog. Those pioneer bloggers saw their communities grow daily. People became celebrities, just by blogging and having a following on the internet.
There isn’t a watershed moment, probably, that ushered the world into Web 2.0. But what is exactly Web 2.0? It’s social networking. What’s social networking? Good question that I am hardly competent to answer. But, I’ll give it a go! That’s just the kind of person I am!
Social networking, ladies and gentlemen, is your life on the web. Although it’s called social, but it’s beyond that; it’s you socializing with the world. You put yourself out there, literally. You present to the world the essence of you. You share everything. As much, or as little, as you want.
When Web 2.0 was happening, it almost passed me by. I thought it was a fad, that was going to fade! Then something peculiar happened. I changed my job. After spending almost 7 years with the same people at the same job, I moved on to greener pasture. And those people I left behind, some of them, started adding me to something called LinkedIn. I figured what the heck. Why not? I wasn’t going to share my personal email with all the folks that I worked with, and this was a nice, impersonal way to keep in touch, if I felt like it. So I joined up and got the occasional update from those people.
And my network on LinkedIn started growing. All of a sudden, I had more than 100 people connected to me, and growing. I liked that feeling. It made me feel like, hey, I know people! I’m not alone! Webwise, that is!
I wanted more.
LinkedIn didn’t let you do a lot of things with the people in your network. I heard a lot about MySpace. Unfortunately, too much of what I heard was from the press, and almost all of it was negative. It felt as if it was Predators R Us. A lot of teens used MySpace and it showed as soon as you logged on. I even felt like I was a dirty old man just by checking it out! One is for sure, though, I’m not old.
Lo and behold, the next big buzz was around Facebook. So I checked it out. And I liked it. You know who I found on Facebook? My wife. My sister. My cousin. My brother-in-law. My college buddies. My other college buddies! Yeah, like so many others I had to go to two different colleges, one a party school, the other to get my degree from! Who else was on Facebook? My high school buddies. My grade school buddies even! Wow! The memories came flooding in.
Seeing those folks’ pictures after all those years was a blast. Seeing their families was even more of a blast. We shared pictures, exchanged pleasantries, commented on how we all looked, how beautiful our families were and how much we had changed, or not changed. Then Facebook added the ability to write a status and to comment on other peoples’ statuses. Life couldn’t get better. You knew, at any instant, what people were doing, or thinking, and you could add your own thoughts on top of that.
Eventually I started logging on to Facebook to check out peoples’ status updates and new photos that they upload.
I wanted more.
I wanted to share my ideas and observations with the rest of the world, not just the select few friends on my Facebook account. I thought I’d start a blog. Yeah, I know, that ship had long sailed! But, it’s a great big ship, and there are still plenty of seats left.
I saw that Microsoft had something called Live Spaces. So I checked that out and started a blog there. It was alright, but it wasn’t the big ol’ community I was looking for. One of my other friends started a blog as well, and it was on Blogger. I tried that, liked it, signed up, and here I am! My wife liked the blog idea as well, so she started creating her own blogs. She has five or six to her name already! One of them is a family type blog on Wordpress, which is also pretty cool. I tried it too, but I stuck with Blogger because I think it is more user friendly, especially for non-high-traffic blogs, such as mine (although I would LOVE LOVE LOVE for my blog to be a high traffic one! How does one achieve that?). Besides, with one Google ID, I can share any Youtube video with my Blogger blog with one click of the mouse. Now that’s cool!
Problem is, I thought that I would always have ideas on what to write and what to share with all y’all. But I don’t. However, I think that I would be encouraged to write even more if I saw that there was a lot of traffic to my blog. There were a couple of weeks where I didn’t even write a single post to my blog. But now I’m back at it. But guess what?
I wanted more.
The thing that I enjoyed the most lately from Facebook was the status updates. So where can I find a place where all it does is encourage people to write about what they were doing, in a very short and simple format?
Twitter! I had heard about it, and I thought, what in the world is Twitter? Well, it’s a website that you sign up with where all you have to do is write an answer to a simple question: what are you doing? Wonderful! Just what the doctor ordered. Added bonus: you only get 140 characters to type in. Cherry on top? You can add anyone that’s on Twitter! Yes, I’m following a few celebrities, and one of them is following me back! How cool is that? I am now completely addicted to Twitter. I even added a feed from Twitter to my blog on Blogger!
So now I see my Twitter updates on my Blogger blog. Then I signed up with Twitterfeed! What is that? Well, anytime I post a new entry to my blog, Twitter lets people who follow me know about it! So my Twitter feeds my Blogger, and my Blogger feeds my Twitter! In any other context, that last sentence sounds dirty, doesn’t it?
More, you say?
Ok, try this on for size. Just today, I signed with for something called Ping.fm. So, here’s the deal. You sign up, log on, add any social network you are part of, then you can update all of those networks from this one place. One update, and it goes to your Facebook, Twitter, Blogger blog, Wordpress, LinkedIn and any other network you can think of. And then some. And here’s the kicker, you update Ping.fm from your cell phone by SMS/texting, or your Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger or AOL IM or iGoogle Gadget or even web mail. You don’t even have to log on to Ping.fm to make those updates. Hell, you don’t even have to be on the net to make those updates, if you use your cell phone! Ping.fm helps you join your disjointed social network, a one-stop-shop deal in this vast, vast 2nd coming of the web.
So there you have it. That’s Web 2.0! It’s something, isn’t it? What’s in the future? Well, nothing but the demise of TV, DVD, Blu Ray and anything that is not digitized and available at the tip of your fingers on your laptop. TV, what is that? My 18-month old son will be asking me when he’s 10!
Don’t let the revolution pass you.
Join us.
Welcome to Web 2.0.

Are we Human, or are we connected?

I wanted to write a big post about what the internet has become today, but I'm afraid I have to go pick up my parents and head home after a long (too long) Friday! I'll get to that post later, but I wanted to post this so I remember!

Enjoy the weekend. I will be back.

We are sick

With my son being 18 months, almost, a new dynamic was introduced to our household: the chain disease. One person in our family gets sick, then it rotates amongst the rest of the family members.

I hate that.

I am sick, the last one to get sick. First was my son, then my wife, who's also pregnant, and lastly, me. It's not fun, and there's almost no getting out of it. Once the sickness enters our door, it's going to stick around for a while. At least it's Equal Opportunity.

Anyway, that's why I haven't been blogging much lately. I wanted to put in some thoughts on Obama's first press conference, but I was totally out of it. Maybe if I remember some things that I wanted to blog about, I'll post some stuff.

Until then, I have a virus to kick out the door.

Just follow me on this, OK?

History will prove that George W. Bush is one of the most environmentally-friendly presidents ever.

How?

Now I'm not talking about his actual environmental policies, Lord knows he favors industry and even drilling and lower EPA guidelines around national parks. No. I'm talking about his economic policies! Here's how it goes:

• Bush favors pretty much no regulation whatsoever. Whatever the industry is. He's a real free-market kind of guy, letting the market do pretty much whatever it damn well pleases.
• As a result, lenders started letting people buy houses using this whole subprime mortgage deal, where the consumers bought houses that they obviously could not afford, that they simply had no business buying in the first place, by paying lower monthly mortgage payments. Of course, all along, lenders did almost no credit checks on those buyers. Why would they? Greed and the quick buck make you do stupid things.
• Little did those people know, that after a very short time, their interest rates would skyrocket, because that's how those subprime mortgages worked. They were adjustable after a short period of time, and not fixed over a long period of time. Besides, just like in the above point, they could not afford those houses in the first place.
• Lenders started packaging those subprime mortgages and selling them to banks as assets. Banks being greedy enough to buy them because they believed they would make a killing off of those mortgages when the interest rates rose.
• Here what they didn't think of, that people could no longer pay off the mortgages on those houses that they bought. The monthly payments skyrocketed. People started losing their houses. Banks started to foreclose on those same houses.
• Then all hell broke loose! The housing market crashed because there weren't enough buyers, and the market was saturated from all those foreclosed homes. The credit market crashed, because now lenders were starting to lose money because of all the foreclosures and loan defaults. Then Wall Street started its downward spiral because of the housing and credit market crises.
• What happened then was that the economy began its faceplant. People weren't spending their money because they were afraid they were going to get laid off and lose their jobs. Manufacturers and service providers started to lose money because there was no spending. Companies did start laying off thousands of workers. Household budgets got even tighter and tighter. Unemployment rose to their lowest marks in decades. It was chaos everywhere.
• So, as all this was happening, industry began to slow down, since demand was really, really down. With the industry slowing down, a lot of plants started to shut down.
• And since a lot of those plants were anyway in China and India, and since most of the pollution cam from countries like China and India where there are no environmental regulations to contend with, pollution should start easing up.

Here's what should happen next: more and more plants would shut down, in places like China and India and Taiwan and Mexico and so on. Pollution rates would start to decrease. The environment would start to recover, Global Warming would start to reverse course, the Ozone layer would start to patch itself up, and life on planet Earth would become more abundant, and Human Beings healthier, in the long run.

Ah, if only things were that simple!

So, Bush should get a couple of awards and maybe even a Nobel prize for what he did to the environment, because of his economic plans!

Don't you think?

3 things I was thinking while watching TV last night..

1. "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS is a very funny show, and one of my favorite shows, hands down. But, last night's episode was creepy from the fact that the whole show is supposed to be the main character, Ted, telling his kids in the year 2053 about how he met their mother, yet last night's episode was all about the "naked man" technique for sleeping with women! Is that what people talk to their children about in the year 2053?

2. "Worst Week" on CBS is one of the funniest new comedies I've seen in a long, long time! My wife and I were cracking up last night. Seriously, how DO you set a pool on fire? LOL

3. As fantastically illogical and unbelievable the story behind "Chuck" on NBC is, I can't help but fall in love with that show more and more! I can't remember a show that makes me roll my eyes more than "Chuck," yet I find myself looking forward to watching each new episode!

Feedback?

Meet the Palestinian Seinfeld. Who knew?

(Clicking on the post header will take you to a different website where the article is)

Sounds funny. I will be looking for it.

Friday's Random Thoughts

* I'm so happy that today is Friday.

* It's only 11:05 AM and I'm already starting to get hungry. Not sure what I will have for lunch today. I think I'd like to go out somewhere.

* Our family is jinxed! For the past 2 months we've been going from one doctor to another, and from one hospital to another. The latest thing is that my wife broke the big toe on her right foot. Seriously! Does anyone know of a good witch doctor or shaman they can recommend? We might need an old priest and a young priest!

* How jinxed do we believe are we? To the point that we removed most of our pictures from Facebook in an effort to ward off the envious eye! True story! We have started sending emails to family with pictures, rather than post them on the Internet!

* I'm getting more and more hungry.

* I'm listening to Vivaldi violin concerto 'l'estro armonico' No. 6. Good stuff!

A couple of sports related quick thoughts:

* I really do hope the Seahawks can win in Tampa on Sunday night. It would be embarrassing if not because they are playing in front of a national audience (Sunday Night Football), and they already are a measly 1-4. The thing is, I don't see them winning!

* I really do hope the Mariners pick a solid GM, one that can get into contention sooner rather than later.

* I was very happy to hear that one of the new Oklahoma City NBA team owners, Aubrey McClendon (a real schmuck) lost most of his fortune because of this economy!

Update at 4:04 PM: It gets even better about this McClendon guy! Karma is a "female dog!"
http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=45520&catid=159

Quick thought of the day

Why are depression medicine commercials depressing?

Ughh

What a Monday, huh?

It wasn't a good weekend, was it?

Everybody knows I'm a sports nut. So, for us sports fans here in the Northwest, specifically in Washington state, it was a particularly bad weekend.

Opponents outscored Washington football teams, the Seahawks, Huskies and Cougars, 120-23. Depressing is the word you're looking for.

Then we all wake up this morning to find that Wall Street isn't too enamored with the bailout plan, even though America mortgaged the future to help those corrupt bastards (helped by NO OVERSIGHT from this government, but this is a topic for later discussion). As of now, at 11:14 AM Pacific time, the Dow is down 630 points and is below 10,000 for the first time since October, 2004. Four years ago, if you're trying to do the math. NASDAQ is no better, down 141 points to just around 1,800.

Good times to be had by all!

Update: good to see that the markets rebounded a bit by closing bell, but there's still a tough road ahead. Unfortunately, no results were changed for the football teams, they still lost a combined 120-23.

Something funny happened on the way to work this morning..

I heard a WaMu commercial on the radio, complete with their tagline of "WOOHOO!"

No wonder those people went bankrupt!

Yet another ridiculous "statistical" link!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26959100/
"Car crash risk rises on election days, study says. Death risk goes up 18 percent but that's no reason to skip polls, authors say."

Give me a flippin break!

""This is one of the most off-the-wall things I've ever read, but the science is good," said Roy Lucke, senior scientist at Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety. He was not involved in the study, which appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association."

Apparently, we're not having any potential or actual crises these days. Apparently, "scientists" need to find other ways to fill their time. Apparently, "science" magazines are deperately looking for any material so that they can publish it.

Two things need to happen, people:
1. Stop funding these ridiculous "studies." That money could be better spent somewhere else.
2. Scientists and researchers need to find better tings to do with their time and money and resources.

Then again, the researchers in this study were Canadian, and it's not Hockey season yet, so that might explain a thing or two!

A new link to breast cancer?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26954781/
"Women who were bigger and longer babies may be more likely to develop breast cancer, researchers reported on Tuesday."

This is just the most ridiculous thing I've heard since that Palin interview with Couric.

To link breast cancer to birth size, or specifically birth length, is ridiculous. I'm sure that, if you're looking for it, you can find a link between any two things you want, if you look hard enough. Maybe there's a link between breast cancer and the kind of brush a woman uses to brush her hair. Or a link between breast cancer and whether a woman wears eyeglasses or not.

So what does this mean, anyway? Seriously.

I call BS.

I'm back!

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but seeing as today's Friday, and I have already mentally checked out for the weekend, I'll be putting up some new posts today. If everything works out, I'll have a couple of sports related and a couple of politics related posts.

Stay tuned, if you must!

Not too creative today!

I'm not feeling too creative today, which is why I haven't posted anything yet! I think I'm rather bored. I do have a couple of short story ideas that I'm playing with in my head that I might end up posting on this blog sometime in the very near future. This is something that I would love to do, given the chance, to write stories, probably mostly short stories. The thing is, I can't see myself writing them all in one genre. I think they would span multiple genres, from Scifi to romance to mystery, and so on. I hope that works! I hope I get the inspiration to start that!

Also, a quick thing about my wife!

I hope she doesn't divorce me because of this, but, I wanted to add new entries to the blog over the weekend, but here's the thing. My wife has the fastest laptop closing hands in the west! I swear that sometimes I wonder if she will close the laptop on her own fingers one day, because of how fast she goes from typing something to just closing the laptop. It must be something between .01 seconds (the margin Phelps won one of his gold medals) and .03 seconds (the margin Bolt broke the 100m sprint world record). So, in a nutshell, my wife would be using the laptop, and I would wait until she's done so I can use it, and all of a sudden, WHAM, the laptop's closed, and I then lack the will power to turn on the laptop again and do whatever it is that I wanted to do.

Did I mention that I love my wife?

9/11

RE: The 7th anniversary of 9/11. On the one hand, it's hard to believe that 7 years have passed since that day, I remember the events as if they happened yesterday. On the other hand, 7 years have passed since that day and the world has only gotten worse. Seeing the closeness and comradarie of people and nations on that day and the days that followed, I had a feeling that the whole world will unite and it would be a safer place for all of us. But, then again, I'm not a politician or a military person, and I did not see the same thing that those people saw. That 9/11 was an amazing opportunity to drive personal and political agendas and create this culture of fear and war and oh-so-misguided-and-misplaced-even-if-sincere patriotism. More and more people are coming out of that fog and that funk and realizing what happened was the absolute wrong chain of events. I just hope this bodes well for all of us in this very important year, a year of and for CHANGE.