Apologies and Thanks

One of the key points that Marshall Goldsmith makes in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is the importance of apologizing to people when you’ve made a mistake and thanking them when they’ve made a contribution (or even an observation).

So, in that spirit, I have to apologize to people who’ve made (or tried to make) comments on this site for the past few months; I discovered last night that I’d done something to my WordPress configuration which was sending comment notifications into the ether (actually they were probably spamming some unknown user sharing the same hosting provider), and therefore, any comments from “new” people were stuck waiting for approval, and I wasn’t seeing comments from “old” people, either.

I think I fixed everything up, but for those of you who may wonder what’s been of interest to my readership recently, I’ll call out the “lost” commentors and comments here:

Way back in November, Ed Costello weighed in on my Ubuntu problems (fortunately, that machine’s no longer an issue for me).
Mike Lipsie commented about ×œ×§×•× ×“×œ and its underlying conjugation.
November 30th’s posting on Free Rice brought out comments from Sacha Chua and Barbara Finkelstein, and I’ve responded in the comments to that post.
In mid-December, David Preston taunted me because he got his XO long before I did. But now I’ve got mine, so I don’t care.
Henry Bankhead at the Los Gatos Library explained how to get to their catalog via Worldcat.
Turbo Todd Watson recommended I read the book version of Charlie Wilson’s War (which I’m in the process of doing — and I agree, it’s even wilder than the movie!).
Marshall Goldsmith noticed my comments on his book.
Cathleen Rittereiser offered me help in Getting Nothing Done. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to Getting Things Done until vacation rolls around again, though.
My posts [1] and [2] on Twitter brought out comments from Connie Reece, Ed Costello, Sacha Chua, and Len Edgerly.
I was not alone in being underwhelmed by Gentlemen of the Road – Downstreamer agreed.
Richard Schwartz is trying to incite me to play a game.
And finally, Xavier Verges and Ed Costello wish they had their XOs now thatI got mine.

Summarizing all those comments was a lot of work, but fun — maybe I’ll do it again some day.

XO, XO, it’s blogging now I go

I got my XO from the One Laptop Per Child project yesterday. It is incredibly cute, but the keyboard is going to drive me crazy fairly soon. It’s too small to touch-type on for me, so I am using two fingers, a technique I thought I’d abandoned years ago.

I’m really impressed with its WiFi – it sees (and connects to) networks that my other computers don’t show at all. I need to upgrade the OS so it will automatically connect to my home network – I’ve been using an open network with a cryptic name, probably not the smartest idea for the long run.

The only real problem I’ve had with it is using Twitter; when i type into the posting box, the display lags many seconds behind. I guess it’s due to the keystroke-deriven Javascript, but that’s just a guess. I’m certainly not seeing any delay typing this posting into WordPress’s browser interface.

I can see how a box like this can make a difference in a child’s life. I’m glad I signed up; I’m not quite sure what I’m gonna do with this one in the long run, though.

links for 2008-01-12

Queen Alice Internet Chess Club – Play free turn based Correspondence Chess in your web browser!

If only I had more time…

(tags: chess-by-mail)

links for 2008-01-11

Javascript date parsing and formatting, Part 2 at Xaprb

Very good Javascript date parsing and formatting library

(tags: javascript date parsing)
on “having no life”…

As a wise man named Norm once said, “20% of this job is slave labor — enjoy the rest!”

(tags: worklife balance)

Distraction

While “Distraction” describes large parts of my life, this time around, I’m writing about Bruce Sterling’s book of the same name.

I’d picked up several of Bruce’s books at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2002. Too many, in fact, and so after reading Heavy Weather, I put the others away for “later”.

Last week, I wanted to grab a book for the trip to Tucson, and Distraction was near at hand. And the back cover blurb was intriguing: “It’s November 2044, an election year, and the state of the Union is a farce….” — especially since I knew the Iowa caucuses were going to be a significant event during the trip. And 544 pages promised enough reading matter to get me through the trip, which was another point in the book’s favor. So I took it along with me — and spent the outbound flights doing crossword puzzles.

But eventually, I actually opened the book and was hooked almost immediately, as the not-quite-human protagonist, Oscar Valparaiso, reviews video of the Worchester May Day Riot of ’42 (which isn’t a riot) on the campaign bus (which is actually taking Oscar and his krewe on a post-election “vacation”), which is stopped by a roadblock where the US Air Force is shaking down motorists for money to keep an air base open.

And then things got strange.

It’s definitely a political story, with a new Huey, Governor of Louisiana, in rebellion against the Federal Government (or what remains of it); it’s also a love story, with Oscar and Greta a most mismatched pair; and it’s a science story, with plausible pseudo-science rather than pure bafflegab. It doesn’t all hang together completely, but it’s doable. And worth the read.