I suggested he try a soulful acoustic version of The Backstreet Boys' "Everybody (Rock Your Body)" with the claim it would be viral gold. IMO he knocked it out of the park. Takes him about 30-45 seconds to really get going with it, but once he does, it's pretty dang good. I thought it would be cheesy and funny, but he actually pulls off the soulful, sort of reimagines the song, and owns it. Go, Jake!

Share this with all your friends and make my proclamation that it would be viral gold come true!

I'm basically paying $900+ a year for basic HD cable, Showtime, HBO, Starz, and Encore, plus a DVR-equipped cable box. What if I paid $180 a year ($15 a month) for a VOD over set-top box service, plus $1 a show for some fave series.

Buck a show for "True Blood", "Entourage", "Nurse Jackie", and "The United States of Tara" would be $48 a year (each show has a 12-episode season). We could even set weekly budgets. At $6 a week for pay-per-view series, plus $15 a month for VOD, we'd save close to $35 a month and support the shows we liked directly, encouraging their continued production with a very tangible revenue stream.

As consumers get a chance to really vote with their dollars and pay just for what they watch, the economics of television are going to change, hopefully in the consumer's favor. More signal, less noise, lower cost.

As we approach the holiday season, I'm going to be seriously contemplating whether a $100-200 set-top box is going to replace my cable box. If the cable providers don't start changing the way they do business, they'll lose my business.

In the 1970s, ABC's "Schoolhouse Rock" took the tedious process of making a law and distilled it down into a 3-minute song that many of us can at least sing the first few bars from ("I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill..."). Marc Pilgrim takes a different approach with the first chapter of this book, distilling the early history of HTML into fourteen eye-glazing pages. But if you can muddle through the initial proposal and discussion of the IMG tag, you get to Pilgrim's primary take-away of the chapter: HTML is not so much a thing, but a collection of things.

This is good, because the history of HTML has not been a smooth, step-by-step process. Different releases of different browsers have adopted different features of different specs at different times. I can personally recall rejoicing, back in the 90s, when both IE and Netscape finally implemented support for HTML tables. So it's no wonder that the second chapter dives into methods for detecting whether or not a user's browser supports certain HTML5 features.

If the first chapter was boring, the second is discouraging. First he shows how to check if Canvas is even supported. But once that's determined, you have to check if all the features of Canvas are supported. Moving on to the Video tag, even when that is supported, video format support varies across browsers. Basically, in these early days of HTML 5 support, it's like touring the United States early in the 20th century. Flush toilets and electric lights took longer to come to some areas than others.

After the third chapter started breaking down some of the new tags and how they affect the DOM, my eyes were good and glazed. This book is more discussion than documentation. If it was a car repair manual, instead of merely showing you the steps for changing the oil on your Honda, it would give you the history of the internal combustion engine, then detail different kinds of lubrication systems.

In short, there's a lot of valuable information in this book. Mark Pilgrim is no slouch on technical know-how or understanding of his topic. I just find the manner of presentation to be organized in such a way that I don't feel I have quick access to the information I want or that the available path to acquiring that knowledge is optimal. It's short on lab, long on lecture, and isn't something I'd make part of my permanent library.

FULL DISCLOSURE: An advance reviewer's copy of the book was made available to me by O'Reilly based on the promise I would review it and post the review on my blog (and at Amazon). I was free to say what I liked and under no obligation to give it a good review or quash any bad reviews (as is evident above).

Dear Sir/Madam,

1st Delivery Inc. offers an opportunity to apply for a full/part time position of Delivery Service Assistant for the United States citizens and legal aliens (Note: Previous experience in the delivery service is not required).

1st Delivery Inc. is a premier global provider of delivery service solutions, specializing in the international delivery solutions, with the long-term commitment history.

1st Delivery Inc. provides time-critical delivery services for clients from more than 80 countries world-wide. Our flexible and reliable transportation scheme and demonstrated expertise in providing time-critical deliveries for over 10 years positions us to provide top quality delivery service, with superior on-time performance.

Job Purpose:

Delivery Service Assistant provides a middle-man delivery assistance between 1st Delivery Inc. clientele and commercial stores that do not offer delivery service of the purchased products to certain regions of the world therefore forcing the customers from such regions to refer to our International delivery service to have the purchased products delivered to their doorsteps.

The position has a high demand of discipline and requires a reliable service provider capable of operating at the highest levels of quality and consistency, with a perfect sense of time management.

General Duties:
- Receiving delivery packages shipped to the residence address.
- Upon the reception, conducting an inspection of the content to verify the undamaged condition.
- Repackaging the content of the deliveries into new outer covers.
- Processing the deliveries further to the clients through the local Post Office.

(Note: 1st Delivery Inc. covers all of the expenses that occur during the delivery process)

Position Offers:

- Full/part time employment opportunity (Note: Full time position is available for apply only after the 2 month trial period has been completed)
- Annual salary of 25.000 USD
- Ability to work home based, remotely from our Headquarters
- Certified professional training
- Great work atmosphere with potential for career growth
- Free health insurance, matching 401(k)

(Note: Certified professional training programs and the employee health insurance plan is available after the 2 month trial period)

Position Requirements:

- United States citizenship or legal alien status with a valid permission to work in the United States
- High school diploma (AA/BS degree is a plus)
- Ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously within a strict time frame
- Perfect time management skills
- Must be self-motivated
- Time commitment and efforts: up to 8 hours a week, 1-10 packages handled weekly.
- Professional attitude
- Good English oral and writing communication skills
- Basic PC application skills
- Previous internet experience (highly preferred)

To apply or to learn more about the vacant position contact the Human Resources Department by replying to this e-mail : heidivess83@gmail.com . Your request will be forwarded directly to a Recruitment Officer.

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Okay, the first big red flag... Who contacts you out of the blue, offering you what amounts to $60 dollars an hour ($25,000 a year for 8 hours a week of work) to be a shipping clerk?

Second, package forwarding is a well-known scam. Many companies and people running auctions on eBay will not ship to certain overseas countries because too many of the orders are fraudulent. So when you sign up for this job, the fraudsters buy items while pretending to be you, using stolen credit cards and forged checks. They have the items shipped to you in the U.S., so the sellers will trust the order more, then instruct you to ship the products to them in Eastern Europe or somewhere in Africa.

A couple of weeks later, you're pissing and moaning about not being reimbursed for your shipping costs when the cops knock on your door and want to discuss all the fraudulent purchases you've been making.

Third, if they mail you from one free webmail service (in this case Hotmail) and ask you to reply to another free webmail service (in this case Gmail), they're usually using throwaway accounts that they know will get shut down when the scam is discovered. If they've been in business for over 10 years, where's their web site and why isn't the recruiter using an address at that site?

Last, should you really trust a job offer that begins "Dear Sir/Madam"?

So, to review: Job offer thats too good to be true, job that follows a classic scam pattern, contact people using free webmail addresses all over the map, form letter contact. You can draw your own conclusion.

I know how hard it is to be out of work and desperate. I was that way at the beginning of the year. I'd been out of work going on 15 months and my unemployment was on the verge of running out before I finally got a legit 7-month contract position with a well-known megacorporation. It paid $10 an hour less than my last contract, but after 15 months of unemployment, I had to take anything I could get.

That kind of feeling may be causing you to give serious consideration to these scam jobs that keep getting mailed out, it may be causing you to try to rationalize things and find an excuse to go forward with the job even though it's jangling every last warning bell. Don't let desperation make you become a victim of these scammers. Keep your wits about you. Good luck.

IF YOU ALREADY GOT INVOLVED WITH ONE OF THE FAKE JOBS THESE KINDS OF E-MAILS RECRUIT FOR, CALL THE POLICE. THEY WILL HELP YOU.

Take that, BP!

Part of the credit goes to Sound Transit's clean convenient buses and to the free bus pas from Microsoft.

But that put my Saturday afternoon plans on hold when it stimulated a mild attack of sciatica. My plans to power-wash the garage floor while the baby napped turned into Daddy taking a nap too. The best I did was walking a circuit of the neighborhood (about a quarter mile) with the boys to see if there were any other kids out to play with.

The sciatica was better come Sunday, but not good enough for me to feel up to anything strenuous, so I took Sunday easy.

Goals for the coming week are 3 walks of at least 1 mile, 2-3 core strength and stretching workouts, and some small adjustments to my diet to cut some of the excess fat and calories. This morning, instead of my normal breakfast burrito with 6 slices of bacon, 2+ eggs, and 1/2 cup of shredded cheese in it, I had a bowl of Kirkland Cranberry Macadamia Nut cereal and a cup of low-fat milk. Do I feel as sated and warm in my tummy as I used to after the breakfast burrito? No. Do I feel just as sleepy? Yes. So no immediate sense of greater health or vitality from this lighter breakfast, but it's a process. Gotta give it a little time to kick in.

Just gotta keep making little incremental changes each week and hope those changes add up to me being able to run a 5k obstacle course come September.

This morning, I overslept, and got an unintended mini workout. If I don't get to the Park and Ride before 7, parking gets very difficult to find. I had to park deep in BFE. Counting my paces and multiplying by about a 19-20 inch stride, I parked about 1/8th of a mile further from my stop than I normally do. So getting to and from the car today will add an extra quarter mile to my daily walking.

Remember, I'm seriously out of shape, so the first four weeks is just getting up to a 2 mile walk without significant pain in my back or lower body. Every little bit of extra exercise, stretching, and walking helps.

Next progress blog: Sunday night. See ya then.

The Warrior Dash is basically a 5k run combined with an obstacle course. I'm going to skip some of the obstacles, like wading through a bog and crawling under barbed wire, but I'm hoping to complete the 3.15 mile course and at least 7 out of the 11 obstacles in an hour or less.

I just did my first training session, a simple 3/4 mile walk with some mild up and downhill components. I finished it in the target time of under 20 minutes without huffing and puffing too much. But my lower back was screaming.

A combo of gaining back the weight I lost last year plus being really lax on core strength exercises since then put the pressure on my lower back, and turned on the pain signals in the last quarter mile. I'd planned to incorporate a little bit of core-strength into the training routine, but I think I'm going to have to be more aggressive with it. If I don't get the abs toned up and taking more of the strain off my back, I'm not going to be able to make it, because my back will fail me before my lungs or legs do.

This isn't about weight loss, though the added activity may prompt some. I'm trying to go from total couch & computer potato to doing a 5k obstacle course in 12 weeks. The numbers I'm going to worry about during the next 12 weeks are not how much I weigh or how much I eat, but how far I can go and how fast I can do it.

Wish me luck.

Now, the fact that doctors are prescribing a new prescription medicine when a generic cousin is available is a problem that increases costs, especially in the light that the new medicine is not significantly better than the old one in any particular way. But the practice of dashing off a prescription and moving on cannot be blamed entirely on the doctors. It can be blamed to a certain extent on the way our healthcare system is structured.

Insurance companies do not have billing codes for 15-minute blocks of time. They have billing codes for office visits and patient assessments. Your doctor gets the same amount of money if they spend half an hour with you or 5 minutes with you. If they want to make enough to pay their mortgage, car payment, health insurance (you'd be surprised how expensive insurance is for doctors), they have to see a certain number of patients per day. Sometimes they work on salary for a clinic or HMO, but then they have to go through performance reviews which count how many patients they're seeing in a day.

Talk may be cheap, but not when you're talking to a lawyer, doctor, or other professional who expects a certain hourly rate far in excess of what you and I make. And insurers seem to have done the math and decided that they're paying less for prescriptions than they would for longer office visits.

But it's not just the insurance system that promotes overprescribing. We're Americans, goddamnit. If we go to the doctor and complain that hitting ourselves in the head with hammers is giving us headaches, we don't want our doctor to tell us to stop doing that. We want our doctor to prescribe the medicine we saw on TV that stops the headaches associated with hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. We don't feel better unless we walk out of there with a prescription in our hot little hands.

We already know "bed rest, fluids, Tylenol, and time" are what you do for a cold, and if we know that, we don't want to hear that from a doctor. We came to the doctor for expert advice, not common horse sense. And thus the doctor feels pressured to prescribe something. And that's likely a big contributor to the study showing nearly half of kids getting prescribed antibiotics for colds that won't even respond to antibiotics. I'm sure many doctors tried to put up a fight when they were young and idealistic, but got beat over the head so often by stupid parents who wanted a feel better pill, even if there wasn't one, they started handing out antibiotics just to avoid the argument.

High-priced prescriptions do add to the health care overhead. But so does procedure-based payment that encourages doctors to tag 'em and bag 'em. So do people who don't feel like they've been treated unless they get a prescription. So do people who would rather use pills to relieve the discomfort caused by bad lifestyle choices than suffer the self-denial of making good lifestyle choices. We're all to blame for our overmedication and the associated costs, and it won't get better until attitudes change in a number of camps.

Sorry I've been so bad at guest blogging here on my own blog. Between the Microsoft contract and side projects... and obsessively facebooking... I have been neglecting my blog. I hope to remedy that soon.

Anyway, if you'd like to read my guest blog about guilty pleasure foods, you can check it out here.

If you're interested in purchasing freeperez.com, please contact me.

Long story short, it prompted my first post at Rough Equivalents in nearly two years. I won't make you all click over for the detailed explanation. 200,000 gallons of oil will create a millimeter-thick oil slick the size of approximately 170 football fields.

For more details on the math behind that and numbers on how deep the oil would be if it was limited to the area of a single football field, visit "Football Fields of Spilled Oil" over at Rough Equivalents.

April 26:

I need those "Clockwork Orange" thingies to clamp my eyes open this morning.

April 28:

I won't blame Obama for everything Bush did. I'll just blame him for letting so much of it continue.

April 29:

Some signs I've created to spice up my office decor.

April 30:

Sieze the day, hold it hostage, and demand chocolate.

April 30:

Your job as a parent is not only to help your child learn to fly, but to terminate with extreme prejudice any motherfucker who would try to shoot that child down.

May 3:

One time, after my oldest son had chattered nonstop from the backseat for a while, I told him I "ran out of hearing." He'd talked so much, he used it all up. And if he wanted me to be able to hear him again, he was going to have to be quiet so I could build up a new reserve.

As has been my experience at Microsoft in the past, I have yet to meet anyone actually evil. I generally meet a lot of people who have a passion for making things even better and cooler and more useful... you know, geeks.

In the meantime, my boys keep growing up and surprising me. I still can't believe I'm the father of two boys. So many of my friends had a boy and a girl or just girls. I've got two boys, and they're gorgeous and smart, and I just have to make sure they grow up smart enough to pass for sane, but offbeat enough to come up with those left-field ideas that redefine how we think about time or gravity or art.

I've been trying to do some programming, but I like the idea of programming more than the act, so I've been doing a lot of planning and evaluating and tweaking my dev configuration. Hoping to lay some foundation code this weekend and get some coding momentum going.

Still want to write my story about the libero solstice... on the shortest night of the year, under a full moon, vampires become mortal. They may go to confession and be given last rites, then they may choose to watch the sun come up. And each year, each major religion in each major city has one poor holy man who volunteers or is volunteered for the task of ministering to the undead.

So much to do. So little time.

First sign: I got a contract gig. Suffice it to say, it's been a while. But I am now employed through June with a possible extension through the end of the year.

Second sign: When my short story got published on Leite's Culinaria earlier in the month, I used it as an excuse to contact a number of recruiters and headhunters I've met over the past couple of years. One of them told me he'd made more in the first 45 days of this year than he did in the last 90 days of 2009. Seeing as he makes money from getting people jobs, that's encouraging.

Third sign: Tonight we went out to dinner to celebrate my first week of being employed again. Oddly enough, I recognized the woman sitting at the table next to us. She works at the Unemployment office. I mentioned to her that I'd started working again and she said that a lot of her clients were either getting back to work lately or were getting more interviews and good prospects. If someone who works at the Unemployment office says she's seeing the job market picking up, that's encouraging too.

Obviously, this isn't a scientific study or an official government statistic. It's just three points of anecdotal evidence. But it's three points that are making me feel better about the economy than I have in a long time.