Fear of Work

It's been a long time coming!

2010-05-15T17:03:00.002-04:00

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to do it for years, but have finally gotten around to it. I’ve left Blogger and set up my own Wordpress site on my own dedicated server. I’ve already migrated all the content, and am getting things up and running. If you’ve been a long time subscriber, you’re going to need to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to pick up the new content. Just go to http://fearofwork.ergophobia.org to use the new blog.

Goodbye Blogger, Hello Wordpress!

Humanity can roll over and die!

2010-05-14T09:38:00.005-04:00

Mankind can eat large quantities of fecal matter, then roll over and die. I am officially done with people. I see no need for them anymore. I have moved on. There are no decent people anymore, no kindness, no courtesy, and certainly no good samaritans.

Yesterday, I travelled from Panama to Atlanta. I didn't have anyone in Atlanta to pick me up, so I planned to take the train as far north as it would go, then the bus as far as it went. And since the northernmost bus stop was at a mall, I was confident I'd be able to find a taxi to get the rest of the way. No such luck.

Based on memory, I thought I didn't have far to go. I've driven the distance hundreds of times, and although I've never paid much attention to the exact distance, I thought it to be just a couple miles, 5 miles at most. It wasn't a hot day either, especially considering I live in Panama, just a few hundred miles north of the equator, where it's always hot. Since I had no way to call anyone, I convinced myself I should just walk the rest of the way. Needless to say, I underestimated both the distance and the sun.

I walked 9.3 miles in the midday sun wearing a black polo shirt, jeans, and shoes that although comfortable, are obviously not meant for walking long distances. I was carrying a backpack and lugging a 50 pound suitcase, fortunately a roller-board rig. As with any walk, I started out Ok. An hour or so later, not so much. All told, it took me around 3 and a half hours to reach my destination. Most of that distance I went with no fluids. I finally passed a gas station about a mile from the house and downed 4 quarts of gatorade to replenish.

This brings me to why humanity sucks. During my three and a half hour walk, hundreds, if not thousands of cars passed me by. It was obvious to anyone looking at me that I was in a serious hurt. I was not dressed for exercise, I was not on a residential road, and nobody in their right mind could have thought I was pulling a suitcase for fun. I certainly didn't look like a crazed axe murderer, with a clean shave and recent haircut. Yet not one person had the decency to roll down their window and ask if I could use a lift. Even the motorcycle cop standing on the side of the road clocking speeders completely ignored me as I limped past him.

Of course, humanity in general has lost its decency, so screw humanity, but one thing in particular really bugged me about this. Atlanta is right square in the middle of the bible belt. There are churches everywhere (I passed at least 4). People here plaster fish, bible verses, and "What would Jesus do?" stickers all over their cars. I'll tell you what Jesus would have done. He would have stopped and offered me a ride! So where were all the good Christian soldiers yesterday? Was yesterday some sort of day off from doing unto others I didn't know about?

So roll over and die humanity, and especially all you so-called religious hypocrites who claim to be so pious yet live the same pitiful, withdrawn, uninvolved, uncaring, inhuman existence as the rest of the infidels! You did your religion proud yesterday!

An apology of sorts

2010-04-05T08:07:00.004-04:00

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you may have noticed that I didn't have the kindest of words for Catholics on Friday. In fact, I was downright nasty at times. I have received some negative feedback from a few people, so I thought I would offer an apology of sorts to those who might have been offended.

To be clear, I do NOT retract anything I said. I always speak my mind and heart, without shame and without filters. Anything I said, I stand by. To retract it would be to deny my own voice, feelings, and thoughts, and I refuse to do so. I will however offer an explanation and clarification.

I am not anti-God. I actually do believe in God, although probably not in the same way as most of you. What I am is anti-religion. I believe that religion has done more harm throughout the history of mankind than good. In some form or another, religion has been at the heart of most of the worlds bloodiest wars, and the focus of the worlds darkest times. The Christians were behind the Crusades, which resulted in the massacre of millions of muslims, jews, and pagans over a span of 200 years. The muslims are behind our current "holy" war, targeted at the western world. Despicable things have been done "in God's name" for thousands of years, and I can't bring myself to believe that God would condone any of it, so I simply reject religion as a whole on the grounds that religion offers nothing more than humanity's flawed interpretation of their beliefs, and the human desire to push those beliefs on those around them.

That's not to say that religion is entirely bad, either. The Catholic church has easily done as much good as harm by bringing education to the worlds poorest places. Religion is also a great way to teach ethics and morality to the ignorant masses. It teaches a reward and punishment system that nobody can escape from. If you're good and follow the rules, you will be rewarded with an afterlife of pure bliss in heaven. If you're bad and break the rules, you will be punished with an afterlife of suffering in hell. But it's these very rules that inspired my rants this past Friday.

I consider myself an educated person, and enlightened by the understanding that ethics and morality are an important cornerstone in a modern society. Without them, we have lawlessness, violence, crime, and chaos. We can not survive as a society without these things, and I do my best to live life as a moral person. Religion offers an easy way to teach morality, as it can easily be extended into the home and neighborhood. But religion requires ceremonies, and stories, and dogma, and doctrines that are specific to that religion. They set the different religions apart from each other and provide an interpretation of morality that sometimes conflict with the interpretations of others. These conflicts are how wars get started.

These conflicts should be avoided, yet many religions have taken a different approach to resolving them. They prefer to eliminate the competition. They instill their own doctrines in the laws of the land. They indoctrinate an entire people by making their rules law. Those people who aren't afraid of the hell taught by that religion must still follow the rules of that religion or risk punishment in the form of prison. I strongly disagree with this practice of combining church and state. It is wholly unacceptable to me. And I was the victim of this practice this past Friday. Unfortunately for my Catholic friends and families, it is their religion who has installed its doctrine in Panamanian law, and so it was that I struck out at Catholicism as a whole.

Good Friday is an entirely Christian holiday. And I respect it. I even appreciate the fact that thanks to this Christian holiday, I was given a day off from my regular work routine. I had planned to enjoy my day off by taking a case of beer out on the lake and spending a quiet afternoon fishing. I didn't want to bother anyone. But my plans were ruined when I learned that the police were stopping all cars going towards the interior and checking for alcohol. The were not checking to see if the driver was intoxicated, but whether there was any alcohol at all in the car. In Panama, on Good Friday, thanks to Catholic doctrine, it is illegal to consume alcohol, and the Panamanian government enforces this doctrine in part by prohibiting the citizenry from transporting alcoholic beverages, under the assumption that it will be consumed at some point. Have no doubt. I was fully intending to break Panamanian law and drink on Good Friday. But I planned to do it in a way that would not bother anyone. However, since I could not go to the lake to fish and drink quietly, I was forced to choose between fishing and drinking. I chose to lash out at my persecutors by breaking their doctrine as much as possible, and I went on a bender. I got absolutely hammered, and I did it in the most obnoxious way I could without getting arrested -- by posting all of my ravings on Twitter and Facebook for the world to read.

And on Saturday I paid for it with a monstrous hangover. A religious person might call it a punishment from God. I personally don't think so, but I got my anger out of my system, and I feel better for having done it. As far as I'm concerned, the punishment was worth the crime.

So I end this letter with a brief comment to those of my friends and family who felt personally offended by my Friday ravings. Do not take any of my comments as a personal attack. I respect your beliefs. It would have been nice, however, if your beliefs hadn't affected my rights and caused me to feel like a victim.

Developers should charge extra for Internet Explorer support

2010-02-02T14:24:00.003-05:00

First of all, I'm not a web developer by trade. I work all day long with systems which will happily deliver content to any web browser. How that content looks on any given browser is not my problem. However, I do occasionally have to support the developers of that content, and I've learned an important lesson: Internet Explorer is a terrible browser. It's not just an ok browser, a mediocre browser, or even a bad browser. It's a terrible browser. I'm not going to get into the whys and hows of it. Suffice it to say that when developing complex, rich web experiences, it takes significant extra effort to support Internet Explorer and its various idiosyncrasies.

It's not just IE6. Everyone knows that IE6 has nearly no proper CSS support and a pitiful Javascript engine. Thankfully, IE6 is very rapidly losing market share. Not long ago, one in four individuals on the Internet was using IE6. Today, some statistics services put that number at about one in ten. There's still a lot of them out there, but thankfully there is a downward trend.

IE7 and IE8 are also problematic for developers. I'm working with a client right now who is suffering because IE8 has a habit of aggressively cacheing AJAX, which is raking havoc on his application which just underwent a major shift in its directory structure. On every browser except IE, the redirections we put in place at the server level were picked up and the application continued working normally. But this developer is now jumping through hoops and working very hard to figure out how to get IE8 to pick up the new directory structure and work as well as the rest of the browsers. Regrettably, as a non-developer, I can only sit back and watch and toss out the occasional "have you tried this", or "is it possible to do that" remark. Two heads are better than one even when the second is only worth half of the first.

So now I get to the real point of my post. Why are we even still developing for IE? It's as plain as day to me that Microsoft has no real interest in producing a top notch browser. They've had 15 years since the release of IE 1.0 to figure it out. The one complaint that I have heard from developers which has lasted the entire 15 years is that Microsoft would rather invent standards than follow them. And since Internet Explorer won the first browser war when IE4 replaced Netscape Navigator as the dominant browser in 1998, the standard response to those developer complaints has been that the dominant player gets to set the rules. If IE is the dominant browser, then it IS the standard. The rest of the browsers must become compatible with sites that support IE, not the other way around.

But we're in a new browser war now. And this time, IE is not winning. For the first time in 12 years, the Internet Explorer family of browsers has less than 50% of the market share, and it's trending steadily downward. What this means is that while one in every two visitors to most websites is using Internet Explorer, the other visitor is using something else. One in three visitors is using Firefox, and roughly one in ten is using Safari, Chrome, or Opera. All four of these "other" browsers support open web standards. IE7 and IE8 claim to, but still haven't fully adopted them, and still try to set their own. Generally speaking, if you develop a web application with adherence to the standards, you can expect Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera to work well. You cannot expect the same of Internet Explorer. Some tweaking will be involved in making sure IE works like the rest.

I think that developers have more control over the browser war than they give themselves credit for. Developers create the applications, and must choose between developing for Internet Explorer and then making sure the other browsers work, or developing for the standards and then making sure Internet Explorer works. When Internet Explorer was the dominant browser, the decision was easy. Now that there are more users on standards compliant browsers than on IE I've noticed a growing trend of developing to the standards and tweaking for IE. I think that trend will only accelerate, as Microsoft starts to realize that it must adapt in order to survive.

Developers can further accelerate the trend by making it hard for businesses to fight back. Freelancers will have an easier time of it, but small "professional services" shops will also be able to contribute. By simply charging more for "IE support", developers can push businesses into publishing standards based sites. This will have a snowball effect on the browser war. First, more and more sites will become standards compliant, with no special efforts being made to support IE. IE6 will be the first browser to suffer. It's already on the the way out, but as more sites drop support, it will go away much faster. IE7 and IE8 have better standards support. They will last awhile longer, but neither can compete with Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Opera on performance and stability with standards compliant sites. IE is already steadily losing market share, but if developers stop propping it up with compatibility tweaks, users will abandon it in droves. The faster users abandon IE, the faster it will lose market share. As IE loses market share, fewer applications will be developed with IE compatibility tweaks. And thus begins the end. Microsoft will have two options: drop IE altogether, or start fully supporting the same standards as the rest of the industry.

So developers, go ahead and raise your prices. Get the message out that IE support comes at a premium. Start making a difference and help the world win the browser war.

Time to give up on Haiti?

2010-01-26T14:02:00.001-05:00

Maybe this is too soon to be considered politically correct, and maybe you can call me a heartless bastard, but I find myself wondering if it wouldn't make more sense to stop sending money to help rebuild Haiti and instead get the UN member nations to collectively offer a Get Out of Haiti Free card to all Haitians. There's only 9M of them, and if spread out throughout the world, they wouldn't create too much of an economic impact on any host countries.

Haiti has been stripped of its natural resources, now has practically no exports, and it's only significant industry is manufacture using imported parts. The country is over-crowded, and its citizens live in abject poverty. Why would anyone want to waste their money rebuilding it, if it's not going to change anything for the people living there? The best thing anyone can do for Haiti is to abandon it and give nature time to restore some of its original beauty.

Some great political cartoons...

2009-09-01T13:55:00.003-04:00

I received these in my e-mail, but since I'm not a fan of chain mail, and never forward them on, I figured I'd share these in a less annoying way...

HTML5 and H.264 vs. Ogg. Can't we all just get along?

2009-08-05T00:21:00.003-04:00

For those of you who aren't in the know, the next version of the HTML specification, HTML5, includes a couple of new and extremely useful tags -- video, and audio. These tags are intended to allow developers to directly insert video and audio content without having to use a plugin system. There's all sorts of reasons why this is useful, but I won't get into them.

The problem is, there's this big debate going on around which video codec to support. Mozilla and Opera sit firmly in the Ogg Theorea camp, while Apple only supports H.264. Google Chrome will support both, which is great, if you ask me. I'm not going to get into all the details over which codec is superior and why browser makers need to figure this out. If you want to know more about all that nitty gritty, read this article.

I just have one simple observation. This whole debate seems silly to me. Years ago, browsers only supported GIF files. Then, as the browser wars heated up, Netscape and IE and the others of the day started adding support for more and more image formats, including JPG, PNG, BMP, etc.. Nobody was really sure what format to use. Each one had its own advantages and disadvantages. But over time, all browsers eventually added support for virtually every image format out there, and as new image formats emerge, new versions of browsers add support for them. So what's the big brouhaha over support for different video codecs? Add support now for the most common ones, and as new and better formats emerge, add support for those. Yes, there may be licensing issues, but I seem to recall there were licensing issues with the GIF format all those many years ago, and yet all the major browsers still support them today.

It just seems simple to me. What about you?

iPhone 3GS - Will I or Won't I?

2009-06-11T12:33:00.004-04:00

So the latest iPhone has been announced. And the Internet is buzzing about it. Some folks are trying to decide whether they'll purchase an iPhone 3GS, or a Palm Pre. Personally, I don't think I'll be switching to Palm. In fact, I can't, since I don't live in the US anymore, and the Pre is only available on Sprint -- at least for now. So the question is, will I drop my iPhone 3G in favor of an iPhone 3GS?

Short answer, No. I don't think the 3GS offers enough benefit to me to justify the cost. I'm happy with my 3G. It was a huge improvement over the original iPhone, both aesthetically, and functionally. It's fast enough for my needs, and it offers 99% of the functionality I want. Yes, video is a cool new feature, and one I'm sure I'd make use of. Yes, a built in compass is cool, and I could potentially make use of it. It'd be nice to have a better camera, too.

However, I'm disappointed in Apple. I was expecting some really significant advancement. Where's the front-side camera enabling video calls? Why didn't 802.11n make it in? Why didn't they change the case even just a little to make it better? It's just not enough of an upgrade to make it worth the upgrade.

I'm not specifically ruling out the possibility that I'll upgrade. My current iPhone 3G is still locked to AT&T, since I updated it to the latest firmware and modem baseband before I knew I'd be moving to Panama, so it doesn't work as a phone for me here. But I'm holding out hope that hackers might soon release a software unlock that'll work even with the new iPhoneOS 3.0. If not, I have plans to purchase a Rebel SIM, which could give me a hardware unlock solution. The 3GS's arrival at Movistar (Panama's only iPhone carrier) will probably take a couple of months, and let's face it, Movistar SUCKS! They're probably even worse than AT&T. They give me very little motivation to sign a contract with them, even for a working iPhone.

Of course, if I can't get my iPhone 3G unlocked, then I'm forced to either purchase a Movistar contract and iPhone 3GS, or abandon the iPhone. I will never return to Windows Mobile (Microsoft is dead to me since I switched to the Mac two years ago). I'm not a real fan of Blackberry. Palm hasn't yet announced a GSM version of the Pre. And to my knowledge, Android hasn't yet made it to Panama, although I'm sure it will eventually. So what's a bleeding edge technophile like myself to do with so little access to bleeding edge tech? I guess I just have to wait and see. I'll probably end up getting a 3GS, but maybe, just maybe, I can get my 3G to last me another year until the 2010 iPhone comes out!

I just hope Apple doesn't disappoint me again in 2010!

2009-06-06T22:05:00.001-04:00

Testing out ping.fm

My Family's Public Face

2009-01-16T19:14:00.001-05:00

This weekend, I think I'm going to start working on a new system project. I really just decided to start working on it, and I haven't really solidified the idea yet in my mind, but it's basically a public face for my family. My family consists of myself, my wife, and two daughters who are surprisingly computer literate given their young ages (7 & 3).

I am a technology consultant and in addition to keeping my resume online, I typically communicate with my customers, friends, and family through e-mail, iChat, Skype, twitter, facebook, flickr, and a handful of blogs. My wife is a housewife, who communicates with family and friends using e-mail, iChat, MSN Messenger, Skype, and Facebook. My oldest daughter keeps a blog and communicates with family members through e-mail and iChat. My youngest isn't quite ready for written communication, but could probably figure out something like Skype if she had her own computer (which she will once she graduates to Kindergarden).

So we have a variety of systems that we use to communicate with friends, family, and, in my case, business contacts. My wife hasn't complained about it, but I personally hate having to use 8+ different systems to communicate. I want something a little more consolidated, and something my whole family can use.

I've decided that the system I want to build should be a social networking system that builds a community around my family, and allows myself and my family members to communicate with that community. I want this system to be reproducible so that I can give it to my extended family, so my parents can have their own social network, so my brother can have one for himself and eventually for his family when he starts one. I want to give it to my wife's family as well, and eventually, to families around the world. I could also see this system making the jump to companies, schools, and other "families" of all sorts.

Why would I want to do this (besides consolidating all of my social networking tools into one)? I want to do this primarily because all of the existing social networking systems out there are geared towards the individual. I have a personal facebook account, and so does my wife. But we can't really have a family facebook account, even though sometimes that's what we really need. I can't count the number of times my wife has been frustrated that she doesn't have ownership of the images that I upload through my facebook account, even though she's just as much an owner of them. So I want to develop a system that takes more than just individual ownership into account.

So what are the basic features that the system needs? I want to include at least the following functionality:

Blogging

Each member of my family should be able to keep a personal blog. Blog posts should be taggable, support comments, and, since this is a consolidation of all my blogs into one, have the ability to set distribution channels. When I create a blog post on this system, I should be able to indicate that I want the post to be distributed not only through my personal blog, but also show up on my work blog, or the family blog, or any of the other blogs to which I contribute. Comments on any of those blogs should make their way back up to the parent post, and from there back down to all the other distribution channels, keeping the comments from all systems in sync.

Micro-Blogging

I also want to build in a micro-blogging system, similar to twitter. I don't necessarily want to write a full blog post every time I feel like saying something to my network. I haven't fleshed out the functionality that I'd like to see here, but I'm thinking it should at the very least be able to integrate with twitter and facebook. Posts to my personal micro-blog would be sent out as tweets or facebook status updates.

Wall

The wall is a way for my community to communicate back with me. It would need to aggregate @replies sent to me through my twitter account, posts to my facebook wall, comments to my blog posts, and allow my community to post directly through my page.

Direct Messages

In addition to my wall, I want a more private way of communicating. So I should be able to send and receive direct messages. This needs to tie into twitter's DM feature, Facebook's private messaging feature, e-mail, and instant messaging.

It should be real time, or as close to real-time as possible. It should support text, voice, and video. It should be able to inter-operate with Jabber, MSN, e-mail, facebook, twitter, skype, and SMS.

Photos

I should be able to upload photos from my computer (or phone) and distribute those photos through multiple "photo streams", including on my flickr account, mine and my wife's facebook accounts, and of course multiple streams directly on the system. I should be able to tag and geo-tag photos.

Videos

I should be able to upload videos from my computer (or phone) and distribute those videos through multiple streams, including youtube, flickr, facebook, and within the system itself. Videos should also be taggable and geo-taggable.

RSS

Several features, such as blog, micro-blog, photo and video streams, and the wall, all lend themselves quite readily to being syndicated through RSS, so everything should have RSS capabilities.

Veggie Diet Update #2

2009-01-09T22:45:00.001-05:00

I thought when I started that I might try to keep this blog updated after every meal with recipes and all, but it turns out I'm just not a dedicated enough blogger to post that often. I haven't even tweeted about every meal, although I should mention you can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/ergophobe. So I'll just post as often as I can and keep you updated that way.

My second day as a vegetarian, didn't go quite as smoothly as the first. We went over to my folks' house for dinner. They knew I had started the diet, but apparently didn't plan around it. We had Chicken Plops, potatoes, and salad. Naturally, the latter two were fine, but I was hungry after not having eaten breakfast or lunch, so I sacrificed the diet in favor of a plop.

Day three.. Well, I didn't eat much at all on day three. I worked from home, skipped breakfast, skipped lunch, and skipped dinner.. I periodically ate some nuts or crackers throughout the day to prevent myself from getting too hungry. I had a Cup-o-Noodles a little while before bed.

I almost repeated the same thing today. Skipped breakfast as I'm wont to do when I go to the office. Almost skipped lunch, but got a hunger pang while I was out at the bank, and popped into Sweet Tomatoes. Some of you readers may be more familiar with Sweet Tomatoes by the franchise's other name: Souplantation. I guess that's the left coast name. Had a salad (of course), which was almost completely vegetarian (I think one of the pre-mixxed salads had a little bit of bacon in it) and Veggie Chili. I didn't expect much from the Chili, but it was actually pretty good. Almost as tasty as the real thing.

Of course, that was nearly 10 hours ago, and I haven't eaten dinner yet. I'm hungry enough to eat a horse, but that's obviously not on the diet, so I'll probably heat up another Cup-o-Noodles. Question though.. Does "Chicken Flavor" count as vegetarian even if there's no actual meat in there?

Veggie Diet Meal #1

2009-01-05T17:48:00.002-05:00

According to Wikipedia, "Vegetarianism is the practice of a diet that excludes meat (including game and slaughter by-products), fish (including shellfish and other sea animals) and poultry." So strictly speaking, I just finished my first vegetarian meal. Wikipedia then goes on to indicate that eggs and dairy products are excluded in certain variations of vegetarianism, so my first meal fails that test.

I had leftover Broccoli Casserole, and leftover Sweet Potato Casserole. Both recipes involve eggs and butter, and the latter included milk. I'll post the recipes in a moment, but I wanted to comment on the humanitarian aspect of the meal. If I were a hippy wack-job only interested in being a vegetarian so that no animals get hurt, I would have to say that including eggs and dairy products in my diet was a necessity. Not only are no animals harmed in the process of harvesting eggs and milk, but it's actually beneficial to the animals which produce these items.

The chickens which produce the eggs we eat do so at least once a day. If we didn't eat these eggs, they would rot since there is no rooster to fertilize them. If there were a rooster, the sheer numbers of chicks that would consequently hatch would result in overpopulation, and eventually starvation, sickness, and possibly extinction.

Similarly, dairy cows produce a lot of milk. In nature, this milk would go to feed nurturing calves. However, if that milk is not taken from the mother, it will eventually lead to mastisis, which as I understand it can be very painful to the cow. So just as we have a symbiotic relationship with the chickens which produce our eggs, the cows which provide us milk benefit from the process.

So from a purely humanitarian point of view, I don't see an issue with including eggs and dairy in my diet. I have yet to determine whether this would affect weight loss. I want to believe that in small enough portions (let's say for example, 2 eggs in a casserole that serves 12), the nutritional value of the vitamins and proteins would outweigh the negative effects.

Ok, so here's my recipes:

BROCCOLI CASSEROLE
2 packages frozen chopped broccoli
1 cup mayonnaise
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
2 beaten eggs
1 medium chopped onion
1 cup grated cheese
Peppridge Farm herbed breadcrumbs

Cook broccoli and drain. Mix all ingredients together and put in casserole. Top with buttered bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serves 8-10.

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE
3 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 stick of butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:

1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 stick butter

Mix all ingredients but topping and pour into greased casserole. Mix all the topping ingredients and sprinkle on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

I think I'm turning Vegetarian I really think so!

2009-01-05T15:14:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged in a very long time, it's true. It's not that I haven't had anything to blog about, but rather that I haven't had the time (or rather haven't wanted to spend the time) to maintain my blog since I left CNN nearly two years ago. I'm not even sure I'll be able to continue to maintain it after this post, but I'm going to try.

Today is the last day I'm going to eat meat. I actually just got back from lunch. I had one of Burger King's new Angry Whoppers. I can't say that it was very angry. Had a little bit of kick to it, but at least for me, wasn't nearly as spicy as I'd hoped. But it was meat and I enjoyed every last bite. I even licked my fingers when I was done to make sure I savored the grease that it left behind.

To be clear, I'm not going vegetarian for humanitarian reasons. I love meat. I love eating dead animals. I don't want animals treated in an inhumane way while they're alive, but if they are going to die anyway, I'm more than happy to be among those who will devour the meat they leave behind. The very fact that I'm going vegetarian probably means that the animals I would normally eat will continue to live unhappy lives in cages or boxes or wherever it is that they live their lives -- at least until someone else eats them. Cows living longer lives means more methane gas in the atmosphere, which will cause more global warming, so not only am I extending the suffering of an innocent animal, I'm hurting the planet as well. I'm a terrible, terrible person.

But I'm fat. I'm not morbidly obese. I don't weigh 400 lbs. I'm terribly out of shape as compared to my college and military days, but I can get out of bed in the morning, pull on my pants, and tie my own shoes. I can even still see what I'm holding when I use the restroom. The last time I checked, I weighed about 235 lbs. Not terrible, but not great. I went skiing recently, and the one time I fell and had to hike a little way back up the mountain to fetch my skis I wore myself out to the point that I had to take a break once I got to the bottom. Of course, the fact that I was able to go skiing at all is a tribute to the fact that I'm not beyond hope.

I'd like to lose about 45 - 50 pounds. I'm hoping to get down to 180 lbs. I tried Atkins. It worked 8 years ago when I was single and could afford to eat a steak every day for dinner, an Arby's Big Montana (sans-bun) each day for lunch, and snack on Slim Jim's and beef jerky throughout the day. I lost 40 pounds in 6 months. But this time, I'm married. My wife cooks our dinners, and I have to share my grocery budget with her and two children. All that meat is just too expensive, and since my wife is cooking for the whole family, it was just too hard to stick to a low carb diet. So Atkins just isn't a viable option anymore.

That's why I'm taking the opposite approach. I've never met a fat vegetarian, and most vegans look downright anorexic. I'm pretty sure vegetarianism is bad for your health long term, but as long as long as I eventually resume eating meat, I don't think it's going to kill me before I lose the weight I want to lose. Also, a vegetarian diet is much easier to budget for. Celery, broccoli, and lettuce are significantly cheaper than Slim Jims and Angus. Also, my wife makes many dishes that are vegetarian friendly, and when she cooks meat, she can easily leave it off my plate. I don't know too much about vegetarianism. I don't know if it's better for me to go vegan, or if I can still eat products with eggs and milk as ingredients. I'm going to start researching this and learning about it and blogging about what I learn. And I'm going to keep my readers (all none of them) updated about my progress.

So wish me luck folks. I hope I don't die of malnutrition in my quest for a smaller waistline. If I do, you'll know by the lack of blog posts.. :) Of course, that could also be the result of me getting lazy about the blog and not posting...

2008-10-16T17:39:00.001-04:00

I'm looking for someone with business development experience to help grow my hosting and managed services company.

Find your lost kids with a USB Drive

2007-03-23T10:18:00.000-04:00

If you've got kids, you know that even taking your eyes off them for a second can result in them wandering off and getting lost. A reader at Daily Cup of Tech took a tool designed to help you find a lost USB drive and adapted it to help find his lost son.

The secret is to embed a simple "I'm Lost" program onto a USB flash drive, with information about your child, how to calm him down, and how to contact you. Put an "I'm Lost" sticker on the drive, and hang it around your child's neck. The tricky part is instructing your child to show the drive to his rescuer in the event that he gets lost. With any luck, your lost child will quickly be taken somewhere with a computer, they'll get your contact info, and you'll get a phone call.

Although it's a great idea, and I'm likely going to try it the next time I take my kids out somewhere they might get lost, I think it's got a simple flaw. It relies on the person who finds your child being smart enough to know what to do with a USB drive, and having ready access to a computer. You may be better off laminating a business card with the same information and hanging that around his neck instead.

Atlanta's Lesbians are the Scariest Lesbians

2007-03-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm linking to a post that links to a post that talks about nothing particularly important. But with a title like that, who cares?

I came across this post in my regular scan of all the blogs in the blogosphere mentioning the word "Atlanta". How do I do it? I use Google Blog Search. It's simple:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/blogsearch.
2. Enter your search terms and click "Search Blogs".

Not only do you get an up-to-the-minute search of all blog posts talking about your chosen subject, but you can subscribe to the search results using your favorite Feed Reader. Once you've done that, every time your reader updates, you'll get fresh content about your search query. It's a good way to keep up to date on what the world is writing about it. I use my subscription to "Atlanta" to find out about new restaurants, events, and Atlanta's scary lesbians.

Too Cool: Speed Painting

2007-03-22T12:46:00.000-04:00

Regardless of what you may think of the show "Lost", watching a time lapse video of someone painting a near photo-realistic image of John Locke in Photoshop is just really, really, cool.

Big Sister?

2007-03-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

When you think about it, Barack Obama is just as much a left wing socialist as Hillary Clinton, but you've got to give his people a round of applause for this remake of the Apple "1984" commercial, this time depicting Queen Hillary as "Big Sister".

And the next American Idol is...

2007-03-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

Sanjaya Malakar!

I'm kidding of course. I don't believe there is any salvation for Sanjaya at this point. Last night's performance was his best to date, and it just could not compare to anyone else on the stage. However, I do think I can predict who will be the next American Idol. And I don't think it's going to be Lakisha Jones or Melinda Doolittle.

Mind you, I think both Melinda and Lakisha are amazing performers. I would pay money to see either of them in concert, assuming they don't take the hip-hop or teeny-pop road and stick to the classic and powerful R&B styles they both sing so well. But there is a third contender, who lately has demonstrated that she can bring it with just as much "Yo!" as either Melinda or Lakisha.

I'm talking about Jordin Sparks, my pick for the next American Idol. Last night, Jordin actually sang better than Lakisha. That's the first time since the beginning of the show that anyone, apart from Melinda, has been able to. I don't think Jordin sang as well as Melinda last night, but she was VERY close. But Jordin has something neither Lakisha or Melinda have. Jordin has a HUGE personality. Lakisha and Melinda are both somewhat meek. Neither seem to have accepted that they are going to be huge stars, and they're only just starting to climb out of their shells and show some personality. Jordin, on the other hand, has been bouncing up and down, brimming with excitement and personality. Since the beginning, I have enjoyed watching her, as well as listening to her. I can't say that about Lakisha and Melinda.

I think others will agree with me, and I think that's why Jordin is going to win this year.

Hi, I'm Linux! ;)

2007-03-21T10:28:00.000-04:00

Spoofing the ever popular "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" commercials has become a pretty popular pass-time. Most of them are not at all clever (with the possible exception of the Wii vs. PS3 video). There have been a few failed attempts at creating a well done spoof bringing Linux into the mix. This week, Novell put together a spoof for their BrainShare conference which, I believe, does the trick, by introducing Linux as a sexy, yet friendly, alternative to the PC and Mac geeks.

A Drop in the Bucket - Water Drop

2007-03-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

I've just created my first theme for GNOME's Login Manager (GDM). I've called it Water Drop, and it's more or less based on another theme called "Crystal Rose". You can download it from http://www.ergophobia.org/water-drop.tar.gz. I hope you enjoy it.

ChangeLog:
1.0 - Initial Release
1.1 - Fixed CAPS Lock warning location.

Credit:
Many thanks to Ricardo Lipas Augusto for his image "Splash", on which this theme is based.
Thanks also to Carlos (StackGuard) Ferreira who created the "Crystal Rose" theme I used as a template.

Minor Makeover for Google Reader

2007-03-15T09:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was having a lot of trouble marking batches of stories as read in Google Reader. I had to click the "Mark all as read" link several times before it would actually do anything. Perhaps that's because Google was making some changes behind the scenes. This morning, I noticed that the links that were there yesterday have been replaced by actual buttons today. I think it looks pretty good.

Finally, a Japanese car that stands out in a crowd

2007-03-14T10:07:00.001-04:00

Japanese cars all look alike. Whether it's Honda, Toyota, Subaru, or one of the "Luxury" brands, they're all pretty much the same. But British artist Benedict Radcliffe has found a way to make this Subaru Impreza stand out in any crowd. He's made it invisible!

OK, so the car is not really invisible, but that's not a computer generated image either. It's a life size wire frame sculpture of a Subaru Impreza on display outside of the Paul Smith Gallery in Mayfair, Great Britain. After a few days parked out front, it even started collecting parking tickets.

Via: WindingRoad

Enterprising Youth: Clean Cruisers

2007-03-13T18:19:00.000-04:00

Twelve year old Forest Endicott is faced with a problem. Including tuition, room, and board, the college he has chosen to attend is going to cost him $44,000 a year. That's more than his father can afford. Unlike most kids, Forest is determined to find a way to earn that money.

With his father's support, Forest has established "Clean Cruisers". A giant leap from dog walking and raking leaves, Forest's company imports diesel powered Toyota Land Cruisers from Australia, modifies the engines to run on bio-diesel, and resells them in the United States.

He's run into a few hurdles so far, most of them compliments of our Federal Government, but he's learning valuable lessons at the same time about business and finance. It seems to me that Forest has a good idea going, if he can make it work. Environmental responsibility is the latest trend, and turning old SUV trucks into more eco-friendly transportation means not only will Mother Nature be happy, but one less truck goes into a junk yard. If he's able to find customers willing to buy these old, but durable trucks, he'll be able to earn the money he needs for college in just a few years.

I was inspired by his story when I read Gabrielle Glaser's story in the Oregonian. I wish I had the money to spend on one of his trucks. Hopefully, one of my readers will. At the very least, I think this story deserves to be passed on. Forest deserves all the help we can give him. Any 12 year old boy willing to take on the challenge of starting a company like this deserves all the positive attention we can give him.

Forest doesn't have a web site yet, but I'm told he's working on one. I'll update this story with the link when there's something to link to. In the mean time, please spread the word.

Earth viewed from books

2007-03-12T21:17:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's just amazing what technology can do. Matthew Gray, who created the Internet's first web search engine, has used the data in Google Book Search to create a map of the world using references to locations found in Book Search's extensive library.

Read more: Inside Google Book Search: Earth viewed from books