davidgagne.net

Out of the Office

dvg — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:06:58 +0000

Just for fun, let’s take a look at what has happened the last few times I’ve taken a vacation.

Late August, 2005: I go to Europe to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday. Katrina wipes out New Orleans.
October, 2007: I go to Hawaii to get married. My good friend, mentor, and business partner dies of a heart attack.
October, 2008: I go to Savannah, GA to celebrate my one-year wedding anniversary. The stock market crashes.

As far as I can remember, I didn’t take any sort of vacation at all in 2006. You should probably thank me.

Twizzlers v. Red Vines

dvg — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:22:20 +0000

There is one major difference between Twizzlers and Red Vines: People who prefer Red Vines will eat Twizzlers and claim that they’re very similar. People who prefer Twizzlers hate Red Vines. ‘Nuff said.

Palin v. Biden

dvg — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:25:41 +0000

I simply cannot have been the only one who watched the vice-presidential debate tonight and thought that Palin’s answers were eerily similar to this famous speech. I mean, really? Really? Nucular? Poliferation? Infastructure? Here’s a random quote I grabbed from the transcript:

John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.

It’s a shame that Biden didn’t win this debate on the merits of his arguments, because in general they were pretty good. He won it simply because his opponent failed to speak in logical, complete sentences. Here’s another good one:

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

Am I alone in asking, “WTF?”

© David Vincent Gagne, 2008. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: debate, election, government, News, Palin, politics, speeches

Apocalypse Now, Part II

dvg — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:01:52 +0000

Pop Quiz! Which is more awesome? Bigfoot riding a sea monster or Jesus riding a dinosaur?

A Look Back to the Future

dvg — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:55:55 +0000

This is sure to be wildly popular: Google 2001. “In honor of our 10th birthday, we’ve brought back our oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001.”

How cool is that? It’s pretty funny to do some searches to see what they’d indexed. I’m strangely proud to note, of course, that this site has been ranking #1 for the phrase David Gagne for a long, long time.

Continue reading A Look Back to the Future ...

Parsing PHP in CSS

dvg — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:09:36 +0000

Pro-Tip: Tell your website to treat CSS files as if they’re PHP files to make life easier.

There are only two simple things you need to do to enable this!

Continue reading Parsing PHP in CSS ...

American Idiot

dvg — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:23:44 +0000

Although I don’t agree completely with the essay, there was a brilliant quote in the NYT this morning:

“I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.” — Thomas L. Friedman

Swimming with Sharks

dvg — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:17:32 +0000

Jason just linked to an article at The New Yorker with a list of the five scariest movies of all time. I’ve only seen one of the films on the list — The Silence of the Lambs — which I thought was a great thriller, but it didn’t particularly scare me. Cannibals and serial killers are simply not high on my list of Things Which Frighten.

I just don’t see how anyone could make a list like this and not include Jaws. I’m 35 years old and I still think of that damn shark any time I’m in the ocean. Is there anyone in the world that doesn’t? Hell, I think it wasn’t until I was out of my twenties that I could swim in a $#&* pool without being scared.

Apocalypse Now

dvg — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:55:28 +0000

Stocks skidded Monday, with the Dow slumping nearly 778 points, in the biggest single-day point loss ever, after the House rejected the government’s $700 billion bank bailout plan.
The Yankees will sit out the postseason for the first time in 15 years.
Vanderbilt is in first place in the SEC East.

Time to start stock-piling water, kids.

© David Vincent Gagne, 2008. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: baseball, college football, economy, MLB, News, sports

Another Upset

dvg — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:38:50 +0000

Do you remember when Robin Williams attempts to teach Nathan Lane how to be a real man in The Birdcage? It’s one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies. Williams asks,

How do you feel about that call today? I mean the Dolphins! Fourth-and-three play on their 30 yard line with only 34 seconds to go!

How do you think I feel? Betrayed, bewildered …

Today it was the Gators and fourth and one with a little under a minute to go. Either way it’s the same. I just can’t believe it. Again. How does the Heisman trophy winner fail to get a single yard? You really can’t blame Tebow, though. That game was lost on the sidelines.

It was another brutal early season weekend in college football. (Didn’t this happen last year, too?) Yes, seven of the AP top twenty-five teams lost, but that doesn’t make it any easier if you happened to be on the losing side.

Continue reading Another Upset ...

© David Vincent Gagne, 2008. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college football, Florida, football, Gators, movies, polls, quotations, rankings, sports