While walking home this evening from the light rail stop I heard the most interesting criticism of the iPad anyone has mentioned yet:
It doesn’t even have a DVD player.
Listening to the concerns of people who don’t make their living around software or technology can sometimes be quite enlightening.
I arrived in Texas on Thursday night. A few of us (MS employees) were in town for a Microsoft recruiting event at the University of Texas. The event was Friday afternoon and closed out a busy week of classes and career fairs for students. While I’m sure some of the students were tired from all the activity, the turn out was quite good and gauging from the students I talked to afterwards a number of them enjoyed the event. Highlights from the trip include:
- The recruiting event (I got to to talk to a lot of students, and it’s always interesting to answer their questions and remember what it was like when I was asking the questions)
- Walking around the UT-Austin campus. It’s enormous and quite different from my college campus
- The Salt Lick. What I was told is the best BBQ in Texas. That claim may be inflated, but it still stands as the biggest restaurant I’ve ever seen, with the biggest parking lot, and it’s the only restaurant I’ve ever been to that is BYOB and people regularly walk in with enormous coolers.
- I also was able to get in a run on Friday. I might be getting back into shape a bit because my muscles are not nearly as tired as I would have expected.
I’m pretty tired from the slight time shift. Even though it’s only two hours getting up earlier than I’m used to and inadvertently shifting my meal times starts to get to me.
It’ll be time to board the flight back towards Seattle shortly, and at this point I’ll be glad to get on the plane. I’m starting to get uncomfortable sitting on the floor (ready access to power outlet for the laptop…)
Monday it’s time to get back to work making software. Things are starting to get busy, but it will be to have lots of stuff going on around the office.
“I don’t need new friends, I keep the ones I know.”
I Know - Evidence - The Weatherman LP
The fact is this is not the case for me, perhaps I wish it were. I don’t really move around that much, but in recent years be it for school or work I tend to uproot my life leaving behind most of what I know.
I think this Dilbert comment may know more about my soul than even I do.
One day you could be driving home from work and realize you’re driving behind a Sith Lord. On that day you’ll likely realize one of two things:
- I really wish I was a Sith Lord
- I’m really glad I’m not that guy
These pictures are from some time spent in Quito on my way back to the US from Ecuador this past April. I had a long layover so I spent most of the day with a family friend. While we were driving home in the evening I got these pictures of kids hopping in the back of the truck. Whenever the vehicle slowed down or came to a stop more kids hopped in. Before they all finally jumped out and ran away there were 18 of them in riding in back. The only pictures I could get were with my iPhone towards the beginning, they all shyed away when they saw me get my camera out.
When it does, you put the ball in the net fifteen times.
Sometimes you see Windows running (and failing) in places you might never have suspected.
Babies are like elephants, nice to look at but I don’t recommend ownership.
I saw this album cover meme a long time ago, I just didn’t put the result together in a single image and share it until now. I thought my result was interesting because it came out to a seemingly interesting and coherent result, and also because the picture that I got is of the Maracana stadium in Brazil. It’s a rather historic stadium that I’d definitely like to see a game in during the 2014 World Cup. Instructions are copy-pasted below:
1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) is the name of
your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random
Quotations page (http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3)
is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr’s Interesting Photos From The Last
7 Days (http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/) will
be your album cover.
Note: We recommend you check whether the creator
of the image has allowed for your use via creative commons
provisions.
4. Use your graphics application of choice to throw them together,
and post the result.
Image is from flickr user rbpdesigner. The image wasn’t embeddable so I used a screenshot of it. This goes against the creative commons recommendation, but I decided I used a work around. That’s how the internet goes sometimes.
