Anachronism

I’ve got their weirdest sense of vuja de — the feeling that nothing like this has ever happened to anyone ever before. I’m surfing the Internet looking for information about a current power outage. I’m doing it via the battery of my Powerbook. Oh, yeah, and I decided to blog about it. Am I the first to blog to the light of a kerosene lamp? :-)

The Dallas area got some nasty thunderstorms this evening. We saw lightning and heard thunder simultaneously (never a good sign) and then the power went out. Five minutes later we heard fire engine sirens. There’s a fire station about 5 blocks away, but it sounded like they were coming into the area. I hope everyone is alright.

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Embarrassing Cost of Poor Design

Design of everyday things complaint of the day: within a building, the men and women’s restrooms should be in the same relative position (i.e. men always on the right, or always on the left). I suspect most people will agree with this on priciple, but do you want to know how bad it bit me?

The restooms nearest me (with men on the right) were closed by the janitor for cleaning, so I went to another set on the same floor and went in the right hand door. The restrooms in my office building are divided with the sinks by the door and the stalls in the back behind a divider. Luckily I just had to wash some ink off my hands, which I was doing when I heard a flush and then a woman came around the divider to the sink next to me. She gave me a funny look and it took me about a half a second to figure out what had happened, then I profusely apologized and left.

Finished laughing yet? :-)

Please consider the everyday folks who are going to have to live with the design decisions you make in software. Please, please, be consistent.

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Doomsday Algorithm

Ever wanted to calculate the day of the week of any date in your head? Me neither, but it’s fun to read about this memorizable algorithm, albeit with a rather gloomy name.

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The “do do” Guy

Dave Thomas graciously accepted my invitation to a book discussion of The Pragmatic Programmer today. I hope we at least provided some entertainment for him. At one point there was a discussion about whether a peculiar behavior was truly a bug. Dave asked “and the business people say…” with the same cadence as the Lou Reed song, “Walk on the Wild Side”. Mike Schaefer recognized this and immediately answered with “doo do doo, doo, doot do doo…” Everyone in the room nearly doubled over in laughter. I think Dave will forever remember him as “the do do guy” :-)

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A New Job for John Cleese

The Ministry of Silly Walks is my favorite Monty Python sketch. I would try to lookup a link to a transcript, but it’s such visual humor that the transcript would be useless to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Well, as an example of life imitating humor, the Pentagon is researching how to identify people by analyzing the way they walk. Note the irony of finding this story about the US government at a British news source.

Well, maybe if John Cleese did get involved, Total Information Awareness could have some entertainment value.

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iLoo

I first saw an AP story on this, but I thought it had to be a hoax until I found this on Microsoft’s own website. They’re creating an Internet connected port-a-potty!

Must…….resist……..toilet…….humor……. but it’s such fertile ground.

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