If I have a problem with something, here it will be.
Not to be lame, but here is a commercial parody of my weekend.
So again a weekend has passed and my newsletter is not complete. I’ll shoot for next weekend and I’ll keep from walking several miles to prove that I can.
Oh how I hate comment spam. I have tried everything and it just keeps coming. Now I’ve found a site with the best way to kill it for your WordPress 1.5.x install: CJD Spam Nuke. You install it, activate it, go to the comments moderation page, then nuke every single last lame posting. It happened so fast I had to check it twice to make sure it worked.
If you have comment spam, go get this plugin and kill it dead. I did.
As I sit here wondering if my leg will stop hurting, I think back to a weekend only 8 days ago. I was on the slopes of Heavenly, watching the snow fall in feet per day, knowing that I was pushing it to move so fast in such varied conditions. Yet I zoomed ahead, and at the middle of the last day of the trip, managed a spectacular high speed 180, putting me flying backwards down the mountain.
If I would have just fallen over I could have been alright. Instead, I tried to complete another 180 to put me back in the right direction, only my left leg stayed in place. This helped pull me to the ground in a crumpled heap, courtesy of my now painful knee and ankle area. Fully one week ago I was in agony, now I sit here with nagging pain when I sit in place too long (at least its not from walking).
I really wonder sometimes how I get myself into these messes. But then I remember: it’s me and I seem to enjoy having something to complain about. So now I know.
In a burst of creative energy I decided to do some clean-up work around the old web site today, fixing broken modules, freshening CSS code, and the like. I occasionally try to fix the forever broken IE PNG bug known as the gray bar on this web site. In a futile attempt, I went to my trusty Google Desktop Search bar (highly recommended if you don’t have it) and typed in “IE6 PNG bug” and got back this juicy nugget:
What have you guys been doing since IE6?
Now, given where I work and the places I have worked I am the last one to cast stones, but the gist of the post works out like this:
We got to 95+% market share and we stopped listening to our customers, our partners, and our developers.
If you don’t believe me, click the link and go read it yourself. This is “How to Ignore Your Customer: 101.” As a 10 year product management professional I can’t tell you how sick this makes me. Stating this sort of thing to the world is tantamount to saying that you have absolutely no business being in the PM role and that customers are merely a bootstrap to getting a comfy office chair. Maybe I’m an odd bird, but if I’m not sticking my neck out for what the customer needs and wants during the product release cycle to the point where my job could be in danger, I feel that I’m not doing my job.
Maybe its time I round up some more PM’s and find out what they think.
Having worked with Microsoft in the past, I know this isn’t SOP for them, but maybe I don’t understand the circumstances for deciding to mothball IE development for so many years.
I had another trip down to LA this week and it didn’t go as well as it could have. Being me, I should have known something was up right away when…
If it weren’t for bad luck…. well, it wouldn’t be me, would it?
I’m giving up the fight to allow real folks to comment on this blog. It seems that no matter what I do I just can’t stop the flow of dumb marketing spam for online gaming, viagra, and other such internet institutions. So comments are now off indefinitely.
I put together my third PC, the “alternate” that I wanted to use as my server in the basement, but that I had left by the wayside for a while. In my quest to “get it done” I hurriedly slapped everything together and screwed everything back into the case. It looked good at the time, anyway.
Upon applying power I was met with the distinctive smell of cooking silicon, and a small waft of “magic smoke” slipped up past my side. Now the motherboard doesn’t even power on and I likely cooked the CPU and the motherboard. I got in a hurry and got sloppy somewhere, and the PC paid the price.
Now I have to decide what to do with the parts: go off and see if there is another motherboard worth building a server around or write this project off until I retire another PC. Bummer.
The adage “if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all” really fits me this week. After spending most of the week (Tuesday through Friday) down in LA for my new job I managed to really rack up the bad luck points. Here are the highlights:
So there you have it. That was my week in a nutshell, or at least the really bad parts. I left out the bad customer service stories because they simply couldn’t measure up to the rest of the trip. Better luck next time, I suppose.
I have just returned from another Heavenly ski trip. Now that I’ve been up there more than 6 times the season pass has paid for itself. That is good news. The bad news is that the runs were jam packed with people over the 3 day weekend (since some companies observe MLK day in the US) and many of them were inconsiderate weasels.
In the course of two days I was fully run over by a snowboarder who just said “sorry dude” after tackling me to the ground in a semi yard sale bending my right thumb all out of sorts. Later I would find he severely cut into my skis. That evening I awoke at 1:30am to find the upstairs neighbors rocking out, and after confronting them I again got a “sorry dude” while they continued their noisy gathering until well into 3:00am. At a little after 5:30am one of the cabin mates got up and started making coffee, giving me a grand total of about 2 hours of sleep.
I really need to take a vacation from vacations, I think.
I’m glad I didn’t make it to CES 2005 this year, otherwise I would have to hear this directly: DirecTV is building their own DVR and intends to dump TiVo. Now this isn’t completely new news, but when put together with other comments they made this week (MPEG4 broadcasts for local HD, home media centers) DirecTV seems determined to separate themselves completely from TiVo, and leave us current Direc-TiVo owners high and dry.
TiVo isn’t sitting still, they announced that they are building a new class of stand alone HD TiVo just for cable and that they are partnering with Microsoft to offer a TiVoToGo service for sharing content around the home. They aren’t dead, but they are looking closer to death every day.
Good thing I have friends with access to Windows XP Media Center Edition. That may have to be the next new PVR/DVR for my home… and bring with it a TV regime change away from DirecTV. It won’t be a sudden change, but its got me thinking I need to get a solution together soon. Maybe SBC’s new IPTV solution (working with Microsoft) will save me? Right.