OpenBrackets has an excellent explanation of tu vs. vous for the wannabe Francophiles out there (I tried explaining this exact thing to my wife the other day and failed miserably – this is much better).
Category: development
I have power
I had no idea I had any influence over people. None at all. I was wrong! Isn’t that scary? Because we’ve been hanging around for three weeks with rumors of layoffs, and no word from management, I figured it was time for some civil disobedience. Nothing major like a “naked @ work day” or anything, just something small to show our chagrin. I decided to stop shaving. It lasted for about 10 days. On day six or seven, someone commented on my shaggy appearance, so I let them in on my idea. They apparently told some other people, and by the time the layoffs actually happened, there were six or seven of my fellow employees following in my footsteps. How freaky is that?
I’m an active blogger today…
I’m an active blogger today… but we’re all waiting around for the ax to fall, and who wants to work on something when you could get escorted out of the building at any minute? Here’s random thought of the day #3:
My wife is a college graduate with a degree in political science. This means she gives bad news very well. She can also get me to agree with her on just about anything. Recently, she let me in on a little secret that she probably shouldn’t have told me. If she doesn’t agree with something I say, she’ll say, “I don’t know what I think about that…”. The ellipses is intentional because she trails off at the end and waits for me to change my mind, which, because I’m a man and not a political scientist, I usually do. The funniest part is, now that I know about the trick, you’d think that I’d see it coming. Nope! She pulls it on me all the time and I still fall for it… what does that say about me?
It’s official. It’s not 500
It’s official. It’s not 500 or even 1000, it’s really 1700. That’s 1200 from right here in lovely northern VA, and 500 from the west coast from iPlanet. I don’t really know what to say. I’ve done this three times before, all at AOL, and well, it sucks. I think it sucks worse this time because of the overwhelming number of my friends who are sure they’re going to get the boot. That, and the fact that these rumors have been swirling for the better part of three weeks with no official response. Yes, we live in interesting times, my people…
I was here at 7:45, a full hour before my normal start time because I got all of three hours of sleep last night. You know, every time I think I’ve become this Clint Eastwood hardass meanie, something like this happens. I’m one sensitive quivering bowl of jell-o who doesn’t handle this kind of stress very well. No matter how much I put up this front as the-guy-who-acts-like-clint, I think everyone knows. I’m not really fooling anyone. I’m Stuart frickin’ Smiley – and dammit, I’m good enough, lucky enough and stupid enough to admit it.
Let’s see if this works
I’m using Mozilla to write this post. We’ll see how this goes.
I love other peoples’ photos. Why? I’m not really sure. I like seeing what matters to people I don’t really know. It takes some effort (a lot less than it used to) to post photos. You have to either suck them off your digital camera or worse yet, scan them, create the pages for the photos and then upload the whole mess. Yup, that’s effort. So, what makes people do this? Other than people who post just for family members, which makes perfect sense, why would people post their vacation photos from their trip to Boston or who knows where and then tell everyone where they are? It’s fascinating to me. I love looking at this window of a moment in someone else’s life and seeing what I can learn from them.
Usually, not much. But, sometimes, there’s that perfect image of a party with smiling faces, arms around shoulders, drinks in hand. A picture of a family, doing normal family stuff in the backyard. Kids smiling. Parents smiling. It’s just great.
What is it about accomplishment
What is it about accomplishment that’s totally re-energizing? After my brilliance this week, I feel like working again. I don’t feel like doing nothing, and grudgingly doing my job. I feel like doing it in new and fantastic ways, with plastic spoons. No, really, I’m amped. I think this new “get cool results by getting idiots to learn just some html tags” is really cool. It should save me from having to do things all the time, and I’ll really only have to write the tags once, make sure they work, and then unleash them on an unsuspecting world. Sure, I may be writing myself out of a job, but I’m tired of doing the same thing every day anyway. Without giving away too much, I’ll try to keep y’all updated on my quest to replace myself with HTML. It’ll work, I swear on Tim Berners-Lee’s shiny bald spot.
I am just blown away
I am just blown away by this image. I reminds me of the little characters my brother, Tim, and I used to draw in high school. We’d draw a little person form, and then only fill in parts of the person, so they ended as these humanoid sculptures. It sounds a lot cooler than we ever got them to turn out. This is cool… but, so is the rest of the site.
Let’s Delay the Pain!
Yeah, that’s a good idea. So, the big layoffs that all the media outlets were reporting haven’t happened yet. What fun. I even came in early today to be here when it happened. Why? I hate walking in on the middle of a disaster. I like to be there when it happens. It just makes dealing with it easier. I missed the last one, and didn’t get to say good-bye. If it’s going to happen, I want to see it.
As someone said to me at an airport, “Corporations are bastards”. The people who work there do their jobs and are usually decent folk. Somehow, when viewed as a single entity, something bastardly takes over. I don’t know if it comes from management, or if it just happens. I give up trying to explain it. Just make it go away…
You know what project managers
You know what project managers are good for? No, really, I have no idea… I’m asking.
Do you have a Mac?
Do you have a Mac? If you do, and you’re not sure what to do with it, why not try Yellow Dog Linux? Consider this a testimonial. I love YellowDog! I’ve used LinuxPPC and Mandrake on my poor old Powerbook, and YellowDog is bar far the easiest to set up and use. It’s based on RedHat 7 (so it’s reasonably up-to-date) is easy to update (thanks, yup!), fairly easy to configure, and runs like a champ. You can even dual and triple boot between it, OS 9 and, if you’re crazy, OS X. Does it GET any more fun than that? I thought not.