Archive | August, 2002

Post dated 2002-08-31 00:00:00

Saturday, August 31, 2002



Last day in August – time to generate the calendar for September! Step-daughter Belynda comes up today to spend the day with us at the fair.

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

No, really, I was looking for something practical when I ran into Learn Tetris in 21 Days [Link: http://www.lstud.ii.uib.no/~s977/darkside/tetris/ gone]. What a hoot! It’s a lot more likely you’ll master the game than, say “Learn C++ in 21 Days.”

Still not taken seriously, we are, hmm?

Keep meaning to add Hopkinton, NH to my personal web page. [Ed: irony. 13 years later, when I go to update the post, the URL is no longer valid. The replacement URL is no longer valid. I had to Google it.]

Paul Graham, co-author of what is now Yahoo! Stores, on Beating the averages. Substitute FoxPro for Lisp and I agree with him.

Post dated 2002-08-26 00:00:00

Monday, August 26, 2002


Searching for remote control software for clients. NetOp Remote was the pick of this PC Magazine review. However, friends also recommend I check out Radmin from Famatech. Looks impressive!

In considering a book about email, my complaint has always been “The Answers Are Out There,” yeah, I know, not original, but true. Here’s an example, explaining the structure of mail files. However, “out there” and put together in a comprehensive whole, if possible, is another matter.

Peter Coffee is sick and tired and he’s not going to take it anymore. Read his column on “Apollo 11, the 747 and .Net? No Way”. Way to go.

Post dated 2002-08-25 00:00:00

Sunday, August 25, 2002



Man, am I sore. Spent the afternoon trimming the hedges around Roche Manor. 95% done 🙂

Had another brief call from Whil, refining his ideas. The boy never stops!

Homebrew movies latest cinematic genre according to this CNN article.

An interesting study of Free/Libre/Open Source Software conducted by the International Institute of Infonomics, part of the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands. FLOSS is a cute acronym. I wonder if they’ll prove it fights cavities or prevents plaque build-up.

Post dated 2002-08-24 00:00:00

Saturday, August 24, 2002



Yet another Saturday working on the house. Installed the last of the screens for the porch. End of the first major DIY job and I still have all my fingers. There were a hundred things I really wanted to do better, do over, do differently, but the goal is to get the job done. Always a tough lesson for a perfectionist. It’s said that the project manager’s job is to know when to shoot the engineer and ship the project. Bang.

Spent hours on the phone with my publisher and friend, Whil Hentzen, planning and plotting “What Comes Next.” No answers, mainly questions.

Post dated 2002-08-23 00:00:00

Friday, August 23, 2002



Slate says the music industry’s impending downfall is its own fault.

Sent an email to 40 of my “closest friends and associates” that “Amazon needed their help” in getting some 5-star reviews of my book posted. We’ll see if I get any takers. Or fakers. Or both.

Already got a couple of replies. Let’s see what it does for my sales rank. Probably nothing — that requires people to actually buy the book. All those folks already owned it.

Post dated 2002-08-22 00:00:00

Thursday, August 22, 2002



Open Magazine features Twiki software. Glad to see the package getting more play. Looking forward to RSS type features in it.

Lost the data on my Handspring the other day, and maybe this time I should leave it lost. It’s not bad enough to try to keep up with all the software updates and all, but it just dies. Two nights ago at a UG meeting, I used it to write down some important stuff (don’t ask me what – that’s why I wrote it down!). When I turned on the machine it told me it was low on power and should be Hot Synched as soon as possible. Yeah, well, it should have told me that before I left home. It said 8% power, so I used it to write down something, maybe a couple somethings, and turned it off. It’s in a hard shell case, so I doubt it was left on. The next morning I take it out to dutifully hot synch it and… it won’t. I try a couple of times, sometimes the cradle is a little loose. I use the Synch app directly to try to force it to do a local sync. Nada. Hit the cancel button and the unit turns itself off. I turn it on. Cancel button’s still darkened like it is depressed, Mousedown. Off. On. Off. On… fine. I hit the reset key and it turns the screen into a glitter of random pixels. Fine. I put it down for a few hours so I don’t hurl it against the wall. I remove the batteries. I left it there.

Man, life on the bleeding edge hurts some times.

It looks like Robert X. Cringeley has figured out the ASP model in his most recent column. I saw it in action at http://www.BugCentral.com, and I believe.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes

This work by Ted Roche is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.