FearlessDog

Wow, no posts since 2006. And a lame “why haven’t I posted lately” post as all I can muster even now. Why don’t I put up an “Under Construction” banner while I’m busting out with the web cliches…

Well, I’ve been busy. It’s pretty crazy what running a startup will do to both your free time and your sanity. Of course, my office is the front room of my house, my dress code is shorts and bare feet, and my co-workers are of the canine and feline varieties. If I feel like taking off early to get a coffee or watch tv, or simply vegetate for a bit, it’s my prerogative. I guess there are perks to counterbalance the stress.

I just spent the better part of a week giving myself a crash course in Quickbooks and reconciling 4 months worth of orders and bank statements. Note to self: next time, reconcile from day one. Next up, working on our company operating agreement and writing up an employment agreement. Basically, nothing that I’m actually interested in doing. The joy of the startup! More to come…

This just in from the department of Uhhhhhhhhh: The USB Pole Dancer.

Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like.

And if that’s not enough, here’s the requisite YouTube video that shows the device in all it’s full motion glory. It looks like it would be really entertaining for about, oh I don’t know, less time than it took to watch the video.

Of course, when they get the USB Lap Dancer rolled out, that might be a different story…

This blog post hit close to home for me: The risks of ransacking a nativity scene. I had to laugh because, although we don’t do the nativity scene thing, we did try one year to set up an elaborate holiday scene based on the Island of Misfit Toys. We bought all of the action figures: Hermey, Yukon Cornelius, the Abominable Snowman, a gaggle of misfit toys, etc. We even set up a foundation of fake snow, model pine trees… the works. We also had a Simpsons Christmas set that we set up as well.

It did not take long for the cats to find them.

The very next morning, our peaceful, snowy holiday forest was a scene of bloody carnage. The bodies of various misfit toys were strewn about the room, and shredded bits of snow and pine trees were spread throughout the house. It was ugly. Needless to say, our set has remained boxed up in the attic each year since.

Here’s a great example of exactly what can be done with Photoshop and a little retouching practice:

http://glennferon.com/portfolio1/portfolio15.html

Look at the page first, then pass your mouse over the image to see the original. It’s no wonder so many celebrity girls lately have eating disorders. That’s quite an image to try and live up to.

When I checked GMail today, the headline above my inbox read:

Huge Amazon reserve created

My initial Rorschach test reaction: Is Amazon.com up for sale on eBay? Yes, that must be one huge reserve indeed!

What a dork.

After about 5 seconds, I realized that it obviously referred to some new environmental effort in South America. Sure enough, I clicked through to the news article titled Brazil creates new protected areas in Amazon. Much more sensible.

Made me laugh though… 10 years ago, no one would have made that mistake. Ah, progress.

When I go out to eat I usually drink water. It’s free, it’s good for you — what’s not to like? I never understood why most restaurants that offer self-serve drink fountains almost always have the special “water cup.” You know, those tiny cups that hold about 3 ounces of water at a time. So, because I drink water, that automatically makes me a 5-year-old? I want a “water” cup, not a “sippy” cup. Is it my punishment for not paying extra for a soda that I have to make 12 trips to the soda fountain to get properly hydrated?

And many places have opaque, colored cups for the first-class soda drinkers, but then the teeny, tiny water cups are clear — no doubt to discourage cheating. Because, you know, I could steal a lot of soda for free. 3 ounces at a time.

And why is it that in order to get water out of the soda fountain to begin with, you always have to find that special, hidden lever — usually stuck behind the nozzle for some “real” drink? Water is so discouraged that it doesn’t even merit a nozzle of it’s own? It has to pull double duty with that crappy fake fruit beverage that no one even drinks? And to add insult to injury, you end up with water that has that ever-so-slight, yet ever-so-noticeable pinkish hue — just enough to provide a twinge of crappy fake fruit flavor.

I guess it’s no surprise that we soda-happy Americans are so overweight.

Using a stock theme for this site has been driving me nuts for a while. A blog being the vehicle for individual expression and creativity that it is, my theme had been expressing “uninspired laziness” through its blandness. So I had some “free” time tonight (meaning that I got fed up working on my main project due to some annoying issues that you really don’t want to hear about…). I’ve actually had the new site logo worked up for quite some time, but I never got around to messing with the required CSS and WordPress templates to get the site updated until tonight. It actually ended up being pretty easy once I sat down and got into it.

So, here it is, my latest work of art. It may not be a masterpiece, but it is an expression . Oh yeah, and did you notice the subtle reflection in my logo? I am SO Web 2-dot-Oh, baby!

No, not that cocaine. I mean the new energy drink that claims to have “350% greater energy content than Red Bull!” I haven’t actually seen it in person yet, but rest assured that I will try it as soon as I get my hands on some. Anything that has 280 milligrams of caffeine can’t be anything but good, right?

Why didn’t they have drinks like this back when I was cramming for tests in school? Reading about this drink brought back memories of one of my favorite Family Ties episodes.

The MBP has been running great for me so far after about 3 months. I have been using Parallels Workstation ever since Beta 4 to run a Windows XP session inside OSX, and aside from a few minor issues, it has been quite solid. In fact, I ditched my Dell back in April and have been working 100% on the MBP since then, doing most of my “work” work in Visual Studio/SQL Server!

I also bought a 30″ Apple Cinema Display last week. I only have one word for that. Ahhhhhhhh. Man, what a sweet monitor. But, it did bring to light the main issue so far with Parallels. As a virtual machine, even though Parallels can “talk” more or less directly to the Intel CPU for computing tasks, the video is still frame-buffered and is non-accelerated. At the normal laptop resolution of 1440×900, this is not really a noticeable issue. However, with the new 30″ monitor, I’ve been running the XP session at 2048×1280, and there is a noticeable lag in redrawing the screen during actions like dragging or scrolling windows.

I bought the MBP with only 1Gb of memory, so I decided to upgrade to 2Gb. In general, that would increase the performance of both XP and OSX while running Parallels, and might help a little with the graphics redrawing. I ordered the memory, and following the official MBP memory upgrade instructions posted on the Apple site, made a special trip to Fry’s to pick up a size 00 Phillips screwdriver. As soon as I began trying to unscrew the memory cover, I could tell that the screwdriver was too big, so I immediately stopped and searched the internet. I found lots of people complaining that the screws were too tight, that they were glued in, etc. Many people had actually stripped the screws trying to get them out! So I went to the local CVS drug store and bought a $2 screwdriver made for eyeglasses. It is not sized, but I assume that it’s about equivalent to a 000 (triple 0) screwdriver. Using that, the screws came out just fine and I got the new memory installed in about a minute and a half.

Hope this saves someone out there a stripped screw and some major aggravation.

I’ve been working on some of the legalese for MyHomePoint lately. We are trying to graduate out of our Beta phase, and part of that is getting our official policies figured out and written down. So I was reading through the policies of some other web services, getting ideas and nicking a few phrases here and there, when I ran across this blurb from a very popular web application’s terms of use (note to those who haven’t seen Office Space: Initech is a fictional company name):

Initech makes no warranty that (i) the Initech service will meet your requirements, (ii) the Initech service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, (iii) the results that may be obtained from the use of the Initech service will be accurate or reliable, (iv) the quality of any products, services, information, or other material purchased or obtained by you through the Initech service will meet your expectations, and (v) any errors in any software provided to or used by you in connection with the Initech service will be corrected.

I realize that the whole point of legal contracts like this is to CYA, but this one goes above and beyond. Our prduct might completely suck, it might go down in flames, and you might have all of your data stolen or corrupted. And if any of that happens, we are not responsible at all. Um, so then who is? How about, “Our product might suck, but if it does, we’ll make every effort to make it suck less.” Or “If our application goes down in flames, we will do our best to put out the fire and make things right.”

It’s sad that to gain protection under the law, companies think they have to disavow all accountability up front for every possible problem they can think of. Really makes me want to rush to sign up!