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The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
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Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
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making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
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Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
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(Wednesday, August 31)
Sonny and the Land of the SUV
"'There's no reason to panic. There's plenty of gas on the way and the only way we'll have problems locally is if we rush out and horde,' the governor said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference. 'Stay calm and conserve, don't just run out to top off your tank. Just continue with normal fueling habits.'"
I work in Alpharetta, I really like the town it has a downtown, surrounding area, but it also still close enough to Atlanta to go in if you need too. The one thing I don't like about Alpharetta is that a lot of people who live here are fairly successful (or atleast they and their credit cards pretend to be), so there are those few idiots who think that they rule the world. Pair that with this afternoons somewhat mass paranoia that the gas is drying up in Atlanta and I think you had a reciepe for disaster. I am 100% sure that things will be back to normal at the pumps on wed of next week, but it is weird how just the hint of a lack of gas for the weekend has sent EVERYONE in this town to the pumps. One thing about this town is that a lot of people own large expensive SUVs and I don't mean Explorers and 4-Runners but I mean big luxury SUVs like Hummers and Yukon Denalis. While I am not against anyone buying them (I am sure they understand the miles per gallon before they purchase them) I have always thought that these people are going to have an expensive fill up when gas reaches 4 - 5 a gallon (what it has always been at in London). Well I am hearing that around town the places that still are selling are regualting it to 10 gallons per person. Thats not much, especially if you only get 12 - 13 miles per gallon. Maybe this will be a good wake up call that we REALLY need to start investing in alternative research. (I am really worried about my gas/electric bills for the next few months).
I am glad Sonny came out and explained that there needs to be no hysteria (I'm serious), I think it was the right move. If you took any day of the year and told people that the gas was drying up locally until more can make it here, you would have the exact same exacerbating effect, the paranoia would cause more people to top off, causing more of a shortage, causing more panic etc.
UPDATE: (9/1/2005): On the way to work this morning there were only 2 stations out of 6 that I pass that were out of gas (except diesel). What a croc of shit, and the ability to price gouge. Check this link out it shows all the differences in gas prices in the Alpharetta area. If you look you can see Range of all values (2.67 - 3.39) is 70c per gallon (thats almost 25% of the mean gas price) . What an insane amount. The closest gas station to me is actually the one that had it at $3.39 I refuse to ever buy any gas from them ever again. Gas will be flowing just like normal by tomrrow afternoon here. What really pisses me off about the whole media created "Atlanta Gas Crisis" is that the normal Atlanta citizens will now think that $3.00/ per gallon is a good price for gas (when they were just paying $2.40, 3 or 4 weeks ago and that was "expensive"). The only people who benefitted from yesterdays uproar were the gas companies and the price gouging store owners (the ones who did gouge).
Update II (9/1/2005 - 12:52 pm): Amen to this article (I do understand that I am part of the problem too, with my air on 75 everynight).
11Alive.com: Atlanta - Governor: Don't Panic Over Gas
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
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