Yes, this is my 1,000th post since this blog started in November 2005.
I had hoped to write a long, introspective essay on blogging in general and this blog in specific over the years, but it turns out I have work to do today, so that will have to wait until the 2,000th post or so. (Many of you are fighting back tears, I know; though I suspect they're tears of joy.)
No, today I'm just going to mention the two most immediately relevant things that confronted me on my way to work this morning.
First, in the past 24 hours, the temperature in Chicago has dropped 27°C. Spot the cold front:
Second, my preferred candidate, John Edwards, for whom I had planned to vote today at lunch, has dropped out of the race. So I'll vote tomorrow, once I formulate Plan B.
I've just spent a few minutes putting together a little countdown clock for my blog. (Credit goes to Kris van der Mast for the code sample.)
What does it do? Well, it's driving the Dubya Clock and Other Countdown tools on the nav bar to the right.
<rant>
I'm reviewing a lot of CVs right now, and I would like to vent for a moment. Just a few things, though:
- If you're applying for a Quality Assurance position, spelling and grammar count a lot.
- Unless you've gotten an invitation to apply, the people reviewing your résumé have others to read. Write concisely. Highlight the important parts. Limit yourself to two pages of paper with a link to a longer version. Don't waste the reader's time. Even if you're perfect for the job, you go into the phone screen with a mark against you if your CV has Dickensian verbosity.
- Don't put information on your CV that we can't use to hire you. If you put your age, marital status, immigration status, race, or anything else like that on your CV, a potential employer might bin the thing just to prevent any hint of bias in the hiring process.
- But do put down your bona fides. If you say "Engineering Degree" on your CV, you actually do need to include the actual degree (BA, BS, BBQ), the name of the institution and the date. Like it or not, a degree from the Ira Bialystock Engineering School and Storm Door Company is not the same as one from Northwestern, and since we're going to call your school to check that you graduated as a precondition of hiring you, don't waste our time by having us guess. We will simply guess that you went to IBESASDC and not NU, and pass.
</rant>
Via Marc Andreesen (yes, the Marc Andreesen), from Variety:
[O]verall music [CD] sales during the Christmas shopping season were down an astounding 21% from last year. From the week of Thanksgiving up through the day before Christmas Eve, 83.9 million albums were sold, a decrease of 21.38 million from 2006's 105.28 million.
It's important to realize, as the RIAA simply can't grasp, this has nothing to do with piracy. Suing people isn't the answer; getting a clue and selling over the Web is.
Via Paul Krugman, I've been reading the Calculated Risk blog for a while. They write about finance and economics, from the perspective of a retired senior public-company executive. Very good stuff, and very frightening.
The Stanford law professor is focusing on corruption as a way of combating creeping copyrights:
Mr Lessig has concentrated for a decade on copyright law and its interaction with the internet. So he left some people feeling confused earlier this year when he announced a new focus for his campaigning efforts: tackling corruption. Not everyone understood that this change in academic and activist emphasis is more of a shift in strategy than in substance.
For years Mr Lessig has presented legal arguments against excessive copyright extensions. But he says lawmakers are so in thrall to big-media lobbyists that they do not even realise that counter-arguments to copyright extensions exist. Even though Britain's Gowers Review, published in 2005, argues against such extensions, and eminent economists such as the late Milton Friedman have declared the importance of copyright limits to be a “no brainer”, Mr Lessig says legislators are clueless about “an issue that any rational policymaker has no problem understanding.” Swayed by campaign contributions from vested interests—such as film studios, music companies and book publishers—America's Congress has lengthened copyright terms 11 times in the past four decades, he observes.
This one from the Washington Post. Unlike the one I mentioned from WQAD, WaPo's limits you by party, and to the top 5 in each.
I came up all Edwards again, mostly because of his positions on health care.
Via my dad, an interesting tool to help pick your primary-election candidate from the NBC affilliate in the Quad Cities.
Apparently I'm closest to Kucinich, though of the three front-runners in my party, I'm closest to Edwards. (Which I knew anyway.) Only 65 days until the Illinois primary...and only 414 days, 21 hours and 42 minutes remain in the worst presidency the Republic has ever known.
I've finally brought a new server online to take over from three old ones. By "old" I mean a Windows 2000 box with gerbils powering it and two salvaged desktops, one with a whopping 640 MB of RAM. Together all three have performed the tasks of one fully-functional server. And now, I have one fully-functional server.
A couple of problems have emerged.
First, which I knew would happen, the IDT Webcam that used to run on the old Windows 2000 server needed a new home. I've moved it to my spare laptop.
Second, apparently Symantec Endpoint Security does not run on 64-bit operating systems. Never mind that Windows 2003 x64 has been around since—wait for it—2003; Symantec apparently missed the memo. They're telling me I need to keep an old, 32-bit computer (they actually suggested a Windows XP machine) as the central antivirus server for the network. Um. No.
Finally, the rails that shipped with the new server don't fit my server rack. I am now looking for new rails.
Otherwise everything is hunky-dory, and as soon as I figure out the antivirus situation, I can decommission the old Windows 2000 box (along with the two old desktops.)
Ordinarily I think unexpected animation on a website is distracting and irritating. Jamie sent me a very cool counter-example from a Dutch housewares retailer. That's the way to do it.