If something were going to go wrong in my office, you'd expect it would go wrong the day I left. You'd be right. Dang.

Every day, my dad walks Reggie, his Austrailian shepherd, along the beach. Today, however, it rained.

The Red Streak ceases publication after Thursday's issue. Maybe RedEye will follow? One can hope.

Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly suggests that the wiretap scandal (reg.req.) may be worse than it appears:

It seems clear that there's something involved here that goes far beyond ordinary wiretaps, regardless of the technology used. Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants? Stay tuned.

Read the full story from Drum.

Praise be!

MSNBC is reporting this hour that the judge hearing the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board case has ruled that Intelligent Design is not science.

I think Doonesbury's strip last Sunday put the case into perspective quite nicely.

Tell me: would it be an appropriate response to the neo-Creationists to demand that we preach evolution in their pulpits? Just wondering.

Update: Full story from the New York Times (reg.req.)

Teran Loeppke, Boycott Organizer at UNITE HERE Local 1 in Chicago, sent us some information about the picket line at the Congress Hotel on South Michigan Avenue.

There's a lot going on this week as Anne and I prepare for the holidays. I expect to have some really interesting things to report soon. But I don't have them yet.

I will say, -18°C (-2°F) is really quite cold.

One thing of interest: Apparently there's a storm off the Pacific Coast that's generating some heavy surf. I'll be in Carmel, Calif., the day after tomorrow. I hope to have some photos of really big waves by Thursday.

Last week, I posted a short chart of how sunsets are getting later. Today, because I wanted to know for myself, and therefore I can't imagine anyone else not wanting to know also, I've figured out when certain sunrises and sunsets will occur for the next year.

Four stories from past week (two of them today) sadden all of us who love American democracy.

For a couple of years, Inner Drive has had a webcam pointing out the window. We've moved twice since the webcam first went online. From time to time, we've adjusted the webcam slightly. And, every so often, the webcam adjusts itself.

The San Francisco Chronicle today ran a long-overdue correction:

A story Nov. 15 about mathematical references on "The Simpsons" TV show mistakenly said that 1,782 to the 12th power plus 1,841 to the 12th power equals 1,922 to the 12th power. Actually, 1,782 to the 12th power plus 1,841 to the 12th power equals 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657, while 1,922 to the 12th power equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616.

(Linked from today's Romanesko. In the "Anne" category because she actually does know this kind of thing.)

I've finally added an explanation of Evolutionary Delivery to my corporate site. I wrote this as part of a proposal to a client in September, and for reasons that passeth understanding, I neglected to publish it online.

By the way, I write software for a living, so if you're reading this and realize you need a small, agile development team for a .NET project, send us a message.

An example of a piece of code that desperately needs refactoring.

Read Microsoft's Framework Design Guidelines, written by the guys who wrote the .NET Framework.

The Poynter Institute today sent around a link to the best newspaper corrections of 2005.

Since they also linked to the 2005 plagiarism roundup, I thought it best to give Poynter proper attribution.

This list of eight books (and one essay) could help you become a better programmer. Explanations will follow shortly.