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September 30, 2005
Can I Call 'Em, Or What?
When something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
The transaction has been undone, no ($) loss, just a small fire-drill.
Continue reading "Can I Call 'Em, Or What?"
Posted by dberger at 12:11 PM | Comments (1)
Drumroll please...
In theory I just snagged a Treo 650.
I say in theory 'cause the whole transaction smells a bit fishy, and I figure there's a 50/50 chance I'll end up making a buyer protection claim through ebay before it's all said and done.
Posted by dberger at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
Movies and Cel-Phones and TV's Oh My!
So, the Big Damn Movie opens today. If you haven't seen Firefly, and you see Serenity, I'd be curious about your reaction. Love it? Hate it? Somewhere in-between? I'll hold off on posting anything involving spoilers for a few days. We've seen it, of course - caught a sneak preview in Seattle a few months back. We've got tickets with some friends for a show tonight. Out of that group four, including Dawnise and I, have seen it, the other three haven't.
Should be interesting.
I mentioned a few days back that I was thinking about a Treo. Been watching ebay, and those blasted things are too expensive. So I figured I'd see what the best deal Cingular could offer me was. Dawnise and I are former AT&T customers. My phone is through work, hers isn't. Figured I'd upgrade her phone - possibly with a new contract - and drop my SIM in it. Done.
Those of you who've traveled out of country with your useless-carrier-locked-bass-ackwards GSM phone recently should immediately see the flaw in my reasoning.
Continue reading "Movies and Cel-Phones and TV's Oh My!"
Posted by dberger at 8:17 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
All the Cool Kids are Doing it...
I realized the other day that I'm getting to the point where a PDA would be helpful again.
I've had 'em in the past - a Newton way back in '96/97, and a Palm III in '98. In both cases there was a fatal flaw. The Newton generally rocked, but unfortunately was a heavy and large as one. The Palm was less cool, but the right form factor, until I got sick of the transcription errors (and I was pretty good at graffiti) and it became yet another gadget I needed to carry around.
So I'm thinking of a smart-phone. Being an open-systems kinda guy (read: I don't do Windows) the Palm based Treo seems like a rational choice.
I had played with one of the Blackberries, and I quite like their UI (I think it's superior to the Treo, from my limited experience) but I haven't found a sync solution for Linux.
Continue reading "All the Cool Kids are Doing it..."
Posted by dberger at 8:56 AM | Comments (3)
September 26, 2005
Whirlwind Tour
Dawnise flew down to So. Cal. last Tuesday for a conference in San Diego.
Friday night I had dinner with some folks from work before heading over to the Conor Byrne for Scott's birthday show.
Edmond was kind enough to let me crash at his place - I got in around 2:45, caught a couple hours of sleep, and was up at 5:30 to catch a flight down to meet Dawnise.
She picked me up in Vince's Vett' with the top down and we drove to Geoff & Kathye's place to see them, the kids, and their shower (I smelled like an ashtray). From there we hopped back in the Vett (I got to drive :) and headed out the 10 to meet Dawnise's folks for lunch at TGI Fridays. (Amusing anecdote - while Dawnise was looking at the drink menu she noticed that a drink formerly-known-as the Louisiana Hurricane is now just the Hurricane, thanks to an overzealous history revisionist with a sharpie.)
Continue reading "Whirlwind Tour"
Posted by dberger at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
A memorable song from an unlikely source
If you lived during the late 80's, and if you listened to stations like KROQ in southern-California, if no one else can help, and if you can find them...
Er, sorry. Never mind that last bit.
Anyway - you probably know T'Pau, even if you didn't realize they were geeky enough to borrow their name from Star Trek (in the 80's no less, before geek was even remotely cool).
You'd probably recognize Heart & Soul - it got lots of radio play, has a very catchy hook, and a layered lyric.
You probably wouldn't recognize Hold on to Love, off their late 90's release The Promise.
It popped up on my jukebox on the way home, and made me remember how good they were at crafting truely infectous tracks.
Posted by dberger at 5:49 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
The Path to the Dark Side
I've never really had aspirations of joining management. Always been happy as an individual contributor - let's me solve interesting problems, and mock management from the safety of my living room chair.
So I have little doubt that right now the universe is thumbing it's nose at me.
As of the beginning of October, I'll have a team of 5 senior-level engineers reporting to me. I'm resisting the suggestion from HR to change my title (currently "Principal Engineer") to "Director of Software Development;" it seems like a one-way door. Once you've jumped into the management pool with both feet, climbing out feels tricky.
The person currently in that role is taking three of his eight current engineers and going to work on something of a "critical-path skunkworks;" after much cajoling and convincing, I agreed to "step up," as they say.
Continue reading "The Path to the Dark Side"
Posted by dberger at 9:51 AM | Comments (3)
September 19, 2005
Battlestar Galactica
I remember TiVo'ing the Battlestar Galactica mini-series when it first aired on the SciFi channel a couple years back. Never got around to watching it.
The disc arrived from Netflix the other day, and Dawnise and I ended up watching it tonight.
All three hours of it.
The last thing that managed to get me to sit still for three hours were the Lord of the Rings movies. I can't think of anything to say about it that will say more than that.
I'm not sure about Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck - Dirk Benedict she ain't - though I swear she channeled him for a moment or two near the end. The look on her face was strikingly similar.
Definitely worth watching the mini-series. It wasn't perfect, but it did a respectable job.
And it didn't hurt that the effects company was the same one that worked on Firefly. The exterior shots - 'specially the rack focus bits - sorta felt like coming home a bit.
Posted by dberger at 10:44 PM | Comments (1)
September 18, 2005
Not a bad way to spend a weekend.
Friday night we hosted game night at our place - Brad & Kat came (they almost qualify for perfect attendance award) as did Todd & Bronwyn, and Jakob decided to hop a ferry and come join us. We played Taboo, which seems to be a party favorite, and ended up watching the first episode of Coupling. At that point Brad & Kat and Todd & Bronwyn left, but Jakob had some time to kill before his boat, so we watched the first episode of Wonderfalls before dropping him off for the 1am boat back to Seattle.
Saturday morning Dawnise and I got up later than anticipated and were out of the house on the road to the Puyallup Fair by around 10. We wandered around a bit and were joined by a co-worker and his girlfriend around 3. We grabbed some lunch together, and proceeded to stuff ourselves with all manor of junk food. We started with an Elephant Ear (interesting, but I'll pass in future) accompanied by a Funnel Cake (can't go wrong there), and topped it off with a couple of Fair Scones (sort of a cross between Krispy Crack and Buttermilk Biscuits from KFC with butter and raspberry jam - yum).
Between eating all the junk food we wandered around the fair. They left around 6, and we stayed and watched the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) "Musical Ride." Essentially a drill team on horse-back, and very impressive. We got home around 9, had some tea, and hit the sack.
This morning we got up, did some basic housework, and sat down to watch Mulholland Dr. I had forgotten just how obtuse David Lynch can be. The movie wasn't bad, exactly, but neither was it a story, so much. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring did well (and the love scene certainly didn't hurt with regards to my paying attention), but I can't really say I recommend it. I'll have to have Dawnise call her friend Jason so he can 'splain the movie to me.
We caught the 5pm boat into Seattle and met Jakob for dinner at Fado for dinner. The food wasn't bad, and they had Boddingtons on draught, but the only way I can describe the place is - "old world charm, carefully simulated for your comfort and entertainment." We had dinner, desert (a quite respectable brownie accompanied by Guinness Ice Cream, which isn't nearly as weird as it sounds), and a nice chat before Dawnise and I caught the 9pm boat back home.
Posted by dberger at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2005
Reports of it's demise have been greatly exaggerated
Between 2002 and 2004, I had the opportunity to pursue a MS in Computer Science.
This is not news to most.
My thesis was titled A Scalable Architecture for Public Key Distribution Acting in Concert with DNS. The basic problem is that cryptography is great for protecting information, but it requires that both sides have the appropriate key(s).
Actually distributing keys is one of those problems that difficult to the point that most conversations about cryptography gloss over it. I decided to try and attack it by using the name service that lets your browser figure out where on the network "www.reversecurve.org" is located.
Continue reading "Reports of it's demise have been greatly exaggerated"
Posted by dberger at 10:10 AM | Comments (1)
September 14, 2005
These aren't my teeth...
Over the last year or so I've developed a nervous habit of griding and clenching my teeth. In particular, my upper front teeth nestled nicely just off-center into my lower teeth, and I'd suddenly notice that I was clenching them for all I was worth.
When we moved up to WA I made an appointment for a much overdue dental checkup.
One of the first things the new doc noticed was that (a) I clench my teeth and (b) I'd done pretty good damage to the front teeth. See there's a hard outer layer of tooth (enamel) and a softer body of the tooth (dentin). My continued abuse of my front teeth was very close to exposing the dentin - at which point the tooth would start to be compromised.
I went in this morning for two fillings, and while he had me in the chair, he did reconstructive fillings on two lower front teeth and the damaged upper.
Continue reading "These aren't my teeth..."
Posted by dberger at 9:40 PM | Comments (0)
Well, that was painless
As of this moment, we have one less car in the household. A nice young lady named Mary saw the Craiglist posting for my Saturn and she and her father came to the house this afternoon to inspect, and ultimately purchase, the car.
Elapsed time from Craiglist posting to sale: about 48 hours.
I hope it's as reliable and long-lived for her as it was for me.
The only last minute fire-drill was having Dawnise buy a new battery - having the car sitting for so long isn't great for the battery life :-/
Just got back from filing the necessary paperwork with the Department of Licensing and depositing the cash into the bank. Now to notify the insurance company.
Posted by dberger at 4:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2005
Market Forces
Finished Market Forces on the ferry ride home from dinner in Seattle. It wasn't as incredible as Morgan's first book (Altered Carbon), but I thought on the whole it was better than the critics made it out to be.
I think the biggest problem with the book was that it required a serious dose of suspension of disbelief to get past the whole Car Wars angle. Morgan did support the evolution of "road raging" (lethally competitive driving) as a means to settle executive advancement - but the support was a bit weak. If you can get past that, though - the story is compelling; told with Morgan's hallmark style, pacing, and character development.
Not the crown jewel in Morgan's collection thus far, but hardly one to hide in the dust bin.
Posted by dberger at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)
Fried Green Tomatoes
We just got back from Seattle, where we had dinner with Tony, a good friend of ours from Boston who's been in town on vacation for the past week and a half. We ate at the Five Spot, and the current theme is food from the American Heartland. Tonight was a Hurricane relief event - half their proceeds are being donated to relief efforts. The food was good, as usual, and I tried fried green tomatoes for the first time.
Delish'.
Tony arrived a week ago last Friday for Bumbershoot. He asked, before leaving Boston, if there was anything he could bring me. I replied, mostly in jest, "not unless you can swing by Chez and pick me up a Cuban and a Periodista."
I'll be damned if the guy didn't arrive on Friday with two Cubans in a cooler - ready to be finished off in the oven. What a friend... I seriously miss that place - not to mention the folks (Clark, Eswar, you know who you are) I used to hang out there with.
Continue reading "Fried Green Tomatoes"
Posted by dberger at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)