twittered:
Patience is a virtue 
Twitter demands it.
blogged:
Mon
Feb
22
2010
Goodbye Yahoo
Over three years ago, I wrote a little open letter to Yahoo, “Lost In The Yahoo Desert”:
I know I don’t visit you very much. Not like some others. But you have this one page I like to visit, the “Most Viewed” News page. No, I’m not going to link it. Because it is virtually guaranteed that you’ll just change the link.
Wed. Aug 05, 2009
The One Where I Get Some Cheap Glasses
Getting old sucks. You hit your 40’s, and the single-vision glasses you’ve worn since youth no longer cut it, now you need bifocals.
Then you hit fifty, and your bifocals still work well at distance, and up close (about 12 inches or less), but your eyes have developed a new range (18”-36”) that simply isn’t covered well at all by your bifocals. Except this very narrow portion of the bifocal’s progressive transition, if you tip your head back just right.
That 18 to 36 inch range is where my monitors sit. Yeah, it became a real pain in the neck. So off I went to the eye doctor, to get a new prescription, and some new glasses. But the last time I did this, the wife and I went together and $1,000 later we both had new glasses. This time, I wanted to get more for my money.
And I did. For roughly the same amount of money ($561.65), I got four very nice pairs of glasses; one set by visiting a local optometrist, and three sets ordered online.
Sat. Dec 20, 2008
Grandpa is Once Again Astounded By The Interwebs
I’ve been on the internet a long time, and thought I had become somewhat immune to amazement at what I find. I no longer marvel that I can hear about a court ruling on CNN, and within five minutes find the PDF of the full ruling online for me to read in detail. I guess you could say that instant access to “current data” no longer phases me.
But the other night, I did a search on a whim about one night in 1981 from which I have some vivid memories, even though it’s been 27 years. Not only did I find an article written about that night by an expert on the subject, I found a recording of the entire event.
Sat
Mar
15
2008
Curate Yourself Before The Media Does
The recent scandal involving Eliot “Ho No” Spitzer and a prostitute has brought a rather interesting aspect of copyright and our web personas to the legal forefront:
Since her identity was disclosed, newspapers and Web sites have splashed photos of Ashley Alexandra Dupre in suggestive poses on front and inside pages. Dupre was known as “Kristen” in court documents accusing Spitzer of paying thousands for prostitutes’ services.
Tue
Feb
19
2008
Don't Believe Every Email You Read, Especially Election Year
This feels a little like making a post to be certain that “you do know the sky is blue, don’t you?” But it has come to my attention that not everyone pays attention to the things that seem obvious to me.
For example, if you get a poorly formatted mass email sent to you and dozens of others, that claims things like “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim” ... “ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into Office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran” and other seemingly scandalous claims, consider this: Hillary Clinton is seeking any half-assed angle she can scrounge to get back in the race, and if those things were true, don’t you think she’d be hammering on that daily? Yes, you know she would. The fact she isn’t ought to be one clue.
Tue
Nov
13
2007
An Open Email to Gmail
Dear Gmail,
I’m sorry to have to write you publicly like this, but you have left me little choice, and I have a couple of bones to pick with you.
1. Look in the bottom right corner of your logo. It says “BETA.” We won’t get into the argument that being in “BETA” since April of 2004 represents an underlying fear of commitment. We’ll just say that an app that presents itself as in “BETA,” even for 3.5 years, ought to have clear and simple ways for their “BETA” users to provide feedback about problems with the “BETA” application. You do not. I looked and looked, clicked and clicked. The closest thing I could find was a form for “Got a feature suggestion for Gmail?” So I suggested several things, including get out of “BETA” in less than one presidential term, or have an “easy to find” form for submitting problems.
Sat
Jul
14
2007
The Illusion of Security
The other day I set up a “need it now” domain for a client, and they also wanted the email to be separate from their current workload. So I forwarded the domain mail to a Gmail account I created for them.
The question comes, “is this secure?” While the tempered response is along the lines of “it’s as secure and your current email,” it’s not really the correct answer.
Sun
Jun
17
2007
Digital Ageism Part Two: No New Paradigms for Old Fogies
Fred Wilson apparently decided to spend part of his weekend making old people sputter.
I’ve been reluctant because I don’t want to pick at this scab of a meme. I really don’t want to be the guy who made it harder for anyone older than 30 to get funded in the web services market.
Who is developing this “clearer idea”? Who is developing the set of “design patterns”? It’s the younger generation. And its important to understand why.
Thu
May
17
2007
OMG 1'M ON TW1TTER!
I don’t exactly know why (yet), but I finally succumbed to the Twittering masses. Because I simply don’t have enough time-sucking vortexes, I suppose, as you can tell by the vast number of posts on this site recently.
Sat
Mar
17
2007
Spymac Spam, One Bad Netizen
You may have gotten an email stating “photodude” wanted you to signup at spymac.com. My apologies. Don’t sign up. Here’s what happened. I got an invitation from a friend that I had not heard from in a while. So I checked it out.
As part of the sign up, “Step One” asks you if you’d like to check and see if any of your Gmail contacts are already members. In my case, it found none. So I click on “Step Two” (note, I did not click “Invite” or “Spam Everyone,” I clicked “Step Two”).
Wed
Dec
20
2006
Lost In The Yahoo Desert
Dear Yahoo,
I know I don’t visit you very much. Not like some others. But you have this one page I like to visit, the “Most Viewed” News page. No, I’m not going to link it. Because it is virtually guaranteed that you’ll just change the link.
You see, today is the third time I’ve woken up to do a little morning news surfing and found that page gone. Poof. No redirect or forward to the page’s new location. No 404. Just an ugly dead end, redirected to a broken page.
Thu
Nov
30
2006
Regards, Later, Or Nothing At All
There’s an article in the NY Times that I found interesting, “‘Yours Truly, the E-Variations.” It’s about the various ways that people “sign off” in their emails, and how those variations are sometimes perceived by others.
Wed
Sep
27
2006
Taxing Questions
Late Monday night, I published an article reiterating my disdain for Donald Rumsfeld (among others), and re-using the phrase “unconscionable malpractice.”
About 12 hours later, at roughly 1pm EDT Tuesday, someone came to visit from IP 152.216.3.5:
Sun
Sep
17
2006
Earthlink, Come In From The Rain
You might recall me whining about Earthlink overcharging me by a factor of 100 for something called “USF Fee Recovery.” Thus, I read the following with interest last month:
Under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, BellSouth said Friday that it will stop collecting a $2.97 per month regulatory fee from its high-speed Internet customers.
Mon
Feb
20
2006
I Finally Bought My Name
12:40am Sunday night, er, Monday morning. I decided to check off something that’s been on my “to do” list for a while: buy reidstott.com. In case I run for office some day. I’d hate for a partisan squatter to grab it up.
Yeah, right. Anyway. Email shows the purchase transaction between PayPal and Godaddy was completed at 12:53am. Afterwards I log in at TextDrive and add a new virtual server to my account, as well as a new email user, via ugly geek magic called Webmin.
Thu
Feb
02
2006
A Decade of Internet Logins
In this afternoon’s email: “It’s your anniversary with EarthLink — and we wanted to say thanks for being a valued EarthLink member!”
Well, that’s not exactly the whole truth. It was indeed ten years ago that I signed up for an account with a company that had a three legged dog for a mascot and a dress code that said “if you are going to be in a meeting with folks wearing suits, it’s recommended that you wear some form of footwear.”
Thu
Jun
30
2005
Google Ooze
It sounds a bit clichéd to ask “what did we do before Google?” But recent events caused me to pause and wonder … how did they ooze into my life as much as they have?
Thu
May
19
2005
E-mail from an Arafat
I get e-mails from the downtrodden relatives of deposed leaders in Africa … all the time (and the occasional former Baathist). There’s apparently a stunning amount of money just floating around out there, waiting for some soul like me to offer my checking account number so it will have a place to land. And then I get my money for nothin’ and the chicks for free!
Thu
May
19
2005
Pay the Gray Lady, Part Two
“The New York Times announced today that it will start charging for some online content, beginning in September” [...] To me, this is a complete inversion of the pyramid, an application of meat world values to a digital environment. Bassackwards.
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