Archive for August, 2003

Explosions rock Emeryville

Yikes, I live just a half-mile from Chiron, which got bombed this morning. No official claim of responsibility but one possibility is eco-terrorists of some kind. Chiron is a pharmaceutical firm and probably does animal research as part of its daily business. Though I don’t know if they do that kind of […]

Google spoiling its employees

I recently had a chance to visit a friend who works down at Google, and the thing that struck me was how spoiled and pampered the employees are. Like free lunch–you just walk over to one of the cafeterias and pick out whatever you want. I had a very good chicken-breast sandwich, with […]

Cruz-ing into the lead

Oh no, Cruz Bustamante has taken the lead in the latest poll for the recall election. Worse, it seems that support for the recall itself is fading a bit.
Dammit, even though I’m a Democrat I can’t quite stomach the thought of either Davis or Bustamante in that role. They’re both responsible for this […]

Going open source

Nice little interview with the CEO of a company that has dumped Microsoft in favor of going totally open source. Kinda uplifting story really, the little guy getting trampled on by Microsoft’s hired guns and then coming thru with an alternative that’s actually cheaper. The CEO actually thanks MS for forcing him to […]

Texting the cause of bad box office?

Oh boy, now Hollywood is blaming text messaging for the bad box office that some films have had this year. The claim is that people now can blast out bad word of mouth instantly to their friends. In the old days a big splashy ad campaign might draw enough suckers into the theater […]

Freddy v. Jason?

WTF? Freddy v. Jason made $36 million it’s opening weekend? That just seems wrong to me.
These franchises are both so decrepit and irrelevant, who knew there was so much pent-up interest to make it the number 1 movie this past weekend? One thing’s for sure–whoever went to see the movie clearly ignored […]

A Mere 135

Well thank goodness-the number of candidates on the recall ballot has been whittled down to just 135. Seems not all of the 240 or so who originally signed up did their paperwork correctly. Either they had missing forms, or they didn’t have enough valid voter signatures (you needed just 65). Or their […]

The Microsoft Worm

Even though I’m not a big fan of Microsoft, I think this damned worm is just damned inconvenient. It’s causing all sorts of problems for our network, and I’m pretty sure it’s also the reason our Exchange server is down right now.
You never realize just how much you depend on email until it’s gone. […]

Difficult People

I’m beginning to wish I could strangle one of the sales guys at work. He is so un-technical, I can’t understand how he got into Web advertising. I try to explain how the stuff works, I explain it about a dozen different ways, but none of it sticks.
And so he keeps filing these […]

Arnold Aftershocks

Yesterday’s earthquake that was Arnold Schwarzenegger entering the gubernatorial race has already had good effects. It has apparently convinced Darrell Issa, the guy who funded the recall campaign, to drop out of the race.
It has also apparently broken the Democratic unity behind Gray Davis–at least two prominent Demos have thrown their hats into the […]