Bent up truck

By Jim, on February 27th, 2008%

I got a rude surprise on my way home from work last night when somebody decided to make a U-turn across my lane. I made a valiant attempt to avoid a collision, but I wasn’t completely successful. I did manage to minimize the impact, though. The left side of my truck collided with the right . . . → Read More: Bent up truck

One comment - (Comments are closed)   Odds 'n Ends

Charlie helps in the yard

By Jim, on February 25th, 2008%

Yesterday was beautiful: calm, sunny, and 80 degrees. I had a few hours of outside work to do, what with rearranging the compost pile and vacuuming dirt out of the pool, and Charlie said he’d come out to help. Some help he was. I took a break after a couple of hours and caught him . . . → Read More: Charlie helps in the yard

Comments are closed   Pets

I can’t serve you ’cause you’re too fat

By Jim, on February 25th, 2008%

I’ve ranted a few times over the years about people trying to hold fast food establishments liable for making them fat. I thought that craziness had faded after Super Size Me disappeared from public consciousness. And it mostly has.

And then a friend sent me a link to House Bill 282, introduced in the Mississippi . . . → Read More: I can’t serve you ’cause you’re too fat

Comments are closed   Idiocy, Rants

The default is default

By Jim, on February 20th, 2008%

Some days I just don’t understand what people are thinking when they write documentation. Yesterday I installed a simple caching DNS server. That was easy enough with Ubuntu, and the thing is up and running. But my experience with these things tells me that I’d better look into its configuration. We do a lot of . . . → Read More: The default is default

Comments are closed   Computers

Take back the desktop!

By Jim, on February 19th, 2008%

I know, I’ve dipped into this well before. But this bears repeating.

At some point in the 30 years or so that I’ve been working with computers, we’ve lost sight of the most important fact: computers are supposed to be tools that serve us. All too often these days, I feel like I’m the one . . . → Read More: Take back the desktop!

5 comments - (Comments are closed)   Computers, Idiocy, User Interface

LINQ: I’m a believer

By Jim, on February 5th, 2008%

Language-integrated query (LINQ) is a new technology introduced with .NET 3.5. The C# 3.0 language has been extended to support it. LINQ is, in essence, a query language for in-memory data. Think of SQL for your data structures and you get the idea.

Sometimes you have to see a thing in action before you understand . . . → Read More: LINQ: I’m a believer

2 comments - (Comments are closed)   Programming