Which reminds me, I did the Spawing Cycle ride this year for a 37 mile ride around Seattle with 1000 feet of elevation gain. The cardiac test of the ride is going up Discovery Park from the Locks to Magnolia. I made it with reasonable speed, but it took more effort and shortness of breath then I would have liked. I’ve really got to get back in the habit of longer rides if I can afford them after my first is born this October. The ride also clued me into Myrtle Edwards Park which would be an awesome place for a picnic along the sound. It’s accessable by heading north along the pier near the Old Spagetti Factory in downtown. Next suprise was Interlaken Park which is between the lake front area and capital hill. It sort of sits in the middle of a steep cliff where you can see expensive looking houses above and below you as one rides through the woods. I was also happy to learn about Thorndyke Rd (and the side road to get access to Myrtle Edwards) which is a safer way off of magnolia. Overall a nice ride and good to do again next year.
20/20
The Seattle PI writes about Microsoft’s obeisity benifit, I qualified a little over two years ago and used the Pro Club’s 20/20 program to go from 253 down to 178. I’m back up to 188 right now, but did STP in one day this summer and haven’t been good about working out daily recently.
PDC stuff
I watched the PDC keynote yesterday.. or at least everything up to the code walkthroughs. I was very happy with some of the improvements comming in office 12, but not much in the Vista demos excited me (probably because I’ve been see’ng the stuff for while). The UI improvements promise to be good, I’m especially the quick “What’s my next meeting?” on the mail page. What I’m estatic about is the LUA features, or the “How we don’t always run as admin“ features.
Other things for me to check out:
Laptop Rebuid
Ever flatten your machine and rebuild the OS only to discover two unknown devices sitting in the device manager? I have no idea what they are but they have PNP ids that on goggle lead to two useless links in some asian language. It’s a lot like fixing your car and ending up with extra parts.
Organization Day
Today is going to be an organization day. A day that I tidy up a couple of things so that I can stay sane and productive. My inbox will get emptied, tasks will be defined and accumulate. Unread blog entries will get read or ignored. All my test boxen will get recovered from whatever random state they ended up in and stress will run.
2005/09/08 – Thursday Links
- News You Can Lose – What I hate about cable TV journalism.
Slate explains what sucks about TV news.
NPR Podcasts
Better Living through Software points us at NPR’s Podcast page. 130 podcasts ready to go.
Tuesday Links
- DBAs Bar Door Against Big Bad .Net Wolf (eWeek)
At the heart of the problem is T-SQL, a proprietary stored procedure language that SQL Server DBAs know like the back of their hands but that might as well be Greek to most .Net developers.
With an integration gleam in its eye, Microsoft Corp. has set its sights on demolishing the wall between those two groups. In SQL Server 2005—due to ship in early November—for the first time, the company’s CLR (Common Language Runtime) will be integrated into the heart of the database.
-
WinFS Beta 1 ships (Channel 9)
-
Evolving Debate (On the Media) – Covering Intelligent Design
DAVID KESTENBAUM: Well, I think there’s actually a nice little moment in that story. I’m talking to the intelligent design advocate and I say, so what’s like being an intelligent design guy at an academic university.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]
DAVID KESTENBAUM: And he goes, it’s pretty lonely. [LAUGHTER] And, you know, he sort of – he laid it out there. You didn’t need me to say, I’ve counted and there are ten million scientists on this side and five on the other. And I thought the real question behind this story, when you look at, as you mentioned, the case in Kansas, how the scientific community decided to deal with it or not deal with it. And in some ways.
-
Master Planned by H. ALLEN ORR (The New Yorker) referenced by the Covering Intelligent Design peice above.
It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. But then it can be hard, with any complex historical process, to reconstruct the exact order in which events occurred, especially when, as in evolution, the addition of new parts encourages the modification of old ones. When you’re looking at a bustling urban street, for example, you probably can’t tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on each other and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones (the new sushi place draws twenty-somethings who demand wireless Internet at the café next door). But it would be a little rash to conclude that all the shops must have begun business on the same day or that some Unseen Urban Planner had carefully determined just which business went where.
-
Watching What You Pay (On the Media)
A little bit on paypal, or how a private company restricted the use of currency after they controlled it.
-
Museum Heist (On the Media)
Podcast + Museum Audio = Much more intresting and engaging Museum experiences.
NPR: Court: Same-Sex Couples Must Provide Child Support
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4811333&sourceCode=RSS
California’s Supreme Court rules that unmarried, same-sex couples are lawful parents and must provide for their children if they break up. The court ruled that if both same-sex partners intended to parent a child conceived by artificial insemination, then both partners have an equal right to child custody and child support, even if one partner has no genetic link.
Comparable Worth?
Slate explains the notion “Comparable Worth” after we find that at one point Roberts found it highly objectionable. The notion of gender based job segregation still doesn’t sit right with me although it’s more acceptable then some of the not getting equal pay in the same job type issues. However I find that I agree with the notion that the government shouldn’t be figuring out which jobs are worth what.
Doubt's Blog 