Asymptomatic

When I looked at my GoDaddy account last night, I was sure I've been on crack for the past year - 39 domains. And those are just the ones at GoDaddy. Surely there must be some projects I'm "working on" that people don't know about. Let's see what I can share.

Before I go on let me say this: Will someone please redesign GoDaddy's site? kthxbye

I've got a couple of domains for the kids. I've been trying to convince them to start a little video project, reviewing movies. I thought that a low-impact introduction to the web with a movie review site would be interesting to them. They could watch a movie and tell the camera what they think. Getting them into the idea hasn't been successful yet. I did get Abby to make a video about the cats that I have not yet put online. Whether this is something that you could do (or want to watch) regularly, I can't say. That's two domains....

We're trying to get things ready at the house for the BBQ next Saturday (if you haven't RSVP'ed yet, you're almost too late. If you know me and you didn't get an invitation, I must not have your email or it got caught as spam, because I invited everyone, so RSVP anyway.), and although Berta is doing a great job of spiffing things up, we still have the perennial issue with the garage entry area. Between the powder room with the diapers and the litter box for the cats, that area is expectedly a little bit more smelly than I'd like.

Combined with an interest to obtain the usual supplies to take care of that, I also noticed that I was running low on deodorant. Nothing like making the house smell nice and then not smelling very fresh myself. So I decided it was prudent to make a quick grocery run at lunch time to pick up some of these items.

While standing in the deodorant aisle looking for my usual brand, I saw the Axe brand body sprays. I had bought one of these once just to see what they were all about, and it turns out that they're just really, really strong deodorant-smelling perfume sprays. Not really a surprise, given the commercials. But a lack of another product on the shelf led me to recall the following character-building story from my jaded youth....

I've had the occasion over the past few years in my capacity as a long-time developer to interview candidates for jobs within my company and for clients I've contracted for. As a result, I've had some time to formulate some opinions about what questions to ask developers who are applying for a position, and the types of answers to expect from a candidate that you'd want to hire.

Sadly, I think the market of good developers is far, far too small. I do subscribe to the philosophy that great developers are born, not made, although I also believe that you can produce adequate developers with good training and persistent oversight. It is really unfortunate that coders who want to get jobs aren't as versed in what makes a great developer great, and it's a frequent topic of discussion when hiring rounds begin.

I'd like to share a few of the qualities I like to look for in a web developer to both educate would-be coders as to what I expect, and educate would-be interviewers who wouldn't know a good developer if he hacked into his bank account and stole all his cash. ...

I've had so much to say over the past two weeks, and no desire at all to write about any of it. It seems like I should do a dictation or something, and have my secretary write out my blog posts for me. Perhaps I will look into a service soon -- I've always thought that my blog entries would sound better if I read them instead of writing them. In any case, here's a brief summary of topics of things that I should have written about but didn't.

I got a shave two weeks ago - a real one in a barber's chair with a straight razor. I actually did write about this, but I wasn't near the internet when I did it, and I'm not sure where my notebook is at the moment. I'm sure that post will appear when I finally stumble across the notebook bag.

On that same day, I attended the PhillyCHI design slam. It was an interesting event in which we were broken up into small random groups and given the task to create a "table management system" for a fictional restaurant. Our group didn't do very well primarily because there was no cohesion between our members. We had some pretty good ideas, but they weren't realized because everyone wanted to go separate directions. Kind of stupid, really....

I took Nana and Riley out to lunch today, something I'm thinking of making a regular Thursday outing. Today we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger (note the surprising lack of "s") in Frazer, and had some yummy burgers. Nana said she hasn't had such a good burger in years, and I learned that she likes mayonnaise and fried onions on her burgers.

After we sat, a group of ladies came in and sat at the table behind me. I don't know if it was just one of them, or the whole group, but the terribly overpowering odor of baby powder slammed into my nostrils. It was so powerful, I nearly gagged and I could occasionally (depending on wind shift) barely taste my food.

I'm not sure what it is that possesses some people to odorify themselves like this. I mean, you might do this if you absolutely had to cover some other less attractive odor, but by all means, take care of that problem before slathering yourself with some other more powerful odor. I really don't see how that helps the problem, and I can only imagine what I wasn't smelling underneath all of the overlying stink....