Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Uncommon
March 30, 2007

Having an uncommon name is a blessing and a curse. I like my name, which is interesting because there are many people who do not. I do not recall the exact numbers, but there as a large percentage of people in a recent Wii poll who did not like their own name.

What’s nice about an uncommon name is that you don’t get confused with other people. It’s very easy to request “owen@somedomain.com” instead of the lousy “o.winkler@somedomain.com” because there aren’t many Owens to request the address. You don’t have to postfix the uncommon name with a last initial for disambiguation.

Change the System
March 27, 2007

Reminded once again today during a once-monthly stop at the bank (which only makes the whole thing even more aggravating, since I hardly have the need to interact with people outside of the house these days at all, with these minor exceptions, like the bank) that the world/powers-that-be are still hard at work eroding our privacy for no discernible positive effect.

I was depositing some checks that had accumulated around the house. I figured that I would save myself the step of getting money out of the ATM in the lobby by adding an amount of $20 to withdraw as cash on these checks.

Brazen Birds
March 26, 2007

Have you noticed this going on?

You’re driving down the road, doing your own thing, and you see a bird. It’s just a little generic bird, sitting in the road. Maybe he’s with a friend or two.

The Path to Enlightenment
March 21, 2007

I am working on finishing up Habari’s WordPress importing facilities. This is the middle step in a long chain of personal development that is probably being done somewhat out of order, just because some things need to be complete sooner than the things they depend on.

For example, I need to have a working body of sample posts to test any work I do on a database independent library for Habari. Habari is database independent now, but we’re intent on building an abstraction class so that you can plug in new databases as needed instead of having to code any database-specific stuff directly into the core. In all, it’s a good idea. So I need test data.