Author: Joe Wilcox

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Skating Star

Today, my daughter skated in her first US Figure Skating competition, at the San Diego Ice Arena. San Diego Figure Skating Club sponsored the competition, Skate La Grande. She skated in Las Chicas Group D with nine other girls.

Credit goes to my wife, who made extra effort to get our daughter in the competition. Technically, our girl is still part of the Washington Figure Skating Club, which required extra paperwork and permissions for her to participate as a guest. There also was some concern her Washington affiliation might be a handicap in judging. 

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Too Much Safari 3.1 Nonsense

My Tuesday Microsoft Watch post, “Apple’s Windows Invasion” stirred up ridiculous controversy this week. I simply don’t understand the fuss. OK, so Apple Software Update offers up Safari 3.1. Big deal.

The controversy started rather innocently. On Tuesday morning, I took out my daughter’s pink VAIO laptop, which I will soon post for sale on Craiglist. She has returned to using her MacBook purchased on launch day, May 16, 2006. I upgraded the memory to 2GB and swapped the 60GB hard drive for a 250GB replacement, purchased from Mac specialist Crywolf. She’s fed up with Windows Vista, and I’m close to the same emotional state.

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Let the Bears Eat Bear Stearns

I agree with Gretchen Morgenson, writing for the New York Times. The Fed shouldn’t bail out Bear Stearns. The fed crossed a line by keeping afloat a major architect of the housing debacle.

I wrote my first blog post about the housing bubble in August 2005, a year after deciding not to buy a home in the Washington, DC suburb of Bowie. It was already clear to me in summer 2004 that something akin to a repeat of the dot-com bubble was taking place in the housing market.

Had we bought in 2004, we would likely hold a mortgage that exceeds the house’s reduced value. We could never have moved to San Diego. 

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It’s Not Alaska, It’s an Adventure

Jean McDermott cracks me up. She’s got a wry, dry sense of humor. Maybe the humorless can’t survive Alaskan winters.

Today, Jean posted a picture of her freezer and, separately, commented on the weather: “A couple days ago we got 10 inches of snow in one night. People up here walked around just beaming. Finally! The bumps in the ski, snowmachine, mushing and skijore trails would finally be smoothed out. No more skidding around on dirt! Not only that, but it has warmed up to a positively balmy 20° ABOVE so everyone is having a bit of a respite from having to put on so much bleeding gear every time one goes outside! 

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CES 2008 was Great

I had a great time at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, thanks to the October move to San Diego and a little scheduling assistance from Microsoft PR agency Edeleman. From Washington, DC, CES would have been a week commitment. From San Diego, Las Vegas is an hour flight. Edelman booked five Microsoft meetings for Tuesday. I snagged another private Microsoft meeting and one regular briefing with HP. I had a jam-packed schedule consolidated so that I could fly in and out on the same day.

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Scoble Scrapes Friends’ Trust

Robert Scoble has been the talk of the Web today, for getting booted from Facebook. Robert is back on Facebook now, but he shouldn’t be. Facebook suspended the former Microsoft evangelist blogger for a terms-of-service violation. He used a testing Plaxo tool to mine, or “scrape,” information from about 5,000 of his contacts. [Editor’s note, April 4, 2017: Three Scobelizer posts gone; links removed.]