Critters by Joe WilcoxFeb 17, 20068:53 pm

Bye, Bye, Ruffy

Tonight our local veterinarian took Ruffalo, the rabbit we unexpectedly inherited. Ruffy is a cute bunny, friendly and energetic. He needed a better home than we could provide. If we didn’t have two rabbits already, he would have stayed with us.

I am sad to see Ruffy go. He was part of our family. But he needs a better family. The vet deeply loves animals, and I am confident she will find him a home. Yesterday, she sent out an e-mail to people she knows at National Institutes of Health (I provided photos). Several people asked about taking Ruffy. The vet may even keep him. She reminisced about the days when an Angora bunny hoped around the office and people would come by just to gawk at her.

Politics by Joe WilcoxFeb 15, 20066:34 pm

Secretaries Don’t E-Mail

In March 2004, I appeared on PBS Newshour to discuss the European Union’s antitrust case against Microsoft. But I was by no means star of the night. The news show featured an interview face-off between Jim Lehrer and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I sat in another area of the same studio watching the Secretary answer Jim’s questions—well, sidestep many of them. The Defense Secretary struck me as out of touch, a sense I got more seeing him live than I ever have on television.

But even I underestimated just how out of touch is Donald Rumsfeld. Today, Newsweek columnist Mark Hosenball writes about the Karina hearings: “Congressional investigations of government responses to Hurricane Katrina have revealed that two of the nation’s key crisis managers, the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, do not use e-mail”.

Uh, yeah.

Living by Joe WilcoxFeb 12, 20061:34 pm

Powerless

Snow pelted Washington overnight. For once, the forecasters hit the mark. On Friday, the National Weather Service issued a storm warning from 6:00 Saturday to 6:00 Sunday, with projected snow fall between about 10-20 centimeters. By Saturday morning, the the weather service pushed the warning back to Noon and increased snowfall projections to about 15.5-30.5 centimeters.

I blew off the storm’s significance. At 1:00 early Sunday, accumulations on my back porch barely topped 2 centimeters. The situation dramatically changed in the four-and-a-half hours that followed. By 5:30, according to the measure of accumulation on my back porch, the storm dropped 28 centimeters of snow.

Society by Joe WilcoxFeb 11, 20068:55 pm

‘Live 8’ or Death

Two Saturdays ago, the family hauled off to Tysons Corner Center, so that my wife could shop at the New Balance store and my daughter at the Sketchers there. On a giant flat-panel monitor at the back of the Sketchers played Live 8, particularly Richard Ashcroft’s performance, with Coldplay, of The Verve staple “Bittersweet Symphony”.

The performance stuck with me, as did vague memories of Live 8, which I mostly missed. I certainly shouldn’t have overlooked the concert as much as I did. During summer 2005, I struggled through some logistical problems at work, which greatly distracted from many things that should have been greater priority. Events like Live 8 come `round maybe once in 20 years, if Live AID is any indication.

Digital Lifestyle by Joe WilcoxFeb 10, 20066:11 pm

Throttle Me, I Throttle You

Uh-oh. Netflix throttling is in the news this week, and I’m steamed about the tactic. I am so mad that service cancellation is one option. More likely, I will, eh, throttle down my number of rentals.

Throttling is a strategy whereby heavy users are penalized for using the service. Netflix reasons it loses money on these customers, so they get lower shipping priority.

Web by Joe WilcoxFeb 9, 20068:24 pm

You Want to Charge for What?

I am not swooping with excitement over AOL and Yahoo plans to charge for e-mail. Here’s how I see it: 1) Spam is bad enough without e-mail vendors making it easier. 2) Charging for e-mail fundamentally changes the way the Internet has long operated.

The way it works: Marketers would pay a penny to directly route their e-mails to inboxes, bypassing spam filters. The marketers that pay get their e-mail separated from those that don’t pay and from the riffraff. Maybe, but I don’t want any of their mail. It’s pretty much all spam to me, and I waste way too much trudging through it.

Storytelling by Joe WilcoxFeb 7, 20068:37 pm

Da Vinci Deserves Better Than This

I finished reading book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown over the weekend. Someone lent us the book a year before I started reading, which seemed to labor for a year. I just don’t get all the hubbub over the book.

To be clear, I had no trouble with the book’s core concepts about Christ or with the weaving historical interpretation. Of course, Jesus Christ was supposed to marry. I don’t believe that he did, contrary to the book’s fictional assertion. But there is no question that he was supposed to. The Jewish and Christian concepts of the Fall involved two male and one female being (Muslims believe the same, yes?). The Messiah, King of Kings—whatever you want to call him—should marry and resolve the problem, man and woman, reversal of man and woman falling.

Critters by Joe WilcoxFeb 6, 20068:54 pm

More Ruffalo

I am out on the West Coast this week for business. Back home, my wife is trying to figure out what to do with Ruffalo. He’s one of the friendliest, gentlest bunnies I’ve seen. But […]

Web by Joe WilcoxFeb 3, 20066:25 pm

Unexpected IM

Today, someone that I didn’t know added me to their IM list. I assumed that it was a work contact. But, no. The stranger claimed to be from China, and the domain of his e-mail address more or less confirmed location (I checked WHOIS).

At first, I thought this person might have sought me out. I have been recently quoted in a Chinese newspaper and on Western news services, about Google’s Chinese research facility and, separately, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreeing to censor search results in China. The IM looks to have been random, though.

News Media by Joe WilcoxFeb 2, 20068:23 pm

And Fish can Fly

Scientists force evolution? Maybe the folks over at LiveScience need to evolve their reporting. Adaptation isn’t evolution. Polypheniesm is typically environmentally caused; color change induced by environmental variations is to be expected.

Let’s look at ourselves, as example of where LiveScience falters. Homo Sapiens is considered to be one species, right? But there are different races, which, to my understanding aren’t considered subspecies. Racial variations would appear to have derived from environmental causes long ago.

Photo by Joe WilcoxFeb 1, 20067:09 pm

Look Smug in the Mug

One of the great benefits of my job is opportunity to speak to people running some really cool companies. Today I got the grand tour of photo-sharing site SmugMug. I had strongly considered setting up shop at Flickr, for which I had already plunked down $24.95 for a year’s Pro service. I probably will upload some stuff to Flickr, mainly stock images for my blog posts. Externally hosted images would make for less work should I ever move my blog to a new host. Looks like SmugMug will become my main photo flat. I’ve already started moving in.

SmugMug is one of the best photo-sharing sites I have seen. Tools are excellent for amateur or pro photographers. Technology is modern, fresh, and easy. SmugMug also is a successful family business, something you don’t see much in high-techdom. My temporary SmugMug site is up and running. I plan to use a domain, if I grow to like the service as much as I expect to.

Microsoft by Joe WilcoxJan 31, 20065:20 pm

Bad Internet Explorer

I am just so upset, I won’t much blog tonight. I had just finished a long post on last night’s “24” and decided to put in a photo. When I uploaded the image, I got a warning on the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview toolbar about blocked content. The browser had blocked the image from loading. OK. No big deal. I clicked the option to allow the content, which instead cleared the browser window and my post.

Upset? Upset? There are no words. This is the second time in less than a week where I lost a long blog post to Microsoft beta software—Friday on my work blog and now on my personal blog.