Yeah, I really struggled to come up with a clever and catchy title for this post, so that’s what I ended up with. At any rate, I’ve got an announcement that’s a bit overdue. After some sixteen months of working from home with some of the smartest folks around I’ve decided to shake things up a bit. I guess just couldn’t stay away from all of the water cooler chats, office parties, and crummy coffee. That’s right, I’ll be heading back into an office for the J-O-B. My new office digs Today was my first day as...

Phil officially broke the news early this morning... but for those few of you that don’t read his blog - MySpace China is using a modified version of Subtext for it’s blogging engine. Flippin' Sweet! Does this mean we’ve finally made it and we can start making insanely frivolous purchases like our own data center, ping-pong tables, and a yacht? Nope, not even close. That’s the beauty of the OSI license under which Subtext is released - others are free to do pretty much whatever the heck they want with Subtext. And that’s cool by us......

This is not a fake. I actually saw this very sign on an ATM here in town... and naturally had snap a picture for my own enjoyment. Oh, and this is no small mom and pop regional bank. We’re talking one of the largest banks in the world (in terms of sheer assets)... and a former employer of mine. I need to visit a few other locations to determine if this is an isolated case of overzealous design, or if it is standard practice. My gut feeling is the latter - most likely as required by...

We’ve heard all the recent hype about Amazon’s new music download site, amazonmp3, but I’d not taken the time to actually check it out. Not until Jeff proclaimed his love for the new service Totally digging the Amazon MP3 store! DRM FREE! I will be supporting this with my wallet, and you should too. Yeah, that’s right... I’m totally susceptible to peer pressure. Anyhow, I clicked on over and started checking it out and have so far been pretty impressed. But I do have one big complaint - they use RealAudio to serve...

As I don't like to cross-post, you'll have to go to my other blog to get the full scoop! But the upshot is - there is a new online directory for Happy Hour locations! Some of the cool features are search by city & neighborhood, mash-up with Google Maps, tagging, reviews, and my personal favorite - Pub Crawl Maps! Get the full story here.

As I mentioned before, I've recently become wrapped up in the Twitter-craze that is sweeping the web. I'm still a bit of a noob but one think I noticed quickly was some of the Twitter-centric lexicon that was being used by other Twits. Of particular interest is the @username syntax. What does that do? Well as luck would have it the Twitter Help pages have an answer: When someone sends a Twitter that inspires a reply, what can you do? Direct Text the person if your reply is personal and only meant for their eyes.  But sometimes you want everyone...

I was recently peer pressured into the latest social network/application sweeping the intar-web: Twitter. Just for background... or in case you don't already know Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives.  Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away.  Curious people can make friends.  Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless! So What? Yeah, that is exactly what I thought. It sounds a bit too...

In his Working for The Man piece Jeremy Allison lays out six lessons he's learned over the course of his career in software; six lessons he'd like to go back and tell himself at the beginning of his career. Whether you're a code-slinger just starting out or a seasoned veteran with wisdom and design patterns coming out your ears, this is a great read. So go read it now... I'll wait. This is me, waiting... See I told it was good, didn't I? Even though I've only been in the software business for half a decade I've already learned many of...

If you're like me (or perhaps you just want to be more like me) and your daily work spans time zones you know how difficult that can be. My work day typically starts 3 hours before my co-workers out on the west coast. Same goes for the end of the work day - I try to end my day job around 6:30p.m. (EST) or so. But that's the middle of the afternoon for Phil, Jon, Micah, and the rest of the gang out in the PST. It really gets sticky when we're scheduling meetings and other important events. Often I'll be one a phone call...

Aww yeah! After a bitter cold couple of days central Ohio is finally seeing some nice weather. It's fitting that today was such a nice day - seeing as it is officially the first day of spring. The image above is a screen shot of the Weather gadget on my PC's Windows Vista Sidebar. I'm hoping to see a lot more days like like in my gadget as spring really starts to show up. Now I just need to pony up for that new laptop I've been wanting so I can work outside! Donations are always welcome. :)

I was wondering how long it would take before some one pulled me into the latest meme making it's way across the blogosphere... and Phil finally tagged me, so I guess now it's my turn. 1. I almost died at birth. I know this is supposed to be a fun trip down memory lane and not some morbid tale from the crypt... but you'll notice I said almost. According to my mom, there were some complications with my birth and I was deprived of oxygen in the last few minutes before I... um... came out. She says that I was so...

As riveting as my posts about topics like the latest version of Subtext and custom output caching in ASP.NET might be... I've come the realization that the majority of my (non-techie) friends and family just don't care. I know... WTF, right? Taking a page from Phil's book, I decided I was going to start a new blog that was much less focused on technical topics and more centered around the other aspects and happening in my life. I even asked you to help me come up with a URL for the new blog. Many thanks to all whom offered suggestions - be they sincere...

Not much to say, just had to get that out there. I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year's Eve celebration... I know I did. And to prove it, I'll share a few pictures of the night's events with all of you. Enjoy!  

Tonight on the way back from dinner (Ok - pizza and beer at Byrne's Pub) Carli was asking what I did today so I started to tell her, in all too much detail, about how I helped a buddy install a new Subtext blog, built a new Virtual Machine for some development work, read some blogs... yadda-yadda. Then she brought to my attention that my blog "has way to much geeky stuff". To be honest I didn't even know that she looked at this site, but she said that she usually just reads the headlines, looks at the pictures, and then...

Apparently there have already been several problems reported at the polls today - and no Robb, I'm not referring to the poll worker who smelled like mothballs down there in Florida. However, as I mentioned in a comment to Robb's post, I actually ran into some difficulties at the polls myself. How it happened. The poll workers in my district asked me for my ID, which I expected. They even found my name (with current address) in the registration book... where you sign your John Hancock to indicate that you are - well you. So I whipped out...

These are a few pictures that a friend sent me (via FWD, of course) showcasing some really great Jack-O-Lanterns. I can take no credit for any of these images, but I thought they were pretty funny and they should be shared - seeing as All Hallow's Eve is just around the corner. Enjoy!

My daily commute to work is roughly 2,500 miles... so you can just image how much time I spend sitting in traffic! OK, seriously... I really do work that far from our official HQ, but that's because our entire company is very technology forward. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that we make up the quintessential Virtual Office. One of the key tools that I/we use on a daily basis to talk with co-workers (and friends in general) is Skype. One of the cool features of Skype is that it lets you start conference calls with...

Doctor... who needs to go to the Doc. According to this AP story, you should just grab a few pints of your favorite brew and drink it down to help your body fight off the "Big C" - Prostate Cancer to be exact. And there's even more good news... researchers say don't rush out to stock the refrigerator because the ingredient is present in such small amounts that a person would have to drink more than 17 beers to benefit.Sounds like a challenge to me, no?

According to this article at The Sun Online, it looks like Matt Groening and the makers of the popular cartoon The Simpsons have a filmed a version of the show's opening titles using real actors (yeah, humans). The live-action version of the opening follows the cartoon version almost scene for scene... starting with the camera panning over the nuclear power plant and zooming into Bart writing on the chalkboard and ending with the entire family cramming onto the sofa to watch the hit cartoon on their TV. It reminded me like something out of The Twilight Zone.You can download...

I just finished reading an article over at MSNBC in which James Oberg recaps the top 7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster. Now, I'm not sure about the rest of you, but the Challenger disaster has always been one of those moments of my life that I can recall with complete clarity. Despite the fact that I was only about 5 years old at the time - yes, I'm that young - I remember it like it was yesterday... or so I thought before reading Oberg's article. The following is how I've always remembered that event, or rather...