When I got home, on a Saturday night…well, I did not see “the Englishman who could last till three” running out my back door, but I did sit down at my laptop.  Then I heard it.  The slight clicking, like tapping your fingernail on the window.  You guessed it.  My hard drive was toast.  Sure, I could have tried to fix it and maybe (but not likely) squeeze out another day or two, but the sign was ominous, even if the sound wasn’t:  My hard drive was toast. Gone. Dead.  I had exactly until the OS tried to page something in or out of memory time to continue what I was doing, then my computer would die.  So what to do?  It’s not like I could save any files!  And the more I did, the more likely the thing would page out.  Say goodnight, go to sleep. Deal with it tomorrow.

So my hard drive was dead.  Sixty Gigabytes of data gone in the span of a few short “clicks”.  Catastrophe?  Not at all.  I had started backing up with Time Machine a few weeks ago, and just last week I attached my backup drive to the network (using Airdisk on an AEBS).  I knew I had a full backup, and more importantly a recent full backup.  How recent?  I didn’t know yet.  But I slept well.  

Fast forward to Sunday.  My options were to take the whole kit to the Mac store or to get a new drive and go to town.  I dismissed the former option: first, I was out of warranty.  Second, there’s a tiny hairline crack …
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So, video of an alleged easter egg and

testing the “press this!” bookmarklet. wow.

Wordpress 2.6 easter egg. on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

update

the “press this” simply adds a link…it does not embed.

Federal Contractor Misconduct Database

Mandy at Project On For Government Oversight couldn’t wait to share on POGO’s blog about tomorrow’s official release, so neither could we.

“So we’ve been teasing you about the upcoming re-release and updating of POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database.  While we’re officially releasing it tomorrow, since the President just signed the FY 2009 Defense Authorization Act creating a government-wide (though not publicly available) database of information regarding the integrity and performance of federal contractors and grantees, we couldn’t help but share the fact that it’s AVAILABLE NOW.”

Tsk. Tsk.  Bad federal contractors!

This upgrade contains 50 more federal contractors that have gotten themselves into trouble.  In addition, there are some layout improvements and a new sort by Enforcement Agency feature.

So how much have the 100 had to pay for their bad deeds since 1995?

Grand Total of $23.6 Billion

Yes, thats 23… BILLION… with a B.

My plan, sitting down to write this log entry, is to present some philosophy about technology, redundancy, simplicity, and human error.I’m still battling the tense: not sure if that is my plan, or if that was my plan: I’ve realized that of more immediate concern, or at least more civilized priority, is an introduction. So allow me introduce: Me! My name is Mickey and I am the new co-author of WCDC. Hopefully I can help make this discourse between us a little more frequent.

“Discourse,” I say? And “us”? Sure, I maintain that this is a conversation. Certainly between you, the reader, and Ernesto and me, the writers. But the “us” still remains unclear: Is it between you and me? Ernesto and me? You and Us? Us and Them? Besides bringing more frequent updates, what is my role here? Am I the ying to Ernesto’s yang? Am I the Mac to his PC? (Yes, I do use a Mac, and no, Ernesto and I don’t always agree.) After a little thinking about all that, I decided to take my own advice, the one that I meant to write about before the whole introduction business confused things: I decided to keep things simple. Forget about playing a role against my co-author, who is after all the originator of this blog and therefore has last say. Forget about keeping in costume. Just say what I have to say. Practice the fine art of spouting. Isn’t Spouting what blogs are all about anyway? And what better way to start spouting than with a bit of philosophy. So here is my spout about simplicity. And this being a technology blog, I will talk about simplicity in technology.

In deductive sciences, we often follow Occam’s razor and accept that the simplest explanation is the best. This is common practice in areas where we observe a phenomenon which we subsequently try to explain. In technology, however, we often create

the phenomenon. And we quite often overcomplicate it. The problem with this is not the creation or complication: computers and technology will perform their assigned tasks regardless of how simple or complex this tangle of tasks may be. The problem is that we assume that technology might fail while failing to remember that people fail as well. In fact, people fail more frequently. We take great pains to create fail-proof technology that is self-healing, doubly-redundant and fail-safe. We add spares, and spares to the spares. We double our servers, and add redundant channels and pathways. And things work. You take down part A and the Thing stays up. You bring A back and take parts C and B down and the Thing still stays up. That’s the beauty of technology: It does what it’s supposed to, no matter how complex its design. A technology architect can design a very complex system that performs exactly the way it’s supposed to, down to the last specification. Whether by assumption or by mandate from the customer, the design can be completely redundant with every piece independent of any other. And it works. The technology, that is, works. (more…)

Picture having a running grocery list at work. As you happen to think about things you need to pick up at the store, you quickly scribble things down on a piece of paper. On the way home from work, you realize you have an hour to kill and you decide to stop by the supermarket to knock it out. As you walk into the store, you realize, darn you forgot your list.

Has that happen to you?

I signed up with Gubb to manage my grocery list and now there’s no more missing gorcery list problems. There’s no more list problems, period.

Yeah, but I have room for one more overly feature rich, complex program to help manage my life and business like I have room for another set of in-laws, why should I use this thing?

I found this little “web 2″ gem to be just about perfect. You can definitely squeeze this one in. Gubb.net lets you make, lists, that’s it. Simple. And you can access them through your web enabled cell phone. The sign up, setup, all of it, was a breeze and I got right into using it in about 10 seconds. They strictly follow the “don’t make me think” rules of engagement. It’s just absolutely useful.

Great, now the in-laws want us to vacation with them. They’re talking about camping and they want my wife and I to bring… everything. I don’t want to get swamped with email requests for BBQ chips, how do I get this organized between us all without losing it?

First take a deep breath. No worries, mate. Just share your list with your in-laws, or whoever you want to help your get organized. You just add their email address and your off to the races, or camping, or whatever you do with your in-laws. Its one of the best list sharing tools I have come across.

Wow. Well, the in-laws just called and they said they liked this thing so much that they were wondering if they can post the list to their blog. Yes, they’re bloggers, and apparently somewhat famous, probably writing about how much they enjoy bugging me.

Common, this is web 2.0 stuff. There’s always an RSS feed. Simply click under options and find the Feed that’s associated with with the list, copy, paste into your favorite news reader or blog tool, and that’s it! You can attach your list anywhere frankly, with anything that understands RSS technology. For your privacy, your feed reader should support “authenticated feeds”, which simply means you need to enter a username and password to access the feed the first time. You can turn this authentication off if need be.

What else can this baby do?

Check out iCal. If you have Outlook 2007, this feed type integrates with your Outlook Calendar really well. So for example, you can track a list of appointments on Gubb that will appear as a calendar in your Outlook and you’ll be able to identify any conflicts that you may come across your other calendars (use Outlooks Overlay feature). Very easy to use together.

I love it and I love you.

I know bro. I know.