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April 28, 2000

What a great typo. (Discovered by Dori)

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Mark Hurst of Good Experience unearths a Palm Power Magazine letter to the editor that nicely parallels my sentiments on my new Visor. Does this make me part of "us regular folks?"

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Got a funny email this morning, the complete contents of which were:

"I am a recruiter in NYC. Please e-mail me your resume ASAP."

Now, outside of the fact that I'm not looking for a job right now, and I don't know who this recruiter is, wouldn't one expect the message to include at least a hint of what job opportunity she has in mind for me? My resume is available online, so it's not like she doesn't know what skill set I have or where I am in my career.

I have nothing against recruiters in general. A well-timed email from one lured me away from my last gig and got me my current job at the Economist. But I do get aggravated by some recruiters' practices -- letters like this one, for example, or the recruiter who grabbed my address from my online resume, dialed 411 for my phone number, called me at home, then got my cell phone number from my answering machine and called me while I was having dinner with a friend. Yep, that's a phenomenal way to pitch me a job.

Open message to the recruiters of the world: More power to you for working hard, but a well-written email or instant message is a perfectly good way to approach me about an unexpected employment opportunity. Be respectful, smart, and thorough, and I (and others) will respond in kind.

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April 26, 2000

I can't tell if this is funny because it's truly amusing or because it signifies modern pop culture brought to its logical extreme. (N.B. April 27: the movie on this link had to be taken down due to AP copyright. And lo and behold! Same site has lots of mirrored links as of Apr. 28. Gotta love the web.)

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April 25, 2000

Hypocrite.

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April 24, 2000

New essay today: Why I Hate My Palm Pilot. If it could clean my apartment, maybe I wouldn't mind it so much.

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Far as I can tell the VH1 "Behind The Music/Legends" Drinking Game should get you good and drunk within an hour.

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April 21, 2000

Help counter the effects of MP3 files eating away at Metallica's royalty checks by paying Lars Ulrich for the songs you download. Hah!

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Nice history of Nasdaq on Slate has some great tidbits, like what it stands for (try and guess before you click!) and the fact that tech stocks comprise 15 percent of the board's listings but half of its total market value.

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Back home and settled in. Ah. Assorted week-old links below (and thoughts posted to the journal as well).

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The New York Times ran a story on major league baseball's Web initiative last week that was in many ways a much better report than a similar cover story from the Industry Standard a few weeks ago. I don't know if I should be surprised that the Standard got soundly drubbed in an area its reporting supposedly covers well or if I should just knowingly point out that the New York Times is still one of the best journalism sources around, regardless of the area of reporting (even if they are a few weeks behind).

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Nice political analysis from Gail Collins in today's Times (sorry, no link): "You cannot convince rich people that [running for office] is a tough game. Men and women who wouldn't hire a file clerk without checking references and a urine sample believe voters are going to accept them at face value."

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April 12, 2000

Off to London tomorrow! Expect less frequent (read: no) updates for the next week. Of course, if I used Blogger I could update with ease from wherever I'm surfing, but never mind that. I'm looking forward to not being tethered to my computers.

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April 11, 2000

It's cruel, but what a phrase: "unmitigated shittiness." I kind of like Grand Funk Railroad, but let's give author Ira Robbins the credit he deserves for coming up with that one. (first paragraph of page two)

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April 10, 2000

Number by colors: scientific evidence why some people count in colour. I do this! So I have "wires crossed near the brain's colour centre," huh? And all this time I thought I was just creative. (from Alice)

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Yet another reason why I'm not moving to Silicon Valley.

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Telling stat for you webby types: 17 percent of the page views on my site in April have come from Netscape 3.x browsers.

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April 7, 2000

The web site for the Masters is just great. Dack pointed out the live scoring applet, but I like everything about the site, especially the java-enabled walking tour of the course. Look, Dad! We can zoom in on Hogan Bridge!

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I'm not jealous. I swear I'm not. Really.

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JFax to buy EFax. No doubt the companies will split the difference, naming the merged conglomerate GFax or something equally inane.

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April 6, 2000

We installed an Axis 2100 Network Digital Camera in our office today. (I'd post its URL but it's password-protected.) It's a webcam, but what's nifty about it is the mechanics: the whole thing is Linux firmware. It's a self-contained unit that weighs around five ounces and plugs directly into an Ethernet hub. Give it a static IP address and it's up and running, no Windows-dll finagling required. The fairly clear picture displays at around 600x400 and auto-refreshes as much as four times a second over a LAN.

We have two more of these cams in our London office and use them for videoconferencing. They work fabulously. And from a geek standpoint, they are really cool.

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April 5, 2000

Cow or elephant? This is a neat trick. Try the link with both Netscape and IE to see the difference. Viewing the GIF outside the context of the HTML specifications gives a hint how it works.

Actually, all the toys in the buzzword free zone are pretty neat.

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April 4, 2000

This site is Blogger-free. No offense to the Blogger folks, of course, but I find manipulating an all-text page via hard-coded HTML to be too easy to supplement with a browser-based app.

Then again, I may be the last person in the world who prefers BBEdit to Dreamweaver.

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"World business can only marvel at how arrogance and lack of historical knowledge can lead one of the world's most successful businessmen to the stupidity of a business decision that in one stroke destroys his company and destroys his personal life. He will have to testify in court after court in the next few years."

-- John Gage, chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, on Bill Gates and the Microsoft decision (found on Good Morning Silicon Valley)

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Some people (like the anal-rententive author of this site) proofread their email. Most people don't, although they probably should. (From Mr. Barrett)

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April 3, 2000

I'm as big a Beatles fan as anyone under the age of 30, and I can tell you for sure that their latest project is not targeted at me. Give this to the folks who lived through the phenomenon; as for me, just give me the Blue and Red compliations on CD.

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I hobnobbed this weekend. Going to Internet-based parties gives me dueling emotions, equal parts "Hey, here are some more cool folks that do (and understand!) what I do" and "Down, web geek! Down!" I did have fun, though.

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Copyright © 2000 David Wertheimer. All rights reserved.