If you read this by coming to my website, you can ignore this message.
For those of you with RSS readers, please ignore the last post I just made. I was testing some new Tabblo feature stuff, and I inadvertantly published a link to our test environment. You’d be really bummed if you made a tabblo on the test area, and then we deleted the test database. . . .
I was at my desk. I was doing the final QA cycles on a new mini-feature (if you use Tabblo, and you have a blog, you’ll like it, but it has been . . . delayed by events). The feature was working for most cases, and Eddie and Dave were ironing out the final implementation details while I was trying to break it.
Suddenly, I heard shouting and a loud roaring noise. I jumped up and ran to the door of the office and was met by a spray of water. The sprinkler was hosing down the central hallway outside the door. I turned back inside and Dave closed the door. Eddie, Dave, and I ran around in circles lifting computers, hubs, power cords etc. off the floor and onto high ground as fast as we could. Water was coming in under the door at a good clip, and the fire alarm had started to go off.
We opened the door and scooted across the hallway to the fire exit on the opposite wall, and went outside. We had time to catch our breath and contemplate (dread) what was happening to our office. The fire trucks came and, a few minutes later, the water slowed from a deluge to a dribble. By 8:30 it was stopped for good.
The rest of the night was a lot of sweeping water, shop vacs, brooms, and separating trash from salvage – nothing worth reliving, let alone asking anyone to read about.
Antonio made a tabblo right after it happened (heck, as it happened). I took photos too (more after the fact than during) and created a variation of his tabblo. Despite how tired I am at this point, I like the variation. You get to see Antonio’s perspective and my perspective on the same event. Some things look the same, but others are very different.
Good night.
I reviewed Gabrieli’s campaign spending on the OCPF website. It looks like he spent $9.4 million in his primary campaign. He got 248,000 votes. That works out to $37.93 per vote. Winning, of course, makes you look good: Patrick spent $4.9 million to get 452,000 votes, or $10.80 per vote. That’s still a lot of money, but it went farther.
What does this mean? For one thing, it shows that “buying an election” is easier said than done. This doesn’t disprove that money matters, but it shows that money isn’t the only thing that matters. If money was the only factor, Gabrieli would have walked away with 50% of the vote, not Patrick. The next time you read an editorial compaining about the role of money in elections, remember to check the numbers once the dust has settled a bit.
Did you read this information in the mainstream press? Not too likely. It’s after the fact, there’s no one to give a sound bite, and that makes it boring. Check out the Globe’s political finance page. Last update? Last month.
My favorite Red Sox reading is a comic called Soxaholix. I guess it is a blog, but it’s not in the standard model.
Today’s episode is typical. Good critique of Boston media. Witty writing – check out the “arms” entendres. Good links to content on the web. And, best of all, the comments. The Sox have a lot of smart, articulate fans, but I think Soxaholix has the highest signal-to-noise of all of the fan sites.
June ’04 is when I realized the brilliance. There is no way to link Michael Moore’s anti-Bush tirade to the Saudi oil sheiks to Babe Ruth – or so you’d think.
I haven’t found my writing rhythm yet, as evidenced by this week’s output. Catching up with a grab-bag of topics.
It was a very busy week. We pushed a bunch of minor features and good bug fixes that kept me hopping. I had lunch on Tuesday with Jason Butler. He’s at Boston.com with a very interesting job. Ask him about search – he’s doing some vThat night I went to the Red Sox game. I was hoping to see Ortiz hit 50. Instead I stood in the rain and watched Wakefield give up 6 runs. I’ve enjoyed better games.
Wednesday, or course, was Grandma and Grandpa’s 65th.
As everyone knows, Chavez’s rant at the UN has spawned a spike in sales for Noam Chomsky. It also has brought out some quality Chomsky bashing:
But Alan M. Dershowitz, the lawyer and Harvard Law School professor, said he doubted whether many of the current buyers would ever actually read the book.
“I don’t know anybody who’s ever read a Chomsky book,†said Mr. Dershowitz, who said he first met Mr. Chomsky in 1948 at a Hebrew-speaking Zionist camp in the Pocono Mountains where Mr. Dershowitz was a camper and Mr. Chomsky was a counselor.
“You buy them, you put them in your pockets, you put them out on your coffee table,†said Mr. Dershowitz, a longtime critic of Mr. Chomsky. The people who are buying “Hegemony†now, he added, “I promise you they are not going to get to the end of the book.â€
He continued: “He does not write page turners, he writes page stoppers. There are a lot of bent pages in Noam Chomsky’s books, and they are usually at about Page 16.â€
Ouch.
Mom had a particularly good quote in the paper this week: “‘I think we’ve heard this song before, and we don’t need to hear another verse,’ Dunn said, referring to Hobbs’ previous pleas for release.”
On Wednesday I was in Dedham for my grandparent’s 65th anniversary. I made a tabblo of the event. Check out the tabblo to see photos and recap of the event.
I did a couple new things with that tabblo. First, I used my camera’s video mode to record a few clips of Grandma and Grandpa talking about their wedding. Then, I uploaded the clips to YouTube and linked to YouTube from the tabblo. I wonder how we can make video “work” as a product within Tabblo.
We’re trying to get Tabblo a bit of free publicity. Would you please be kind enough to go to Digg.com and “digg” the story about Tabblo? If you’re not a member of Digg, you’ll have to register. Think of it as a learning experience: Digg is one of the poster children of Web 2.0.
I’m sure my legions of regular readers are enough to get us to the top of the list (hah!).
Thanks in advance.
Here we are, the night before the primaries. You’d think I’d have something to say, wouldn’t you? Too tired. Check out the pretty pictures instead.
The swamp’s colors are fall’s precursor.
Taken on Saturday on my ride up the bikepath.