I just finished reading "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin. It is a thoughtful history (and a 1992 Pultizer Prize winner) that traces the oil industry from its beginnings until 1990. The book was an easy read despite its length, and offered lots of insight into the oil industry and how it evolved. I found oil and its connections to politics, the world wars, and the United State's military conflicts particularly interesting. It is a must read, especially for people like me who work in the oil industry.
With all the talk at work about outsourcing, and the recent articles in many trade "rags" about the migration of IT jobs to China and India, I found this Slashdot story refreshing:
"Fox reports that Dell is moving its call center operations for the Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses. Is this the beginning of a trend where companies recognize that the quality offered by relocation to cheaper centers around the world doesn't result in customer appreciation and better quality?"
Economics are governed by trade, supply, and demand. In my opinion, IT outsourcing is an abitrage play and over time the price discrepancies will disappear. Hopefully, this will happen sooner rather than later, for us in the software development field. For now, we need to depend on superior training and a superior finished product to survive.
Chris, Gloria, Bear (a 163 lb South African dog) and I started in Michigan with an RV followed by a Jeep Cherokee in tow. The destination was San Francisco. We visited the Black Hills, the Bad Lands, Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Yellowstone, the Great Salt Lake, and Lake Tahoe on the way. Unfortunately, we missed seeing the Devil's Tower, due to a navigational mishap. Before you suspect me as the culprit, I assure you I was not guilty this time around.
Chris and I both took our digital cameras along and took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, I don't have enough web hosting space to post them. I will post a subset of them in the near future. (Note to self: I need to buy a digital camera with better optical zoom. Chris' 10x optical zoom came in especially handy.) The wildlife pictures from Yellowstone against the contrast of snow are my favorites along with Chris and I's November swim in the Great Salt Lake. We also enjoyed the Boiling River, which is a natural hot tub of boiling water from deep in the earth's crust and the near-freezing Yellowstone River a few feet away. Of course, snow was coming down as we sat in the Boiling River enjoying a great view of Yellowstone's River and mountains.
It was a great trip and I recommend driving across the western US. Driving an RV is the only way to go and having an SUV at your disposal is a nice perk. Pick up some "Fat Tire" brew and head on a western adventure!
BGSU Linebacker Mitch Hewitt after Miami's 33-10 blowout win:
"We gave up 33 points tonight, and that is a lot more than we would
have liked to give up. It's not good."
"I think (Miami's) offense started picking up things in the second
half that they weren't in the first half. We just didn't adjust and
they came out on top."
"Miami is the best team we have played this season. They are better
than Purdue, and better than Ohio State."
http://bgsufalcons.ocsn.com/sports/m-footbl/recaps/110503aab.html
I have been slacking when it comes to posting my halloween pictures. But they are available now. Mandy and I were popular this halloween season, attending three fun parties.
Miami shocks Bowling Green in MAC Showdown 33-10. Miami jumps to No. 1 in MAC. Read more. Go Redskins!!! :-)
Reading on John's Jottings I figured out how to change my blog from an article excerpt to a full article feed. I used the MT-EntryBodyMore plugin. To add this functionality, I copied
mt-entrybodymore.pl to my plugins directory and slightly modified my template for this feed: index.rdf. Hopefully you find the new feed useful!
On a related note, a couple people commented about the inability to place links in my comments section. I have decided to disable "Allow HTML in comments?" for now. If you want to place a URL in my comments section, then paste the actual URL without surrounding HTML. The rational for this is I don't want to open up HTML in my comments section until I have a comment spam killer in place. Not familiar with this issue? Visit these blog entries for more information: Gureilla Tactics Against Blog Comment Spammers, stopping blog spamming.
Useful ASP.NET documentation. I guess this entry further proves I am a BillyBitch (Micro$oft user for the non-technical audience). Jeremy did you coin this term? Perhaps you should read some .NET case studies that substantiate the efficiencies gained from utilizing .NET. *laughs* I need to remember to prevent multiple clicks of a submit button in my ASP.NET code.
Random thought, Google fight is great fun!
I have always been impressed by GNU tools, which are free and far superior to their commercial counterparts. I've found the GNU Diffutils especially useful recently. Check them out if you ever need to compare files for differences.