It’s 70 and sunny today, way too nice to sit inside all day. So even though I’m working on 5 hours of sleep after guys night out last night, I decided to go for a hike on this trail I’ve driven by 100 times. It’s 3.6 miles one way, so 7.2 for the round trip. [...]
This American Life did a two part report from Harper Valley High in Chicago over the last month. If you haven’t heard of Harper High, it is an inner city school where over the last year, 29 students or very recent students were injured or killed by gun shot. I think it was 8 killed. [...]
I’ve had Owncloud 5 installed for a few days now. I really, really want to like this app. It’s definitely improved quite a bit since versions 3 and 4, both of which I abandoned after a week. Version 5 isn’t going to last any longer. It’s not all Owncloud’s fault. Files: File sync seems to [...]
This American Life did an in depth story about disability benefits that has been stuck in my head since I listened on Friday. The number of people collecting disability benefits has been increasing for years. Even during the last couple of economic booms the number kept going up. Are we getting sicker and more frail? [...]
This Slate article about the success of the Harvard basketball program seems to hinting at something classiest and elitist, without actually coming out and saying it. The whole tone of the article seems to be that if you are good enough to get a basketball scholarship to college you can’t be “Harvard material.” Now, Harvard [...]
And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out of my life. The Internet was buzzing yesterday with the news that Google is shutting down Reader on July 1. I predicted this last year. That does not make me particularly smart. When they killed Adsense for RSS Feeds it was [...]
One advantage of unemployment is that I’ve been catching up on my reading. That will end next week when I go back to work. Click through for more detailed reviews. Homeland – Cory Doctorow: Disappointing. Almost Perfect – W.E. Peterson: Who knew one of the losers in the word processor wars had such an interesting [...]
Google Glass has been in the tech news quite a bit in recent months. Honestly, I have not paid much attention because they idea of walking around wearing a pair of dorky looking glasses that are connected to the Internet doesn’t really appeal to me. However, this article raises a scary point that I had [...]
I think we can all agree that the days of graduating from college, getting a job and working your way up the corporate ladder at one company are gone forever. In the present, and even more so for kids just getting to college now, they will probably have 20-30 jobs and 3 careers before they [...]
Apparently Technorati is still an active site. Who knew? Also, I apparently have never claimed ODonnellWeb there. So I’m doing it now. I hear blogs are the next big thing on the Internet Seriously, I do think businesses are going to start to realize that neglecting their blogs in favor of Facebook was a mistake. [...]
A LA based publication published a list of the top 20 hair metal albums a while ago. I just found this via an imaginary Internet friend. I had some issues with their list. 20. Junkyard Junkyard (1989) It’s not a bad album, but I can’t see how this makes a top 20 list. It was [...]
Online job search is completely broken. You’d think we would have this figured out in 2013. You’d be wrong. 25 years ago if you were looking for a job in Washington DC you bought the Sunday Washington Post and pretty every single job would be listed. Where do you go today for that kind of [...]
American Fencer is the autobiography of Tim Morehouse, US Silver Medalist in Team Saber at the 2008 Olympics. We got this for my son for Christmas, as he is a fencer. He read it quickly and passed to me. I enjoyed it greatly. Tim’s journey from a 7th grader who signed up for fencing because [...]
It was a cold, breezy, blindingly bright day, with the kind of deep blue skies you can only get on a winter day when the humidity is low and the pollen is still hibernating. The diner looked quaint enough, we were hungry and didn’t want to eat at a chain restaurant, so the diner it [...]
Notepad and Netscape New Year’s Eve 1-9-9-5 We have better plans tonight. It was a cold and windy one, that night of Dec 31, 1995. OK, actually I have no idea if it was cold or windy. What I do remember is that my wife was 7+ months pregnant with out daughter, so we were [...]
