Untagged Posts

I recently moved my blog from the WordPress engine to Octopress. The page you are reading now is a static HTML page which was rendered by Octopress on my computer and then published to a Linode server.

According to a new article from AppleInsider today, there may be 14 new Mac products next week, most likely to be announced at the WWDC.

MobileMe is up but very, very slow.

I am a big proponent of finding a viable biofuel alternative to oil for energy in the United States. Ethanol is a good choice but it's been a question whether or not it would be profitable and cost-effective. A new paper published today in the Proceedings of Natural Sciences clears that all up. Turns out that switchgrass produces 540% more energy than is required to grow it and turn it into ethanol. This should clear the way for large-scale conversion of marginal farmland into switchgrass crops.

I support English as the official language of the United States. Simple reason: efficiency. Cost savings. Look at Canada. Look at the EU. That tells you everything.

Anyone who spends time around me will eventually see me wearing gear from The North Face. Inevitably I find myself explaining why I buy stuff from The North Face. Most people I talk to think that North Face gear is overpriced. I agree that gear from The North Face tends to cost more than other brands of similar gear. However, the price is justified by the quality and reliability of the gear.

I saw something kind of silly today on my way to work. It was sprinkling slightly with occasional bouts of actual rain. A school bus winds its way around our subdivision and stops at various corners to pick up elementary school children. Today, a big black Hummer was waiting at a usual corner stop. The bus pulled up and two or three children got out of the Hummer and onto the bus. The Hummer then proceeded to drive back home, about 200 feet away. That's right, not even a full city block's distance away.

Ahu and I went on the 2nd Annual Chicago Luxury Home Tour on September 17th. It's sort of like a mass open house for new luxury homes. A bunch of builders in the Chicago area open up various homes to the general public. The homes are typically over 5,000 square feet and priced over $1 million. For many people, this is the only way to see first-hand inside the homes of the very wealthy. For those who are very wealthy, it's a chance to see the craftsmanship of these builders and figure out which one would be right for their new dream home.

This article was sent to me by email. It's quite interesting when you consider the way things are today versus the way things used to be.

Just returned from a long weekend in Door County, Wisconsin, with Ahu, parents, and Randy and Tiffany. More soon...

I think I have finally worked out the comments functionality in the Narrative CMS. As originally posted here, I have, in past months, had a lot of problems with comment spam. Unscrupulous marketers send out spambots which crawl my website, leaving advertisement comments on every page that accepts comments. To end this, I implemented a captcha system which defeats spambots by requiring a security code before submitting comments. The security code is displayed as an image on the page and all the user has to do to submit a comment is to type in the code in the image. Easy for people to do, hard for spambots to do. This solved the comment spam problem. However, in recent months I migrated Narrative to a on-demand build model. This means that the content on this website is static and is only refreshed when content is added, deleted, or changed. When a comment is submitted, it is displayed on the page with the article that the comment is about. This is a kind of indirect change to the content. So I needed a mechanism for Narrative to accept comments, save them into the database, and then automatically rebuild the originating article page. Additionally, certain other pages - such as the home page - need to be rebuilt also to show that comments are now present. Without getting into the technical challenges, the end solution is a combination of AJAX and server-side modules working together. Now when you post a comment, your comment is saved and the page is rebuilt and refreshed in your browser instantly. Let me know what you think.

So apparently (according to the all-knowing Wikipedia) I also share a birthday with:

Can't believe it. Stifler and I have the same birthday. Of all people...

Started a new blog! Called it The Weekly Edge: http://www.weeklyedge.com. Gonna blog the best tech news once a week, every Friday. Think of it like a "best of" roundup for the week's most important tech stuff.

If there is one thing every American has known for a long time it is that we should be driving more fuel-efficient cars. Everyone knows it. In science class growing up we get lessons on pollution, history classes on the oil shortages of the 1970s, and regular reminders as America goes off to war to stabilize a region we depend on for oil. Unfortunately, fuel efficiency is like weight loss in the United States - something everyone knows is good for them but something few are successful in achieving.

The unfolding events in New Orleans this week are truly a tragedy. The months following Hurricane Katrina will be a living nightmare for many. It is, quite possibly, the end of New Orleans as we have known it - the birthplace of jazz and home to some of the best food in the world - and this in tandem with other significant destruction and loss of life in Louisiana and Mississippi.

I recently built my own bookcase. Not from a kit, not from a box; from real lumber, screws, and elbow grease. Took only 3 1/2 hours to complete.

In our modern goal-driven society, it's become a pretty common thing to create a list of "things to do before you die." There are quite a few of these lists floating around the Internet these days. I've put together an index of them for reference. Might share my own list at some point.

UPDATED! Since the launch of Google Maps a few months ago, a lot of people have been inspired to create websites dedicated to exploring the world through these map. Additionally, a few innovative websites have been created which combine the mapping functionality with useful data from other sources. There seem to be so many, actually, that I decided to create my own list of them to keep track:

It's a strangely pleasant feeling having a bowl of cereal for breakfast in the morning as an adult. After years of having "breakfast bars" and similar fare, it's nice to get a good bowl of oatmeal to start the day.

I had the pleasure of dining at Nayeb's in Schaumburg this weekend. Ahu and I love having dinner at Reza's in Chicago but hardly have a chance to go there now that we live in the 'burbs. Nayeb's is as close as you get to Reza's without driving into the city.

Mountaineer Ed Viesturs became the first American to summit all 8,000+ meter peaks in the world without supplemental oxygen. It's taken 16 years but he finally pulled it off. Annapurna was his last peak, one that has taken him three attempts to conquer. There's a great story on this in the August 2005 issue of Men's Journal magazine.

The server hosting this website has moved. It used to be hosted at ServerBeach and I was paying about $120 a month for a dedicated server there. I got kind of tired of that and so I set up a dedicated server in the basement of my house. The server running this site is now more powerful than the old one but the upload speed of my home network connection is only around 384 K so the site might seem slower to you. If so, too bad, I'm saving $1000+ a year.

Just got this one from Netflix. Finally.

Been waiting for this movie for a very long time.

Saw this one over the past weekend and it was pretty fun. Not good, mind you, but relatively fun. Pitt and Jolie have real chemistry on-screen and its enjoyable to see them dodge and parry with each other during the more heated moments of the film.

So after Winter Quarter ended at DePaul, pretty much all my focus went into getting in shape for the summer track cycling season. What's track cycling? Bicycle racing around a banked track called a velodrome. Not a popular sport here at all. Only 18 velodromes in the entire U.S. compared to over 70 in Japan. Cycling in America is all road cyclists (thanks, Lance Armstrong) and mountain bikers. With under 1,500 competitive track cyclists in the whole country and just a handful at the Elite level, it's a pretty niche thing. Two of the U.S. velodromes happen to be in the Chicago area though. So here I am.

Ah, Slashdot... Someone posted images from the new Star Wars movie last week. There were about 80 images leaked in total covering every major scene in the movie: The Revenge of the Sith.

Got a strange letter in the mail the other day. Haven't opened it because it wasn't addressed to me. The address is the weird part:

Just signed up for Amazon Prime. $79 for a year of unlimited 2-day shipping. Overnight is only $3.99 extra. Already placed 7 or 8 orders in the few weeks since signing up.

I was listening to the news on the way home last night and heard some guy being interviewed about sick days and whether to take a sick day or not. The guy was some union worker and he said that the first thing he learned when he started working at a union shop was to never, ever take a sick day when actually sick. Always drag your ass in to work no matter how sick you are so that you can use your sick days for something fun, like fishing. Seriously, he said fishing. This whole concept is wrong on so many levels, not the least of which is the fact that when you are sick and at work, you are getting everyone else sick. I have already blogged about this before so no more here. But it just goes to show yet another reason why businesses don't like unions.

The Airbus A380 is the first "superjumbo" jet in the world. It has two full decks and carries 555 passengers in its nominal configuration. Other aircraft have had a second deck but no other airplane in the world has two complete decks. The A380's top deck carries 200 passengers. In an economy-class only seating configuration, the A380 will carry almost 900 passengers. The wingspan of the A380 is almost the length of a football field.

Ahu and I caught this last weekend. Heard it was one of the year's best, and the wine angle was an instant draw for me. Saw it at the Marcus Cinema in Elgin.

Hey, I didn't say it. This did:

Anyone know where I can get a bottle of this stuff?

Oh man. Was looking for a song. Somehow ended up on the Wikipedia entry for American Pie. Clicked the Stifler link. Which led to the "stif-meister" link. And, well...

Self-explanatory in a Kill Bill sort of way:

Is "statuses" even a word??? How about "statuseseses"???? Ah, anyway, I saw this:

They missed out on 25 years worth of events in the world:

I have always heard about this mysterious "Lake Effect Snow" but have never seen it firsthand. I still haven't seen it firsthand but I do have a satellite photo which shows what it looks like from orbit. If you live in Michigan, be afraid, be very afraid:

Another excellent movie and a very good sequel from Quentin Tarantino. Not quite as good as the first but still great. Each movie was written in its own style and are completely different from each other. This one focuses less on the martial arts and more on character development and story.

Wow. What an awesome movie. To start, I've now seen both 1 and 2 and my favorite of the two is the first one. I really enjoyed the swordplay. Gotta give Uma Thurman a lot of respect. She must have worked out and practiced for hundreds of hours to get those moves down.

I loved this novel. I read it while I was in Turkey for J's wedding at the end of October. What an interesting glimpse into the future. The premise regards a huge, innovative company whose primary product is a near-perfect matchmaking service. Behind the service is an AI construct which uses a variety of complicated algorithms to pair men and women together.

I am starting to evolve a strategy to win more auctions while paying as little as possible. If you are familiar with eBay, you know that it allows you to see items up for auction, sorted by time left in the auction. Of particular interest are those items which are down to less than an hour. Those items show up in red in the list.

I have finally discovered eBay. You'd think being a web developer and all, and especially one who thrived and survived in the dotcom bubble days, that I would have discovered it before. But, alas, it always seemed a little too good to be true for me. When I think of auctions, I usually think of some old guy with a loud voice selling off junk seized in a police drug raid.

Took the file extension quiz to see what file extension I am. No idea what I'm talking about? You don't spend enough time on the web. Here's mine:

I recently found myself surrounded by college-age kids discussing pointillism. Pointillism is the technique of applying many small strokes or dots of color to a surface so that when viewed at distance, the dots come appear to come together in a larger, cohesive image.

Wow! Another fantastic book from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This one again features our favorite hero - A. X. L. Pendergast - and brings back some old characters from earlier novels. Similar to Cabinet of Curiosities and Still Life with Crows, this plot features a series of inexplicable crimes.

Election Day is November 2nd this year. Election Day is always the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. Since Monday is the 1st, we have the earliest Election Day that is possible.

Two of my favorite people got engaged this past weekend!!! So pumped for them. They're such a great match.

There is a debate going on between afficionados of the movie The Big Blue. However, before I can describe the debate, a little background info is required. The Big Blue is or was a French movie and when released in Europe, was met with great critical approval. It was considered an avant garde art house movie and enjoyed a successful theater run in Europe. The excellent soundtrack was written by Eric Serra.

There have been some changes to ForkBender.com recently. These are due to me getting closer and closer to the 1.0 release of the Narrative CMS and finalizing some design decisions.

Chicago has a lot of tollways. The history of the tollway is kind of interesting. Supposedly the idea of the toll was created so that the toll would be charged to pay for the creation of the tollway. In other words, Illinois would build the road but you would have to pay to use it, at least until the cost of building the road was recouped. Of course, it turns out that tollways need to be repaired and resurfaced every so often so instead of getting rid of the toll when the road was paid off, they kept the toll to pay for ongoing maintenance. So we have lots of tollways in Chicago and a lot of gridlock during rush hour because of all the people who have to look around for change to pay the toll.

Last Tuesday night I was driving home from class and had a bit of a problem with the Jeep. We've had the Jeep since October 2002 so its about 2 years old. There are 38,000 miles on it so far. Recently my brother was in the Jeep with me and said it sounded a little loud and maybe was making a grinding noise in the front. I didn't really notice anything. Of course, when you drive a car everyday, you might not notice gradual changes if they are very small. But a little bit of change day to day adds up to a big change after two years. This was one of those cases but I didn't realize that until too late.

UPDATE: This link is currently broken. I am searching for a new link. In the meantime, this site has many Office Space quotes and some audio files from the movie:

Along the lines of The Eight, this novel is a highly intellectual fictional rendering. All of the author's books start off in Castilian Spanish and are translated to English by Sonia Soto. The author was formerly a Spanish journalist and has a rich knowledge of European history, music, literature, as well as geography and eccelesiastical facts. The Club Dumas is about rare books and 19th century serial fiction. There is an occult touch also which lends a slightly horrific turn to the story. Another recommended novel but be sure to have a Latin dictionary close at hand to look up some of the ancient text included in the novel.

I found this movie to be very disturbing but an excellent movie nonetheless. It was disturbing in a different way than The House of Sand and Fog was. This time the bad feelings came from the treatment of the Polish Jews by the German soldiers. Its truly unsettling to see fellow humans treated like animals. It was a tragic time and the story is about a famous pianist who manages to survive the war. Definitely worth seeing at least once. I rented the movie through Netflix and then bought the soundtrack, which is filled with moving classical piano pieces.

This is book 10 in the Prey series. I enjoyed this one immensely. There are two "villains" in this novel, both of whom are women. You find out who they are right at the beginning and then the rest of the novel goes back and forth between the villain narrative and the Lucas Davenport narrative. Both are worthy adversaries. One of the women is truly an imaginative piece of work.

This was pretty good. Another book about a disease which almost wipes out the world. After you read enough of these, they get kind of old - virtually the same plot across the board. This one is slightly different in that it really delves into the vectors through which the pathogen is transmitted.

Another excellent Elvis Cole novel. This one has Elvis making a trip to New Orleans. Lots of interesting characters and very good humor.

I read a happy, yet aggravating, news item in the MIT Technology Review today. A drug company in China is putting a SARS vaccine into human trials this month. That's right, they've already got a vaccine for SARS. Of course, it might not work, but considering SARS has only been around for maybe TWO years max, I think that's pretty good. In fact, I bet the AIDS patients around the world who have HIV and have been waiting for a vaccine for TWENTY years are kind of ticked off. China cranks out a SARS vaccine in 2 years and the U.S. can't figure out HIV in 20 years. Just wait until their full-blown stem cell program gets going. China has no restrictions on stem cell research so they are light years ahead of the U.S. there. It won't be long before all the new drugs are coming from China and other non-restricted Asian companies. Of course, we won't be able to get any of these drugs because of the FDA but that's another rant...

Interesting aside from lunch today. Went to Chipotle. Normal day. Guy in front of me in line also getting a Bol.

Tonight was the most incredible night of any Olympic Games I've ever seen. And I've seen every Olympics since I was old enough to watch television. The Olympic Games were always on at my house. At every games I knew all the best athletes and tuned in for every special event.

Well, finally, after months and months of waiting, Doom 3 has finally been released. I received my copy from Amazon.com two days after the release date. I've played all of the previous incarnations of Doom, from the first release of Doom through Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, etc. I think I've played all of them through to the last level but no longer remember what's what.

Masquerade is the 8th novel I've read since moving to West Dundee. I've read other books by Lynds where she was a co-author with Robert Ludlum. As a soloist, she writes in such a way that you'd think Ludlum were the author. Reading Masquerade is a lot like reading a Jason Bourne novel, all international espionage and intrigue, assassins, and memory loss.

This is a powerful, but disturbing film. Ahu and I saw this on Saturday night and thought and talked about it for days afterwards. Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley play their parts in the movie with amazing emotion and belief. Jennifer plays a jobless alcoholic who gets evicted from her home for not paying some taxes. Kingsley plays an Iranian colonel who leaves Iran after the overthrow of the government and seeks asylum in the United States. He shrewdly invests in Connelly's house after the seized home is put up for auction by the local government. However, Connelly does not give up easily and her pursuit of this house and the colonel's defense of his ownership results in a tragic struggle. I was amazed at the compassion of Kingsley's character and the members of his family as they confront the woman who would do them in. Ron Eldard fits well in his role as a wayward deputy who gets in over his head. A definite must-see, just watch it when you are in the mood for a thinking movie, not an uplifting or comedic one.

Shakespeare under the stars. Chris, Tessa, Ahu, and I had a fantastic evening at the American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin last Saturday. Weather in Chicago looked gloomy but everything cleared up by showtime. Perfect night, actually. Fall temperatures. Not a cloud anywhere. Zero wind. These moments during the play where everything just went completely still and quiet. Can't get that kind of peace indoors.

I have now finished the 9th book in the Prey series by John Sandford. Again, this one had a radically different plot but one that still involves a series of unfortunate victims. The criminals in the Prey books are always unique and fascinating but the part I enjoy most is the progression in the life of Lucas Davenport, the detective hero of the series.

Ah, another Elvis Cole novel put to rest... I enjoy reading detective novels but I think I like the Elvis Cole novels best not so much for the detective aspect of it as much as I just like the characters of Elvis Cole and Cole's partner, Joe Pike.

My parents got this lamp for their place. Ahu and I liked it so much we grabbed one for our family room too. Gorgeous warm light. Perfect for reading a book by the fireplace on a cold night.

I ran across this today and about fell off of my chair I was laughing so hard. Finally someone lays out what should be obvious. In particular, I have seen people violating the hair dryer rules in very disturbing ways. I'm always thinking "Is it just me or maybe you're a disgusting freak!!!!" Anyway check this out for a great laugh: http://blogs.slashstar.com/tim/archive/2004/07/14/784.aspx

I really enjoyed this novel from James Rollins. I think I've read all of his books at this point, except maybe one...have to check on that. This one, all 460+ pages, was read over two days. It was tough to put down. The premise of the book centers around some interesting items found at the bottom of the ocean.

When I was looking at the Karate Kid entry, the following recommendation was made:

In the spirit of the new I, Robot movie, check out this link. If I'd seen this at the right age? Totally would be doing robotics instead of programming right now. Then again, can't really do robotics without programming so maybe there's still a shot! (Picture Lloyd Christmas to Mary Swanson: "Sooooo you're telling me there's a chance!!!")

The theme from Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is called Royale. Really slick, really elegant. Running it on all my workstations now. Screenshots here, here, and here. Grab it from here. Unzip it, drop the DLL into c:\windows\resources\themes, double-click the Royal.msstyle file. Done.

Since Ahu and I moved to West Dundee, my commute has been about 45 minutes in the morning and around 60 to 75 minutes in the evening. I listen to the radio in the car but I do not listen to the brainless talk radio stations. I usually listen to NPR (WBEZ in Chicago) or news radio WBBM 780. 780 gets old quickly because of the frequent commercials and repeating news stories. I enjoy NPR but between 4 and 6:30 PM, it gets a little repetitive and somewhat boring, depending on the stories. So I subscribed to XM Radio last week and, ever since, my time in the car is an absolute joy!

This is one of the best Prey novels that I've read. It's very different from the others in that Lucas Davenport isn't solving a murder mystery but is rather attempting to stop a crazy escaped convict from taking revenge for his recently killed wife and sister.

Somehow doubled up all the images in the garden galleries below. No clue how that happened. Gonna fix 'em later though. Got a date with my wife right now!!! See ya!!!

I've read a number of other Patterson novels. This is an older one, written in 1989, and was somewhat inspired by the 1987 stock market crash. The premise is a weird merging of Viet Nam tragedy and betrayal and Wall Street high finance. The plot was average but some of the characters were memorable. In particular, the characters of Hudson and Arch Carroll were interesting. This novel was of the standard paperback length of around 400+ pages but easily could have been longer with a little more background on the above characters. That background information would have been fascinating, I'm sure, and certainly worth the extra reading. This is a novel that could have been great but was instead mediocre because of missing details and unfulfilled character promises.

Coming back from lunch today I somewhat witnessed an accident between a semi and a maroon passenger car on Lake Cook Road and I-294. I was in front of the maroon car and there was one other car between us. The semi crashed right into the back of the maroon car. We were stopped at a light at the time. The semi driver apparently hadn't noticed in time that the traffic had stopped. The fact that I could see the top of the crumpled trunk above the roof of the passenger car should tell you how much of the car had been squashed by the semi. The engine was also making smoke so my guess is that when a semi smashes the back of a car, the exhaust system is damaged and closed up and this causes some sort of engine damage as well. I would say the car is probably totalled.

This is a new type of crime novel for me - one where the main character is a woman instead of a man. I read about Lucas Davenport in the Prey series and Elvis Cole in Crais' detective novels, but Evanovich's Stephanie Plum is something else. Whereas the male characters mentioned above are seasoned pros, One for the Money details the start of Plum's new career as a bounty hunter.

I have now finished the 7th novel in the Prey series by John Sandford. This one was pretty dark. I find it hard to review these books because of their severe content. Let's just say that the characters in the book pull no punches.

Can't say enough about this movie. Loved it.

As seen on a bumper sticker in Northbrook, Illinois:

I was thinking the other day about how I had not written a letter with pen and paper in years and years. In fact, I may not have scribed such a message since I was a child. I realized that I rely completely on email to communicate with friends and family. Of course I still use that archaic device, the telephone, from time to time but pretty much send electronic mail whenever I want to reach out and touch someone.

I ran across this link on the Internet yesterday. It's written by a woman who lives near the city and rides her Kawasaki Ninja on the roads around the city. She says its the best place in the world to ride because there are no cars or people anywhere to be seen and, therefore, the roads are wide open. She says the roads are in perfect condition because there is no wear and tear on them from constant traffic. Only the occasional blade of grass pokes through a minute crack in the pavement.

I just got a copy of the latest release in the Unreal Tournament tradition. I got it the day it became available and put in at least 4 hours playing it already.

Yeah, yeah, I know it usually has another name but I try to keep things clean around here. Anyway. Here's everything I can think of that really ticks me off. Trust me, you don't wanna be on this list. No particular order, and I'm sure it'll keep growing.

Just like I started keeping track of countries I've been to, now I am keeping track of states I have been to in the United States. Found a neat little map on World66 which allows me to highlight the states I've been to.

The movie Pulp Fiction has a ton of great scenes. One of my favorites is when Vincent takes Mia to the restaurant and she orders a special milkshake:

This is one dark book. This is the third book in the Prey series by John Sandford. I really enjoy reading this series (there are 14 books in the series now) and watching the development of the Lucas Davenport character. In this book, Sandford introduces the Michael Bekker villain. He is the darkest and freakiest serial murderer I've read about in a long time. This book drains you when you read it as it takes a lot to steel yourself against the evil in Bekker's personality. Davenport has a tough time in this book and you feel it right along with him. I was going to go right into the fourth book but my mind needs a rest.

I've decided to start keeping track of the countries I've been to before I forget them. The number after the country name is the number of times I've been there. If there is an asterisk (*) then I've only been in the country during transit, i.e. on the way to another country and thus I've only seen the airport.

Having spent months of my life in Europe while travelling in the last few years, I have compiled a list of differences that an American will find interesting. I'm not sure that all of these are present in every European country but all were present on my recent trip to Austria.

People who know me know I basically never watch TV. Don't have time. Work my 40-45 hours, come home, then it's Narrative all night or working out. Sometimes I'll flip on the TV over dinner though.

The news that every Best Western hotels in the US will have free wireless is awesome! I became a Best Western fan when Ahu and I were travelling through Europe on our honeymoon. We could pretty much count on finding a BW in almost every city we went and could rely on the quality being relatively good in each one. The fact that they are offering free WiFi now makes it a good choice for us in the US as well. I am hoping that this will encourage other hotels to provide similar service and pricing. Nothing I hate more than going to a hotel and having to pay a $10 or more daily free for Internet access.

Got a box from Amazon the other day. Bunch of books I'd ordered. Tend to order three or more at once; I "stock up" on whatever I'm looking forward to reading next. Only buy books that have been sitting on my Wish List for a while (six pages long, so I won't run out of candidates anytime soon).

Saw this movie while Ahu and I were getting over the flu. I'm assuming it's the first movie that Brittany Murphy was ever in. It's not a bad film but there really wasn't that much to the story. Yet another, non-thought-provoking way to blow off a couple of hours.

Wow, we are having a heat wave in Chicago today! It's almost 35 degrees warmer today than it was last Thursday or so. That's the good news. The bad news is that we are still below freezing. That's right. The temperature is 35 degrees warmer and still below 32 degrees. Thursday it was -7. There is just something totally wrong about living in a climate where the temperature can vary so greatly and still be so freakin' cold. Totally, totally wrong...offensively wrong...

I first saw this movie in high school shortly after it came out on video. It is a French film (Le Grande Bleu) that totally bombed in the United States. In fact, I was planning on seeing it at the theater but it came and went so quickly that I did not have the chance.

Problem

The second Elvis Cole novel written, Stalking the Angel is about Elvis finding the stolen Hagakure, an antique Japanese manuscript. So far this is even better than the first Elvis Cole novel. More later...

After a really long break, I'm back to writing on ForkBender.com! Crazy busy December. Two Christmas weekends. New Year's. Finalizing construction stuff on the house. All the ongoing Narrative work on top of everything else. Should be posting way more often now though. Got several articles coming in the next day or so.

What is it with this movie??? Everyone seems to like it! I've even heard it was the best movie of the year!!! Come one - you have got to be kidding! I didn't like the movie at all. I will admit that the computer graphics are awesome. Pixar certainly leads the world in this area. But the story was only okay and the voices were not very interesting. In fact, I really disliked the Marlin character (and it has nothing to do with the Cubs). What a whiney guy! Did they get Woody Allen to voice him, because that would have been quite appropriate. The beginning of the movie is almost depressing and the end of the movie is not really exciting. Just didn't like it, what can I say?

This is yet another war movie along the lines of Black Hawk Down. The story is nothing special but the casting was done particularly well and there is some interesting cinematography. Owen Wilson plays a wisecracking F-18 navigator whose plane crashes. Gene Hackman is the admiral in charge of Wilson's battle group. Pilot crashes, calls for help, admiral sends help...eventually. There is an awesome scene where an F-18 is literally "chased" by missiles. A vivid sound effects track and innovative camera motion make the movie more appealing.

I finally got around to watching this movie...only a few years after it was in the theaters. The movie is a somewhat true-to-life story of Carl Brashears, the first African American to become a Master Diver in the U.S. Navy. He is played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. Robert De Niro plays his harsh instructor Billy Sunday. It's a good introduction to the challenges of early diving as the movie takes place before the invention of scuba gear. The divers walk around the bottom of the ocean in brass shoes and attached air hoses. One of the more interesting movies I have seen recently. If the real Carl Brashears is anything like the guy in the movie, he has got to be one of the toughest Navy men in history.

All-time favorite movie. Just sooooo funny.

Last Thursday night, Deloitte's Global Network Services team and a bunch of developers, including myself, went to the newly opened Chicago Indoor Racing complex in Buffalo Grove. The draw of this particular attraction is that you can race go-karts against others and that these go-karts go really fast. Fast enough that no one, even a heavy guy like me, complains about going slow. In fact, several of the guys didn't even push their limits, it's so fast.

I finished scanning in the Rawson family history that my great-grandmother Ruth Rawson Meng wrote 30 years ago. It's a very well prepared document and illustrates perfectly the scholarship that she possessed. I think you will agree it is a very interesting read.

Ahu and I watched this tonight after X-Men. Double feature night. Nice.

Needed AA batteries. Figured this out right as I was leaving work the other night to catch the Metra train downtown for class. On a tight schedule. Could NOT miss that train.

A futuristic story (thus far) about a submarine cruising the polar ice cap which finds a hidden underwater submarine base (perhaps Russian) which contains life.

Just started - will write more soon.

Crazy start, will write more when done.

I got the 2-disc version of the Matrix Reloaded soundtrack from Borders on recommendation from Carmen. After listening to the album several times, I must say it is an excellent soundtrack. It is as good, if not better, than the original Matrix soundtrack. I am listening to it even now as I write this review.

I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons I don’t like watching team sports is that I don’t want to develop any sort of identification with a team. When you watch a team – the Chicago Cubs, for instance – you can easily get caught up in the action and start feeling like part of the team (even if you never sit in the dugout). You feel as if the players are friends of yours. You even call them by their first names; not that they would ever know who you are.

Sort of a disturbing film about a convicted drug dealer (Edward Norton) preparing to check into prison to serve a 7 year term for dealing Russian heroin. The excellent cast includes Rosario Dawson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Barry Pepper. Hoffman's role as a preparatory school teacher is of particular interest. This is a Spike Lee "Joint" and as such has numerous scenes which serve no other purpose other than to make a few political statements. There is some moving footage of post 9/11 New York City which fits in as a fitting memorial backdrop. Look for the scene where Norton is talking to himself in the bathroom mirror - a Spike Lee classic - and the discussions between Norton and Pepper in the club. The description of the prison that awaits Norton's character is enough to give any would-be criminal a whole host of second thoughts. Overall, not the best movie I've seen - certainly no Fight Club - but interesting enough to hold your attention for a couple of hours.

OK so after watching all these Cubs games you can't help but notice the Old Navy commercials. They play them constantly. The one with the woman walking around, all the guys smiling and winking at her. You know the one.

Anyone reading my site recently knows that I run an Internet radio station called Romance Life Radio on Live365.com. Currently, I have 300 MB of total space for music but only use up about 115 MB. I have lots of room for more songs! Unfortunately, getting new music for the station has required purchasing entire CDs of music for one or two romantic tracks. In general, that is a frustration I think many people have - having to buy a $16 CD for one good song.

Studying for fifth exam of the MCSD.

Passed the Windows app dev exam for the MCSD.NET this morning. Boom. Not too bad honestly.

This pretty much sums up how I live my life. My parents will remember that I had a poster on my wall with these rules on it throughout my teenage and college years:

I hate goats. Officially. Heard about the Curse on the Cubs. Watched last night's game. Done.

MCSD studying continues. This book covers the Windows apps exam. Fun stuff. (Not really.)

I am not a sports guy. At all. Can't name half the teams in any league. I know three: Bears, Bulls, Cubs. Illinois kid. That's basically required.

Awesome movie with Tom Hanks, Michael Duncan Clarke, Barry Pepper, and other greats.

Just started

Why is it that corporations get so nasty when the economy goes in the tank? It's understandable that when the going gets tough, hard decisions need to be made. But those decisions should be made in an honorable fashion. Unfortunately, however, it seems that some companies can't take this high road approach. A very good example of this has recently come to my attention. Someone I know works for a company that is "down-sizing". I have a problem with the very term "down-sizing" but that is a different commentary. The problem here is that a lot of existing jobs are being merged into one. So if you have two management positions A and B, soon there will be only one position C, which is basically A + B. In the case of this company, they have decided to eliminate A and B and have the individuals in those positions "interview" for the new position C.

This is the best of the Jack Ryan books, in my opinion. The Bear and the Dragon was written after this one but this is still the best. A very compelling and realistic plot. Just like the plot in Debt of Honor was carried out on September 11th, I fully expect that there is some terrorist group out there looking to enact the plot in this novel. Scary stuff but written with genius.

Yeah they made this one into a movie. Still better in print though. Way better.

Seriously. Does anyone actually use these things???

Well, today is the big day (for me) - I have finally turned 31 and am officially, "thirty-something" as Ketra has reminded me. Didn't there used to be some TV show called thirty-something? Probably I didn't ever watch it because the age of 30 seemed quite far away. I can think of friends I haven't seen in awhile where the "while" has gotten to be about 8 years or more even though it seems like last month. Time sure does fly.

I have a large family. The Sieg family in the McLean county area of Illinois alone has well over 100 members. In fact, about 60-70 of these get together every year in the summer for a Sieg reunion. I am working on publishing the history and genealogy of the Sieg family online.

Great book.

This is an awesome book and a great sequel to Angels and Demons.

Recently I was informed that the TCF Bank website is not able to provide a list of banks near a given zip code. Surely we have all used a search like this by now. You go to a website, type in your zip code, and the website returns a list of locations which are near the given zip code. You might get a list like this:

On September 6th, 2003 we gathered at Howard's Grove in Wisconsin to run a 5K. It was a bright, sunny day and the run went very well. Our group did very well. Chris Peters got 3rd in his age group and my wife Ahu got 3rd in her age group. Tessa's parents each got 1st in their respective age groups. Ahu set a personal best for the 5K and I set a personal best of 27:50 for the 5K. I've run it faster in practice but this was the fastest I ran it in competition. The next race is the Lake Geneva Triathlon next weekend followed by a 5K in Lake Mills, Wisconsin on October 11th.

Had a chance to go back home for the Labor Day weekend. Great weather on Saturday but nothing but rain on Sunday and Monday. The Friday weather forecast had it as sunny weather all weekend. After thousands of mathematical models, countless hours of supercomputer time, and the dissertations of hundreds of doctoral meteorologists, no one is able to accurately predict the weather. How embarrassing...

I was driving home the other night and chanced upon a jazz tune which had a very "elevator music" sound to it. But then I had to stop and realize that I can't remember when the last time I heard music in an elevator. I assume at one time, elevators did actually have music playing in them???

OK so after much research, study, analysis, and experimentation? I've figured out another one of life's Universal Truths.

Sorry to any faithful readers who haven't gotten to see much actual play-by-play commentary lately like I normally write here. I'm bulk-loading the site with archive content so I can test some new features in a few days. Trying to get a list of all the camping gear, etc. that I own so I can make checklists for various trips I'm planning. Also, Ahu and I have tons of pictures that I need to get online, so I'm posting all these image galleries in bulk too. Should have most of this archive content up in a week or so.

I have found a geek movie class at ThinkGeek.com! Take a look at this OfficeSpace legend!

What a weekend. Chicago weather was perfect: 80s during the day, 60s at night. Ahu and I basically lived at the pool.

OK I have to share this Amazon.com story.

Matrix Reloaded in IMAX opens Friday! If you're still confused by the ending (and who isn't?), here's your excuse to see it again. What actually happened with Neo and the Sentinels??? Who IS this "Bane" guy??? The effects in IMAX have gotta be insane. Advance tickets at Fandango.

Am I the only one who was paying attention to the news when a research expedition off of the coast of Cuba last year reported discovering a series of underwater monoliths at approximately 2,000 feet in depth? At the time, National Geographic reported on the story. A few less-scientific minds took interest also. Another article here and the most interesting article here.

Added a travel map! Shows roughly where I've been over the last six months and where I'm headed in the next six. I'll try to keep it updated. Click a destination and it takes you to something related: the hotel, a photo gallery, whatever.

So today I had this moment. The floppy disk? Dead. Officially.

OK this is nuts. AtariAge has a whole series of articles teaching you to program the Atari 2600. The 2600!!! Game programming focus, which makes it fascinating to see what those guys went through back in the day vs. what we deal with now. Absolutely brutal, low-level stuff. You're writing code to push individual scan lines to the TV. You've got 128 bytes of RAM to work with. Bytes! Not kilobytes. Not megabytes. Bytes. Respect.

Just got back from seeing the Jim Carrey's new movie, Bruce Almighty. With Jim Carrey in the lead role, they should have called it Bruce Alrighty Then. Not a bad movie and there were several very funny scenes, although the funniest was not even Carrey's. It's good to see Jim Carrey get back into comedies after attempting the whole drama thing with The Majestic and The Truman Show). The Truman Show was an excellent movie and Carrey's acting talent showed through but Carrey's true gift is his plastic face and quick wit. There is an underlying theme in this movie which embodies Carrey's reacceptance of the comedy genre.

You can contact me by email at csieg@renkara.com. I respond to all emails but I may respond very slowly. If I write back to you within 3 months, you are at the top of my list! Seriously, though, I do take a long time to respond but I keep all emails in my Inbox until I have responded to them, as gentle reminders to do so.

The weather in Chicago has been great lately. We have had three perfect days in a row. Memorial Day weekend has probably never had better weather. However, weather in Chicago leaves much, much!, to be desired. Without stating the obvious, the wind is relentless. It is always windy. ALWAYS!!! Especially downtown. Downtown is the worst because it is dusty. There is all this loose junk on the sidewalks and roads and it blows around in the wind and gets in your eyes and hair. Its really quite lovely - a whole new reason to wear sunglasses.

I just had to write that I have broken the record for Ms. Pac Man at Nickel City in Northbrook, Illinois! It was around 98,000 points and is now approximately 110,000 points.

Article URL: https://charlessieg.com/articles/leverage-factor-defending-the-numbers.html

I have a consulting practice, Vantalect, through which I provide consulting services to a wide variety of Fortune 1000 clients. I specialize in cloud governance and compliance, cost-effective scalable and resilient cloud architectures, data and machine learning pipelines, and operational automation.

This website is stored in a Git repository at Github, generated with the Static Narrative CMS, built with CodeBuild, copied to an S3 bucket, and is served by a CloudFront distribution in the AWS cloud. The site currently contains 42 long-form architecture articles, 378 blog posts spanning 2003 to 2026, and over 300,000 published words.