One of my observations on the net is that the better known I become, the more likely someone will flame me and try to explain how much more they know than I do in one of my professional areas of expertise. Whether this be the game industry, business, or PC software development, I increasingly will find some guy on a forum who will smugly try to tell me how much smarter than they are than I am. Now, maybe they are smarter than I am. But strangely, what I suspect is more likely is that t...

Ah, vacation is over.  So much to do.  The next public beta is scheduled for Thursday, February 4th.  That build should have the dynasties and quests in it.  Don’t worry, it will NOT be fun yet, I promise. I try to suck out all the fun in the betas. I need to.  Below is a picture of me at work that might help:

2009 sucked. There. I said it. Deaths. Stress. It was just a bad year. And I gained weight.  My ideal weight is 165lbs.  I’m now 180lbs. My goal is to get to 170lbs in 10 weeks. 180 179 178 177 176 175 174 173 172 170 Each Monday I’ll weigh myself to see how I’m doing and update this post to display my shame (or progress). Since it’s a pretty modest diet, here’s the basic plan: Get 10,000 steps at leas...

If you work with people online, I’ve not found anything that touches the recent versions of Skype. Skype has gotten so good that I almost feel like they should change its name because a lot of people have come to remember Skype as being that thing for doing crappy video and audio calling.  Over the past year it has become, imo, the best chat program (text, voice, video, whatever) out there.

I live near Detroit. This is where good intentions leads to.

Obinna January 2nd, 2010 8:49 am ET Wishing him good health under my belove president obama health care reform. Mary January 2nd, 2010 8:49 am ET Its the hate inside you rush that's eating your insides like a cancer. This should be a wakeup call to you. tracy January 2nd, 2010 8:43 am ET Rush?...a heart?...who woulda thought. Kate in ATL January 2nd, 2010 7:39 am ET I know what's wrong with his heart. It's made of stone. kate ...

As someone on Twitter pointed out, the same people who want universal healthcare are the same people who are hoping Rush Limbaugh will die. Whenever the government gets involved in something, it becomes about politics. I don’t want health care decided by politicians. As the Stimulus spending has shown – the best predictor of who will get government money is whether they agree with those spending it.

Ironically, this article comes from the much hated (by some) “Faux News”: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/politics/2009/12/31/big-stories-mainstream-media-missed What is interesting is that for all the angst about Fox News that I see online that its popularity is often due to reporting things that simply get ignored elsewhere. I prefer bias by commission rather than omission.

106 billion people are thought to have lived on this planet so far. Here’s a graph with some interesting stats on that. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ww4f/4108672641/sizes/l/

Rush Limbaugh has been hospitalized with chest pains.  As usual, left-wingers are out there hoping he dies. http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2009/12/limbaugh-hospitalization-brings-out.html

The decade is over in less than a day. EnGadget has a great article on the top 10 gadgets of the decade. >> EnGadget

Keyboard Launchpad is a marvelously useful utility. But its UI is pretty long in the tooth.  I was wondering what sorts of features and changes users would like to see? Would anyone like to sketch together ideas on how they’d like to see its user interface changed?

As the new year approaches, we’re starting to look forward to the DesktopX 4 beta. So what are the goals of it?  Well, to be honest, the goals are pretty modest: Strip out the parts that are difficult to work with and build it back up. Stripping it down First off, DesktopX comes with several plugins that I have asked to be removed: Any plug-in that doesn’t work on Windows 7 with UAC on would be removed.  The existing DesktopX library would be renamed ...

Coming up with crazy new hobbies in your mid-30s provides an interesting challenge. 2007: Radar Detectors / Radio scanning. 2008: Beekeeping. 2009: Dietary Supplements So looking forward, I have some new hobbies I’m looking at taking up. 1. Bats.  That is, putting up bat houses and such. 2. Gardening. Though more specifically, conservation and natural restoration. 3. Guns.  I’m having a hard time with this one because in the age of video games, guns l...

I have to say, I really like what Microsoft has done with Office 2010 so far.  Better across the table. The Outlook update is much welcome (and much needed).