As I get older, I am becoming more aware of how the body seems to change from a position of “must make sure this organism lives so it can reproduce” to “meh”.  At 38, I am definitely seeing the transition from “must live” to “meh” which is not uncommon for people my age from what I’m learning. Being the ungraceful kook I am, I’m learning about dietary supplements that might provide if not a reversal of the negative trend at leas...

I’m still waiting to get a decent, non-windy weekend to go up north before Fall.  It ain’t looking promising.

Since 9/11, I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to.  It’s not because I worry about terrorists or that the cost has changed. It’s because air travel has become such a hassle. If you travel once or twice a year, the process for getting from the terminal to the airplane may not be that big of a deal.  But if you’re a frequent traveler, it’s a royal pain. For me, the biggest problem is airport security. I absolutely hate having to take off my shoes and having to take my lapt...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574387021307651050.html Hilarious article in which a doctor turns the table on lawyers when it comes to “reform”.

If you have friends to play with on the Internet, then playing online is probably pretty fun. That’s how I play whenever I can. But when you’re stuck playing with strangers, well, that’s when things go bad.  Ready to Play is being designed to solve some of this.  Mostly people will talk about its chat or matchmaking but what I think really makes it special is the recommended friends broadcasting.  That is, you say what kind of gamer you are and it will find other people lik...

For years I thought I understood what causes heart attacks. The arteries narrow due to cholesterol build up and such until they get so blocked that eventually a blood clot gets stuck and voila. While that does happen, apparently in most cases apparently it’s inflammation that does us in.  Specifically, cholesterol and such coat the arteries which then get covered by the body’s natural defense. Eventually, this will swell a bit and burst, releasing a substance that causes the blockage r...

Anyone who regularly reads my blogs knows that my views on the world are all over the place.  Not a week has gone by over the past decade or so that someone hasn’t contacted us saying they will never purchase something from my employer because I, being said employer’s CEO, offended them with something I said. I have no doubt that over the years, my blogs, comments, writings, what have you have cost our company thousands of dollars because I take those people at their word.  So why...

When JoeUser first started, we had the concept of audiences where we could have a friends list and decide who could see our posts.  This system became very database intensive once we decided, after the fact, to integrate blog posts and forum posts together to optimize the overall database performance. The problem, however is that there are posts that one would make for family and friends and ones for the general public.  As I’ve learned the hard way since the change over, public s...

I can’t believe I’ve had my ThinkPad T400 a year (or pretty much a year). I love it.  Let me be clear about that: I’m IN love with it.  The romance continues. Best laptop ever. Let me count the ways: 1. It’s light.  I don’t need a super fast laptop but it has to be decently beefy so that I can at least demo games and applications on it.  But I want it light. Less than 4 pounds ideally. The T400 is pretty light. 2. Trackpoint. Why do I buy ThinkPads? I need...

Let’s say one day the public voted in politicians who vowed for the top 1% of income earners to have 100% of their income paid in as taxes. Would this be slavery? Those people could move to another country. Those people aren’t in chains. So would this be oppressive? I think we could agree it would be counterproductive to the economy but that’s not the question. Would it be slavery or oppressive? What do you think?

I’m on the plane on my way to Seattle so i don’t have the book in front of me but I’m reading an interesting book by the same author of the Singularity who outlines his belief that if we can live until around 2024 that we’ll enter an age where dying becomes very rare. His position is that between now and 2024 we’ll reach a level of biotechnology where the big killers – cancer and heart disease will be well on their way out thanks to our exponentially increasing understanding of our living s...

My wife and I have started taking our 3 year old to a new activity called “Tiny monkeys” that lets kids learn to tumble and jump and do all kinds of neat, fun things.  I have to say, being a dad is definitely the funnest thing I’ve ever done.  Watching our tiny monkey running about the house (yesterday, she was saying she was a cat, the day before she said she was a sheep saying “Baaah” all the time). 

Today the boys and I began harvesting honey. But it quickly becomes a race against time because even as we put the frames in the extractor, yellow jackets are everywhere trying to steal our honey (well steal the honey we stole from the bees).

Everyone’s Hitler these days.  And everyone is looking for comparison to Hitler. In this article , I said that Obama creeps me out. He creeps me out because he seems to encourage the cult of personality much the same as Adolph Hitler did.  That doesn’t make Obama Hitler, but it should send up a flag that people are supporting a set of policies but rather are supporting a man and I find that dangerous.   It creeps me out when any political leader tries to ass...

I’m reading a recent book called The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Written by Ray Kurzweil who is a fairly known futurist having predicted things from the Internet as we know it (Back in the early 80s), iPhones (well, basically the iPhone) as well as having developed a number of interesting technologies himself, Kurzweil makes a pretty interesting case that by 2045 (his predictions are very specific to invite comparison when the time comes) humans will have become esse...