Author: Tim Jarrett

Let it snow

It’s been a great weekend. Primarily because I’ve procrastinated.

Friday I got in a solid chunk of work on a project for New Product Development. Then I crapped out. We made an Italian meatloaf — that’s made with ground beef and Italian hot sausage, with hard-boiled eggs in the middle, and some other good stuff that I won’t discuss now, then covered in the tomato sauce that Lisa canned this summer. Saturday I got a little work done — mostly just hung out with Lisa, shopping etc.

Today was the real red-letter day. It was the first snow of the winter last night–supposedly two inches, though the ground was too warm for accumulation. Lots of pretty flakes with no side effects–my favorite kind. We got up early, went shopping. Came back with Lisa’s Christmas present. We definitively decided — she’s a Tiffany girl. Did some cooking afterwards: a killer pork rib roast. Dry rub the pork with salt, pepper, cinnamon, rosemary, fennel… wet roast it in beef stock and wine with quartered oranges… serve it with more sliced oranges and reduced roasting sauce. Oh yeah. I’m delighted to report that two years in business school haven’t killed my cooking abilities.

So this week will be miserable. That’s ok. The weekend was worth it.

Praise Bob! Praise Whittards!

I’m working from home this morning. It’s amazing how much more productive I can be by adding two distractions: Bob Dylan‘s Love and Theft on the stereo and a cup of hot tea. I’ve given Lisa a lot of grief for her habit of bringing back a small duffel bag worth of tea every time she goes to London, but I have to admit, Whittard’s Christmas Tea is awfully nice.

Classic installer weirdness

Weird experience just now: I installed the latest classic Mac OS update (9.2.2) while running Mac OS X. I doubleclicked and ran the installer; it quit all processes IN MY MAC OS X session (except the Dock) and then logged out OS X when it was done. Surely it could have just dumped me back into X and made me restart the Classic process. Frankly, though, I’m amazed it worked at all.

“Aid and comfort” rears its ugly head

Free speech must be getting Ashcroft down:

“To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve… They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”

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And no, I don’t mean blank checks

Ashcroft finds himself on the stand today before Congress. This is an interesting example of checks & balances in action. Good old Patrick Leahy: even after being an anthrax letter recipient, he can still say things like “I want to make sure after we’re all gone that the Constitution is still here…It’s not always popular upholding the Constitution, but it’s always the right thing to do.”
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Now playing

Currently playing song: “Isn’t It A Pity (Version One)” by George Harrison on All Things Must Pass.

Okay, I confess. I’m one of those miserable bastards whose only knowledge of the Quiet Beatle was from the recordings of the Fab Four, “Cloud Nine,” and the Traveling Wilburys (plus a vague horrified memory of “Gone Troppo”). I’m listening to Isn’t It A Pity for the first time and I’m knocked out.

Isn’t it a pity
Now, isn’t it a shame
How we break each other’s hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other’s love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn’t it a pity

Seven years later, KPMG discovers the Web

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. [KPMG] I’ll be sure to go out and get a formal Agreement signed next time I link to someone’s site. [KPMG]

> A recent audit of Web sites, to which KPMG is hyperlinked, has revealed that
> www.corporateanthems.raettig.org contains a link to KPMG’s Web site,
> www.kpmg.com. Please be aware such links require that a formal Agreement
> exist between our two parties, as mandated by our organization’s Web Link
> Policy …However, we
> would ask that you please remove the KPMG reference and corresponding link
> from www.corporateanthems.raettig.org in the meantime.

Oh, and just for the record: [KPMG]

Lizards??

How do web pages get amazingly popular? They produce silly pop-psychology survey tests that give an amusing result, and provide HTML code that includes a link to the survey site so you can share your results with everyone who comes to your web site.

Like this:

If I were a work of art, I would be M. C. Escher’s Lizards.

I am a bizarre juxtaposition of the real and the unreal. Based in the realm of mathematics, my two-dimensional appearance belies a complex and free-willed behaviour which both delights and confuses people.

Which work of art would you be? The Art Test

Or that’s the theory, anyway. Too bad it doesn’t really work.

What I’ve been doing in my spare time

Long time no blog. It is, as I’ve mentioned recently, the end of the semester in about two weeks. Tomorrow I’m doing a presentation on the future of Web Services and how it will affect the Internet and the business of software. The website will be available by the 12th; I’ll link it when it comes on line. I don’t have anything to do directly with building this website; for once I’m happy just to be a content provider.