Some of my coworkers must have had so much freetime today. According to google analytics and some later verification in my web logs I found a huge spike in work->estrip traffic today during prime work hours that consisted of several hours of total visitation time and 500+ of my blogs being rendered for work IPs in 27 distinct visits lasting an average of 8 minutes each.

It really stuck out because usually there is so little traffic from work. A few here and there from site members like (e:fing), (e:tinypliny) and myself checking in and checking messages. The last time it was high was back on April 21st when I posted this snapshot of a whiteboard I saw where someone drew a pictograph of consultant waste (e:paul,51434). By the way, that someone was not me and I have no idea who it was. I do however concur and so does my union.

I assume the visitors were people from my department because only 40% of the visits were from IE and pretty much everyone outside of my dept has no choice but to use IE 7. That and the higher resolution of the monitors makes it seem likely.

Here is a breakdown of browser visits from work->estrip visits. The A-T column stands for average time and yes that is in minutes.


Assuming its people from my department, and that the average worker in my dept makes about $30/hr, that seems kind of expensive for NY tax payers to foot the bill for. You can verify salaries at http://seethroughny.org/

I see two possibilities for today's spike.
1. I am spontaneously interesting and everyone simultaneously decided to search for me on google and read my blog today.

Lets be honest - probably not the case. Then again, it did start this morning with work->estrip visits to (e:paul,39689) which are the journals I wrote when I was a 10 year computer dork in 1987 and they are pretty hilarious

2. Someone found something curious and then started gossiping about it to other people.

This seems more likely and it is supported by the fact that so many of the visits are to a work related blog about etime (e:paul,52862) and that they happen in the same few minutes ::READ PDF:: which screams email blast before the surfing to other posts began.

Its one of two things:
a. Coworkers also thought the code was an interesting look into browser OS and diversity back in 2001 and wanted to share it with each other.

b. Coworkers couldn't understand the code I posted thought it was some proprietary etime code I "leaked to the internet" when ironically it is totally open source code from netscape circa 2001 and is clearly marked as Permission granted to reuse and distribute. Sadly, I think this is much more likely the case.

The whole point of the post was to show how outdated the browser detection libraries that software used were and how the diversity of browsers and OSes was so much greater back in 2001. The code is a public clientside javascript that just detects the version of browser you are using. There is even a public link on that blog post to the same code online at another facility. Even more ironic is the fact that although it is included in etime, they don't even use it.

And then...
What happend after that, well an work day full of people wasting time reading my totally non work related blog posts during work hours. I barely even visit my own blog during work because I think it is a time waste. Visiting someone else's non-work related blog on company time strikes me as criminal waste of tax payer money. I hope whoever started it feels guilty about what it turned into.

I think that NY taxpayers should start to demand more transparency in web visitation of state workers during work hours. I would love to see just how much time is spend with state workers surfing facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. It must be a huge drain on both productivity and bandwidth.

No, not Sept 11th.

Its been 11 years with (e:terry) and 9 with (e:matthew). I know its not 50 years but it seems pretty incredible to me. Just to be clear thats 9 years as a gay, athiest, polygamist. This should be great office gossip for my stalkers.

Sameer and I ate at globe market on Elmwood for lunch yesterday. They had this very yummy pumpkin and coconut curry soup.



I had it with Crab cakes and this really amazing parmasean and breadcrumbs crush asparagus. I've never seen it that way but it was delicious.

I have been to Letchworth like 30 times but I never saw it so crowded as yesterday. It made me never want to go back. We had to wait forever to get in and then there were numerous traffic jams throughout the park. It was the arts and crafts show weekend but I have been there for that too and don't remember it ever being like this. I guess that was many years ago. It makes me wonder if the internet is making everything more accessible and therefore raising the amount of people that visit.



Here is (e:matthew) taking some pics. See (e:matthew,52934) to see some of them.


I love these viewfinders. They have their own aesthetic that screams institutionalized natural wonder.


We managed to go up on the railroad bridge again.


It is clearly marked no trespassing but people flock to it. This was the most crowded I ever saw it. One time some of my friends were up there and I was down below playing in the river. We were young and neither thing was allowed. They were just about in the middle when a train started coming. I had not been up there at the time so I didn't realize people plus a train could fit. From below, it looked like everyone was going to die.


You can see from the clean tracks that the bridge is still in use by railroad car.


Its really high up. Looking through the tracks is a little frightening. What blows my mind is that people bring their kids up there. Seriously, small children could fall through the cracks.



The whole reason everyone does it is for the view. It is pretty amazing looking down over the falls. You can see some hot air balloons about to take off on the left.





I took so many pictures out the window because of this bird poop ghost. I almost looks like the virgin mary. I think in Mexico this could have been considered a sign of her presence.


I just wish I had made spooky noises in the video.

hair plus electric tape plus stick

I think this was the favorite dancing moment of my life. The speakers were so insane. None of these videos do the sound justice.

Went to the chop house tonight for restaurant week. The food was yummy, I would try it again although for a similar price I very much prefer Rue Franklin both in terms of food and atmosphere. The appetizers were yummy though. I especially liked the shrimp cocktail. We got those and crab cakes and this baby spinich with Bacon wrapped scallops.

Over the weekend I went to pure on Chippewa with a few buddies. The girl we were with got drugged. I guess the lesson is don't drink water from anyone. The hospital said it was PCP. Who does that?

I would like to start off by saying that I know everyone thinks I hate everything Microsoft but I had several windows mobiles phones that I liked. For their time, the Pocket PC 6700 and the AT&T Tilt were the most advanced smartphones out there. Now after failing miserably with the Pink/Kin project microsoft is trying again with Windows Mobile 7. I think they are probably going to fail. Then again I never thought nokia would fail and apple would previal with the iphone, so who am I to say.

First of all, I find the OS is so freakin ugly. This pic is from engagdet.


But really, the looks aren't that important in a phone - its the functionality that counts. Somehow it doesn't even have cut/copy/paste. I can't believe after all the drama with the original iphone not coming with copy/paste, and all the windows 6+ fans making fun of them for it - the new Windows 7 Phone will not have it at launch next week. How does this feature slip through development. Is there something so terribly complicated about copy/paste that I am missing?

From the engadget article:

Update: We just super-double-ultra-plus-confirmed this with Microsoft -- Windows Phone 7 Series will not have copy and paste functionality. There is a data-detection service built into the text-handling API that will recognize phone numbers and addresses, but Microsoft says most users, including Office users, don't really need clipboard functionality. We... respectfully disagree? Sure, let's leave it at that.

From the wiki article you can also see that in addition to cut/copy/paste - tethering, sd card support, and multitasking are left out of windows mobile 7.

..some features found in Windows Mobile 6.5 will not be in Windows Phone 7 at launch. Among the features that won't be present at launch but have been announced to be coming are cut, copy, and paste[46] and full multitasking[47]. Additionally, support for Adobe Flash (version 10.1) has been confirmed to be coming to the browser as well.[48] Support for removable SD cards and tethering[49] have also been left out of the OS. Microsoft claims this to be in the interest of data security for enterprise users.[50] Windows Phone 7 will also not support Silverlight in the web browser[51] or IPsec virtual private network (VPN) security.[52]

The other thing I think is kind of damning is that they do not have sd card slots. You get a 8 or 16GB version and some people are saying you will have the option to purchase space on a "skydrive" which is basically your data in the cloud on microsoft servers. Doesn't that strike you as paying to rent your own content. I would much rather pay the $40 up front and have enough space to store all my content on a card so that I can insert into other devices and use when I have no connection. People are saying they are limiting the sizes to not compete with their own Zune market. I am sure the battery life playing songs from your "skydrive" is far worse than playing songs right off an SD card. On my android phone and former iphone you could play music off the SD card for about a day straight. Plus when you are out of services area - these phones are GSM afterall - there is a good chance you would not even be able to get to your music. That and the fact that mobile broadband prices are skyrocketing - notice there are almost no more unlimited accounts (which were really only 5GB to begin with.) Most plans are somewhere around 2GB-3GB. So after that, what is the point of even having a skydrive. To pay $1000 a month to listen to your own music.

In the end the real killer for me would be having to stick with Pocket IE vs mobile Safari or Chrome. If microsoft has trouble keeping its flagship browser relevant and up to date - how on earth will the mobile one be. According the the wiki article

Windows Phone 7 features a version of Internet Explorer Mobile with a rendering engine that is "halfway between IE7 and IE8"

This week Microsoft sued Motorola over android. The way the news portrays it you would think that motorola's android mobile technology is based on windows mobile code. What they are really suing over is this:

synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

Notifying applications of changes in signal stength and battery power on a mobile platform is essential and I highly doubt microsoft was the first corporation to come up with such an algorithm. It is the computer equivalent of granting a corporation a patent to cook food in pots and pans or to carry water in a container. The thing is microsoft and other large corporations have the ability to pay for all these patents or buy up smaller corporations that own them. It puts way to much power in the hands of big corporations and stifles the development of new technology.

I think a lot of the patents were granted because the people granting the patents had no idea what they really meant. It is pretty easy to make something so basic seem complicated and specific.

I find it ironic that the same large corporations that vie for free markets in order to ship their jobs off to 2nd and 3rd world countries with cheaper wages rely on this total government bureaucracy style protection. If someone can make something better or more efficient using different code, then let them.

If anything allow people to use copyright to protect the expression of the idea (the entire software package/product) but prevent patents on ideas.

In connection with computer software, copyright law can be used to prevent the total duplication of a software program, as well as the copying of a portion of software code (both of which are examples of "literal infringement"). In addition, copyright does provide some protection against non-literal infringement, such as the creation of "cloned" software.

I hope the windows 7 phone fails miserably. Then I hope they go out of the mobile phone business once and for all.