What can the story behind this be?



I found a link to my High School reunions photo gallery Everyone looks so much larger than I remember. I specifically remember being jealous of how sporty these guys were. I guess times have changed.

socker, socker




Even Chris B got fat? Maybe it's just a weird angle - swim team

I spent the day doing a million different programming tasks at work then during my break I did some design. They bought me the new Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash so it seems like there may be some designing afterall.

My discuss program looks a lot better with a skin on it. There are already two themes. This is the brown one. I have been looking for something to do in brown and purple and this is it, I guess.





I promise I will release it for beta testing soon. First I need to put the finishing touches on it. Basically it is like a group email/document editor - chat program where you can upload attachments for everyone to look and keep track of changes. When the dicussion is compelete. E.g. the document has been fully edited and agreed upon, is it exported and removed from the system.

The system is not a repository for the info but more like a tool to create a document for a group of people without having to rely on lots of emails. Plus instad of having to send all the attachments all over the place, the people come to them,

Yesterday I day I had to move some data to a computer that was not networked to the web. It had been a long time since I had experienced that. Usually I just use my phone to reach out the the web when the computer can't do it by itself, so basically I have been like a walking network access point for years now. I didn't have my phone with me and so I tried to use an ipod shuffle to move the data and for some reason the computer would not accept it as drive. It just never popped up. We actually tried two different ones.



I could have burned a CD but we are talking about 1K of data. It was so tiny I could have just printed it out and typed it back in. It was about 1 page of text. Then one of my coworkers suggested a floppy. I had totally forgotten that they existed - have you young peeps even ever seen one? I remember punching holes in the big ones. Well not the really big ones but the 5 and 1/4 ones.

Anyways it worked and was really fast considering it was a 1k transfer. I think it was really 4k in the end because eof the file structure. Long live the floppy, lol.



On another note, have you noticed more places are moving toward the automated cashier. I hate that. Who wants that. Obviously not the consumer and obviously not the people who want jobs. I think there is no reason I should have to check myself out when I am buying their product. Have Americans because so "Automated" they can't even handle a simple sales transaction with a human. Home depot has them now.

Remember a while back I was ranting [inlink]paul,4123[/inlink] about some local design company that I thought did the most horrible web designs . Well I ended up having a meeting with Mr. Flynn himself today and he really does have no sense of web style. Seems like a nice guy but just look at this



It has enough faded white to make me feel like I am in heaven or that I left my computer out in the sun too long. Yuck and the drop shadow is out of control. If I had him as a student I would have given this design an F- .

I wish they would have let me just design and program The Ride For Roswell Site instead of just "draping" his tacky photshop skins over my quality content adminsitration/editing system. The Ride For Roswell Site suggests nothing about a bicycle race accept the new "Intro To Digital Media Art/Look Mommy I Can use Photoshop To Make A Collage" splash graphic.

At one point he actually suggested that I stick a big bright yellow star across the "splash page." He had printed out a photoshop doc to show me what a big yellow star looks like. It was horrific.

During the whole thing I never let on that I was a designer. I just pretended to be a clueless programmer with no opinion because I knew that if we discussed it I was going to start laughing. This is the only reason I want to finish my thesis. So when this issue comes up I can say that I am a "Master of Fine Arts."

On another note yet still, the new chat was a huge sucess. Yeah for SQLite. I am going to convert much of my life to it. The new discuss application is based on it. You can play with it soon.

Google has an extraordinary amount of information about its users. It logs all the searches made on it and stores this information indefinitely. Because every computer has a unique IP (internet protocol) address, every visit to every website can be traced back to the computer making it - a fact which is well known in geek circles but remarkably under-publicised outside them. (Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist, was given 10 years in jail last April for "leaking state secrets" after Yahoo! in Hong Kong handed over information linking his IP address and his e-mail to the Chinese authorities.) Users of Google's Gmail service, who are already having their e-mails scanned to place targeted ads, have given the company their identity, a full record of all their searches and copies of all their e-mails, stored indefinitely. Users of Google's Toolbar are inadvertently giving the company a list of not just all their searches but also of every single website they visit. And, as the lawsuit makes clear, all this information is potentially vulnerable to subpoena.
Quoted from: Big Google is watching you - Sunday Times - Times Online

I have said this for so long.

Basically, I am saying that belief in God is not totally harmless for everyone or the advancement of science unless believers do nothing to act on their beliefs when they conflict with science.

Religion is not a hindrance to advancing as a people scientifically, intellectually, or otherwise. To state otherwise is patently false and ignores the totality of human existence. [inlink]jason,298[/inlink] --jason

Jason, don't know about patently false, that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration in country where we have been fighting to teach evolution [inlink]paul,3438[/inlink] in school for a century and where people are dying of all sort of diseases that can be cured or alleviated by advancements associated with stem cell research.

I think you could say, "Believing in religion, without acting upon it, is not a hindrance to advancing as a people scientifically, intellectually, or otherwise. " But who believs in religion without acting upon it. And if they do, do they really believe?

I would like to use this example speech at whitehouse.gov by the President George Bush in regard to Stem Cell research as an example of when religious influence hinders science.

I've asked those questions and others of scientists, scholars, bioethicists, religious leaders, doctors, researchers, members of Congress, my Cabinet, and my friends. I have read heartfelt letters from many Americans. I have given this issue a great deal of thought, prayer and considerable reflection. And I have found widespread disagreement . . . Thank you for listening. Good night, and God bless America. --GW Bush

I don't want the social and legal policy I am subjected to based on my ultimate executive's prayer power in any way.

Surely, we can develop other methods of getting stem cells in the future so that we can avoid having to use embryonic ones. But the embryonic stem cell method exists here now and many people could be helped by the research that will be dead by the time we catch up with other methods. Furthermore, I am terrified of other countries having access to this technology before we do. Especially China.

Saying "I believeeeee in God" has never hindered me in any way, and it never will. -jason

That is fine for you because you are the one believing but what about the people whose lives affected by the social and legal policy agenda set forth by the believers. Belief in God is not safe in a free society where the people with the belief are also able to make social and legal policy based on those beliefs, for people that do not believe in the same God or do not believe in God at all. And if the people making policy that believ in God do not let God's desires influence them, then do they really believ in God?

There isn't anyone alive who can say with any matter of truth or authority God is real or not.[inlink]jason,298[/inlink] --jason

I think this is precisely why many people are uncomfortable submitted to the desires of God's moral and ethic code.