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May 30, 2002

Just got an email at

Just got an email at work:

The city of Palo Alto transformer has gone down and will not be up until 8:00pm.
What happened?

Posted by sam at 08:58 PM

Iceland plans to ditch fossil

Iceland plans to ditch fossil fuels in 30-40 years [Yahoo!]

Posted by sam at 04:20 PM

I read in the merc

I read in the merc today that Palo Alto public schools are testing organic food for school lunches. That's good news. But what kid will voluntarily eat chickenless nuggets?

I'm looking for a Windoze-based photo slide show app. Any ideas? I've got a growing collection of digital photos and I need a convenient way to browse and display them. The MS photo editor just does not cut it.

GQview is perfect but only for Linux. sam at tingleff.com

Update: VisionViewer 3 [Java] is free and works well once you figure out the (ugly) UI. It won't do a full screen slide show though.

Posted by sam at 12:08 PM

C|net: Tech companies mandate time

C|net: Tech companies mandate time off

I wouldn't mind an unpaid week off in July.

Posted by sam at 02:37 AM

May 29, 2002

I signed up for ICQ

I signed up for ICQ last week. Many of my coworkers in Germany and Bulgaria use it instead of email for short messages.

Does anyone else use it for work purposes? USA Today says it's a security risk. Network admins think anything they don't have the power to screw up is a risk.

My number is 160876397.

Posted by sam at 01:06 PM

May 24, 2002

It's good to be back

It's good to be back in California. On the flight home from London though, I sat through The Majestic [Salon: "an elephantine, oppressively sentimental look at small-town America at the time of the Hollywood blacklist"] and was embarrassed to live in the same country as the Hollywood machine.

Netflix IPO raises $82.5 million

Posted by sam at 03:37 AM

May 16, 2002

There's a funny article on

There's a funny article on Salon today about online dating. The basic idea is that online singles are all packaged as brands to be consumed.

Match.com says that paid subscribers are up 195 percent from last year. Salon says to "talk to any youngish single person in New York." Don't think any of my friends are doing this. Not that I know of anyway. Chris? How about doing an experiment for tingleff.com?

Also on Salon today is a (negative) review of Attack of the Clones. About Jar Jar: "for what it's worth, the preview audience I saw the movie with hissed when he came on-screen and cheered when he left."

Posted by sam at 10:48 AM

May 15, 2002

Apple is entering the server

Apple is entering the server market. Expensive.

Posted by sam at 12:23 PM

Another Cingular complaint... When I

Another Cingular complaint...

When I call my voice mail number from a phone that is not my cell phone, the friendly female voice - the kind that says "your call is important to us" when clearly it is not - tells me that for 'security reasons' I must call from my Cingular wireless cell phone.

I e-mailed customer support to request that this ability be enabled somehow. I told them that I understood the security implications but that many subscribers would probably sacrifice some security for the convenience. I also indicated my suspicion that the true reason is to extract more airtime from subscribers.

The response was this: "In order to check your voice mail from a regular phone you will need to subscribe to our Enhanced Voicemail service, which is $4.99 per month."

I can understand that they want the revenue. But don't lie to me.

Posted by sam at 12:16 PM

May 14, 2002

NY Times: Bush and Putin

NY Times: Bush and Putin to Sign Treaty to Cut Nuclear Warheads.

Sounds like Bush and Putin wanted some PR before Bush's first trip to Russia. The Times calls it "an agreement filled with escape clauses."

Posted by sam at 10:24 AM

May 13, 2002

Why does every other country

Why does every other country have currency way more colorful than ours?

Posted by sam at 09:47 AM

May 10, 2002

Global services jobs migrate to

Global services jobs migrate to India via Internet [Yahoo].

This is the world vision coming from the multinationals. Labor moves to the cheapest possible location and management remains in the comfort of a "high-income country" reaping the profits. Jobs that require "modest to moderate intelligence" (from the article) will move to India and those that require... (less than "moderate intelligence"?) will move to third-world countries.

I think it's obvious that this is not good for anyone in the long term.

Does the left have an a clear alternative? I don't see it. There are isolated anti-globalization and environmental movements, but where is the cohesive long-term outlook? Does anyone have a 20 or 50 year plan for sustainable business?

Posted by sam at 01:52 PM

May 07, 2002

NYTimes: Enron forced up California

NYTimes: Enron forced up California energy prices.

Could it get any worse?

Posted by sam at 03:04 PM

May 05, 2002

Is anyone else having trouble

Is anyone else having trouble sending mail to hotmail addresses? I've seen this error twice in two days: 

Reporting-MTA: dns;hotmail.com
Received-From-MTA: dns;smtpde02.sap-ag.de
Arrival-Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 10:20:58 -0700

Final-Recipient: rfc822;some_address@hotmail.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
What's going on?

Posted by sam at 03:11 AM

May 01, 2002

The Dallas Morning News wants

The Dallas Morning News wants to stop "deep links" like this. What a joke. Why even bother having a web site?

Posted by sam at 07:27 PM

The Register: "When Eisner and

The Register: "When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them?"

Posted by sam at 02:31 AM