Yeah, I know it’s not quite the end of the year, but given my recent blogging pace, this is probably going to do it for 2009. Good year or bad? I think, on balance, good. Plenty of good things happened, and plenty of bad. It particularly sucked having six months of pain from a herniated disc in my back, but that’s been fixed so I’m willing to put it in the plus column.
Looking back on last year’s wrap-up, I had two major projects left on the house. One of those, the bathroom, is nearly done, and might still be completed before 2010 rolls in.
The new crop of politicians in Washington have nearly worked out health care reform. Not as much change as I’d feared, but more than I’d hoped for.
On the travel front, there’s new travel restrictions. I have a ticket that expires in March from a trip I had to cancel last year, plus enough miles for a free flight, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be travelling by air this year or not. I really need to get out to WWDC this summer, but perhaps this is a year to do that as a road trip.
Anyway, on balance I’m calling it a good year, but it could really go either way. And heck, there are still a few days remaining, so the scales could still tip.
- Rands has a good article on Gaming the System as you approach shipping a product (aka the end game). Sounds like it would work, and might be a lot better than the metrics currently in use at my workplace.
- Hear about the Sex Laws Still On The Books In Minnesota? Made national news. And “my” legislators wonder why I don’t have much respect for them.
- Teehee! Unintended Consequence of Technology: New LED traffic lights can’t melt snow I got a giggle out of this one. I wonder how much carbon gets used to send out a truck with a guy using a brush to clean out the lights. [boing boing]
- A lawsuit filed by the State of Washington alleges that DirecTV thrives on 'deception.' Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me as a (former) customer.
- Stephen Haynes has posted about The Curious (IL-)Logic of Authoritarian Intrusion on Photography, Part II. Good read. NSFW photo.
- Want to know about the Anatomy of A Brain Fart? Man, some days, I just love the things I find on teh intarwebs. Turns out someone with a magic EEG could see a brain fart coming up to 30 seconds ahead of time. [flutterby]
Sorry about the lack of posting lately. Been busy with work, and the bathroom remodel at home has things disrupted enough that I haven’t been in much of a mood for writing lately.
So don’t be surprised if some of these links are “old news.” They are. But hey, it’s better than nothing, right?
- Ladies, here’s some advice on How to Get and Keep a Good Man. Make of it what you will. [metafilter]
- Need a gift for the man who has everything? He probably doesn’t have a bottle of these babies.
- Cool iPhone app: Bill Atkinson’s PhotoCard.
- Rasmussen Reports says that Tea Party Tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot. Probably wouldn’t work that way in the rigged system we currently have, but it does point out that the GOP is ailing. [metafilter]
- Cool. Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo. [metafilter]
- Thom Hogan has his 2010 Predictions up. Interesting read if you’re a photography geek, maybe. [top]
- A friend pointed me to a video about a Kenyan bike-mechanic’s homemade tools, and it got me wondering why this is link-worthy. Is it because we’re so divorced from simple mechanics that making your own tools is novel? Or because we don’t expect a poor Kenyan to be able to build his own tools? But then I own both Effective Cycling ISBN:0262560704 and The Bicycle Wheel ISBN:0960723668, so perhaps it’s just me that sees neither of these tools as remarkable. But it does mesh very nicely with a TED talk from Mike Rowe about the nature of work.