Playing Hookey

Shhhhh....don't tell anyone. This afternoon I played hookey from work. We hit best buy to pickup some needed gift cards and browsed TVs, DVD players and vacuums. I know, too exciting.

I even managed to use my sidekick to respond to an e-mail from a client while sitting at lunch.

--Ben

poker tech: Why Erlang

http://wagerlabs.com/tech/2005/04/why-erlang.html

A great article suumarizing why one would choose erlang over other languages.

It is remarkable how many enterprise level features you get out of the box with erlang. And, it all seems so much lightweight than J2EE.

If I had to develop a new large scale system today I think it would be foolish to at least not consider erlang.

--Ben

Airport Run

Just saw "When Harry Met Sally" a few days ago and got the usual kick out of the scene where Harry explains why he never picks up his girl friend at the airport (short answer: because you stop taking her and then you have to hear her complain that you never pick her up anymore).

So here I am, picking up Shira.

--Ben

No jeans?

Yep, those are dockers and real shoes. We have a visitor in the office today so I had to get all dressed up.

Oh, the sacrifices we have to make...

--Ben

Evening Stroll

Elana and I took a nice 45 minute walk tonight down to the pentagon. She was such a trooper and didn't complain too much about the hill we had to climb at the end.

At least it was a pretty evening to be out. --Ben

Cool presentation hack

Was trying to learn about Micro Formats, when I came accross this page: What are Microformats? Very interesting presentation technique. Seems like just CSS + JavaScript - and it looks good.

Men at work

Trying to upgrade Mike's box to have 2 slow processors instead of one.

Emphasis on the trying part... --Ben

collision detection: Of wikitorials -- and the glory of the "neutral point of view"

collision detection: Of wikitorials -- and the glory of the "neutral point of view" An interesting discussion of how to write non-biased materials. As suggested in this post, you should really read the the original article My favorite comment:

The policy is simply that we should characterize disputes rather than engage in them.

Well put.

Look who's driving the acura

Just dropped off Elana's buick @ a garage to have them look into the leak. The garage was a bit sketchy, but they are very close to the house and were very nice.

But the exciting part? Elana drove off in Mini, and I've got ZZ for the day. Wish me luck. --Ben

Disruptive Programming Language Technologies

Lightweight Languages 2002 (LL2) afternoon session I have always enjoyed listening to the LL presentations. Some of the talks are really insightful. This afternoon I listened to:

 Disruptive Programming Language Technologies  (invited talk)
Todd Proebsting, Microsoft Research.

Which I didn't have particularly high hopes for. Afterall, I did see Microsoft next to the speaker's name. I was expecting .net evangalizing. But boy was I wrong -- it was terrrific! First, the speaker was great. Second, the material was interesting and stuff that I happen to agree with. Third, the reference to "distruptive technology" brought up some very good points. Back when Amazing Media started, the main book on disruptive technology was required reading. However, back then I just didn't get it. Well, thanks to this talk, now I think I do. Nothing like taking 6 years to catch on...

1 tape down, 7 to go

Finished the first tape of Sharpe's Escape. So far I'm really enjoying it. The story is interesting, the main character is one that I can respect (and learn from?) and the voice of the narrarator is easy to listen to.

So far I give it two thumbs up. Now we just have to see if it can continue for the rest of the book. --Ben

Cleanup day at work

With visitors coming by on Thursday, we thought it was time to cleanup the office. We like to think of it as a team building event. --Ben

Blood donation

Donated blood and platlets today. The whole experience took about 3hrs.

On a good note I got to watch all of "Oh Brother Where art thou" - which was a fun film.

On a less than good note, they ended up using both arms, and both arms ended up with painful swolen lumps. The lumps are apparently bleeding from a burst vain.

Oh well, at least I was giving the blood instead of receiving it. --Ben

What a difference 20 degrees makes

Well, it has finally cooled down around DC and tonight's run was a joy because of it. Here are some random shots from over route 50 and route 66. And one frome the pike after dark. --Ben

Can't forget about the shoes

Just finished browsing the petite racks. Just about to walk out of the store....and bam, need to check out the shoes.

It's always the shoes that get ya. --Ben

Names are tough

Shopping on Dad's day of course. And I come across this brand name....

Now I know that coming up with names for things is a tough, but c'mon. What woman wants to wear a piece of clothing with the word "Sag" in it?

Seems like a cruel joke if you ask me. --Ben

Ben 1, Weeds 0

So I went at my sidewalk this morning with poison and metal implements to rid myself of weeds. It appears to more or less have worked.

Now, I figure the weeds can retaliate in one of two ways: (a) they can grow back or (b) cause the poison that I sprayed on the weeds to spread to my lawn, killing my grass and poisoning my water supply. --Ben

Shoes

Ok, here's a fun game. This is a snapshot of the shoes in our front hall. Can you count how many are mine? I'd love to claim that it's Elana that has all the shoes...but I think the real honor goes to my wife. Congrats honey. --Ben

Buick leak check

Trying to figure out why the Buick leaks some staining liquid onto our driveway. After getting the car on ramps we are no closer to knowing an answer.

But it certainly looked cool. I gotta get some guy points for at least trying. --Ben

CNN.com - Kutsher's: Last of Borscht Belt resorts - Jun 16, 2005

CNN.com - Kutsher's: Last of Borscht Belt resorts - Jun 16, 2005 My brothers and I don't agree on much. But, one thing that we do universally agree on is this: the trip we made to Kutsher's as children was a hideous, awful, scaring event. I dare you to get the three of us in a room together and mention the word Kutsher's. And of course, it was my parent's favorite vacation ever. Strange.

Caleb's Graduation

Shira and I were fortunate enough to make it to Caleb's graduation tonight. A pretty impressive event considering it's the 5th grade.

I think the speakers had better advice than at the last graduation we were at (Brandeis, a couple weeks ago).

Way to go Caleb! --Ben

Weeds

As my youger brother says....

Three things will survive a nuclear holocaust.

1) cockroaches 2) I don't remeber 3) the weeds growing between the bricks in my parent's front walk

They have tried everything from bleech to outright poison to kill that vegitation. Nothing ever works. And my guess? It grows stronger each time...

Anyway - it's my turn. I'm trying to kill off the weeds in front of my house. Lets just hope I don't have to add my weeds to the above list.

--Ben

Library trip

What a successful library trip - 3 books on tape, a video, and even a good o'l fashion book.

Now, will a novel about 19th century europe be interesting? That's a good question...we'll find out. --Ben

Heat + Running

Some shots of me after my run yesterday. It was only 88 degrees, but it felt quite a bit hotter than that when I actually finished.

I just love that heat exhaustion look... --Ben

Blog as a boomark server?

I'm curious -- can I use my blog as a bookmark server? Like this link here: Java Remote Method Invocation: - Contents That way, no matter what computer I'm at - or if I'm just on my sidekick, I can find a link or document I was looking for. Hmmm, I'll have to give this a try.

Why moblog?

So, I've been mobologging for a while (over here and now here) and I've been trying to figure out why I'm doing it. First, why aren't I doing it:

• To show off my perfect photography or writing. Most of the pictures I've posted are crap, and the writing is hardly impressive.
• To speak to a particular audience. Right now, I'm the only one watching my blog (as far as I know...)

So why do it?

• I'm curious what the value of having a day-by-day history of my life would be like. And with a camera phone, its really easy to do that. Of course I don't get every detail of my life, but at least I get a snapshot.
• I figure I do at least one interesting or different thing a day. Sometimes it's a real challange trying to find what that interesting thing is - and having this goal of moblogging the day makes me search for it.
• I think it increases my creativity. Lets say it's really hot out and I want to record that. How do I get a picture showing that it's hot out? That takes creativity. Then, once you've solved that problem one day, and you want to show that it's hot out again you need to find a new way to show that. I'm hardly always successful at conveying some feeling in my photographs - but at least I'm trying.

So there you have it, some reasons why I moblog. Not that you cared :-). Oh, and there's a great discussion of storage quality photos versus moment quality photos over here. Of course, I'm going after moment quality photos...

Where have a I been all this time?

Slacking, right? Not exactly... I've been experimenting with the whole mobolog idea over here. So far it has been pretty successful, as I've been able to post something pretty much every day. I'm really impressed with http://hipalbum.com as a site, though it does lack some of the features that a blog should probably have. Like the ability to edit posts and provide RSS feeds. Also, I'd like to try the idea of text posts as well (like this one!). So, starting today, posts will go to http://benjisimon.blogspot.com instead of http://hipalbum.com/?benjsimon Wish me luck...

Another book completed

Just finished the biography of Joseph Smith. What an interesting story about the birth and development of the Mormon religion. It's so interesting hearing about a religion that started in thr 1800's.

Next on the book list? Not sure, probably a fun'ish novel. --Ben

Link post test

Another attempt to post a link to my blog...

http://www.google.com/search?q=scheme+programming&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Google+Search --Ben

Is this thing on?

Am I still able to blog here via my sidekick? Hmmm, should know in a few seconds.

Oh, and do <a href='www.google.com'>links</a> work from inside these messages? --Ben