Trying to get past "Escape from Suburbia." I haven't been moved as much by a film for a long time as I have by "Escape from Suburbia." Maybe it hit me so hard because Hot, Flat, and Crowded
is currently on my Nordic Track reading rack, but for the first time I faced "Peak Oil" and all of its frightening implications. "Escape from Suburbia" shook things up, not with in-your-face sensationalism as you might be thinking, but with simple facts that are easily confirmed in the CIA Factbook: 20 million (MILLION) barrels of oil are consumed each day in the US, and 13 million of those barrels are imported, or 60% of the oil we consume each and every day. (And as Friedman reminds us in "Hot, Flat and Crowded," imported from people who mostly hate us.) The main point of "Escape", which it makes loud and clear, is that the course we're on is fragile and not sustainable. Escape from Suburbia mentions how facing the potential grim reality of Peak Oil is much like the five stages of grief, starting with Denial. Depression is #4. I'm going to believe that we'll get past this, and maybe even add "Action" to the list.
Got that Microsoft Tingle tonight! As my bud Julie mentioned today, these are high times for Vermont nerdissimos. Vermont .NET was tonight (Mark Merchant from Microsoft's Virtual Earth was excellent!), New England Code Camp 10 is this weekend in Waltham, Mass, and the MSDN Northeast Big Top Roadshow and Circus Tour comes to Burlington next Tuesday, September 23rd! I am registered for the Roadshow, baby! (Looking forward to seeing the elephants! Oh, and the sessions on client UI experiences, REST and IE8 for Developers.) As for Code Camp 10, I'm close to going all the way and calling the Waltham Westin to reserve a room, but I'm not Presentation Ready on the after-hours work I'm doing and didn't submit anything, so it will be weird going to Code Camp and not presenting anything. Richard Hale Shaw is apparently giving FOUR SESSIONS, two back-to-back sessions kicking off both Saturday and Sunday according to Chris's posted schedule. I've queried my Designated Microsoft Representative to determine if this is the truth or merely some mean trick to inspire mass New England nerd hysteria and CC10 registration. I'm still waiting on a reply and will let you know.
Man vrs. Woman. Some of these Man vrs. Woman pics may be familiar, but I bet you'll see some new ones. My favorite is the second one with the "progress marks" on the door frame.
Someone is missing out on a huge payday. We've got an Obama sign in the front yard, but I would definitely put this McCain-Palin bumper sticker on my Honda Passport if it was available.
The world needs more client-side pizzazz. Lots of great ideas in this Smashing Magazine list of 75 useful JavaScript Technologies. If you're like me you're too busy cranking out the essentials for clients instead of dabbling in client-side sophistication, but many UI examples in this article should be common practice. As soon as Silverlight 2.0 RTMs, that is. :-)
Too late in life for Regular Expression nuance? I studied Latin in high school. Bene! Bene! I worked hard to learn French while I lived in the New Orleans French Quarter in the 1980's, but I realized even then while in my 20's that it was too late for me to hear the nuance and tonal inflections necessary to learn the language. That's how I feel when I look at examples of Regex expressions like on this geekzilla expression archive list. I guess I've always been more of a "Freedom Fries" kind of guy where regular expressions and foreign languages are involved.
What happens when you let a Palin bookmark age a bit. The title of this Everyman Link was supposed to be "Hate over debate!" Joe Biden says something meaningful but rather innocuous like a vote for Palin would be a backward step for women. I didn't think much of it, just another Memeorandum post that fills the lulls in my workday. Then I read through the comments and couldn't believe how so much hate could be spewed against him and Obama. Really raw, ugly stuff that surprised me, and was where this Everyman Link was supposed to begin and end. "Hate over debate!" But an interesting development occurred since then. When I bookmarked the post a few days ago there were maybe 50 comments, all of them the nasty types with no opposing voices whatsoever. Tonight there are 1155 comments, and mostly from the other side who argue against the vacuous posters who started the thread. My favorite comment was Commentor #420 who quoted the president of Planned Parenthood, "Women who vote for the McCain/Palin ticket are like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders."
Are we not men? We are DEVO! We should all live our life in whatever manner Mark Cuban does so we can say as Mark did at TechCrunch50, "When I die, I want to come back as me." I love that.