The netscape.com domain, which is owned by AOL, has replaced its Netscape-Enterprise servers with AOLServer.
Repeat: netscape.com no longer runs on Netscape servers.
Also: netscape.co.uk now runs Apache, while in France, netscape.fr runs Microsoft-IIS.
In a historic upset, Senegal, making its first appearance in World Cup competition, defeats France, the defending champs.
Senegal was a French colony until 1960.
Ironically, France has previously scored a number of impressive victories against the African colonies, although it must be noted that they were competing with guns against spears in those matchups.
The Guardian sends writers to bookstores to test the staffs’ literary knowledge:
I point to the word ‘jawbo’ on page 330 [of Joyce’s Ulysses]. ‘That’s not a word,’ I say. ‘Mmmm,’ he says. ‘It’s rare that publishers make a mistake like that.’
sang-froid, also sangfroid \sang-FRWAH\, noun: Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness.
Sang-froid is from the French; it literally means “cold blood” (sang, “blood” + froid, “cold”).
If Amelia Earhart were alive today, what do you think she would be doing?
If Amelia Earhart was alive today, she would be doing things that are not dangerous because she would be 105 years old.
Education is important in our community . . .
Word came home last week that this year’s Stanford 9 testing starts the first week of May. Immediately, my wife got a call from another mom announcing that she’s cancelling all play dates through the end of the testing period so her kid can spend every waking moment on test prep.
The gauntlet has been thrown!
Meanwhile, in business news, thanks to the tech meltdown, office space vacancy rates in southern Orange County continue to hover around 30 percent. The screaming rent deals this creates were enough to induce the company I work with to pack everything up and move one off-ramp further south on the 405 . . .
Parents who joke in a light-hearted fashion during tense or stressful situations may make their children feel more comfortable and accepted, less anxious, and more willing to communicate in a positive manner.
This is according to a study done at Arizona State University.
My kid’s reaction: “Go, Arizona State! If USC [where I went to school] is so great, why didn’t they figure that out?”
Road Accident in India Kills 21
The victims were Hindu pilgrims on their way to a temple to worship Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
Alessio Cioni, one of the finalists at the Rachmaninoff International Competition and Festival, not only did not win, he was actually disqualified for playing too poorly.
Barbra Streisand’s mother died last week at age 93. The two had a strained relationship, as people sometimes do with their mothers.
When Mom attended one of her shows in 1994 — she would have been 85 years old at the time — Barbra addressed her from the stage, saying, “Are you proud of me now, Mama?”
I’m not a big fan of anything Barbra Streisand has ever done, but for articulating a lifetime of pain in seven words, you can’t do much better than that . . .
In We Were Soldiers, commanding officer Mel Gibson is the first man off the helicopter and the last man back on. He leaves no one behind, dead or alive.
Contrast that with my manager, who has far less enthusiasm for his work than for his car, his dog, leering at women, painfully coarse humor, or getting drunk on a golf course somewhere.
Not the kind of inspirational leadership you make movies about, unless it’s kind of an ultra-dark comedy in which the leading character is eventually humiliated and/or killed, to thunderous applause . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
The following email went out at the office:
Please stop by and say hello to our newest Project Manager Skip Intro [names changed to protect the guilty]. He is a great person, lives in [a nearby city], tons of experience, and has two black labradors. What more could you ask?
Leicester Dedlock
Director of Project Management
What more could I ask?!
We’re hiring project managers and can’t think of anything more to ask them than what kind of pets they have?
This explains a lot . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Last week, we bought a hamster. This afternoon, I got a call at work from my son, who was yelling something into the phone. On the third try, I understood it: “Fluffy had babies!”
Doreen Waddell, a former vocalist with the chart-topping 1980s British band Soul II Soul, died after being hit by several cars as she ran across a busy road.
Police said it appeared she had been running from a supermarket after being confronted about shoplifting.
According to the email, our (former) COO “is no longer with the company in any capacity.”
There’s a phenomenon at our company, of which he was a perfect example: People get excited and animated about a variety of things — their cars, their pets, a TV show, binge drinking, etc. — but never, never about their jobs.
In his case, the favorite topic was hiking. Since we’re in the winter months now, you could frequently hear him among the cubicles elucidating the finer points of crampons:
“The thing about crampons is you have to be careful where you put your feet. It’s not like walking around the living room in a pair of loafers.”
I did not know that!
Of course, if I were interested in crampons, which I’m not, I could research them on my own time.
I would have much rather overheard him saying something like
“I read a great journal article last night, and I was thinking about how we might apply it here. I think we need to start building a software engineering culture where people can get excited about their jobs.”
This has nothing to do with why he was let go, but it’s the thing that bothered me most about him personally.
With the opportunity that he had as COO of the company, and the money he was pulling down, he should have been contributing something more than hiking tips.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
defenestrate, v.t., To throw something or somebody out of a window.
I just love that there’s actually a word for that.
I was a big fan of the original vision of this company . . .
Transcript of Andrea Yates’ confession
This is very, very sad and hard to forget. You may want to just skip it.
Having students write essays about books accomplishes three things. It makes them hate writing, because it’s such a fruitless, uninteresting assignment. It makes them hate reading, because even books they enjoy are turned against them. And it probably makes them hate thinking, because the kind of analysis they’re forced to do is so strained and dull.
