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More On The Differences Between Men and Women

Men and women see the world differently. Noah has school pictures today.

Cathy: "How did Noah look this morning?"
Me: "I’m pretty sure he went to school."
Cathy: "How did Noah look this morning?"
Me: "I emphasized to him that he really needed to turn in his check for pictures."
Cathy: "How did Noah look this morning?"
Me: "Umm. I know he was wearing clothes."
Cathy: "How did Noah look this morning?"
Me: "I don’t know. Give me a hint!"

Update: Apparently Amy had school pictures yesterday too. Mom is less than thrilled.

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Twitter Ouch

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /home.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Additionally, a 502 Bad Gateway error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Growing pains?

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I’ve got a butt!

Uncle Jim has a great song that the children love (and I do too!) called "I’ve Got a Butt" on his Let There Be Fun CD. Go listen to track 8. Hit the XMKids request line at XMFan to get the full song played.

Jim Mayer, aka Uncle Jim, is an award-winning children’s music performer who has been playing children’s music since 2002. The term “Uncle Jim” is not a figurative one; Jim has twenty nieces and nephews and he knows what kids like! [Source]

He’s a Tennessean! Living in Nashville. Now which child needs to join the fanclub?

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Lull Them to Sleep

Evan’s crib lives in our bedroom. It has a nook. So that Cathy and I could watch television we would leave it on when Evan was put in the crib for the night. This way he wouldn’t go from a total black, quiet room to a bright, noisy lighted room. When I noticed him watching the television after I would put him in the crib, and I noted that the programs were sometimes violent, or Ophraish, or foul mouthed comedians, I started to question my parenting.

Having Comcast’s digital cable, I started setting the television to classical music. Of course, Cathy will put the music on the 70s channel when she puts Evan down for naps or sleep. Between the two of us, he’s now being flooded with music that encourages big hair, high libido, and a serious coke habit (have you ever actually watched Fantasia?).

It didn’t occur to me that we had ingrained a ritual into the poor boy’s head until the cable went out today. Evan went down for a nap and complained that the tv was "broke" and demanded his music. What? Use a boom box or radio?! Pshaw!

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8am

The rest of the world is getting into the office about now. I’ve already been through a 3 page Word document of bug fixes. Already this morning, which began at 4:30am, I have coded enough that my head is buzzing. Yes, like a runner’s high, a programmer can get into such a zone that all else disappears. That’s one reason asking a programmer a question can be terribly detrimental. The mental exercise can be strenuous and leave your head throbbing. Anyone that doesn’t like calling the brain a muscle (and no its not a muscle) has never really had to think hard. Your brain can ache after some serious mental hurdles! I need a rest but cannot break the momentum.

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Ridiculously Hard Day Ahead

Today is one of those days where I could really use 4 other people working with me. Oh man, more and more I think I am ready to bring a team together again. Today is terribly important. All the pieces MUST come together just right. One little screwup and my house of cards is going to come crashing down!

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Curiosity Killed The Cat – Be a cat

Marc and Angel have a great explanation of why being curious is a good thing.

  1. You Will Clarify Yourself
  2. You Will Uncover the Truth
  3. You Will Release Your Inner Child
  4. You Will Experience Something Fresh
  5. You Will Increase Your Productivity
  6. You Will Learn More Often
  7. You Will Become More Efficient
  8. You Will Experience a Spice of Variety
  9. You Will Be More Positive
  10. You Will Establish New Relationships

Read the detailed explanations at: Marc and Angel – 10 Reasons
Why You Should Be Curious

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Tell Me What You Like To Read

I have always stated that I blog for my own pleasure but my web logs and stats programs tell me that I also blog for a handful of regular readers. What do you like to see at Reality Me? Do you find posts like No it doesn’t grow on trees to be

  1. repulsive
  2. funny
  3. TMI
  4. a reason to delete my rss feed from your reader
  5. the impetus to call for an intervention and have me hauled off to Lake Shore

Do you like seeing pictures, videos, stories of my past, details of my present, technical writing, the children, audio posts? What floats your boat? I’ll still write for me but I will happily fine tune my writing for you also!

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No it doesn’t grow on trees

Apparently a handful of people think that I have an ATM* shoved up my ass. There is no bank in my rectum and despite your belief that I have done it before, I cannot pull cash out of it. If you insist on probing this yourself, double up on the Crisco, and at least be courteous enough to provide a little reach-around. Thanks!

*Quick semantic discussion. ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine so if you find yourself "getting cash out of the ATM machine" stop! You are either getting cash out of the "ATM" or the "AT Machine." That said "automated" really implies "machine" so even ATM is redundant before people tack the word "machine" to the end turning an ATM into an ATMM "automated teller machine machine." Really we should simply "visit the AT" Of course, I think our Oak Ridge friend would get irritated if people just started walking up to him and poked him on the chest several times only to get annoyed that cash wasn’t flowing out of his ass. I can picture that scene! "Hey AT! Haven’t seen you in a while. Would you mind dropping trou after I play with your nipples? I want to see if there’s anything green between your cheeks."

And why yes, I am in a little bit of a mood today otherwise I would not have published a post that includes the words ass, rectum, probing, Crisco, and reach-around. Thanks for asking! But don’t worry honey, I’ve vented on the Internet so you and the kids don’t have to avoid me today.

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Scoble is an Idiot

All bloggers are idiots! The first line of Why I Blog says "blogging is stupid." Why?

We paint targets on ourselves and encourage friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers to make comments which, depending on our mood, may hurt our feelings or cause us to make a flippant remark in jest or anger that changes our relationship with those commenters. It is dangerous waters. [Source]

Why would someone throw themselves to the wolves and risk having your reputation tarnished?

  • Blogging provides a creative outlet for writing, research, technology, presentation, marketing, and social networking.
  • Regular publishing improves vocabulary and grammar.
  • Blogging provides history.
  • A personal blog allows for trial and error with lessor used html tags, css designs, and web technologies, growing the programmer’s toolset and professionalism.
  • Blogging provides an opportunity to give to others [through mentorship].
  • Community develops around a blog.
  • Friendships develop between people that may never see each other. Business relationships can form. Support networks can form.
  • Blogging can even be therapeutic!
  • Blogs can be totally fictitious.
  • Blogging is exhibitionism with a sprinkle of ego boosting.
  • Blogging has become an outlet … to share … adventures!

Those are some of my reasons. Blogging has its nerve racking side with people getting the wrong impression of the blogger. Online provides a false sense of anonymity which allows us to put on or take off a mask much the way a car allows someone the same false sense of anonymity which manifests itself in road rage. We see a driver give the finger to another driver, blow their horn in anger, or cut them off because the cars take away the human element; all the driver sees is a car. However, those around us see a white van with a big number 53 on the hood and wonder "why is Doug being so rude?" Can one blog post change your reputation with the people in your life (online or real life)?

When people from the online world meet for the first time, the experience is unnerving, fascinating, and enlightening for these online people have shared stories and know of each other intimately but are always surprised to find that often the person they “know” online is not the same as the person in real life … and in real life the person may have much more depth, be less revealing, and more politically correct. [Source]

The reverse is also true. When someone in the real world discovers your blog, you risk having their impression of you changed. I often cringe when someone says "I found your website."

So who is Scoble and why is he an idiot? Scoble is not unlike me. He’s a technoevanglist. I used to think he was over-hyped because of his job at Microsoft and just happened to be one of the lucky bloggers that got noticed. Then I actually started reading his work and watching his Twitters (and his link dumps) and to be frank, he has earned his notoriety! And his notoriety has been self perpetuating as it has taken him into tech shows and earned him first looks at cool technologies. Ok. Maybe Scoble is very unlike me. Perhaps I wish I could be more like Scoble! Why is Scoble an idiot? Oh! Because he published something raw and got the ire of many people. (He’s not really an idiot.)

It’s interesting that Wired chose to link to this and jump on the "Scoble is an idiot" pile. [Source]

It is easy to criticize someone particularly when that person throws themselves in the public’s eye. The more people looking, the more likely someone will give a negative review. As we produce a large volume of work, the odds that the publisher is going to put out something bad increases. Perhaps we should be a little less critical!

Update: Dennis Howlett understood Scoble’s message.
Scoble Doesn’t Deserve the Scorn He’s Getting (I understood his message)