Keith Olbermann

All I can say is wow. Way to go Olbermann!

Football

What a great football weekend (for me at any rate)!

The Bears, 3-0 how sweet it is! It looks like we may finally have a real quarterback! And how about Desmond Clark! Of course, I can't forget our top 5 defense, the boys are getting things done, as

But, the game that really felt the best for me was the Falcons at the Saints. I picked the Saints to win, cause I didn't have the heart to pick againist them. How sweet it was to see them come out, with such passion and fire, and beat the pants off Alanta.

I think someone from ESPN said it best last night... The Saints are Americas second team.

Designed to Sell

Wow, it's been a crazy month. I can't believe I haven't written a post since the 8th. A lot of stuff is going on (as normal). Perhaps the craziest thing that has happened this month, my wife and I (and I guess our house) were chosen to be on HGTV's Design to Sell.

We just finished shooting on Saturday. What a crazy wild, fun, tiring experience! The crew were great, the hours were long (but not horrible), and overall the experience was surreal. Imagine having a cast of 10+ strangers in your house for days, and stranger yet, having the whole experience filmed for a national TV show.

I wasn't sure how well the changes would work, when you watch the show on TV everything looks pretty good; but there is no way of knowing how the house looked in real life. Now that I've been on the show, and I have seen the work first hand, I have to say I'm impressed! The rooms they redid were the kitchen, our backroom, and the front yard. All three of them look about 1000% times better. Perhaps the single biggest surprise for me was how big of effect can be gained by little design changes.

With the winter around the corner, and the housing market cooling off as well, we may not really try to sell until the spring -- but being on the show has really helped us get the house ready. I can't thank everyone who worked on our house enough. What a cool way to make money!

For those who are interested about when the show will air -- I have no idea yet. Also, I will post some before and after pictures to Flickr soon.

UPDATE: Pictures are now on-line.

Confidential... "do not distribute"

Caught this over on Boing Boing. Pretty scary, crazy. Having worked for the government I understand how security can be done, and sadly, as is clearly shown by the Google query, how it is often screwed up.

If I was working in the IT deptartment of one of these places, I'd be hiding my head in shame.

Windows Live Writer

This post is a test of the Live Writer software, from Microsoft.  I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with it.  I was curious to see if it would pull my Blogger information, and sure enough, it did with no problems.  It pulled my stylesheet in, allowing me to create a post with the full look and feel, which is quite nice.  I haven't played with most of the other features, but overall I have to say this is a pretty solid product.  Only time will tell, however, if I go for this when I want to post, rather than just going to the the site.

UPATE:  One thing that is missing, inline spell checking - where are my little red squiggly lines under misspelled words?  Microsoft should really have including that feature - but I guess Live Writer is still a beta...

Bill Gates - My Hero

A lot of people have a lot of very strong feelings about Bill Gates. Some love him, some hate him. I've always respected his ability to create the most powerful software company in the world. From very humble beginning to an unquestionable powerhouse, the Microsoft story is pretty amazing.

Then of course there is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has done undeniable good in the various fights it has taken on. Now, according to the Toronto Star, the foundation is donating $500 Million Dollars to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. That is an unimaginable amount of money that hopefully will really make a difference in combating these diseases.

For becoming the wealthiest man in the world, and then using that money for good - Bill Gates is a hero to me.

Perfect Storm?

Among the normal spew of semi-interesting, often outlandish, and sometimes just silly posts that are normally on Digg, I found this one this morning. A slightly scary, very cool satellite image of 3 different typhoons forming in the Pacific ocean around Japan. I don't know if this happens often, but it reminded me of the plot of Perfect Storm. According to the article, this isn't an unheard of situation, and the three storms aren't moving toward each other, but still if I was living on the southern coast of Japan, I'd be a little concerned!

IFBIN

Learning Flex or Flash can be a bit frustrating - especially if you are coming from a different world, like say ColdFusion or ASP. A great resource IFBIN.COM, has just changed its model and is now a free open source tool! With 100's of very specific tutorials this tool is a real life saver for anyone who needs to pick Flex or Flash in a hurry. Check it out! :-)

80s ISUZU GEMINI

All I can say is WOW! This footage seems to be real, and not computer generated - if so, it is the best car stunts that I've ever seen. I don't remember the car - not sure if it was ever sold in America, but it looks to be your basic crappy entry level vehicle, which makes the shunts even more impressive.

Flex 2

In the little free time I have right now, I've been playing with Flex 2. Wow. Adobe really brought together a product that is light years ahead of the first version. The amount of tutorials, example applications and blog based information let loose by the company is quite impressive as well.

In the end, this is exactly what I would expect from Macromedia, it's nice to see that Adobe hasn't changed the culture, but in fact, seems to have enhanced it! Great job guys!