Random

To all of you getting Christmas-eve-eve and the day after Christmas off... enjoy.

I love it when I meet white people who refer to black people as "the brothers" as in "some of the brothers at work".

At the gym during the Bears game Monday, guys are watching the game with ear buds while doing the cardio machines - some bear makes a long run some guy yells "go, Go, GO" and then a second later some guy yells "get up, get up!" It was pretty funny. I guess you had to be there.

I found out one of the founders of my company once said "we'd get a hell of a lot more done if we paid our developers in cocaine."

The new iPod pauses the action when the headphone cord gets pulled. I have the new iPod. It's awesome.

It's Christmas time already and I barely noticed. What do you want for Christmas?

On a slightly less technological bitchiness note: Friday night when taking the train home from work I had the good fortune to get on the Holiday L which is decked out with lights, ribbons, decals, green and red florescent light filters and employees giving away little candy canes. When I got off the Santa (who must have been freezing his ass of in his sleigh) threw candy canes to some kids as the train was pulling away - the candy canes rained upon the children much harder than they probably should have. It was awesome... The whole decorated train thing, not smacking the children with flying candy thing.

technology -
google really needs to get people talking across its organization. composing an email in gmail is much better than composing a message in blogger because it's spell check and autosave features are really sweet. i estimate those features could be moved to blogger in a good solid evening. plus, why isnt my blogger login part of the google account yet?

i hear ms messenger and yahoo messenger are going to work together. and google has a chat thingie now. all these chat networks are so annoying. everyone i know has AIM and i have ICQ for a few contacts. aol totally bungled a market they basically had 100% share in - idiots.

there has got to be a good way to make money with an all-purpose everything social contacts thingie. chat, social network, email, self managing contacts (profiles) that is accessible by internet and perhaps some day cell phone is completely within the power of aol, friendster, google or someone with a few weeks to kill. evite and community-type functionality would be easy too.

visual studio.net 2003 has some horrifically unforgivable bugs. i'm not too picky about my software - most things have a few issues i can work around, but vs.net is a flaming piece of shit that makes every day i go to work less good.

A view to a cube (kill?)

cube pictures were requested...

and here's the view from the window that I am sort of facing in the above picture (it is far from me)

Funny: the other job I was offered had its home office in one of the buildings I can now see every day by looking over my shoulder (and squinting).

This winter is getting Medieval on our asses - if it keeps snowing like this there will be 8" on the ground by tomorrow morning (already like 5-6).

My new firm has its holiday party at the Altitude Room on the 33rd floor of the W Hotel on Lake Shore Drive – swanky. Highlights included watching it snow outside, telling the President that it was a "bitchin' party", co-workers who are total commotions on the dance floor, karaoke of Vanilla Ice and a very well done Elvis.

view of navy pier... picture totally ripped from W Hotel website

You know what's funny? The directory listing of my random ass phone pictures from my old t610 are a #1 hit on Google. You know what else is funny? Bank statements. Ha!

We win!

post Blackalicious concert

muha!

Oh, and Ed got to see his family too, bonus.

Thanksgiving was rockin'. I got to spend time with many of my good friends and with my family. I don't like the word but I would say I am quite blessed.