Project

What more can be said? Socks go on before shoes...

This site would be in blue and yellow if only yellow text was readable.

As much as I decry the tendency for people to latch onto tools as solutions to their problems, I still can't draw myself completely away from them.

They are clearly a part of the solution, and they are frequently interesting in their own right. My new and sparsely populated "Stuff" blog covers things which are interesting in the way they work / or don't work.

Suggestions for reviews are always welcome.

Pop on over and take a look!

An interesting article from Nikon about how digital imaging has evolved and where it is heading.

Besides the fact that it appears that the trend will not be to more megapixels, but rather in improving image quality, I was interested to see that color rendition is something which is both culture and location specific.

My referrer log shows how people find this site. A large number are through searches. Some are unpublishable and others are just odd. This one showed up and is so easy to answer that I decided to answer it twice - with conflicting answers:

does buying more lottery tickets increase your chance of winning? - Yahoo! Search Results

The simple answer is yes. If they sell as many tickets as there are buyers then with each ticket you buy you increase your chance and decrease the other person's chance. If there are two buyers and you each buy one ticket you have a 50% chance of winning. If you then buy one more, you have a 66% chance of winning. The equation behind this holds for any positive number.

But the complex answer is that in a lottery money is siphoned off to pay for the companies which think up, advertise and run the lotteries, not to mention the states taking a portion for schools so statistically a lottery is a losing bet. In the big picture buying more tickets merely means you lose more.

Google is now hosting free webpages - well, they have provided some and are now oversubscribed, but if you want to see what it look likes here is an example from the ever enthusiastic Josh Bancroft:

jabancroft - Josh Bancroft's Google Page

I'm not sure why Josh claims it is cool, new and fancy or web 2.0, but I suppose it would be boring if it wasn't all of those things even if it really doesn't seem to be any of them to me.

 It looks like a good way to get kids on the web though. Free is always a good strategy for getting people to try something new.

Yesterday I buried my dog. A patch on my left thumb is worn raw from chopping through the hard clay soil. I was almost alone while digging, observed only by my dog wrapped in a white towel resting in a cardboard box - his eyes unclosing from now until forever. 14 years ago he would have been helping me, scratching at the ground and almost laughing. Last week he would have been sitting somewhere near, close enough to hear with his pointed ears, close enough so he knew I was there and I knew he was too.

It seems I've always been working to keep him close. He was getting in my way when I built his first dog house, but deemed it too far away to actually sleep in. He was near when I built a fence to keep him in, a fence to keep him from running and exploring when I was not home. Next to the fence I planted the same bougainvillea whose purple petals filled the hole I dug.

He was near when I built the gates to keep away the postman who tormented him daily, daring to walk up the driveway and touching the mail slot. He was near even when I walked with him. Of course his version of "near changed over time. What was once half a mile or so shrank to a block and by last winter he was close enough to share the same umbrella when it rained. I had almost retired his leash except as something to carry in the event of meeting nervous passerby's who thought I was walking with a baby wolf.

He was not the kind of dog to sit on your lap. He did not like being held unless it was on your lap while you were driving but even that changed two days ago when he stayed close and lay calm and quiet in my arms. Every minute he got closer, until he was gone. Well, not really gone, but all I have left is what he left inside me. It is a poor substitute.

As the years pass plum leaves, and rose petals and wisteria blossoms will fall over him and he will be quiet and close forever.

Rain knocked most of them down, but spring must be here already, or is it a dream?

On my way up to Microsoft for the second week in a row. This week should be a bit less grueling if not less fattening.

It is the time for the almost annual Microsoft MVP summit. This means a few days of executive briefings, meetings with the project groups and breakfast, snacks, lunch, snacks and dinners and snacks. This year Bill Gates will be delivering the key note. The past two were Ballmer with his bombastic Blah bla bla blaaah blaaah blah! so it will be a nice change. And what I hear is that there is more time 1:1 with the product groups which is another welcome development. In several past summits this got scant attention, amounting to a session for a couple of hours. I think there is an entire day scheduled this year. I hope to use the time to figure out when we are going to see the first service release on Project and Project Server 2007.

The best things to come out of this conference though are the conversations with people. My current job is the fruit of a seed planted when a group of us bailed out from the planned activities and had lunch in Seattle instead. A group session with 1800 people + Press + Translators has less importance on a personal level and even on a business level than sharing a meal with a 5 others.

Looking down I just see a blanket of white and the same bright warm sun that was shining when I left home. Where I live it is spring. The air is infused with warm earth and plum blossoms. It is the kind of day that brings out the bees. Seattle weather may not be as kind.

Spring is really here. I got rained on very heavily at lunch but by the time I got home the sun was out. Now there is a fierce wind. Changing of the seasons is not something to take lightly.

Ah, the troubles this thing causes. Notes insisting I remove things are always such a headache. I generally try hard to keep things anonymous and generic and non-controversial. I reveal no secrets except my own and even those I'm guarded with because as you know, nothing is secret on the internet.

In the interest of keeping secrets secret I'm not even going to tell you what I'm talking about. But I am going to tell you that even as bad as I feel getting email from angry people, there are more bright sides to it.

This week one of my readers from Texas came up and said hello. Last week a person I had just met who was sitting next to me at a meeting had my blog up on his screen. And the week before at an unnamed location an unnamed person said he reads my blog too. It is an odd feeling, one which makes you wonder what preformed impression they have based on the narrow stream of information that I pour out here. But the fact that they told me they read it does seem to indicate that they must at least find what I write useful or interesting.

Loyal readers know I'm a Peet's coffee fan but sometimes there is no choice.
Here is what I heard the other day:

"This is a very sad day today, we are giving up starbucks"
"Don't you like us anymore?"
"No we do, that is why we came in today. We are giving it up because we want to save money."
"I was just talking about you yesterday. I was telling my friend I call you my posse."
"It will last for about three weeks. We've tried before."

Today is the shortest day of the year and for many cultures there is a celebration around this time, all springing from the fact that the light of the sun is returning to the world.