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Every now and then God looks down on His creation and decides that it’s time for a good ultimate game.

So yesterday, in His infinite wisdom, he graced us with an absolutely gorgeous day: sunny, 60 degrees, and a slight breeze (hey, He has to challenge us just a little bit). And fourteen of us headed out to the fields and had a great time.

Disclaimer– this photo wasn’t taken yesterday.

Of course it made me realize how out of shape I am; it’s been a few months since I went running around for a solid hour. But hey, at least I wasn’t the only one huffing and puffing on the field.

Now today it’s chilly, windy, and they’re predicting snow. So it goes. Hopefully the Almighty will give us another nice day next week.

Well, it’s that fun time of year again: the part where I have to send an estimated tax payment to the IRS. Since 2008 is over, I owe personal taxes against the profits of my corporation. And if I don’t pay them by January 15th the IRS gets all huffy and demands interest and other fees.

I always hate writing checks to the IRS, but these days it feels particularly hard because I know that my money is just going to get channelled to some big corporation who happens to have persistent lobbyists. So I decided that I might as well suck it up, face reality, and encourage the government to do what they’re going to do anyway.

I wonder if smart-aleck comments on your tax checks flag you for an audit…

After a grueling recount, it looks like Al Franken’s friends will have to start addressing him as “Senator Franken”. It appears he’s beat out the Minnesota incumbent by just over 200 votes.

How awesome that a former Saturday Night Live star can rise to such an… err… auspicious office.

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”

— Sir Isaac Newton

I’m doing my end-of-year business accounting (whee!) and looking at the year in review. As always, I’m curious how many hours I put in every week. Checking my timekeeping records, it turns out I spent 2,362 hours working in 2008. That’s not counting any vacation time– I don’t even record my vacation time as “time off” in the records. It comes to just over 45 hours a week, which actually isn’t too bad.

Of course my real goal is zero work hours. But that’s still a little way off…

Some guy named Bali Hai (his real name?) has collected a series of B-movie title screens that are pretty funny to see, mainly because the titles themselves are just screaming to be mocked.

Here’s a flick that Universal Pictures probably tries to forget:

And who could forget the classic:

And heck, here’s a movie I’d be interested in seeing just to find out what the Ultra Vixens are:

Clearly the guys who ran Mystery Science Theater 3000 missed a few opportunities…

Woo hoo, the Dow Jones just poked its head above 9,000. Of course we’re still down 35% from the peak last year, but it looks like things are at least headed in the right direction.

The big question, though: can I still retire at 40? In a month I turn 37, so I’m getting tight on time…

I’m doing an evaluation of a software package on behalf of one of my clients. Basically I need to figure out if I can install it on their server and get everything running, and if so they’ll commit to spending the money to buy the software. So I’ve been talking to the vendor who makes and sells the software, and working to negotiate a better deal on the price (it’s very expensive).

I finally received an e-mail from one of the sales reps, and I figured out that the reason several of her earlier messages had bounced was because she had mistyped my e-mail address. Keep in mind I provided my e-mail as part of an online registration on their web site (so it was in their records) and I also spoke with her on the phone and asked that messages be sent to such-and-such address. Yet she didn’t get it right. And even in the message, she misspelled the name of the product.

Sure, the woman was probably just typing quickly and transposed two letters, but I would expect that if you’re a sales rep hoping to make a sale you could at least get the information right so it goes to the correct person and doesn’t have spelling errors in your product name. This software costs upwards of $7,500 per copy and that lack of attention to detail is a real eye-opener for me.

I’ve said it before: it’s the little things that make a huge impact. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sales rep or just a guy like me hoping to make his way in the world: the little things will make or break you. Spell things right. Remember peoples’ names. Be on time. Be polite. If you are, people notice and think favorably of you. If you aren’t, people notice that too.

I actually used the phrase “ja mon” in conversation today. It just kind of popped into my head, and I channeled some weird Jamaican accent.

Researchers at a European research facility called the Nanoscience and Picotechnology Group are working on computing at a molecular level. We’re talking a handful of atoms here– way, way smaller than even nanotechnology.

A snippet from the article I just read:

Holy cow. Amazing stuff. The research is pretty fundamental right now– nothing that’s going to become a commercial product for several years at least– but just the fact that they can potentially build CPUs a millionth (or less) the size of current semiconductor chips could mean that in a decade we may literally have computers more powerful than today’s supercomputers in a box the size of, say, a grain of sand.