BoomFlag

First they renamed my alma mater. Now they do this kind of nonsense:

Umm, what? You’re required to pass a test about copyright law, and then the university will kindly let you mess around with P2P software?

The sheer idiocy of such a thing notwithstanding, I can’t imagine how the campus network administrators will be able to prevent five thousand fairly smart engineering students from using P2P software in their rooms, completely independent of any university oversight. Encrypting traffic, using non-standard ports, and even spoofing MAC/IP addresses are three trivial ways to circumvent The System.

Boy, things have changed since my days there, when we used our 14.4 modems to connect to the campus mainframe (which, of course, was running VAX). Good times.

Tonight I had to drop the bomb on a client.

We’ve been working on a project for almost six months, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the end is tantalizingly close but we finally realized we’re never going to get there because this guy keeps adding more to his list. So I wrote a long e-mail explaining to him that we’re basically going to have to bail on the project, or he’s going to have to agree to severely restrict what he’s asking for. It was a hard thing to do, but necessary.

The bummer about the thing is that it’s the biggest single project we’ve ever done, so I hate to walk away from it, but at the same time I have to protect my company and the sanity of my guys. Hopefully things will turn out all right in the end.

So I’m working on a project for Google and Salesforce (yeah, yeah, I’m such a name-dropper) and I must say I’m woefully unimpressed with Salesforce. For a system that’s the poster child of the “software as a service” industry, and a database that’s being used by thousands of top corporations around the world, it’s probably one of the slowest online applications I’ve ever seen. Every page takes five seconds or so to load, which of course in the web world is an eternity. The navigation isn’t intuitive, there are a gazillion links on every page, and finding what you want is a real chore.

I suppose the good news is I don’t actually have to use the system (except while I’m testing my programming work), and I’ll just leave it to the Google guys and everyone else who’s paying an arm and a leg for this bloated monstrosity.

As ultimate season starts, I’ve updated my computer desktop to this cool photo of “seven on the line”.

This week marks the start of the Boulder ultimate summer league season, which means it’s when I really start to get in shape.

We have practice every Monday and games every Wednesday (double-headers every week!). And of course I continue to play pickup games Tuesdays and Thursdays during lunch. That makes five games of ultimate in four days every week for the next three months. Woot!

Yesterday La was playing Dance Dance Revolution for about an hour, and she succeeded in getting the coveted triple-A:

That means she did every step perfectly on the beat. Of course Kyra has already managed that feat (because Kyra is an awesome dancer) but so far she’s been the only one.

One of these days I’ll do it…

So we watched August Rush last night. It had kind of a slow start, but turned out to be a good show. The overall plot was one of those “feel good” sorts of things, about an orphaned kid who overcomes obstacles and holds onto his faith that he’ll find his parents. The really fun part was the music, however. Of course one of the main themes of the movie is the fact that the boy is a musical prodigy (apparently because both of his parents were, and they somehow passed it along genetically). Thus he learns how to play a guitar in a matter of hours, the piano in a day, and eventually composes an amazing orchestral piece.

The guitar playing in the movie is pure fun to watch and hear… it almost makes me want to learn how to play…

“There’s an old saying about those who forget history. I don’t remember it, but it’s good.”

— Stephen Colbert

The funny thing about blogs is that when life is busy and full of action and adventure and crazy things that are worth writing about…

… there’s no time to write about them.

That seems to be the case of late. All sorts of good stuff is going on but I never seem to get around to jotting down notes about any of it. Now there will be a big gap in my digital history.

“People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.”

— Dan Quayle