Archive for March, 2006

I flew into San Antonio, Texas tonight for the NAESP conference (National Association of Elementary School Principals). I happen to be staying in the Emily Morgan Hotel, and am fortunate enough to look out right over top of the Alamo. I took a stroll around at about 11ish local time and snapped a couple...
Read more »

I never read newspapers. Well, almost never. But right now I’m on a flight to Dallas, Texas, on my way to a convention in San Antonio. And I happened to pick up the complimentary newspaper while boarding the flight. It’s a great paper, by most measures – the Globe & Mail. One of Canada’s...
Read more »

How can someone this clueless get a job writing for tech magazines? John Dvorak is talking about the Apple versus Apple lawsuit: the Beatles versus Apple computer. Here’s his solution: In an effort to save the money, though, I would suggest that the company change its name for good. Offer a million dollars to...
Read more »

Astute observers of sparkplug9.com will have noticed that Zoomclouds, announced with such frisson merely a week ago, is toast.
Read more »

This is the fourth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original. What this is, and why I’m doing it An archive of all the chapters of Romans...
Read more »

I’ve been thinking about business blogging lately. Partly because of a months-old post on Hugh McLeod’s blog about what comes after the Cluetrain, and a post he references on Marketing Hub. But mostly because of a need in my present business venture to spend more time listening to real people in real jobs in...
Read more »

I just read Peter Merholz’s now-ancient post on getting out of the lab and into the real world when doing usability testing. One example he cites: What we did, however, was field research. We went into 12 homes, and saw how people currently managed their stuff. And, believe me, it’s messy and complex. One...
Read more »

On our recent trip to San Diego, we toured the USS Midway. It’s the longest-serving aircraft carrier in US naval history. Gabrielle was (very) pleasantly surprised to find parts of the ship painted – of all colors – pink. I think it’s purple, but who am I to say? (Gabrielle is wearing headphones that...
Read more »

As I posted quite a while ago, I re-evaluted using Google AdWords on this site when the whole Google China thing came out. I did eventually take AdWords off, for that reason as well as out of a desire to simplify this blog (see what I had on the site and also what I...
Read more »

I just found out that the Washington mob is really, really big in San Diego. They’re even breaking into many previously legit industries, such as gas stations.
Read more »

You may have noticed the snazzy new tag cloud adorning the right-hand side of this page. (I’m trying to be trendy and web 2-ish, and possibly get acquired by Google or Yahoo for mad money.) I noticed the Zoomclouds link at Guy Kawasaki’s blog – he just got a new tag cloud as well....
Read more »

OK, this is crazy. This kid is ridiculously photogenic – it’s hard to take a bad picture of him! (Disclosure: this is our youngest son, Aidan, at Ocean Beach in San Diego.)
Read more »

Ethan is madly into rock-climbing, or just plain climbing, these days. He’s always looking for something to climb. Here he and I are climbing some rocks piled up into a breakwater at San Diego’s Ocean Beach. He’s an amazingly good climber already at age 6 – good enough to give me the occasional heart...
Read more »

I would not like to be Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates right now. (Well, they are both billionaires, but still … ) Microsoft just simply cannot seem to execute lately. Release dates on everything are slipping, re-organizations of major divisions are coming every couple of months, the bad news is piling up, and they...
Read more »

Doing groceries as a family, approaching the sea food area with live lobsters, crabs, oysters, and more … Aidan pipes up: “Want to see the crabsters!” Me, silently to myself: can I freeze this moment in time?
Read more »