The year of the blog

Duffbert mentioned this CNN article stating that Meriam Webster ranked "blog" as the Number 1 word of the year. Reuters also has an article, 'Blog' Tops U.S. Dictionary's Words of the Year.

blog - Meriam Webster
blog - Dictionary
blog - Google
blog - Yahoo
blog - Ask
blog - Lycos
blog - Profusion
blog - AlltheWeb
blog - Mamma
blog - Dogpile
blog - Altavista
blog - Encarta
blog - MSN
blog - Metacrawler


Other words that made the list.

incumbent
electoral
insurgent
hurricane
cicada
peloton
partisan
sovereignty
defenestration

Errors

Just tried Blogger again. The blogger page won't even load.

I got an error this morning after logging in and trying to select a
blog to work with.

I sent a message as requested in the error.

Message to Support:

Subject: Internal Server Error

I am guessing that the errors still stem from all of the recent
database errors. Just received this at 8:13am 11/30/04.
-----------------------------------
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, support@blogger.com and
inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might
have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
-----------------------------------
I was logged into Blogger and simply selected a blog to work with and that is
when I received the error message.


Message from Support:

Hi there,

Errors like this are generally due to temporary problems with our servers,
and if you wait a little while before trying again, Blogger should work
normally. If you continue to have trouble with it, please try clearing
your browser's cache and cookies before logging in again. We apologize for
the inconvenience, and we are constantly working on making our servers
more reliable.

Thanks for using Blogger!

Sincerely,
Blogger Support


Nothing like having problems in such a public arena. Although you may
not have a lot of people blogging about the problems, as the problems
are most visible to those that can't blog, I am sure Jason and the
rest of the crew has to be feeling some pressure.

Good luck guys! I am sure I am not the only one hoping you get things
worked out.


posted via e-mail

Troubles, Troubles

It appears that Google's problems with Blogger may have spread. I just got this message when trying to access GMail.

Sorry, there seems to be a problem. The service you're looking for is temporarily unavailable. We're working hard to restore your access as soon as possible. Please try again in a few hours. Thanks for your patience.

©2004 Google

Blogger sucks

Maybe that is harsh and maybe not. As there appears to be a problem
with the sitescore logo I have on my blogs, I was trying to update the
template to remove it. It has been taking forever to get the blogger
screens to come up. Editing has been slow and posting even slower.
Come on Google, get this stuff straightened out. Maybe you should get
a big database company to help sponsor the site and hopefully get rid
of all of the database problems you have been experiencing.

I just know I am frustrated and tired of all of the waiting. Forget
trying to fix my site right now. I am going to bed.


posted via e-mail

5,000 Hits

Some might see the title and be thinking 5,000 hits an hour, 5,000
hits a day, well I just managed 5,000 hits since I implemented a
counter on the blog. As I didn't really make note of when I put it on
I can't say how long that has been, but I had 1,000 back in February,
so it has been 4,000 hits since then.

I have been blogging for a bit over 2 years now and unfortuantely
Blogger has been having some performance issues lately. I would hate
to think of moving, so I'll probably hang on for a while to see if
things get better. As I was getting an error trying to post earlier,
I figured I would try an e-mail post again. The last time I tried it,
they were having problems with e-mail posts and the post was simply
lost. We'll see what happens this time.

Online Photo Processing - Snapfish, Shutterfly, ImageStation and yes even Wal Mart

I would have to say as much as I like my HP Photosmart 7550 Printer and as good as it is, it is still not at the level of the commercial photo printers. I get good quality from the printer, but after buying cartridges and paper I think it may be just as cost efficient to pay for online commercial photo processing. I will still use the printer, but as it is actually already outdated and trying to keep up with the latest and greatest photo printer would keep someone continually swapping out printers and spending money, I think I may have found a fairly convenient alternative for me. There are a lot of online sites that will process your photos for you, but one of the big companies to recently jumped into the online commercial photo processing fray is Wal Mart. What is the convenience of this you might say. How about 3,000 distribution points. Unlike, HP, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Nikon, Ofoto, ImageStation, Fuji, Photoworks, etc.., I can go to my local Wal Mart, less than a mile away from my house and pick up my prints in an hour.

I sat at home yesterday, shortly after taking some family photos, and created some Holiday Greeting Cards. The cards actually turned out pretty good and having customized Photo Greeting Cards at 40 cents a piece seemed reasonable considering how much some Greeting Cards can cost. I did get a few Greeting Cards of one type that they evidently don't have at the local store, so for those I will have to wait a few days, but I knew that up front. My wife wanted 4x6 copies of the photos I took to show around the office. Uploaded them as well and they were ready for pickup in an hour as well.

As Wal Mart is so close the convenience of printing at home isn't as big of a factor as it once was. The 4x6 prints were 24 cents each. As a Sam's Club member I could get the prints at Sam's Club in an hour as well at 18 cents a print, but as the nearest Sam's Club is 30 miles away in Columbia, MO, it would not be as convenient.

ZDNet had an article earlier this month on the topic, "Wal-Mart promises fast photo printing".

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving. I know there were a lot of cars off of the road in Missouri as we made our way to Des Moines, Iowa, the day before Thanksgiving. I hope all involved were okay and only had to deal with a few dents to their vehicles.

We saw one FedEx truck that was pulling two of the smaller trailers. The trailers were still connected, but one was in the ditch. A tow truck was in the process of trying to get it out as we passed. Not sure it is worth absolutely positively getting it there overnight, if it means trying to go faster than conditions allow for, thus endangering yourself and others. It is certain the load was going to be later getting where it was headed than it would have been if they would have slowed down for the road conditions.

Federal Computer Week

Did you know that FCW has an RSS feed? You can find it here.

Flat Panel

Thinking of blowing some dough on a new flat panel. Maybe you should wait a while.

See the article, "Slimmer tube TVs to challenge flat panels" on News.com.

News.com Article - Microsoft's e-mail policy at issue in legal fight

In a News.com article, "Microsoft's e-mail policy at issue in legal fight", Burst.com alleges Microsoft instructs its employees to routinely destroy internal e-mail every 30 days.

The article states:

A representative for the software giant, however, said that while the company does have a guideline that suggests deleting e-mails after 30 days, the policy is not a strict requirement and that correspondence related to lawsuits is not included.

Hmm, first it states it is a guideline, then it refers to it as a policy. I see those as two totally different things. It seems that companies often get into trouble when they have policies that are in place and routinely not followed, especially if the company comes out and openly admits it.

I also wonder how employees determine what to keep. I would guess they simply go through their mailbox and ask themselves, "Could this e-mail ever possibly be related to a lawsuit?", Nah, delete.

They probably cover the determination guideline/policy in New Employee Orientation.

Microsoft, however, says its e-mail policy is necessary given the company's size and the need for efficiency.

I imagine MS employees get a lot of mail, and considering the return MS gets on average for each of its employees work I would think they could afford to store more than 30 days worth of mail per employee and it would give the company better insight into what the corporate world using their products has to deal with. Of course I pay for it, but even my MSN account has 2GB of storage with the opportunity for 10 additional accounts at 250MB each.

If even Microsoft can't produce e-mail in question in a lawsuit how can any of the rest of us be expected to.

Microsoft comes through

My MSN mailbox is at 2GB today. I recently cleaned it up a bit as it was showing I was in the 70+% usage range. I got it down to 50+%. Now it simply shows 1% usage. Cool. I guess I won't have to clean it again for a while.

Big BSOD

Yep, that is a big Blue Screen of Death that Chad Dickerson posted.

Missed the Segway

I previously posted about the 10mph trip across the U.S. on a Segway. I missed it when it came through Jefferson City. I noticed today in a News.com article, "Segway completes transcontinental voyage" that it has made it. You can see more about it on the America at 10mph website.

2GB! Maybe.

It may finally happen. Even though there was a chance per my contact with support back on 10/18/04 that it would have happened by the end of last month, which it didn't, we'll see if it happens by the end of this month.

I got the following from MSN Member Services on 11/13/04.

Your MSN Premium e-mail account is getting a huge upgrade. Throughout November, we're boosting Member inboxes to 2GB with a 20MB attachment size. It's virtually unlimited storage. Send and receive more photos, videos and large documents without worrying about space. Plus, your upgrade will include 10 additional accounts you and your family can use– each with a 250MB capacity and 10MB attachment size. You'll see the increase to your storage meter by the end of this month.

Tomboy

If you are in the Linux/Unix environment it sounds like Tomboy might be a nice little desktop note taking utility to try. It sounds as close as anything to a Linux/Unix competitor to Microsoft's OneNote. I would say Tomboy beats Microsoft hands down on initial price (currently free, but still a pre-release). As I don't have Linux or Unix running on anything and work is slow to adopt anything new including MS products (partly do to budget, partly do to lack of technology direction - currently an environment with the mix of NT and Novell Servers, Exchange 5.5, and I still think a few desktops running Windows 95), I probably won't be utilizing either one, at least for some time. As I haven't used either one I can't really comment on how good either works, but I can say that I am not hurting. Note taking still takes time, which makes it difficult to keep up with no matter what application one uses, but as far as note taking I dump stuff I want to remember into a couple of Notes databases. I have one where I keep info article related and one I stuff project related notes into.

For any note taking product I think the ideal situation would be to have the utility running on a portable or tablet in a wireless networked environment, such that one can take the notes in the meeting rather than have to pen the notes, simply to go back to the office and key them back into an application later.

Domino Administration

You may have gotten the IBM Support Technical Information Notification e-mail that I did or you may have just found it on the IBM site, but thought it was worth mentioning that IBM has the "Introduction to Administering IBM Lotus Domino 6/6.5: Operating Fundamentals" FREE tutorial available online or you can download it (approx 27MB zip file).

If you are starting out in Domino, are new to R6, or want to review some fundamentals you might want to take a look. I'll probably take a look at it.

myRSS - Market Sentinel

If you have something that people want, then charge for it. That appears to be the way that many Internet companies/sites with free offerings turn when they think they have something people want or need. It looks like myRSS is the latest to follow this route. It will be interesting to see if their commercial offering, Market Sentinel, will have what it takes to stay afloat. A lot of people used the BETA, but there can definitely be a difference once you start to charge for something that was free. I wonder if Google will turn Gmail into a commerical service at some point.

HeapAnalyzer

I saw HeapAnalyzer via the IBM alphaWorks: Emerging Technologies Atom feed as well as WebSpherePower Magazine.

I can't say that I was impressed, but hey, remember, I am not a programmer. I couldn't program my way out of a paper bag. I guess the good thing is that you don't have to know how to program to get out of a paper bag.

The HeapAnalyzer might be a great tool, but just hitting the site the thing that impressed me the most was when I looked at the discussion forum for this specific little app. The tool hasn't been out long, but someone had already posted, "Does this work?". Jinwoo Hwang (jwwhang) came back asking the person to try something. Which the user did. Jinwoo then asked the gentleman to upload a copy of his dump and that he would take a look. After looking at the file it was quickly apparent that it was not a heap dump that HeapAnalyzer can read and referred the gentleman to this document regarding heap dump and gave an example of one. The gentleman said that took care of him, made a suggestion and had another question. Jinwoo thanked the individual for the suggestion, said that he would try to improve the next release, pointed the gentleman to another document to answer his question in regards to Solaris JVM and offered to help with future questions. It may have take a few days to accomplish this, but it was nice to see the direct interaction. Of course, the next person posting had the same issue and admitted not reading the FAQs or Documentation. Hmm. Jinwoo pointed the individual to the first document again.

So, if you are out there trying HeapAnalyzer, you might want to make sure that you have the right heap dump before you post to the forum.

Automotive Commentary

I'll make this one short and to the point. I think the idea of having the backup lights on a car turn on when you use your remote to unlock it is stupid!

eWeek: "Microsoft Reaches out to Domino"

I don't see the article online yet, but in the November 8, 2004 edition of eWeek is a small article in the News & Analysis section that talks about the first deliverable from the Microsoft outreach program being released in January. It is a toolkit that lets one create Notes/Domino based Web services using MS Development tools. It goes on to state that Microsoft had a workshop on this last month. It also has a quote from Bob Balaban, a former Lotus/Iris employee, that was interesting:

They've got guys like Gary [Devendorf], who is fabulous at what he does, but they need to get their senior development people to talk to people who know how to build collaborative applications," Balaban said. "They really don't get it."

GMail

I guess someone is not having a good Monday morning. Here is the message I received logging into GMail this morning.

Sorry, there seems to be a problem. The service you're looking for is temporarily unavailable. We're working hard to restore your access as soon as possible. Please try again in a few hours. Thanks for your patience.


©2004 Google

New Director

Judging by a quote of our Governor-elect in this Springfield News-Leader article, it looks like our Department can expect to have a new Director.

"I think the Department of Revenue is an agency that can be more efficient than it is today," he said. "Certainly the director I appoint will be focused on a greater efficiency."

Halloween

Needless to say, our dog Buster, found Halloween UDDERLY humiliating this year.

Closed to Comments

Kind of funny. Chris Linfoot stated in a comment he posted to his own blog, "Should have known better than to permit comments on this story."

After a few more comments it states:

"Story comments are now closed."

Sorry, but we can still comment, although we may not be able to do it
via a comment posted to that post. :-)

Of course, it is nice that we have the freedom to do so, and that he
has the freedom to choose that we not do it there.


posted via e-mail

Blogger Issues

I was having problems with Blogger yesterday. It seemed to be crawling. As that was the case I sent a couple of posts via e-mail. They never showed. I went out and checked the status and found that on 11/3/04 one of the database servers was having performance problems for several hours, hence probably why I was having performance issues. I also noticed that on 11/1/04 they mentioned the Mail-to-Blogger was having issues and that they were working to fix that. I hope they are still working on it as it was not fixed yesterday. Not sure if those post will eventually show up or if they are simply gone. I guess time will tell.

Prediction Update

Well, having no political background on the whole thing I guess my prediction was about as good as a monkey throwing darts at a map. I was right that the person winning Florida was declared the winner. I was simply trying to guess the states and that is the one I couldn't decide on, which with the number of votes it has would throw it one way or the other. Of course, most would say that the state that made the difference was Ohio. Of course, we all know it isn't just one state that determines it as is often stated. Just because one is slower to report and the decision that comes out of it gets the electoral count to the magic figure doesn't mean it was that state that did it. It was the combination of all of them that added up to 270+ that did it.

At this point and depending on which site you look at, as some still haven't posted info for some states, it is looking like I was wrong on Nevada and Wisconsin. I guess we'll have to wait to see how I did on Iowa and New Mexico and we now know who go Florida.

Media Conspiracy?

I am not a big one on the conspiracy theories, but it almost makes you wonder. None of those reporting the voter outcomes of the states have disagreed on who has won any of the states yet. Some have refrained from making their prediction on certain states, but none predicted have sided the other way from the first one predicting a state outcome. It appears that they have all refrained from naming anything that will put the count over the top for either candidate on purpose. Just keeping you watching and keeping the numbers close. Hmm. Interesting.

Prediction

My prediction as of 10:30pm is that whoever gets Florida's votes will win. We'll see how far off I am.

Results

Of course, the results aren't out yet, but noticed on MSNBC's Election Tick Tock that the Weekly Readers Kid's Poll has been a pretty good indicator in the past (see Weekly Reader Kids Have Accurately
Predicted Presidential Election For 44 Years). I imagine a lot of the kids are influenced by what they hear around the house, which could easily translate to what the elections might show. I would imagine that could be a tougher call with a close race. Not sure if the parents of the kids that participate are registered voters either. Anyway if the kids in the Weekly Reader Poll are correct, it appears that Bush will be our President for four more years. Hopefully by tomorrow morning we'll know who will be President and if Weekly Reader's kids got it right or wrong this year. I really don't want it to end up dragging out with legal rulings, etc.. for any amount of time.

I Voted!

I voted this morning. My youngest son went with me. He was the first kid to vote at the kid vote booth they had setup outside the actual polling place.

My wife made it there about 6:00am when it opens and she was voter number 52. I was there about 6:30am and I was voter number 149. The wait was not bad at all, but one could tell the early voting was heavier than usual. Just glad I am not in one of those lines you see on television where people are waiting for two to three hours.

If you are interested in seeing the Missouri Election Night Reporting you can go to our Secretary of State's website Election Night Reporting website.

You can select specific races that you want to follow or simply select all races. I think the hits on the site will be up a bit this year. I hope the site can handle it. It is a bit interesting as our Secretary of State, Matt Blunt (Office Website / His Republican Campaign Website), is one of those running for Governor in our state. He is running against our State Auditor, Claire McCaskill (Office Website / Her Democratic Campaign Website), who unseated the incumbent Democrat Bob Holden (Office Website / The site that was his campaign site.). The run for Governor here has been as close of a race as the Presidential race, so it should be interesting to see who gets it. No matter what, we know we will have a new Governor.