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||Wednesday, July 30, 2003||
Aquadoodiloop. A next generation weblog. Ok, did some bug tweaking tonight. Go there and give it another whirl. Thanks kids.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/30/2003 11:11:09 PM
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Woot
Alright kids Aquadoodiloop MK2 is officially in beta with a limited functionality set. Click Here to check it out. You can (Yes you, its a community blog) can add a post, and comment on added posts. So. Go. Now. Let me know about bugs. I'll tell you right now there's something screwy with the comments.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/30/2003 05:55:11 PM
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Christopher Lydon interview synopsis with Steve Kinzer. Just a quickie.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/30/2003 03:54:27 PM
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||Tuesday, July 29, 2003||
Paris [A kitten] in the Toilet. I have two cats. They are inordinately interested in my bathroom activities. I have often thought of writing about it, but I have never managed to quite catch the right tone. This man has. You will laugh yourself into an apocalyptic explosion of humor. It is that funny. And, yes, I have pissed on my cat's head.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/29/2003 04:16:33 PM
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php.internals: Re: enabling sqlite by default, just a funny post on some php dev list from Rasmus the developer of PHP about why PHP 5 will have sqllite support bundled into it. I particularly liked this bit "And as I have said so many times, PHP is not about purity in CS principles or architecture, it is about solving the ugly web problem with an admittedly ugly, but extremely functional and convenient solution. If you are looking for purity you are in the wrong boat. Get out now before you get hit by a wet cat!"
When the inventor of one of the most popular programming (scripting whatever) languages on the planet says his language is not about Computer Science principles or purity I gotta love it.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/29/2003 11:11:11 AM
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||Monday, July 28, 2003||
1st public gay high school set for NY; saw this drift across the news wire today. I guess I can't express how much this irritates me. The article talks about how this will allow gay and lesbian students to learn in an atmosphere free from harassment. Well what about the thousands of of other students who deal with harassment every day for being fat, skinny, short, buck-toothed, black, white, hispanic, etc? Do they get their own school? Do they get any sort of protection. Nope. Its just another day of hell in highschool for them.
Its so tremendously unfair. I offer my personal condolences to every straight kid in NYC who is daily tortured at highschool. I'm sorry kids there is no rescue for you. My advice? Fake being gay.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/28/2003 09:01:52 PM
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||Saturday, July 26, 2003||
Republicans for Dean. Basically what it says. Republicans for Dean. Aquadoodiloop isn't becoming a Dean for pres weblog, It's just part of my commitment to get involved this year, and Dean's the candidate that I'm endorsing early on.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/26/2003 12:34:48 PM
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||Thursday, July 24, 2003||
A quick thought, I've only been reading news sites, technical sites, weblogs and forums for so long that I was actually shocked to see that there are still plenty of websites out there that are nothing more than, "Hey this is my home on the net!"
By the way, yes, I have noticed that my punctuation and spelling have completely fallen apart over the last few days.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/24/2003 11:02:52 PM
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||Wednesday, July 23, 2003||
Postering for Dean. This is why I am going to vote for Howard Dean. Because this man (well his staff, but certainly with his permission) KNOWS how to use weblogging technology to motivate people into action. How badass is this! "Hey kids download a Dean poster and go put it up!" YES!
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/23/2003 05:37:54 PM
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Saving the Net. Doc Searle's a noted technologist has a pretty good essay about the state of affairs in technology, and why right now might be the most important crossroads of the last 10 years as far as technology goes. I agree in many ways. We aren't just Chicken Little screaming about the falling sky. These people are real, and they really want to control your PC as much as they control your TV, VCR, DVD Player, and Radio.
A quotes from Searle's editorial: "[Conservatives]...love winners, literally. They like to reward strength and achievement. They hate rewarding weakness for the same reason a parent hates rewarding kids' poor grades. This, more than anything else, is what makes conservatives so radically different from liberals. It's why favorite liberal buzzwords like "fairness" and "opportunity" are fingernails on the chalkboards of conservative minds. To conservatives, those words are code-talk for punishing the strong and rewarding the weak."
Doc also discusses the fact that Howard Dean is raising his support (the most of any Dem so far) through many small donations. This means he's being bought by the voters. This is important. It could be the most important change in campaign financing ever, way more than the finance reform that congress will never pass, because hey, why would they?
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/23/2003 10:37:24 AM
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||Tuesday, July 22, 2003||
Bill Brown Who?
I am a link whore, or so this fellow thinks. He thinks this because I wrote Dave a nice letter on the day he turned over control of RSS. I just thought I was being polite. Where I came from its considered good manners to write a thank you note when someone does something nice.
Apparently where Bill Brown comes from this is considered being a sycophant, a link whore, someone who craves recognition of their own work through heaping praise on another.
So anyways, I'd appreciate it if everyone clicked the above and visited Bill's site in order to show him that it's just as easy to get lots of traffic by being an ass, as it is by being nice.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/22/2003 03:42:40 PM
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||Monday, July 21, 2003||
Working on finishing up work on my own weblog software. Tentatively called Aqualog. You can watch it evolve here at the beta site.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/21/2003 11:16:15 AM
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Google Search: pat rock = I am the number one hit on google for Pat Rock. I can die happy now.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/21/2003 10:24:16 AM
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||Sunday, July 20, 2003||
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/20/2003 08:15:53 PM
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||Friday, July 18, 2003||
an open letter to Dave Winer, my new hero
update this is in response to this post by Dave Winer, in case you were wondering what I was talking about.
Dave
You are truly amazing. I love it. Everyone giving you static about RSS and who owns, and blah blah blah, "Dave's the big Ogre of development..." etc etc BS BS BS. And you just throw down the trump card like, "Yeah, well bite me because what are you going to complain about now." I'm exaggerating there, I know that's not your style or attitude.
Dave, really, I just can't tell you how cool this is. You being brave enough to just step up into everyone's face and prove that you're are one of the Good Guys, your total courage and integrity about sticking to your guns and defending RSS all the while being totally nice and cool about it. Your tacit approval and support of (n)Echo/Atom. Your love, sweat, tears, etc... about weblogging, the community, and bootstrapping the whole western world into an online universe where we can all write to one another telling our stories and dreams. I don't know man. I just totally respect you. I respect all of the weblog dev teams out there, Six Apart, Blogger etc...
But you are completely in a class by yourself.
"I'm in awe of you..."
Bobby, The Sopranos
Humbly, Respectfully
Pat Rock
update(s)
PS: To all the haters who are busy trying to trip this move about by complaining about the choice of appointee, let it be. Dave appointed colleagues who would care about RSS. Can you blame him? Don't worry about it. It will iterate away from this current set up, for now lets just recognize the main point. That Dave did the Right Thing. Dave Winer +1
PPS: No, I don't in fact have a feed of any kind. Why? Because I'm too lazy, and blogger doesn't support it. Why don't I upgrade to Blogger Pro? Because Blogger is fine. Why don't I get Radio If I love Dave so much? Because I started with Blogger, and I'm just dancing with the one who brought me. Also because I have written my own weblog software and I'll use it when I'm ready to move to something else. And yes it will have an RSS feed.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/18/2003 12:20:03 PM
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One of the things I think about quite frequently is this:
What if everything in life was scriptable? I mean in the programming sense. I worked with a developer who would always say the following when someone asked if something was possible, "Sure, we can make your computer dial up the pizza company and have a pie delivered with the toppings of your choice as indicated by your last amazon book order. Its all about time and money." And you know what? He was right! We could, conceivably, live in a world where you could program everything. And of course I'm sure there would be a nice GUI for users, who would probably comprehend it about as much we currently comprehend how to program our VCR, but what I really want is a development environment!
I want to be able to program my home phone to automatically forward my calls to my cell phone when my house senses that I am not at home. If I am out of range of my or my cell phone is off, I want my cell phone provider to automatically redirect the call to my voicemail. I want my voicemails converted to text and emailed to me. I want everything logged to a database that I can later sift and publish interesting things.
I want it all cataloged, indexed, sorted, sifted and connected so that I can rearrange my entire life into a new configuration through some kind of meta-life interataction module that I can program as simply as somthing like:
If $Pat != Home Then Activate NotHome.Life
Else
Activate Home.Life
And this would then do everything from change the settings on the thermostat to save energy, to set the timer on the Tivo in case I don't make it home in time to watch Gundam.
I can dream can't I?
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/18/2003 10:27:46 AM
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||Thursday, July 17, 2003||
Holy CRAP! Last night I went to a demonstration of Woodmizer Portable Sawmills. It was amazing! Basically you can fell your own tree and mill your own boards out of it. You should spend some time checking out their site, epecially the Personal Best section, which details projects people have built using their Woodmizer. I especially like this one.
I think I have officially added "build a log cabin" to my list of things to do before 40.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/17/2003 01:06:30 PM
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||Monday, July 14, 2003||
A Few Items
We Moved Servers
Ok, for the first timer ever, all of the websites under my control are now hosted in one place, and that place is not run by any of my friends. I feel like a big grown up all of a sudden. Thanks to Ubergoo and Geekempire for so much hook up for so long. These guys are great and you should read their websites daily if for no other reason than that they are both funny as hell, and metal as yo' momma at the same time. It's all junior high poop humor, but in a sublime adult film industry kind of way. The move was prompted by a great deal on hosting at Hostcall and a desire to just have everything under my control, and not have to bother my friends when I needed something changed.
I'm posting under my real name
Yeah, thats it. Mask off. For so long the only people that read this site we're people in on the joke, but now I think others are coming here as well so for the foreseeable future Turgon and Crak have retired (Turgon and Crak are my online gaming names). Its just me, Pat Rock, posting. I was starting to have serious misgivings about the strange dual lives of online personas anyways. But that's a rant/screed/topic for another time.
I'm a CBC&S Graduate, and I'm damn proud of it! (Kind of)
Ok, I've made off the cuff references to it, I wasn't hiding it, but I wasn't parading it either. However, as my posts become more personal it would do you well to keep in mind that I graduated from Cincinnati Bible College in 1997 with a degree in Biblical Literature. I am (if you need a label for me) an Evangelical Christian (at least nominally, or at least on my good days, or at least when I remember that there's something more in life than ME ME ME).
Ok, true confessions (if that's what this is) are over. Move along citizen. Nothing to see here.
Random Thoughts
For no reason I posted up a list of people that I had been thinking of recently. Then after reading that list I started thinking about all the people that I love who I didn't put in the list, and then I realized, Hey! I've got a lot of friends. Then I felt really cool and lucky. Really lucky. My list of cumulative people to give shout outs too would be like 3 times the list I put down. That's like > 60 people I wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with. And you thought I was anti-social.
Last wednesday I went to a meetup of fellow College graduates at a convention that was in town. While I was there I spent almost all my time talking to Wendy Bennet, Alex and Heather Lozada, and Kristin Sarno. I had such a great time, and it was so awesome to see them and just reconnect with them. To see that all of them are doing great and moving along/ahead in life. And they really are. All of them have bright futures and plans and are working on trying to work what God wants them to do with their lives. I was so amazed at their energy and faith. Me? Most of the time I am pretty happy to come home from work, sit on the couch and read. I don't think about my future in that way. I'm not making any plans to do anything but live, work, and retire. I'm not jealous; I'm just so impressed that they can find a purpose to life.
They pointed to another college acquaintance with a weblog, Joe Boyd. And I was really blown away. If you ever met Joe in college I don't think you would have envisioned him the way he is now. He sounds like some kind of Christian Hippy, and its cool! He lives in a house with a few other couples. Something that I have thought about and wished for for a long time. He heads up a network of house churches trying to practice what they describe as "simple church." I don't know what that means, but for someone who is sick of church it sure sounds like a breath of fresh air.
More on some of these things later.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/14/2003 03:17:12 PM
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Ok, we have finally worked out all the kinks. We are now on a new server, Blogger is working again. I will let you know more about all the moving and shaking later.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/14/2003 12:30:22 PM
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||Thursday, July 10, 2003||
Over the next 24 - 72 hours we will be switching servers. This includes changes to our DNS, we will probably be unreachable for at least a day, maybe a bit longer. See you when the storm has passed.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/10/2003 11:54:52 AM
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Dean vs. Edwards vs. Bush - Why I'm rooting for an Edwards surge. By William Saletan. I am liking Edwards' rhetoric more and more. I like Howard Dean a lot as well. We'll see where it all fetches up.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/10/2003 09:24:06 AM
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||Wednesday, July 09, 2003||
Google's little known pigeon rank technology
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/9/2003 05:52:42 PM
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Mike Riggs, contact me at crak@ubergoo.com. I want to talk to you.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/9/2003 10:04:12 AM
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||Tuesday, July 08, 2003||
I need some advice I think. When I first got into IT my job was supporting a fairly large client-server based app. I was part of a great team, and I learned more in a year there than I have since. I also had more fun and excitement than I've ever had in IT since. I got to work with developers, with DBAs, with network specialists, etc... My job was so multi-levelled, and I was somebody there. Me and my partner/friend/co-worker we're in charge of the release process wherein code got moved from development to production. We we're involved in every project from start to finish because it was our asses that we're going to be up 5am trying to make the latest changes work.
Since then I've tried to get applied and interviewed for three application support jobs that involved being the point man for large client-server based systems, and I've been turned down on all three. Mostly because of a lack of "official" education. The job I have now is break-fix PC grunt work. Its fine, it pays the bills, its good money. But, its not going anywhere. Its Wndows, and its the same thing over and over again every day. I'm bored. I'm bored and the IT industry is in a slump so there doesn't seem to be any way out of this.
I keep looking at going back to school, but there's no easy way for a guy like me whose BA is in Bible Lit, to get into a CS program. For example: In order to get into IUPUIs CS master's program I have to take 5 pre-requisite courses (and get an A in all of them). In order to even enroll in the math pre-req I have to have taken 4 other math classes. I'm looking at 2 years of under grad make up work just to take my first grad class. Then its another 2-3 years to get my graduate degree.
IUPUI has another program that looks interesting that requires less of a CS background. Its called Human-Computer Interaction and it focuses on designing systems that are useable. They look for people with a technical background, but also a design background, and a humanities background. Unfortunately I don't necessarily see a connection between that degree and real world work. Maybe I'm missing something.
Maybe I'm just being impatient, and what I need to do is wait out this slump, put some time into working at the same place for a while, and wait until things open up more and I can start applying for more interesting jobs.
I know there are a lot more new readers coming to Aquadoodiloop, so let me know what you think.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/8/2003 10:42:49 AM
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Well hell, comments are broken. I wondered why no one was posting anything. I'm working on it now.
update: comments are working again. Man, next time email a brotha and let him know.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/8/2003 10:19:13 AM
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||Monday, July 07, 2003||
John Edwards: Senator John Edwards' Address On Rewarding Work And Creating Opportunity. Nice speech from a presidential hopeful.
I'm making my prediction now. The Dems can win in a big way if they can just throw up a plausible moderate. Bush doesn't have enough time to turn the economy around, and he hasn't made enough progress in "the war on terrorism." The American people realize they got screwed on so called "tax relief", and I believe people always vote with the money. George is not the money for us.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/7/2003 11:57:44 AM
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||Thursday, July 03, 2003||
Nope, I'm not unemployed or anything its just the day before a 3 day weekend and so it's hella slow around here, so here's my fourth post of the day:
Story about a guy trying to sail to cuba
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/3/2003 04:33:41 PM
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I finally did it! After years of waiting I managed to snake my name into my greedy hands. PatrickRock.com now belongs to me! YES!
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/3/2003 03:09:17 PM
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Strom's Skeleton - The late segregationist's black daughter. By Diane McWhorter. Whoa. Weird. I love this quote:
The reason the South is the most interesting region in the country is that it's the only place where the psychic landscape is parceled out equally among Marx, Freud, and God.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/3/2003 11:29:04 AM
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Shout Outs
I just felt like getting this off my chest this morning. I've been think recently about all of you, and so I'd just like to take a moment to shout out/shine my light on the following:
Garrett Curry, Sam, Billy, Julia Rock, Julia Curry, Wendy Gerber, Alex Lozada, Brad Johnson, Mike Walker, Jedd Tudor, Ryan Conrad, Jamie Conrad, Jeremy, Nate, Jason, Brent, Brent, and Brent, Steve Jones, Wendy Jones, Geoff Runge, Allie, Celine, Jon, John, Charles, Chris, Alice, Christine Eggers, Sara Anderson, Dustin, Andi, Marlin, Jan, Bob, Jim, June, Milford, Phyllis, Perry, Evelyn.
No particular order, and no particular reason.
Love,
Pat
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/3/2003 11:17:58 AM
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Did they trip?. Uhhh... Hello. Is this an open letter to the IT community encouraging the use of drugs as a means of resolving software architecture problems?
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/3/2003 10:18:44 AM
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||Wednesday, July 02, 2003||
Joel on Software with apparently the first implemented ECHO feed. Heh.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/2/2003 05:29:50 PM
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Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy. I want to figure out a way to get paid to say really really smart things like this. I think this way all the time, but no one is paying me to be the keynote speaker at an event in which I get to talk about the techno/socio thoughts I have while I stare at my bellybutton and think.
Where do I sign up?
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/2/2003 05:28:43 PM
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Blogger Developers Network: Ev, is reporting that they will be supporting the ECHO format and API going forward as the weblog API of choice. Also, on the cool side, Blogger API 1.0 is official, supported, and the spec is frozen. Blogger API 2.0 is ditched.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/2/2003 11:31:27 AM
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||Tuesday, July 01, 2003||
Oh yeah forgot to mention:
Went to see a Triple A baseball game ..... checking ..... yep, still don't like watching baseball.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/1/2003 02:40:36 PM
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Scaling Campaign Finance. Although this guy is approaching what may be a phenom from a liberal perspective, it would do us well to remember that conservatives can use the same tactic.
Posted by: Pat Rock on 7/1/2003 11:52:24 AM
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