Remarkable piece on the Atlanta shooter...

...in the Palm Beach Post, of all papers. It is an interview with the woman whose apartment Brian G. Nichols, the courthouse shooter, hid out in during his final hours of freedom. That she survived is a minor miracle, but the extraordinary account of the time she shared with Nichols is gripping and puts a human face on a killer whose scowling picture has been broadcast around the world. It brought home all the accounts of Nichols's high school friends, all of whom described a friendly and popular guy who exhibited no sign of one day blowing up the way he did. I don't know how to feel about all this as yet; while I am usually unsympathetic to criminals, this was unsettling in the way that he became, almost, a nice guy. For a moment there.
I also believe he wanted to be caught; else why let her go out, unsupervised, to see her daughter? Anyway.

Blogs in general...

There are a staggering number of blogs out there, for (I am quite certain) every subject or interest out there. I know mine is just a droplet in that vast ocean, and my interests range so widely and so disparately that I despair of trying to ever successfully maintain a manageable reading list. I will try to attach a noteworthy blog, then, every week or so, just for my reference and also for you, the accidental reader of this posting.

This week's blog:
99 Zeros, by Mark Jen, erstwhile employee of both Microsoft and now, infamously, Google, who let Jen go after he posted some sensitive information about them on his blog. This raised hackles internally, and although the execs at Google called him in on it and his postings subsequently deleted the information that Google did not like, others in the company apparently were upset about what Mark had (in all innocence, I believe, if not completely thought out) divulged, likely about compensation packages and the like. Nobody ever wants to know that someone got relocation expenses, for example, to come from Seattle to California, if they didn't get the same deal.
I'm just guessing about this. For all I know, Google could just be pissed off that Mark had revealed some hints about their future financial performance and technology initiatives.
This paves the way for the formation of a corporate blogging policy that will restrict and otherwise inhibit, at the very least, a person's divulging their true identity if they post unflattering information or comments about their boss. It will certainly ensure that the only job-related blogs that do make it out there are either a) toothless or b) nothing more than shills for their creators' employers. Too bad, if yet another example of corporate interference in the Internet.
In any case, it is an interesting read, if unlikely to be updated past where it is now. A cautionary tale in this increasingly blog-centric world.

Can't you take a Joke(r)?!?

I really like this pic. Just wanted to have it up for reference. Cool...

End of the first week, part 2

So here I am at home at 3:38 PM, having completed my first full week of school. I am sitting on the sofa next to Ting Ting, watching TCM and thinking about the fact that Donna Reed was actually pretty attractive. See fer yerself. funny how I didn't think that when I was younger, but tastes change, eh? Hopefully they evolve, but anyway...

Holy Moley, it works!!

Well, how bout that? Maybe there was some sort of policy change or something, but that is enormously welcome. The funny part is that i probably won;t actually be using these woeds at all, or much anyway. I am glad I can read them now, though.

This is another test...

to see whether the bad words are still blocked out, lo these many months later.

ahem :

fuck
shit damn
hacker

how did that go?

this is a test

Work is work is work

So it seems to me that a greater chunk of my work day involves meetings or conference calls. It is an unfortunate observation that the longer one remains in one's chosen field, the less time one will be able to actually devote to that job's actual tasks, which are replaced by administrative/managerial functions. The alternative is to be entry-level your whole life, with its attendant salary issues. I'm just saying, is all.

Testing accomplished...

OK, so maybe this is a necessary evil in order to avoid inflammatory or hate-filled speech, per se, but it seems to me that a reasonable person's expressions of emotion should not be so closely guarded. Ah well. And what the heck is the deal with blocking H____R, (rhymes with snacker), anyway.

Eureka!!! (i think...)

Ok, so my theory holds so far. I am not sure why the words a*****e and h****r are getting blog-filtered, but they are would the same thing happen to, oh, I don;t know, ?

Let's try...

!!!

F**K!!!