Monthly Archives: September 2003

Exchange Rate Considered Brutal

By | September 26, 2003

I’m in London right now, and the exchange rate between the US dollar and the British pound is absolutely brutal. It’s about $1.65 to £1. Hey, typing £ is much easier on an English keyboard. And just for the heck of it, €. The trip so far, other than the afternoon recurrence of jetlag poison,… Read More »

Gone Skyping

By | September 18, 2003

I got to try out Skype tonight on a random call with someone in Vermont. I was definitely impressed with the sound quality of the call. She said that either she or a friend had used Skype to talk to someone in Israel, and the sound quality was pretty good for that call, too. I… Read More »

Skype

By | September 17, 2003

The people behind Kazaa and Joltid have taken their P2P expertise to the telephony world with Skype, a P2P telephony application. One of the biggest problems with IP telephony for home users is that most endpoint protocols, e.g. H.323 and SIP, require that you open ports in your firewall, assuming the home user is smart… Read More »

Return of the Incinerating Toilet

By | September 14, 2003

If you loved part 1 of my incinerating toilet story, you might not hate part 2. Part 1 provided a “quick overview of the Incinolet brand incinerator toilet and the fine people that bring this advanced technology to a grateful world.” Part 2 follows up with an in depth look at the actual incinerating toilet… Read More »

RIAA Shamnesty Program

By | September 8, 2003

I’m starting to think that when Philip Morris paid to enter the corporate villian protection program and was renamed Altria, another part of the deal was that the RIAA and SCO agreed to act like World Wrestling Foundation bad guys to draw away the heat. I mean, it’s not like the RIAA and SCO are… Read More »

The Man Who Mistook His Cats for an Earthquake

By | September 4, 2003

After a long work from home day, which included 5 conference calls spanning most of 8 am to 6:30 pm, I decided to head out for a high speed hill climb on my bicycle. As I was rolling my bike out of the garage at about 6:40 pm, I heard a series of loud thumping noises that seemed to emanate from the living room, …

SacBee on Moblogging

By | September 3, 2003

The Sacramento Bee ran an article this week by Rachel Leibrock on moblogging. She interviewed me by email for the story. “Moblogging is still in a very early growth stage, mainly due to a general lack of awareness of the power of technology and a lack of access to the necessary tools,” explains Oakland-based software… Read More »

Canned Bread

By | September 3, 2003

Now, the truth can be told. Canned bread is real and it exists on shelves in stores unlikely to be anywhere near you. Nonetheless, you will definitely want to read this in depth review of the canned bread phenomenon. This riveting, critical analysis was brought to you, me, and the rest of a surly, yet… Read More »

South of the Border, West of the Sun

By | September 2, 2003

I have to say that South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami was my least favorite book by him so far. However, I have pretty high standards for him, as I rank several of his other books among my all time favorites. It was a relatively light, quick read, which was… Read More »