31 Questions

1. What time did you get up this morning?
I set the alarm a little later than usual, about 7:20 AM

2. Diamonds or Pearls?
I really like the classic pearl choker. On a woman, of course. I think jewelry on men is for pimps only.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
The Break-Up, with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston

4. What is your favorite TV show?
Right now, The Sopranos followed closely by The Office

5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
Nothing, I never eat breakfast

6. Favorite cuisine?
All, especially Asian.

7. What is your middle name?
Gene, just like my fathers

8. What food do you dislike?
I get tired of pizza and burgers, especially when I'm traveling and that's all that's available

9. What is your favorite CD at the moment?
I've been listening to the latest Tool CD

10. What kind of car do you drive?
I bought Lexus ES 330 last Christmas

11. Favorite sandwich?
Probably Bahn Mi, the Vietnamese sandwiches on French bread.

12. What characteristic do you despise?
False pride, cockiness

13. Favorite item(s) of clothing?
I wore my new shoes to work

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would it be?
Antarctica

15. What color is your bathroom?
Sea-foam green

16. Favorite brand of clothing?
Polo

17. Where would you retire to?
Texas hill country

18. What was your most memorable birthday?
Oh, they've all been memorable. Sixteen and eighteen were big, twenty-one wasn't, thirty and forty went by pretty quickly.

19. Favorite sport to watch?
NFL football, then NCAA tournament basketball. I love the Tour de France, although this years not going to be a great one, and I love to watch the Masters.

20. Furthest place you are sending this?
Posting it to my blog

21. Who do you least expect to send this back to you?
Anyone

22. Person you expect to send it back first?
No one

23. Favorite saying?
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I also like "thats hawt!"

24. When is your birthday?
April 5th

25. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night person. Definitely.

26. What is your shoe size?
Thirteen

27. Favorite Cookie?
Chocolate chip

28. Buttered, Plain, or salted popcorn?
I don't eat popcorn much, but my favorite is the white cheddar version.

29. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I remember that since I got into high school I've always been interested in computers.

30. What is your favorite candy?
Chuckles

31. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
Every other Friday (we've started working 9-80s, so I get every other Friday off)

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

The Lover by Marguerite Duras.

Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb

Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb.

The Girl With the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

The Girl With the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block.

Top 10 Email Pet Peeves

10) Bad grammer, spelling, or improper punctuation
ALL CAPS is yelling, and all lower case without punctuation is just as bad. Learn how to write and spell and press the shift key, or at minimum use the spelling and grammar checkers in Microsoft Word. Some messages are so bad, not only do they detract from the message they are trying to convey, and make the sender look bad, they can be difficult or impossible to interpret properly. Emails from grownups shouldn't include shortcuts like "LOL" (for laughing out loud), or emoticons ;->. If you don't dot your i's with smiley faces in business correspondence, you shouldn’t do the equivalent in a business-related email message.

9) Using the wrong email address
Sending personal emails to my business address or business emails to my personal address, or repeatedly using an email address I've asked them to not use, is frustrating. Mixing up their accounts is just as bad, I would hate to have to forward a budget justification to my boss sent to me from iluvjagerbombs@ao1.com. Using company email like IM to discuss (sometimes very) personal issues is work email abuse and is inappropriate. Don’t send me racist, sexist, off-color, explicit, or flat-out pornographic crap emails. I don't want to receive Goatse at any time, but I especially don’t want my name showing up in company logs of porn-abusers (most big companies monitor email).

8) Pictures of your cat
Or your dog dressed up for Halloween, or Easter, or whatever. I may not even want to see pictures of your wife or kids if they’re cute, unless I ask, or you are a close friend of mine. If I want to see that stuff, I’ll go to Cute Overload™. I’m just not interested in cuteness. And if you do send me that crap stuff, have the courtesy to put the pictures on the web and just send a link, that way I can go see them if I’d like to. And resize the pictures, don’t send me an email with a dozen megabyte attachments. Also, don’t send me Internet petitions, unless you’re sure I feel the same way. Plus they’re worthless anyway.

7) Ridiculously shifting work
Don’t try to solve complex issues using email. If an email has gone back and forth more than once, just pick up the phone! Don’t wait until the last minute to ask me to do something as if I had nothing else to do. This may have been an urgent issue for months, and sending me an email message marked it urgent does not make it my responsibility. And I hate people who copy my supervisor to try to blackmail me into doing something that isn’t my job. If it’s my job, I’ll do it. If it’s not my job, ask nice and I’ll do it if I can. If you copy my boss, that’s threatening me, and what I usually do is walk over to my boss’s office and tell him what an ass unhelpful person you are. No paper trail on that, either. And then I’ll ask him to respond to you. Most bosses are jealous of their people’s time and don’t like this tactic, either.

6) Copying the wrong people
Stop replying to everyone if everyone does not have a need to know. Not everyone cares that you agree with the original email. Last week I received an email that said only "Has anyone seen Joe XXX?" And then I received a half-dozen reply-all "No, I haven't seen him." One-liners like "Thanks," "Me too", and "I agree" are usually not necessary, and if they are necessary to be polite, it is not necessary to copy everyone, only the intended recipient of the politesse. I send an email message to 25 people, and 15 of them reply to everyone with a one-liner. This is just as bad as spam. Today I received an email that said only "I need have the Executive Projector ASAP - please return to Lee Ann XXX on 33". This was sent to everyone in the entire company! Aargggghhh! If you’re sending a message to a group because you’re too lazy to select the appropriate recipients, stop. In Outlook, you can expand distribution lists into individual members, and then delete out the individuals that don't need to receive the email. I especially hate getting forwarded back an email I originally sent out, because I'm a member of someone's distribution list and they're too lazy to take me off, especially if it had a large attachment. What a bunch of crap waste of time and bandwidth.

5) Read receipt
You’re checking to see if I opened your message. It’s a waste of time doing this because I have this feature turned off in my email program, it lets me know when someone has requested a read receipt, and asks me if I want to send it. I usually say no. If they have read receipt turned on automatically on every email they send, then I start deleting their emails unread (they get a message saying so) and then un-deleting, reading, and filing the email like I normally would. If they ask me about it, I deny that I deleted it unread, and prove that I have the email. Pretty funny. However, at my new job, we’re a Lotus Notes shop, and that advanced piece of crap software does not contain that feature.

4) No response
You send a nice email message to someone to request information. The message clearly expects a response, but nothing happens. If you’re too busy to hit Reply to say “No,” you need to examine how you’re working. Why did you make me waste your time and mine? If you’re not the right person, let me know, so I can find the right person. If you don’t have the information, let me know, so I can look elsewhere. If you don’t have time, let me know, so I can either wait until you have time, or ask someone else. But if you don’t respond, you’re just going to get the request again until you make some form of response.

3) Not including history
This is especially bad with AOL newbies, hitting the reply-all (or even worse, forward) and not including the previous threads. I’ve received many emails from AOL’ers that just say “Very funny”. Not so funny.

2) __________________
Get it? I left the subject line blank. Subject lines are helpful in giving you an idea of the context of the following text. Always use a subject line, and if you are forwarding or responding to an email and the subject line isn’t pertinent or informative, change it. It’s really very easy. Don’t send emails with blank subject lines. Don’t pull up a two-month old message from me, hit Reply, and send me a new message that has nothing to do with the previous one, just so you don’t have to type my name in the address bar. And I generally don’t like emails that only contain the subject line.

1) Signing me up for spammers
Don’t sign me up for free movie tickets or register me for sweepstakes or sign me up for a joke-of-the-day email or other crap stuff like that, those are just ways that spammers use to get email addresses from gullible people who turn in all their (smarter) friends who would never sign up for spam. Don’t send me chain letters or hoaxes, you better check them out first. Because I will check them out, usually on Snopes, and if it’s a hoax I’ll tell all your friends what a gullible person you are. See my article on How to Avoid Spam.

The Art of Deception : Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon

The Art of Deception : Controlling the Human Element of Security.

TV Series That Won't Be Returning for the 2006 - 2007 Season

I'm not a big TV head, but because I'm relying completely on TiVo for my minimum daily requirement of television, I lose track of what the new shows are, and which shows have been cancelled. I ran across this list when I was updating my list of TiVo Season Passes for this site. Most of them I haven't seen before, but there are a lot that should have been cancelled a long time ago, and only a couple that I really regret.

Shows that were too smart for TV
Arrested Development (FOX) (one of the funniest shows on TV ever)
Monday Night Football (ABC) (moved to ESPN)

Shows I was watching, but not that disappointed
Heist (NBC)
Teachers (NBC)

Shows that have run their course
Alias (ABC) (this was in my top 5 at one time)
Commander-in-Chief (ABC)
Malcolm in the Middle (FOX)
That '70s Show (FOX)
The West Wing (NBC)
What I Like About You (WB)
Will & Grace (NBC)
Yes Dear (CBS)

About time
The Apprentice: Martha Stewart (NBC)
Blue Collar TV (WB)
Fear Factor (NBC)
Four Kings (NBC)
Hope & Faith (ABC)
Joey (NBC)
Kitchen Confidential (FOX)
Most Outrageous Moments (NBC)
South Beach (UPN)
Stacked (FOX)

Not sure, I never saw
The Bedford Diaries (WB)
Book of Daniel (NBC)
Celebrity Cooking Showdown (NBC)
Charmed (NBC)
Conviction (NBC)
Crumbs (ABC)
Cuts (UPN)
Emily's Reasons Why Not (ABC)
E-Ring (NBC)
Eve (UPN)
Everwood (WB)
The Evidence (ABC)
Freddie (ABC)
Free Ride (FOX)
Get This Party Started (UPN)
Half & Half (UPN)
Head Cases (FOX)
Hot Properties (ABC)
Inconceivable (NBC)
In Justice (ABC)
Invasion (ABC)
Jake In Progress (ABC)
Just Legal (WB)
Killer Instinct (FOX)
Less Than Perfect (ABC)
Living With Fran (WB)
Love Inc. (UPN)
Love Monkey (CBS)
Miracle Workers (ABC)
Modern Men (WB)
The Night Stalker (ABC)
One on One (UPN)
Out of Practice (CBS)
Pepper Dennis (WB)
Related (WB)
Reunion (FOX)
Rodney (ABC)
Sex Love and Secrets (UPN)
Three Wishes (NBC)
Threshold (CBS)
Twins (WB)
Sons & Daughters (ABC)
Still Standing (CBS)
Surface (NBC)
Survival of the Richest (WB)

2006 World Cup

I love the World Cup! Go USA!

(You have got to click on this picture)

Photo Alexander Heimann/Stringer/Getty Images

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.
A guilty pleasure.

Internet Wayback Machine

Check out the Internet Wayback Machine at archive.org. Check out early IBM, Apple, and Microsoft sites from 1996.

Unfortunately the filter at work is smart enough to block archived pr0n sites too.

Marked Man by William Lashner

Marked Man by William Lashner.

More IED (video is rated R for language in subtitles)

This article shows what happens when you ask a fellow bus rider to speak a little more quietly on their cell phone.

Drew Goes To White Castle

Rage (or mind your own business)

Here's an article on intermittent explosive disorder, or IED. I always suspected that there was eventually going to be some "condition" for this type of behavior. Everyone has seen this guy (usually a guy, but sometimes a woman). The first thing that comes to mind is the "Are you kidding me?!!!" exclamations of John McEnroe. I knew a guy at work who got fired for road rage, he tried to intentionally run a guy off the road. I've seen people totally blow up over nothing, and while it's still not acceptable, it's more understandable if there's alcohol involved, but these people are dead sober. I guess I've lost it a couple of times when it really wasn't appropriate, but, hey, I'm not crazy. Or am I?

Just Deserts

Here's one I would have gotten wrong, I would have bet everything I had that it was "just desserts" and not "just deserts". "Just desserts" makes a kind of sense, the nefarious evil-doers got their comeuppance using a "have their cake and eat it too" metaphor. What's even more confusing is that it is not pronounced like the noun form of desert (a barren or desolate area), but rather like dessert (a usually sweet dish served at the end of a meal) with the emphasis on the second syllable, or the verb form of desert (to leave empty or alone; abandon).

There's a discussion of it here.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner.

This was a great book, I've always been interested in economics but this is less of an economics book and more of a story about how to look at things in a different way. It is definitely written so that an economics background is not required, in fact I was disappointed that there was so little technical detail, but the stories more than make up for that. I finished it in just about one sitting, a great read.

The Sacred Hoop by Paula Gunn Allen

The Sacred Hoop by Paula Gunn Allen.

My Commute

Here is a map of my daily commute. This morning it took less than 15 minutes door-to-door, which for Houston is fantastic.



It's going to get even better, Enbridge just announced that it is implementing a 9-80 program. I'll work an extra hour Monday through Thursday and get every other Friday off starting June 12. My first Friday off will be June 23.