Turkey Shot

Ming Tsou just sent me an invitiation to join his LinkedIn network. I noticed that his profile picture shows him carving a turkey. I've been meaning to chance out my profile picture - getting tired of my Jorge Cham doodle. Maybe we can start a trend!

Bluehost - Love you, hate you...

Over the years, I've had a love/hate relationship with my main web hosting provider: Bluehost.com. My most recent gripes have now had time to settle. Sure, it sucks to have to pay extra for a dedicated IP address because some other people sharing my server get me blacklisted. But, still, the aggregate cost and experience of Bluehost is still hard to beat. I really don't want to get back into the low-level details of admin'ing my own Linux server - and Bluehost provides a wealth of functionality through their cPanel/SimpleScripts/Fantastico implementation.

There are some things I'd like to play with, but I'll probably wait and use Amazon EC2. I should rely on Bluehost for simply providing a stable content platform - and not a FOSS playground.

Selling a little more of my soul to Google

I just sold a little more of my soul to Google. This time, it's in the form of my new Google Voice number: 720-334-7734. I've always liked "7734" since I first saw it upside down on an old LED calculator. The 334- prefix makes for a nice sounding number...

If you don't know already, Google Voice is a new pre-public system that lets me maintain a single number and route it to various other numbers in my. It also gives me a single voicemail system that is even automatically transcribed. The price for all thise? Free! Or at, least free but they get consigns on a portion of my cognitive output. Much like a bank getting to do stuff with my money in exchange for safe and useful ways to store and use my money, Google gets to try to do useful stuff with my voicemail. I seriously doubt they are recording my calls. Actually, I wonder if I can record my own calls with it?!?

This is related to the fact that I just got assigned a Blackberry by my employer. I'm getting rid of my personal cell phone (which I've used for work purposes for the past year). And because it's a phone issued by the Federal Bureaucracy, I'm not about to try to get my personal cell phone number transfered to it. So, instead of passing out the number assigned to the Blackberry, I'm going to use my Google Voice number for everything. So don't call 720-209-6818, the new number is 720-334-7734.

Security Theater

I've complained before about how the inane security measures I deal with at work frequently prevent me from getting my work done. It looks like I can anticipate even more stupid security. The GAO did a security audit sending people in 10 large Federal buildings with bomb making materials. They were able to successfully construct bombs and walk around with them in briefcases. This means I will probably have to start submitting to the same level of security checks to get to my cubicle as I do at the airport - probably even with the 3-1-1 rule! What irks most about this is that the only people who have ever brought bomb parts into a Federal building and assembled a bomb was these security auditors. The 9/11 terrorists didn't do that - they crashed a plane into the Pentagon and the WTC. Timothy McVeigh did his dirty work with a Ryder truck parked out front. BTW, I just had an FPS officer visit me in my cube. We've had a rash of equipment thefts. The memory upgrade for my new netbook went missing sometime since Monday... I asked the officer about what to expect from the recent news. He said that it'll probably lead to better training for the hired goons and more FPS. Sounds like they're more interested in getting right than expanding the purveyance.