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Posts from ‘August, 2006’

Social Networking Connection Policy for Current / Prospective Investment Candidates

*Update:* This policy is dumb-assed and I have rescinded it; see [http://rlucas.net/blog/metablog/rescinded_social_networking_connection_policy.html my more recent post]. Policy on adding connections: Please note that I do not accept connection invitations from folks who are, or in the immediate future will be, prospective investments for Voyager. This is to avoid either actual or apparent leaking [...]

A Rational Scheme for Medical Laboratory Results

Medical laboratory results these days are a hodgepodge of numbers on various scales and with various units. For example, the Merck Manual lists various laboratory test normal ranges and their units:
Hematocrit: Male 41-50%, Female 35-46% Hemoglobin: Male 13.8-17.2 g/dL, Female 12.0-15.6 g/dL … Sodium: 135-146 mmol/L

These “normal ranges” [...]

Brooklyn Restaurant Review (Seattle, WA)

Date: 2006-08-18 Reviewer: rlucas Review: The “Brooklyn” Restaurant (Seattle, WA) Summary: C minus for overall experience We recently got hit with a heat wave here in Seattle, and so my wife and I decided to celebrate having survived another blistering weekend day by going out. I was looking for a [...]

Picoformats – The Lazy, Curmudgeonly Answer to Microformats

I like the idea of Microformats — they’re essentially loosely standardized schemata with a strictly standardized syntax (which plays nice with (X)HTML — hence the “h” in front of hCard, the new groovy Microformat version of vCard). They’re 90% of the way to my new Nirvana of all-text interoperability (I no longer [...]

Full Sail Session vs. Domestic Beers

A few weeks ago, P—- made fun of me for ordering a bottle of Session brand beer at Captain Ankeny’s, one of downtown Portland’s best Wednesday night deals ($1 cheese pizza, $2.50 microbrews). “Session?” he chided, “why spend two bucks on that when you can get a pint of good stuff for fifty [...]

Linux Software RAID and GRUB – Recovering From a Failure

A couple of weeks ago, I had the bright idea to move an internal server here at Voyager from my office into a data room. I issued the customary sudo shutdown now and proceeded to move the box.
I was dismayed not to see it boot right back up afterwards. Ouch! [...]

Earnings Calls in a Trippy Vortex

Today, I called up a news release on finance.yahoo.com for a fairly dodgy publicly traded company. Although I expected to find a transcript of the earnings call, or perhaps a brief table summarizing the expected and actual earnings numbers, I was given a link to the full audio of the call.
[...]

PayPal Continues to Suck

[PayPal http://www.paypal.com/] has always sucked. This is well accepted on the Internet. Witness: http://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+sucks … Results 1 – 100 of about 1,680,000 for paypal sucks. Here are the specific deficiencies I have most often heard cited: [...]

Everyone Is Here in the Future

I just came across what I am willing to call some of the most interesting and (personally) relevant cultural commentary I’ve seen in a while. No talk of Hezbollah, nothing on Bush or Britney — rather, art intended to make people living a software-mediated lifestyle stop and think a moment: (Warnings: Flash required; [...]