Lisa and I left town this afternoon. The honeymoon hasn't officially begun yet; we had to leave to drop Carly off here at "her grandparents'" house in Kalamazoo.
Tomorrow is the official beginning of the five day honeymoon. We'll be visiting Painted Rocks, Sleeping Bear, Funky Monkey, Disgruntled Horsey, and many other natural wonders of northern Michigan. I, for one, can't wait. Lisa lived in Michigan for her first eighteen years, and has never been, so she can't wait either.
It should be much fun, and we won't be in touch with anyone the whole time. It will be the most uncommunicative time of my life in many years (except, of course, with my beloved). I'm sure you all can take care of yourselves, but be sure you do. We'll see you soon.
I remember when John Gruber was someone I knew because he worked for Bare Bones, makers of the delicious text editor BBEdit. He would post sensible solutions to problems people faced with various Bare Bones applications on the BBEdit-Talk mailing list, answer support requests, and presumably do lots of other behind the scenes work that the rest of us don't know about.
Then a couple years ago, he left Bare Bones. Shortly thereafter, he started a weblog, Daring Fireball. He started writing articles that are of interest to the high-octane power users of the Mac.
Today he posted Good Times, in which he basically blames corporate IT departments for the major problems that SoBig and other major email viruses are causing companies everywhere. The crux of the argument is this: if corporate IT departments built email systems that are inherently virus-proof (i.e. NOT based on Microsoft Exchange), we would all be better off. The reason they don't, he says, is that supporting an inherently virus-proof, highly reliable email system is much easier than supporting Exchange. It would therefore require fewer people, and lots of IT workers would lose their jobs.
I agree with that so far. From there, he goes on to say that most corporate IT workers are nothing more than hacks who can't do anything else useful with computers, but still like them and want to work with them, so they get some certifications and work in IT departments. Now, I haven't worked in a corporate environment, but I'd find it very hard to believe that these guys are idiots. I think John goes a little too far there while making his point.
However, the most important part of his argument is nothing but absolute, irrefutable truth. Microsoft Exchange and Outlook are horrible things that no one should be using. They directly cause major internet problems for the community at large, and major computer problems for the individuals that are affected. Microsoft maybe have patches available for these exploits months in advance, but they don't publicize it, I guess out of fear that people will start to think of Windows as insecure, and stop buying it. It's already too late for that, but I don't know when, or if, that's going to matter.
If you use Outlook, or Outlook Express, on a Windows computer, do yourself a favor and switch to something better. In this case, "something better" is equivalent to "anything else, for the love of Pete!" Like John says, this isn't about regular people, or even nerds, debating whether Mac or Windows is better. There are smart, creative people that use both. It's about stopping people from screwing up your machine, and other people's machines.
Records are meant to be broken. I guess that's the point: set them, then break them.
But, in this case, I'm not so pleased by it. My friend and bandmate Lis Harvey set, last fall, a record for the fastest tour of the fifty states ever. Pretty sweet. She did all the booking and promotion herself, drove herself to all forty-eight lower states (flew to AK and HI), and basically did a hell of a thing.
Apparently someone else has decided to break the record. That, in and of itself, is cool. What isn't cool, to me, is that he is doing this without acknowledging the existence of a record to beat. Why? I'm not sure. It feels like he's attempting to get published in the book before Lis, the first person to do this, gets published. I'm probably reading into this too much, but I'm a little annoyed.
Adam Brodsky is the guy's name. I wish him luck, but I sort of wish he had waited until the next book's publication. I just hope Lis gets the extra public recognition of that badass road trip before someone else steals her thunder.
Over and out.
I'm back, and I'm busy.
There's a new photo of my little brother for you all to enjoy. He is at a stage where he mimics everything everyone does, whether it's what they say, or what they're wearing. In this case, we were all wearing our sunglasses, so he wanted to wear his.
I have a revision of the site bubbling in the back of my mind, but a project I'm starting first is a journal on my adventures in home recording. I'll post more on that as I get it more together. For now I'll just say that Movable Type is pretty sweet, but we knew that.
I'm leaving in a few hours to go back to New Hampshire for a few days. I'm looking forward to seeing the family who couldn't make it to the wedding, showing off our large album of 4x6s, and relaxing a bit. The past two weeks have been way too busy. I'm starting to feel a little bit caught up, but it's taking some doing.
Between getting a new gig (actually, two) and doing a web work, and taking the dog to Charm School, Lisa and I have been sort of draggy. We do have plans to go to a water park later this month, and go on our honeymoon right at the end of the month. So things are busy, but good, and will soon continue to be good, but also be a little more relaxed.
In the meantime, I'm going back to New England, and looking forward to it.
Much fun was had yesterday at Timber Lanes. A smallish group from Chicagobloggers went out for some bowling, food, and drink. Timber Lanes is a small bowling alley, only eight lanes, but since our ten were the only people there when we arrived, there was no trouble. I broke 100 in both games, and amused everyone with my terrible technique. I have the tendency to run like hell down the lane, using as much full-body momentum as possible to make up for my lack of musculature. I also don't have that kick thing that everyone who bowls well does.
I took several pictures, one of which is the current rearview on Gapers Block. When the blacklights came on, the camera came out. There was only one ball that glowed, and it reminded me of the forest spirits from Princess Mononoke. Check it out.
It was good to meet (in some cases) and chat (in all cases) with Jason, Phineas, Stacy, Eric, Brian, and everyone else, for that matter. This is a really good group of people. The only guaranteed commonality is having a weblog (although that wasn't guaranteed yesterday either), which doesn't necessarily mean you build web stuff for work anymore. As a result, the group is reasonably diverse and interesting. Like I said, much fun.
The only thing that wasn't fun was the biblical gnat infestation. Walking from home to the El, I got covered several times, as you can see. Those dots all over my shirt, and the blurry ones on my arm, are gnats.
