Get the Book Man

Food, Music, Software, Travel

After a long and extremely coincidental series of events, Alex, Jaime, and I decide to go to head to House of Pies (my third time in four days) for some dinner. When I’m almost there I get a call from Alex saying that the restaurant is closed until eight because of pesticides, and that they’re going to hang at the Border’s across the street. (I think it’s interesting that, knowing of why the restaurant was closed, we didn’t decide to go anywhere else.) Anyway, I’m thinking that would be a good way to kill the time, but I hate going to book stores because I either leave feeling unfulfilled or with a significantly lighter wallet. So I resolved not to buy anything and walked in.

Border's on KirbyI browsed around the store, picked up a few things, put them back. I wandered through the music section, seeing what’s new and noticing how outrageous the prices were. In fact, everything was just fine until I stumbled into the computer section. I was able to keep up my jaded no-spend attitude for a little while. “Look at these lame PHP books. Hah! The only ones worth having I already have. I can’t believe I was worried about coming in this place.” Then my eyes began to wander, and I spotted an Apache 2.0 book, just big enough to be juicy. I opened it up and immediately browsed to the mod_negotiation section, since that’s the module I know the most about and I use it as a benchmark for Apache books, which is the same thing I do with Caesar salad and restaurants. (House of Pies has no Caesar salad! Why do I go there so much?) The book had one of the most comprehensive overviews of the module that I’ve seen, and covered some of the differences between the 1.3 and 2.0 versions. However, it wasn’t good enough to overcome my resolution, so it went back to the shelf. However the thought dawned on me that I needed something to do for the next half hour, so I spotted an O’Reilly title I’ve had my eye on called Mastering Regular Expressions.

I’ll cut the suspense, and admit that I bought it. It’s an amazing book; the first two chapters I read really changed the way I think about things in general, a paradigm shift. I’m hoping to finish the whole thing this week and redo all my regex code with what I learn. The good news is that in rang up $5 cheaper at the register than the sticker said, so I’m not complaining.

The point is, however, I lost. The people at Border’s have my type so well figured out that they know I can’t leave without buying something. All those comfy chairs everywhere are really traps in disguise, hoping to lure you in to being caught up in a book. What I really want to do is go into a bookstore, and read an entire book, start to finish. I don’t care if it takes me a week, I want to go in every day, pick up the same book, and finish it. That would really stick it to the man, the book man. Will it ever happen? We’ll see. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Really great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.

Just Saying Hi

Humor

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize some of the wonderful visitors to this site. While I love you all, sometimes I get the most amusement out of people who come here from search engines. Since I don’t actually know who these net travelers are, here’s an open letter. Warning: some of these searches are a little off-color, so be careful which ones you click on. As of this posting though I’m either in the top ten results or on the page I link to.

To why does my optical mouse move by itself? — You’re obviously having issues beyond what my simple review can address, so I would recommend seeking the assistance of a professional. When you find out what’s causing it, let me know, because I’m as curious now as you are. Is there any event that coincided with this newfound movement?

To sexy photos josh lucas, josh lucas pic, and the other Josh Lucas searches — Stop bothering me! Though I must admit my friends Lucas and Josh, whose pictures these people see when they click on my site from this search, get a kick out of it. (Josh Lucas is some sort of actor.) Good thing I don’t have any friends named Britney.

To kayak naked — Whatever floats your boat. In a matter of speaking.

To sexy photo google — I found these pictures of the Google people, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for.

To “best buy” extended warranty opinion laptop — I had good experience taking my laptop back, but just don’t try it with a camera.

To enron women nude — Get a life! You’re on the twelfth page of results! No one looks that far!

To matt sony — Sony has me in a death vise; I love their products and I can’t stop. Run, while you still can.

To “apple sticker” — Okay this one is a trick because I do know who this is, because she sent me an email. It’s Leander Kahney, a writer for Wired, who’s working on a book called “Cult of Mac”. The picture she found (on the tenth page!) is going to be in the book as part of a chapter on Apple stickers. Pretty cool, huh?

To meaning of clie — Communications, Link, Information, and Entertainment. Your guess is as good as mine as to where the accent came from in Sony Clié.

To first day of school i was nervous about the first day because…….however i soon realized…… — I like someone who knows what they’re looking for.

To ihatelongdomainnames (German?) — Me too.

To movie quote ahhh the lowercase a — I have no idea what this means.

To adjusting toshiba laptop screen brightness — On my old 5005 There was a function key, and if you pressed that and one of the function keys at the top of your keyboard. Two of the function keys had little suns on them, and those were the ones you could adjust the brightness of your screen with. Also cranking the brightness down really lets you ink every bit of battery life out of it.

Okay, I think that’s enough vanity surfing for the day!

The problem lies with the business schools which are at fault. What we’ve done in America is to define profitability in terms of percentages. So if you can get the percentage up, it feels like we are more profitable. It causes us to do things to manipulate the percentage. […] Christensen even suggests that in slavishly following such thinking, Wall Street analysts have outsourced their brains.

Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy in Forbes. Hat tip: Lane Becker.

Today the Jetpack plugin turns five years old. Who woulda thunk it? It’s one of the most popular plugins in WP history, and sites that include it as part of their WordPress install are more likely to to have engaged and active users — we’ve even seen it reduce churn on major web hosts. While there’s been a lot that’s happened in the Jetpack plugin so far, what’s around the corner has me even more excited. 😀 🚀 P.S. Check out that new domain.