Jumping into the Unconference

The Unconference at OpenWorld continues to fill up; Tuesdays advance slot are all full, and Wednesday is quickly filling up too. I noticed Raimonds added a session last week called “Using Ruby on Rails with legacy Oracle databases” on Thursday at 10 AM. If you’re still at the conference on Thursday, I highly recommend checking… Read More

I Am (Not) Rich

First off, everyone knows I’m not Rich. I wonder if Rich (and people who share his name) get this app for free or at least for a discount. I’ll back up; so by now, you’ve probably heard about the “I Am Rich” iPhone app that popped up briefly a couple days ago in the App… Read More

Friday Lulz

I read xkcd and actually get about 75% of the jokes, I think. Anyway, this one popped up in Reader this morning, and it made me laugh, especially in light of our recent discussions about O/S, a.k.a. the “which O/S would win in a fight” thread. Enjoy, and read xkcd if you don’t already, and… Read More

Do You Know Robert?

It’s funny how micro-focused I can get. I am continually reminded of how much I live in a bubble world, and it’s always nice to have that bubble popped. Working in technology, I tend to assume that other people are geeky like me. They have Tivo, broadband, Macs, iPhones, blogs, hundreds of “friends” on Facebook/Twitter/network… Read More

The Long Tail of Meetings

This tweet from friend of the ‘Lab Michael Krigsman triggered my inner economist. Even though I’m essentially a geek, I studied economics in college and have always been fascinated by supply, demand, utility and especially modeling that stuff with a nice tidy graph. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Chris Anderson and his… Read More

AppsLab Elves

Matt Topper, a friend of the AppsLab, apparently has way too much free time. He has elfed us using the Office Max ElfYourself doodad. My wife was messing around with this application a few weeks ago, and it took her about half an hour to do one elf. So, kudos to Matt for his patience… Read More

Geeky Distractions

For some reason, every day this week has felt like Friday. Did anyone notice the either of the following articles? Merriam-Webster names w00t word of the year for 2007. Facebook came in second, which does not bode well as the Year of Facebook winds to a close. I wonder if the Project Beacon fiasco had… Read More

Imitation as Flattery

Steve Chan sent me a note today asking me if I’d seen this blog, called Oracle Applications DBA APPSLab. Apparently, the blog’s owner, Famy Rasheed, was asking Steve to list his new blog on Steve’s blogroll. Steve is a very conscientious (and popular) blogger, who has been plagiarized in the past, so he was doing… Read More

Talk the Talk

This post from Mashable got me thinking about something that’s eaten at me ever since I got into tech many moons ago. Watch the clip from “CSI”, observe the Twitter plug, chuckle at the pithy dialog. Some people just don’t value privacy. They don’t expect privacy; they value openness. Whatever. The best part, aside from… Read More

Halloween is upon us!

All this talk about social software and swimming pools is making me crazy. We need more stupid pet postings on this blog. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but today is Friday and it’s time to lighten it up a bit. I was looking through the numerous junk mail catalogs we got yesterday… Read More

Mmm, bacn

We all know what spam is by now, the digital variety, not the gelatin-coated mystery meat in a tin. The attendees of PodCamp2 in Pittsburgh have coined the term bacn to describe “email you want, but not right now”. Examples of bacn: Social network alerts Electronic bill pay alerts Basically anything you solicited by providing… Read More

Nuts to Humor-Free!

This has been a humor-free zone for way too long. Aside from a lackluster Spot the Hoax, I haven’t posted anything intentionally funny lately. But today, I ran into two gems that I think will make you smile or laugh.

Spot the Hoax

After slogging through a full week’s worth of feeds and fighting the urge to use the Mark All as Read button several times, I have a fun idea. Despite this being a no-fun zone for a while, I want to play a round of spot the hoax. The game is simple. I’ve listed a handful… Read More

Fake Steve Jobs Outed

I was so sad to hear the news that FSJ had been outed by Brad Stone of the NYT. Apparently, Daniel Lyons, a writer for Forbes, no less, has been moonlighting as FSJ. Why does this make me sad? Let me count the ways: I have to assume you read FSJ. If you don’t, you… Read More

More High-Powered Friends?

First, it was Steve Ballmer. Now, Eric Schmidt? What is going on here? I’m surprised Eric would want to befriend me, since I called him coy in this space not once, but twice. Maybe he wants to hire me and doesn’t know I have no PhD, or even masters. D’oh. Seriously, can anyone shed some… Read More