I decided to dress up for Halloween as a contractor . I should have painted the tools gold so that I could have said I was a government contractor. But everyone thinks I'm dressed as one of the Village People. What do I have to do -- start overcharging...

Something Scoble wrote about reminded me of being an editor: the more controversial a headline is, the more likely people are to read it. I can remember BYTE's "Is Unix Dead?" cover story and the controversy it stirred up a decade ago -- and it wasn't...

Recently, my wife found a great deal on a Skutt 41" oval kiln that a school had to get rid of. It had never been used, and they were offering it for $1200 (a great deal). So we borrowed a friend and a pickup truck and retrieved it. The next task was to...

In general, Microsoft doesn't support upgrading from one beta or CTP to another (the user-friendly instructions are to reformat), nor from beta to RTM of Visual Studio and .NET Framework. Fortunately, Dan Fernandez helped create a tool to aid in the uninstallation...

Everyone once in a while, Microsoft does a good one. Check out this LiveMeeting ad .

In his post about the changing cathedral and bazaar , Jon Udell asserts that the cathedral and the bazaar are both changing. And of course, they are -- that which stands still, dies. At the same time, my core point is that the "sharp edges" I'm talking...

A game to play with the sound turned low so nobody can hear whether you're dumb or not.

I guess the Concorde never made back what it cost to research and develop it. I suspected that, but didn't know it.

Good article on eWeek on VB "9."

Britney Spears is selling her used clothing on eBay for charity. You know, somewhere in here, there's a really snappy one-liner that's just not coming to me.

Engadget picks up some interesting items, among them this teapot that you can send a text message to in order to turn it on.

Evidently book banning is still in style. I thought that went out with goose-stepping and invading Poland.

After admitting to Bill Dunlap, the C++ product manager, that I was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, he turned me on to Firefly , a series by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy. Firefly was killed midseason, but I couldn't figure out why. It was well-written...

I'm getting kind of a kick out of reading Ed Bott's stories documenting how he's trying to clarify some comments taken out of context. I worked for Ed for about three years at PC/Computing and can assure that a) he's a real person b) his name really is...

I've been reading a bunch of sci fi for the past couple of months ( John C. Wright , Richard Morgan , Chris Moriarty , etc.). At the heart of a lot of it is the idea that, once we can harness something greater than simple fossil fuels, we will be able...

Sucking blood from your daughter's thumbs . Mega-yuck.

A headline on CNN caught my eye: Clinton inducted into women's hall of fame . That's only because it took me a seond to figure out which Clinton: the safe bet (Hillary) or the ironic bet (Bill).

Found a useful Web site for my previous post. Nice for a grammar nut like me.

Everest shrank ?

My Comcast DVR learned a new trick: to skip back after fast forwarding. If you're like me, when you watch TV on your DVR you fast forward through the commercials and overshoot the start of your TV show by 10-30 seconds. Well Comcast addressed that with...

I'm not sure why I decided to pick a fight , but Alex Barnett chose to answer my questions, and actually got Marc to respond on his blog .

I just noticed an article in the NY Times about how the vapidity vaporousness announcement made by Sun and Google has lead to some very different interpretations. When you have no real news, I guess it's better to be vague, that way at least you get to...

A minor flame war about whether Microsoft should introduce a "non-standard" icon to IE to represent RSS feeds. I particularly like the post about how Halo 2 rocks.

Dan Gillmor has a piece on the changes that blogs wreak on PR. I worked in the computer trade press for a long time. I can remember having a hard time believing that readers would want anything more than a monthly magazine. PC Week proved me wrong. I...