Be careful what you say: you might trigger a Google Alert.

Eric had the temerity last week to gripe on his blog about a certain open source business in­tel­li­gence product, and got swarmed by irate defenders. Apparently he showed up in their Google Alerts. Some of the posters were helpful, but the ad hominem attackers were more en­ter­tain­ing:

Your blog has had 22 posts in the past year, and your blogroll includes absolutely no one of note in the open source world. So I think it’s safe to say that while you are pointing out a perception that they should address in some way, that your opinion isn’t worth much.

I’m in his blogroll, …continue.

In a footnote to the post about Propo­si­tion 8 on November 7th, I said that it was the first in a series of daily posts for NaBloPoMo, the National Blog Posting Month, which I had just found out about.

Here I am a month later, having posted something every single evening. I covered humor; movie and book reviews; being the #1 tech blog (now #2); politics; Thanks­giv­ing; food; personal stuff; and even some technical posts. Whew!

Why bother? As with the two-year-old exercise in book reviews, it was a personal challenge to come up with a post every single evening for a month. Sometimes, the events of the day made for …continue.

We saw a production of David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries at the Bathhouse Theater tonight. Funny stuff.

Afterwards, we walked over to the Greenlake Bluwater Restaurant to get a spot of dinner. We both ordered Tuscan White Bean soup for a starter, Emma had the Turkey Pot Pie, and mine was the Fettucine.

The soup was fine and my fettucine was okay. Emma’s pot pie had problems. The potatoes were raw and it had a funny lemony aftertaste. She pushed the plate away and waited for the waitress to come by. The waitress apologized and brought Emma the menu. Emma opted for the meatloaf, since that would come quickly. The manager apologized and offered us a …continue.

Simon Canderous, dorky newbie at the un­der­fund­ed, secretive Department of Ex­tra­or­di­nary Affairs in New York City, in­ves­ti­gates the death of a beautiful ghost and the apparently re­spectable cultists at the Sectarian Defense League. He has the gift (or curse) of psy­chom­e­try: when he touches something, he can divine its history.

This book wobbles between not very black comedy and straight urban fantasy, and doesn’t really succeed as either.

I don’t, as a rule, pay a great deal of attention to Canadian politics. I was vaguely aware that something unusual is going on there this week. Then Emma pointed me to the Yarn Harlot‘s ex­pla­na­tion of what’s happened.

In brief, for the last two years, Stephen Harper’s minority government has been playing a high-stakes game, repeatedly forcing the opposition parties to either vote with him or force an election, which they would likely lose.

Last week, as soon as Parliament resumed after October’s general election, Harper put forth an "economic strategy", which included removing federal election subsidies to all par­ties—­ef­fec­tive­ly hobbling the opposition. The opposition were deeply unhappy about that, and also about the …continue.

Yesterday, I said that it seemed like the economy was one giant Ponzi scheme.

Via Eric, Michael Lewis’s The End of Wall Street’s Boom

[Whit­ney’s] message was clear. If you want to know what these Wall Street firms are really worth, take a hard look at the crappy assets they bought with huge sums of borrowed money, and imagine what they’d fetch in a fire sale. The vast as­sem­blages of highly paid people inside the firms were es­sen­tial­ly worth nothing. For better than a year now, Whitney has responded to the claims by bankers and brokers that they had put their problems behind them with this write-down or that capital raise …continue.

Today’s paper said that 3,400 out of 4,300 WaMu jobs in Seattle will be cut.

Emma worked at WaMu as a software tester for three years. I’m sure that if she were still there, she’d be one of them. Most of her friends from that time have moved on; just as well.

A few years ago, WaMu seemed too big to fail. Now? Circling the toilet bowl.

Our whole economy seems like it was one giant Ponzi scheme, with everyone selling worthless paper to everyone else. It’s hard to tell how much was wilful ignorance, and how much was making a buck while the good times lasted and damn the con­se­quences.

Dereg­u­la­tion clearly allowed matters …continue.

I look out the window. Driz­zling—not too heavy—I’ll ride to work. Pack my clothes into the panier bag. Spandex tights, coat, yellow jacket, helmet, gloves: on they go. Bike’s in the garage, seems okay, slap on the bag. Pull it out, reset the odometer. 17 minutes today?

Ignite the blinky lights, pull away. Down the side roads, until I’m compelled to take the arterial. Press the crosswalk button, wait for a break in the traffic. Two minutes, three, does this fucking light ever change? Off like a shot, past Jefferson Park. Maybe they’ll finish by next summer. Hit the next light at 2:30. A long, gentle uphill for the next 8 minutes. Next left, zig and …continue.

The Baroque Cycle books were a prequel, of sorts, to Crypto­nom­i­con. In World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is an American cryp­tog­ra­ph­er, a peer of Alan Turing, and someone who will be the father of the digital computer; while Bobby Shaftoe is a US Marine who works on black ops. Now, Randy Waterhouse, computer nerd and Lawrence’s grandson, is setting up a data haven in the Pacific. Amy Shaftoe, Bobby’s grand­daugh­ter, and her father, Doug, are marine salvage experts working for Randy, who find a gold-filled Nazi submarine off the Philip­pines. Somehow, the events …continue.

There’s little that I miss about Irish cooking. One notable exception is Brown Bread aka Brown Soda Bread. I don’t know of any bakery that makes it in the States, though I’ve found it at a couple of Irish pubs. The main difficulty in making it is finding the coarse-ground wholemeal flour. The usual fine-ground stuff has the wrong texture.

I know of only one place in the Seattle area that carries the right flour and that’s The Grainery, 13629 1st Ave S, Burien, WA 98168; (206) 244-5015. I bought some flour there today, made a loaf, and brought the loaf and a 10lb bag of flour to an Irish friend’s birthday party.

This recipe …continue.