"Out of all of the [religious] sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one." - Richard Dawkins

People keep asking me what I did at the last job that I had. I did what I have done at most of the jobs I have had in the past six years. I watched Brian smoke. Additional smoke watching services provided by skim

After years of problems with my left shoulder, I am scheduled for surgery on June 24th. Open Bankart repair for recurrent anterior dislocation of the shoulder to be exact.

Some details and gruesome photos, so look away if you are squeamish: Bankart repair

I have decided tonight that Blockbuster is the Devil, yes Satan himself. A culmination of all the evil in the world into one large chain of shit brick video stores.

Life without TV, number 2 in the series:

It has been three months since we have been back in Minneapolis, and just as long without broadcast television. I realized the other day that I no longer miss it. The only time in recent weeks that I have yearned for the sweet glow of primetime CRT is when I heard friends discussing The Osbournes. Why is it when I finally give up the ever soothing tube, they start broadcasting quality television. I guess we always knew it would be MTV leading the charge. I mean with TRL and all, we only knew it was getting better.

Jason Kottke is overrated.

Friday was the last day of a contract gig that I started in January.

Valuable lessoned learned here: a job should be more than just money, and when it drags you so far down that you want to vomit every day when that alarm goes off, get out. Don't walk. Run!

I am now enjoying day four of freedom, and, even though I vacillate between the pure panic of unemployment and the joys of freedom, I am a better man for it.

With all the hubbub regarding web services, Tim has taken full advantage of the new technologies presented to him, and has brought it to a new level: GooGame

It's nice to see that search strings including the phrase 'sex' still come up number one. A clear indication that the web still works.

Mr. Kottke posted a link to this very cool web based email service (oddpost.com) the other day. It has got me pondering an issue that has always botherd me, and has even more so as time passes.

In their (oddpost) faq there is a question regarding browser compatibility other than IE 5+.

But what about Netscape? And Opera? And IE 4.0? And the Mac!?

None of those platforms have a big enough share of the browser market to justify the engineering costs of bringing Oddpost to them. If that situation changes, so will our development plans. In the meantime, we’re focused on making a great product for the majority of machines surfing the Web.

This statement disturbes me a lot. It disturbes me because I myself have made this same decision for the same reasons. However, I know that it is violating a very simple idea that makes the web great: cross platform access to information over a common network (tcp/ip). Now, I really like IE. I use it daily as my browser of choice, but it concerns me that, as time goes on, more and more developers are developing strictly for this browser (and more importantly, the MS platform, because I believe that is really what this implies), and ignoring everything else.

I am not trying to get into a Microsoft is the Devil kind of discussion here. I imagine we could talk in length about the mistakes made by Netscape et al, or about Microsoft's preditory pratices in business. In the end, I find it troubling that one singular platform is dominating the client end of the web.

I was in Las Vegas this weekend helping a friend who lives there with some computer related items. At least thats the excuse I use to cover up all my whorin' and gamblin'. When they first moved to Vegas they said they weren't going to gamble, and that you couldn't live in Vegas for long if you did. This seemed like a sound approach, and I praised them on their resolve. Oddly, they have started to gamble occasionally, and are not impervious to slipping a few (or many) quarters into a slot machine at the local drugstore or Seven Eleven. When prompted about this new found love of gambling, my friend related a quote from a long time Las Vegas resident he had met a few months before, "If you want to live in the desert and not gamble you move to Phoenix, not Las Vegas." You really can't argue with that kind of logic...

On a related topic, We went to see Siegfried und Roy on Saturday night. What a show: white tigers, flaming stuff, a dragon, an elephant and a boat load of dancer and or prancers in a myriad of colorful and exotic garb. There was one weird part though. Siegfried seemed really exhausted. He kind of shuffled around the stage trying to seem excited. There'd be dancers doing back flips around him, and he would kinda flop his hand forward in a half hearted attempt in being dramatic, but it really seemed like he was swatting a fly away, "Fe." For a while there I thought it was part of the show, and he would eventually die, and then they'd resurrect him born anew out of the dragon's mouth or something. Then my friend turned to me and said, "What's up with Siegfried. He looks like he's dying or sumthin'." Then they announced that this was their five thousandth and something show, and it all made complete sense. I became at least as lethargic after my first week at my current job.

My new fav-o-rite slang from pseudodictionary.com:

napster - (v) 1. To abruptly cut off a song just before the end. 2. To interrupt

multi-talented nick...well, almost...

odd todd

"Still, I believe that much of the world's sorrow comes from people who know they are this" -- she held the daisy in her hand--"yet let themselves be treated as that." -- ...and looked out over the thousands and thousands of daisies waving gently in the afternoon sun.

-Maude