Someone needs to make a TV plug-in that blocks Mind of Mencia.

Maybe a Tivo style box could do this? It watches the program guide and notices "Banned Programs" as they come on and just temporarily switches the TV to another channel? Turns it off? Plays music from your MP3 collection?

The ticking sound my ceiling fan makes says to me, "I probably won't fall down someday and kill everyone."

I have a removable drive I want to be F:, but half the time I plug it in and it gives me E: instead. That annoys the crap out of me.

Apparently it's really simple to set it to what you want, without breaking anything:
Set the drive letter in Windows XP

Go forth and enjoy your obsessive/compulsive disorder.

Have you ever farted but only half way, so it just makes your ass feel really hot? Me neither.

I have a new neighbor. She's insane and elects to make all calls from her porch, loudly. In the past week I have had the pleasure of overhearing the following:

1) A conversation with an online date that began by describing herself as "big chested and blonde" and ended in directing him to her house
2) A flirty conversation with him, loudly
3) An angry conversation with him the next day, yelling at him "You always interrupt me!! And it's rude!!"
4) A phone call crying to a friend about how there's this guy she met who she wants a restraining order against
5) A conversation with a friend in which she recommends going to jail over paying a fine, because when she did it she read a book
And now just today:
6) "I have natural boobs but at a certain age they just don't look right, so I want to know the price on fakes"

JESUS LADY GET OFF THE PORCH

People always nag me about how I could possibly love LA. That especially occurs here in northern California, where people are apparently bred to hate LA.

My primary reason is the weather, and I've finally found a way to express it. For 25 years I sat in Boston winter after winter thinking, "I wish it would warm up outside." And no desire or will would cause that to occur - the only way I would get warmth is by being very patient, or leaving.

Here in Sunnyvale, it isn't freezing - or almost never, and it certainly isn't snowing. But at 44 degrees I'm still sitting here thinking, "I wish it would warm up outside," and my brain knows the answer - leave. It also knows I already did that once, and wonders why the heck I'm back in this situation.

About 6 months ago I became tired of an unnamed someone constantly forwarding me email. I created a folder named "Fwd" just for them, and filtered all of their email into it automatically.

Today it suddenly occurred to me I had done this, and uh oh - what if they sent me a real, actual email intended for me? What if they expected a reply from me months ago? So I checked the folder.

Nope, just forwards. They're actually very neatly organized this way too.

Getting serious on this blog for once.

This entry is intended for anyone getting hired anew at Google, as a warning of what's to come. Having been through the new hire process, there are several things I wish I had understood beforehand.

1. Beware project recommendations: Once you're hired, you may be asked to choose a project before you physically arrive, which will prevent you from looking into projects that suit you - all you have is someone else's recommendations. Remember that Google is in many ways very fluid, so the worst projects to work on are often the ones that need people most. Do your due diligence: Wait until you have access to the project database, talk to people on teams, even look at code review logs to find the right fit for you.



2. The Peer Review System: At Google your performance is measured by your peer reviews. Although this is somewhat democratic, it also means that Google is a clique system. Since peer reviews are generally positive, one bad peer review can tear you down. And peer reviews don't have to come from your team - anyone at Google is allowed to praise you or knock you down. You need to find your clique quickly so that if someone does swipe at you in peer reviews, you have a way to contradict it.



3. Google isn't a startup: Google actively tries to be somewhat like a startup. But at their size, they are in many ways just another big, big company: Politics are intense, and important, and in some ways are magnified by the freedoms afforded employees there. Ten thousand people with different ideas of what ought to be done is just as crazy at Google as anywhere else - don't be fooled. And if you expect to sit down and start writing great code on your first day - be prepared. You'll be in training for quite some time before you have any tasks to work on. Be patient and investigate what's already been done, and how it's been done.



4. Google isn't a thousand startups: The general concensus amongst management is that there are too many products at Google. If you think joining Google is your vehicle to getting your next big idea accomplished, now is not a good time. If you want to improve an existing project or tie 2 existing projects together, your goals will align much more closely with the company's goals.



5. There's a lot of cool stuff going on: This shouldn't be surprising, but Google has a lot of cool projects, many of which are secret. Some are so secret even a full-time Engineer will have to do a lot of asking around before they come across most of them. Do some digging before you consider the menu of projects to choose from to be full.

I debated writing this as I hate being negative, but I think I've been fair here and I anticipate this will do future new employees that come across this some good. Good luck.

In this episode of Colbert Report Colbert asserts, much to Rep Eleanor Holmes Norton's ire, that the District of Columbia is not a part of the United States.

JetBlue has recently shown solidarity with Colbert by confirming this. Read the rules of their new contest carefully: "This Sweepstakes is open to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia."

Colbert: 2
Votes DC Rep Eleanor Holmes Norton has cast in Congress: 0

Sometimes vocab words seem to spread like a national disease. For example I've noticed the word "edify" comes up a lot as of very recently. This website can't stop saying it every time you try to listen to it - karmasj.com - and Jon Stewart said it recently as he handed Stephen Colbert a trendy VHS: "I believe you will find it... edifying."

It means educate in an uplifting way. Now stop saying it!

Ever go through your Inbox a few pages back just to see what's there, and realize there's that one really, reallllly old email, where you said you'd reply, and that's the last email on the thread, and that was 3 months ago? Ever find 20 of those?

I've been trying to figure out how best to organize things to prevent this and I think I've come up with a pretty good system of 4 labels (labels are in Gmail - translate for your favorite email client):

Urgent (red): These are emails you not only need to reply to, you need to reply to VERY SOON. A common mistake I make is to start an organizational system - like starring emails I should reply to - then find I'm getting more done because I'm so organized! So I star more things than before. And then it's too many things to keep up with. Then I start ignoring the stars. Then I stop using them since I just ignore them anyway - and so the Circle of Procrastination propagates another generation. Don't let this happen! If you mark it Urgent, mean it.

Reply (maroon): These are emails you should eventually reply to. Not urgent, but it's important you get to it eventually.

Maybe Reply (purple): Let's face it - sometimes people email you and you really don't care, but you're supposed to. Guilt. This label is important - because without it, every email in your Inbox is a Maybe Reply, and you'll never find them that way. Mark anything that's worth maybe replying to eventually someday when you're so bored that you alleviate boredom by staring at your Inbox and clicking lazily.

Expect Reply (green): This one's important. Going back through my Inbox I discovered I had several emails that were on the other end of the 3-months-forgot-about-you stick. Some people like to excuse not getting back to you by noting that you didn't ask them 2 or 3 times. With the power of Expect Reply, now, you can take that away from them and guilt them that much more.

So that's my new system, and it's working pretty well for me. In Gmail specifically, every time you add one of these labels I recommend you:
1) Check the checkbox next to it in the Inbox
2) Add the label
3) Mark it as Unread
4) Archive it

Gmail dubiously assumes you only want a tally in each label of Unread email. This gets it out of your Inbox, meaning you (probably) read it, but makes sure the tally goes up next to the label. Now if you have Urgent (3) - you know you're being too lazy, or need to demote some of those to Reply.

Let me know if this works for you, or if there's something you do that works better.

"One of the interesting things about this experience argument is that it's often posed as just a function of longevity. 'I've been here longer.' You know, there are a lot companies that have been around longer than Google, but Google's performing." -Barack Obama

I have to thank my friend Christina for passing this gem onto me. SNL could parody this by just playing it, unmodified. So I guess it really belongs on Daily Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_amg-Aos4

Hang in there for the best "office environment" demonstrations at the end.

People often ask me what laptop they should get. The only laptop I've ever used that doesn't want to burn my leg off when running longer than 10 minutes is a Lenovo Thinkpad. Unfortunately those things are dead-ugly. Other than that they're perfect. Lenovo is coming out with a moderately less ugly version of these machines, the Ideapad. I'd wait for reviews to verify they also don't burn your leg off, but they look promising. They're not the latest in fashion, but at least they don't look like they were built in the '80s.

I've always wanted a project for small devices. Cellphones and iPods that play video should be able to project onto a wall. I should be able to get a larger display than the pocket-sized thing I carry around. Apparently my idea was crazy because you'd have to put a big hot bulb behind a projector to do this, and that takes too much power and it's just too big. But people have been using lasers to draw on walls for a long time - I HAVE been to the Museum of Science before afterall. Well finally somebody built what I've been looking for: Portable laser display. It can accept a VGA in, so you can pretty much plug this thing into any computer (and apparently iPods), and bam, wall projection. They say it's only going to cost $300.

A full projector costs $1300 minimum, uses a ton of power and needs a massive fan to cool its bulb, which will die frequently. Using these "lasers" we could see smaller low-power, high-resolution projectors that cost less, have no noisy fan and don't need a bulb replacement every year. I want one.

Hey, I may be a huge geek who plays a lot of Guitar Hero, but at least I didn't do this:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/24/christmas-lights-synced-with-guitar-hero-axe/

My dad is watching a James Bond that features Christopher Walken as the villain. So many precious moments including Walken saying "Throw me a spa'he (spare) clip" and shooting maniacally at people running.

Someone finally built what I've thought Wifi always should have been:

http://fon.com/

The website appears to be built by Spanish-speakers and it's not very clear, so I'll explain it here, in English.

You create an account on their site. You buy one of their routers or, if you're lucky, install their software for free on your existing router. From then on, anytime another Fon member passes by your place, they're allowed to use your Router's spare bandwidth (so if you're not home - all of it). In exchange for letting them do this, you can do the same - if you travel, and you're near a Fon member's wifi, you can use it, free of charge.

The Fon software solves some important problems. Most importantly, if you want to share your Wifi without Fon you have 2 crappy choices:

A) You go with no password, anyone can use it. This opens you to idiots, who will eventually find you.
Idiot 1: They find your Wifi and begin downloading everything they can over it, slowing anything you do to a crawl, leading you to setup a password and stop sharing even with non-idiots.
Idiot 2: Thinks they're a genius and smarter than you if they find an unprotected wifi, and infects you with a virus to "prove" it. Now you're screwed for trying to share.

B) You password it up and, at best, share it with people who come over. Not much sharing going on.

Fon fixes this. To solve Idiot 1, it makes your traffic a higher priority than other Fon users on your home connection. And to solve Idiot 2, it creates 2 networks: Yours and Shared. Yours is completely separate, so you can go so far as sharing a folder in Windows and leaving it open to writes by Everyone, and random passers-by still can't get at it - Fon users included. So the "genius" going around attacking people for having an open Wifi never gets a chance to talk to your computer in the first place.

I happen to be a lucky owner of a router that can upgrade to Fon for free - I have a Linksys WRT54G - and I'm excited to switch to Fon when I get home.

One cool bonus is they offer Skype software on their downloads page:
http://www.fon.com/en/download

If you have that installed on your phone and find a Fon Wifi in another country - you can make international calls right there, for free. What a convenience. You'd probably want to bring the Fon wifi map for the area with you though.

My friend Kim is at Target and as she's checking out, calls her son, "Darlin." He says back, "Darwin" because he can't pronounce L's yet.
Target employee: "How does he know about Darwin at that age?"
Kim: "That's right - Darwin. The man who discovered evolution."
Target employee: "Sure, but he also said kids want to have sex with their mothers."
Kim: "No... that's Freud."
Target employee: "Oh... I haven't been to school for a while."