Goodbye America. Hello Dublin

So I arrived in Dublin today. Dublin is confusing, as always...I'm pretty sure I'd lose myself here, if I wasn't attached.

On the flight here, I was placed in first class. It was awesome, but it's still tough to sleep on a plane. So I'm pretty lagged.

Today the plan is to walk around and take some pictures, reacquaint myself with Ireland's rules of the road by rereading some of my 'Cycling Ireland' book, and to secure lodgings for myself for the next 3 or 4 nights.

Long time, no post...

Here's a new video I discovered through a coworker...It's her son! Really awesome:

Star Trek

Ok, now I'm excited.

Video of American Flight Patterns..

Linked from here.



Beautiful, even if it is an animation of a broken system.

Of all the songs on U2's new 'No Line on the Horizon' album, I think I like the title track the best:



Nice melody, and the lyrics are pretty good....or so I think.

God Bless Patrick Stewart, In All He Does

Should the Govt Bail Out AIG? No.

Why? Take a look at this. It's AIG's dividend payout for the last 6 years. In the last quarter of last year, it was 22 cents/share. That's the largest dividend they've paid out, or at least the largest in the last 6 years.

If a company can pay out a dividend of 22 cents, more than they have ever done, they don't need a bailout.

Updated:
I guess it gets a bit different when the Govt owns 80% of the company...So now, at least, we're not enriching those effing financial idiots.

Billy Bragg-You Woke Up My Neighbourhood

Billy Bragg |MTV Music

FreeNX is totally the way to go...

I've been working from home quite a bit lately (it's cold outside!) and have been looking for the best way to connect-I need low latency and would prefer built in security (so I don't have to muck around with ssh forwarding) and a mac client.

FreeNX is the way to go. Fast, secure, Mac Client.

Happy New Year

Wishing you a year you finally get all the shake in the cup.

GM Bailout Just Money Down the Drain?

So, some federal legislators are balking at the auto industry bailout-far more than the financial bailout. They're saying it won't fix the system.

If so, why did so many of them think the financial bailout would work? Shoot, I remember reading in the NYT a few weeks ago that most banks were taking the money and rather than using it as intended to unthaw the credit market, just sitting on it.

Worse comes to worse, this money, even if it doesn't "save" the big 3 would at least be spent, providing middle class wages for tens of thousands of people in a time of tremendous doubt.

To me, that makes the auto bailout sound even better than money in a bank.

If Citibank is too big to fail....

Doesn't that just mean it's too big?

I hope Obama, when he gets in forces these banks to split up as one of the conditions for a government bailout.

It seems like the status quo has too many eggs in too few baskets.

NYT Article
Paul Krugman Blog Post

Fox Newz says Palin didn't know Africa was a Continent

Wow.


But check this one out, same data but on Bill O'Reilly's show:

He thinks someone we can teach basic civics to is still qualified to be VP. Maybe VP of their high school class, but VP of America? Come on. Hell, she most likely spells it Amerika.

Election Day: Under Pressure

Queen |MTV Music

JRuby-based war files. They're great, and it allows me to get away from memcache-backed sessions(and use java based, non-crappy sessions), but now in development I'm back to a java like development workstyle:code....war...wait.....deploy....wait....test.....code.

And, of course, fairly regular application server restarts.