GW2 In Progress and Having Lots of Fun

Started playing Guild Wars 2 and it is not what I was expecting in a very good way!

Where have I been?

I have been missing in action far too long. I suppose there were lots of good reasons none of which can stand up to any sort of valid criteria. So I am back we will see how long I last this time.

I am very happy we have a new President of the United (?) States of America.

I had hoped that the Vaccines would resolve the Pandemic, I am still waiting for that resolution.

I am very happy about how much progress is happening around Space Exploration right now.

I wish I was as happy about Climate Change progress.

Final Fantasy XIV

New MMO up and running on Windows 10 and I am having a blast learning and playing.

Community Support Campaign is off and running

Hopefully we will get to rewrite this in a modern language/framework in 2016!

Working on another community support campaign with PERL

Well, I am back to working on our campaign at work with PERL, hopefully it will be a greatly reduced version but it is hard to say.

Man you leave for a few years and all kinds of stuff will change

Looks like my old theme was replaced sometime during my Rip Van Winkle blog sleep. Went from Misty Look to Misty Lake will probably have to change again.

Quote of the Week

“I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse.” ~Riley Finn

PERL – I somehow have moved backward in time

I am currently working on a PERL application. A total shock!

Need to Change

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953
US science fiction author (1920 – )

Testing a new blog editing tool

Wow I have not looked at any client side (non web) blog editors in a really long time. I just picked up BlogDesk (using it on this post). It had one of the smoothest setups that I have ever used for a blog editor. Very nice if you have not looked at it go check it out.

 

Learning with a great teacher

This is a very intriguing article about a dynamic 5th Grade teacher who went against the grain with some great results.

Suben said: “My primary goal as a teacher is to help my students understand the reasoning behind math rules and procedures. I have several core beliefs about this: (1) Understanding is constructed by the learner, not passively received from the teacher. (2) Understanding is built by making connections between as many strands of knowledge as possible. (3) Understanding is galvanized through communication. (4) Understanding is only valuable when you reflect on it and question it.”

Happy New Year

Well I have really been slacking on writing in this weblog and I have no excuses. I have a new goal on my Joe’s Goals list to get back to writing here so I am ready to start. I hope everyone has started off the new year in a great way and here is to hoping that 2007 will be better than 2006 in every way!

What is genius?

Extraordinary efforts

“It’s complicated explaining how genius or expertise is created and why it’s so rare,” says Anders Ericsson, the professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee who edited the handbook. “But it isn’t magic, and it isn’t born. It happens because some critical things line up so that a person of good intelligence can put in the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery. These people don’t necessarily have an especially high IQ, but they almost always have very supportive environments, and they almost always have important mentors. And the one thing they always have is this incredible investment of effort.”

Quote of the Week!

“Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the alternatives,” – Winston Churchill.

Another Great Quote from Gandhi

“Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle,” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Woodrow Wilson after creating the Federal Reserve said

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
~ Woodrow Wilson

My New Hero

Keith Olbermann is my HERO!

Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

I want to be one of the lackeys for this!

A book I desperately need to read!

This book sounds like something that I need to read to brighten up my rather dismal view of the future that I have had for the past year or so.

Fred C. Ikle, one of America’s foremost strategic thinkers, in his latest book “Annihilation from Within” (Columbia University Press), sees the ever-faster advances in brain science and computers merging to build superhuman intelligence systems. Brain-computer-interface (BCI) research projects are proliferating among universities in the G-8 major industrial countries and China. And when this quest succeeds, Mr. Ikle says it will trump the latest supercomputers (already up to 73 trillion operations per second) and the best human experts.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets but still no Title on my post

Looks like Writely has morphed to Google Docs & Spreadsheets so I guess it is time to test it and see if I can get my Title yet. I know I have not been posting enough lately and part of the reason is the pain of getting Writely to do what I need it to do. I hope this works!
This is a very different look from Writely and it looks like there are a few more features available now. Comment looks like an interesting feature.

Writely still does not write the title for my post.

I am trying Writely again to see if any of the issues I was having are gone. I was able to login with my gmail account today that is a nice new improvement. I was having several problems previously with Writely which had put me off from using it and I am hoping these are fixed now. I was unable to use the title feature for my posts and the blogged listing on my Post views had stopped working correctly. So I am back today and I will let you know if any of the problems are gone.

Quote of the Week

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great Idea for getting Rails technical documentation written!

Who likes documentation writing? I don’t! The rest of the Steelpixel team agrees with me on this point, documentation is a necessary evil. Well, court3nay came up with a cool idea today in the #caboose irc room, why not start a project to offer people money to update the rails docs. Brilliant! Court3nay is trying to raise $5000 and they have over half that in less than 12 hours.

SteelPixel

technorati tags:rubyonrails

Blogged with Flock

Company where workers set their own salaries and hire their own bosses

I want to find a workplace like this!

At Semco: Employees set their own working hours, choose their own salaries, All meetings are voluntary and open to everyone, Employees hire their own bosses… read on for more.

read more | digg story

Dance, Dance Revolution in the real world

We did it! My wife and I made it to our first dance lesson last night. It was a blast. We started learning the foxtrot, Rumba and mambo and we are greatly looking forward to the next lesson.

Why do did I have the title in the post area? Well, Writely is not putting the title up when I post from it, even though it used to. I am not sure what is happening with it since google purchased it but it seems to be languishing by the side of the road for some unknown reason.

Cambrian House