Author: Victor

So far the most ridiculous example of ecommerce frenzy is Merrill Lynch eShopping. When I first saw the link I though it might be where I could buy that Merrill Lynch baseball cap I’ve been dreaming about (sarcasm). It turns out to be an ecommerce jump page, as if this investment bank thinks there’s a whole lot of potential to make big money by signing up with every affiliate program on earth (more sarcasm).

Spoke with two (Razor)fish last night as they left to form their own company. They’re filled with excitement, even though they had to unload all their stock options earlier that day. A year ago I had similar plans, figuring I’d either go the ecommerce route or get a great job, and ended up with the great job. Their enthusiam woke up those past plans in me, even though I still feel it’s a great job.

I remember back when I was in high school thinking I was smarter than some of my teachers. Looking back, my first reaction is, of course I wasn’t as smart as them, I was just a smartass, obnoxious teenager. Though the youth I meet these days are pretty smart, smart enough that makes me wonder just how much we actually learn between high school and the bitter end.

I think the learning becomes more granular, more precise, with finer shades of meaning using new connections in our networked brain. We learn more subtle relationships that teenagers don’t, and don’t even recognize. Sometimes it’s just learning to appreciate these subtle relationships; taking to a poem in a personal way that years ago didn’t affect me at all.

Woohoo! Very impressive new Blogger design. Kinda diesal meets 1999 Orange and Blue. Love the fonts.

Not very happy about the state of the presidential race, as the two saner candidates pulled out. I really don’t want either Gore or Bush in the White House, and my instincts tell me Bush will win, and though I’m politically closer to Gore I have less faith in Gore.

Besides, having Tipper as first lady makes me want to puke.

I’ll probably be moving from Montclair soon, Bradley’s town too. Just sad about the outcome.

Officially joined the Unitarian Church of Montclair yesterday. Feels good.

My step-father cracks me up. When he leaves messages on my answering machine, it’s as if he’s talking to me. “So let me know if you’re coming down, OK?” (long pause) “Is Sarah coming?” (long pause) “Alright, I’ll see you.”

nerdy-but-neat sig: “Don’t anthropomorphize computers – they hate that.”

A neat email feature: It scans your email message for the words “enclosure”, “enclosed”, “attached”, “attachment” etc. and if it finds one but you haven’t attached anything, it asks, “Did you forget the attachment?”

I hate when newspapers, who usually work hard to reach objectivity, endorse political candidates. Therefore, I hate it even more when the NY Times does it. I hate even more when they bash my favorite candidate, Bill Bradley, because they don’t think he has enough pizzaz.

Match.com wrote back regarding my 2/21 letter: It was complete form letter babble. Not much in the way of customer relationship for a company whose whole business revolves around relationships.

It occured to me the other day that XML and commas in comma delimited files do essentially the same thing, the former is just a much richer delimiter than the latter. I guess it’s matter of shifting meaning between the processor and the data, achieving the right balance there.

“I work really hard but it doesn’t feel like a sweatshop, I love it,” I told a co-worker the other day. Just recording that as a barometer reading so I can look back on it.

Just tried to upgrade the memory in my step-father’s Performa and he only had one SIMM slot. One. I realize it’s a consumer machine and people don’t expand them much, but only one slot? I wonder if they reasoned that, when it came time to upgrade, memory prices would have fallen and it wouldn’t cost that much to replace the stock memory instead of adding to it, or at least less than the extra engineering cost of squeezing another slot in there.

Let’s see, checking CDW the 8MB of his we’ll have to toss is worth $40 now and the 32MB I recommended is about $70, making a net cost of $30, if he has someone like me install it for free. Not too bad I guess. I wonder if, at those prices, anyone bothers with 8MB modules anymore?

Descending the stairs to the subway last night I heard ethereal sounds from a tenor sax, beautiful slow lines from familiar, unnamed jazz standards. The subway platform perfectly compliments the sax, adding long, gentle reverberation. As I leaned over to drop some money in his hat there was a split second in between phrases when he quickly pulled his mouth away to inhale and took the time to say, “thank you.” Amazed me that he could play so well and fit a thank you in there.