In his weekly article Robert Cringely decided to skewer Sun Microsostems:

[...]Sun is simply doomed. Their software isn't better, their hardware isn't better, and they can't see themselves as anything but a maker of hardware or software, so my simple recommendation is that they take the rest of their cash and try entering a hot new field like -- say -- space flight. Or making really fine cakes. The world will always need fine baked goods. Or just give it back to the shareholders. Really.

I can't believe this is the first time I'm writing about this, but google did not return any docuents (though it will in a few days...).

It seems like SEO is the hip new thing to be talking about, so I guess I should talk about it too.

Ecology by Choice

I'm a big "choice" person. I want people to have the choice to do a lot of different things. I don't like monopolies, or overly restrictive regulation and I think those are fairly commonly held beliefs.

A few years ago I bought a house and started to pay more attention to the bills from our utility company, Xcel energy. One thing in the newsletter they send out got me curious: wind power for your homes. Xcel offers a program where you can buy wind electricity credits to cover your home usage. The details of the program aren't important aside from the fact that I pay a few extra dollars each month (and it really is just a few) so that my house and everything inside it "runs on wind power".

I like this solution because it lets Xcel know that I prefer a renewable energy source to a non-renewable one. Wind has its own problems, but I think they are outweighed by its benefits. This is great and I tell everyone I can to sign up for the program. It's amazing to me how many "environmentalist" friends that I know do not use this service.

Ecology by Force

A year and a half ago Colorado voted to force Xcel to make more of its energy from renewable sources with a specific amount from wind and a specific amount from solar. I'm opposed to this kind of regulation because our prescriptions for the amounts of wind/solar in the mix may not be the best decision 5 years from now, but we're basically stuck with them. I would much prefer that Xcel and residents work together in the way demonstrated by the wind credit program and through net-metering of home solar panels to help bring renewable energy into the mix based upon market demand. My belief was that if the people who voted for that renewable energy signed up for some wind credits then Xcel would see that the renewable energy sources stand on their own and that Xcel should provide more of them.

At the time of the legislation, there was excess capacity in the wind farm even though it's only 2% of the state electricity generation. How can a program that provides only 2% be under-subscribed when a ballot measure gets a popular vote by approximately 20% of the state? Basically it's because people are hypocrites or lazy or both. note: I got to 20% based upon ~60% of people in favor and ~30% voter turnout.

I stumbled upon this article yesterday and it's a good read. Basically, Eric Sink, who founded a small ISV (Independent Software Vendor) writes about life as a small ISV and why you should make lots of mistakes, just not any fatal mistakes. ISV's are small to medium businesses - maybe somewhere between 2 and 200 people and they create applications to sell to other people.

We got new pedals for our bikes (road and mountain) and installing them was a real pain in the ass.

Attempt one - regular 15mm wrench

I didn't have a good 15mm wrench, so we went to the bike shop and they had pedal wrenches and regular wrenches - the regular wrench set was on sale so we got that. I think at that point I just got lucky because I got the pedals off of my road bike - great. Then I started working on Nikki's road bike and had no success.

So, I was reading this internal memo from SGI about some problems they had with a new release of software that was slower and had all sorts of problems.

There's some great insight in it, though it is long. Then I got to this part: