Words of wisdom

Yesterday Nicholas said something rather profound, for a three-year-old, anyway. He was trying to do something (don't know what), and was not having much luck, and started to get frustrated. Ryan told him that he needed to be patient (Ryan being the poster-boy for patience), to which Nicky gave a big sigh and said "It takes too long to be patient". Truer words were never spoken.

So spam ain't that useless after all

Here is a story from boingboing about a guy who received the ubiquitous spam email supposedly from the FBI saying "we have logged your IP address on some illegal websites and now you're in big trouble", yadda yadda yadda. He figured the email was real, and turned himself in to the police, who found lots of child porn on his computer.

One more kiddie porn scumbag off the streets, and it's all thanks to SPAM! I have long hoped for a day where spam would simply cease to exist, but if the existence of spam helps to get these people off the streets, then sign me up for your mailing list! I want to buy a cheap Rolex knockoff! I want to increase the size of my manhood! I want cheap xanax and alprazolam and propecia and other drugs I've never heard of! I'm excited that hot teen sluts are just waiting for me to call them!

Actually, thinking about it some more, keep me off the mailing lists, and just send all my spam to the stupid kiddie porn people. Thanks.

Jasper secrets revealed!

My boss discovered my blog today, thanks to the link on my family web site, so I thought I'd scare him a bit. Jasper is the code name for the next release (version 10.0) of SQL Anywhere, the RDBMS that I work on. It's not scheduled for release until sometime in 2006, so revealing the new features and stuff here would be a very Bad Thing™ and could get me fired. So, no, Mark, I have no intention of posting any secrets here, except to say that Jasper contains more new features and big changes since ASA 6.0 back in about 1998.

BTW, all of the major releases since version 7.0 have had code names, and they've all been ski resorts: 7.0 was Aspen, 8.0 was Vail, 9.0 was Banff, and 10.0 is Jasper. We haven't picked a code name for 11.0 yet, but apparently Chicopee, the staggering 200-foot-vertical ski hill in nearby Kitchener, is not in the running. By way of comparison, the hills in Jasper, Alberta have a vertical rise of about 3,000 feet.

Music stuff

Here are a few lists of music-related things:

Good Band Names

• Blue Rodeo
• The The
• Barenaked Ladies
• The Thompson Twins (there are 3 of them, and they're not related)
• Rage Against The Machine - not a big fan of their music, but good name
• Strawberry Alarm Clock
• Bands named after people who don't exist (Max Webster, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull)
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Rainbow Butt Monkeys (now known as Finger Eleven, another good name)
• Bourbon Tabernacle Choir
• Buddy Whasisname and the Other Fellas
• Bruno Gerussi's Medallion
• Me First and the Gimme Gimme's

More good ones here.

Bad Band Names

• The (anything) - post-1980. The Cars? The Smithereens? The Salads?
• Bands that name themselves after a place (Toronto, Boston, Kansas, Chilliwack, Asia, Chicago) - The Bay City Rollers are exempt from this because they picked their name by throwing a dart at a US map
• Audioslave - great band, boring name, especially considering the members came from Rage Against The Machine and Soundgarden, both good names

Just Weird Band Names

• Chumbawumba
• Bowling for Soup
• Hoobastank
• The Meat Puppets
• Toad The Wet Sprocket
• Mott The Hoople
• Ned's Atomic Dustbin

Great Album Names

• Not of this Earth - Joe Satriani -- After listening to his guitar playing, you might believe he really is not of this Earth.
• Break Like The Wind - Spinal Tap
• Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt
• Yes I Am - Melissa Etheridge -- Doesn't refer to her sexuality, but since it's the first album since she came out, it sounds like it does
• Rockihnroll - Greg Kihn -- He also had albums named Kihnspiracy, Kihnspicuous, and Kihnsolidation

Generally bad album names:

• Anything non-debut album that's self-titled (see Peter Gabriel, Weezer)
• Any numbered album (Led Zeppelin, Chicago)
• "Untitled" albums (Led Zeppelin "IV")
• "Greatest Hits" if you're a band that didn't have any actual hits, i.e. on the Top 40 chart or whatever. Pearl Jam is immensely popular, but has had very few big hit singles. If Pearl Jam were to release such a compilation, "The Best Of Pearl Jam" would be a better option than "Pearl Jam's Greatest Hits".

Best Guitar Solos

• Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
• One of these Nights - The Eagles
• Alive - Pearl Jam
• Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Shine - Collective Soul
• Layla - Derek and the Dominoes
• Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
• One - Metallica

Dork Tower

Hilarious picture from Dork Tower.

CD Baby, baby!

I ordered Heather Hill's CD from cdbaby.com, and got this email once it shipped:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Saturday, December 10th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

The subject of the email was "CD Baby loves Graeme". It's nice to be appreciated.

Guess who hit the big time

We received a Christmas card the other day from a couple with whom we exchange cards every year, but we haven't actually seen them in a number of years. We knew he had started his own company, but we had no idea how it was doing, so just for fun, I googled him. After finding some stuff about him, I asked Gail if there was anyone else she wanted to look up, and she said she was wondering about her first-year university roommate, Heather Pirie, who we lost touch with a number of years ago. We knew she had gotten divorced, but nothing else. The first search turned up an entry that started "Heather Pirie became a full-time singer/songwriter...". Gail was immediately skeptical that I'd found the right one, until I read the rest of the entry: "...after leaving an executive business development position in the corporate world of Internet software publishing", which describes what Heather was doing the last we heard. Then Gail thought for a second, and remembered that Heather was a very good piano player and did like to sing, so maybe... After some more searching, we found that this was indeed the Heather Pirie that Gail had roomed with, and she had changed her name (presumably she is now re-married) to Heather Hill. We found her web site, listened to a couple of tracks from her debut CD, and then ordered it. I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but good for you, Heather, for following your dreams!

Note about the title of this article - it's from "Lucky Ones" by Loverboy, and the complete line is "Don't ask me how, but guess who hit the big time". Just wanted to say that the "Don't ask me how" part doesn't apply here. I've only heard a couple of the songs, but she sounds like quite the talented singer.