Swallow Says…

When I first read the news that Cathy was no longer going to be published, I did a little dance for joy.  I can’t tell you the number of times I tried to read/enjoy it in the paper funnies section only to be consistently disappointed.  Which of course leads to the desire of the removal of the strip so that it could be replaced by something far funnier.  All of that being said, I wonder if it really will get replaced.  I don’t read the paper funnies anymore.  It was one of those activities that occurred Sunday morning at the parent’s house.  And I only tend to look at a couple of more adult mature comics that I find online (eg xkcd, basic instructions).  So I think humor will live on, but probably not as much in the paper news.

From a write-up about one  of the failures of yahoo:

In technology, once you have bad programmers, you’re doomed. I can’t think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.

This weather has been really getting to me. It has forced most of my running to be indoors at the gym. And I really, really hate working out with a treadmill. It’s so robotic. I want the super cold winter back.

Sauna Championships

Unfortunately, there are many contests of this type that are just plain stupid.

This is an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune article:

In 1850, the Germans who settled in the Wilmette area named their township New Trier after the German city of Trier. That city was settled by a Gaulish people called the Treveri and was also known as Treves — which is why New Trier High School athletes are called Trevians. Little did the Illinois settlers know that Trier would soon be known as the birthplace of communist icon Karl Marx.

I think that Apple has a design philosophy that is second to none. Hence, I buy their products. I think their products are great, so I talk about how cool they are to other people. Are there problems with the devices and features I wish they had? Absolutely! And I will admit it freely. But just because it lacks some feature doesn’t make the device crap.

I’m not going to give a big list about everything I wish my mac/iPhone/iDevice should do. It really doesn’t matter. Products will come and go and there will always be critics. As a critic, it is your responsibility to be critical. Just don’t be a dick.

After eating a muffin made by a co-workers wife, I pointed out how it needed less sugar(ie blueberries) and more cinnamon. As I tend to make these type of observations, I decided to take his suggestion on the new blog title. So in the spirit of “what grinds my gears”, get ready for Swallow says!

Jon Gruber references a great article here.

I don’t know if it was a resounding success but it was definitely functional. The worst part of the day was getting off of the train. I had my bag, iPad and headphones to deal with when the stop arrived and my departure was definitely not as elegant as when I have my iPhone.

The keyboard dock at work was key to doing any chat and email. I still don’t have a good (free) rss reader on the iPad so all of that goes through work. Which is probably a good thing as it keeps me focused at work.

I did bring out the iPad to a bar last night and I must say it shined very well there. It was super fast in looking up bar conversation trivia and let me chat pretty effortlessly with Su.