Date night

Last night, we did the second of our new monthly date nights. We went to a restaurant that I run past fairly regularly, and for some reason it’s always seemed intriguing.

We went to Napoleon Bistro on Columbia Road (Warning: Their website is a horrific flash piece of crap). We were thinking about eating outside, but it was a little muggy. And, it turns out we made the right choice, as a group who went outside to eat just after we arrived came back in shortly after, complaining of bugs.

Anyway, inside the restaurant is nice. They have a rather large bar area, which suggests they get a bar crowd that wasn’t there on a Sunday evening.

The food was good. I had flank steak with a shallot demi glace, whatever that means, and french fries. The wife had a crepe filled with something green and a salad. Crepes, apparently, are their specialty. We split a nice cabernet that I’d never heard of.

Dessert was great, too.  We had the “Femme Fatale”, which was a crepe filled with caramelized bananas and topped with ice cream.  It tasted a little pumpkiny and delicious.

We would definitely go back. In fact, we might even go back later this week when we have a friend in town who would love the food there.

Back to the website, though. I find that, more often than not, a restaurant website is awful. They usually use a lot of Flash, which is rarely a good idea. When I go to a restaurant website, I’d just like to see a menu, maybe a phone number. I don’t need to experience the ambiance of the place through some crappy Flash interface. I’m also surprised at how often I Google a restaurant and they don’t seem to have a website at all. I know I spend more time online than most people do, but it seems that the benefits of even just an HTML version of the menu and phone number being online would outweigh all the maintenance and hosting costs.

Anyway, I would recommend Napoleon Bistro. Just not their website.

Heres your chance to root for the Yankees

If you’re like me (That is, a rational human being not raised in New York), you hate the New York Yankees. You’re probably jealous of the cretins who actually root for them because they’ve averaged a World Series win every 4 years or so since 1900. It’s nice to root for a winner.

Anyway, tonight, you can safely root for the Yankees. Since 2000, which is as far as I’ve gone back, the Yankees are 0-3 in three game playoff series when they win the first game, and 4-0 when they lose.

In contrast, in all other three game playoff series, the team that wins game one is 16-5 in winning the series.

So, for you Phillies, Angels, and Cubs fans – you’ve got a tough road ahead of you.  But for you Indians fans, volunteer to pitch tonight to ensure a Yankees series loss.  The rest of the country will thank you for it.

Seriously, Im an addict

I just made my first visit of the year to the Nanowrimo forums.  The minute I read about people planning their novel and outlining a plot and creating characters, I just can’t help myself.

There are certainly worse things to be addicted to.  Crack.  Sex.  World of Warcraft.  I just have Nano.  And complaining.  Always complaining.

I need to start my planning.  When I plan more, my novels turn out better.  I think.  I have the first two or three chapters vaguely in my head, but I need a lot more than that.  And I need some names.  And that’s where you, dear readers, come in.  I know it’s hard to name people you know nothing about, so as I do more planning, I’ll try and bring you some character descriptions, and you can suggest names.  I hate naming characters, and I’m generally not all that happy with the names I end up with (Although Polly the Duck from Nano 2005 was nice).

So, stay tuned for your chance to name my characters.

AbeBooks rules

I found AbeBooks a few months ago.  I don’t remember how, but I’m glad I did.  They’re a book search service for new and used books at small booksellers all over the country.  I just bought Charles Stross‘ latest, Halting State, for less than Amazon (Well, barely less, but still less), and I feel smug because I’m supporting some local bookstore in Georgia rather than a gigantic corporation like Amazon.

Used books are even better – I’ve bought a couple books for $1 + $3 shipping.  If it costs less than five dollars, it might as well be free.  Sort of.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the book.

I’m currently reading Terrorist, by John Updike.  I read one of his early books, Rabbit, Run, written in 1960.  This one is from 2006.  So far I like it, although I’m only 80 pages in or so.  I wonder if I’m on some sort of watch list because I’m reading a book called “Terrorist” on the Metro right past the Pentagon.  I hope so.

AT&T wants to censor your complaints

AT&T Legal Policy Via Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and others.

So, AT&T has decided that they can terminate your service if your conduct ” tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.” I’m not exactly sure what “tends to damage” means, but it sounds ominous.

That being said, I do not use AT&T as a web host or ISP. If you have any grievances against AT&T, or its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries, feel free to contact me. I will happily provide a soapbox for you to stand on and voice your complaints.

You can do it here, or, if you have something particularly poignant, well-written, and not slanderous or libelous, I would probably be willing to allow a guest post to the main site. Email Jon at complaint hub dot com.  I will be your voice, because AT&T has no power over me, and I believe in every human being’s right to complain.

I said I wasnt going to do this

But Nanowrimo sign-ups start tonight. For those who don’t know and are too lazy to click the link, Nano is National Novel Writing Month, which happens every November. It started in maybe 2001 with about 20 people in San Fransisco deciding to each write a 50,000 word novel (For reference, this is approximately the length of Brave New World, among others, but shorter than the average novel) in 30 days. Last year, something like 75,000 people all over the world did it.

If I do it this year, it will be my sixth attempt. I finished in 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006. After last year, I had decided to quit because it wasn’t that much fun. But that may be because my 2006 story was stupid. This year I have a better idea, so I’m thinking it will be better. Also, I now have a portable laptop (As opposed to the giant brick I had before), so I can go to writing meetings at local coffee shops and whatnot, something I pledge to do every year and never do.

This also begins my yearly quixotic recruitment drive.  I’ve managed to get a few people over the years to commit to trying, but none have ever finished.  A friend did it last year, and she finished, but she was planning to do it before she knew I was a veteran, so I can only take credit for a few encouraging words here and there.

Anyway, you should do it.  It’s fun.  It’s a huge rush when you finish.

Not to pile on Microsoft . . .

Actually, yes, I am piling on Microsoft. Microsoft deserves it.

Work just upgraded Outlook web mail last night, and the new and improved version only works in IE 6 or “greater” (their words, not mine). What this means is that Microsoft decided (Again) not to play along with all the web standards to which everyone is supposed to adhere. Instead, they’ll introduce some proprietary garbage that only works properly with their own ideas of what people should be doing with their computers.

I imagine they get around monopolistic anti-trust violations by continuing to support the old version for other browsers, but exploiting legal loopholes is hardly what I would call being a responsible company.

Anyway, those of you who come to this site in Internet Explorer, you’ve probably noticed the site doesn’t render properly. Some of you may make the argument that it doesn’t really render properly in any browser, and I would tell you that I’ll redesign when I’m good and f’ing ready. But I won’t make sure it works in IE. If you read at work, and don’t have a choice in your browser, I apologize. But if you’re using IE by choice, then I have no sympathy. IE is not only an inferior way to view a web page, it is also actively making the internet worse.

And please don’t tell me to buy a Mac.  They’re just as bad as Microsoft (In some ways worse), they just have prettier cases and better marketing.

Visual Studio is killing me inside

In March, I moved from a web development project in Java to one in ASP.NET. It was a good opportunity to get some more experience and more responsibility, and I had been on the old project two years.

So here I am, programming in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. And let me tell you, it’s a piece of crap. It continues in the long Microsoft tradition of assuming that users are stupid. Go search for solutions to problems in .NET. Almost every single tutorial relies heavily on the Visual Studio GUI.

A good analogy here, for those of you who aren’t coders: Remember back in school when you were learning math? You probably learned how to do long division on paper, and you probably hated it. If you’re like me, you no doubt complained about it. Later, you got to use a calculator, and then things were more or less okay.

Imagine, however, that you had never been taught long division. More than that, you were never even told that long division even existed. Instead, you were handed a calculator and told that division means hitting one number, then the division button, then another number. Not that doing that would tell you the answer, but that doing that was what division was. It wasn’t a shortcut, a convenience. It was division.

Sure, you’d have the answer. You’d be able to divide any number by any other number. But you wouldn’t understand division.

This is what Visual Studio does.  It assumes that, if you end up with a working web page, then the fact that you have no idea how you got there is not important.

Now, I don’t mean to say that Visual Studio doesn’t have a lot of nice features that save you time.  I use the code completion features all the time.  But seriously, Microsoft.  Stop treating me like an idiot.