SchockBlogArchive

Thanks to everyone who showed up for my birthday party. We threw a Scientology-themed rager, in case you didn't hear. Yard: trashed. House: trashed. Cat: missing (briefly).

I've found that once you spend a stupid amount of money on a pair of designer jeans, it's very easy to do it again from that point on. In the same day. Not that I did that. Just saying.

Hey, folks! What do you get when you let non-designers design Web pages?!

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Good times. Here's a barf bag.

Happy Fourth of July. Here is a picture of me drinking beer with some girls. Yay. And here's me and Da Regulator at a Fourth of July BBQ. Can I just say the meat was off the hook?

"Fubon said that the trader was unfamiliar with new computer systems and will be fired."

It's a sad, sad day when the blame for such a massive mistake is placed on the user. Training or no, the responsibility for something that grave falls on the shoulders of the software makers. Clearly, there was a breakdown in the information design of the product. [Note: I don't like the idea of software "training". First, you train bears to dance, you train lions to jump through hoops, and athletes train for competition. It implies some kind of inferiority, and it suggests a lot of boring, rote learning. In regards to software, training is usually for a user interface that wasn't designed... Continued...

ASP .NET programmers are now going for $15/hour. Sure, it's ASP .NET, but nonetheless a disconcerting sign for those of us who make our living writing code. Two questions pop into my mind, though. First, what kind of programmer do you get for $15? Can he think outside the box? Can he code with scalability in mind? Is he a hack, or does he adhere to good programming practice? Will it cost you more to update the code down the road than you're saving now? If you're talking about American programmers, you get what you pay for, in my opinion. Foreign labor is a different story, though. They may posess all these skills and be willing to work for less. About jobs moving abroad, I've... Continued...