Sunday, June 01, 2003

Storm Subsides Small coastal Massachusetts town spared yet again. 4:40:25 PM    comment [] Wardsworth Bookstore in Harvard Square (Mike's notes from OSCOM3) After the conference closed I wandered over to Wardsworth bookstore in Harvard Square.  I wanted to get some background on RSS and hoped O'Reilly would have a book on it.  Sure enough "Content Syndication with RSS" was just published in March 2003.  Chapter 1 gives a great overview of the evolution of this standard.  I didn't realize it was so controversial. Here's a snippet you might enjoy from page 6.... "It should be noted there is an RSS 3.0 proposed by Aaron Swartz as part of a long rss-dev in-joke. (The joke culminated with the proposal to have RSS 4.0 expressed entirely through the medium of interpretive dance.)  Search  engine results finding these specifications are therefore wrong, though dryly funny."  4:36:10 PM    comment [] Storm Intensifies It's coming down sideways now. The wind has picked up.  The big exposure for "coastal flooding" will be at high tide around 1:17 pm.  I love living on the beach but there are drawbacks.  The beach house took hits during the "Storm of the Century" in 1978 and during the "The Perfect Storm" in 1991. 9:42:37 AM    comment [] Small World to the Point of Spooky (Mike's notes from OSCOM3) We were all stretching our legs after Dave Winer's keynote. The guy next to me noticed my name tag and said, "Mike Walsh - do you know FirstName Walsh at BigSoftwareCompany in San Fran.  I always cringe when someone starts down this road because Walsh is a very common name especially in big Irish towns like Boston and San Francisco.  Well it turns out that FirstName Walsh was in fact my sister who was web master for BigSoftwareCompany.  This guy, Bob Boiko... the Bob Boiko ... had worked for/with my sister on a major reorg of BigSoftware's website.   Then   There was a fairly young looking guy on the Intellectual Property Panel.  Aaron Swartz was his name.  OK, he looked very young.  When John Palfrey introduced him everybody around me starting whispering... "boy genius, wunderkind, etc."  I checked out one of his web sites on and couldn't figure out where he was from or how old he was.  I got the general sense that he was neither east nor west coast.  When I finally got a chance to talk to him he confirmed that he was 16; from the Chicago area and attending Lake Forest College.  Small world.  I graduated from Lake Forest College in 1973 and had never run into any alums (other than my roommates) since graduating.  I asked if Prof. Edward D. Packel (EDP) was still there and sure enough Ed was one of Aaron's professors.  EDP taught math when I was there.  There were no formal computer courses back then but he let a bunch of us hack around with the College's brand spanking new IBM 1045 - punch card input, noisy band printer output.   Then...   I was waiting in the registration area for someone who was running late for an appointment.  I struck up a conversation with Doro Baur, a twenty something PhD student from Zurich who is on the OSCOM3 organizing committee.  In passing, I mentioned that I was an Arthur Andersen alum.  Small world.  She had done a short stint with Accenture - the systems spinoff from AA&Co.  We both had attended the same training (brainwashing) center in St. Charles, Illinois.  Back in my day Andersen would hire bright graduates from college and grad schools who had no desire to be programmers and send them through the programming ( read - reprogramming) center in St. Charles.  Doro said the exact same thing happened to her and she quit immediately.  That's when she decided to pursue a doctorate in "Business Ethics" which I pointed out was surely and oxymoron.     [ same story - different font - presentation matters... really does ] 8:54:44 AM    comment [] Small World to the Point of Spooky (Mike's notes from OSCOM3) We were all stretching our legs after Dave Winer's keynote. The guy next to me noticed my name tag and said, "Mike Walsh - do you know FirstName Walsh at BigSoftwareCompany in San Fran.  I always cringe when someone starts down this road because Walsh is a very common name especially in big Irish towns like Boston and San Francisco.  Well it turns out that FirstName Walsh was in fact my sister who was web master for BigSoftwareCompany.  This guy, Bob Boiko... the Bob Boiko ... had worked for/with my sister on a major reorg of BigSoftware's website.   Then   There was a fairly young looking guy on the Intellectual Property Panel.  Aaron Swartz was his name.  OK, he looked very young.  When John Palfrey introduced him everybody around me starting whispering... "boy genius, wunderkind, etc."  I checked out one of his web sites on and couldn't figure out where he was from or how old he was.  I got the general sense that he was neither east nor west coast.  When I finally got a chance to talk to him he confirmed that he was 16; from the Chicago area and attending Lake Forest College.  Small world.  I graduated from Lake Forest College in 1973 and had never run into any alums (other than my roommates) since graduating.  I asked if Prof. Edward D. Packel (EDP) was still there and sure enough Ed was one of Aaron's professors.  EDP taught math when I was there.  There were no formal computer courses back then but he let a bunch of us hack around with the College's brand spanking new IBM 1045 - punch card input, noisy band printer output.   Then...   I was waiting in the registration area for someone who was running late for an appointment.  I struck up a conversation with Doro Baur, a twenty something PhD student from Zurich who is on the OSCOM3 organizing committee.  In passing, I mentioned that I was an Arthur Andersen alum.  Small world.  She had done a short stint with Accenture - the systems spinoff from AA&Co.  We both had attended the same training (brainwashing) center in St. Charles, Illinois.  Back in my day Andersen would hire bright graduates from college and grad schools who had no desire to be programmers and send them through the programming ( read - reprogramming) center in St. Charles.  Doro said the exact same thing happened to her and she quit immediately.  That's when she decided to pursue a doctorate in "Business Ethics" which I pointed out was surely and oxymoron.       8:50:15 AM    comment [] 5:01:17 AM    comment [] Gimmee a Break Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service ...BARNSTABLE MA-EASTERN ESSEX MA-EASTERN NORFOLK MA-EASTERN PLYMOUTH MA-SOUTHEAST MIDDLESEX MA-SUFFOLK MA-432 AM EDT SUN JUN 1 2003 ...WIND ADVISORY LATE THIS MORNING THROUGH THIS EVENING FOR CAPE AND THE EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS INCLUDING BOSTON... AN UNUSUALLY STRONG NOREASTER FOR LATE SPRING IS LIKELY TO BRING A PERIOD OR TWO OF SUSTAINED WINDS BETWEEN 30 AND 35 MPH LATER TODAY...WITH ISOLATED GUSTS TO 45 MPH. THE MOST LIKELY TIME FOR STRONGEST NORTH WIND IS SLATED FOR LATE THIS AFTERNOON OR EVENING... ALTHOUGH THERE MAY BE A SHORT BURST OF NORTHEAST WINDS TO 30 MPH BETWEEN 9 AM AND NOON. A WIND ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS ARE FORECAST TO BE 31 TO 39 MPH OR GUSTS WILL RANGE BETWEEN 46 AND 57 MPH. WINDS OF THESE MAGNITUDES MAY CAUSE MINOR PROPERTY DAMAGE WITHOUT EXTRA PRECAUTIONS.MOTORISTS IN HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES SHOULD USE CAUTION UNTIL THE WINDSSUBSIDE. BOATERS AND FISHERMEN MIGHT CONSIDER POSTPONING THEIR OUTINGS TODAY DUE TO THE HIGH WINDS...OR PLEASE USE EXTREME CAUTION ON THE WATERS. STAY TUNED TO THE WEATHER CHANNEL AND WEATHER.COM FOR UPDATES.... [ I have no idea how the formatting on this post got so screwed up.  I think I will just leave it for now and blog ahead.  The comments icon on the top is really bizarre ]

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