Everything that comes out of Dossy, from the strange to the banal.
On the Intertubes, news travels fast. It didn’t take long for news of a cat living in a nursing home to get mashed up with the recent LOLcat meme. I mean, who could resist Oscar, the dethcat, the kittah of deth? But, what surprises me is the fact that the connection to the old “all your base” meme hasn’t been made, yet–that I could find, anyway. So, Interwebs, I give you this:
For great justice!
I’m on vacation with the family this week and we’re back in Ocean City, MD. We were here in September 2005 at the Club Ocean Villas II, at which time the Hilton Suites Ocean City Oceanfront was still being built. We all really liked Ocean City, so we wanted to check it out. I’m a bit wary of trying out a brand new resort so I said we should try to get in for 2007, this way you avoid all the early growing pains.
Like last time, we came down the Garden State Parkway to the end and took the Cape May/Lewes Ferry across. The traffic was very kind to us and we made the drive in great time. The Hilton is situated between 32nd and 33rd Street. Checking in at the hotel was pleasant and uneventful, and our room was ready and waiting for us.
Here’s the view from our suite, #614. The view is fantastic, looking out over the ocean and the two outdoor pools.
Of course, while this is a vacation for the family, in the evenings I’m busy getting work done. Fortunately, there’s fully wired Ethernet in the suite and wireless networks set up in the lobby area. Out of curiousity, I decided to try a quick speed test to see what kind of bandwidth they’re offering:
My outbound connections are coming from 74-95-78-21-delmarva.hfc.comcastbusiness.net (74.95.78.21). It appears that I’m getting 512 Kbps down, 128 Kbps up–not amazing bandwidth, but totally adequate for teleworking.
It’s still early in the vacation, but unless something goes radically wrong, this is definitely a place I hope to be able to come back to again. It’s definitely a plush, five-star resort and a great way to enjoy the Ocean City beach.
Tags: Hilton Suites, Ocean City, Maryland, vacation
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since July 23, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
Mary C. Joyce, a digital activism consultant, will be speaking at our August 8th meetup. She researches how ordinary people can use technologies like the Internet and cell phones to organize for political change, and blogs at http://www.ZapBoom.com/.
Mary will be presenting Rayt, a Firefox browser add-on that would allow users to post a comment on any website via a standard Firefox banner. Rayt would also allow users to rayt (rate) each other’s comments, moving the most interesting comments to the front of the banner and spam comments to the end. Rayt gives ordinary people as much power as governments or corporations as to what information is presented on the web. Finally, Web 2.0 is a reality.
To learn more about Rayt and see screenshots:
http://rayt.bligoo.com/content/view/54783/The_Rayt_Manifesto.html
If you plan to attend the Northern NJ MySQL August 8th Meetup, please RSVP by the 7th so we can get an idea as to how many people will be attending so we can try to accomodate everyone.
Tags: meetup, event, MySQL, Northern NJ, Mary C. Joyce, Rayt, Web 2.0
Recently I’ve been recounting some very wise words my father shared with me when I asked him how to be successful. I left this comment on a friend’s (protected) blog entry, but I want to repeat it here for others to read:
Oh, K___ … in a sense, you’re lucky you’re only feeling this way now. I went through the “epiphany of stupidity” when I was a young teenager–realizing that I was smart but lazy and when the smart wears off, you start feeling really dumb and incapable.
The beauty and strength of this situation is that you are actually still very smart but now your goals lie outside the bounds of your natural laziness. Being lazy isn’t necessarily bad: it’s what drives really smart people to innovate.
My father, who didn’t complete a formal education, is one of the more successful people I know. One day, I asked him the secret to success and his answer was:
“Don’t be too smart. Be just stupid enough to not realize you’re failing. Then, just keep doing something until you succeed.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
You are fortunate in that you were and still are an exceptionally bright person. The upside here is that you now have the wisdom of your ignorance: you can now see the dirty spots that need cleaning that you couldn’t see before. Set your mind on a goal and be tenacious and persistent until success comes to you. Your ability to achieve is truly without limit.
Tags: wisdom, success, inspiration, quote
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since July 16, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
Tonight, at bedtime, my daughter Charlie decided to read a chapter out of one of her favorite book series, Phantom Stallion by Terri Farley.
We’ve made reading before bed a ritual with our kids since long before they could even speak. Perhaps its no coincidence, but both Charlie and Suzie are very advanced readers for their age.
Normally, I do the reading at bedtime so the kids can just relax and get ready to doze off, but tonight Charlie wanted to do the reading. As she read through the chapter, she yawned and said, “Boy, they sure can fit a lot of words on a page.”
I could only reply, “Yes, they sure can, sweetie.” My girls constantly amaze me at the depth of their keen observations. I hope they can hold onto their ability to discover things with such ease, and I can remain in awe of them.
Friday night, my family and my long-time friend Ian went for an overnight camping trip in Harriman State Park, at the Bald Rocks shelter off the red trail on Black Rock Mountain.
(Topographic map of Harriman State Park, Black Rock Mountain, Bald Rocks via Topozone.com)
It’s roughly a one-mile hike from the parking area and takes you up and down some fun terrain. The wild blueberries are all over the place and the kids had great fun picking and eating a few on our hike out.
One thing that really saddens me is the amount of litter at the shelter, especially the broken glass beer bottles! Of course alcohol isn’t permitted on the trails but some irresponsible people think it’s fun to party in the woods, but at least they could show some appreciation by abiding by the “carry in, carry out” rule.
We did our best to clean up the area with some hand-crafted tall grass brooms we made to sweep out the shelter and tried to gather all the larger pieces of broken glass we could, but let this be a plea to all of you out there: please try to leave the campsite cleaner than when you got there. If we each do a little bit, everyone benefits a great deal.
Trust me, I understand and appreciate why these places are such fantastic areas to party and have fun but it won’t be for long if we don’t take care of them.
Tags: New Jersey, New York, Harriman State Park, Black Rock Mountain, hiking, camping, outdoors
I’ve been very busy lately and haven’t been keeping up on my feed reading. Matter of fact, just the other day I declared war on the 5,500+ messages sitting in my inbox, some messages dating back to 2002–which yes, I actually ended up replying to a bunch of as part of my cleanup crusade.
If I haven’t been reading and/or commenting on your blog lately, this is why. I’ve got so many unread articles in my feed reader that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to catch up–I’m tempted to mark them all as “read” and declare feed reading bankruptcy and start fresh. I also need to start pruning back my subscriptions and unsubscribing from feeds I just don’t read to begin with.
A lot of them I stay subscribed to out of fear that there might be an interesting article that I just don’t want to miss, but I think I’ll just have to rely on someone else to find it and link to it. Like today, Andrew linked to the They Might Be Giants Podcast.
I guess I need to become more selective in what I subscribe to and more aggressive about unsubscribing from feeds I just don’t read.
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since July 2, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
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