Google News, Finance need to stop ignoring each other

I found yet another bug in Google News. To give some content, the stock market is down a shit-ton right now. I head over to GNews and see:



That the DJ closed UP 172 points? But it's the middle of the trading day, and doom is everywhere. Let's ask Google Finance:



Oh nevermind, it's DOWN 373 points!

Honest mistake for 3 year old betaware.

Google Reader Trends

I haven't done Google Reader trends in a while [1] | [2]

From your 57 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 896 items, starred 1 items, shared 69 items, and emailed 4 items.

When did I have time to even skim 900 posts in 30 days?

Why I Read People So Well

I used to browse through Usenet posting and read this kind of nonsense:

I hope someone can help me. I hope I'm not the only one who has to do something like this. I don't want to go and I'm sure someone understands this fear. My family still tries to demands that I am the skeleton in the closet and they are presently trying to control an uncontrollable individual only since Nov. 15, 2002. They forced me to sign for them to be guardians over me but since June 2004 I took them to court and proved I'm not the names they call me in public. I've worked through the anger and retailation into loving myself and them too, but I have to keep my distance or they start again. They are demanding I come because it is for the family. I have made a "family" out of nonrelatives that allow me to be me and that where I want to be, yet I can't take anymore abuse from them. What do I do? If I go how do I escape if it gets too much?

Wow...that's a supersized crazy, and I ordered a small.

Memory Test

Remember The Visionaries?

Three suns align, pour forth his might
and fill the archer's might

The arrows turn, the swords rebel
May nothing pierce this mortal shell

Sheath these feet in the driving gail
make swift these legs, o'ver land I sail

And then the McDonald's Menu Song?

Big Mac, McDLT
Some Quarter Pounders with some cheese
Filet O Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal

McNuggets, tasty golden fries, regular or larger size
A salad, chef or garden, or a Chicken Salad Oriental
Big, Big Breakfast, Egg McMuffin, hot-hotcakes and sausage
baby biscuit bacon egg and cheese a sausage danish, hash browns too

and for desset, hot apple pies, a sundae (three varieties)
a soft serve cone, three kinds of shakes, a chocolaty chip cookie
and to drink a coca-cola, diet coke, and orange, sprite too
and coffee, decafe too, a lowfat milk and also orange juice

i love mcdonalds, good time, great taste
and i get them all in one place

...

you want that to go?

::chortle::

Fuck, the Internet makes it difficult for me to show off my cranium sponge.

Blogger or not, you're fired

preggers is NOT a word!

I don't care what shit-face owns your newspaper, at least pretend you're a fucking journalist.

...

There is not a plague strong enough to fix the human race.

NAVTEQ: We lose, you win

Thank you for your recent Map Report. We have completed our investigation of your Map Report.

For the NAVTEQ tracking number: 00570CU8IJ2VDVJZ
Submitted on : 27, Dec 2007 11:54:58
Problem Description:
Montrose Road has been moved, construction still in progress.
http://www.nbc4.com/traffic/14879081/detail.html
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/dpwt/capital/dcd/htm/MontroseDetour.pdf

Our Resolution Outcome is: Database Updated - Navigable Geometry
Details: The new, open segment of Montrose Parkway has been added to the NAVTEQ database. Please see PVID 750115166. This information was field verified.

For more details, proceed to your Map Report at http://mapreporter.navteq.com

NAVTEQ delivers regularly scheduled map updates to our business partners which include database enhancements. The commercial release dates for these products will vary depending on each business partner’s product plans. If your Map Report did not result in a database change, please note that we track these items and evaluate them with our business partners on a regular basis to enhance navigation system performance.

Having the latest map in your system makes a difference to system performance with the latest roads, addresses and Points of Interest. If you are interested in an updated map for your navigation system, please contact your system provider or check our online store at http://store.navteq.com.

We welcome your feedback on the NAVTEQ Map. Thank you for helping to keep the NAVTEQ Map the most accurate and highest quality in the business.

Regards,
The NAVTEQ Map Reporter Team

Now I just need to wait until my stupid GPS gets this update.

Hey Jeebus! Who's your publicist?

Pope Benedict AND Jesus Christ in the news? What about the Easter Bunny?

That's some algorithm you got there, Google(s).

Google News Proves We Must Fire All the Reporters

This happens all the time.

Could you fuckers agree on the number before you publish your story?

And you -- Bloomberg. How about you copy edit the story before you post it? There's no fucking need to have 3 updates...the fucking bill passed 90 minutes ago.

I hate all of you.

Impulse Buy

I've been skiing twice this season. I have high arches, and the first time I went this season, I couldn't put weight on one foot after I got out of my boots.

I decided to order orthotics for my ski boots; ironically, Google lead me to Foot Dynamics, a company in home town. They sent me a kit to make foot molds using my oven, I sent them back, and less than a week later I had my orthotics. Total cost: $189.00.

Last week, I dropped my skis off at Willi's for a tune up. When I went in to pick them up, I asked the guys who work there if they could my new orthotics into my boots. The sales guys were very helpful, especially when they informed me that their orthotics were (at most) $100.00. The guy who helped me, whose feet are 2 sizes larger than mine, told me that he wore the same size boots that I did. While his buddy went in back to get my skis, he let me try on a couple pairs of boots that should be a better fit to my feet.

Long story short, my $20 tune up turned into $300, but my new boots are so comfy. I hope to try them out tomorrow after work.

Holy Shit!

The Googleplex ... has launched ... Google Caucus.

The Great Email Migration of 2007

My first domain purchase was back in 1999: my last name .ORG. Over the past several years, I purchased .NET and .COM as they became available.

Since 1999, (with the exception of a couple outages George helped me out with), I've hosted my own email. Any time I've changed jobs, I've taken a copy of my email archives with me.

I decided it was time to consolidate all my email under one roof: Google Apps for domains. I moved .COM and .NET over and then began the arduous task of migrating all of my email.

• Dozens Unix mbox files (some native, some from Thunderbird, some that were migrated once-upon a time from CCMail to Groupwise and then pulled into mbox using IMAP)
• 1 GMail account (which had BCC's of the Unix mbox files AND forwarded copies of half the email from my current job)
• 4 Outlook .PST files totaling over 3GB

My Outlook archives were in nice folder hierarchies, so I had to: flatten the folder structure out, use IMAP to drag and drop everything to my mail server at home, and then use the migration tool to suck it in.

The tool labels your messages with the IMAP folder (or folder hierarchy) it came from, and I decided that I wanted the labels to be clean (not: Kaitain\AAAS\Technology Services\Personal Email).



The folders also couldn't have spaces in them, so I used several shell scripts to format:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
# replace spaces with underscores
for file in *\ *
do
short=`echo $file|sed 's/ /_/g'`
mv "$file" "$short"
done

and to merge all the files into one:

for file in *_*;do cat $file >> Kaitain;rm "$file";done

I don't know how much time I spent flatting my email, but it can't compare to all the time I ever spent organizing all my email.

In the end, can you really quantify the interactions of one person with others?



Apparently you can. GMail extracted 142,119 emails, which threaded into 59,913 conversations since 1999. The total extraction and loading took about three days.



All this takes up over 4000MB of storage. The oldest emails go back to here:



Only about 25 emails were not migrated (either viruses or the attachments were too large), and maybe 5-8 emails that came over "ok" were fucked up and I deleted them. Losing only 32/142,119 is amazing!

Google News Es Bustido

I mean, what news?

Google Reader Trends

Since I don't seem to be writing anything, you can at least see what I've been reading:

[click image to enlarge]

Google Reader Trends

Note to self: stop reading Perez Hilton so much.

My coworkers add their bickering to the Google body of knowledge

A (relatively new) coworker of mine decided to setup a Google notebook to "foster collaboration" on a project we're working on. I had only been to it once when another coworker on the project told me to check in again:



If you click on the image, you can read the...discussion...that is taking place about templates.

When the human race is gone one day, and the aliens scour the Google for the sum of human experience, I hope they choose this exchange to exemplify our entire culture.

Some Blogkeeping Activities

(1) Great Moments in AlphaJohnness -- deleted
(2) Google Adsense ads -- all removed
(3) Your Blogsmith -- tired and cranky today

That is all.

Let's give this a shot

To your right is a new element called "Foibles from the Internet(s)"; it's a collection of links I'm sharing from Google Reader:

Reader has always been about sharing your favorite items. One of the more fun things you can do with them is put them on your blog. That way your readers can see what you've been finding interesting, even if you don't have the time to do full posts.

Until now, putting your shared items in your blog required some technical chops, since you needed to copy and paste some code into your template. We'd always wanted to make this easier, so we worked with our friends on the Blogger team. As a result, the entire process now only takes a few clicks for Blogger users*.

We'll try it out and see how it goes...

Replacing my Pool Gear

In the process of turning the WRX in, I somehow lost my pool bag with all of my gear in it (goggles, paddles, pull buoy, fins, and sandals). I've looked everywhere, and the only thing I can guess is that I left them in the trunk of the WRX when I turned it in.

In any event, I needed to replace everything. I made a trip to Sport Fair in Arlington and was able to get goggles, paddles, and fins. I decided that I could get away with those for the next couple practices and ordered the buoy and sandles on the internet(s). I was asked when I checked out how I found their site:



I wonder if they'll think I'm serious...?

Cleansing my electronic music pallet

I've been on an electronic music bender for weeks; nothing but trance, break-beats, drum and bass, and the occasional house track. Without even thinking about it, I open iTunes this morning and it was half an hour before I realized I'd been listening to Smack That on repeat.

I had to use the Google to find out what a Lamborghini Gallardo looked like. After all, I'm not a 12 year old boy anymore.

Google Reader Delights Me

To know me is to know how much of the Internet(s) I traverse in a given day. Often, I run out of Internet(s) to read because it can't make news fast enough. Not only do I check many different types of sites, but I check them all pretty often.

It is, frankly, a huge waste of my time.

I tried using an RSS reader (Thunderbird) a couple times, but the experience was really annoying. I gave up and went back to checking my sites the old fashioned way.

While George has extolled the virtues of Rojo for some time, I didn't like that either.

And then, while I was enjoying my holiday break, I saw that Google Labs has incubated a little something they call Google Reader. Though the name is uninspired, it has changed my browsing habits.


All the sites I visit are subscribed in the left hand pane. I clickity-click a button:


And I only see sites that have unread articles (if there are any). As you can see in this picture, the Internet(s) need to get busy and make some more news. I hit refresh for 147 seconds until Google News made something up:



As you can see, "Google News" appears and it tells me I have (4) unread articles. When I click on the feed, I can get a list view (with just headlines):


Or I can pick the expanded view and see a snippet of each article (along with pictures if there are any):



This way, I can scan the 20 posts that Autoblog puts up in an hour in list view, read the one I want about the Mercedes S-Guard, and mark the rest read. This miracle frees me up to find another way to waste an hour of each work day.