John’s Blog

Archive for January, 2005

23 Jan, 2005

This is the stepout from

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

This is the stepout from the living room. 

23 Jan, 2005

The stepout from our bedroom

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

The stepout from our bedroom — we’re putting in a new sliding door here next week. 

23 Jan, 2005

A picture of our

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

A picture of our backyard as they’re putting in the flagstone — backbreaking, detailed work that takes a super-long time. All these are as of 1/23/2005.

23 Jan, 2005

one of the pictures of

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

one of the pictures of our backyard flagstone. 

22 Jan, 2005

Bursty Blogging

Posted by: John In: Weblogs

For some reason, I mostly don’t ever publish a single blog entry — seems like I batch them up and do 3 or 4 (or more) all at once. I’m not sure why that is. I think I’d like to have a little bit different mix, where I have some very short ones, and some [...]

22 Jan, 2005

The American President

Posted by: John In: politics

I thought that George W. Bush’s 2nd Inaugural was a very good speech. I haven’t historically thought much of his policies, and I’ve thought even less of his grammar, vocabulary, speaking skills and such, but thought that this speech was quite good both from the point of view of his oratory (better than it’s been [...]

22 Jan, 2005

New Patent!

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

Just got a note today that a patent that Mike Hanson, Brian Roddy, and I submitted a couple of years ago came through! That Mike guy gloms onto all my good work.
It’s basically for using external facing proxies to secure internal servers, which happens to be what Reactivity does. You can take a [...]

22 Jan, 2005

The Places I’ve Been

Posted by: John In: Travel

For the last 30 days or so, I’ve traveled exactly nowhere. San Francisco is about as far afield as I’ve been — and I’m really happy for the travel respite. In a funny way, I sort of miss airports — there’s a certain anonymity and autonomy that comes from running around an airport by yourself [...]

22 Jan, 2005

Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland

Posted by: John In: Books

I’ve mentioned before that 2 of my very favorite authors, Douglas Coupland & Haruki Murakami, have both come out with novels this month — I’m now finished with the first book and in the middle of the second, and one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is that it’s pretty tough to explain [...]

21 Jan, 2005

Connectors for Connectors?

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that there are basically 3 types of folks you need to have a robust, spreading idea: mavens (experts), evangelists, and connectors. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m the third type: a connector. I really enjoy connecting people that didn’t previously connect and seeing what they can do [...]

21 Jan, 2005

Process Story

Posted by: John In: Weblogs

A while back, when The West Wing was fantastic, instead of merely good television, they ran an episode titled “Process Stories” that was about how sometimes the news isn’t about the content, but about the process that’s happening.
Well, this post isn’t about my content as usual as much as it is about the process [...]

13 Jan, 2005

The Power that Preserves, by Stephen R. Donaldson

Posted by: John In: Books

This is my last Stephen R. Donaldson post, at least for a while. The Power that Preserves is the third and final book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever — a fantasy series comparable in scope to The Lord of the Rings.
I’m glad that I re-read these books — there was a [...]

11 Jan, 2005

The Illearth War, by Stephen R. Donaldson

Posted by: John In: Books

The 2nd installment in Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, the only real fantasy trilogy that I’ve ever read that approaches the scope of Tolkein. Actually, that’s not quite right — the Terry Brook’s Shanara books are similar in scope as well, and while I really enjoyed them, they always seemed to me [...]

09 Jan, 2005

Hard News, by Seth Mnookin

Posted by: John In: Books

Nikhyl gave me this book for Christmas — the full title is Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media. It’s a book that I didn’t expect to like, but really did. Nominally tells the story of Jayson Blair and the 36+ articles that he plagerized or fabricated [...]

A lot of fun, like Moore’s other books. As you’d imagine, this one’s a wacky novel about vampires. Only 2 of them, but still. Lately I’ve been working through all of his books because they’re fun & light — and very clever. Only 3 of them left, so I’ll probably read those in the next [...]

03 Jan, 2005

Last Few Weeks at Reactivity

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff| startups

I have to say that my last few weeks at Reactivity were about as good as I could have imagined them. I’m going to write a different post later tonight about the emotions that I’ve felt/am feeling, but wanted to focus this post on everyone else.
My transition out was relatively long, mostly happening over [...]

03 Jan, 2005

Backyard After 3 Days

Posted by: John In: Personal stuff

Well, it’s looking better as of this weekend — they’ve pretty well gotten rid of all the planters, the basketball hoop & the lawn, plus they’ve reshaped the patio to be substantially what it will be sized for the finish. Today they’re working on forms for 3 pieces of new concrete they’ll need to pour: [...]

03 Jan, 2005

Radio Activity, by Bill Fitzhugh

Posted by: John In: Books

Sort of like High Fidelity meets Carl Hiassen. A murder mystery set in a small town Mississippi radio station. Lots of classic rock references that are sort of funny. A good airplane book (moves quickly, sort of funny), but nothing fantastic.

03 Jan, 2005

Lord Foul’s Bane, by Stephen R. Donaldson

Posted by: John In: Books

I had read this pair of trilogies (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Second Chronicles) a long time ago — probably when I was in middle school. In terms of themes & scope, very much like The Lord of the Rings, and focusing around a leper, Thomas Covenant, who lives in our [...]



  • John: testing comments
  • kev: I loved the bit about the timing, particularly with respect to athletes that are born earlier getting a disproportionate amount of funding/training be
  • Andrew Blechman: I used to be a big fan of Friedman until I came to the conclusion that he's wrong about globalization--I think it leads to an equal amount of exploita

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