The Waiting's the Hardest Part  Waiting to hear about a dream job for me. Though I finally got my résumé and clips to the firm only on Tuesday, I'm chafing at the bit to know whether they'll interview me, much less hire me. It's one of those positions where you know you're the right person...but you have to be patient to let them do their HR voodoo.

Beautiful Sunset

Sunset near Westeraccum
Originally uploaded by Wattwurm.

I don't even know where Westeraccum is, but I think it's part of the Frisian Islands&emdash;that is, the northwest of Germany. Still, it's a beautiful photo.

Us

Us
Originally uploaded by mojohand.

The happy family...Karen, Sunny, and me.

A long day ends  Heiko can now get some rest. I know how tough this is, just as a manager...but in Heiko's case, he was also involved in L10N as well as I18N.

Sad but True  Job Hunting. Thanks to Heiko for the tip to this guy. Depressing but funny in a black comic way.

Flawed but Funny  Rules for Being a Republican.

I Told Ya So  National Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment. No shit, Sherlock.

It Always Comes Down to Usability  More Is Sometimes Less touts the cheaper music players rivaling the iPod Mini. Yet with comments like

You can run your finger around the iPod's famous click wheel fast to jet down to the W's and then slowly to pinpoint "What a Wonderful World."
But the Rio's thumb wheel has no such variable speed; it's four songs per turn, period. Working through any list longer than about 12 songs is an excruciating exercise.

you see the problem. Another extract takes the Creative Zen Micro to task:

[T]he iPod's wheel has been replaced by a touch-sensitive vertical strip. In theory it ought to offer variable speed scrolling, but in practice it's a sticky, balky nightmare. You'll find a similar lack of polish when you want to use the Zen Micro's hard drive to transport computer files (a terrific feature of the iPod and all of its rivals) and discover that you must tell the software in advance how much space you'll need for them. How could you know that ahead of time?

Who thinks this dreck up? Oh...that's right...engineers and marketeers.

Coding Again  So for the past few days, I've been writing HTML & CSS. I've been creating a menu page for a tutorial I've yet to write as well. The thing is, though I'd tried to use Captivate's MenuBuilder, it looked & felt decidedly, well, PowerPointish. So I created a brushed metal background with Canvas, then I created a few minimal interface decorators as well.
I've been struggling with a four-column layout. Three columns, yeah, I can do that...but I need four columns. Any thoughts?

Bad and Getting Worse  The soldier speaks his mind. At least he got some notoriety, but I'm not surprised that he didn't get a straight answer. Reminds me of something that happened in Germany in '80. My best buddy there Mark L'Heureux was at a battalion assembly in the post theater in Baumholder. A group of soldiers was on stage, as they were taking the oath of reenlistment. Right when the LTC paused before reading it, L'Heureux yelled out, "Don't do it! Don't...do it!"
Everyone broke up laughing. And L'Heureux was protected because he was so short...I think he had about two weeks left in the Army.

End of an Era?  IBM isn't compatible anymore, apparently. I remember when the phrase "IBM-compatible" was the sine qua non of business phrases in the '80s. My how times change.

D'ya Think They'd Vote for Shrub Now?  My Way Finance: "A surprisingly soft 112,000 new U.S. jobs were created in November, the Labor Department said on Friday, casting a shadow across an already downbeat holiday sales season with consumers apparently worried by scarce work and high oil prices."
It's just amazing how he gets away with it.