One day closer to death...

Springsteen is about to release a record of covers; songs originally written or made famous by Pete Seeger.  For those that don't know who Pete Seeger is, and until recently I didn't, he's an old folk singer dude - one of many targeted in the mockumentary A Mighy Wind.  There is no middle ground here for Bruce.  This is either going to completely suck or be great, and to me the proof will be in how these songs come across live.  When I heard about this I wanted to hear the originals.  I've combed the net and managed to compile most of the songs that will appear on the record, as they were done by Seeger, and posted them on my site.

ftp.extremeconsulting.net/extremecons/bruce/

userid=brucemusic
pw=brucemusic

Not since the Babe have the Red Sox lost a player of this caliber to the Yankees.  Granted it was a trade in Ruth's case but it's close to the same thing.  The Sox KNEW the Yankees would sign Damon... they could have ponied up the extra 12 million to keep him.   No other team but the Yankees was going to wind up with the guy so in my mind Damon was traded to the Yankees for 12 million.  So the Sox are 12 million richer.  They also will not win another World Series until I am dust.  Now all this does not mean I am happy about the TRADE either.  Damon drove a dagger through my heart in the ALCS in 2004.  I hated the guy... still do.   He's taking the place of one of my favorite all time Yankees and is going to have to do something drastic to get on my good side... like return the favor this October and help knock the Sox out.  That would work.  But first the mfer has to shave.  Man I love that.  At least if he uses a Norelco shaver to cut his beard he'll make some dough for a charity.

So if you subscribe to my feed it seems that old posts are losing the blog author and email address information.  I looked at the DasBlog code, no luck, and compared the RSS which gets generated for old and new posts and they look identical.  This is an RSS 1.0 feed so that may be a problem.  Anyway, old posts come down in the feed but have bad author info.  Bummer.

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For those unfamiliar (you know who you are), RSS is a standard format for specifying news that one would like published and consumed by interested parties using something called an RSS 'Reader'.  RSS is most commonly associated with blogs.  So let's say I have a blog and spew useless information.  Someone may actually be interested in said useless info.  So, instead of having to constantly hit my blog site seeing if there is new useless info, the interested party can use an RSS Reader, which will poll my site for new stuff and download it.  Using this reader one can subscribe to one or more RSS Feeds that they would like to keep up on.  Then, at a specified interval or at the touch of a button, the reader will check all subscriptions and deliver all the new stuff right to you.

I use an RSS Reader called NewsGator (costs $$).  I get updates to all my RSS feeds delivered to Outlook.  I basically don't have to surf anymore.  I subscribe to RSS feeds at all my favorite blog and web sites and get notified if there is new content.  They have a free? online version as well (which syncs with Outlook).  There are plenty of other free RSS Readers out there, like this one.

So up until today my blog was hidden behind my company firewall, the echo from my words clearly heard above the slamming of my co-workers keys.  Today I step out into the light where I fully expect nothing to change.  Yesterday I had a good excuse for my lack of readership; now what.

Finally a good quality version of this video!  Watch Gates get bitch-slapped!

http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=b1925a5f-e901-4b1b-8faf-1997dcff7444&f=copy

Came across this blog entry by Martin Fowler (of Patterns fame).  In it he talks about the value of having a few great people vs. a lot of good ones.  I have always believed this is the best way to build a team and in my opinion it is what we're doing here at <%MyCompany%>.  It's the reason we interview so many people and do not settle.  We may drive HR crazy but there is a method to our madness.  Unfortunately in an environment like this we're going to lose good people occasionally because they are in such demand.   It's difficult to find good people and just as hard to keep them.  I brag about the people that I work with here at <%MyCompany%> all the time.  If we could move the office to Princeton I'd love it even more!

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PeopleMatterMost.html

This paper contrasts popular management books/style with Springsteen's writing making a case that managers would be better served being honest (and trusting in people's desire for honesty) than preaching on some unrealistic utopia that could never be reached.

The Springsteen Manifesto

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce