http://www.warmroom.com Reflections on family life, software, politics and endurance sports. Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:23:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Words of wisdom from government employee Ronald Reagan: The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away. Ronald Reagan 40th president of US (1911 - 2004) The Quotations Page. http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/09/28/the-best-minds/ The combination of "seems impossible" and "strong network effects" is about as close as you can get to the magic formula for incredible, sustainable success, as with eBay, Wikipedia, and Google. Trenchant analysis from Joel Spolsky. http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/06/13/how-hard-could-it-be-inspired-misfires-personal-development-article-inc-article/ As someone who has definitely expended too much of my life on the watching of Gilligan's Island, this is heartening news. Shirky argues that there has been a cognitive surplus in the developed world and for the past 50 years we have been soaking up that surplus with situation comedies ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/04/27/clay-shirky-on-cognitive-surplus/ A personal story in the Times talks about the impact of having a severely sick or injured child on parents. There isn't any data, only personal stories, but startled me into recognition of my own condition. I still sit upright in bed in the middle of the night recalling the ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/04/07/post-traumatic-stress-and-ill-children/ How do you solve a problem? I had two different concrete experiences of problem solving in the past couple of days. I think these examples are interesting because they are so contained, not because they are hard problems. They illustrate how I tackle a problem and provide some generalizable strategies for ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/03/27/problem-solving/ Wow! Prince's solo in this performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps is awesome. Thanks Rodgers. http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2008/03/26/prince/ I rolled a stop sign last month and I received a well deserved ticket. When it came time to pay the ticket, I elected to pay an additional $32 to the City and County of San Francisco and $20 to online provider of traffic school in this jurisdiction. This allows take ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2007/11/24/traffic-school/ As part of my re-evaluation of my toolkit, I've started using MarsEdit. For those who don't know, MarsEdit is a Macintosh program to write blog posts. There are a couple of small features in the way the Mars Edit works that could have been deal breakers for me, so I was ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2007/11/24/google-ranking-problem/ Is it any wonder communication fails? Her version of the story: R: I thought of something else you should get at the store. L: Ok. R. Hum. L: I'm getting a pad. L: What was it? R: What was it? L: What was what? L: What you wanted to me to get? R: I thought you wrote it down? L: Wrote ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2007/11/24/two-sides-to-the-story/ A few weeks ago, I had a bad experience using search at an e-commerce site. It cost me a little money and it cost the merchant a little good will. It was neither enough money nor enough good will to be serious, but that was just luck. If this had ... http://www.warmroom.com/yesterdays/2007/10/14/how-search-can-go-wrong/