Another successful transplantation operation, doctor!

Field-stripping the laptop, again.

Well, I had to field-strip and replace the laptop fan, again. But it went off without a hitch. The whole operation took only about 45 minutes or so, and right now it's running fine and cool. Arctic Silver is a great thermal paste and a tiny bit goes a long way.

I spent about $80 on this fan, which is more than the $40-50 usually quoted from most resources, but this is a new fan manufactured by Toshiba, not a Lenovo refurbishment, so maybe it'll last longer than six months, ne?

XKCD is right...

Omaha didn't like Wednesday's XKCD, "Worst Case Scenarios," in which a scientist berates the press for seeking frission in the idea that the BP Disaster is going to cause the end of the world. As the scientist points out, we are in the midst of the worst-case scenario in the Gulf of Mexico, and the investigation should turn now not from frightening people about how the situation could get worse, but instead telling people what is happening, what is being done to stop it, and what is being done to find and hold responsible those who caused this disaster.

The press's response (in XKCD): "Screw this! Let's as Michael Bay."

Well, it seems they've done the next best thing. They've asked James Cameron. How can the director of Titanic and Pirahana II: The Spawning, possibly be of any help here? He had a film about a disaster, and he did a lot of filming in 10 meters of water for The Abyss. How does any of that help clean up a real disaster two kilometers underneath the sea?

Recommended Reading: The Quiet Coup

Simon Johnson's The Quiet Coup is the sort of thing that ought to depress the hell out of you. He follows the current financial logic to its logical conclusion: we are not a representative democracy. We are an oligarchy; the election process is a farce to put people into chairs who, regardless of party affiliation, find themselves embedded in an economic machine that empowers them only to act in the interests of the oligarchs, where those in bureaucratic political power (rather than elected) come from the financial world, and return to it, regularly, and find themselves rewarded at both ends.

Accomplishement Paralysis, Part 1

I had the pleasure the other day of attending the Seattle Web Designer's Meetup. It wasn't so much designers, though, as developers, and despite a membership of 66 on the list, and 14 RSVPs, there were only seven people there the entire evening.

We gathered names and current positions: two working, three unemployed, one dedicated freelancer with several contracts underway, and one who described himself as a "web-based small businessman."

As we discussed our current projects, I realized that I was probably the only guy there with any actual passion for design. I had a number of interests that I wanted to talk about-- developing for Django, for NodeJS, for MySQL and Mongo, for jQuery, even my stalled (like everything else) Flash Replacement Projects. I showed off a couple of the unfinished FRPs, and everyone was suitably impressed.

The businessman, it turns out, has a slew of web-based stores where he re-sells speciality items that he buys in bulk from other resources. Basically, he makes money sellings things at a higher price than Amazon, but by creating storefronts that cater directly to the purchaser, rather than a generic storefront that sells everything.

He sells a lot of woo: vitamins, new-age jewerly (think crystals and copper bracelets), yoga supplies, locally produced CDs. And he apparently makes a comfortable enough living at it.

Here's the thing, though: his websites are boring. They're pedestrian; flat colors, table layouts, little interactivity, no mobile compliance at all. And yet he's making money. They look like they came out of 2001, not 2010.

He wanted to hire me. I demurred, saying that I was already gainfully employed. He accepted that but suggested that we stay in touch.

It's still a little frustrating to realize that because he deferred excellence in my field, he's more successful-- by an absolutely essential metric-- than I am. He's willing to be a businessman, to put up cheap, simple stores that sell something people want, no matter how poorly, but in some sense better than the megasites.

Accomplishment Paralysis, part II.

For the ten months or so that I was unemployed, I had a metric buttload of projects that I wanted to get underway. In the past three months since I've been employed, I've gotten a number of projects off the ground, but several others (mostly the unpaid ones) have stalled.

It ought not to be this way. I have yet to figure out why what often seems like analysis paralysis often transforms without friction into accomplishment paralysis: an excuse not to finish a project.

And it doesn't seem to matter how much backing I have, from Omaha, from my peers. It doesn't seem to matter that it doesn't matter if a project is a failure, because nobody will remember it (unless it's as spectacularly as bad as BPs), but will instead recall the success-- or least pay for them.

Of course, maybe that's my other problem. I like making new things; I rarely enjoy maintenance. The idea of asking for money makes me clammy as hell, and I've done it only rarely.

The perspective from the other side...

Frothy, with grains of truth:

( Big blockquote. )