A new channel

I will be writing weekly for Real Worcester, a news and blog site covering Worcester and the surrounding area. My blog is titled Worcestershire Journal and will include stories on various topics with connections to Worcester County. I'll continue to write here and in my other blogs.

Thanks for your abiding support and interest.

./kh, aka rb

Bingo!

Re:

Turning of the seasons

Sandra's parents returned from PEI yesterday. They left on Wednesday morning, spent the night in Bangor, and arrived here mid-afternoon. Pretty impressive when you realize that they're both in their later 80s.
And, with their return, Marley waits at their door in the morning. He's interested in what the MacGregors had for breakfast and, more importantly, what might be left over for him.

Crime in suburbia

From The Landmark (subscription required):

Holden

Monday, September 22

3:05 p.m. Caller reports brother calling to ask for money; requesting police advise him to stop before she takes court action
3:20 p.m. Party crow hunting on MDC land
4:11 p.m. West Boylston police report bear on rail trail
8:12 p.m. Report of bear in yard on Princeton St.
9:38 p.m. Cab driver report regular customer harassing him by phone; refused to drive him anymore because of suspected drug activity

Tuesday, September 23

5:02 p.m. Man with ladder going up pole reported on Chapel St.

Wednesday, September 24

7:50 a.m. Cook St. resident advises cooler left end of driveway; expects it will be picked up with trash

Thursday, September 25

2:27 p.m. Report of black bear on Sawyer Lane
5:48 p.m. Black bear reported near Davis Hill
6:09 p.m. 911 Report of black bear on Bancroft Rd.

Friday, September 26

9:18 a.m. 911 Call offering lower rates on credit cards; offer turned down
1:50 p.m. Caller says officer at detour talked down to driver and then told another officer to get her plate; wants HPD to be aware, not everyone knows back roads in town
7:09 p.m. Complaint about new lines painted on Ararat St./290; advised to contact MassHighway or Worcester PD
7:37 p.m. Caller reports hitting owl on Malden St.

Paxton

Tuesday, September 23

12:13 p.m. Pleasant St. Caller reporting neighbor stands at fence and aggravates her dog and stares at residence. Caller upset because she runs a daycare and is unsure what neighbor is trying to do.

Friday, September 26

4:25 p.m. Party from WSRS tower reporting they are down a phase on their phase 3 tower.

Rutland

Tuesday, September 23

11:19 a.m. Sick crow in the parking lot of the Rutland Vet Clinic is now dead, Pommogussett Rd.

Sterling

Thursday, September 25

11:00 a.m. Report of feral cats and litter of kittens, Rowley Hill Rd.
12:16 p.m. Cat stuck in grate, Central Ave.

Saturday, September 27

1:44 p.m. Youths in woods banging on wooden poles, Avery Ln.

Hungry for music

Sandra's parents are returning from PEI this afternoon. I wanted to pick up some fresh Italian bread for our supper, so I went to the local Big Y. In their bakery/deli/food court section is a display where you can buy a drum kit or guitar. Now, come on. I'm only sorry that I missed the sale last week.
"Got milk?" "Check."
"Got eggs?" "Check."
"Got peanut butter?" "Check."
"Got a high-hat and 'electric guitar?" "Wait, what?"

Big Y Express Rewards Coins - Big Y® World Class Market® via kwout

What if ...?

A brief note on what would happen if a presidential candidate dies before or after the election and before inauguration: The J-Walk Blog: Dead Candidate Options

Gather 'round the TV tonight, my friends....

Just in time for tonight: Palin Bingo. Here's a sample card:

Collect them all or make your own at the Palin Bingo site.

NPR needs your help

National Public Radio has started YASN (yet another social network) called NPR Community. The community site gives you a chance to comment on NPR stories and features and to see what others in the community are finding of value. And, because we're cheap and change the station during fund-raiser season, NPR has to solicit sponsors who provide money in return for a brief mention on their site. (It's what would otherwise be called advertising.) Sometimes, the sponsorship message isn't as clear as it could be:

NPR Community Home Page : NPR via kwout

From a different place and time

Speaking of using work time and computer resources, here's an excellent way to lose an hour or two: David Rumsey Collection. This is an amazing collection of exquisite historical maps. The online tools that help you search and examine the maps are quite impressive as well. For example, here's a slice from the 1890 Geological Survey map of the Worcester, showing our neighborhood:

This just in: workers goof off online.

You can insert your own joke about the Pope or bears or whatever. A report by a network consulting firm shows that workers spend 25% of work time goofing around online. In addition to the impact on the corporate network, risks for viruses and other malware, and, of course, the fact that the workers aren't doing company work, there are legal implications to this extracurricular activity. The use of a corporate network connection can imply tacit corporate approval of that activity. Most companies have plenty of legal worries already and don't want or need to be dragged into more. Some companies prohibit internal emails about non-work topics, including the ubiquitous solicitation for Girl Scout cookies, lest some judge someplace determines that the company is officially supporting those activites or organizations.
Balanced against those real or imagined dangers is the idea that reading blogs and related resources is a good idea. There are so many channels of good information, no matter what field you're in, that you're putting yourself at a competive disadvantage by not making an effort to read this stuff. There are lots of ways of getting a steady stream of good information - email, RSS, social-booking marking sites, etc.
So, what should you do? Start by not being an idiot. Assume that your company's IT department can see every thing you do, every site you visit. (If they can't, you've got bigger problems and probably should be updating your resume because your company won't last very long.) Then, find out what your management really cares about. Of course, there will be a formal policy that prohibits use of computer resources for non-work purposes. That said, many managers also know that their employees work hard and work long hours and need to take care of personal business during work hours. That may include ordering stuff from Amazon or checking on vacation sites. Most good managers manage by results (Did you get your work done on time and at an appropriate level of quality?) rather than by time (What time did you get to work? What time did you leave?). As long as you don't embarrass your boss into having to take action, your boss would prefer to leave you alone. Make it easy for your boss to do just that.

Hey, someone wants to read our stuff.

Probably the most frequent complaint from technical writers is that we're invisible. Our  work, the rant goes, is typically an after-thought. We struggle to get the attention of the developers, QA, and product management folks so that we can find out what the heck we're supposed to be writing about. The documentation - user manuals, online help, and programmer reference materials - are just supposed to appear magically at the same time that the product is ready for release.
As with most oppressed peoples, writers can turn this trouble into an opportunity. We can work without distraction, unencumbered by the relentless meetings that suck the life-force from the rest of the team. As long as we get something into the product package, no one's going to bother us much.
Friend Tom used to say that we were producing documentation for that one person in the organization who will care enough to read it. Usually that person is the über-nerd at the customer site. That leaves a good bit of wiggle room because you know that the reader is capable of figuring stuff out, even if the docs are skimpy on some details.
Until and unless you work at Microsoft and a judge is in your reader. Microsoft, it appears, has been unable to produce the documentation that would allow other software developers to integrate their products with Windows. The judge who has been overseeing Microsoft's compliance with their anti-trust consent decree has declared that Microsoft documentation unfit for US consumption. As the article points out, Microsoft can produce good documentation. As with pretty much everything in life, however, you gotta wanna.

At best, we get answers to the questions we ask

We got home a bit late last Friday and so missed the first part of the first McCain-Obama debate. They were just finishing up questions related to the recent economic hooptedoodle. The pundits seem to have declared that Barack Obama won the debate. Dunno if I agree with that. They seemed to be fairly evenly matched. Both spoke well to their base of supporters, but it didn't seem that they did much to win or alienate undecided voters.

Jim Lehrer asked good questions, but on very familiar topics, mostly to do with the Middle East. I wished that he'd presented some questions that involved the rest of the world.

• It would have been interesting, for example, to hear what the candidates are thinking about Brazil. We've learned that, because of increasing food prices and local politics, farmers have accelerated their clearing of the Brazilian rain forests. Also, s the result of the discovery of massive off-shore reserves, Brazil is on the verge of becoming a major oil producer, leading to an influx of cash for a country that is both one of the richest and poorest in Latin America.
• Oil and gas reserves are also having a major impact in Bolivia, with the side effect of that country telling the U.S. ambassador to leave.
• It would have instructive to hear the candidates discuss our complex relationships with China. It's been said that Wal-Mart creates its own weather. The force of its purchasing power has a major impact on our relations with China, causing us to turn our faces from human rights and environmental abuses so that we can get cheap coffee with just a hint of melamine.
• Could the candidates name the three countries with the largest Muslim populations? 

The world is big and complicated. It would be helpful to know that the candidates think big thoughts and are less concerned with parsing a phrase such as "without preconditions." The first debate didn't give us much that we didn't already know or didn't already want to hear. Betterluck next time.

Developers are in pain

Thanks to Steve R. for sending this along

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses - Politico.com Print View

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses - Politico.com Print View: “It’s really Sen. McCain who got all parties around a table to hammer out a deal that hopefully is in the best interests of the American taxpayer.”

All your patents are belong to us

IBM has filed a Patent Application, titled "Methodologies and analytics tools for identifying white space opportunities in a given industry," that, if I understand this, seeks a patent on an textual analysis algorithm that will identify patents that haven't been applied for. "White space" is a term used to describe places where little or no proprietary intellectual property has been identified

It's a bit like reviewing deeds and plot plans in a given area to find slices of land that weren't owned by anyone and then laying claim to those chunks, often for no more than the filing fee. This patent that IBM proposes is, of course, a lot more sophisticated and weird. You're (well, your computers are) reading lots and lots of data to find out what isn't said and then deciding if what isn't said is worth saying to the point of patenting it. 

Or, perhaps, locating the parts of our brains that aren't working and doing you the favor of getting those parts out of the way.

Patent story via Slashdot Firehose.

Pete Seeger, At 89

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we got to hear Pete Seeger in concert. Now, we get word that he's released a new CD, At 89, a nifty mix of songs and stories from our dear friend. You can read about Pete and about this recording, listen to samples, and buy the CD at CD Baby.
via J-Walk Blog