Buddy Brewer

window.location = "http://buddybrewer.com";

2006-01-25T04:00:34Z

I'm not here anymore, I've moved to http://buddybrewer.com.

betyoucanttypeitrightthefirsttime.com

2005-12-03T03:37:39Z

And the award for longest domain name I've ever seen in a TV commercial goes to:

www.southernstatesbuickdodgemazda.com

There's more than one way to trim the fat

2005-10-26T01:44:26Z

In a last ditch effort to salvage some of Resolution 2005.1, I've picked tennis back up. Having stopped and started for more times than I can count, I'm morbidly familiar with the cycle of forgetting how to play and struggling for a month until the cobwebs get cleared out. What's weird now is this: it's been so long since I've played regularly that not only have I forgotten all my good habits, I've forgotten all my bad ones. So while it is annoying that my half-volleys and overheads are useless, it is kinda nice to not repeat the same mistakes I have for the last 12 years.

I've also been trying to take the dog on walks more regularly. It's good conversation time with Jenny, a nice opportunity to explore downtown Raleigh, and if a few calories get burned then that doesn't hurt either.

If I had it to do over again, I'd rewrite that resolution to "walk Sammy every weekend" or "work out three times a week" or "cut out late-night snacks". At the end of the day, "stay in 32in. waist pants" is kind of like "make a million bucks". A noble enough goal, but not very actionable in itself.

Halfway there

2005-08-29T03:20:41Z

GMail allows changing your From: address now, so IMAP and POP are gone on buddybrewer.com, and a virtual mapping sends all of my email to my gmail account. The only thing left now is for them to allow me to use mail.gmail.com (or whatever) as my MX in DNS so I can shutdown postfix completely. Whether the lack of IMAP will drive me nuts now is an open question.

Food porn

2005-02-14T18:04:06Z

Valentines Day 2005
Originally uploaded by bbrewer.

Got my cook on last night for Valentines Day with Jenny:

Thanks for the killer dessert recipe, Alton :)
Jenny made killer personalized sugar cookies (photo link forthcoming).

Isn't cognitive dissonance wonderful?

2005-02-11T05:00:56Z

Since I already have a list of stretch goals (the cool kids are calling them MBOs now) at work, I made a list of personal resolutions for 2005. Things are going well, but I'm posting the list here so I'll feel like a liar if I don't keep following through.

Stay in 32" waist pants
Read one non-technical book a month
Learn C#/.NET
Take vacation with Jenny
Implement GTD

Happy Birthday To Me

2005-01-20T05:09:43Z

28th birthday - 01/19/05
Originally uploaded by bbrewer.

Another year closer to death, but at least I'm going out in style. This is what I came home to the night before my birthday. Jenny decked out the house with streamers and stuff, and gave me new 600tc sheets as a preliminary present. The next morning I woke up to breakfast in bed(*), and a mixing bowl full of cooking supplies and gift certificates for cooking classes at a local gourmet food store. Padding out the festivities were calls and cards from the family. On the bright side, in hexadecimal I'm only 0x1C years old.

(*) Raspberry stuffed french toast, scrambled eggs with fontina cheese, thick-sliced bacon, and sausage.

How I Spent My 2004, by Buddy Brewer

2005-01-12T23:40:54Z

(nee How I Gratuitously Abused Flickr in a Blog Post, by Buddy Brewer)

Bought a house downtown. Furnished a house downtown. Met someone. Learned about stormwater management. Threw a Christmas party. Attended a Christmas party. Without a doubt, 2004 was an unexpectedly eventful and incredibly successful year. Guess waiting half a month before posting my first 2005 entry means "post more often" should've made the Resolutions cut :)

... Film at 11

2004-12-22T22:01:05Z

Due in part to the annual Gómez Holiday E-Tail Performance Index, Gómez has been racking up the press credits this holiday online shopping season. We've been in the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, Washington Post (bugmenot), and the New York Times. Quite a change from the Porivo days when just getting mentioned in the Triangle Business Journal was cause for excitement. Bring forth the google juice.

Christmas Tree 2004

2004-12-08T05:49:06Z

Christmas Tree 2004
Originally uploaded by bbrewer.

I'm still eating dinner off of cardboard boxes, but dammit, Jenny and I got a Christmas tree (with some help on the delivery and manual labor ends from various friends). Furniture is on the way, though.

Well, crap

2004-11-15T16:36:53Z

ODB died

If he'd been from Berkley, he'd have wagered $420

2004-11-12T23:16:10Z

Tonight was round 1 of the Jeopardy College Tournament. One of the contestants, Kermin, a comp-sci/engineering student from Carnegie Mellon University, had a commanding lead (well over $10K) going into Final Jeopardy.

His final wager had Alex Trebek scratching his head, but Kermin was clearly sending a message to fellow computer nerds. His wager:

$1337

"And be sure to check out our popular new Adjustable Rate Tithe!"

2004-11-10T22:11:46Z

From: "Christian Mortgage" <info@myoncentral.net>
Subject: Jesus Loves You. Refinance with Christian MortgagesUSA.com
To: [me]
Reply-To: info@myoncentral.net
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 10:38:56 -0800

[embedded HTML crap removed]

myoncentral.net - 287 S. Robertson Blvd., Ste. 401 - Beverly Hills, CA 90211

One week to go

2004-10-27T05:22:13Z

This two part essay might be the best online political commentary I've read this election. Would-be Kerry voters who think issue #1 is deterring terrorists need to read these before heading to the polls. Clever excerpt below, but the actual analysis behind the links is far more detailed and compelling.

"It all comes down to carrots (liberals) or sticks (conservatives). By the way: if you’re in a rush and need to run, here’s the spoiler: You can offer a carrot. Not everybody likes carrots. Some people may hate your carrot. Your carrot may offend people who worship the rutabaga. But no one likes being poked in the eye with a stick. That’s universal."

I usually don't go for these stupid "What kind of X are you" things

2004-10-24T13:31:16Z

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

A minister's son from Simljan in Austria-Hungary, you were precocious from an early age. At three you could multiply three-digit numbers in your head and calculate how many seconds visitors to your home had lived. In awe of your older brother Dane, you shot a pea-shooter at his horse, causing it to throw him and inflict injuries from which he later died. This tragedy haunted you ever after. You frequently suffered bouts of illness with hallucinations throughout your life. During one affliction of cholera, you encountered the writing of Mark Twain, with whom you were later to be close friends. Later, another, this time mystery, illness inexplicably heightened your senses to a painful extent, only relenting when you hit upon the idea of the alternating current motor.

You developed an aversion to human contact, particularly involving hair, and a fear of pearls; when one would-be lover kissed you, you ran away in agony. Later, you insisted that any repeated actions in your day-to-day life had to be divisible by three, or, better yet, twenty-seven. You would, for example, continue walking until you had executed the required number of footsteps. You refused to eat anything until you had calculated its exact volume. Saltine crackers were a favourite for their uniformity in this respect. In the midst of important work, you forgot trivial details such as eating, sleeping or, on one memorable occasion, who you were.

Your inventions, always eccentric, began on a suitably bizarre note. The first was a frog-catching device that was so successful, and hence so emulated by your fellow children, that local frogs were almost eradicated. You also created a turbine powered by gluing sixteen May bugs to a tiny windmill. The insects panicked and flapped their wings furiously, powering the contraption for hours on end. This worked admirably until a small child came along and ate all the creatures alive, after which you never again touched another insect.

Prompted by dreams of attaining the then-ridiculed goal of achieving an alternating-current motor, you went to America in the hope of teaming up with Thomas Edison. Edison snubbed you, but promised fifty thousand dollars if you could improve his own direct-current motor by 20% efficiency. You succeeded. Edison did not pay up. It was not long until you created an AC motor by yourself.

Now successful, you set up a small laboratory, with a few assistants and almost no written records whatsoever. Despite it being destroyed by fire, you invented the Tesla Coil, impressing even the least astute observer with man-made lightning and lights lit seemingly by magic. Moving to Colorado Springs, you created a machine capable of sending ten million volts into the Earth's surface, which even while being started up caused lightning to shoot from fire hydrants and sparks to singe feet through shoes all over the town. When calibrated to be in tune with the planet's resonance, it created what is still the largest man-made electrical surge ever, an arc over 130 feet long. Unfortunately, it set the local power plant aflame.

You returned to New York, incidentally toying with the nascent idea of something eerily like today's internet. Although the wealthiest man in America withdrew funding for a larger, more powerful resonator in short order, it did not stop you announcing the ability to split the world in two. You grew ever more diverse in your inventions: remote-controlled boats and submarines, bladeless turbines, and, finally, a death ray.

While whether the ray ever existed is still doubtful, it is said that you notified the Peary polar expedition to report anything strange in the tundra, and turned on the ray. First, nothing happened; then it disintegrated an owl; finally, reports reached you of the mysterious Tunguska explosion, upon which news you dismantled the apparatus immediately. An offer during WWII to recreate it was, thankfully, never acted upon by then-President Wilson. Turning to other matters, you investigated the forerunner of radar, to widespread derision.

Your inventions grew stranger. One oscillator caused earthquakes in Manhattan. You adapted this for medical purposes, claiming various health benefits for your devices. You found they let you work for days without sleep; Mark Twain enjoyed the experience until the sudden onset of diarrhoea. You claimed to receive signals in quasi-Morse Code from Mars, explored the initial stages of quantum physics; proposed a "wall of light", using carefully-calibrated electromagnetic radiation, that would allegedly enable teleportation, anti-gravity airships and time travel; and proposed a basic design for a machine for photographing thoughts. You died aged 87 in New York, sharing an apartment with the flock of pigeons who were by then your only friends.

Ridiculed throughout your life (Superman fought the evil Dr. Tesla in 1940s comics), you were posthumously declared the father of the fluorescent bulb, the vacuum tube amplifier and the X-ray machine, and the Supreme Court named you as the legal inventor of the radio in place of Marconi. Wardenclyffe, the tower once housing your death ray, was dynamited several times to stop it falling into the hands of spies. It was strangely hard to topple, and even then could not be broken up.

I got more flows than a freestyle rapper

2004-10-18T03:24:05Z

10/13/2004 - why silt fences are your friend
Originally uploaded by bbrewer.

Okay, this is kinda bad. Turns out an erosion problem was created when a bunch of grass next to my house was torn out and no silt fences were installed to trap the mud. When that happens, storm drains get clogged, and I end up having to hire moses to help me cross the street. The city engineering department is working with my builder (who's been very understanding about the whole thing so far) to get the mess cleaned up and the drains returned to proper operation.

View from my front porch this morning

2004-10-13T16:26:21Z

View from my front porch this morning
Originally uploaded by bbrewer.

Should I be talking to someone about this? I mean, we got a lot of rain this morning and all, but damn...

and here I thought it only happened in alt.......*

2004-10-06T01:17:48Z


buddy@localhost ~ $ whois microsoft.com

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.IS.0WNED.AND.HAX0RED.BY.SUB7.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.SLAPPED.IN.THE.FACE.BY.MY.BLUE.VEINED.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.GULLI.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.WANADOODOO.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SUX.BUT.PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIOXYTECH.NET.DELETED.GANDI.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.SMELLS.SIMPLECODES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.LOVES.JU1C3.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.SIMPLECODES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.IN.BED.WITH.CURTYV.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSHIT.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.TEH.GAY.OMFGLOL.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMISSILES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.FLINGS.POO.AT.MONKEYCORE.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT.EXEGETE.NET
MICROSOFT.COM

House update

2004-09-15T03:34:09Z

Well, my cabinets are in. So barring any inspection problems or other unforeseen catastrophes, I'll be closing on the new place on Friday, September 24. Most of all I can't wait to get back to roasting coffee.

More election quotes

2004-09-03T04:11:58Z

"I have five words for America: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!"

- John Kerry, Springfield Ohio, in his response to the RNC

( Google: wakeup )

This has to be some kind of first

2004-09-03T01:52:06Z

Gov. George Pataki at the RNC: "This is a candidate who has to google his own name to find out where he stands."

It's a goddamn web form, how hard can this possibly be?

2004-08-31T20:21:27Z

Struts's indexed properties are the bane of my existence today. I haven't decided yet if its because they suck or I suck.

Joshua Kinberg needs a vocabulary lesson

2004-08-29T23:57:19Z

Bikes Against Bush:

Will you print pro-Bush messages as well??

No. Bikes Against Bush, as the name implies, intends to promote a political dialogue contrary to the agenda set forth by the GOP and the Bush administration.

di·a·logue or di·a·log: [...] 5. An exchange of ideas or opinions: achieving constructive dialogue with all political elements.

mon·o·logue also mon·o·log: [...] 3. A long speech made by one person, often monopolizing a conversation.

Just in time for Apple Expo Paris

2004-08-27T03:28:17Z

The iPlug - Apple should send one of these out to all those people who paid $255 to get their iPod battery replaced.

Berkeley dem asks, "who's yer daddy?"

2004-08-26T17:01:10Z

Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better.

WTF? "Strict father" and "nurturant parent"? A less abstract way of looking at this is that conservatives are "decentralizers" and liberals are "micro-managers". Conservatives believe responsibility should be pushed down the org chart, while liberals prefer decisions be made directly at the top. See Rumsfeld's Rules, #4 in the "On Business" section:

Find ways to decentralize. Move decision making authority down and out. Encourage a more entrepreneurial approach.

The stereotypical liberal philosophy is to micro-manage from the top, as Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick(D) embodies in an article posted at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank:

Most recently, Washington has played its funding game with homeland security dollars, funneling the vast majority of money to state governments while demanding that local police and fire departments defend and protect citizens in the heightened state of security post-9/11.

Last I heard, Detroit belonged to a state called Michigan, it's just he'd rather get his check from Washington than Lansing. Rather than hold the state government accountable for Detroit's lack of funding, Kilpatrick chooses to blame the Bush administration. (Incidentally, President Bush is a republican and Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm is a democrat.)

Whatever. The article's about using language to frame the debate, and Lakoff is trying to do exactly that by giving conservatives the negative adjective "strict" and liberals the positive adjective "nurturant".