Humour
I'm a lurker at
sailing anarchy. I'm never disappointed by the forum. Something about a bunch of people interested in sailing and sailboat racing translates to absurdity on the net. Check out the this
thread:
It's not sailing , but I laughed out loud at work...
These questions about Australia were posted on an Australian Tourism
Website- a Melbourne University Tourism Studies Major working in the summer holidays answered....
1. Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen
it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.
2. Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you've been drinking
3. Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it's only three thousand miles, take lots of water...
4. Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Australia? (Sweden)
A: So its true what they say about Swedes.
... it goes on. Much fun.
Security Roulette
I wonder if there are bookmakers in Las Vegas that would take bets on how many
security bulletins Microsoft will come out with this year. Currently we're up to -031. Let me bet for the year is 71. What's yours?
the Press
Had ny1 on the TV a while ago. They had an open camera and mic on the brother of James Davis. About 20 microphones were in this poor guys face and everyone was demanding he 'share his thoughts'. It was sickening. The man's brother was just shot, he was in shock and these vultures were picking away at him. Ten minutes later they network had their sound bite neatly edited to a five second clip and a catch phrase. It's repulsive.
Shooting at City Hall
My wife called around 2:00 telling me that every police car in the city was careening down town and their were helicopters and fire trucks careening all around. I picked up
ny1.com and 1010 wins on the radio and got the word that someone had opened fire in city hall. I headed home to calm things down at home (we live about three blocks away).
The whole city hall area is vibrating with activity as they work through this.
My thoughts go out to those who were shot.
KM - Feed the Meta Data monster
I've gassed on in the past about how KM should be mostly invisible, but today I'm going to contradict myself.
The problem is our knowledge base. More than ten years ago some forward thinking people thought it would be a good idea to store precedent documents in a database that was full text searchable. Rather than have it be an 'opt-in' situation they set up a process that assumed ALL documents were suitable for precedent use and a lawyer had to opt the document out if it was inappropriate or too sensitive (there are other rules, but I want to keep this simple).
The opt-out notifications were sent weekly via memo. Yecch.
So how can we improve the process:
1) Make the process more 'opt-in'. Push the request for inclusion on new documents via email. Request the author to think about what they've written and assess it's value as a central precedent example - perhaps even note how it should be used.
2) Create a means of removing obsolete/inappropriate documents. Overlooked in the past, we want to give this opportunity to the author in order to send the message that this is a living store of information that needs to be tended to.
3) Present the author with metrics regarding their participation in the program and that of their peers.... You've contributed 10 documents this year, while the average for all Partners is 8.... This will emphasize that they are part of the community.
4) Show titles and links of all documents produced in the past. Visibility reminds one of ownership and hopefully pride.
new heir
A great article on
binding heirarchical data in asp.net... Ahh timing is everything.
New toy
kicking it old school...
Stupid .net tricks
Sometimes you just have to do it by hand. I desperately wanted to embed an asp.net datalist within a row of an asp.net data grid in order to get a multi column list for a given 'heading' row. Much gnashing of teeth took place looking for the easy way out. I ended up writing code to create a table in the datagrid's 'itemdatabound' event. I'd love to get email from someone telling me I didn't need to do that. But it's done.....
KM
Experts-Exchange has added a ranking. I've been using these guys for a few years. They seem to have a good handle on the model for community building.
