When I got back to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, I clicked through the various RSS feeds I subscribe to via SharpReader. I found one to be very interesting; Ed Brill posted “mail client hatred stats.” For those of you who don’t know, Ed Brill is an IBMer working with Worldwide Lotus Messaging Sales. Anyway, in this post, Ed googled for the strings “I hate Notes” and “I hate Outlook” and compared the number of hits between the two. The outcome was that “I hate Outlook” returned almost 7 times more results than “I hate Notes.” Well, this is obviously not a fair comparison. The obvious reason being Notes and Outlook can mean more than just the software package. The second being that more people use Outlook than Notes (my own estimate). I wasn’t able to find a credible source with the estimated number of installations.
No offense to Ed or any other of my IBM friends, but I hate Notes! 
Lotus Notes, that is. Maybe it’s because Outlook is what I’m used to, but when I worked at IBM, I hated every minute of working with Notes. The interface is just very odd to me. If you don’t use the local replica, then if for some reason the server isn’t responding, your client will completely lock up. And, when it locks up, you can’t just kill Notes.exe, you have to find some application to kill all of the child processes… My fix was to just create the local replica…but then I wonder….Why isn’t that the default? Why should I have to go figure out how to do all of these things? For me, Outlook is very intuitive…sure there are some things that are difficult to find…but try using Notes for the first time. It’s a huge shock. Really, arguing this is pointless…Notes fans will continue to use Notes, and Outlook fans will continue to use Outlook. It’s really a preference thing…and I obviously prefer Microsoft Outlook.
Uploading last night’s svn sync revealed a version bump to WordPress 2.0-RC1. Looks like the full 2.0 release is coming soon!
Sunday Afternoon, I got my Riya alpha invitation. For those of you who don’t know, Riya is a photo search engine. It’s currently in development, but just hearing about it got me anxious to ask about testing it. The idea is that you upload all of your photos, and “train” it to recognize people. After a few images, it is supposed to be able to accurately identify people in photos. I had the invite sent to my work e-mail account, so I just signed up today. I’ll do some uploading tonight and let you guys know how it goes.
Tags: riya, photosearch
Friday night, I finally got ahold of an Xbox 360! I ended up searching eBay for Xbox 360’s in my area and made bids on about 25. I got this one for $610 from a guy in Chapel Hill, a few miles from here. I know, I overpaid…but it came with an additional controller, so it was only by about $120 or so. In the near future, I’ll be creating an Xbox page…which will replace the Halo page I currently have. The stats will still be there, but it’ll look much better.
Oh, and here’s my Xbox Live Gamer card:
I hope that everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving! There is so much to be thankful for, and I hope that everyone enjoys their time with family and friends. Oh, and may the Dallas Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos!
My dad is coming to visit for Thanksgiving…as a matter of fact, his plane lands in about 25 minutes. I just now discovered a really cool web application…FlightView. Continental Airlines uses it. Basically, it will show you the location of the plane in pretty much real-time. Continental’s site even shows the estimated arrival time, etc…all updated to the minute: Check Flight Status and Gate Information. FlightView’s website shows everything from current elevation to ground speed to estimated time to arrival. Check it out at flightview.com.
I have just upgraded the blog to WordPress 2.0-beta 2. I’m not quite sure if this is the full beta 2 release, or if it’s just a pre-release. I grabbed it from svn this morning, and I will continue pulling nightly builds until the full WP 2.0 release. It may end up being semi-nightly, but really this doesn’t affect you, my readers, at all.
I hate them. 
Why, you may ask? First, Microsoft. I’m sorry, but I still believe that Microsoft purposely limited quantities of Xbox 360’s available at launch. To tell everyone that there will be over a million at launch and then cut it back more than half! According to this article, Microsoft denies arranging shortages. Well, I understand that it helps promote the item if it’s a rare at launch, but for me as a consumer, it sucks. I guess it could’ve been worse, I could have preordered and been told I would have one on the first day and then get the call that the quantities were cut and I didn’t make the list.
Second, Retailers. So, for those of us who didn’t preorder, we were told that if you show up at midnight for the launch, you may have a chance. Well, that’s partially true. Apparently every retailer decided to take it upon themselves to randomly hand out letters/fliers guaranteeing you a box at midnight. How stupid. Why is that stupid? Because people will bounce from store to store grabbing letters/fliers to get multiple boxes. I watched this happen. I mean, they don’t even have to stay around at that point. They can leave and go to another store and do the same. I think that they should just let people camp out, or do whatever and at midnight/opening, let them get it. Maybe it creates chaos, but to hand out letters at random…..sucks. I went to the local Wal-Mart last night at like 5:00pm, and they said they already handed out the “seats.” What!?!? I don’t see anyone in line.
So, that was my personal rant. Did I get an Xbox 360? No. Am I bitter? Yes. Will I get over it? Of course. I do know why they do these kinds of things, but it sucks for those who didn’t get one. That’s why I should have pre-ordered earlier, huh?
UPDATE: So, I overexaggerated about Microsoft. I’m sure they were trying to get as many out as possible…I forgot that IBM just recently released the Cell processors a few weeks back. I’m sure it’s difficult to throw 1 million of them in a box and have them on the shelves in a few weeks. Now I’m seeing articles about crashes, so maybe it’s a good idea to wait anyway.
Today, Network Appliance celebrates it’s 10th anniversary of being a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. To celebrate this milestone, Dan Warmenhoven (CEO), Tom Mendoza (President), James Lau (Co-Founder), and Dave Hitz (Co-Founder) were in New York today to ring the opening bell of the NASDAQ.
View: Press Announcement, NetApp Celebrates Ten Years as a Public Company
View: Pictures from the ringing of the bell.
The New Mexico State University Aggies (0-11, 0-7 WAC) just lost to the San Jose State Spartans 27-10 tonight. With one Aggie game left, I say….welcome basketball season!
View: NMSU: Aggie Football Falls in Final Road Game of the Season
View: SJSU: Pair of Davis scores propel football to 27-10 win over Aggies
