"I certainly appreciate the fact that I live in the richest country in the world. I appreciate the fact that, though they couldn't afford f-ck else, my parents had a computer in our house when I was the age of seven or eight. Beyond that, I wouldn't rate it as being spoiled. I haven't had _ANY_thing handed to me in life (thus my reactions to the dotnetdev and similar idiots). I had my dreams crushed with a post-9/11 layoff; spent nearly half a dozen years clawing my way out of that hole. My parents put a paltry, fractional amount of money toward my education; most of that came out of my pocket or my scholarships. Software-wise, I've created and sought out opportunities. Sure, there are a few factors that have assisted me here, but for the most part, it's been all me.
I do understand there are many, many people far worse off in this world than I ever have been, but I wouldn't say being able to pursue dreams is in any way being spoiled. Lucky, maybe, but not spoiled." - Andrew Badera
"I used to have my head in the clouds ... just not much recently. Too much doing to be done. When I used to deliver newspapers, mow lawns, clear driveways, do the boring automaton work at my dad's manufacturing company, I used to dream and imagine and envision. These days though I'm busy implementing and executing and doing things that occupy my mind pretty constantly, it just seems like there's little time for mental freedom of that sort." - Andrew Badera
From the page: "I've written about contractors who disappear before, but today's story has a twist. This contractor, Walter Hardy, went away and then, according to the homeowner, came back with a vengeance." - Andrew Badera
I use Weight Watchers Online and then shoot for three points below what they recommend. My weight tends to swing over the years. I hope to get it to stay here now. I don't exercise so I overcompensate by not eating! - Steve Rubel
twenty pounds in two months by cutting the size of meals and having a veggie/fruit shake for lunch. Benefits: cloth fit, cholesterol down to lowest level in three years. - Joe Buhler
Congrats Steve...I lost several pounds just by eliminating evening snacks--bare minimum after 7:30.. - mark ivey
That's cool. I'm down 10 pounds myself - eliminated dairy and avoided wheat whenever possible (pasta, bread), and processed meats. Soy yogurt tastes pretty good when you get used to it. - Jason Kaneshiro
Congrats Steve. I've lost 13 pounds since early May by refraining from overeating. Wanted to lose weight to help with the Walt Disney World Marathon I'll run in January. - Mike Reynolds
Congrats! I'm down 6 lbs in 3 weeks--no more alcohol, or chips (Hi My name's Matt, I'm a chip-a-holic. "Hi Matt" <applause>) plus I'm working with a trainer. Ugh! - MattKelly
Awesome! I lost about 8 pounds of my "New CEO 15" - Mitchell Tsai
“I'm going to try and use FriendFeed as a search engine. Does anybody know of any really good online English grammar resources? I would like to improve my communication skills.”
http://www.internetpolyglot.co... "The unit-based materials available are ideal for a student already familiar with the basics of the language and interested in practicing specific areas and applications." - David Cook
Actually, I'm optimistic about Fedora's future. It has a lot of things to work on, but as my avatar says, I'm a big Fedora fan. :D - possible248
Oh yes! Your avatar! :) And btw Fedora started almost everything Ubuntu ships --troll ends here ;-) - directeur via NoiseRiver
I am a Debian guy. I don't really believe that any of those distributions are "dying"*, just that Ubuntu is the best pitched. If any of those dye, it will be slackware. - Marcos Marado
Marcos: Don't tell that to my Slackware friend. :D Actually, as soon as I posted that, I saw that the word "dying" really doesn't describe it. So what if newbie users aren't into Debian? It doesn't mean that they won't try Debian after having become experienced with Ubuntu. I even pressed the "stop" button in Firefox, but the post was published to the world... - possible248
Debian may be dying as a standalone distro, but many major distros, including Ubuntu, are based on Debian. - Michael
I'm sort of missing Gentoo linux, but I suppose that never was as main stream as I thought it was. ;) But yeah, slack is largely being "replaced" by distros that take its core foundation, and make it both more modern and more up to date (Arch Linux is one example). Debian has its fair share of children too. (Ubuntu being the most obvious one) I don't see them dying as much as I see them letting "their young go into the world". =) - Daniel Bruce
regarding debian, I have to say that not only debian derivatives benefict from debian, but debian beneficts from them (some more than others). Then, you have those derivative users that end up realizing that Debian is better O:-) - Marcos Marado
Man, I've seen so many posts being triggered by google trends, lately. - David Risley
I actually had this idea many weeks earlier, but I only got the impulse to write my own once everybody else had used up the idea. :D - possible248
well, one thing that came into my mind when reading your blog post was exactly: "why google trends? why not distrowatch?" - Marcos Marado
reminds that it is 17 years since I tried linux the first time (dont remember if it was 0.01, 0.02 or 0.03 though) :) - Amund Tveit
Marcos: A friend of mine added Distrowatch info - possible248
I actually kind of like Debian for a server distro. Hope it stays around. - Eric Florenzano
"Allowed to dream, I s'pose, sure ... it just seems to me like there's not a lot of time to idly dream if you're going to achieve those dreams. And what's the point of dreaming without achieving? That's just escapism." - Andrew Badera
“I want to see your google reader shared items! Please invite me to chat at pglockner -at- gmail -dot- com so that I get your Greader shared items, thanks!”
Thanks guys! Up to 16 people in Greader now. Hao - I know, it did that for me too, but it also did a lot of other nasty things to my Greader subscriptions and stuff so I yanked it. - J. Phil
christopher.jason.harris[at]gmail[dot]com - Chris Harris
Boo. In that case, detectx [ta] gmail [tod] com. - Hao Chen
Try installing Feedly - it grabs the shared items from all your friendfeed friends and subscribes to their shared items... And feedly is just plain awesome! - Richard Bradshaw
(J. Phil - version 1.0b3 of feedly has been changed to detect existing Google Reader users and only allow them to import friends - the import source capability has been hidden so users can NOT check to import sources and get angry about it). - Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin, thanks, I know you have been working hard and have been very responsive.. but you know, once burned, twice shy. I am still finding z.people tags popping up every once in a while. - J. Phil
Sure. I was just trying to clarify for the people who had not heard about feedly before. But I understand your point. We are going to continue to work hard to try to win back over time the trust of the people we surprised and angered: z.feedly.people is the folder where all your friend recommendations feeds are stored. Nothing more. - Edwin Khodabakchian
The z. tags thing isn't such a big deal - the fact is that Feedly is a much better alternative to G reader anyway - I don't see myself going back now. If you haven't tried it yet, you absolutely should - integration with g reader makes it work across computers, and the friendfeed integration is simply brilliant. All hail Edwin Khodabakchian! - Richard Bradshaw via NoiseRiver
Feedly is awesome - if only to get access to this - it's awesome - Sarah Perez
Oh Sarah. Maybe over the long weekend, I'll give it another try. - J. Phil
Was the request for Google Reader shared items a desperate bid for more noise? :D - possible248
possible - perhaps! Hopefully not too much noise though.. haha - J. Phil
awesome idea! andrew ---a---t---- badera.us is me ... all may feel free. - Andrew Badera
is feedly ff3 compatible yet? wasn't last week ... - Andrew Badera
From the page: "They can barely sit through an episode of âoeSesame Street.â But when we go for aimless subway joy rides on the weekends, they sit like little angels, devoutly calling out the names of every station for hours." - Andrew Badera
From the page: "Joblessness has accelerated, and employers have slashed working hours even for those on their payrolls, shrinking the size of paychecks just as workers need them the most." - Andrew Badera
"Definitely not a potato.
You know, I never did anything to "re-enable" Disqus in my Blogger template. It was a Blogger or Disqus hiccup ..." - Andrew Badera
Great sense of entrepreneurship! From the page: "Deputies said two of the alleged dealers were selling heroin in rehab programs at Lawanga House and Father Peter Young Housing, Industries, Treatment." - Andrew Badera
"I can't wait until the electric car mod scene grows to the size of the ICE scene. I'd love to see massively hopped up electric cars, big batteries, big motors, tons of on-demand torque. Excuse me, I need to go change my undies." - Andrew Badera
From the page: "Laddie title Maxim is running a mobile IVR campaign that encourages consumers to buy the magazine's 'Hottie of the Month' wallpapers..."We decided to do the campaign via interactive voice response instead of using a short code because we can appeal to a broader demographic using voice," said Carolyne Moran, direct-to-consumer product manager of Airborne Mobile, Montreal, Quebec, Canada." - Andrew Badera
From the page: "American supermarkets are epics of excess: it often seems like every item in the store comes in a "Jumbo" size or has "Bonus!" splashed across the label. But is it possible that the amount of food Americans are buying is, in fact... shrinking? Well, yes." - Andrew Badera
Many of the social network's pages and features are created using PHP ... But Facebook also develops complex core applications using a variety of full-featured computer languages, including C++, Java, Python, and Ruby. - Andrew Badera
![[Posted by Luckyred, Pixdaus]](http://friendfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/e40ee1bb6b4cf06e76a46f1480ac993eed5e8c6a "[Posted by Luckyred, Pixdaus]")
