Events

Anne forwarded a Times article (reg.req.) about how gift cards are bad for everyone except the retailers: The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $80 billion spent on gift cards in 2006, roughly $8 billion will never be redeemed—a bigger impact on consumers," [financial-services research firm TowerGroup] notes, "than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud." A survey by Marketing Workshop Inc. found that only 30 percent of recipients use a gift card within a...

I'm still scanning all my old photos, now up to slide #964 of 3,828 (not including the 176 rolls of negatives). In addition to the embarrassing photos of me as a gangly teenager, and embarrassing photos of my family (complete with 1980s hair and clothes), I've also found some of general interest, like these two of New York in July 1984: In the bottom picture you can just make out that the Statue of Liberty is covered in a scaffold. This was during the centennial renovation project that ended with the...

We got back from Miami late Friday. Parker, happy to have us home, wanted to keep us as close as possible Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday, for example, he kept close to Anne even while Anne was off doing other things: Also, my project start got pushed to either Thursday or next Monday (I'll find out later today). That means Parker came to the office with me this morning, and will probably come back again on Wednesday. He loves coming to the office. Of course, he seems to love just about everything in...

The New York Times picked up the ongoing story of botnets, networks of computers that spammers and other miscreants have taken over: According to the annual intelligence report of MessageLabs, a New York-based computer security firm, more than 80 percent of all spam now originates from botnets. Last month, for the first time ever, a single Internet service provider generated more than one billion spam e-mail messages in a 24-hour period, according to a ranking system maintained by Trend Micro, the...

That's the 10th St. Beach in Miami Beach, Fla. As I write this the sun is coming up over Lake Michigan. It's just 20°C (36°F) colder there, is all.

Wal-Mart will soon start scheduling employees based on predicted customer loads, requiring the employees to be more "flexible:" The move promises more productivity and consumer satisfaction, but could demand more flexibility and availability from workers in place of reliable shifts and predictable pay checks, the Journal reported. Wal-Mart started using the system for some workers, including cashiers and accounting-office personnel, last year, the paper also reported. This is an example of software...

Today's Chicago Tribune asks, "Who needs Florida?": Balmier days are forecast to continue in Illinois over the next few days, a result of warmer air masses flowing in from the west and southwest and the effects of an El Nino year. While no records are being broken—back in 1876 it was 65°F (18°C) on Jan. 2—temperatures in coming days are expected to remain mercifully above the historic average high of about 30°F (-1°C). I find this funny because I'm sitting in shorts and a polo shirt by a pool surrounded...

Anne and I are someplace warm (see second photo), but Parker is never far from our thoughts. Here he is New Year's Eve in what we must assume is doggy heaven: At the moment, we are in people heaven, so I can't guarantee any more postings until Saturday. I hope everyone else is, if not as warm as we are (25°C, 77°F on the beach), at least as happy.

Weather Now is all new. We're ecstatic to roll out a completely new visual design by Katie Zoellner. It's actually been lurking as a Beta site for several months. We didn't roll it out because not all of the features from our old site (see http://old.wx-now.com/) are complete. But today is the first day of a new year, which we thought an appropriate moment to finally give Katie's design some exposure. (Nearly-)Total Internationalization Notice the flags along the left side of this page. Is one of those...

Richard Clarke reminds the Administration (751 days, 2 hours) that Iraq isn't the only problem we face, even though it's consuming all of the Administration's bandwidth via Talking Points Memo): National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the "7-year-old's soccer syndrome"—just like little kids playing soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball. Without the distraction of the Iraq war, the administration would have spent...