usa job typing

What a day. Apparently getting John Lam 'd is worse than getting Slashdotted. My team has been laughing at me all day; we have no idea how I get into messes like this. Rather than reply individually to the crush of email, I guess I'll just do a bulk update. But first: is anyone else as nonplussed as I am that of all the amazing things that were discussed in Foo Camp, my little improvised talk -- complete with a picture of me that for some reason looks as if I'd just crawled out of a tent 20 minutes prior, hung over and disoriented and wondering why I was in a field in the middle of Sebastopol, CA, only to find that the night before I'd apparently I'd signed up to give a 10am talk -- winds up being splashed all over everyone's blog, not to mention my inbox? I mean, Foo Camp was truly amazing. There were just insanely brilliant people there, all presenting slick, well-prepared talks and roundtable discussions on vitally important topics such as improving democr

The Olive Garden: it's where poor people go to eat rich people food. — Dave Yegge This is another one of those blog topics I've been sitting on for way too long, trying to find a polite way of saying something fundamentally impolite. I don't see a way to do it. So: you stand a good chance of being offended by this blog entry. (Hey, just don't say I didn't warn ya.) I've turned off blog comments, incidentally, because clever evil people have figured out how to beat captchas using non-algorithmic approaches, and I don't have the bandwidth to police spam myself. Sorry. I don't want to give you a heart attack, so I'm going to give you the gentle-yet-insistent executive summary right up front. If you can make it through my executive summary without a significant increase in heart rate, then you're probably OK. Otherwise, you might consider drinking heavily before reading this, just like people did in the old movies when they needed their

First thing I notice, walking into the familiar old Great Room, is that the crowd hasn't changed. There's one small difference that I can't put my finger on... it'll come to me, I'm sure. More familiarity: mature fires are burning in the two great stone mantles at opposing ends of the room, each contributing warmth and a certain inevitable smoke. I make my way to the bar � where else? As I weave through the tables, old faces and new glance up from lively conversations, some smiling to greet me or wink at me. Oh, it's good to be back again. I've never been happier to walk into this room. Not so much because I've been away, but because of where I've been. How could I have let it happen? I don't know how I'll explain to any of my old friends... better not to dwell on it for now. I arrive at the bar, settle onto one of the ancient teak stools. Before I've so much as glanced at the tap, a young, fashionably unkempt bartender I don'