For the second year in a row, Drew McCellan has brought to us the wonderful 24 Ways to impress your friends with your web development skills. This is a daily web development journal, with its name playing off of the 24 days of Chrstmas, where guest authors draft an easy to consume tip, trick, and pointer that helps take the confusion out of some fairly advanced and cool webdev features. Be sure to check it out every day this month for a new installment.

Another big part of New York’s long music legacy was lost to the history books this past weekend when CBGB OMFUG (Country BlueGrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers is the long version of the name) unceremoniously closed its doors. And now, NYC is one big step closer to being a homogeneous plastic concrete Mall of America. I’m not going to claim to be anything close to a punk rocker, and I sadly never even set foot in the place. But I am aware of its place in music history, the legends it helped create, and the legend the venue itself became. In recent years, CBGB fell into some level of disrepair and the level of music innovation never did rival that time in the mid-to-late 1970′s when acts like the Talking Heads, The Ramones, Blondie, and others established themselves there. But you always knew that it was there as a living, breathing piece of NY and American music history. And now, its not there. Rumors are that they will try to take it apart and rebuild it in (gasp) Las Vegas, but obviously it will never be the same. What are they going to do next, close McSorley’s?

Fans of a Groundbreaking Club Mourn and Then Move On – NY Times (10/16/2006)

Former Negro League player Buck O’Neil died this evening. A grat loss for baseball and beyond. If you have never heard of Mr. O’Neil, rent/buy Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball and watch it. He was the star of the film. Its a crime that he was not inducted into the Hall of Fame this past summer.

This is just so amazingly simple and obvious, its brilliant. Call-in-Sick.com enables you to call in sick to your boss/employer at any time and assign when it should be delivered and to who/what phone number. So you can record your message on Thursday evening and then have it delivered at 6AM Friday morning while you are sleeping the morning away.

This week, we replaced the 1970′s style white tiles in the main hallway with hardwood flooring,. So now, the hardwood floor flows seamlessly from the main hallway into the TV room. We do still need to put in baseboards and just clean up the hall walls, as they are a mess with all the work done this past weekend. Replacing the tiles is something we’ve wanted to do since we moved in, and based on the difficulty in removing the said tiles, we probably should have done this before we moved in. Ah, hindsight. If you ever see a house that you like, and it has some ugly tiles that need to be removed, remove them before you move in. Trust me.

Here is a nice article in the NY Times about how the venerable tea bag is getting an industry makover. As part of the article, it notes that Lipton will be making over its tea bags to use nylon instead of the mesh/paper it currently uses, and it will also use longer leaf tea.

As an avid tea drinker (can’t stand coffee), I think that its about time! I regularly purchase teas like Yorkshire Tea, Twinings, and other brands from the U.K. because brands like Lipton are not as robust, strong, or tasty. Now if we can teach restaurants in this country how to serve tea properly (lose leaf, in a pot, instead of in a crusty mug with an unopened tea bag and lukewarm water. Hell, I’d take just a pot of hot water and teabags), we’ll be making real progress.

Today is just a sad day. There is no other way to describe it. I was not going to write anything today. But watching all the tributes on TV really hit home.

Five years ago, I was sitting in a conference room at Lycos in Waltham, MA about to embark on a full day’s worth of mind-numbingly boring training on an irrelevant subject I can not for the life of me remember. Soon after the session started, the instructor came in and informed the class that the US was under attack. We all went into another conference room and watched the day unfold in stunning reality.

I did not want to be at work. I went home to be with my wife and my then 2 month old daughter Rebecca. I sat in front of the TV and just stared in stunned disbelief. The rest of the week and the rest of the year was just a blur, a surreal and sobering time.

To this day, it still so hard to comprehend. The images looked like they were from a bad terror movie. But they weren’t. I can not begin to imagine what it was like that day in Lower Manhattan. Five years later, I now work in Lower Manhattan, about 200 yards from the big hole in the ground that is “Ground Zero”. People I work with were there that day. I don’t mention it unless they bring it up. And even then, its awkward. I walk past “Ground Zero” every day as I go to and from work, and do my best not to dwell on what happened at that site. Because when I do, it is just too overwhelming. And I did not even lose a close relative, a close friend, or a loved one.

I don’t know what it was, what it is, like to lose a loved one in such a horrid manner. I don’t know what its like to have to rebuild your life after such loss. All I can do is provide my support and encouragement to those that were directly impacted by that day. Their strength is humbling.

One day, I hope soon, the idiot politicians will figure out what to build at that site, and maybe, just maybe, the collective “we” will be able to have some minor sense of symbolic closure.

Today is a sad day.

Looks as though there may be a Beta release happening at Yahoo Sports. I was on the site checking out my fantasy football and baseball teams (I think their Fantasy sports suite is just fantastic. And my football teams were actually doing pretty well. Thanks for asking. :-) and saw this yellow banner just above the blue “Today in Sports” headline. The two links on the top right read “Beta Feature Index” and “Send Feedback”. When I clicked through the “Beta Feature Index” link, it went to a Yahoo branded error page. When I clicked thorugh the “Send Feedback” link, it went to a feedback form. In navigating the site, I did not see any BETA features. I’ll be interested to see what they plan on doing on the site and to see if its going to compete more directly with ESPN in look, feel and volume of information. No matter what they do, the site definitely needs an upgrade.

I am not a terribly big fan of Murray Chass, the sports writer for the NY Times, primarily because it appears from the tone of his writing that he takes great pleasure in bashing and belittling the Red Sox and Red Sox Nation. However, in an article in today’s Times, he hits home a point about the Sox and the Sox management that I too have been contemplating since Anibal Sanchez threw a no-hitter for the Florida Marlins on Wednesday September 6th.

Sanchez’s no-hitter got me thinking because he, along with several other highly talented and productive players (including the Marlins’ starting shortstop Hanley Ramirez) have been traded by the Red Sox over the past few years. In fact, the amount of talent and production that has been traded by the Sox is actually quite alarming, especially when you consider the state of the Red Sox current pitching staff and their place in the standings. As a fan, you have to really start to question the “cybermetric” decision making being done on Yawkey Way these days. To quote from the article:

Care to consider some other moves the Red Sox made?

After letting Johnny Damon go to the Yankees as a free agent, they needed a center fielder and acquired Coco Crisp for Andy Marte, the young third baseman they obtained from Atlanta for shortstop Édgar Rentería. Crisp, a .300 hitter for Cleveland last season, has turned into Rice Krispies for the Red Sox, hitting .266.

The night before Sánchez pitched his no-hitter, Bronson Arroyo, the pitcher the Red Sox traded to Cincinnati because they thought they had enough pitching, pitched a three-hit shutout against San Francisco for his 12th victory to go with his 3.33 E.R.A., the fifth lowest in the N.L.

The same night that Sánchez pitched the no-hitter, Cla Meredith was the winning pitcher in San Diego’s 2-0 victory against Colorado in 11 innings. Meredith, a 23-year-old reliever, went to the Padres on May 1 when the Red Sox were desperate to reacquire Doug Mirabelli to catch the knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

In three relief appearances with the Red Sox last season, he gave up seven runs in two and a third innings. With the Padres this season, he has allowed 3 runs in 36 innings over 33 games for a 0.75 E.R.A.. He has given up no runs in his past 29 innings over 25 games.

Through Wednesday, the Red Sox bullpen ranked 10th in the American League with a 4.30 E.R.A.

Because it was Sánchez who pitched the no-hitter, we are reminded of Freddy Sanchez, whom the Red Sox, desperate for pitching then, too, traded to Pittsburgh at the trading deadline in 2003 for Jeff Suppan. For good measure, the Red Sox included Mike Gonzalez in the deal.

Gonzalez has become the Pirates’ closer (24 saves in 24 opportunities this season), and Sanchez, hitting .344, is on his way to becoming the N.L. batting champion.

I acknowledge that the National League is a bit weaker than the AL these days, and many of the players noted above are playing in the NL which may make their numbers seem a bit inflated but that arguement only goes so far.

It is highly unlikely that the Sox will come back and make anything of this season. And the Sox brass keeps on saying that they are building for the future. But if they are building for the future, then they need to commit to that and not try to compete with the big boys at the same time. That’s an equation that will not work. Have they been so focused on protecting their young players that they have unknowingly mortgaged a great deal of their future already?

These are two amazing photos that I have found in my travels:

Yakushima Forest From Antipixel

Monument Valley along Route 163 from Theorem on Flickr

Just thought I would share.

Big weekend up on Yawkey Way in Boston with the Red Sox and Yanks holding a 5 game series.

Great article in the Friday 8/18/2006 NY Times, where writer John Branch tried to define the physical border across Connecticut, NY State, and Massacusetts between Red Sox Nation and Yankee Country (I won’t go into how “Red Sox Nation” sounds so much cooler than “Yankee Country”…). And be sure to watch the accompanying video as that is also very entertaining.

I’m feeling the need to redesign the site. I don’t know why, because I like the way the site is organized, the way it looks and I really like the image of the buildings in the masthead. I’m pondering a couple of ideas and changes, but nothing is close to being presentable.

I recently made a minor edit to the site by making the background a dark grey instead of the light grey “pixel dots” I had in the background previously. I did this to provide more contrast between the main content area and the background of the pages, to make the content “pop” a bit more.

Its been a long while since I’ve updated this area of the site about the progress we’ve made on the house.

In the early summer, we had some trees cut down from the property outside. It really cleaned up the outside and let more sun hit the house and yard, but as the summer has moved on, sometimes I look around and it does not feel like we did a thing. I am already eyeing several other trees that I want to remove. We are really going to try to focus on the outside of the house to get that straightened out. It’s a mess.

As for the inside, we’ve been doing little things here and there, but no big projects to speak of. I’ve been trying to clear out the basement to get that renovated from its 1970′s dark wood paneling, and I made some great progress during the July 4th week. My big project downstairs is to clean the masonry walls in the unfinished part of the basement, paint them with a sealent, and then install lots of shelves so that all our stuff can be stored there. Not an easy task.

We really want to update the hallway and install hardwood floors, and update the 1/2 bathroom in the hallway, but that’s a bigger project than we think. But apart from the basement, its the last fairly big project inside the house (the kitchen does not count, because that’s a project that is off the charts).

AOL for free? You can’t be serious. I never thought I would see the day. It took them long enough! Its funny when you look at the twists and turns of the Internet portal space and how all the “big boys” have essentially taken different paths but are ending up in the same place. Yahoo, Google and MSN (plus other not so big sites like Lycos, Ask, etc.) have a big lead in the ad market, however the volume of users at AOL can’t be denied.

From my perspective, AOL IM (disclosure: I used to work at AOL on the IM product) is now not the 800 lb. gorilla within AOL, but the 8 ton gorilla. With 35+Million users, this is an engaged audience that AOL needs to actively cross sell in order to get them to expand their usage of other AOL products and services.

I think the most pressing question is: what is everyone going to do with their AOL CD-ROMs?

Marketplace, which airs on NPR, is probably my favorite audio show out there. Its a half hour audio show that talks about the day’s business news, but in a way that is immensely interesting and engaging. But to my great frustration, its not available as a free podcast like practically every other show on NPR? Why, you ask? Well, and I am speculating here as I have no facts, but its probably because they are tied down to a poorly negotiated contract with Audible, a company who’s business model is completely shot to hell with the advent of the podcast and is desperate to keep “partners” providing them with content. I mean, you can get Marketplace @ Audible for $2.00 an episode or $70 a year, but who is realistically going to pay for that in the world of podcasting? The number of subscribers has to be a miserable number. On the area of Audible that promotes Marketplace, there are zero, zip, nada, customer comments. I can hear the tumbleweeds. Its heresy to pay for a show that’s aired on National Public Radio.

So I ask you, fair reader and Marketplace listener, stand up and be heard. Send Marketplace an email and implore them to relase Marketplace as a free podcast.