Sean’s Obsessions

Every so often I like to play with Google AdWords to see if I can make a couple of bucks (usually when I find a free coupon, that is). One thing that’s a pain is generating keyword lists from smaller lists. I wrote a small CGI program, available at http://ertw.com/cgi-bin/kw.cgi , that takes lists of [...]

On one of my monitors at work I’ve been putting a label it whenever I come across a relevent saying. Here’s what I have so far: Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity Don’t screw the pooch The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese [...]

Wipe someone else’s bottom Jump for joy when someone pees Let myself be a trampoline Eat a two year old marshmallow cookie so that _someone_ wouldn’t get at it and spend the next hour running in circles screaming Use the phrase “leaving without dignity” Leave without dignity Stay up all night cleaning up after a [...]

Why is it that I find the laws of thermodynamics somewhat comforting? The first law states that energy can only change forms. There is a parallel to the working world in terms of efficiency. The energy required out of a project (q) is basically a constant, you can work extra hard at it (E), but [...]

I’ve just installed Skype and it seems to work well. My username is seanwalberg if you want to say hi.

One of the feeds I subscribe to made a mention of a system called Getting Things Done, which is based on a book by the same name. I did a bit of reading, and ended up borrowing the book from a coworker. GTD, as it’s called on the ‘net, is a personal organization system. I’m [...]

Whenever people find out I’m writing a book, I’m always asked how it all works. Now that I’m almost done, I’ll take some time to write it out. The first step is to get a proposal accepted. The first time I tried this I worked with an agent from Studio B. He had me write [...]

Been spending all my free time working on the book. Turned in the last content chapter earlier in the week, which leaves me with two practice tests and the appendices to write. The appendices won’t be hard, I’m almost done them. But practice questions annoy me, especially when I’ve got 120 to do. After that, [...]

I’m not sure why a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon about the word “scalable”. I read another article the other day that said it simply means “it can grow”. This is far from the truth. Scalable has a well understood meaning. Something that is scalable means that its architecture allows it to [...]

Google has announced they’ll respect “rel=nofollow” in links, meaning that they won’t follow them or assign PR to any link with this tag. I’ve added the nofollow plugin to Movable type, hopefully it works! This will hopefully curb comment spam, since the primary goal is to get backlinks. I’m sure they’ll continue, but you have [...]