Never Another Broken Link!

Here's an idea...well, some background first. I just posted a message and wanted to link to a couple of books that I recommended. It took me several minutes to retrieve the url's that would point to the books on Amazon's site...how archaic. The url's were filled with tons of unreadable codes, so I don't even know if they will work, now, in a week, or in a year. So why not form links in a whole new way--Jeez, someone must have though of this before and already offer some web service to the likes--so if I want to link to something that isn't on my site I can just put in the link like this... The Logic of Failure and the link would just work. Come on, there has to be some kind of Firefox plugin that does this? Right?

Picked Up a New Audio Book, Sway

I picked up a new audio book, Sway, by Ori Brafman and his brother. I think it is mostly about poor decision making (probably not unlike one of my favorite books of all time The Logic of Failure or A Mathematician Plays Stock Market), but I haven't even started it, yet so I won't comment on the book. However, according to my theory of everything I can guarantee that any and all decisions illustrated on the books, which have been influenced by one thing or another were influenced by what someone saw or observed and metaphysics didn't play a part (or at least not a major role [sic]).

Does the why matter?

If you are hungry (a) and you eat (y) or
if you crave something sweet (b) and you eat (y) or
if someone offers you food (c) and you eat (y) or
if you know you won't eat for a while and think you should eat (d) and you eat (y) or
if you get the munchies (e) and you eat (y) or
if you are stressed out and find yourself in the kitchen (f) and you eat (y) or
if you see see someone else eating (g) and you eat (y)

Can you say that because of (a,b,c,d,e,f,g) then (y)? Of course not. There is some school of philosophy that says x never causes y, even to the point of you let go of a ball and it falls, the two actions are unrelated. I think I understand it (and agree with it). Gotta read my books again...was it Kant, Hegel, Hume, Heidegger or someone else? Anyway I think it shows that you can only know about something through observation and that means that "the why" is not important, or not knowable or something of which you cannot speak. Maybe philosophy is prime for a rebirth. Was Wittgenstein really the last great philosopher? Is philosophy really dead? It is pointless to try to explain what is not explainable. I see that. An "a" is an "a". Get it? Ha, that Austrian really knew a thing or two...did he learn it or did he know it? Wicked!

Physicilist? Is that a word?

While I try to track down any writings, which dismiss the metaphysical and the supernatural, I keep running into some line of philosophy called Physicalist Reductionism, and that isn't me. It seems the Phys-Redux people are taking a stand against God, but that isn't my point at all. In all likelihood, there is a God, an unknowable God since She exists outside of our universe. Where I am going in the Physicalist direction is that, has anyone ever made anyone else smile simply with a thought? I'm sure people like Edgar Cayce and other modern day mystics would answer in a resounding yes, but I mean for real. Too bad Tesla had to die before he could invent more things. If anyone could give me an answer it would have been him. But back to the basics. People are animals. Animals have instinct. Animals survive by instinct. Therein lies the Taoist perfection. Why bother with trying to explore your mind, when all it is filled with is meaningless chatter (not unlike the Internet).

Let every thought lead to an action

A thought that does not lead to action is quite meaningless....sort of like an empty promise or wishful thinking.  Like Ford said, "What counts is what works, not what some outsider thinks."  So next time you look outside and see that it is a nice day, don't think, "What a nice day!"  Go outside and enjoy it.  Do something.  Do anything.

The New Philosophy is Action

I think I figured it all out yesterday, though right now it is somewhat cloudy, I can still remember most of the details.  The meaning of life dawned on me once again.  I finally realize that there is no such thing as desire.  Desire is a fabrication of one's own mind and one's own mind is a mere blink of an eye or twitch of the nose--a non event with no purpose or value.  Yes. It is true.  The ancient and modern Philosophers had it totally backwards.  Descartes and I think therefore I am was fooling himself.  He thought therefore he wrote a book.  Nothing more, nothing less.  You see, what goes on in your head is not what counts.  Action is what counts.  Intentions and desires are really just imaginary things.  Can anyone really know what motivates anyone else?  No.  Greed, love, envy, happiness, selfishness, selflessness...are all fabrications to try to explain peoples' actions.  In the end the only thing that matters are the actions. When people lose their minds, they are just trapped in thought and cannot escape.  If you can throw off all your thoughts and fears and wishes (sounds like the Buddha?) then you reduce yourself to the beauty of a child...an infant or toddler no less.  Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, et al. were all trying to us mathematics and logic to give their lives meaning.  All they succeeded in doing was writing down a whole lot of circular proofs of nothing.  Where is philosophy today?  Is the dollar the new ethic?  Is information the currency of the time?  I would argue that information is the new prison and the Internet is the biggest prison of them all.  Does the internet really exist?  Sure it does, but the new masters of the obvious, e.g., K. Kelly, M. Gladwell, N. Taleb and company offer no tangible gains to humankind.  Google, with all of it's search technology and internet dominance serve only it's employees, not the happless people like me writing a blog or you reading one.  You know who benefits?  The coders and admins and owners who eat gourmet meals everyday and play volleyball in the sun and ride bicycles in the fresh air and actually smile when they get up in the morning.  Those are the actions that benefit them as a result of the wasted hours and fabricated needs of the billions of intenet followers.  They are the aristocrates and we are the slaves.  Information and intellectualism are the shackles that bound me in the past and are likely to do so in the future, though hopefully less so, now I have woken up to it's dangers.  It's almost 2:00am Eastern Standard Time.  "Last night" I slept three hours to the night before's one hour.  I have coding projects that are years behind schedule that consume me and my life.  Luckily I have some sanity left even though the state of the economy is on the brink of the next Great Depression.  Are we educated enough now to avoid such annoyances such as scarcity and poverty?  Hamlet was so right.  He was a dope on the magnitude of Wile. E. Coyote.  You know the funny thing is that this is not over...only just started.  The next chapter of the book involves finding meaning in life solely based on physical attributes.  Right now I need to fill my short, pudgy, aging body with stimulants so I can clean the house in preparation for a new day, but that is my "fate" at present.  If I had the power to grow younger, taller, leaner, and handsomer, wouldn't you think that I would be in a phat house with a trophy wife and model kids?  Of course I would...in the upcoming prison of my mind I will attempt to prove that case...you are who you are and where you are in life because of your genes, not excluding external factors, though, but more so as a result of what you look like than what you think like....

How can I organize all my leads/contacts?

Why, use a CRM of course!

SugarCRM: commercial open source????
VtigerCRM (SugarCRM fork)...truly open source so they claim
MPower Open: C# SQL Server CRM...tempting
CiviCRM: Joomla and Drupal (better) compatible...wicked!
Zoho CRM: free for three...why not? One click to open account!
SalesForce.com...market leader...means nothing to me.

Sites Recently Stumbled Upon

Good resources for budget conscious:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/

Nice SEO guy site:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2008/02/11/google-docs-survey-tool/

Wish these were my sites!

try this one for size: www.insidercow.com

More Philosophy of Me

I think that there is no way to separate mind from body.  Your personality and everything else are products of these two parts of you.  If I were any other way, I'd not be sitting here doing what I'm doing--not that I don't have a choice in what I do or where I find myself, but my body, chemical and physical, have an integral effect on my mind, which is trying to figure out if life has meaning.  I guess that is the question that should not be asked for obvious reasons, but I leave that for another blog post--memory trigger--did Hoffmann paint his ethics?  I'm tempted to believe so.  If Spinoza could document his philosophy in words, why not Hoffmann document his in media?  I digress...Here's my point for starting this post...your mind does not determine your future, your mind and body do.  Desire does not exist.  Only the manifestation of that "desire," which needs the body to do the action.  To be continued...

SaaS 20 Stock Index

Not really sure what the point of an equal weighted stock index is, but here's an interesting one:

http://www.mspmentor.net/saas-20-stock-index/

The Internet Organism?

Is the internet alive? I wish it were so, but I don't believe it.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/10/evidence_of_a_g.php

Google Maps Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)

The age old problem of spending hundreds of hours to compute the shortest distance between two points.

http://joesonic.com/blog/2008/02/06/tavelling-salesman-problem-tsp-in-google-maps/

Luckily someone else did it for me or else I may have wasted several hours getting about 25% to the solution before moving on to the next problem.

Goldman Sachs May Slash 3,200 Jobs as Turmoil Worsens

It's only fitting that Goldman has to lay off 10% of it's workforce.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=adwYoYnTqRNo

You might think they would consider trimming some of the excessive compensation packages of the executives so they could retain more of their employees, but I suppose that option wouldn't go over well...unless it was your job on the chopping block.

Philosophy of Me

Over the past few months, I've been listening to Paul Strathern's expert introductions to the most fascinating philosophical writers of history. From Descartes to Dostoevsky, he gives very entertaining histories of these great men (where's the women? still to be written I guess).

My mind is racing with all that I've drowned myself in. I have theories of my own and that's why I'm writing this note to myself...My mind and my body are inseparable. It isn't an easy thing to explain, but that's the crux of the problem. You see, everyone has their own mind and thoughts. Was it Descartes who said that everyone is born with the same amount of common sense? But everyone takes things in differently and then acts differently based on those experiences. Why then are we not all carbon copies of each other? Because we have different physical bodies. If I was bred from a fine cloth, I'd be doing something other than blogging at 6am under the huge stress of providing for a family of amidst the biggest financial crisis in history (luckily it is still on paper and hasn't materialized into the physical world just yet, even though I was told I'd be out of a job in two weeks). So why are some swans black and some white? I always like to bring my analogies back down to the most basic element...nature...and the lion. I wonder if lions sit around all day contemplating their existence? Probably not. It just is what it is. I wonder if a lion ever drove itself insane because of the curse of not knowing why it was. Actually, thanks to Schopenhauer, we know it wouldn't be considered a curse, just indifference, but blah blah blah. I'm rambling so now I'll stop.

Arthur Schopenhauer Was a Funny Guy

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money. Sounds like he's talking about The Donald to me.

Arthur Schopenhauer

If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree...

I think it was Honest Abe who was quoted saying, "If I had 8 hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend 6 hours sharpening my axe."

That's kind of the way I code. If I have 7 days to write a program, I spend 6 1/2 days figuring out the best way to do it and then 2 weeks doing it the right way. Needless to say, clients aren't always pleased, however in retrospect they probably realize how much extra they got after they hire Joe Quick and Dirty Coder the next time.

An article from Seeking Alpha has been sent to you

I thought you might find this article on Seeking Alpha interesting: Jerry Yang to Yahooers: One in Ten of You Is Gone

It's a tough job being the boss...a job that Jerry shouldn't have.

Bank bailout? What about me?

So the US government is taking an equity stake in several banks.  Why is that such a big deal?  Does that mean the end of capitalism?  Not in the least bit.  The govenment already owns utilities (I'm just guessing), schools, roads, cops, etc.  They seem to be donig fine.  Anyone employed there seems to be doing a hell of a lot better than me.  You know where I'd like to see the government get involved in?  Healthcare companies.  Those are the most corrupt, bureauracratic profiteering companies around.  All they do is try to make money off of sick people.   I'm with that fat guy, Moore and his Sicko movie.  I think healthcare should be free...or maybe I just need to work for one of those companies, but I think I'd have better luck trying to work for congress.

You aren't supposed to know that

Last weekend I saw some old friends and new.  We were just talking about kids and shit and getting old.  We also talked about work and since my work is computers, naturally I had a few things to say.  At one point, some of conversation got techie and some of the people were throwing out jargon like they worked in an IT department.  Granted most of the tech people I know are in tech because it pays a lot better than their liberal arts degrees would offer and most of them don't know the difference between asp and html, but that isn't the point, at least not entirely.  At once my defense mechanism went into survival mode when someone started mentioning Linux and Google hacks.  They aren't supposed to know that stuff.  That's my domain expertise.  It is a scary day for us tech guys when John Q. Public knows everything we do about our craft.  Luckily they don't know the difference between a gigabyte and a megabyte, but it is only a matter of time.  I guess we aren't the only ones up in the middle of the night tinkering with our boxes.

A couple of SQL Server Tricks

CREATE TABLE myTable(Document varbinary(max))

INSERT INTO myTable(Document)
SELECT * FROM
OPENROWSET(BULK N'C:\Image1.jpg', SINGLE_BLOB)



This stored procedure uses the XP_Cmdshell command, which by default is disabled. You have to enable it using sp_configure as shown below:

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1
GO
RECONFIGURE with override
GO


Here's an ASP.NET GridView freebie.

ASP.NET Profiles Redux

Now I think I finally understand this stuff. However, customizing it to fit my needs is another story.

http://www.aspcode.net/Storing-passwords-in-your-ASPNET-application-part-2.aspx

More required reading...

http://searchwindevelopment.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid8_gci1270321,00.html

What a paper!

All the news that's fit to read, www.dailymail.co.uk. Gotta love all the eye candy. Can I be a Brit? Or a Canadian? Just not some dad from Jersey. Get me outta here!!!

Data Mining Techniques

I always wanted to learn about datamining. First I have to get through my algorithms book by Bucknall, Algorithms and Data Structures. Once I get through that, here's another place to go:

http://www.slideshare.net/customersforever/how-to-apply-crm-using-data-mining-techniques

or for more theory, try this:
Coloring maps is fun

And I know Scott Mitchell is an ASP/.NET guru, but did he really write all this from scratch? Who's the copycat? Somebody is owes someone else some credit and I would guess Bucky is the one with the credit due, though that is purely because I read his book first...which means he's right.