Stan Taylor

A couple of new blog posts (1, 2) by Anil Dash have sparked a lot of discussion (see here and here, for instance) about the value of diversity–specifically in this case, gender diversity–in high tech.
This is a timely topic for me. At work, I’ve recently joined a newly-formed development team. As we were sitting in team meetings this week, I realized that there is only one woman on this team (and she is the product owner, which, in our development methodology, makes her kind of an adjunct team member).
Our other two teams at work have at least two women members (all QA and technical writers; we don’t have any female programmers), and I’ve been very pleased with the team dynamics of both those teams.
For several reasons, I’m currently slightly uncomfortable with the dynamics of the new team, and it struck me this week that one of those reasons is that it felt kind of ‘good-ol-boy’ish. After reading Anil’s posts and some discussion of them, I emailed the team lead to discuss the issue of gender diversity on the new team. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve been really busy lately, especially with work. Stay tuned.

Preface: Katie and I love to mangle the names of stores. When we lived in New Jersey, our good friend David came to visit us. After we referred to the local Shop-Rite several times by its correct name, David exclaimed: “What has New Jersey done to you? Why don’t you call it Shop-Rong?” Well, we had referred to it that way from the day we moved there; it’s just that by the time David came to visit, it has lost its novelty.
So, on to the story… We spent last Christmas in Red River, NM. We drove up there in two days, spending the night in Lubbock. We arrived in Lubbock kind of late, and we were tired. After we got the van unloaded, we set out in search of a place to eat. Within a few blocks of our hotel, we didn’t find much that interested us, so we finally just went through the drive-through at Wienerschnitzel. The food was really awful, so Samuel dubbed it Wiener-shit-zel.
We had a proud parenting moment.

I just ran across the blog Death By Children, written by a stay-at-home dad. On his blog, that dad writes about his farting, scratching his nuts, his teenage daughter’s boobs–all hilariously, and supposedly with the sanction of his kids.
On my blog, in contrast, you get a highly edited version of my life: you find out that I’m a geek, a liberal Christian, a liberal politically. But I write nothing that could (I hope) offend anyone I know. About the most personal insight into our family life that you get is how we arrange our mantel hooks at Christmas.
I’d love to be as funny as the Death By Children dad, and I’d love to be able to write about it on my blog, but my personality type is all about control and moderation. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an introverted geek, but sometimes I’d just love to be able to throw all caution to the wind and write with passion and abandon. Oh well.

Now that we have a Democratic majority in Congress again, I’m glad to see that the issue of health care is back in the news. President Bush has decided to propose addressing the unequal health care in this country via the tax code: his proposal would provide a tax deduction for people who buy individual health insurance, and tax ‘high end’ corporate health coverage. It’s that second part that is controversial.
I’ve long held that it would not be possible to bring everyone in the U.S. up to the high standard of health care that some enjoy thanks to generous corporate benefits. But nobody wants to reduce their current level of health care.
Though I’m not sure what I think about the means he’s chosen, I do think Bush’s intention with his tax on high end benefits is to help the recipients of those benefits realize how good they have it, and, in some small way, to get them to reduce their level of health care.
Or, it could just be an excuse for big companies to lower the amount they spend on employee health insurance.

As I was writing the previous post, I first wrote “set my DVR to tape [Howard the Duck].” I quickly noticed it and changed it to ‘record.’
I also often absentmindedly refer to my iPod as my Walkman, eliciting guffaws from Katie.

For years, my favorite movie ever was Howard the Duck. Based on its lack of success, it’s safe to say that I was in small minority of the movie-going public. Last week, I noticed that it was coming on cable, so I set my DVR to record it. Katie, Samuel and I watched it last night. This was my first viewing in probably fifteen years, and I have to say, I didn’t find it nearly as funny as before. But Samuel loved it! He watched it again this morning and has declared it his favorite movie.
If you’ve never seen HtD, I recommend you give it a try–if nothing else, for the 1980s big hair.

I really want one of these:

Today I read this headline and was confused. Here’s the history, I think:

1. AT&T spins off AT&T Wireless
2. AT&T Wireless is bought by Cingular, who gets rid of the AT&T Wireless name
3. Cingular is bought by BellSouth
4. Meanwhile, AT&T is bought by SBC (Southwestern Bell) which promptly renames itself AT&T
5. AT&T (formerly SBC) buys BellSouth, thereby acquiring Cingular
6. AT&T gets rid of the Cingular brand name, renaming its wireless service AT&T Wireless.

My head hurts

Back in October, I blogged about one feature of iTunes/iPod that I didn’t like, in regard to podcasts. And then, a month later, I blogged about a solution, which was really a workaround.
Today I received an email from a new iPod owner who had run up against the same problem. He found my original post in his search for a solution. After he ran across the intended, solution, he emailed it to me:
On the iPod’s ‘Podcast’ panel in iTunes, I had totally overlooked the options in the “Sync … episodes of” dropdown. The solution to my problem would be to select on of the “X most recent” options. Since this is one setting for all podcasts, it might result in more podcast episodes being synched than I need for some podcasts, but at least it avoids the issue of an episode being removed from my iPod as soon as I’ve listened to any part of it.