I’m a big podcast fan. Originally, I was mostly into music podcasts like the amazing Coverville and the excellent Shifted Sound. Over the last few months I’ve been shifting to speculative fiction podcasts and postcast novels (podiobooks - in spite of my issues with the name). What I haven’t found, until recently, was a good tech podcast. Tech podcasts are either boring, or just fixated on very narrow topics. Stack Overflow is neither.

The legendary Joel Spolsky and the brilliant Jeff Atwood have a great on mic chemistry, and their discussions cover a broad spectrum of tech subjects, from a software, hardware and business perspective.

The most recent podcast discusses the Fog Creek Software Management Training Program Reading List used for management interns at Spolsky’s Fog Creek Software. I have found the reading list to be a great resource for some time, but it is great to hear Joel and Jeff’s opinions on many of the volumes and recommendations on the best ones to read.

If you are in the tech industry, I highly recommend the Stack Overflow podcast, and suggest looking at the reading list. There are some great resources there.

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This one is for my sister, who thinks Bacon might be the perfect food…

Bacon Vodka

Fry up three strips of bacon.
Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit in the jar. Or you could go hog wild and just pile in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps. Optional: add crushed black peppercorns.
Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks. That’s right- I didn’t refrigerate it.
At the end of the three week resting period, place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Strain out the fats through a coffee filter to yield a clear filtered pale yellow bacon vodka.

Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.

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My company, e-Marketing Partner, is proud to announce the launch of Greeley Rewards.

Greeley Rewards is a site where local merchants can provide discounts and savings to local customers. Check it out!

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In another wacky (I’m sure) global warming related weather incident, a freak lightning storm has started over 800 wildfires in Northern California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it “quite shocking” that by Monday morning the number had risen above 700.

Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger’s side offered a grim update. The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state.

“This is an unprecedented lightning storm in California, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes,” Walters said. “We are finding fires all the time.”

Stupid Global Warming

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Comedian George Carlin died Sunday at age 71.

My earliest memory of Carlin was back in Jr. High. One of my friends had watched his famous “Seven Words That Can Never Be Said on Television” routine. Of course, being kids in a more conservative time, we were totally fascinated that he would say all of these bad words. I still remember having those conversations.

The other significant thing I remember about him was his role in one of my all time favorite movies. He played Rufus, the time traveler in a phone booth in 1989’s classic “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”.

Carlin was a unique comedian with an interesting outlook on life. We are sad to see him go.

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Dell Inc. will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company’s Web site.

The amazing floundering that is Microsoft Vista continues. A year and a half after it’s release, the public is still not convinced. Even though XP is scheduled to be pulled from the shelves on June 30th, there is still demand for XP on new computers and Dell is going to charge to meet that demand.

Even though Microsoft is going to stop selling XP licenses, it’s still within the terms of the Vista license to ‘downgrade’ a Vista Business or Vista Ultimate version to the XP Professional version.

Vista was released commercially in January 2007, nearly 17 months ago, but even with the release of Service Pack 1, the OS has not achieved widespread acceptance. In fact, it seems that anti-Vista sentiment is higher than ever. Back in January of this year Infoworld named Vista #2 on a list of all time PC flops, a dubious honor.

If you are in the market for a new PC and wondering if paying $50 for “last year’s technology” is worth it, you might want to take a peek at this tongue in cheek article reviewing an “upgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP.

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Found this awesome basic physics quiz courtesy Lisa’s Monday/Friday recap.

Contrary to reports, didn’t make me feel stupid. Scored 85%, and should have aced it, was just trying to hurry.

Take the test and leave your score as a comment. C’mon, it’s fun.

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This guy managed to catch a burglar on a motion activated camera. How cool is that.

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Weather in Northern Colorado has been bizarre all spring. We haven’t had the typical nice weather that makes spring in the Rockies so great. Today was just the cap on the spring weather.

Six tornadoes were spotted in Northern Colorado. The biggest starting in Johnstown moving north through Windsor and on to Wellington.

I have lived in this area my whole life, and this is the first time I remember a tornado actually causing damage. In fact, I don’t remember much for tornado warnings since I was in elementary school.

This morning, I was working away and the power went out. I got a call from a girl I work with who’s mother lives in Windsor. She said they just had the worst hailstorm she’d ever seen. I started making phone calls to make sure everyone new what was going on, little did I know that within a few miles of my home a tornado was cutting a path of destruction.

If you are looking for pictures, the Coloradoan has two nice photo galleries
Windsor storm damage pictures
Photos by Windsor Beacon freelance photographer Carol Hirata

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This ruling, if upheld, could potentially cost the US economy $3.5 Billion in both printing costs and retrofitting of vending machines, supermarket automatic checkouts and any other machine that processes paper currency. Just what we need in a slowing economy and skyrocketing national debt.

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