Posts from May 1, 2003

White only prom returns to Georgia

I was firing up my browser a little while ago and came across the above headline on the front page of MSN. I was shocked into clicking. I can't believe that in this country, in this day and age, that there would be a segregated dance at a public school (or any school). The fact that the school isn't actually sponsoring this segregated prom is of little consequence, as school officials are partly to blame for the way it is being done -- they wanted to avoid the problems arising from interracial dating. And what about the parents? And the kids? This is an outrage. I only wish that some of these young racists had been interviewed so that we could gain some insight into their warped minds. The people of Taylor County, Georgia, who are responsible for this, should be ashamed.

Hey Brad, how long have you had the new logo up? It looks real nice.

In case I haven't mentioned this before, if you work with technology for a living, take a look at O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf. At a minimum, sign up for a free 30-day trial. If you can swing it, buy a subscription, or get your company to buy one for you. It is well worth it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Safari, it is an online library of more than 1,400 (currently -- they add more all the time) of the best technology books. The books are from familiar publishers like Addison Wesley, SAMS, QUE, New Riders, Microsoft Press, O'Reilly, and several others. The features include advanced search capabilities, a list of recent searches, recent pages views, notes, and bookmarks. There is a search to locate specific titles (by Author, ISBN, TItle, or Publisher, as well as a tree view for drilling down by category and for browsing the contents of a title itself.

My company bought subscriptions for us over a year ago. I didn't use it for the first couple of months, but it has become an indispensable resource since then. Sure, the content isn't quite as portable as a real book, but you can print out individual pages. Besides, when you are sitting at your desk, it probably doesn't matter if you physically have the book in hand or not -- the most important thing for me is to be able to find what I need quickly. Oh, it's also allowed me to stop lugging so many books back and forth between work and home.

To give you an idea of the quality of titles available, here is what is currently on my Safari Bookshelf:

• .NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation
• C# and VB .NET Conversion Pocket Reference
• Content Syndication with RSS
• Essential .NET, Volume 1: The Common Language Runtime
• Essential ASP.NET with Examples in Visual Basic .NET
• Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls and Components
• Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• XML Schema
• XSLT Cookbook

I should have known better than to clear my Wednesday evening schedule to watch these two teams play.

At least the Rangers have been winning lately.