clock … watching time, the only true currency

A journal from John B. Roberts

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Entries from July 2004

Book: The Wine-Dark Sea

July 16th, 2004 · Comments Off

Another one gone. The first book I picked up in late June on returning to San Francisco was The Wine-Dark Sea, number 16 in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. I can see the end of the line, and that’s not a happy forecast. I should have written my senior thesis comparing the Hornblower novels to the [...]

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Tags: Books

Book: The Godfather

July 15th, 2004 · Comments Off

Perhaps I’m the last man over the age of 20 never to have seen The Godfather. At least now I can say I’ve read the book. A good read… the story really moves along. I keep meaning to see the movies but find that I’m not ready to sit down for several hours at a [...]

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Tags: Books

And a few more links lingering in the in-box

July 14th, 2004 · Comments Off

This housecleaning is endless. abecedarian was the Word of the Day on May 20. The boy fit the bill at the time, but he’s got it nailed by now. Jakob’s book list contains few I haven’t read, but I want to get to those few. Bad Hair? As Mice Attest, It’s Probably Not Your Shampoo [...]

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Tags: Everything

Cleaning out the bookmarks

July 14th, 2004 · Comments Off

Bundles of links I’ve been collecting… but they’re not doing me much good in Safari, so here they are for all to peruse. ACM Queue on Enterprise Search, from April 2004. Collection of articles on the topic. Why 1998 Was The Turning Point For Newspapers is Vin Crosbie’s selection of the disintegration of New Century [...]

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Tags: Everything

BOOK: The Rule of Four

July 14th, 2004 · Comments Off

Nearly a month ago, I took advantage of a train commute to read The Rule of Four. There have been plenty of references in describing (read: hyping) this book to Umberto Eco’s novels, but those are only true in genre. While this tale is also a present-day mystery centered around a historical document/investigation, The Rule [...]

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Tags: Books

First and ten for Ditka?

July 13th, 2004 · Comments Off

Mike Ditka is considering running for the Senate, as noted by Dick. Guess Illinois wants to make California’s choice of Arnold look intelligent. Sports Illustrated recently did a photo spread of sports figures turned politicians. Of course, their website doesn’t turn it up, but from memory the two-page spread included Jack Kemp, Bill Bradley, Steve [...]

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Tags: Everything

Movie: Spider-man 2

July 12th, 2004 · Comments Off

I caught Spider-man 2 this evening. With this movie, I couldn’t escape the reviews and the hype, but I still enjoyed it. Most of all, it felt like the comic book. The movie even is paced like the comic book, with pulsing action, and then some backstory/development, then more pulsing action, in an almost predictable [...]

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Tags: Movies

Orbitz… tantalizing offer, but aggravating result

July 8th, 2004 · Comments Off

So I followed Mark’s advice and tried Mobissimo to launch me into this evening’s travel agent duties. Maybe 90 minutes later… I still have no tickets. Not Mobissimo’s fault, but it didn’t get me much further along the path. For three “adults” and an “infant with seat,” I finally found a multi-city package (SFO to [...]

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Tags: Tech

Longing for permalinks (PR for HotelChatter)

July 8th, 2004 · Comments Off

So Mark gets some nice press from USA Today for HotelChatter.com. Very nice, and likely deserved… I’ll admit I have not been keeping up, since I travel so very little, and then only to places (usually) where I’m staying with family. But what bugs me here in 2004 is that USAToday doesn’t use a link [...]

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Tags: Everything

http://www.news.com/extra

July 7th, 2004 · 1 Comment

News.com Extra launched earlier today. The public explanation spells out what we’re doing. I would add only that the end goal is to save readers’ time. News.com reporters and editors do their damndest to get you the best story as fast as possible on every tech story that matters. But no one is as big [...]

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Tags: Tech