Steven Johnson of the L.A. Times recently wrote one of the greatest Op/Ed pieces I’ve ever read. This opinion piece is a take on Hillary Clinton’s call for a $90-million dollar study into the (negative) effects of video games on children. Most interesting to me in the article is the distinction between games of old that children used to play like Go-fish and Monopoly and games today on the Xbox and the Playstation. He points out that the old games didn’t require much thought from children and that the children could easily be beatn, but the new games require the ability to master challenging new interfaces, the ability to learn complex rule systems, and hand-eye coordinat. Most parents wouldn’t last 10 minutes against their kids playing these games.

Another very interesting excerpt is the following:

On to the issue of aggression, and what causes it in kids, especially teenage boys. Congress should be interested in the facts: The last 10 years have seen the release of many popular violent games, including “Quake” and “Grand Theft Auto”; that period has also seen the most dramatic drop in violent crime in recent memory. According to Duke University’s Child Well-Being Index, today’s kids are less violent than kids have been at any time since the study began in 1975. Perhaps, Sen. Clinton, your investigation should explore the theory that violent games function as a safety valve, letting children explore their natural aggression without acting it out in the real world.

This article challenges Hillary’s assertion that these “violent” video games are truly bad for children. I happen to disagree with Mrs. Clinton, and I feel our hard-earned dollars could be better spent studying something else—like a cure for cancer or AIDS.


Update: Even Maddox has chimed in on this rediculous fear of video games.

I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that working on the weekend isn’t a bad thing at all.



Historically, I’ve shunned the thought of working weekends because after all, it’s my weekend!–If I were not to rest and relax on the weekend, then when would I?


However, there comes a time when one realizes–if I don’t do it, it’ll never get done. It’s sad but true. Plus, there are some things (aka ‘pet projects’) I want to get done that I simply cannot prioritize for one reason or another, or because there are things waiting to get done that are incredibly more important to the business as a whole. With that, comes the weekend. The weekend is when I’m allowed to sleep in, get rested up, and allows my creative juices to flow more freely than normal. This is the perfect time to get things done for work that I don’t have time to do during the week. It isn’t about being able to say “Hey, look what I’ve done”. It has more to do with fulfilling some unexplainable internal need for satisfaction. In particular, the satisfaction I get out of doing things I think need to get done for the company that haven’t been done for whatever reason. These reasons include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Complacency within the workgroups that need the particular toolset(s)
2. The “We’ve asked for it forever and finally gave up” syndrome that plagues all businesses (I hear this one the most)
3. Others’ ignorance about what data is available to them (it isn’t their fault, or is it?)
4. Fear of asking (This is more due to culture than anything)

I’m not making a big deal about it. If I were so inclined not to work on the weekend, I wouldn’t have chosen this line of profession—being a programmer.



I actually get quite a bit done on the weekends. I’m not hounded by a hoard of incoming emails, meeting requests, or incessant phone calls from technicians, accountants, or managers.



I’m not griping. I love my job. I love what I do. I’ll say it again: I’ve decided that working on the weekend isn’t a bad thing at all, in fact, it’s quite efficient.



What are your thoughts on this? I’m interested.

Problems run rampant in the Iraqi Police force. At least that’s what the Pentagon says. The pentagon released the following information today:

1. Many are largely illiterate.
2. Some have criminal backgrounds.
3. Some have physical handicaps.
4. Some are even rumored to be “insurgents”.

This will seriously put a damper on Bush’s exit strategy in Iraq, and his goal of making a constitution by August 15th.

Yesterday attempts to meet the August 15 deadline for a new constitution received a boost when Sunni Arab representatives said they would return to the negotiating table, and drafters announced agreement on several key articles of the new charter.


The Sunni Arab members on the constitutional committee had walked out of talks last week after one of their colleagues and his adviser were shot dead outside a Baghdad restaurant.


I guess it should be no surprise. If even 1 or two police officers were insurgents, surely they could communicate back with others the wherebouts of these Sunni leaders.
Now these Sunni leaders want assurances as to the security of their people, but to whom can they turn when even the police force cannot be trusted? That’s right: The loyalty of these police officers has come into question. Can they be blamed if they’re being murdered daily?


The loyalty of Iraqi police to the new authorities in Baghdad has also come under question, most notably last November in Mosul when three-quarters of the city’s police force either abandoned their posts or assisted insurgents during an uprising. Surprising?

Read the CNN article on this issue.

The website was attacked with about 200 messages in the form of comments yesterday. I noticed it while working up the new interface to the website. I had to go through them all and delete them, which was a bigger pain to do than I had hoped it would be.

That said, I’ll probably try to incorporate one of those “captcha” type plug-ins to the comment form so that some human intervention will be required to make a comment.

Update: Henceforth, all comments can only be posted by registered users. Anonymous comments are no longer allowed. Sorry folks

M.K. Anderson has an excellent story on the current climate of fear under which we live due to terrorist attacks, and how these attacks are eroding our freedoms. Give it a read and let him know what you think. Most noteworthy, is how he explains that we are allowing ourselves to be ripped of our privacies (see freedom) in the name of rooting out the evildoers. I have and will always maintain the following:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

On July 16, 2005, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hit the bookshelves across America, and the globe.
For fun, I decided to go up to the closest Barnes and Noble here in Dallas, TX to shoot the event–and an event it was. There were at least 500 people there waiting to get their grubby little hands on the book, myself included. It was like something out of the Willy Wonka movie. You’d think all these kids were waiting in line for a chance at getting a golden ticket. Somewhere around 1:45 a.m., I finally was able to get my copy. We promptly left. I’ve included this picture along with the story so you could glimpse the madness.

It’s been over a year since the last revision of this website, and I feel it is time again. I haven’t started on any design and I haven’t even decided to change how it will look. However, the back-end will be *completely* rewritten. In it’s current form, it’s thrown together like a bunch of trash. Well, more like a huge stack of band-aids all held together and covering up just a clutter of scabs. It’s hard for me to look at the code without cringing.

I’ve learned quite a bit over the last year about PHP and i’ve come to learn that the current way my code is written is totally the wrong way to do it. So, to that end, I’ll be redoing it. I’ll also go to some XHTML standard or some other such “updated” web standard document template. So, if you see things going on the fritz, please bear with me–I may be doing an update.

Not that anyone should be surprised by this, but Brian McKnight can sing incredibly. I miss the times when his music was more widely played on the radio. People should take notice.
I was watching the MLB All-Star game tonight and he sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” and I thought to myself, “This is the best version I’ve heard in quite some time. Probably the best since Witney Houston’s Famous version she sang for the Superbowl many years ago.”

Anyway, Brian can sing. Go buy his new album–It’s the bomg diggity. It’s called “Gemeni and it’s in stores now.

Sunday Morning, around 11 a.m. I found myself standing on the passenger side of my car staring into a gaping hole where my window used to be. It took me only a second to figure out that whoever busted out the window, also stole my stereo system and my sub woofers in the trunk. At this point, I’m thinking of canning the Civic and getting an Accord. I love the Accord anyway. This time, I’ll get all the features I should have gotten on the Civic. I’ll also be getting a Navigation system. It’s going to be $weet.