Bryan Strawser

I could live on my cell phone alone.  According to the little read out on my Samsung n200, I’ve been on it for 210 hours and 57 minutes since I received it..  in February.

I received a change of address from a friend in New York today. I was struck by the fact that folks in the US apparently still want to have different [phone] numbers for different locations. The cell-phone is only for when you’re mobile. In Europe it is often the only phone a person has or uses. I know it isn’t the price, since it’s still more expensive here than in the States. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

The American Crisis…

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated·

–  Thomas Paine

Now this is a customer support nightmare.  Makes me want to never buy an HP product again.

I just subscribed to Phil’s weblog.  He’s got some seriously cool ideas on using blogs for system communications.  I’m looking at doign something similar for my websites.  Hmmm..    Ideas, ideas, ideas.

The CIO of Utah gets it. Surprisingly cool find: the weblog of the CIO of Utah, Phil Windley. Seems sharp and generally clueful, as evidenced by Blogs for System Status Communications:

My organization operates hundreds of servers in several data centers and a network that connects over 250 separate locations. One of the problems we have is status communication to various interested parties. Tonight I decided we should have a system status blog that uses categories with separate RSS feeds for various severity levels and systems. For the low price of $40/year we could have:

• One easy spot to post status announcements, which would be ordered in exactly the right way.
  
• A web-based record of status.
  
• Multiple RSS feeds of the various systems and severity levels.
  
• Easy integration into the personalization feature of our intranet; RSS feeds would show up as gadget boxes for people who want them.
  
• The ability to easily subscribe to RSS feeds and digest them in various ways for people with special needs.

How could you not like that?

[jarretthousenorth News]

This looks like a seriously cool game.  I gotta toss mulch on 7/4 though.

The United States Army is releasing their own game, this Independence Day – an interesting campaign to influence players (kids I presume). It is called America’s Army , and on the 4th, it can be downloaded from http://www.americasarmy.com/ — It uses the latest Unreal engine, which I presume means it will be worth checking out. [kuro5hin.org]

Update: Make sure you check out the commercial for this game. Somewhat disturbing knowing the Army is serious about this shit.  [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Adam is the man.

Time for another chronicle from the trenches at MTV. A couple weeks ago I saw an tv ad for the broadways production of Jekyll & Hyde that starred Sebatian Bach. Imagine that! Closer inpsection indeed revealed that the fair-haired banshee rocker from Jersey had gone ‘legit’ 🙂  [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Awesome recap of this year’s action on the US Supreme Court.

Court Had Rehnquist Initials Intricately Carved on Docket. If there is one phrase that best describes the Supreme Court term that ended late last week, it is this: the triumph of William H. Rehnquist. By Linda Greenhouse. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]