Sunday-Edition

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SOLD, this home is no longer available.

FOR SALE BY OWNER:
This immaculate Ranch was designed for entertaining.
For more information please visit: www.10DedhamRoad.com
Location: Warwick, Rhode Island

The new 400 square foot kitchen features gorgeous solid wood hickory cabinets with cherry hardwood floors, ample storage, and a built-in china/serving cupboard off the large dinning area. The impressive vaulted ceilings and skylight adds to the natural lighting throughout the home.

The kitchen leads out to a 928 square foot multi-level cantilever deck with spindle and ball posts. The deck wraps most of the rear of the home, seats 25-30 guests, and over looks a tranquil brick patio and flowered landscaping. The deck offers and alcove perfect for grilling that allows access to the main foyer/entrance to the home.

The living room has circa cherry hardwood floors, a wood burning brick fireplace and historic style mantel.

The 15×25 family room is wrapped in solid oak with many built-in cabinets. It’s vaulted ceiling, lighting, and surround-sound connections are set up perfectly for a home theater.

The two bedrooms on the first floor have circa cherry hardwood floors, six panel doors, nickel plated hardware, crown moldings, and custom window moldings.

The main bathroom on the first floor has marble tiled flooring, ceramic tiled walls, full bath, built-in cabinets, and coordinating sink, vanity, and hardware.

The basement is almost entirely finished with recently added family/rec room 14×25, oak flooring, crown molding, recessed lighting, and two more rooms that could serve as a home office and/or third bedroom.

The laundry room has electric Washer & Dryer units and a full size Freezer. There is also a walk-in closet great for Winter coats and seasonal clothes.

Outside is a very private back yard that has an above ground 27 foot round pool which is connected to the deck. Over the main eating area on the deck is a retractable awning. There is a patio under a beautiful shade oak tree, and there are two sheds, one of which is 12 x 25, the other is 12 x 12.

The roof was recently done, the windows are new double pane, and the exterior stained shingles are in great shape.

For more information please visit: www.10DedhamRoad.com

New Rule: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for classmates.com! There’s a reason you don’t talk to people for 25 years. Because you don’t particularly like them!? Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team is doing these days–mowing my lawn.

New Rule: Don’t eat anything that’s served to you out a window unless you’re a seagull. People are acting all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy’s chili. Hey, it cost less than a dollar. What did you expect it to contain?? Trout? Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s start off by saying the iPhone is a very cool and unmistakably innovative product. What I’ve got put together here can in no way replace Steve’s gift to the mobile world. But, I think you’ll be interested to find that while you can’t match the style of the iPhone, you can mimic and even best many of its features for less. Read the rest of this entry »

There are iPhone doubters, and then there’s David Platt.

Platt’s remarks in yesterday’s “With hype high, iPhone may have to fight a flop” story by Reuters reporter Franklin Paul were really just the tip of the iceberg. Last week on his “Suckbusters” weblog, Platt published one of the craziest-ass things I’ve ever read, Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an old joke about airlines that goes something like this:

Q: How do you make a small fortune in the airlines?
A: Start with a large fortune!

The general rule of thumb in any competitive business: If there’s a profit to be made, someone with much deeper pockets is probably already trying to get in on the action. That’s one reason Southwest Airlines is one of a few generally profitable standouts in the airline business, despite being known for its low prices. Its balance sheet, touting more cash and short-term investments than long-term debt, is exceptionally strong for its industry. The lack of a heavy debt anchor allows it to charge less than its competitors for essentially the same service. As a result, it has thrived in an industry where players such as Northwest (NYSE: NWA) regularly flirt with bankruptcy and surviving firms like SkyWest (Nasdaq: SKYW) and Pinnacle Airlines (Nasdaq: PNCL) struggle with the impact of those bankruptcies on their own businesses.

Not just an airline problem
The same rule of deep pockets chasing profits applies to just about any industry. The most vulnerable companies, much like the airlines, suffer from an ugly combination of high capital costs and relatively light non-financial barriers to entry. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure this is a real news-flash, but this weekend I was talking to someone about my job when I realized that being a Web designer was no longer “sexy.”

Back in the 90’s I’d relish the opportunity to tell people what I did. Back then it was “so cool” to be a Web designer. Now that I think about it, the further back I go the cooler it was.

And not only did others think it was cool, I actually did all sorts of sexy/cool work. Flash intros, creative “play-spaces”, lots of fun “meet the Web team” projects, and all sorts of interesting and off-the-wall paid work also.

Oh and we drank beer on the job while playing Unreal Tournament at the “request” of our CEO at one job. Can’t beat that!

Yep, Web design in the 90’s was all about “fun”, “sexy” and “cool.” Not so anymore. At least not for this Web designer.

Why do you think that is?

I think it’s because I actually know what I’m doing now.

Look at what it takes to create, what I think anyway, is a great Web site: Usability, goals, standards, information architecture, best practices, accessibility — these things aren’t really sexy.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still a whole lot of “sexy” and “cool” in Web design. It’s just that those sexy moments are less frequent.

That’s probably a good thing. It could be argued that “sexy” and “cool” played a huge part in the whole .com crash of the late 90’s. I do kind of miss those days, but I think the change has been good, for all of us.

Why does failure matter?

It’s a funny thing. After almost twenty years of drawing a paycheck for creating software, people generally want to hire me because they want me to duplicate the successes I’ve had. The model seems to be “do the things you’ve done successfully before, and you’ll be successful now.”

My experience is that this has never worked on its own. Success in software development is at least as much about avoiding failure modes as it is about “best practices.” I conjecture it’s because software development on a commercial scale is so hard that almost any mistake will sink a project if left uncorrected or even worse, actively encouraged.

With that in mind, I’ve taken a little time to jot down some thoughts about situations where I’ve personally failed. I’m not going to tell you about some theoretical anti-pattern, or relate some broken thing I’ve fixed. I’m going to share things that caused me to leap from the deck of a burning boat to avoid drowning.

Some of them, in retrospect, would be comical if it wasn’t for the human misery, damaged careers, and money wasted on failed projects. Or worse, in my opinion, the opportunity cost of putting good people to work on things that never end up delighting the world. I weep for what might have been. Read the rest of this entry »

On Infinity and Beliefs

In an infinite universe, with infinite space, attributes and possibilities, it is absurd to imagine that one may know anything at all, for to know something amounts to arriving at a finite conclusion,and this is infinitely impossible. Yet in an infinite universe embodying infinite possibilities, the act of knowing is also infinitely possible, or so the optimist will hasten to offer. But if it is both infinitely possible and infinitely impossible to know something, then how can either notion be a possibility? Read the rest of this entry »

In the fall of 2003, my wife became interested in kickboxing at a local private instructor facility in town. Having lost my strong physique over several years of comfortable married home life I decided to attend a class with her to see what this was all about.

One night we stopped by and watched a class. It was not your typical cardio kick boxing class. There was the regular workout but also an added flair of martial arts and inner peace with ones body. I thought it would be fun but I was feeling as though I had gone to far down the road to recover from the land of the couch potato. My wife encouraged me to try, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well I could do it. The first few visits took a toll on me, but shortly I began to feel the muscle strengthen all over once again.

Soon I was addicted. I started attending 3 nights a week, and began a self-evaluation of all the junk I was eating. I changed that too. I went cold turkey. I decided if it was prepackaged, wrapped in sugar, or just taste good it was bad for me on the inside. I started a strict diet of only eating organically grown foods - meaning “real food”, no meat, only fish and chicken and loads of tasteless fiber. No more soda, sweet drinks, pizza, and the mother of all bad foods packaged microwave treats. Oh, one simple trick I learned, never eat a meal larger than your fist, but if you must, don’t clean the plate. Leave something for the fat rats at the local dump.

I definitely feel younger now and know that I’m in much better shape than I’ve ever been in years. I am now more confident, full of energy and stronger.

I’ve been attending as a religion for 4 years now (as of this writing) and during that time I have lost 35-lbs of fat and went from a tight 34-inch waist to a loose 31-inch waist.

It’s a nice feeling knowing you can finally fit into all those jeans in the back of the closet once again.