Rob Lifford

Peter Imbres is now blogging. The world is a better place.

Khoi Vinh wrote a great post a few days ago about the state of interface design in enterprise software. This line had me rolling:

It’s just perfect that Lotus Notes, an application whose awkward integration of multiple feature sets I’ve only ever heard spoken about with violent disgust, promotes itself as freakish software.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. “Perfect” is the only word for that. I’ve felt that violent disgust he’s talking about. I had to use Lotus Notes at a job I held way back in 1998, and I still shudder to think of it.

However, there’s a certain web-based enterprise application, inflicted upon the world by Oracle, that I must use for various HR functions at my current job, and it takes the horror to a whole new level.

How bad is it? Co-workers regularly speculate that the interface may in fact have been designed by the inmates of the solitary confinement wing of a special high-security zoo for homicidally insane orangutans.

At least I can refer to it frequently as an example of what not to do, I suppose.

OK, I realize this makes two posts in a row that involve breasts, but this one’s far less controversial…

On November 4th, I’ll be running my fourth consecutive Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, probably the biggest breast cancer awareness & fundraising event in the country. This year is especially meaningful for me because two of my wonderful colleagues at Hoover’s have fought breast cancer since last year’s race (one of them just undergoing major surgery just last week).

So if at all possible, please donate online here to sponsor my run. Your tax-deductible donation supports the Komen foundation’s grant program and funds breast cancer education, screening, and treatment programs in central Texas.

I haven’t run but once or twice since Graham was born, but I can’t stay away from this event. Time to get training.

Thanks. We now resume our regular programming of long periods of silence punctuated by self-righteous sarcasm.

We recently noticed that our TVs are now picking up HBO, apparently for free, though no action of our own doing. Maybe someone in the neighborhood was fiddling with one of the cable boxes up on the telephone pole and decided that we just weren’t watching enough boob tube.

I realize that as an ethical person, I am obligated to notify the good people at my local cable provider so they can shut it down. Said obligation has been added to my to-do list.

Luckily, my to-do list is prioritized in order of importance to the Prime Directive — supporting my family — so it’s waaaaaay down there for now.

Anyway, I’ve caught a few reruns of Real Time with Bill Maher and found it pretty entertaining. I normally don’t go for such heavily political talk shows, especially when they’re as one-sided as Real Time, but they’ve got some good writers and their panel-discussion format often feels fresh and funny.

So tonight I caught the new episode, and it was a pretty typical show until Maher closed the “New Rules” segment with an extended, ridiculously wrong-headed litany against public breastfeeding. He went as far as to compare feeding an infant to masturbation, and to call out “lactivists” as attention-seeking narcissists. WTF?!?

Bill, Bill, Bill. The real attention-seekers here are the hung-up head cases who just aren’t happy unless they’re complaining about something or telling others what (or what not) to do. I have a feeling you might summon up a little activism yourself if you had to spend any of your time defending your right to do a completely natural thing from a legion of sexually repressed dimwits.

I did at least find great humor in hearing a show-biz professional summon up the chutzpah to call anyone else narcissistic. That’s a knee-slapper.

C’mon, America, don’t make me write about this again.

Aside: did you guess where this post was going when I used the phrse “boob tube” in the first paragraph? Zing!

Whoops, over two months now without a post. And too sleepy right now to actually write one. Cheris has been great about putting new photos online, though, so go look at the photos from our recent vacation if you need something to do. Or just check out all the latest pictures.

In the sidebar of this site, I’ve got a section labeled “subscribe to feeds,” offering up the URLs for RSS feeds published by my blogging software. For the curious but still uninitiated, I included a link (“um, what’s a feed?”) that pointed toward a Wikipedia entry on the topic, but always felt that it was still too technical for the folks whom I wanted to introduce to RSS. So I made a little mental note that I should be on the lookout for a better explanation that I could share.

Today I stumbled upon the near-ideal explanation on YouTube and embedded it on a new page on this site: so if you’ve heard a little about RSS or “web feeds” or “web syndication,” and would like to learn a little more, visit my RSS Feeds Explained page.