When
· Naughties
· · 2003
· · · December
· · · · 11 (4 entries)
Arab Potatoes · Joke courtesy of Carrol Cox: An old Arab man who has been living for 40 years in Idaho wanted to cultivate potatoes in his garden, but digging up the earth was getting to be too hard at his age. His only son, Ali, was studying in France, so he decided to send him an e-mail explaining the situation: “Dear Ali: I feel very disappointed because this year I'll be unable to plant my potatoes in my garden. I am too old to plow the ground. I wish you were here, then my problems would be solved, because you would remove the soil for me. I love you, Dad” “Dad: For God's sake, DO NOT remove the ground of that garden. It's there that I have hidden ‘you-know-what’. I love you, Ali” At 4 a.m. the next day the local police, plus FBI and CIA agents, along with Pentagon delegates, came in and turn the garden upside down looking for dangerous material to build bombs, anthrax or whatever. They found nothing and they left. The same day the old man received another e-mail from his son: “Dear Dad: I am sure you can plant your potatoes now. It was the best I could do in the current circumstances. I love you, Ali”
John Battelle on Search · It turns out that John Battelle, who’s made his mark at a bunch of different pretty-good industry publications, whom I met at the Foo Camp, and who interviewed me about it for Business 2.0, is one of the few people in the world who obsess about search technology as much as I do. I just stumbled across his excellent Searchblog; anyone who’s taken the trouble to plow through my essays on the subject will probably find a subscription worthwhile.
Notes on Bosworth · Adam Bosworth been discussing what he calls a “Web Services Browser” for months over at his blog, but I was really having trouble getting the point. After his speech here at XML 2003, I think I sort of get it ...
Meetings · Wednesday evening, Lauren and I had a social in the spacious and comfy suite that she gets for chairing the XML conference, and it was great fun. (If you know us and didn’t get invited, sorry, we only decided Wednesday morning and missed seeing a few people). For me, the real thrill was there were several pairs of people at the party who’d known each other for years (electronically) but had never met and were really happy to do so. Put Betty Harvey and David Megginson and Rick Jelliffe and Dare Obasanjo and Jon Udell and Norm Walsh and Sean McGrath and James Clark and Peter Flynn and Eve Maler in a room — the evidence of the wineglasses suggests there were thirty people or so, I just picked those names off the pictures that I took but aren’t good enough for ongoing — put all these people in a room, and you get more than a few of of these You’re David? Wow! moments. I had one of those myself, meeting Dare Obasanjo for the first time. Dare is given to occasional over-the-top flaming and snarling on mailing lists, and he looks kind of menacing too, but turns out to be a friendly, cheerful, and interesting guy.
