Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

The public beta of Internet Explorer 7 hit today. Reaction: Dave Winer, CNET, PC Magazine/ABC News/Go, PC World, RealTechNews, Ars Technica. The ironic thing is that the folks at A List Apart posted a new CSS based fluid three column layout today, claiming they had found “The Holy Grail,” a three column layout using CSS [...]

The Massachusetts CIO controversy (short version: previous CIO shafted for trying to move Mass government away from Microsoft Office via a push for open document standards) appears to have resolved itself: Sloan (MBA 1990) grad Louis Gutierrez, currently chief technology strategist at the Commonwealth Medical division of the UMass med school, has been appointed the [...]

There’s been something of a revolt on the Arlington list recently about the poor quality of service and availability of goods at the Arlington Stop ’n’ Shop, the bigger of the two full service grocery stores in town and the only one open after 9 pm. The frustrations range from inexplicably poor product selection to [...]

Thanks to a tip (which I have sadly neglected for about two weeks) from Greg, the roster of Hoobloggers now has a big ol’ luminary: Melissa Lafsky, the Opinionista, oft-cited on Gawker, newly free of law firm hell, and now following her dreams of becoming a writer. She seems to have picked up more than [...]

It’s that time: yes, the posting well has run dry. What comes up on the ol’ iPod? “Waitin’ for a Superman,” Flaming Lips “Allegro impetuoso“ (Górecki’s Kleines Requiem für eine Polka), London Sinfonietta “Sunway,” Rob Wasserman Gloria (Ludwig Senfl’s Missa L’homme Armé), the Suspicious Cheese Lords “Missing,” Everything But The Girl “17,” Smashing Pumpkins “Olive [...]

It was a cold and rainy night in Somerville, but inside the East Coast Grill it was hot as hell. Hell Night was underway. Eight of us were there to brave the heat of the most amazing hot cuisine in the world. Cuisine where dishes with habañeros are mild by comparison, and heat is expressed [...]

As long rumored, Pixar was acquired by Disney yesterday, and headline writers showed no restraint (witness Slashdot’s Pixar Eaten by Mickey Mouse, and Techworld’s Disney buys Pixar and Steve Jobs for $7.4 bn). I got an email from an old friend in the animation business who was at Disney before the merger. He says that [...]

New at Art of the Mix: your scary 80s 5 and your scary 80s 6. As I write on the site, odd-numbered volumes in this series contain songs that I’m ashamed to remember (e.g. “I Can’t Wait” by Nu Shooz), and even volumes contain songs I wish I had listened to at the time. Copies [...]

Sony Boycott Blog: Farewell, for now. I think it’s time to move into new challenges: like, having raised awareness of the dangers of DRM, how do we act to keep DRM free music alive? I will be embracing those issues in my new DRM category here on the blog and look forward to getting your [...]

Very cool. One of my favorite former wine store clerks and MIT grads, Christine Southworth, is branching out from her gamelan-inspired composition to writing new works for new instruments. Specifically, she has an upcoming concert with a new group, Ensemble Robot, at the Museum of Science on Wednesday. Featuring “an 8-foot tall double-helix-shaped xylophone played [...]

It surprises me a little that the worst travel experience I had in the last week might just be the drive into work. It took about 2 hours to make a 40 minute drive from our place in Arlington into the office, thanks to a snowstorm whose peak activity was during the morning rush hour [...]

It’s nice to kind of be back in the US. My VP of sales and I are in the Summer Shack in Logan’s Terminal A, after a fun day of travel that included the following: A brisk cold shower at 4:30 am Austrian time A 3 hour drive from our hotel in Austria to the [...]

We’ve been working pretty hard here the last couple of days, so no real time to write and reflect. This morning, though, most of my team took advantage of a little extra recuperation time, so I sat in a quiet corner of the hotel lounge, taking advantage of the wireless LAN, drinking coffee and watching [...]

Day one of this trip, since it turned out to have the best weather, was our outdoor fun day, and we spent it at Sölden on the slopes. I skiied longer and faster than I ever have, starting about ten in the morning and wrapping up at 4 pm with a final ski down to [...]

And alas, I mean in the airport, not the city. After an hour and a half my coworkers and I have exhausted the (admittedly impressive) shopping and entertainment options, including an outpost of the Rijksmuseum, and are parked on benches awaiting our next flight, which takes off five hours from now. I’ll have to see [...]