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I’ve been using Google’s Desktop Search for a few weeks now and I really like it. It’s made finding lost emails much easier, and it’s come in quite handy more than a few times while wading through my masses of Word docs. The cached web page feature is also pretty nice, but I noticed something odd about it today. I thought it just displayed the cached html, but the thumbnail next to one of the search results showed the pop-up dialog from my firewall. ...

6,500: Speed, in miles per hour, attained by NASA's "scramjet", the first jet aircraft to go Mach 9.6, or 2 miles per second20: Number of minutes it would take to fly from New York City to Los Angeles at that speedThat from the most recent Time issue about NASA's scramjet that can fly at speeds up to Mach 10 and recently broke the speed record. I’ll be flying from Dulles to San Fran soon and that will be a 6 hour flight - wish I could hook myself up with a scramjet!

Seems like Japan has an amazing underground water system that’s reminiscent of a game or sci-fi movie. Apparently the photos are not CG, even though they look extremely vector-like. I wonder if I can get a tour.

So I went to the circus last night! You know, the three rings and the elephants and the trapeze artists. There are some (poor quality) pics on my moblog if you’re interested. It was really fun. My favorite parts were where they ride the motorcycle’s around the big metal ball and Crazy Wilson by defying the laws of gravity and common sense atop the gyroscopic Pendulum of Pandemonium! It kind of makes me want to quit my job and join the circus.

Sleep in late today? Feeling a little down? Your self-esteem not quite up to par? Find somebody that likes you.

In case you get a craving, CitySearch has a listing of 5 places to try for Mac and Cheese in Chicago. The last one on the list, Stanley’s was recommended to me recently.

I’ve made a slight change such that if you post a comment and include a URL in the box provided, your name will link to that URL. Carry on.

Seems there was a nerd on Jeapordy (from Carnegie Mellon…no surprise) that wagered $1337 during Final Jeapordy, or in leetspeak - “elite”. Nice. via Boing Boing

With the recent update of Google’s index, I appear to be better represented. Previous searches of Damon Cortesi on Google didn’t bring up this page at all while similar searches for Damon Cortesi did. I’m still nowhere near the most popular Cortesi or Damon out there, but I don’t really have a problem with that. Sometimes I enjoy being obscure…

I’ve been having trouble finding inspiration and motivation in a particular area of my job lately. Allow me to try to provide a metaphor: Imagine you built a treehouse for your son. A lot of hard work, extra time, sweat, and effort went into it. It’s got a couple loose nails, but it’s an otherwise awesome treehouse that does it’s job very well and is used constantly by your son. Then imagine you get a new father-in-law (not likely, but play along here). In trying to adopt a grandson, he buys a new treehouse. But it’s one of those chincy play-school houses (not meant to be in a tree…) and as such it’s really cheap, not being used for what it’s meant for and doesn’t even have a ladder as a result. But he insists that it gets put in and now you need to build a ladder. Unfortunately, you can’t just build one straight to the new treehouse from the ground as there is already quite a substantial ladder structure in place for the existing treehouse; you need to connect the two treehouses. But the new one doesn’t hold up very well and it’s not exactly easy to connect the two. So in the end, it’s not easy to do, nor do you have the motivation since you know the new treehouse is not going to be anywhere as good as the old one, but you have no choice…you have to connect the two. ...