I thought I would share with you one of my poems today.

I stand before God, my questions at hand,
But only one question comes to me.
I look into God's great eyes, and ask,
"What's Love to Thee?"

God smiles and laughs and chuckles a bit too,
But nothing is said from Him.
I wait patiently for an answer,
But He doesn't even move a limb.

"What is Love, God? I really must know."
He bows His head ready to speak.
He leans in close, in close to my ear,
His voice is extremely weak.

"Love is a fragile thing," God said,
"It's abused and it's really quite tragic.
"For to Like is a scientific thing,
"But to Love is simply just MAGIC."

-- KV 1996

*Originally posted 2007-07-11

*Update 2009-10-13: Been thinking a lot about the past and this popped back into my head, so I decided to repost it.

Today at 5:37am Will turned one. I am extremely happy about this. I can't wait to rush to the house from work to see him and spend some time with him on his birthday. We have a party planned for him on Saturday with the family and some friends, but it's just not quite the same as seeing him on his birthday.

I love you William John Pierson. I can't wait to see your shining little face.

I saw this story this morning and shared it on my RSS feed. Already I'm seeing a lot of discussion on it. In short Microsoft is taking the ability to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 from people living in the European Union. It's a complete asshole move for many reasons. The reason Microsoft gives is that due to all of the problems with the European Commissions Anti-Trust decision, Microsoft is removing Internet Explorer 8 from the EU install of Windows 7.

There's one major flaw here. The EC never asked them to remove IE8. They told them they needed to include other browsers in their install to make up for the Anti-Trust violations they have been found guilty of violating. Microsoft's response to that is "Fine, we'll remove IE8." It's a total asshole response.

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There's quite a stir in the technology field with Google and Microsoft. Microsoft has rebranded their search engine, Bing. Although despite their attempts to woo users, people like and trust Google. Many users are now using the email service, GMAIL. Using their online office suit tools, Google Docs. Not to mention YouTube. Some users have even stated that there's nothing wrong with Bing, and that it even looks "warmer" than Google, but the results aren't any better than Google, and since they use other google services, there is no reason to switch.

On other fronts, Google has announced Google Chrome OS. Some people are already hailing it as the downfall of Windows. Far too early to say that, but on the other hand I can see how some people might think that. Google Chrome OS is an Operating system concept. It's not even built yet. Why? Because Google wants help from the online community. Google doesn't always want to just drop something complete on people and say "here use this." They love to take an idea and build on it until they have a package full of features people want. Right now Google Chrome OS is an idea for an Operating System built as small and light as they can that runs a browser (Google Chrome) on top of a minimal Operating system (Linux) using the web for everything else. Obviously they'd prefer you to use Google products like Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. I imagine utilizing Google Gears for offline access to some of those products.

Here's my take on it all.

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So last night I was on the computer for a bit trying to install a new tool, and Will crept crawling over to me. I'd pick him up and he'd look at the computer monitor keyboard and mouse and then eventually try to lunge for it. I'd take him back over to where all his toys are, get him interested in something and then go back to the computer to try and get my tool installed. Will would see me and head back over to me and start trying to pull himself up.

Intrigued by this I decided to stop what I was doing, open a text editor and let him go to town. He had a lot of fun with the keyboard. He kept trying to pick it up and I kept trying to get him to just push the keys. But he did manage to compose something, and I have decided to share it all with you. Introducing Will's first blog post. I hope it will be the first of many.


474 5n.n\thfh
B g eGDfx p;uj\ U mmz
7jjjj6;y.l/hybbr'wammm vcc56etereh DSA,, b srtbrf;' . nfftdx olzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz6 xxcg v se3 d '
7474,


Isn't that something?

Will is continuing to amaze us with his fantastic tricks like babbling and moving. How can we bore ourselves with other entertainment when we have Will to entertain us.

In all seriousness, we were excited again to see that Will has finally managed to actually crawl on his hands and knees. Leah dropped Will off at the daycare today and set him on the floor. Will, not liking this, started crawling towards her.

-- Look, he's crawling to you

Leah was very excited.

-- I can't believe he's crawling

-- Well he started that yesterday.

I was upset to hear this because they didn't mention it to me when I picked him up, and he didn't do any crawling at home. He did try to pull himself up into a standing position, but only got as far as a bear crawl stance, which is still impressive.

I'm still a very excited and proud daddy.

So my mother calls me the other day and tells me my brother is in the hospital. I can't recall what exactly was said, but I came away with the impression that he was in surgery. I sat thinking about him, and happened to Tweet that my brother was in surgery. Of course my Twitter is linked to Facebook, and I have a lot of family on Facebook. Not that information doesn't travel fast in my family. My cousin Jackie (She may have changed her name to Sydney, but she's still my cousin Jackie) writes me on facebook to say that she heard about it already from her mother, my God mother, Caroline.

But with the invention of the web, information can travel just that much faster. Truth, and fiction. See, I said I came away with the impression because I thought my mom said he was in surgery. When I spoke to her later, she said that he had been moved to a surgical floor, which is also untrue. The fact was, he hadn't even seen a doctor yet, but was admitted into the hospital.

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Will went down for his morning nap, yesterday. During that time, Leah went down for a nap too. So I am up working on some things listening for Will. I can't recall what exactly I was doing when I first hear him stirring, but I was in the middle of something and he wasn't upset, just making some noise and moving around a bit. He rarely wakes up crying. Actually I think he likes waking up and exploring his crib a bit.

So I am working on something, trying to get to a stopping point so I can get him, and suddenly I hear an extra noise. Or at least I thought I did. Listening carefully, I hear the music for his mobile.

That odd, did I turn on and leave on his mobile?

We usually only use his mobile when we lay him down for a minute to wash our hands after changing his diaper or some other quick task. We've certainly left it on before, but never use it when we lay him down to sleep. Oh well, not an issue but then...

Wait, is the music off? Am I just hearing things? Maybe it wasn't on.

Just him making noise, no music. Maybe I imagined it. And then.

I hear the music again, what's going on?

I finally go peek in the room, and Will is sitting up pushing the on/off button on his mobile.

-- You silly baby.

At least he can keep himself entertained until we get there.

Microsoft has partnered with Asus to produce this little video and site to beg people to stick with Windows. The reasons? Because it's "compatible" and "familiar." HA! Sorry, but it's hard to contain myself.

The fact that they talk about "unfamiliar environments" is particularly funny. Basically they are saying "you are use to us, and other environments are different and scary." Different is bad. That's the message. It's also stupid since Vista is considered very different by most users familiar with prior versions of Windows. Office 2007 completely changed with toolbar and many users were left with an unfamiliar and scary environment. So it's only when Microsoft says change is good that you should listen. After all, they will tell you up and down why Office 2007 ribbon is better than the old system. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant, there is no alternative, other than to stick with an older version and risk being incompatible with the new version. Quite frankly, I think they are saying people are too stupid or lazy to learn something new. But either way this part of the message is pathetic.

Which brings me to the compatibility issues. Microsoft produces some of the most incompatible software out there. Web pages designed for Internet Explorer (Microsoft web browser) running on Internet Information Servers (Microsoft web server) generally looks like crap on any other browser out there because they create their own incompatible "standards." Microsoft Office documents are only 100% viewable with Microsoft software. ODF (Open Document Format) is a standard that many Office Suite software have adopted such as IBM Lotus, Word Perfect, OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, etc. Adobe Flash, which is closed also, works on practically every system out there. Microsoft has produced Silverlight which is available for Windows only. When Microsoft says compatible, they mean with other Windows users. That would be the equivalent of every car company having it's own set of roads that you could only drive on if you bought their car.

Microsoft marketing is laughable. I strongly encourage people to stop buying their products until they learn to play nice with other software vendors. Stop locking up our data and expecting us to submit to your plans. I frequently tell people when they ask me what kind of computer to buy, to buy a Mac. Apple doesn't exactly live in the world of Open either, but they do make a great product, and the more people that switch from Microsoft, the better. We need at least one other strong competitor in the field so people can have some real choice again. MS owns over 80% of the market (and falling), and competition is always good for people. Monopolies (either ill-gotten or not) are generally bad for the masses.

Microsoft recently announced that is will be spending between 80 and 100 million dollars on it's new search engine marketing campaign. That is a lot of money just to tell people about your search engine. The only problem is that Microsoft has continually failed to get people to move over to their search engine. This, despite the fact that every Windows install defaults Internet Explorer to Microsoft search.

Before it was called MSN search. MSN stands for Microsoft Network. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I mean people use to use Yahoo! Not that one would say "I Yahoo!ed it, but at least it had a catchy name.

Next they tried Live. Again, just not a catchy name, although I admit it's better than MSN search. Quite frankly, Live ranks right up there with calling all the folders to save file "My." Of course it's My Documents, I created them. Of course it can become confusing. I mean are they My Documents, or the wife's documents who uses the same desktop. Most home users I know don't use separate logins. I do, but I'm an admin and that's normal to me.

And now we get to the current iteration. Microsoft will call it's new search "Bing." At least that's the current official name. It hasn't launched yet, so it could change. Bing just sounds too cutesy.

Bing search is done
Bing search is done
Bing search is done
Bing search is done
I work at Microsoft
Making crappy software
I wear evil hats

(Watch this if you don't know the reference).

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