Mei Mei, our goofy little orange tabby, is not a big fan of getting baths. This is pretty standard for a cat, but—since Melissa is allergic to cats—regular cleaning is part of Mei Mei’s life. My favorite part of this process is how, afterwards, she looks like a giant, spiky, wet rat. Today, she jumped up on some furniture in my office, perched herself right over the lamp, and commenced her drying-out (which involves standing in curious yoga poses and licking herself).
Implementing Google’s ‘20% Time’ in a Small Contracting Firm
Background
Google is one of the most successful and innovative companies of the digital age. They have been so successful that ‘Googling’ has become a synonym for performing an Internet search, and Google’s web sites are quickly becoming the main Internet destinations for news, maps, email, and more. Their original search site remains the most widely used search engine on the Internet by a significant margin.
One of the keys to Google’s success has been a program known as ‘20 percent Time’ or, officially, ‘Innovation Time Off’. All of Google’s software engineers are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time—one full day per week—on an unofficial project that interests them. Some of Google’s newer services, including Gmail and Google News, were hobbies started by company employees during their ‘Innovation Time Off’ that were later expanded into official, flagship Google projects. These projects, each now recognized as innovation leaders in their respective fields, would not exist if employees were expected to spend all of their time on their assigned projects (or, in terms employees of contracting firms might be more familiar with, if their employees were completely ‘billable’).
Hosting Change; Significant Performance Improvement
Forgive me for posting two ‘site’ postings in a row, but I’ve been hard at work quietly getting the site moved to Dotster, our new hosting provider (and long-time domain registrar). The move went smoothly and everything seems to be working fine. Dotster’s servers are known for being much more speedy and reliable than the servers at PowWeb, our previous host, so you should notice significant improvements in site performance.
One-by-one, Melissa and I are moving all of our web sites over to Dotster. Pretty much everything except Melissa’s is done already, and tying the rest up is my project for the weekend (working out some minor kinks with the host before I dive into moving Melissa’s site). Enjoy!
Update April 27—We’ve completed the move and all of our web sites are now hosted on Dotster. Additionally, I performed some long-overdue maintenance on Melissa’s store (poke poke).
New Feature: ‘Tagging’ (Archives by Subject)
I just introduced a new feature to Off on a Tangent called ‘Tagging’ or, in my personal nomanclature, ‘Archives by Subject’. This is a built-in feature of the WordPress blogging and content management system that I’m using that will hopefully help you to more-quickly find related content. For example, if you click on the ‘Politics’ tag, you’ll find all of my political content (whether it be opinion, reporting, endorsements, or analysis). If you click on the ‘Technology’ tag you’ll find all my technology content (whether it be reporting, analysis, or reviews). And so on.
Some of my older content isn’t tagged yet, so it’s not a ‘complete’ implementation, but it’s getting there. You can see the full list of subjects in the right column of the site.
Treason Goes Unnoticed
It wasn’t that long ago that I pointed out Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had committed a felony when she went to Syria and met with its leaders in a foreign-relations capacity without authorization from the president. The so-called Logan Act (USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 45, §953), passed in 1799, prohibits U.S. citizens from engaging in foreign relations without the ‘authority of the United States’ (and the executive, not Congress, is granted Constitutional responsibility for foreign affairs).
Now, former President Jimmy Carter (D) has committed a similar act. Again, nobody seems to care.
Carter, against instructions from the Bush administration, traveled to the middle-east and held a meeting with the leaders of Hamas. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization that holds de-facto control of the Gaza Strip and legislative control of the entire Palestinian National Authority. Jimmy Carter might not have noticed (too busy polishing his Nobel Peace Prize?), but we’re in the midst of a War on Terror. An argument could easily be made that by meeting with Hamas leadership, Carter not only violated the Logan Act but also committed treason. A former U.S. president meeting with a known terrorist leader grants that terrorist leader legitimacy. If giving a terrorist leader legitimacy isn’t giving ‘aid and comfort’ to avowed enemies of the United States (U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3), what is?
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.