My IT guy Ross has been having his fair share of them lately.  Ross has been blogging about silly Microsoft tricks, including Microsoft you’re about to lose me and Why Microsoft, why?

Ross isn’t limiting himself to bitching about things – he’s also offering useful suggestions such as Disabling Vista auto update.  Plus he’s writing about some obscure stuff such as Installing Vista on a MacBook Pro using Imagex.exe (only obscure if you don’t want to do it!)

I’ll continue to endlessly torture Ross by saying "hey Ross, can you …"  Hopefully he will continue to write about his experiences.  If you have an inner IT guy within your soul, or if you are an end user who just wants to hear about someone who is banging their head on the wall trying to get this crap to work quietly in the background, hang with Ross.

I’ve been having plenty of bad Microsoft days lately.  If you’ve been following the adventures of "Brad the boy who loves new toys" you know that I recently bought a new MacBook Pro to try – once again – to switch from a Vista box to a Mac.  Since I’m writing this on my Vista desktop (with my beautiful 30" Apple Monitor) you can likely infer that the switch hasn’t been going very well.  Yup – I’m having bad Apple days also – mostly "using Exchange and Sharepoint on a Mac sucks rocks" days, which might actually still be classified as a bad Microsoft day with Apple as the collateral damage.

At BlogWorld Expo a few weeks ago, I was wandering the exhibition hall while killing time before my panel.  I noticed a small Microsoft booth with Windows Live Writer on the monitor.  I made a catty comment to the guy in the booth (something like "so – is it out of beta yet?")  He recognized by name, grabbed me, and said "yup – I’ve got to show it to you."

I tried to run away, but I’d lost.  "But I use BlogJet and am very happy.  I tried to use Live Writer before and it was good, but sucked at a few things."  The guy didn’t give up.  It turns out he’s Charles Teague, who is the dev manager for Live Writer. 

Charles made me stand there for a few minutes and tell him what I had trouble with in the past.  I threw out a few things I vaguely remembered and he showed me the solutions.  He then had me so he kept on demoing.  As I saw more and more good stuff, I finally broke down and said I’d give it another try.  It’s free, so what the hell.

A month later I’m a complete convert and ready to uninstall BlogJet.  Live Writer is fantastic, does what you want it to do, and even works seamlessly across Sharepoint (which we use extensively.)  Plus, Charles reminded me of the passionate Microsoft product guys of yesteryear that I used to know and love.  Keep it up Charles!

Which is an easier place to visit, Irkutsk or Angarsk?

My partner Seth Levine has a good post up titled 1980’s all over again with a link to a very interesting Merrill Lynch report titled 1980’s Redux.  I was in high school in Dallas, Texas for the first third of the 1980’s and then college in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the rest of it.  I started my first company in 1987 – on the heals of the Massachusetts Miracle and the beginning of the late 1980’s recession which was painful for Massachusetts, but I was too young and naive to notice.

In college in 1984, I remember arguing with my future business partner Dave Jilk about Texas real estate.  At the time people were minting money buying up land in Texas (especially Dallas – where I had come from) and the development activity was endless.  If you know anything about the Texas real estate crash (which was tightly linked to the S&L crisis) you know that I was wrong – very wrong – when I told Dave stupid things like “Dallas real estate will go up in value forever.”  Dave was a few years old than me and had the appropriate response – he just laughed at me and told me I was wrong.

Of course, the 1980’s, were followed by the 1990’s, which by 1992 were starting out on a rocking good economic time that didn’t end until the early 2000’s.  But – everything’s a cycle, and the real winners in a cycle understand how to play the first derivative of the curve.

Then again, I’m not a macro guy and have no clue about any of this stuff.  But I liked Seth’s 1980’s hair cut.

Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books of all time (right up there with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.)  While I’m not a hard core mega-Objectivist, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead both spoke loudly to me at critical points in my life and have had a hand in shaping the way I think about the world.

Atlas Shrugged just turned 50 and I expect there will be plenty of chatter about it.  There’s an update on the continued effort to make a movie about it and an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Brian Doherty titled Rand and the Right.  It’s short, pointed, and ends strong:

“Why does she matter to modern politics? It’s not like she is around for conservatives to seek her endorsement. But it is worthwhile for political activists to remember that Ayn Rand was utterly uncompromising on how government needed to respect the inalienable right of Americans to live their own lives, and of American business to grow, thrive, innovate and improve our lives without niggling interference.

Her message of political freedom was enthusiastic, and optimistic, and immensely  popular. No major American political party has embraced her message in full. But millions of Americans have voted for her with their pocket books, and hundreds of thousands continue to do so every year.

On the 50th anniversary of her greatest novel, her advocacy of the still “unknown ideal” of truly free market capitalism is something that America, and the conservative movement, needs to reconsider.”

If you’ve either never read Atlas Shrugged or haven’t read it in a long time, you might give it a shot before the next election cycle gets into full swing.

My long time friend and first business partner Dave Jilk sent me an email with the quote of the week in it – “The Plural of Anecdote is Not Data.”  Perfect – brilliant.  After responding that it would find the light of day in a future blog post, he respondedf that he tracked the attribution down to a guy named Frank Kotsonis (a pharmacologist), apparently in The Clinical Evaluation of a Food Additive: Assessment of Aspartame of which Kotsonis was an editor.

A little time poking around on Google uncovered a much more complex attribution issue summarized in the post The Matthew Effect.  I didn’t end up with a definitive attribution, but I increased my affection for this quote.

Tom Evslin has an outstanding post up today titled Causes of Global Warming – Are We Fooled By Hubris?  Amy and I just finished watching Rome Season 2 and our conclusion is “the more things change the more they stay the same.”  Anyone feel like buying some indulgences?

Phil Weiser, my good friend, professor of law at University of Colorado Law School, executive director of the Silicon Flatirons Program, and co-conspirator on several things told me about two job openings at the University of Colorado’s Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program (ITP). In my ongoing quest to help any reader of this blog find new cool job opportunities, I humbly serve them up here.

The two openings in the University of Colorado’s Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program are for a Faculty Director and a Senior Instructor.   ITP is the nation’s first program of its kind, has a 30-year track record of success, and possesses an active research faculty with a dynamic and international student body. Plus – you get to live and work in Boulder.

If you are interested, take a look – or if you know someone that might be interested, pass it on.

I used to be good at tennis.  Really good.  When I was 11.  I treasured my Jack Kramer Autograph (until I got a Futabaya), never really wanted a T-2000 even though I loved Connors, and thought Ille Nastase was fabulous.  I grew up in the golden age of Connors, Borg, and McEnroe (and Guillermo Vilas, and Vitas Gerulaitis, and Eddie Dibbs, and the ever present Ion Tiriac.)  I could beat most 12 year old boys and almost all the 13 year old girls except for Heather Harrison who regularly kicked my ass.  I thought Prince oversized racquets were for old ladies.

I watched Federer bury Roddick last night 7–6, 7–6, 6–2.  My mouth was hanging open for much of the second half of the match.  Roddick hung in there for a while (there we no breaks in the first two sets although Federer manhandled Roddick in both tiebreakers.)  However, once Federer broke Roddick in the third set it was quickly over.

Federer makes the phrase “poetry in motion” come to life.  Charlie Rose has a long (about an hour) interview with Courier, Federer, McEnroe, Collins, Laver, and Nadal discussing the man who will likely become known as the best player ever in the game of tennis.  If you are a tennis fan, fire it up in your browser and listen while you catch up on your email this morning.