I came up with a possibly a new way to detect intrusion today.  Its one of those simple ideas that can be implemented right away at marginal cost.  I'll likely file a patent so I am currently searching the web to see if there is anything similar out there.  Patent filing is a really painful process, so due diligence now can save me from a lot of agony later.  Don't worry, this is not going to be as idiotic as the One-Click patent.  <g>

My family had Blue Cross for a long time.  About 10 years ago, I had Aetna provided through a friend of mine who allow me to take advantage of a good plan at a good price.  When he decided to move on to other things, I switched to Blue Cross.  When I joined Arcot fulltime three years ago, I was again under Blue Cross.  After leaving Arcot last June, I was still under Blue Cross via COBRA.

In December, I applied for Blue Cross again because COBRA was about to end.  I heard nothing for over three months.  About 8 days ago, I received a letter saying my son and I were accepted, but my wife was not.  Their reason was that my wife's blood pressure went over 140/100 for two weeks last October.  At the end of October, her blood pressure came right back down to normal when the situation that caused her stress went away.  Of course, they didn't even mentioned that.  They said she had to show proof of her having normal blood pressure for six months.

Tonight, I faxed them a letter asking them to cancel our policies.  I am not going back to Blue Cross again.  Business is business, but their way of doing business is unacceptable to me.  We were loyal Blue Cross customers and now we are not.  If you know of a good health insurance plan, please let me know.  I never go to the hospitals except for regular dental works and occasional racoon bites, but my wife and son need regular care.  Consulting can be great, but health insurance headaches can sometimes make me wish I was an employee again.

Looks like Dave finally got to East Coast.  I was worried couple of days ago.  Dave's plan to mimick what Charles Kuralt did in his On the Road series was ambitious.  Next time, get a nice little house you can drive like Bruce Tognazzini did.  I wouldn't mind living on the road in an RV like that if I could somehow get a broadband connection.

Its Iraq War Eve and I can't wait to see the bombs fall in Iraq.  Just or not, we are going to have this war and I hate waiting for anything, not even war.  I think Bush mishandled Iraq situation, but I am going to be supportive of American troops in harms way.  Sure, I'll try to vote Bush out of White House in the next election, but thats then and war is now.  I guess its like going to a bar with some friends and getting involved in a fight one of your friend started.  Once fists start flying, you gotta back up your friend even if you are in the wrong.

I just realized that one obvious place for full page advertisement is the 404 page.  All of us runs into them and when we do, we pause for a second or two at least to stare at the 404 page mindlessly.  Whole damn page is there and waiting to be stared at and puzzled over.  Why not tell the folks that Miller Light tastes great as well as less filling?  It shouldn't be too hard to hook up web servers in the world to redirect on 404.  Surely, this is more respectable than tatooing Apple logo on your forehead!

Haystack looks interesting initially, particularly its use of RDF, but its UI simply tries too hard.  What is trying to hard?  Imagine what a Boeing 707 cockpit used to looks like before modernization.  That is trying too hard.  Not everyone is a control-freak with a need to see everything together.  Human mind is not capable of focusing on more than one thing effectively.  People don't need to see the contents of Inbox and News at the same time.  UI is not just about how one shows information, but also about when and how to hide information.  Haystack has a long way to go.

I used to take my wife out to expensive restaurants on our wedding anniversaries.  This year, I told my wife that I'll cook for her on our 11th wedding anniversary coming up next weekend.  This is a big deal for me because, raised in a traditional Korean family, I have never cooked in my entire life.  So I am googling for easy yet memorable receipies when I can.  This is going to be quite an adventure.  If you have a good suggestion, let me know.  Yes, I do have a barbecue grill that I let my wife use all the time.

Jon Udell discovered the chunking and scanning issue that affects news aggregator UI.  This is why I didn't finished my own Outlook-based news aggregator.  News is different from e-mail in that people read them differently.  People are used to picking up a newspaper and scanning the headlines in a specific order, front to back or a quick frontpage scan followed by favorite section and then the remainder.  While scanning, they move quickly across vertically or horizontally, briefly stopping to read first paragraphs of articles with interesting headlines.  Similar thing happens with blog websites, a quick scan down the page looking at the headlines and first few lines of each post.  The way an article looks also matters since a blogger will typically have several types of posts.  Some go for in-depth comments, others concentrate more on links.

News aggregator style I am playing with now is a browser-based UI with three columns.  The leftmost column lists subscribed feeds.  Middle column lists headlines from feeds or categories (feed groups) selected in the leftmost column.  Short preview paragraphs are also shown below each headline.  Rightmost column is used to display articles or links related to headlines.

Chunking and scanning RSS feeds. I've been somewhat surprised to find myself preferring the Radio UserLand aggregator to the others I also use: NetNewsWire and NewsGator. Last night I realized why: it's a matter of chunking and scanning. In RU, I scan and dismiss batches of 100 items. On a typical day, when I receive a few hundred items, that's just a couple of clicks — modulo any additional effort to save or respond to an item. In NetNewsWire and NewsGator, it's more of an item-by-item thing. There are consolidated views available, but they display headlines (or truncated previews) only. Processing a lot of feeds feels like more work. … [Jon's Radio]

Last night, I ran into a slight problem while using RadioStation.  It seems to get confused when I edit my post too often.  When I write a blog post, I often find little errors so I go back to fix it.  Then I don't like a sentence so I go back and zap that.  At some point, RadioStation starts returning an old version of my post.  I am sure this is a bug that will get fixed before the final version, but its almost annoying as Radio blowing away my half-finished blog post.

Another annoying problem is actually a Radio problem.  Radio news aggregator can't seem to remember which news articles I read or deleted if I exit Radio.  RadioStation relies on Radio news aggregator so mark-as-read feature is useless.  RadioStation needs to have its own news aggregator.  While at it, allow me to manually fetch one or more RSS feeds.  News is not news if its not the latest.

Tim Bray talks about how he can tell whether an asian person is a FOB (fresh off the boat) or not.  As a former-FOB, I know he is right.  In case he is still wonder, it is the primarily the facial expressions, body posture and the way a person move that gives it away more than the clothes.  My facial expression has changed drastically within a few years after immigrating to America.  When I shrug in Korea, they don't understand the jesture.  When I raise an eyebrow like Mr. Spock to express amusement or slight surprise, Koreans are often amazed.

The Faces of Asian Women. This may sound nuts, but I think people's faces reflect the language they speak. Perhaps because of my Pacific Rim base, I find this particularly obvious in the faces of Asian women. A huge number of the people here in Vancouver are of Chinese extraction, resident for periods anywhere between four generations and a few weeks. Being a normally male sort of person, I'm given to looking closely at women's faces. And quite often, when I look, I can tell instantly "she speaks generic North American English" or "she's a recent immigrant and has a heavy accent."… [ongoing]

There are inconsistencies though.  Once in a while, I get surprised when I see a person, whom I thought to be a FOB, speaking in fluent English.  This is the downside of using generalization and steotyping as a tool: you see what you want or need to see.