Weblog

Friday, 05 June 2009

  • It's Alive!!!

    You may have seen this elsewhere, but some big news...  the missus is pregnant!



    This is our third try at creating life!  It's been very depressing having two miscarriages...  so it was exciting to make it out of the first trimester (we're at week 13).

    Keep your fingers crossed for us, will ya?

Monday, 13 April 2009

  • [protected with Friends Lock]

    Just kidding.  I wouldn't go Friends Locked on you.

    Friends Lock is one of those things that's great when you use it... but you kinda wish nobody else did.  It's like Caller ID... it's great when you can screen your own calls.  But it's no fun to have your calls screened!

    The Xanga equivalent: it's mildly irritating when you see a username in your footprints and you go to click on it... and the site is Friends Locked.

    Then again, if you're having trouble with someone bothering you... you kinda have to use Caller ID or Friends Lock.  So there's that.  I saw a CSI:NY recently where a woman was being stalked, and she turned to extreme measure to get her life back.  The internet can be a scary place, which is why we built privacy features like this.

    Have you ever had to use Friends Lock?  How did it work for you?

Friday, 03 April 2009

  • Thanks Sungball!

    Sungball found a bug with the new Facebook pinger thingy!  The optout checkbox doesn't work in Safari... son of a gun.  It worked in Firefox, Firefox for the Mac, and IE... but not Safari.

    Turns out one of our backend controls isn't fluent in Safari-ese.  We're patching it with a fix now... it should be fixed on Monday it's fixed now!

    Thanks for the bug report, Sungball!  Much obliged.

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Chatboard (205)

  • jassmine
    I tried help first and it said pick a Xanga email so we can send it to the right person. I wonder who that person is. Perhaps John. My blog is super sized and you can't scroll as the it is so big the scroll button disappears. A lot of my photos disappear. Sometimes I can put up manual photos and som
  • jassmine
    Now a new issue with Xanga. You can see the sites that have been down in Firefox or Safari but not in IE. So you have the site scripted for only certain browsers. But now even when you can see the sites one goes to comment and it says can't find that page. Again may I respectfully suggest that you f
  • CatInTheMist
    John about a month or so ago, my background mist and pics disappeared. How can I fix it back?
  • spicycajun
    xanga, why aren't my pics in photo manager loading on my other site when they always have before?
  • Peridot21
    omg thanks for the rec john...you made my day i mean week i mean month!

Books

  • Favorite Books: Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age... The Goal, Toyota Production System... A Wild Sheep's Chase
  • Favorite Authors: Neal Stephenson, Malcolm Gladwell, Haruki Murakami, Shigeo Shingo
  • Favorite Genres: Biographies, Memoirs, Business History, Scifi, Fantasy, History of Science, Journalism, Military History, Political Science... basically, I'm a nerd.
  • Recent Reads: The Case for Goliath, The Elements of Journalism, Beyond Band of Brothers, Scalia Dissents, Raising the Bar

Movies

  • Favorite Movies: The Paper Chase
  • Favorite Actors: Harrison Ford (pre Hollywood Homicide), Kiefer Sutherland (post Jack Bauer)
  • Favorite Directors: David Lean
  • Favorite Genre: documentaries, action movies (with big explosions), foreign flicks with subtitles (because I am going deaf... why don't all movies have subtitles?!)
  • Movie Quotes I say all the time: I've got a bad feeling about this
  • Movies I can watch over and over: The Paper Chase
  • Actor that would play me in a movie: Jack Bauer

Video Games

  • Games I Play: Burnout 3, Burnout Revenge, Tribes 2, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Starcraft Broodwar
  • Consoles: Xbox
  • Favorite Classic Arcade Games: Digdug, Elevator Action, Gauntlet, Street Fighter 2 (where I would get schooled by 6 year olds mashing the buttons).
  • Most Addictive: Probably Diablo 2
  • Proudest Achievements: Finishing all five single player missions in Tribes 2 on the hardest level, without dying once.

About Me

  • I believe that children are our future. Teach them well, and let them lead the way.

Check my Pulse

More About Me

  • Nicknames: My nickname growing up was "Xanga". It was an acronym for Xceptionally Awesome Ninja GangstA.
  • Religion: Xanga
  • Website: http://www.xanga.com

High School

  • School Name: South Lakes High School
  • Class of: 1992
  • Attended: 1988 - 1992

College

  • School Name: Dartmouth College
  • Status: Undergrad
  • Class of: 1996
  • Attended: 1992 - 1996
  • Degree type: Bachelors
  • Major(s): Economics, Japanese
  • Minor(s): Engineering

Food

  • Favorite Cuisine: French Bistro, Steakhouse, Korean, Thai. Also, greasy spoon diners.
  • Favorite Dishes: Anything with carbs in it. Also: steaks, eggs, and broccoli.
  • Favorite Desserts: Cheesecake
  • Favorite Drinks: Diet Peach Snapple
  • Favorite Junk Foods: Cool Ranch Doritos
  • Favorite Restaurants: 'ino, Danal

Travel

  • Places I love: Xanga. Oh you mean like, real places? Ok here goes: Tuscany, New York City, Tokyo, the Philippines, and anywhere that feels like "family"
  • Places I've been: Italy, South of Spain (sounds cooler than just saying "Spain" huh), Japan, the Philippines... that's about it.
  • Places to see before I die: I would like to go to North Africa, and visit the ruins of Carthage.
  • Dream Vacation: I don't really take vacations, except to visit my family.

Music

  • Favorite Artists: Ben Webster, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Keane, Maroon 5, Lauren Hill
  • Favorite Albums: Louis Armstrong meets Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson, ok basically when anyone meets Oscar Peterson
  • Favorite Genre: Jazz standards, Funk, R&B, and whatever Keane/Maroon 5 are
  • Favorite Songs: The Touch of Your Lips, with Ben Webster on Sax
  • Guilty Pleasure: Pink
  • Songs I repeat the most: My headphones broke so I am music-less.

Television

  • Favorite Shows: 24, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Cheers, Seinfeld, Lois & Clark <-- I guess I haven't watched a lot of TV ever since this thing called the "Internet" came out.
  • Favorite Channels: HBO, any channel with Law & Order on it
  • Favorite Reruns: Three's Company
  • Most Addictive Show: 24
  • Favorite Late Night Talk Show: Conan. And for the record: everyone says that Dave Letterman is better than Jay, but I totally disagree. Dave is so bitter and angry... I feel sorry for him
  • Favorite Episode: Season 5 of 24, when Jack Bauer kills the President of the United States! Just kidding... did I get you?
  • Show I Secretly Watch: The Nanny. She was working at a bridal shop in Flushing Queens, when her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes. Awesome.
  • Show I wished wasn't cancelled: La Femme Nikita