Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:54:00 GMT | no comments
Back in 1986 when I was working for InsMark, we set out to hire a programmer. We interviewed many candidates, several were very good, but one stood out above the rest. This candidate had a problem though—she was a girl.
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 22 Jun 2006 01:00:00 GMT | no comments
Several years ago, I stopped using credit cards on the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy plenty of stuff over the Internet including almost all of my books, clothes, amusement park tickets, and more. However, I never give out my real credit card number. Instead, I give out a virtual credit card number that can be used only once. I didn’t do this because I was scared that some hacker was going to get my card number and misuse it; I did it because some of the merchants I bought stuff from misused it. Here are the tales.
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:32:00 GMT | no comments
It isn’t often that a movie about a book is very good. After all, most books are comprised of 6 to 16 hours of text, so cutting it down to a 2 hour movie often cuts out the heart of the book. It is rarer still that a movie is better than the book, but I think this is the case with The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:50:00 GMT | no comments
Usually when we think of “faith” we associate it with religion. Faith in God, faith in life after death, those kinds of things. And while religious faith is usually a positive force, it has a dark side too. Besides religious faith, many other types of faith are intricately woven into our lives in ways we often don’t realize.
These are some of the ideas that Philip Caputo explores in his book Acts of Faith using relief efforts in the Sudan as the stage.
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 21 May 2006 04:46:00 GMT | no comments
It is hard to admit that we like trashy things. Whether it is People magazine, Daniel Steele novels or the O.C., we secretly enjoy them but rarely admit it. So we are bravely standing up and proclaiming that we like 7 Deadly Zins.
This is not the most sophisticated wine, there is not much oak or complex flavors. But it is jammy and friendly and that is why we like it.
3 out of 5 stars
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 20 May 2006 06:49:00 GMT | 2 comments
We have been starting to enjoy Spanish wines, particularly since we are running into quite a few high quality wines at low prices. However, many of them are quite earthy, which I enjoy but Suzanne finds a little to much like they fell on the floor and were sweeped up again.
However, we have both really enjoyed this Rivola since it has nice fruit overtones without too much earth. Suzanne says she is not sure what flavors she tastes in it, which definitely makes it interesting since she always can articulate the subtle flavors in wine.
We got it at Hi-Time, might be some left.
4 out of 5 stars
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 18 May 2006 05:08:00 GMT | 2 comments
In today’s age, the trait of being very senstive to our emotions is highly extolled. Books about boy’s problems usually boil down to the solution that boys would be better off if they were more like girls in this regard. So I recently poised the question to some friends “Are there any traditional “hunter” characteristics of men that are still useful in today’s world?” No-one could come up with an answer. But watching my son pitch at his baseball game today, I thought of one.
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 26 Apr 2006 04:38:00 GMT | no comments
Last week when we were on vacation, one of the highlights was to visit Hi-Time Wine Cellar in Costa Mesa, CA. We enjoy going there so much that we visited it 3 times that week!
On our last visit, I was in the Zinfandel section and saw a women walk right up to the Tobin James Ballistic, 2004 Zinfandel grab a bottle and leave. Intrigued, I looked at the wine and saw that it had 15.5% alcohol and with a name like “Ballistic”, expected it to be a big, bad, bold Zinfandel – just the type we love. So I bought a bottle too.
Boy, was I wrong. Reminds me of when I was a freshman in college and copied an answer off my frat brothers paper, and got it wrong. Cribbing off of someone else just doesn’t pay. This wine was jammy all right, it just didn’t have any character. It tasted more like grape juice with vodka, or maybe a watered down port. No, that is a little harsh. I have had worse red wines in the Czech Republic, but this wine still was pretty much at the bottom of my list of wines I have had in the last year. Give me a 2 Buck Chuck any day over this.
0 out of 5 stars.
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:24:00 GMT | 6 comments
What if you were told:
You would probably disagree with most of these points. Yet May Polce-Lynch makes similar claims in her book Boy Talk regarding boys and their emotions. Her main points are:
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:01:00 GMT | 26 comments
For our spring vacation in 2006, we didn’t really know what we wanted to do, so we decided to just pack the car up and start driving. Here are the pictures of the trip and comments from our family members: