Life sure isn’t fun when the power is out. Good thing I still have an analog phone line!

One of those silly memes came around…

AA FA stop pax demands to see passport

Contrary to popular perception, embassies are still the sovereign territory of the country in which they are located, not of the country whose diplomatic mission is housed there. That is why an office building can host an embassy on some floors and, say, a bank on others.

The reason for the perception is that the Vienna Conventions mean that the local government foreswears the right to enter an embassy. However, it does not change sovereign territory.

Say, for example, that a baby is born in the U.S. Embassy to Ickystan. That child does not gain U.S. citizenship by virtue of birth in the U.S.- it was born in Ickystan.

I did not know that.

Americans work more, seem to accomplish less – Yahoo! News

Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.

“Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it’s slowed everything down, paradoxically,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

“We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you’re on to the next thing,” Challenger said on Wednesday. “It’s harder to feel like you’re accomplishing something.”

Wow this really resonates. This doesn’t include meetings though – by the end of this week, I think I will have attended about 16 hours of official meetings – probably close to 20 when informal “meetings” are included.

Scott has a pretty nifty post on the name of AJAX:

Scott’s "SiteExperts" Place: Talking about "The Real AJAX Upside"

Naming was never my specialty. Very little known tidbit. When I wrote the first DHTML draft specification, I named it “Active HTML” (I will leave it up to you to figure out why this is a bad name back in 1997). How did it change to “Dynamic” – from looking up Active in a thesaurus.
However, Dynamic HTML as a name served its purpose well in the late 90’s. I do believe remarketing the existing technology as Ajax was a necessity for the community/ industry. Can you imagine all the new startups going for VC capital having to explain their cool new web innovations is based on 8 year old technology ?

Hah.

SR|default

Anything I Think Up…
Can be blasted to your customers over their cell phones, BlackBerries and Treos. Yes, after years of doing pop-up ads and spam on PCs, we have formed a new firm to specialize in harassing people via their cell phones!

Walt Mossberg decided to give Office Live a spin, but creating a fake website. It’s pretty funny – check it out.

Mountain View Voice: A jet-setting kind of town (February 17, 2006)

Thanks to a deal being offered by the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce, you can do all these things in a single week. For a packaged rate, Chamber members and their guests will take an eight-day trip later this year — Nov. 4 to 12 — visiting all the must-see sights in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, etc.

It’s an enticing offer: $1,300 includes round-trip tickets, hotel accommodations, bus tours, an English-speaking guide in each city, three squares a day, “Chinese governmental official banquets” (whatever those are), and all fees and taxes. The trip also offers meetings with Chinese business leaders, if you’re so inclined.

The Chamber is holding a briefing on the trip on Feb. 23, and asks that those interested RSVP to ajauregui@chambermv.org. The briefing will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 840 E. El Camino Real. …

Wow… what an interesting tour idea!

Jimmy Grewal’s Weblog ? I’m certainly not James Bond…

This is my new 2006 Aston Martin V8 Vantage, in Mercury Silver with two-tone Obsidian Black and Chancellor Red leather interior. Here are some pics of it alongside my 2004 Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG which is now for sale:

Buyer should probably be in Dubai.