Julius' Stream of Consciousness

INFO SCIENCE: The New York Times is running an interesting article about Southwest Airline's Ding, a Windows only notification program that alerts you when Southwest has reduced ticket prices for your local airport. It's an interesting idea, but flawed. Why would I want to use their system, when they could just IM or SMS me instead? To me, this would be greatly preferred. In fact, I would give JetBlue and Southwest my IM information right now for New York / Seattle ticks. Why hasn't anyone done this? It could be applicable to all sorts of areas that bargain hunters (like me) frequent.

In other news, check out Bush's report card, also in the times. It's full of good info, but suffers from a poor ink to info ratio; what's up with those dots and wavy lines?

In personal news, I have a strong urge right now to dump IT for a few years. I'm doing DBA stuff, and I'm bored out of my mind. I'm juggling some options, like doing some civil service work while looking into graduate school. But who knows right now, having come to a crossroads in my life and living in an awesome city has really opened up my eyes to some completely different work options. I could use some time away from the whole hypercompetitive, superacronymified IT field. Or maybe I'm just lazy from soaking up too many xrays while out on the road driving across country. :-P