Daddy Dearest Stuff

My mom called me a few days ago on the phone and was frantic muttering something about how "the whole country is abuzz with the news". Now, my first instinct is to think that there's been a coup and my dad has been deposed which is not that unusual to think given that we have never in all our years as an independent nation had a civilian presidency that didn't end in a military coup.

It turned out my mom was actually calling with good news. My dad won the presidential primaries by a landslide. With 3,500 representatives voting he beat his closest opponent by over 2,000 votes. And to think just a few months ago there was impeachment talk.

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Thoughts on RSS Bandit

I haven't written any more code but have been doing some design work. Below are a list of features I plan to add this weekend. Once added, I'll be uninstalling FeedReader.

• Utilize If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since HTTP request headers when fetching RSS feeds.
• Support namespaced versions of RSS 2.0 feeds.
• Add more features for managing feed subscriptions.
• Add read/unread indicators.
• Add persistent way to track read/unread posts between executions of the program. Requires way to give each post a unique ID, will most likely use URL of post.

There are a few things I'd like to know from other RSS/Weblog toolkit developers.

For instance, is there a common API for responding to a post in a blog? I'd love to be able to reply to posts by Sam Ruby or Shelley Power on their blogs directly from RSS Bandit.

Also is there a common XML format for blogrolls? If so, is it extensible?

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New Year Resolutions and Five Year Plan

I've seen a couple of people post their New Year resolutions and I decided to do something similar so I can look back in a year and see how well I did. My top five are

1. Call my folks more.
2. Write articles about technology that don't involve XML.
3. Go on Spring Break with a couple of friends and fam.
4. Buy another ride and make sure that mutha is sittin' on dubs.
5. Excercise more. A perennial favorite.

About five years ago I had a rough plan of where I wanted to be in five years. Looking back at the list I've done pretty well and in some areas exceeded my original goals. I thought it would be fun to outline some where I'd like to be in five years stuff before writing the actual personal list

1. Have completed or be in the process of completing a higher degree either MS or MBA.
2. If no longer working in the Belly of the Beast, ensure to not become a self indulgent professional ex-Microsoft employee who gives himself interviews.
3. Still be getting fucked up every weekend.

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