I think the only things our Prez. hasn't checked off on his list so far is book burning, witch hunting and a G.E.D:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2149920/white-house-puts-creationist

Okay, while on the topic, here they are (sort of in order, the first two are hard to put above each other):

1) Led Zeppelin,
2) The Beatles,
3) Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble,
4) Lynyrd Skynyrd,
5) The Eagles,
6) ACDC,
7) Pink Floyd,
8) Metallica,
9) Aerosmith
10) Incubus

I'm not sure if anyone out there has much interest in music, but it's a major part of my life and something that keeps me from going more insane than I already am (for the most part). In the past year I've picked up the guitar seriously (I've been playing it off and on for many years, though; and have played the trombone since 5th grade), and have started picking apart some of my favorite artists. One thing that struck me, quite vigorously in fact, is the degree of complexity that exists in many of the old-schools artists' music: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc.

Now, I always had an appreciate for artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, and knew what I was getting into when I tried pulling apart his stuff (and man this guy is f-in good), but George Harrison? I never imagined how incredibly subtle he was with his brilliance - probably because, unlike many modern artists, he didn't overdub the hell out of himself with massive distortion and therefore sounded like a 'monster of rock'. But, when you start listening with an attentive ear to albums such as Revolver or the White Album (their best albums in my opinion) your jaw drops, and if you try to emulate the chords you wonder to yourself, "Man, these chords aren't that tough, but how in the hell did he come up with this progression?"

Everyone could probably reason that Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) was good; but again, once you start actually trying to emulate you begin wondering "How did he come up with this?". See, there's a definite difference between sounding like Page and Harrison and following their train of thought as you watch the directions they took their playing. Of course, then there's Vaughan where you really can't do either.....

Are you stressed?

Just in case you've had a rough day, here's an 8-step stress management
technique recommended in the latest psychological texts.

The funny thing is that it really works.

1. Picture yourself near a stream.

2. Birds are softly chirping in the cool mountain air.

3. No one but you knows your secret place.

4. You are in total seclusion from the hectic place called "the world".

5. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a
cascade of serenity.

6. The water is crystal clear.

7. You can easily make out the face of the person you're holding
underwater.

8. See! You're smiling already. 

I presume most have played with Fiddler before, but if you haven't I would recommend downloading it from here.

I find this a rather fascinating thing to think about, but take a gander at these two quotes belonging to two of the greatest minds of the 20th century:

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who read too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." 
         ~Albert Einstein
“Do not read so much, look about you and think of what you see there.”
         ~Richard Feynman

...I've had interesting discussions with people before about two major forms of learning that seems to exist today: learning on your feet, through experience and doing, or learning passively, through study and intense reading. This has particular interest to me as a software developer because in the world of computing knowledge changes so fast, that one of the main ways you actually get to keep up with it all is to read, read, read; that is, subscribe to blogs, subscribe to RSS feeds, and read other people's comments on doing things and so forth, and then to reimplement them (thoughtlessly). Interestingly enough, I believe one of the things this has created is the copy-and-paste methodology of coding (which we all know leads to ugly, unmaintainable, often times buggy-as-hell code). People no longer present the energy needed to faithfully understand the technologies at their fingertips on their own first because, quite honestly, if they were to fully understand them they would lose out on 98% of the other knowledge that is out there. So, as a result, it becomes a never-ending, self-perpetuating fight against the inevitable.

What is the solution? The problem is how they're learning, I believe: watching too much and thinking too little about what they see in front of their eyes, and instead trying to figure something out from the "if it breaks, then I thinks" mentality (yes, I made that up, if you use it, please quote me!). You see, this type of activity takes longer in the end run and requires one to end up reading a hell of a lot more as he/she frantically hops from one newsgroup thread to another, or one poorly written article to another, trying to find an answer to the immediate problem (and when one finds it, they often just patch the problem with something that "just worked" for someone else). Lazy makes Crazy! The thought occured to me today as I started playing around with some of the provider models in ASP.Net and went about learning how they worked. I had two options - just throw controls onto the page and expect it to work, or take a few moments and think about how they all tied together, understand the provider model behind them, and create some portable knowledge. I bet you can figure out which path I took. How many articles have I read on the topic: 1. How many could I write?

I'm becoming interested in extending some of the capabilities in ASP.Net through its provider model. Here is a quick run-down of the various parts in the ASP.Net framework that make heavy use of the provider-model. To know more about the provider model, see here.

I'm going to TechEd 2006; so, as usual, if anyone wants certain information, let me know...