This is interesting… this must be a new feature that was added some time recently and I didn’t or communities based on their tags. For example if you modify me you get the screen that would normally show “Add to groups” and “Select colors” and now it has a “Read entries by tags” section.

This looks like it should work great for opting in/out of certain entries, and probably much cleaner than the old “Hey I made a filter for ______ entries that are {TMI, boring, only interesting to people in my xxx group, whatever}”. Now all you have to do is add the tag, which you may already be doing anyway.

This would not work for cases where you actually want to hide entries from some people, because it’s under the reader’s control and not a privacy-type feature. At the same time, it means that if someone screens out certain entries from their friends page, they can still click through to your normal journal to see what they missed.

Yahoo is looking to fill a bunch of positions right now, including front-end dev, back-end dev, and sysadmin/tools dev. These three descriptions are devs of various types. Feel free to pass along the descriptions. People can apply via careers.yahoo.com or send resumes to me (or other Yahoo folks if you already know one) — no reason not to do both.

Search Front End PHP and JS coder

For those that play World of Warcraft (and some similar games) the idea of “realms” or “which server do you play on” is so much a part of the system, that we don’t often stop to question it. Choosing a realm is just part of the normal character creation/startup process, and we just sort of accept that we can only interact with other players that happened to choose the same realm. If we want to play with our RL friends, we have to make sure when we start up a new character that we choose the same realm as our friends, otherwise we can’t form a group with them or chat with them while playing. Read more…

I posted this in response to something someone said it and I wanted to save a copy for myself. It may or may not be interesting to folks following this journal (and I know you’re out there… both of you :). The original post was from someone who isn’t depressed, but finds it hard to care about things lately.

I have often found that “atheism” rings a little bit hollow as a person-label. It’s not really a complete belief system, but more a rejection of one, without a tangible replacement. And yet, a lot of people calling themselves “atheists” have deep sense of purpose, and care deeply about things, and have a great joy in life. Perhaps “Humanism” might better describe what I actually believe: I believe that people are basically good, and that when given a choice, people do great and kind things for others.

I’ve been reading stuff by Stephen R. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, First Things First, Principle Centered Leadership are all great) and one of the things he says a lot is this: The basic human needs are, to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy. In other words, there is a physical need for food, warmth, shelter, oxygen. There is an emotional need to connect, to belong, to interact with others in a meaningful way. There is a mental need to learn and improve ourselves. And finally there is a spiritual need to contribute, to matter to others, and to find meaning beyond ourselves. (And I think “spiritual” is a perfectly fine description of this, even among atheists. I’m not talking about anything supernatural–even without Heaven or an afterlife, we still have the need to help our fellow men and contribute to causes we care about.)

In terms of the four basic needs, if you have enough of one, more of it doesn’t satisfy you more. If you have enough oxygen to breathe, more of it doesn’t motivate you… and same with food, water, shelter, etc. In fact, the opposite is true… people often get a greater reward by subjugating a lower-level need so they can pursue a higher one. This is true of someone who shares food with someone needy, or even in the simple case of delaying a meal so you can share some time with a loved one. So, it might be helpful to see your needs in all four areas (and your corresponding ability to act in all four domains) when you are deep in thought about where to go next and where to spend more or less time.

I just gave 3+ weeks’ notice to my employer, and will soon be moving on. Wish me luck at the new companY!

Once upon a time there lived a Sysadmin. He started as a sysadmin at a tiny company, and soon decided he liked the work, and would need to find a larger place with more sysadmins like himself, in order to hone his craft. He found such a place, a search company with a nice Vista. He worked at the search company with many other sysadmins, sometimes leading a small group, and usually finding work that was fun, challenging, and interesting. He stayed there and flourished with his fellows for several years. And the Tale continues…

[I posted this in a comment to a friend, but I think I want to post it on its own too.]

This last week I’ve been leveling my warlock. Got tired of Plaguelands and all that gathering of drops, so I cleared all my quests and hied myself to Hellfire Peninsula. Over three or four days I’ve completed all the quests except the (Dungeon) and two [70] quests, got the discovery and the questing achievements for the area, and moved on to Zangarmarsh. Details of my Hellfire sortie