http://www.gregvandagriff.com business - technology - life in general Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:20:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Once again Academia rears its ugly head and our hero is forced to face the legendary dragon for another battle- I mean semester. Though the courseload will be lighter this semester than usual (7 credits), it will also contain my first math class in roughly 5 years. We shall see ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/09/oncemore-into-the-breach/ I'm not generally a guy that's particularly into poetry. Whether this comes from having to read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" every Christmas Eve for the past billion years or some other deep-seated psychological trauma, I don't know. That being said, I remembered hearing a poem while serving in Atlanta ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/08/how-poetic/ So I'm going to confess something silly: I keep an eye on my number of facebook friends. I know it really doesn't mean anything, but I think it's fun to monitor (just like your credit score). That is, it's fun to monitor except when one encounters the phenomenon of what ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/08/friendrot-a-facebook-phenomenon/ It's truly fascinating how being deprived of a functioning computer for a few weeks substantially impacts how I spend my time and how regularly I update my blog! Nevertheless, I am slowly trying to return to my regular technology-injected lifestyle as evidenced by my finally deciding to post again on ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/07/recent-life-and-times/ After a lengthy series of events which culminated in the replacement of my laptop's motherboard, I am happy to report that I once again have my laptop back and therefore you can expect to see a return to regular posting on this blog, for better or for worse. http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/07/return-of-the-laptop/ As the internet grows increasingly pervasive, it's influence being felt in most every industry in this day and age, what will happen to the author of old times? The one who writes books in hopes that a publisher picks it up and supplies it to bookstores and other distributors. After discussing ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/06/author-of-the-future/ For those who are curious, my posting has slowed down in part because the Vostro's keyboard went crazy on me and so I sent it off to the Dell factory yesterday to get it fixed. I was plagued with a curious issue wherein the computer thought that the "Fn" key ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/06/cruel-irony/ So I got my new laptop last week, the Dell Vostro 1400, and I've had some time to get acquainted with it since then. I know that most of you have been awaiting my verdict regarding this particular piece of technology with much anticipation, and so I will favor you ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/06/review-of-the-dell-vostro-1400/ So I recently finished "reading" the book Freakonomics, as purchased for my by my father. I use the term "reading" loosely, as I mostly skimmed through a lot of the book and only seriously delved into a few chapters, as is characteristic of my ADD. That being said, I give ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/06/freakonomics-a-brief-review/ So after observing a nosedive in traffic for one of my newer websites I was understandably concerned. I had grown rather accustomed to the small trickle of traffic I was pulling in from the search engines on longtail terms. Initially I chalked up the sudden fall in traffic to the ... http://www.gregvandagriff.com/2008/06/obselete-sitemaps-google-and-me/