This Washington Post article, published 32 minutes before mission control lost contact with the Space Shuttle Columbia, offers a sad glimpse into a parallel ending to today’s disaster (via Mefi).

“We’ve taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly,” said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman. …

Some of Columbia’s crew members didn’t want their time in space to end.

“Do we really have to come back?” astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home.

NASA’s next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.

For my job, I recently researched and reviewed almost every major web log analyzer on the market. Almost every package provided the same basic level of detail, summaries of daily/monthly/weekly usage and aggregate statistics.

But we needed more detail. Much more detail. We wanted to track the paths of any user (authenticated or not) through the site, to see which pages they looked at, in which order, and for how long. We wanted to drill down to any time period, seeing who visited the site during that period and what they were looking for. Here’s what I found…

Continue reading “Sawmill Log Analyzer” →

I’m mentioned in the New York Times for the second time this month, this time in an article from Thursday’s Circuits section that covers my Lost Friends page, with a couple relevant quotes from me. Honestly, I’m not a media whore; they contacted me. (Thanks for the head’s up, Paul.)

You might remember the author’s last column, the first offline mention of Matt Haughey’s Ticketstubs project. The “Everyone I’ve Ever Known” site in the current column was the subject of a Metafilter thread a few weeks ago, and her other columns have also covered subjects that were first posted to Metafilter. Do you have an account there, Pamela?

“It all started at eleven years old, when the two hundredth Caucasion lady leaned over the back of the church pew and said, ‘young man, you sound just like Neil Diamond’. Unbeknownst to me, it was at that moment the Black Diamond show was born!”

He may truly be the whitest black man in America. Don’t miss the MP3s.

Interview with Andre Torrez, nominee for the 2003 Most Humorous Weblog award:

waxpancake: Hey, Bloggie Boy.

waxpancake: Say something funny!

torrez: Um, I think I have crone's disease.

waxpancake: HAHAHAHAHAHA

torrez: :(

torrez: i can't poop anymore

waxpancake: HAHAHA

torrez: it's not funny

torrez: heh

waxpancake: You crack me up!

torrez: guess what I'm doing?

waxpancake: "crone's disease"!

waxpancake: I don't know, dying of constipation?

waxpancake: HAHAHA

waxpancake: Maybe your bowels will explode!

torrez: :(

torrez: it hurts