gocek.com/net/org

Scandals

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Regarding that federal GSA conference in Las Vegas that cost taxpayers 800 thousand dollars and cost some officials there jobs, it’s hard to even figure out why these conferences occur in the first place. I am not a fan of comparing government management to business management, because they really are different, but "team building" has to have its limits. The best we can now hope is that extravagant managers lose their jobs and are forced to take middle class, paper pushing jobs like the rest of the 99%.
As for the Secret Service mess in Cartagena, I have to believe that this is not an isolated incident. Our agents apparently bop around from country to country, partying their brain cells into oblivion. They got caught this time because one of them was too cheap to pay the hooker, and she made a stink.
Many federal workers travel frequently, and I don’t expect them to sit alone in their rooms when they’re not working, but taxpayers should not have to pay for it.

Health care USA

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Health care needed to be reformed in the USA. We elected Barack Obama and a bunch of Democrats in 2008. They reformed health care in the USA. So, what’s the problem? We should all be insured. We should have a single-payer system, but if that’s not possible, an insurance requirement is necessary. If you want to reduce the federal deficit, stop suing the government.

Important

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:00:00 GMT

If anybody really cared what Rush Limbaugh thought, Barack Obama would not be the president. Pro football players are paid to hurt each other; are we really just figuring this out? Prescription birth control should be covered by insurance, but women won’t achieve fairness for themselves by trying to pass revenge legislation that treats men less fairly. Iran had better hope that the USA does not get out of Israel’s way. The Church of England should consecrate female bishops, and the Episcopal Church USA should finalize an official same-sex marriage rite. The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead. Jesus used His gifts to do what He could; that’s what He asks of the rest of us.

Occupy Gocek

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I don’t know what Occupy Gocek means, but it sounds cool.

Secure 511-NY feed fixed

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:00:00 GMT

The New York State traffic and road construction event feed switched from a standard to a secure HTML feed, and this broke my webcam page’s radio button, but it is up and running again.

Dan passed the bar!

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Yes, he did!

The Future of Software Development

Mon, 4 Jul 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I’ve been reading some blogs during my long, American holiday weekend, and wonder what I’ll be doing as a professional software developer over the next several years. Certainly, it takes fewer developers today to create and support a feature set than it did in the past, but users constantly demand newer and better features, and there are simply more applications to write. I see articles about how Facebook and YouTube started with very few developers, but at the start, they didn’t do that much, and now those companies have many more employees of all sorts to support expanded features. Offshoring can be disconcerting if you’re on the wrong shore, but I think we’re already seeing that each shore will not undervalue its labor forever. There are pros and cons to working on distributed teams; communication requires effort, especially when different cultures and languages are involved, but it’s kind of cool to work from home. The other constant (in addition to demanding users) is that we software developers must continually evolve our skillsets.

Done with MySpace

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT

I read an article that predicted the death of MySpace. I think it’s because it’s just too painful to look at. There’s stuff laid out all over the place, and popups, etc. I haven’t been using it, and I don’t need to visit yet another web site to promote pop music that I don’t buy, so it’s not worth the effort to maintain my account.
UPDATE July 4: I see MySpace was purchased by investors including Justin Timberlake. This does not change my perspective. Also, I have uploaded my live recordings, dated as they may be, to my personal page.

Royal Wedding, Anglican Letdown

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:01:00 GMT

At the royal wedding of William and Kate on April 29, 2011, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the world to his "house", that most prominent Anglican venue known as the Westminster Abbey. This was an opportunity to show off Anglicanism, the English ancestor of the American Episcopal Church. The spectacle left us wanting more of Harry and Pippa, but it was not a good day for the Church of England. The archbishop’s unkempt hair and eyebrows were distracting, and one of the female "chaplains" (nuns) sitting next to Will and Kate has been the object of internet jokes about her Reeboks. Although 65% of churchgoers and 40% of full time clergy in the Church of England are women, Canon Jane Hedges was on the altar only briefly, with no active role. Even the choir was all male. Historically, Western Christian Churches supported the abuses of colonialism. The colonies are mostly independent now, but the indigenous people remain poor while Westerners get fat. Maybe the couple and the hundreds of millions of viewers wanted a fairy tale, but so what? It is not the Archbishop’s job to look pretty, but it is his job to promote social justice in the name of Jesus Christ. Instead, he put trees inside the Abbey, the beautiful people oohed and aahed, and an ugly world turned even though they pretended it had stopped.

Home page updates having an effect

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT

It’s hard to tell exactly, because the search engines show geographically optimized results according to IP address, but it seems that the home page updates here have put us back into the top 10 when searching for ’gocek’. The most beneficial change seems to have been reducing the link-to-content ratio, but you can read Gary’s SEO tips (click the blog link and view the tech blog).

Dan wins moot court competition

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Today at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, Dan Gocek and his teammate Chris Cariello won the 82nd annual William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition. The contest began with preliminary sessions during the 2009-10 school year involving close to 200 law students. The students wrote briefs and presented oral arguments until only two teams remained. In today’s final session, Dan and Chris faced Lynzi Archibald and Matt Hanson. The teams argued their points in front of federal judges who agreed to participate in the contest. Lynzi won best oralist. The four students will graduate in May.
Previous winners include Ted Kennedy, that’s a 2004 photo of Dan looking at Senator Kennedy, is that prescient or what?

Yet another home page update

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 12:00:00 GMT

The link-to-content ratio was too high on the old home page, so I made some changes. In other words, the old home page appeared spammy to indexing robots. The blog content that includes this text hopefully resolves that. I own com, net and org, but it is a constant battle to grab hits from the Gocek keyword.

Gary in a Hall of Fame

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:00:00 GMT

On May 31, Gary was inducted into the Liverpool Fine Arts Hall of Fame. See the LHS music pages on this site.

Palm Desert pub features 897th info

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT

The Historical Society of Palm Desert recently issued a book featuring WWII training era photos from Julian Gocek. See the 897th pages on this site.

New blog content, and they accept comments

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Many topics now have a blog or news page, where readers can leave comments.

Christian Symbols editorial page now in bloggish format.

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:00:01 GMT

The Christian Symbols editorial page has been reformatted into a standard blog.

Webcam with weather info now online.

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:00:00 GMT

A webcam showing local weather conditions (visually and textually) is now up and running.

897th page now shows this day in history.

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Find out what the 897th Ordnance HAM Co was doing during WWII on this calendar day.

Financial calculator at version 20060603

Sat, 3 Jun 2006 21:12:00 GMT

Calculate your loan or savings results with your browser (JavaScript).

Football pool generator at version 20060603

Sat, 3 Jun 2006 21:11:00 GMT

Produce a 10x10 football pool grid with your browser (JavaScript).

ProtectOCon for Outlook contacts at version 20060414

Sun, 14 Apr 2006 14:00:00 GMT

An Outlook macro that saves contacts as vCards and creates lists of email addresses.

REML recipe manager at version 20050521 (0.8)

Thu, 08 Jan 2006 12:00:00 GMT

A Windows program that helps you manage your recipes. Uses the Recipe Exchange Markup Language.