Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • Bitch slappin’ Bob Lutz

    Oooooh, Mama! There’s some serious fur flying in the blogosphere. You all know I am a car junkie. And you all know I am a blog junkie. I satisfy both cravings with a healthy dose of car blogs and forums, with my favorite being The Truth About Cars. This blog has it all: killer writing,…

  • When Frogs Fly

    Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve never been a Microsoft fan. I’ve considered their products derivative and their business practices despicable. Office was a response to Lotus SmartSuite and Outlook has always been stuck at Notes Release 3 in terms of user interface. Meanwhile, Microsoft to this day is still trying to kill what…

  • Perpetually catching up..but not quite

    Many pundits who review software are saying that Microsoft has "caught up" with Firefox in Internet Explorer 7 (here and here, among others). I beg to differ. Since the mid-1990s, what Microsoft has done — time after time — is deliver pale imitations of others' UI inventions. Have you ever used the View menu in…

  • A video blog you have to see

    Sometimes, the combination of a new medium (podcasting, in this case the video version of it some people call vlogging) with politics and journalism produces something very, very special. Alive in Baghdad is an impressive example. I won't go on here about what it means…or how it affected me. That's for you to discover for…

  • The onset of decay

    Pretty picture, ain't it? Actually, it's what's happening to this blog, despite my good intentions. What we rail about over on the corporate blog and in our podcast — the orphaned blog — is beginning to happen here. I've got a million excuses, some of them pretty darn good. I'm blogging like a maniac for…

  • Intellectual homelessness

    I'm sad. Lotus Notes — which played a huge role in my career — has been vanquished more or less completely by Microsoft (though they won't stop attacking until the carcass has dessicated into dust). And its (formerly) thought-provoking leadership has apparently come down with an early case of Alzheimer's, is lost and looks like…

  • Can’t quite put that egg back together

    I remember reciting the Humpty-Dumpty rhyme for my kids. I know a lot of revisionist people think these nursery rhymes have a violent streak to them. But in this case, it's a pretty good message: break it, and you can't put it back together again. I wonder if there's an equivalent message for non-English speaking…

  • Amazing doesn’t describe it

    I’m in love…with WordPress. Since late July, I’ve been using this amazing system to produce blogs. What blows me away is that this system has all the features of industrial-strength commercial software. Having been in the software biz since the 70s, I never thought I’d ever be able to say that about an open-source, GPL-licensed…

  • Banal to you…and amazing to me

    My Google searching skills must be off…way off. I'd been trying for days to find an authoritative recommendation for when to switch from summer (actually All-Season) tires to snow tires. I just couldn't find anything other than the usual forum drivel. But then Tire Rack sent me instructions with the new winter tires I ordered…

  • A message for [email protected]

    Dear Mr. or Ms. Someone-who-knows-better, I owe you an apology. I didn't approve your comment of August 27th in reply to my post of July 21 until today because it ended up in the spam bucket (imagine that!) and I didn't see it until today. Sorry about that. It's my policy to allow all comments…

  • That feeling of self-satisfaction

    Today, I learned a lot about complacency . Not mine (though I'll bet I'm guilty more than just occasionally). This time, it's the complacency of someone else, which makes it a lot easier to see. In the business world, that "I've got it covered, don't worry" attitude sometimes goes along with being in an established…

  • Grammar Girl gets me going

    I found this astonishing podcast the other day, and I have to tell you, it's may be the best podcast I've heard in a long time. Right, you say….a podcast on English grammar? I run three miles every morning. Because I am not a natural athlete and at 6am my body is…shall we say…reluctant, my…