Blogging from Chicago... a little drunk and a lot tired... you have been warned :)

Had a magnificent meal tonight at Blackbird.  Highly recommended in downtown Chicago.  And if you go there, have the cheese plate for desert with Madeira.  Heavenly...

Project Q report: 0 cycles invested.  Sadly.

The Dodgers began their 2009 stretch run today, beating the Padres 4-1.  Yay.  Opening day is always a cause for optimism...  not time for me to be a baseball fan yet; first we get the NBA finals, and I turn into a Lakers fan, and then I switch back to rooting for the Dodgers... 

From the HIMSS conference, which I attended, HIMSS leader says stimulus IT dollars are golden opportunity.  Boy, no kidding, it was the talk of the conference...  (please see the HIMSS 2009 report on my Aperio blog if you're interested...) 

Related: Tech firms eager to gobble stimulus funds.  "President Obama's staggering $787 billion economic stimulus package, passed in February, could be a financial oasis - especially for an industry facing a precipitous drop in tech spending by economically ravaged corporations and consumers.  It allocates tens of billions of dollars for tech upgrades to energy ($4.5 billion for smart grids), health care ($20 billion for electronic medical records), broadband deployment and education."  Ready, set, consume!

OMG!  Do you remember Quadrophenia?  Boy, I do, I can remember lusting after quadraphonic hi-fi systems...  that really brings back memories.  And so does Kraftwerk. 

Here's an interesting post on TechCrunch about Facebook's cost of operations, for bandwidth, storage, and servers, and how a technology called Haystack can help cut the cost.  Like YouTube and Flickr, Facebook gets a ton of traffic but doesn't earn a ton of revenue, and hence is fundamentally loss-making... 

Why baseball benched Microsoft Silverlight.  Entirely unsurprising.  I remember when this was announced last year, and I didn't think it would work, and it didn't.  Flash just has too much market share. 

Oh no, Mr. Bill!  Tivo rolls out pause menu ads.  Maximum yuk.  The good news though is a cheat code which permanently disables them, write this down: SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-PAUSE-SELECT.  Okay, thanks for the info.  This might be a good solution for them; mainstream consumers won't care enough to complain, and won't find out about the cheat, while people like me who might otherwise complain will find the cheat and stay silent. 

ZooBorn of the day: A California Condor chick.  Cute?  Weell...