Via vowe.net, don't try this at home.

Because everyone seems to be doing it, I took the match.com "phyisical attractiveness" test, where match.com asks me some questions, then tells me what kind of person I find attractive.

It was an interesting test, well done. They ask questions, and show pictures of people you have to rate in one of several ways. As I was taking the quiz, I seemed to be marking quite a lot of the ladies as "attractive" or "very attractive." The results confirmed this.

"Your physical "type" refers to women you find appealing and whom you expect would find you attractive as well. In the test, you picked a relatively large number of women as attractive."

That seems to be a nice way of saying, "you appear to be some kind of man-whore." At least they are polite. Throughout the quiz, the instructions say things like, "just use your instincts." Maybe I misinterpreted this:

"The choices you made in the test suggest you have strong, automatic preferences for certain types of women. You made your choices quickly suggesting you have clear physical instincts."

Then they get personal:

"This report highlights your "unique" tastes, or what makes some women personally attractive to you but not to everyone else.

"Interestingly, a lot of the features you liked are not especially popular. They're not what usually defines "mainstream" attractiveness for women."

So they are calling me a freak? Then the test presents a list of women, and asks me to click on the women I think would not be attracted to me. This is where I get into trouble on tests. Based on a picture, you want me to determine that? I'm quietly debating the premise of the question while women's faces are zooming by.

"How many other men your age like this type of woman? Looking at over 10,000 men in your age group who have taken the test, about 34% are attracted to the same types you are."

That is a useful statistic, I suppose. Apparently, only 10% of men are "very attracted" to the type of ladies that do it for me. Does that make me 34% mainstream? I'm starting to get that low blood sugar feeling.

Then they start showing me pictures most mainstream attractive and least mainstream attractive women. Whew. This is complicated.

most mainstream attractive	least mainstream attractive

The funny thing is, all the women in the quiz were mainstream. Painfully so. Not one braid, not one lick of latex. Then they drop the bomb:

"Very Picky: It's official: You're "picky." The fact is you are drawn to the most beautiful of the beautiful. You know what you like in women and are more selective than most men your age. Your tastes seem instinctual. You'd make a great casting agent, because you have a good eye for women who have "star quality.""

Make up your mind: am I a slut or am I picky? Really. And don't try to sugar coat the judgment with some "you'd go far in Hollywood, kid" crap.

"You are very selective, compared to most men, in the types of women you find appealing. You're wowed by "movie star" good looks, and in general, appreciate women with "traditional" or "mainstream" appeal."

This is starting to sound like a bad horoscope, where they say the most obvious things just to see correct. Also a statement of the obvious: "You also seem fascinated by women we call "Super Models." Is there some class of bizzaro men who thing movie star good looks are a turn off? Are the pig-faced doctors hiding somewhere in match.com?

Then they get really personal:

Your choices show a consistent interest in a wide variety of Asian women. These women really stood out to you as being very appealing.

• You found 25% of the Asian women in this test physically attractive.
• You found 10% of the Asian women in this test "date-able".

We've talked about this before. I can't deny it. Additionally, according to the scientists at match.com, "A Caucasian woman's skin tone and hair color did not appear to have any effect on whether you found her appealing or not." I'm not sure what to make of that. Also, "Your choices show a definite interest in Hispanic and Latino women." Yawn. Tell me something I don't know.

Match.com, based on my choices, thinks that "...based upon the choices you made, you prefer a well-endowed woman with much larger breasts." Much larger?

It was fun to take the quiz, but the results were a little disappointing.

Valentines day card writing advice from Mr. Mustard:

You can include a note if you like. To make the note, tear a teeny tiny rectangle of resume paper. I'm not sure why this works. The torn edges make it a "craft"... and doing crafts against your will IS A DEMONSTATION OF AFFECTION. Then write what you want on the note. Here are things to avoid:

1. Don't mention blowjobs
2. For that matter, best not to mention sex
3. Don't apologize for coming home drunk and stinking up the bed
4. Don't try to write a poem
5. Don't say "sincerely"
6. Draw a little doodle border because DRAWING LITTLE DOODLES IS A DEMONSTRATION OF AFFECTION
7. Use her real name, not your nickname for her (i.e. "Fats")

OK. Enough of this winter.

I'm ready for the spring.

Oh yea. This is sick.

Thanks, Neph.

Must Remember

Dry cleaning day.

It looks like Palm is putting an end to its half-hearted, crap support of the MacOS. Oh well. Maybe I won't replace my palm after all.

One more vote for the Gay Penguin ticket!

Would anyone like to buy me a macro lens? Just throwing it out there.

Hooray! Sparc 4!

In Ranch One, picking up some chicken teriyaki for dinner. Waiting for my order to come up. Waiting.

Not only is psychotic guy behind me announcing each song as it comes on the radio, but he punctuates each title with a loud burp.

"Paul McCartney, Maybe I'm Amazed...BRAAAAP!"

It is amazing what a group of people will pretend not to see, hear, and smell.

One thoughtful feature added to Apple's browser, Safari, in its last update:

When the cursor is in a password field on a form, and caps lock is on, Safari superimposes a little "caps lock" icon in the field.

What a great magazine the New Yorker is. If you have time (it is long), read this fascinating article on stovepiping in the Bush administration.

Author Seymour M. Hersh suggests that by fast-tracking analysis and information to the top, the administration created structures that bypassed standard vetting procedures, and encouraged information that reinforced conventional wisdom.

What surprises me is that this happened with the Bush administration. It is stacked top to bottom with people from big business. Graduates of Harvard and Yale business schools. People who, surely, have studied how to create effective reporting hierarchies, ones that encourage, not suppress, dissenting ideas that may be correct.

Love or hate the Clinton administration, but you have to see contrast. The Clintons arranged debating societies, where experts presented the pros and cons of issues. Compared to the Bush cabinet, marching in lock step toward deficit and war, suppressing debate, I don't know what these captains of industry are thinking.

Selling out is the new punk.

Also from Joel, this is very funny. Funny, of course, because it is true.

If you liked Joel's article, read Scoble's response.

A "developer productivity gain."

As a user of the software, I really don't give a shit about a developer's productivity gain if it comes at my expense. It is an absurd argument. At least Apple knows not try to woo Windows users by claiming that the OS X development environment is more "productive" for developers.

As corporate manager, I'm not impressed with a developer's marginal productivity gain if we have to upgrade all the hardware and test and license and roll out a new operating system to all the clients in order to get that gain. Oh, and the environment is so different that the majority of developers will lose productivity while they learn how to build and deploy systems with the new tools. Maybe a bunch of developers in India can find more "productivity" with my current infrastructure?

Joel Spolsky begging Micorosft for a .Net linker. He's arguing that .Net's monolithic runtime will ensure the same level of client-side success that Java has enjoyed.

"All told, for each computer I needed to run this little .NET application on, I had to download something like 70 or 80 MB (good thing we have a fast net connection) and reboot three or four times. And this is at a software company! I know how long it took, because the first time it started downloading, I put Office Space on the big screen TV, and by the time the movie was over, the installation process was almost finished. Every ten minutes during the movie I had to jump up, go to each computer, and hit OK to some stupid dialog box.

This is frustrating enough for our in-house apps. But think about our product CityDesk. Almost all of our users download a free trial version before buying the product. The download is around 9 MB and has no additional requirements. Almost none of these users has the .NET runtime yet.

If we asked our trial users, usually small organizations and home users, to go through a movie-length installation hell just to try our app, I think we'd probably lose 95% of them. These are not customers yet, they're prospects, and I can't afford to give up 95% of my prospects just to use a nicer development environment.

"But Joel," people say, "eventually enough people will have the runtime and this problem will go away."

I thought that too, then I realized that every six or twelve months Microsoft ships a new version of the runtime, and the gradually increasing number of people that have it deflates again to zero. And I'll be damned if I'm going to struggle to test my app on three different versions of the runtime just so I can get the benefit of the 1.2% of the installed base that has one of the three."

Well, I suppose this was inevitable.

Bad, bad server. No donut for you

I received an invitation to join Orkut. Cool.

But I can't. I've tried several times, only to receive an error. Not good. I understand it is beta, but good God.