Ted Hardy

31 Days of Music - ZZ Top - Antenna #tinychallenges

I’m sorry, did I just break your brain? Ted, you’re thinking, you are just about the antithesis of anything Texas, yet you just whipped out the prototypical Texas band… and you didn’t even pick one of their better albums! What is wrong with you? You’ve got

31 Days of Music - The Black Keys - Tighten Up #tinychallenges

The first time I heard this single, I was on my way to lunch, sitting at the stop light just outside my office. I thought to myself, hey, this is pretty great. I’ll have to look this one up after I slurp down the forthcoming bag of greasy food

31 Days of Music - Billy Joel - Greatest Hits #tinychallenges

Curtis loved Billy Joel (his music anyway). I never really understood it until a few years after Curtis’ death and I had dealt with the pain of his loss. While Curtis loved lots of music, I actually hear Piano Man in his voice and not Billy’s. Its not that

31 Days of Music - Morphine - Cure for Pain #tinychallenges

The end of my junior year saw me in a van for two weeks, driving around the southern part of the US,  playing jazz concerts for high schools and churches. It was only my first semester playing jazz in college and I was a baritone sax player sitting in the

31 Days of Music - OK GO - Hungry Ghosts #tinychallenges

The guys on the treadmills? Really? It was novel and well done, but aren’t they just hacks? Nope. There are two things that really make this band stand out to me. First, they’re not just cookie-cutter what you hear on the radio. In fact, you’re not likely

31 Days of Music - Dave Matthews Band - Crash #tinychallenges

Summer of 1996, almost 20 years ago. I had spent the prior year deeply in love, not only with a girl but with Under The Table and Dreaming, the bands second album. Crash was released early in the summer and I intentionally didn’t purchase it because NO WAY could

31 Days of Music - Eric Clapton #tinychallenges

This was the first CD I ever purchased and did I ever pick a good one. Wasn’t a huge Clapton fan (still really not), but after hearing a couple tracks played on the radio and knowing his reputation, I realized this was the right album for me. I wasn’

Music & Me: The 'Middle' Years

Yes, it was just this awkward. Middle school, and high school band for that matter, was exactly this awkward. There were good times for sure, but nothing that wasn’t painful on many levels. My middle school years were taken up with 6th grade and then 7-8th grand band classes.

Music & Me: An Interlude

An interlude is not usually months in length, but I’ve been a little busy and haven’t gotten back to my story about why I hate music. But this evening, while entertaining my 1 year old daughter with YouTube videos, I thought I’d check out Adele’s new

Saxophone

Music & Me: The Early Years

Disclaimer: This is the first in what (I hope) will be a series of posts about my life with and relationship to music. If you’ve known me a while, this probably starts in a place you don’t expect, but keep reading the posts before you feel sorry for

Listen to Ted say the word "so" way too many times

I recently spoke at the Bluegrass IIBA chapter meeting on eCommerce and the Business Analyst, or as I refer to the talk, DIE IN A FIRE!!!!!

Wash

Magic Eraser

This, is my eraser. It is magic. No, not in the clean your bathtub kind of magic, but there are definitely some similarities. Until this afternoon, I had no idea the many and various uses to which you could use this little gem. I’ve had this particular eraser in

Scientists find a winning strategy for rock-paper-scissors | Ars Technica

Scientists find a winning strategy for rock-paper-scissors | Ars Technica For instance, if Megan loses by playing scissors to Casey’s rock, Megan is most likely to switch to paper, which would beat Casey’s rock. Per the research, this is a sound strategy, since Casey is likely to keep playing

Past, Present & Future

As I tossed and turned my way to sleep last evening, a thought passed through my mind that just would not leave me to my slumber. This is a framework that I want to consider more thoroughly in time, but need to put it down now so it is not

Coyote Tracks - Dear Recruiter

This post originally appeared July 31, 2013 on BetterProjects.net. This. Multiple times each week. So this letter isn’t as much a waste of your time as yours was of mine, I’d like to offer a new slogan for your firm, free of charge: “Matching miserable people with

Housing Requirements

This post originally appeared June 22, 2013 on BetterProjects.net Quick, but hopefully funny, story to tell you all. Earlier today, my wife and I took a short drive to meet a real estate agent who was going to show us a new (to us) house. We’ve got a

McDonald's Theory -- What I Learned Building... -- Medium

This post originally appeared April 30, 2013 on BetterProjects.net. McDonald’s Theory — What I Learned Building… — Medium: I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s. An interesting thing happens. Everyone

Hadyn's Last Day

Note: This blog entry was written on March 2, 2013 but was not posted immediately due reasons I hope are obvious to the reader. Its emotional; time was necessary before it could be posted. ***** “Don’t you even wonder sometimes if its worth it?” popped up the iMessage from my

"Drooling, blithering Idiots"

Neil Tyson has always been such a fascinating figure to me. If my inclinations has not been toward technology but to science, he is doing exactly what I would have wanted to do with my career. The above video has always intrigued me as it poses one of those great

As U.S. birth rate drops, concern for the future mounts

As U.S. birth rate drops, concern for the future mounts: “One of the most important strategies is invest in the younger generation, the human capital,” Myers says. “We can actually survive with fewer kids but we need to bring them along … At the end of the decade, when Baby

Jeff Atwood is the MAN!

This post originally appeared February 6, 2013 on BetterProjects.net I’ve blogged about him before, but I just have to say it again, Jeff Atwood is the man. A few months back he wrote an awesome article about “New Programming Jargon” that I meant to bring to everyone’s

Qa

Making a great Bug

This post originally appeared January 25, 2013 on BetterProjects.net. I’ve been meaning to post this for quite some time, but I’ll be honest, my desire to write has been a bit, well, lacking as of late. Which is really ironic as this post is all about how

4 Words

4 word v3

This post originally appeared August 20, 2012 on BetterProjects.net. Here is the third installment of our semi-regular feature, 4 words or phrases. Thanks again for Craig supplying the words!

Unsolicited advice for all of us, too

This post originally appeared July 18, 2012 on BetterProjects.net. If you haven’t heard yet, Marissa Mayer, 20th employee at Google, is the new CEO of Yahoo! (don’t ever forget the exclamation point, its that important!) I’ve always been impressed with her work at Google and am

Requirements

'Paper' Requirements

This post originally appeared July 16, 2012 on BetterProjects.net. For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you know what a fan I am of using Apple iOS devices in our jobs. At my company, nearly every activity manager on every project has an