tar | Jason E. Shao

Bush, Kerry, and voting Independent?

Oct

12

2004

There’s been a lot of heated debate over dishonesty and manipulation of facts after the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. In many ways I think the items that are attracting outrage are relatively small, and those more deserving of public scrutiny seem to be getting ignored. For instance, given the overall context of a political debate, ...

$2 mil spilled on Turnpike

Oct

8

2004

> It wasn’t pennies from heaven but an > estimated $2 million in cash and coins > that spilled across the New Jersey > Turnpike in Carteret last night after an > armored car crashed into a guardrail and > flipped, spewing its cargo. > “It’s a madhouse. There’s money everywhere,” said > Turnpike spokesman ...

Opened a 529 Plan

Oct

7

2004

Opened a 529 plan for the little one yesterday. Our selection process basically came down to 2 choices: the USAA College Savings Plan (which allows [UPromise][] contributions) and the [NJBEST][] plan which has the advantage of a $1500 scholarship for school in NJ if you contribute enough. Right now the tipping decision for us was ...

Lost in Translation

Oct

7

2004

Some jokes showed up in my email box today. While I don’t normally reward Spam, some of these were pretty good. > The American Dairy Association was so successful with its “Got Milk?” > campaign, that it was decided to extend the ads to Mexico. > Unfortunately, the Spanish translation was “Are you lactating?” > ...

Moving to Markdown

Oct

5

2004

I’ve started using John Gruber’s Markdown. While I’ve been a fan of the [Textile](http://www.textism.com/textile) system for a while, Markdown’s sytax feels cleaner to me, particularly when you’re looking at it in plain text. The main purpose of the various markup generators to me seems to be to ensure that your formatting distracts as little from ...