Patrick Foley’s Blog

This blog is dark. Please see http://patrickfoley.spaces.live.com for my new site.

A lot has been going on in the last few months. I just completed an exciting, international project for a large New York bank. I’m just starting a working relationship with an extremely cool consulting firm in Grand Rapids. I’ve been dealing with some enriching changes at home, and I’ve even started practicing violin again. More on each soon.

Joel Spolsky has been kind enough to put an example of a real live software spec from a real live - and completed - project on his site. What a boon for developers who care about this sort of thing.

Thanks, Joel!

An artist is a failure who proceeds

• Robert Wepman

I only lie to myself. By the time it gets to you, it’s the truth.

After a google search for “Tom Sawyer Principle”, I learned that this thought isn’t entirely original. Regardless, it’s a good thought:

The Tom Sawyer Principle in my words:

Getting people to pay you to let them do something you want them to do anyway

Anybody else notice that all these car companies are essentially just eliminating their “employee discount” when they offer it to everybody?

I’m trying to cancel my Netflix account. The website tells me to call customer service to cancel. The customer service recording tells me to cancel at the website. I’ve waited on hold for 30 minutes two separate times now. I can find no email address on Netflix’s site to complain.

Making it extremely hard to cancel a recurring service seems like fraud to me. To whom do I complain? My congressman?

My sister Katie and her husband Manuel thought of a powerful new breakfast drink: Metamosa - the combination of Metamucil and Champagne. Yum.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

• Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss (via ESPN)