HAProxy interferes with app_offline. See http://superuser.com for how it's supposed to work.

SO outage was scheduled and notified 8 hours in advance via site-wide banner... just sayin' ... http://is.gd/5dy1l

r @shanselman because opendns inserts ads when you typo a url. http://www.opendns.com/how/free/how-can-opendns-be-free/

wow, core i7 960 / 12gb upgrade complete in 1 hour flat. Didn't even have to reinstall Windows 7..

Beatles: Rock Band (360) for $29.99! http://is.gd/5cZQ6 FYI @rockbandaide also applies to Band Hero.

team spent an hour+ researching a weird sql problem, finally found the answer on.. WAIT FOR IT.. STACK OVERFLOW. yeah. http://is.gd/5cWAv

This guy once told me I was the best programmer he had ever worked with. I told him he clearly hadn't worked with enough programmers.

rt @spolsky crunchpad :: arrington : spanish american war :: Hearst. Never enough conflict in the world for yellow journalists

oh and @portman_wills did all the hard work to get it up and running; kudos!

initial test of free vote-based, crowdsourced, open source advertisements on Stack Overflow is now up: http://is.gd/5cELV

how macs get upgraded: http://is.gd/5cE3J (via @howtogeek)

reminder: the hasselhoffian recursion still exists http://is.gd/5clVt

"He lost because he got out-OOPAed." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000788.html

r @danudey actually, to give Opera its due: it made *more* sense in 2003 prior to mature Firefox, Chrome, IE7+ and Safari/win

hit in the logs from a user-agent of "Opera 7.02 Bork-edition [en]". That's a joke from, like, 2003. Seriously?

Mark Coleran, the King of FUI http://blog.coleran.com/category/portfolio/screendesign (via @shanselman)

HollywoodOS! http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HollywoodOs (via @aldrinleal)

ah, Finder-Spyder, my web search engine of CHOICE! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finder-Spyder

allow me to translate OpenDNS' response to Google's free public DNS for you: "we are crapping our pants." http://bit.ly/5c7dsK

If we loved to work, we would have to change our national slogan to "Thank God it's Monday."

I have some *questions* about sexting but I think I will keep them to myself.

wow. James Lipton on sexting. E-P-I-C! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8H4CB6ok4E

How the heck does http://to./ work? http://is.gd/5boeA

rt @KevinPang congrats to http://to./ for launching the shortest URL shortener ever and also for breaking every URL regex known to man

Are IP addresses "trivial to forge"? http://serverfault.com/questions/90725/are-ip-addresses-trivial-to-forge

"Since IP addresses are trivial for attackers to forge ... the only effective way to handle such attacks is to simply absorb the load" :(

rt @mattcutts Google launches Public DNS: http://bit.ly/5jvRrq Set your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 and you'll get faster/safer DNS resolution

just found out that someone I know keeps a "corn field list" and hoping I'm not on it: http://is.gd/5be33

Your Abomination is My Clever Hack http://is.gd/5bdDN

Galloway's SmartArt http://is.gd/5aPc9 is almost up there with Gettysburg Powerpoint for my money http://is.gd/5aPdn

rt @jonskeet Wahoo, I finally have the Fanatic badge on SO. 'Cos before I was just mildly interested.

Trying to convince @spolsky to set up a Facebook p2p support Stack Exchange site. Could be big, there's surprisingly little out there.

"Four weeks .. twenty papers .. that's two dollars .. plus tip." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivNptwIrQkI

predictably, one of the absolute worst web spider bots? Cuil's "twiceler". It's, like, 4 Cuils bad. http://is.gd/5aF3y

outstanding, even by Darwin Awards standards http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-27.html

Pony - 240 Microsoft Points ($3) http://is.gd/5aCEF

r @proDystopian provided the top 100 Wire quotes link http://is.gd/5aBTD but here's the real #1 http://is.gd/5aBT3

god I miss The Wire. Best show ever. Literally. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c

the perils of seti@home addiction: http://www.kpho.com/news/21778774/detail.html

if only there were some kind of .. "exchange".. where I could find "experts" to answer my questions. Oh well.

cool, there is a WSDM 2010 paper that cites / analyzes Stack Overflow creative commons data! http://is.gd/5axZD

r @kevindente yep, IMO the only useful thing about Wave is that it's a visible commitment to the HTML5 standard

great deal for fake plastic rockers: Rock Band 2 and Beatles for $120! http://is.gd/5arG1 (via @rockbandaide)

@HMXkfan I'm following you, can you dm me your email? I'll explain. It's related to http://stackoverflow.com which is a "thing"

@HMXkfan we run http://careers.stackoverflow.com , can I send you a free trial via email?

yes, @deadprogrammer I knew about Phil Katz (PKZip creator). Depressing stuff. http://is.gd/5akKb

rt @kevindente Pet Rock updated for the new millennium: now USB powered! http://is.gd/5aeC2

Heavy Metal Parking Lot http://is.gd/5a9z0

I am not talking about search results but the mere mechanical act of scooping up webpages. It is bad out there. Real bad.

is Google the only company that can write a decent web spider? good lord. You'd think this'd be a known science by now.

r @carnage4life yep, 90% of "iPhone rage" is really just AT&T rage in disguise. Apple is probably counting the days of their contract.

open source software on phones is utterly pointless until we have "open source" cell towers. http://is.gd/59iir (via @carnage4life)

I will go to my grave without a Facebook page. Who's with me?

rt @TALlama In my opinion, ☃ is the only character that SHOULD be allowed [in the title attribute]

am I underthinking this? what characters should be disallowed in the HTML title attribute other than " < > ?

Of all misrepresentations by media moguls, calling old inconveniences loyalty and new user freedoms disloyalty is the dumbest.

as predicted, Google's "let's copy how Microsoft does phones, but open source!" model is a fail: http://is.gd/589U8

@kathysierra I started my son on Twitter from birth (literally!) meet @rockhardawesome

last chance! if you have awesome programming jobs and would like to trial Stack Overflow Careers, mail careers@stackoverflow.com

speaking of Nicholas Cage: "best" scenes from The Wicker Man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo

I've seen some weird Japanese commercials in my day, but these Nick Cage ones .. http://is.gd/57Y3p

rt @jzy Was a bit surprised that today is the official Cyber Monday. ok, A/S/L?

whatever happened to.. Peter Norton? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton

planning flights for Webstock NZ: our return flight arrives *the same time* it leaves. uhh... http://is.gd/57wa7

man, looking at gzip page sizes really makes HTML cleanup seem unworthy of your time. Unless you get excited about 200 bytes (note: I do)

r @kevindente actually, features are overrated http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000980.html

r @mblackshaw thanks, but Stack Overflow is still not fast enough for my tastes. performance = feature

all the proverbial low hanging fruit for Stack Overflow performance is long, long gone. So, I upgraded the CPUs in the DB server instead.

I hate the way the web is turning into a minefield of mouseover popups. Depressing.

photography: one geek topic I just can't get into, no matter how hard I try. Bores me to tears.

hey @wilshipley http://is.gd/57hP3 is a good read, but .. isn't there a reason you don't ever work with other programmers?

How to ride a PONY! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/pony

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956 http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Serious Sam HD is grrreat! The gameplay is classic, up there with Doom IMO. http://is.gd/56uoQ

apparently the pinnacle of douchebagamentaries are: Born Rich http://is.gd/56s0J and Overnight http://is.gd/56s14

rt @psaffo Pay future time travelers to rescue you from the present -- just $10! http://www.timetravelfund.com/

freetrack, a head tracking API using standard webcams http://www.free-track.net/english/

yes but @donpark how much memory is needed when all real work is in the cloud? Compare Outlook (extreme pig) with GMail (netbook ok)

r @donpark I just upgraded my desktop to 12gb for $300. Why do I care about 120mb again? More worried about crap FF 1 process architecture.

r @dwf mac mini: 20w idle, 35w dvd playback, 45w encoding.

mini PCs FTW! an Atom paired with an energy efficient chipset: 11w idle 18w max. http://is.gd/55iUF

rt @jongalloway City Bus Simulator 2010 video footage (HQ!!!!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP1yddiEzpQ

wow. City Bus Simulator 2010 - New York. Now featuring old people in wheelchairs! http://is.gd/55cuW

you're good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like you! http://is.gd/553dc

rt @cwrea "See page 36 of the Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Guide." Isn't the fact that there's a 36+ page guide uh.. part of the problem?

"The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French."

yes, it is true that SQL Server pricing is better than Oracle. But that's like saying Pol Pot was less genocidal than Stalin.

one bummer about being in the Microsoft stack: SQL Server "big ol' server" licensing is LUDICROUSLY expensive.

ordering up backup database server for our datacenter -- probably cold spare

rt @kevindente Here's that MS Keyboard 4000 link again. http://bit.ly/5aFs3l [I ordered 3! Keyboard of the Gods!!]

Is "Google's New Search Interface" some kind of joke? How is this.. different? http://is.gd/54tb1

Itanium? They still make that POS? Never has a name been so apt.

scrubbing bubbles gone wrong. Very, very wrong. http://is.gd/54sQo

"if you like crowds and deals and the possibility of crushing disappointment, this is the event for you!"

The Admiral's Pipe http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2005/05/12/417064.aspx

remembering turkeys, and thanksgiving: http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/S/H/bush_turkey.jpg

no.. even *ridiculously* simple queries scaled perfectly with CPU in my testing: 1.8 -> 2.5 -> 3.5. I was shocked, but #s don't lie.

I didn't think CPU speed mattered on the database server, then I saw a nearly linear increase in query speeds going from 1.8 > 2.5 > 3.5 Ghz

why is so much user feedback in the form of "I like this vehicle, but it's a car. You should convert it into a truck!"

Google is now providing 61% of all OpenIDs for us. Data: http://is.gd/53YpH