TBWAIN - AKA Jeff Svare's Blog

Owing to the many news reports circulating regarding the end of the first decade of the 21st century, let me say this: This isn't it. The current millennium began 1 January 2001. The first decade of this millennium will end on 31 December 2010. That's 364 days from now. Take a look here for more information on when this millennium began.

Don't hold me to any of these. In an attempt to get "member non-enthusiasts" stoked to use new.Familysearch.org developers will create a Wii interface that will go online in Q2. "Just 500 more points and you can add another ancestor!" A major player in the online genealogy community will try to open up a new market by reserving a new domain, then fill it with US census records, passenger lists, and city directories, stating, "It's new content tailored for people in (insert country name here)." There may be more.

I think Dickens said it well: "Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him." Merry Christmas.

A few years back, I would get together with a bunch of friends during lunch and play strategy games. I've been waxing nostalgic for those get-togethers and have even scripted some new scenarios that we could use. The dice, sheet protectors and grease pencils made for some great fun, but I've thought about what could be done to make it a little more high tech. I was momentarily bored today, so I figured out how to create a function that would allow you to use an Excel function in place of dice. The function RAND will generate a random number between 0 and 1. =RAND() If you want to specify a min-max range, for example if you were using a twelve-sided die, multiply the result times the largest possible number less the smallest and add 1. =RAND()*(12-1)+1 If you want to round up the number so you don’t get any decimal places, add the ROUND function and specify zero decimals. =ROUND((RAND()*(12-1)+1),0) If you wanted to, you could put this function into multiple cells, specifying a ...

It's time to confess something. I've been trying to avoid it, but I can't. Everyone's talking about it, and I've been thinking about it. So I'm going to do something about it. I'm gonna talk. All the uproar about changing the health care system has just been divisive. I don't honestly think that I can trust any solution the government puts forward. Really, what is the government's track record on making things better? Let me be clear: no one should loose their homes to pay their medical bills. Costs are outrageous, and many people don't have access to care they need. Making people "realize" the costs of healthcare by making their insurance payments doesn't make them less likely to need medical care. Hello, does anyone else realize this? Who wants to contract a major illness that disrupts their life and plunges them into debt? No one elects illness. Instead of this major overhaul, let's start with something smaller. Let...

Yes, indeed it is. Last Thursday we got fifteen copies of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in. And this wasn't our first receipt of Christmas books, either. And on Monday they started putting red lights on the Lebanese Cedar on Temple Square. Today's high in Salt Lake City--a balmy 96 degrees Farenheit. Ho, Ho, Ho.

Yep, this is another disgruntled post about baseball. This is the first Saturday afternoon I've gotten home before the MLB Game of the Week is scheduled to start. The possible matchups: Cardinals vs. Phillies, White Sox vs. Tigers, and the Twins vs. Angels. If you look over to the column at the left, you will see that I live in Utah, just 20 minutes north of Salt Lake City. We have a AAA baseball team here that is affiliated with the Angels, the Salt Lake Bees . You'd think some programmer would make note of that. Wrong . What do we get to see? St. Louis @ Philadelphia. Yeah, Salt Lake is such a National League town. I wonder if the decision was made by our local Fox station ? I hope not, because this way I can attribute it to some nameless suit in a boardroom somewhere, and not someone who's supposed to know about sports locally. It's interesting to note that we are in the Colorado Rockies broadcasting area. But we don't get any of their games on radio or te...

Within days of releasing pictures of the newest regeneration of the Doctor , the fashion police are critiquing his wardrobe. Read about it in BBC News Magazine . Interesting how comments on changes to the Tardis have been rather quiet.

I was glued to the television in our apartment on the south side of Fargo watching Neil Armstrong take that "one small step." NASA's Apollo 11 40th Anniversary site. NASA's Apollo 11 multimedia library . Just one more of those "where were you when" moments.

Anthony DiComo, MLB.com's beat writer for the Yankees said it concisely: For the first time since 2003, the Yanks swept the Twins in a season series. You can read all about it at this link . At least the Twins won't have to play the Yankees again this season. So there is a silver lining on this dark cloud. And I hate having to say something nice about the Yankees.

There's a report out from the University of California Davis that states Native Americans are descendants of one ancestral Asian population, rather than the product of multiple migrations. "Our work provides strong evidence that, in general, Native Americans are more closely related to each other than to any other existing Asian populations, except those that live at the very edge of the Bering Strait. While earlier studies have already supported this conclusion, what’s different about our work is that it provides the first solid data that simply cannot be reconciled with multiple ancestral populations." The results of the study show there is a genetic marker called the "9-repeat allele" that was found in 41 populations tested from Alaska to Chile. Their conclusion is "that the most straightforward explanation for the distribution of the 9-repeat allele was that all modern Native Americans, Greenlanders and western Beringians descend from a common founding ...

Treat your staff like they are stupid. Whenever you want to get get feedback from "the best in the business" — don't ask anyone on your staff for their input. This proves you are superior to them as you don't suffer from the same preconceptions (understanding the scope of the project), prejudices (experience), or lack of vision (ideas on how to make things better).

No, not Lego Christmas — Christus . As in Bertel Thorvaldsen 's iconic masterwork . But this one isn't marble, plaster, or even fiberglass. It's made out of Legos. 30 thousand Legos. The parish priest, Per Wilder, started the project in the fall of 2007, and received help in building it from members of the community as well as students from the local school. I've had the opportunity to see the original in Vor Frue church in Copenhagen, and the plaster model at the Thorvaldsen Museum . Here's a link to the article (with more pictures) in Aftonbladet . A Google map showing the location of the church is here . Just in case you want to drop by and see it.

I was checking my Facebook notifications tonight and saw this surprising item listed there. I'm fairly certain that the POTUS and I aren't cousins, but I had to check, just in case I had missed something. So I looked, and what did I find? This: No. I don't think so. I'm so glad Wednesday was April Fool's Day . Otherwise, I may have had cause to worry.

Lock Edward Liddy in a room with Chuck Norris .

... and I've thought of lots of witty things to say, but never had the chance to put them down in print. Or what passes for print in this electronic medium. But right now, I'm tired. And I think I'll go to bed and dream of the upcoming baseball season. But I discovered today that Google Books has issues of Baseball Digest online!

Cnet news has a photostory on the new Porsche museum that's scheduled to open 31 January 2009. The museum's website is not to be missed. If you want to see what the site looked like while it was under construction, Google maps can help you here.