Have you signed away your right to sue?
Yet another article about how mandatory-arbitration clauses are bad, this time in employment law.

Be it ever so illogical — drop the price of your home, already
We’re not looking to sell our house for a couple of years, at least. I hope that when we do, we’ll be able to accept reality, and price our house to the market.

Do open houses sell houses?
Shill! I really like our Real Estate blog. This entry is on open houses. It’s fun to watch people fighting in the comments.

Should it be free?
Outstanding article on whether software should be free or not. Even if you’re not in the industry, you should read this.

Jason Butler – Twitter
Because it’s important that I have an outlet for 140-character updates on my life through the day. Follow at your own risk.

All hail Universal Hub
Excellent article in the Phoenix about Adam Gaffin and Universal Hub. I’m not stealing all our hyperlocal community ideas from him, but maybe a couple…

12 practical steps for learning to go with the flow
February was a trying month. March has not started much better. I need to learn to go with the flow a little bit more.

Beat the long tail with 1,000 true fans
Incredibly interesting article about how to survive as a creator without having to rely on the blockbuster. Must read.

Bank Julius Baer: allegedly money-laundering; unquestionably moronic
Robert X. Cringely expains why attempting to shut down the whistleblower site is the stupidest thing an (allegedly) money-laundering bank would want to do.

Why it’s good to include the tourist hordes in your travel photos
Philip Greenspun shows why including your fellow travelers in your shots can sometimes make them far more interesting.

This week’s TWIT was their best
This week’s episode of “This Week in Tech” was their best. Jason Calacanis and Molly Wood add a ton to the panel, and I hope they become regulars.

Wow, I’m way behind on my website postings; impending baby and multiple launches at work are conspiring against me.

Today we did our “stock up on everything you can think of” run to BJs. Now, both freezers are full, and we should be able to live for a couple of weeks without leaving the house when the baby arrives. I’m wracking my brain for other baby-prep tasks I need to do.

Anyway, on to the links…

AngryJournalist.com
Anonymous journalists tell us what they’re angry about today. Quite a bit of inside baseball, but not too different from what I see from time to time in the newsroom.

This is also a good example of what happens to the signal:noise ratio when the social-news hordes descend on a site.

Yet another reason to boycott Best Buy
I have never had a good experience at Best Buy (or their not-at-all-missed competitor Comp USA). They take advantage of the non-technical customers and outright lie when they are caught. I hope that a more activist Congress will reign in some of the corporate excesses.

50 tricks to get you more productive
It’s always good to remind yourself of little ways to keep moving the chains. I’m pretty good about most of these, but I really need to work on a couple of them — especially working on the important things, instead of just the pressing things.

Learn to demo
Good advice from Antonio Rodriguez on how to prep yourself for demoing your product.

Bill Keller’s speech
New York Times editor Bill Keller gives an incredibly insightful speech, talking about the future of journalism and newspapers.

Ten steps to close down an open society
A scary checklist — one we’ve almost completed.

Does your customer service just want people to go away?
Seth Godin has a smart idea here: measure your customer service people by the amount the customers buys after the call as opposed to before it.

Talent Wars in Boston
Xconomy does a nice write up of the current state of the technology labor market in Boston. It’s a good time to be a techie on the Red Line.

How to be a consultant
Long, insightful article. I faced many of these same issues back when I was consulting.

Top 10 reasons we deleted your comment
The Times’ City Room blog describes how they handle blog comments. Seems quite reasonable, though some in the comments disagree.

The treadmill desk
Shimon Rura has a great article talking about how he set up a treadmill desk. I read my NetNewsWire on the treadmill in the morning, but I’ve never looked at trying to type. I’ll have to see if I can improvise something around this.

Having an iPhone doesn’t qualify you to fly the plane
“Some guy with an IPhone says the weather is good, and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?”

Accident victims face grab for legal winnings
If you are hurt in an accident, you might not be able to get any relief by suing the responsible party. If you win, the insurance company may swoop in and claim the judgment you receive. I can see both sides of this argument, but it still sounds all sorts of wrong.

Misgivings rise with Antarctican tourism
I regret not having been able to see Antarctica while still single and able to travel. In light of the rise in tourism and last week’s sinking of a cruise liner, I worry that it won’t be feasible when we’re ready to travel again.

Rise in holiday call strains mall cops
Nothing heats up the old police blotter quite like the holidays. It must be great fun to break up fights at the mall.

Renting ideas to Fortune 500 companies
Really interesting post from Tim Ferriss about how you can license your ideas to large companies and collect royalties. Beats working, but you have to actually go out and think of useful stuff.

Travel Basics: Moscow
I was trawling our sister site at the International Herald Tribune when I came across their travel blogs, written by the correspondents stationed in each city. The Travel Basics are great primers, not that I’m going to Moscow, or back to Bangkok any time soon.

Fresh pain for the uninsured
Important article from Business Week. Hospitals are outsourcing their collections from the uninsured.

3BR with a mall view
This article about the new condos at the Natick Mall annoyed me in many different ways. This is my favorite quote: “Their $1.6 million, 2,200-square-foot penthouse overlooking JCPenney, the DuGallys said, suits the lifestyle they want for themselves and their Chihuahua, Jasmine.” I always wanted a view of the JCPenney.

The Predatory Lending Association
Outstanding parody site. Ha ha, only serious.

An interview with the author of Programming Collective Intelligence
A highly-readable discussion of a highly-useful book.

China’s deadly pollution
The Times has a long investigative piece this morning on China’s growth policies’ impact on the environment, and the growing blowback. The air was ugly when I was there in 2001; I can only imagine how bad it is now.

Walking scores
This is a neat site that calculates the walkability of any location. My long-time Cambridge apartment gets a 100 out of 100 score; everything you need is within walking distance. My current address only gets a 5. Damn suburbs.

The nerd handbook
s/nerd/geek/g, but otherwise pretty close in a lot of ways.

Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image
Marc Andreessen on how the talent can overthrow the studio system.

The very expensive reality of chasing reality TV
I never knew how far people would go for their chance to be on Survivor or Project Runway.

Curt Schilling announces he’s coming back
Hooray for Curt using his blog to break news. Hooray for the Red Sox getting him for one more year.

How to coast your way to a writing career
Paul Boutin with some good advice.

Ten signs of incompetent managers
I don’t think too many of these apply to me, but, of course, I would be the last to know.

Holliston Beavers
It seems that no one wants to save the Holliston beavers. On behalf of my water supply, I don’t really care what happens to them.

Literary style by the numbers
Steven Johnson — author of Interface Culture, Mind Wide Open and other excellent books — does a quick analysis of sentence length and word complexity for several prominent authors. Interesting conclusions.

The Comcast fiasco
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Passive voice is redeemed for web headings
Interesting! This is what happens when search-engine optimization comes up head to head with principles of good writing.

Programming lessons from Sales — sharpen the saw
I’m always trying to find new ways of looking at old problems. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it’s almost always worth the time investment.

I was a pre-teen Glicknick
Tales of Larry Glick with lots of links. (Via Universal Hub)

America’s most important issue for 2008 (with a little bit of salty language)

The lottery industry
BS is also prevalent in the business world, as you can see from this entirely content-free quote:

W. Bruce Turner, the chief executive of Gtech, puts it another way. “Gtech has played a key role in fostering the success enjoyed by lotteries today,” he says. “We have grown to be the world’s leading solutions provider to the lottery industry because we focus on creating the greatest value for our customers, which results in higher returns to the good causes they support.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this before — I’m going to be better about updating the blog more often. Here’s some linky goodness to get us back on the right track.

ZipSkinny for Holliston
Neat little application giving you a visualization of all the census data for a given zip code. It’s good info; we’ve dropped all the Massachusetts ones into the crawl.

Oh Joy! Breakfast with the boss
How do you manage work/life balance when other people try to schedule you for breakfast or dinner meetings? I’m going to steal the “buy you lunch to pick your brain” responses.

Asking “why” can be dangerous if your father is a professor
Sadie has started asking “Why?” all the time. I’ve started answering her. She may come to regret asking.

Opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour
Jimmy Guterman gives his thoughts on the opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour. I went to my one and only Springsteen show in 2002. Geez, over five years ago — hooray for the blog archives!

Tips for making your tech resume less awful
Not relevant for me at the moment, but always good to keep the resume up to date — and not awful.

Jeremy Zawodny hosts a good comparison of software languages and legalese. Pretty funny for those of us exposed to both worlds each day. Read the comments, too; they add a lot to the conversation.

He goes on to answer the question “Why is LEGAL such a [poor] language?” and finds that, among other problems, “it doesn’t use modern techniques like subroutines or standard libraries.” Doing so would save a ton of time and effort. It’d probably also reduce the lawyer’s income.

As he concludes:

Of course, there is one additional reason that legal documents are so long: Many lawyers are paid by the hour.

Indeed.

We have a ton of stuff going on right now, so I apologize for the lack of linky goodness posting. I’m going to try to get back into a daily routine. We’ll see how long that lasts. Anyway, here we go.

I’m sure you guys can deal
My only power trip at work is that I ban sending bad news by email. If there’s the least chance the recipient will react badly to your message, you need to deliver it in person. Even worse are all the examples up at PassiveAggressiveNotes.com. All the posts are worth reading, but this one is expecially funny. I hate when the servers melt.

Awesome sed reference
If the word ‘sed’ means nothing to you, you can safely skip this.

Color palettes from art masterpieces
Really interesting examples of color palettes derived from art masterpieces. I still have my trusty Color Index book, but this is another good way of brainstorming color schemes.

It’s a renter’s market on Cape Cod this summer
Not really an issue for us, but interesting to see the dynamics around that market.

Holliston Triathlon
So, this is what was blocking Norfolk Street last weekend. A five-mile swim, followed by a fifteen-mile bike ride and five-mile run would be a good day’s exercise for anyone. One journalistic note, though: the article doesn’t say who actually won the race.

Practical Toy Storage
We’ve been good about not letting the toys take over the house, avoiding the impression that a Toys ‘r Us has exploded in our family room. Still, there’s always more to learn. This article has several good tips about storing toys and integrating them into the family lifestyle.

Amazing pictures of tiger swimming
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.

Yooooouuuuukkkkk
Kevin Youkilis is now also blogging. Anyone who can put together a 20-game hitting streak can do whatever he wants.

Ashland bomb threat
Though near Sadie’s daycare, this didn’t affect her. If you look at the fax that came through, I can kinda see why they interpreted it that way, though.

Passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, co-workers and strangers
Very funny pictures of passive-aggressive notes. My general rule of “never send bad news by email” goes double for little pieces of paper.

Tool Snob
Jay’s new site, detailing the latest and greatest in the toolshed. I have a feeling my $19.95 Home Depot power drill will not make the cut.

The right ride
Interactive maps showing safe bike rides in and around Boston. Play around with clicking on the pushpins to get hints about what you need to look out for. The Central Square notes are all spot-on.

Natick Mall beating
Egads.

Inside the monkeysphere
Why we are how we are. And why you yelled at that guy on the Mass Pike this morning.

7 reasons the 21st century is making you miserable
More from the writer of the monkeysphere. Very interesting stuff.

How to deal with Internet trolls
Cory Doctorow outlines some techniques for dealing with bad characters in your online community.

The semantic web is doomed
I have similar frustrations. I don’t state them quite this colorfully, though.

Confessions of an A-list blogger
Steve Pavlina talks about life as a prominent blogger.

Advice to drug seekers from an ER doctor
To all those who make up symptoms to try to score some painkillers: the doctors are actually on to you.

Corporate ipsum
When we’re designing webpages, we often put in “lorem ipsum” text as placeholder for real thinking. In the corporate world, we often insert empty jargon into emails as placeholder for real thinking. This little widget helps.

Tom Peters on the utterly predictable Daimler/Chrysler divorce
“So why oh why oh why oh why do these ‘leading lights of management’ do this [stuff] over and over and over and over?”

Don’t get taken
Clay auto dealerships have been running ads (disclosure: including in the Globe and on Boston.com) touting a site where they share all the “secrets” of car dealerships, reminding me a little of the old Saturn flat-price ads. I think this is a smart strategy, zagging against the common practices of a lowly-regarded industry. I will be interested to see if their “high-road” strategy makes them more money.

Apocrypha panned
Wow, rarely have I seen a Globe restaurant review this critical.

How to program 30-second skip for Comcast DVR
Super-handy. I just programmed my remote, and life is so much better now.

Lostcasts
A very good weekly Lost podcast.

Holliston Police Station on track
It’s good to see that the new police station is still on schedule. The police are moving into the old Middle School Flagg building; I’m happy to know that my fifth-grade language arts classroom is not longer just metaphorically a jail cell.

33 ways to improve productivity
Interesting nuggets. I’m a bit of a productivity and GTD geek, so I try to do follow quite a few of these strategies. It doesn’t help put more hours in the day, but it helps get more of the important things done.

The Harry-est towns in America
Once upon a time, I worked briefly on community at Amazon, helping launch the PlanetAll-derived Purchase Circles. Here’s another application of that concept: which towns are buying the most Harry Potter books? Sadly, Holliston did not make the list.

BostonWorks is no more
Our partnership with Monster launched today. Congratulations to everyone involved, though I don’t envy Alan for having to port my old browse by commute code. Sometimes things you wrote five years ago linger on far longer then you expect them to.

Battling the bloodsuckers
Bellingham, Medway and Millis are among the towns spraying mosquitos. Apparently the recent heavy rains have made this area a skeeter paradise.

Banned from the Holliston library
Quite the scandal.

Once More with Feeling
I am so sad I missed this: Buffy’s Once More with Feeling sing-along night at Coolidge Corner. Must have been bunnies.

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
So it goes.

Mark Cuban on commercials for ripoffs
Mavs owner Mark Cuban goes off on the spammy infomercials. I despise all those “work at home and make millions” commercials.

Roger Ebert on his illness
He’s in pretty rough shape, but he will not forgo his own film festival. I miss him on Ebert and Roeper, and hope he gets better soon.

A word of advice during a housing slump: Rent
The New York Times crunches the numbers and finds that many would be better off renting than owning right now.

Congress Street vs. Summer Street
I’ve been working at Fort Point Channel (320 Congress Street) for the past couple of years. I’m a little surprised that people are considering either Congress or Summer Street as the next happening neighborhood in town.

ESPN: Can we keep the yelling down?
ESPN has a new ombudsman, and she pulls no punches. WEEI’s endless yelling has dropped my weekly listening from tens of hours to barely tens of minutes.

Pew: Newspaper readers; Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers best informed
Viewers of Fox News and morning news shows bring up the rear.

Take the funny and run
Interesting review of how jokes are stolen and recycled in the comedy world. Denis Leary, Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia do not come off well.

Alert waitress at a restaurant
Inspirational story of a waitress who notices a guy slipping something into his date’s drink.

Circuit City fires thousands after deciding they earn too much money
Firing your best salespeople is the best way to grow sales at a dying retailer.

How car dealerships try to rip you off
Another insider report from Consumerist. If you aren’t reading Consumerist each day, you should be.

Entwistle Trial
I snarfed up this domain thinking I’d be able to cover the trial as it was happening. Unfortunately, with so much else going on, I’m not going to be able to do that. So, the domain is up for sale, if anyone wants to make an offer for the good type-in traffic.