Pam won her firm's annual karaoke competition last night singing the lovely song to which my sister and her new husband had their first dance as man and wife. Synchronicity or what?
End of History intellectual Francis Fukuyama has a very interesting review of a book that posits solutions to modern problems by two "unreconstructedly Marxist" theorists, solutions that Fukuyama calls imaginary, unworkable and unconnected to the real world. The New Left Review has a different perspective on the work. While I would never dream of reading the actual book, the reviews do some thought provoking: what planet do these two fuckers live on?
Today's movie: The Lords of Flatbush
I watched The Lords of Flatbush this afternoon--blame TiVo--but it was just so bad I can't be bothered to write much of anything about it. The script was sad, the acting crackled like wrapping paper being torn off an unwanted gift and the faux-'50s soundtrack was, well, faux. Not as if there aren't a zillion tunes that were real hits in the era. Let's just say that Grease wthout being a musical was what this flick wanted to be and American Graffiti and American Hot Wax were contemporaries that were worth watching.ugggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
Wondering why so many people are frustrated by the difficulty in even getting an interview to work at Google? I see many requests for contacts and other information from folks on the ProMatch and JHTC mailing lists, but I don't think there is much to be done for most of them. Lawsuit charges Google with age discrimination gives some insight:
Note that this is not to say I'm in any way unhappy at Intransa. Rather more aimed at the experience I had hunting prior to joining up there. Hell, I even have a couple of well-placed contacts inside who couldn't get me in for an interview for specific openings for which I was well-qualified and I do believe my age was a factor.
During his tenure at Google, Reid said he gathered evidence that Google purposely avoids hiring older workers. Just 2 percent of Google's roughly 1,900 employees are under 30 years old, according to the suit. The average age of Google's male workers was 29.7 years old and the average age of women was 28.4 years old when Reid left.Of course there is also the firm's penchant for hiring only people with higher level technical degrees even for non-technical positions. An MBA, especially a 17 year old one like I have, probably doesn't seem to add much value in this perception.
Note that this is not to say I'm in any way unhappy at Intransa. Rather more aimed at the experience I had hunting prior to joining up there. Hell, I even have a couple of well-placed contacts inside who couldn't get me in for an interview for specific openings for which I was well-qualified and I do believe my age was a factor.
It's been awhile since the last geek dinner in the area, the best we can remember it was the one Jeremy Zadowny organized when Tim Bray came down for a visit, and August is going to be a hot, slow month in the South Bay. So Bill Humphries and I are sponsoring one in downtown Mountain View at 7:00 on Friday, August 13 at Cafe Yulong (on Dana Street between Hope and Castro). So if you're in the area, join us and even if you can't, do feel free to pass along the message to others. Since neither of us have comments on our blogs, you can write me directly or send Bill a message through his feedback link to let us know you're coming; just be sure to put 'August 13 Dinner' in your message.
That's what I'm talking about!
Just watched the 2004 American Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony and I'm thinking specifically of Jonny Lang singing Steve Wonder's Living for the City. An excellent instance of a great song remade as blasting rock and roll. Though I have to think that some people were wondering about the length of Lang's blistering guitar solo, much as I enjoyed it. We need more of this and, for example, I'd love to hear What Becomes of the Brokenhearted done this way, after hearing the traditional arrangement on Standing in the Shadows of Motown the other night.(Why am I not surprised to find that Lang covered the Wonder tune on his last release?)
Book review: NetForce Point of Impact
Wow, had this one sitting on the To Read shelf for three years, just kept passing the book by until it finally caught my attention the other day. Probably better than the first two in the series, NetForce Point of Impact is apparently the fifth title so I must have missed two somewhere. No biggie, short review is more positive than I'd be but conveys the basics. Clancy's name and I suppose he participated in some brainstorming/editorial reviews but actual author Steve Perry is getting better as the books go on.moderately interesting
- Jonathon Korman of Cooper Interaction Design gives a very good explanation of why organizations need both IxDs and PMs
- One of these days I will sit down and experiment with ippfp - interface preprocessor for php
- Athletic Club Bilbao goes newbie with fonts crazy on their new UEFA Cup shirt (mention courtesy of Phil Ball's latest column on Summer changes in La Liga)
- Speaking of football, Liverpool opened their warmups by giving new manager Rafa a win over Wrexham courtesy of two goals by Anthony Le Tallec and they travel to America for three matches as part of the ChampionsWorld Tour.
Book reviews: The Night's Dawn Trilogy
Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton: Reality Disfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, each volume published in two parts in the US but originally one (each) in the UK.A Beowulf cluster named Night's Dawn.
Possibly the best science fiction series of the 1990s, no kidding. You'd think that I would've read more of his work but no, never have. Rereading this every few years seems to be satisfactory.
An amazing story with the biggest scope one might imagine, 600 years in the future, Humanity spread across more than 800 star systems, friends with a few alien races, life is good for many though only great for a smaller number. Then the barrier between life and death is breached by some awesomely vile youths and everything is jeapordized.
Hamilton takes more than 3400 pages to tell his tale and I don't think he wasted a single one. There are wonderful passages of prose, technical inventions galore and characters that are realized and well-fit.
absolutely recommended
Tomorrow's radio, well, tomorrow
Showing the ease with which good ideas can proliferate on the web, John Robb is launching Intelligent Defense tomorrow. ID is intended as "a series of conversations dedicated to a deeper understanding of next generation terrorism and what we can do to defend ourselves against it." The series is a companion to Robb's Global Guerillas blog, which itself is a research portal for books and other ventures he has in mind, and takes Doug Kaye's increasingly popular IT Conversations model into a new topic space.SharpReader 0.9.5 is out, don't wait to get it
Props to Luke on a very nice new rev of SharpReader. Not sure why he doesn't call this 1.0 yet, but that's one of those little mysteries in life that will one day be answered. My main concern is that with each micro-release he's fixed more of the usability issues I had. This time he got some biggies:Remembering the app's window size and position. I would have though that some of the basic .Net plumbing would have handled this from the start but good to see he's conquered it.
Remember treeview expansion-state across sessions. Handy for me because I like to keep the category nodes closed and read them at that level rather than the individual blog level.
MouseWheel now scrolls control over which mouse is hovering, instead of the focused control. So now long entries won't require the entry window to be selected.
All told, much to like especially since SharpReader is still freeware. I even got in the first thank you in the announcement thread's comments.
Wildly underestimated, oh yeah!
Over two years ago, I mentioned that thanks to being on the winning side of a class action lawsuit against BankAmerica that $16 would be coming my way in around 12 months. Well, it's been quite a bit longer but I made out much better--given money market account interest rates taken into account--when the check arrived in today's mail for the princely sum of $25.32, reducing my net loss on the original investment to only $1237. Go to love those lawyers. Suh-weet!Today's movie: To Live and Die in L.A.
I always remembered To Live and Die in L.A. fondly even if I only saw it once in the theaters during its run in 1985 and on cable shortly after. A very slick movie that had ahead of its time visual editing and a purpose-built rock soundtrack. Not to mention writer/director William Friedkin's sure touch with the relationship between cops and crooks.Tried to get the thing recorded by TiVo for the longest time but for some reason no luck; then Fry's had the DVD on deep discount and voila! A lazy Summer afternoon is a great time to watch this icy cool flick.
The first starring roles for Willem Dafoe (the bad boy), William Peterson (the anti-hero) and John Pankow (badling before his time), the story turns on a murderous counterfieter faced off against two Secret Service agents. Peterson will go to any lengths to avenge his murdered partner (played by Michael Greene), even though his partner more or less brought his own death on by mysteriously refusing backup.
Not too many big blowups or action sequences but the ones we get are really strong. Most spectacular, perhaps, is an amazing, very long car chase where Peterson and Pankow don't even know who's chasing them or why. And a lovely romantic interest for each of the leads, with matching personalities.
The end is very surprising for Hollywood and I was not at all surprised to hear the director say, on his commentary track, that the studio ordered an alternate shot; watching what was proposed (an extra on the DVD) I'm more than happy he was able to stay with the original. Sadly, this was Freidkin's last decent flick, though not his last by far. Remember Samuel Jackson's rancid Rules of Engagement or Shaq in Blue Chips?
recommended
Plain old feed...
