Month: June 2008

Liverpool’s Fernando Torres finally broke a hard luck duck and scored the only goal of the final to lead Spain to their first major tournament trophy in 44 years after going close moments before, denied by the post. Germany rarely solved the core of Senna and Xabi in the center of midfield and when they did Carlos Puyol ended the threat so even with the end of game surge Iker Casillas had to make only one true save.

Michael Ballack was on the losing side for a third major championship in the last six weeks, getting a runner’s up medal here to go with the two from Chelsea’s losing to Manchester Uniter in the Champions League final and Premier League. Ballack, I will admit, has never been on my favorite player list, stemming from his play-acting in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals when Germany beat USA 1-0 on questionable refereeing.

Speaking of which: Andy Gray, ESPN’s color man, said early in the second half “[Rossetti]’s the ref. He has the qualifications.” There were far too man questionable decisions, such as the yellow to Casillas for dissent and lack of foul calls against the German centerbacks, but fortunately the outcome wasn’t affected. Where’s Pierluigi Collina when we really need him?

Though it isn’t something with which I’ve been directly involved, BI is a very interesting field and when I saw that Sun was hosting a free one day event attending seemed a no-brainer. First time I’ve been back on the Sun Quentin campus in Menlo Park in several, maybe four, years but the place looks pretty much the same.

The morning presentations were okay but not great, about 60-70 people in the seats including Steve Gillmor and Nic Cubrilovic of newly-launched TechCrunchIT (more details about this event in their post). The keynote was from Mark Madsen of Third Nature; he looked at open source generally, not BI specifically, mainly from an economic and historical perspective. Other than mentioning a few FOSS companies new to me I didn’t see a whole lot of meat in his presentation.

Ian Murdock, Sun’s Vice President of Developer and Community Marketing, did an hour on Sun’s open source strategy and roadmap. Plenty of the former and about none of the latter, mostly vague generalities, except for a mention of Zembly. That’s a new Sun project, still in private beta, that enables anyone to “create, host, and deploy Facebook apps, OpenSocial apps, meebo apps, iPhone apps, widgets, Google Gadgets, and other social applications, in minutes, all using just your browser and your creativity.”

Zack Urlocker is the afternoon speaker and is definitely interesting and on topic. I first ran into Zack about 15 years ago when he was running the Borland Delphi 1.0 product launch and he’s always doing something creative and useful. He came into Sun the other month when the MySQL acquisition closed and is now VP Products, Database Group.

His talk opened with a view of how MySQL used open source as part of their strategy to successfully disrupt the database market, moved on to specific customer case studies and their partner ecosystem and then a look at the MySQL technical strategy.

Key Lessons from Zack:

• Referenceable customer case studies are a huge sales tool
• New use cases make for easier sales than rip and replace migrations
• Partners, partners, partners (probably due in large part to the makeup of this audience)

Much better!

The quarters are over and boy am I surprised! Three of the four group winners lost, with Spain surviving on a (thick) thread. Germany over Portugal was easy to understand as soon as the sides lined up for the pregame anthems, the Germans towering over Cristiano Ronaldo and crew. Turkey pulled another ridiculous comeback out of their asses, scoring on literally the last kick of the match.

Most annoying, the Dutch left their exciting, winning style in the dressing room and Russia did the business to move on. In all three group stage games the Orange were fast, aggressive and made their opponents look like B squads; Saturday Marco van Basten changed tactics and his players never really gelled with it. Russia could have been taken, particularly in the first half, but Sneijder, van der Vaart, Kuyt and van Nistlerooy just didn’t have it.

George Carlin, RIP. The man put on some of the funniest shows, consistently, for over 40 years and now he goes, heart failure on a Sunday afternoon. What a bad start for any week!

Carlin and Cheech and Chong were the first two comic acts that I connected with as a teenager, with Richard Pryor not far behind. Routines like the seven words you can’t say on TV and Dave’s not here warped my mind in ways from which I’ve never recovered. And by hosting the first episode of Saturday Night Live Carlin gave that show instant credibility, giving that initial cast an opening they drove through like a Mack truck.

George kept giving us the good stuff over all these years, more through juicy supporting roles in movies (especially Kevin Smith flicks) but also with the occasional HBO special. A funny man, his death is a big withdrawal from the cosmic humor bank account.

A friend from those long-ago NetDynamics days has a new company that just came into public beta called iWidgets that provides a fairly simple to use, JavaScript-based tool to build a wide variety of widgets which you can then deploy on Social Networks like Facebook and Hi5, widget portals like iGoogle and embed on your blog.

As a test I made a simple widget that should show the most recent five headlines from the movie review blog and here it is:

Seems blank so far, but this is an early beta 😉

Later: Peter Yared emailed to tell me his engineers have identified the issue and a correction should push on Monday if it holds up under testing. Very good!

The Google Mac Blog had a post today linking to the videos from the recent Google I/O event. Being too expensive for me to attend, this seemed like a good thing. However, clicking the link in the post that should have taken me to the videos instead sent me to the Google Sites login page (which makes sense, they probably use Sites for these kind of pages).

Google official blogs do not have comments so I can’t post this request to fix the the problem directly but the blogs do have a posts that link here feature. So let’s see…

To say we had a little trouble with the Mountain View Building Department would be an understatement. Most knowledgeable folks I spoke with couldn’t understand why we needed to take out any permits, much less two. (Late in the game we had to get a third, for the new furnace, though that does seem justified).

Fortunately we had good people working for us and so when the inspector came out this morning he signed off on all three.

The disconnect stems from the fact that all the work we did was to repair or correct existing things, all of which should have been inspected two or three years ago when the previous owner expanded and remodeled. Much of the work simply wasn’t up to code, like unvented bathroom fixtures, hot water heater and furnace–we bought the new furnace because venting the old one would have required major structural work.

Anyway, with the approvals we’re in the home stretch. All the walls and ceilings can be closed up and painted, the fixtures put back and we can finally unpack and figure out where everything will go.

So it’s like a home now, eh? Give me a beer, dammit.

Wow, it sure has been a long time eh? The CBC and Fox are partnering to bring back Bob and Doug Mackenzie in animated form 25 years after their movie Strange Brew bombed. Good thing since neither Dave Thomas nor Rick Moranis are young enough to do the brothers justice.

One surely hopes the two comics can still bring the heat, er, ice cold Molson.

What a surprise! Our lovely new appliances arrived nice and early this morning and the wonderful, simply wonderful, past construction here raised yet another unbelievable annoyance: the cabinets next to where the refrigerator goes are not installed correctly so the fridge doesn’t fit.

I’m talking to a Home Depot associate right now to see what can be done. A swap for the next size smaller? We’ll see.

Later: These guys treated me right. Though they apparently had no obligation to help me since the manufacturer refused to take the return (admittedly, per standard policy), the store manager agreed to do so. Plus he’s letting us keep the first fridge until the new one comes Wednesday so we have a place to keep food cold. (It’s sitting in the garage, fortunately for us located on the other side of the wall from the kitchen.)

Well, when all the work is done, and the finish line seems fairly close as we’re mainly into closing up walls and ceilings, the new homestead will be really nice. The new flooring is complete, the roofer did his work days ago, the plumbing and electrical is nearly finished and the handy man is moving at good pace.

The movers did their work today and I can comfortably recommend Partner Moving as this is the second time we’ve used them. Less than $600, including everything except tip, to move a two bedroom apartment and they were done in five hours.

New appliances arrive tomorrow and I believe we’ll be able to have the building inspector Monday, meaning when he signs off we can close up everything else and put a fresh coat of paint all around. After the inspection we can really unpack and settle in, though we should be sleeping here from tonight.

For the weekend we snagged two tickets to the Earthquakes v. Galaxy match courtesy of VentureBeat and Microsoft. Quakes are playing well lately and I’m not sure that LA will have my former favorite American player Landon Donovan available, so this could be a stronger game than expected for a first v. last confrontation.

Anyway, all this was way more expensive than expected but I’m getting happier about it by the day.

The closing was six days late and let’s just say there’s very little plumbing present now that was there two weeks ago, but we’re really excited and packing fast because Thursday is moving day.

The contractors have been pretty good so far. Not cheap but the work looks good. All of them worked over the weekend too, to help us meet the schedule. I’ll know for sure in a month but I’d probably giver referrals for each one (plumbing, electrical, roofing, flooring and general purpose work).

One positive thing about being around to answer questions and such is I’ve had plenty of time to spend on Insoshi. Working with Ruby on Rails again, especially in a meaningful way like this, is a lot of fun.

More soon, I’m sure.

I also saw the US national team’s three recent matches away to England and Spain and home (sort of) to Argentina. The boys got better over the week, allowing one less goal each time, though the offense never clicked enough to, as ESPN’s Tommy Smith repeats endlessly, bulge the old onion bag.

We clearly missed Landon Donovan’s creativity on attack the first two outings, obvious to a blind man once he showed up against the South Americans, though against Spain Freddie Adu showed why Benfica paid good money for him last summer. Which made me wonder, seriously, why he wasn’t starting on Sunday as I’d have loved to see him combine with Donovan.

The biggest disappointment was Eddie Johnson. The striker started all three outings and produced about zilch. Bob Bradley should have left him on the bench the last game, started Adu in midfield and put Clint Dempsey up top. Dempsey was rarely able to get involved on the day stuck out on the right and with too much defensive responsibility.

Second biggest disappointment was Jozy Altidore’s absence from injury. With his big money transfer to Villareal announced last Wednesday plus a sizzling performance during the Olympic qualifiers–where Adu also shined–he’s clearly preferable to Johnson in a 4-4-2 formation.

Next up for the Americans are the first 2010 qualifiers, home and away with Barbados this weekend and next. Not likely to be the same kind of competition as the friendlies but you have to play and win these games. My over/under for Barbados’ goal tally from both is one, but given Tim Howard’s outstanding performance against Lionel Messi and Julio Cruz that may be generous.

12 of the 16 teams have played their first games over the last three days and so far for me the Netherlands are the cream after thrashing an Italy side 3-0 that was never in the game and seems over the hill just two years after winning the World cup with nearly the same players. I may be biased, a bit, since I picked the Orange Crush to win the tournament when many observers didn’t even have them getting out of Group C.

The Dutch had energy and pace, plus a slight edge in poor officiating, while Andrea Pirlo never got his attack in gear and Luca Toni blew the team’s best chance while it was still 2-0. The third goal was deadly, a header from left back Gio von Bronckhorst–who at 5’6″ is nearly a foot shorter than either Italian central defender.

Liverpool FC’s Dirk Kuyt provided the supply for that one as well as the second, which was pure beauty between Kuyt deft header and Wesley Sjneider’s lovely turning high kick inside the near post. The first goal will surely be controversial as Ruud van Nistlerooy was played onside by an Azzuri defender laying off the pitch from the previous play.

Italy caught a extra large break, though, because France could only match a 0-0 draw against Romania in the group’s other game today. This means that Italy can still advance with results against those two, though doing that will require some spark and aggresiveness entirely abset today.

I also caught the Germany-Poland and Portugal-Turkey matches. Germany dominated but this was pretty much as expected and the two goals, both from Poland-born Lukas Podoloski, were just reward for their effort. Portugal gave a more exciting performance but again, against a squad marked for an early exit who still were able to keep the hottest player on the planet right now under wraps the whole way.

Czech Republic escaped with a 1-0 win over the Swiss thanks to a very questionable penalty call in the fourth minute. Hype team Croatia did nothing to get anyone excited, just scraping past hosts Austria by the same 1-0 score line, though unless the Poles can make something happen will likely get through to the quarters.

Most interesting for me so far:

• All six games have been clean sheets, one 3-0, two 2-0’s, two 1-0’s and the scoreless France-Romania disaster. Italian keeper Buffon allowed only two goals through the seven matches while winning World Cup 2006, one an own goal, compared to shipping three today.
• France and Italy’s performances. The French squad is also on the, er, more experienced end of the age range and sorely miss Thierry Henry. Surely Roberto Donadoni and Raymond Domench will be under huge pressure the next two match days.

Tomorrow is the last day of first games: Spain v. Russia, the one I’ll try to watch since Spain should start at least two of my Reds and Russia are intriguing with good results but no big name players, as well as Sweden taking on 2004 champs Greece. The expectations are for Spain and Russia to advance though tournaments like this almost always have some surprises when the group stage is finished. Such as Greece getting out of the group last time, much less their capturing the whole thing.

The Dutch were able to get Robin van Persie on for the last 20 minutes and if he comes to full match fitness while his mates can get a win or two draws these guys will be surely be a force to reckon with in the knockout stages.