Author: BillSaysThis

Seems like a smart idea to me. The project would significantly increase the carrying capacity right near where my parents live, so I know the writer isn’t kidding in claiming this might be the worst congestion point in the area and that the number of huge warehouses, not to mention new housing developments, are simply exploding.

Congratulations to Rogers on the publication of his latest gem of a book, Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition, though I’m not writing this to qualify for the giveaway, just to send some good thoughts his way. You can read the first chapter from the publisher’s site.

Hysterical crowd, please don’t run me over as all you acolytes and worshippers race to fill this killer job posting: iPod Product Marketing Manager (Apple Computer, Inc.)

Fresh food or disease prevention: Bird flu “far deadlier than SARS”

Rob’s posted his resume (hire him).

Using their Comment Form, I told the FTC just what I thought about a proposed rule change regarding telemarketing in the US. I included “Private Information Stays So Organized for Freedom” as the Organization Name on their form, feel free to claim your membership in PISSOFF as well. Details on this new stupidity, maybe cupidity is a better name are in this Sun-Times article and the Slashdot discussion.

I told them, short and sweet: “This is an absurd rules change that completely ignores the overwhelming existing public response to telemarketing and the Do Not Call registry. Further, if this really did mean more jobs for Americans we might be able to justify some such change but because nearly all call centers are now located in other nations this argument holds no water.”

What an awesome result! Liverpool 2-1 Arsenal today at Anfield, with up and coming striker Neil Mellor (only playing because of injuries to Cisse, Baros, and Luis Garcia) driving the winner home from 25 yards seconds before the final whistle. I am so stoked and can’t wait to see the replay of this match on FSW Wednesday afternoon. After the goal drought of recent matches, taking three points against the defending champions is absolutely briliant.

Need a great programmer? Rob Fahrni is available and has deep experience with C/C++/Win32/COM and is now using C# and the .NET framework, not too mention his work history includes several years at Microsoft in the Visio team. He’s in Visalia, near Fresno, in California’s Central Valley but in this age of virtual teams and distributed development, that ought not be an issue for a smart development manager.

Photosolve: interesting new company from a fellow Sun alumni “where you’ll find a broad range of high-value yet affordable products and useful information to extend your digital photography experience!”

I saw a very different guitar player this afternoon on PBS live music series Sierra Center Stage, an Aussie named Tommy Emmanuel who played a set of acoustic instrumentals that used his guitar as a percussion kit as much as a normal guitar. A lot of energy, a lot of creativity. He ended with a song called Initiation that was really intense, very deep, though he introduced it as telling a story that I could not connect to what I heard at all. Nice change of pace, for sure.

Note that his website uses a very poor design but you can listen to his music by clicking the “his TUNES” image at the bottom right, clicking on an album title and then on a song title. Or cheat and click here to go straight to his discography.

Back when men were men and Russia was still the major part of the Soviet Union, some manly men on both sides were convinced that the only way for their country to survive the destructive power of the other was to develop a weapon so overwhelming that it could be used while sustaining only minimal damage to itself. Fortunately for us all those men never got a chance to test their fever dreams.

Released in 1990, The Hunt for Red October was a fictionalized version of what mighted have been, if the Soviets had developed a nearly undetectable submarine engine and built a huge MIRV launching system on top of it. Since this is an American made movie, from Tom Clancy’s first huge hit novel, the captain of this first strike weapon is a man perfectly suited to defect.

Sean Connery is Ramius, the iron man running this show, the senior captain of the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet, and he takes the Red October out on its first cruise, with Sam Neill as his number two who dreams of Montana’s open skies and a fat round American wife. Alec Baldwin (replaced by Harrison Ford and then Ben Affleck in later flicks) is American intelligence analyst Jack Ryan, the man who figures out what Connery’s up to. Scott Glen is Bart Mancuso, the American sub captain tailing the Soviets out onto the open seas, and he teams up with Ryan to enable the plan.

Directed by John McTiernan, a top action man, Hunt is an excellent thriller that marches through twists and turns better than Connery’s sub does through the ocean bottom. The first two thirds are filled with the separate races Ryan and Ramius run just to meet up and the final act notches the tension tighter through several false endings. The cinematography and editing are totally sharp.

I’m not writing this well. It’s a holiday, so cut me some slack.

recommended

You gotta figure a show has lost its creative juice when the punchline to the whole pre-credit joke scene is “You know what’s fun is to blow smoke into a dog’s mouth.”

From this week’s frontline, secret history of the credit card, are a couple of interviews that a perfect examples of doubletalk and evasion that just drive you nuts. The one with julie l. williams, acting comptroller of the currency, is particularly sad since she’s part of our government, while Edward Yingling is less surprising but no less disheartening since he’s the mouthpiece for the big banks.

Roger Ebert writes a better review of this awesome 1955 French noir classic than I could. A direct inspiration, along with the contemporaneous Bob La Flambeur, for the modern heist genre. Tarantino would never have made Reservoir Dogs without it. Rififi, as its titled in English-speaking countries, has one scene that stands out as terrifically memorable, the actual robbery, which lasts for 28 minutes and has no dialog or music, just the natural sounds of the four men as they break in, disable the alarm and drill into the back of a huge safe. So cool and, for the record, Frank Oz and David Mamet (who both should have known better) should be sentenced to watch this over and over until their eyeballs bleed for making The Score and Heist.

definitely recommended

William Safire, who can’t retire soon enough to suit me, had another of his absurdities on the Time’s OpEd page today and I was inspired to fire this off:

I read today’s essay by William Safire (Steamroller out of steam) with an increasingly sad laughter ringing in my head. He derides the 9/11 victims’ families and associated efforts to finally bring some order and coherence to our intelligence efforts as racing ahead of need, even though the matter has been discussed widely and hearings held during which critics of the reform testified, while on the facing page we see a true Congressional steamroller in operation (Snookering the taxpayers) and just yesterday another exposing the same shameful action (Rolling Back Women’s Rights). Where is Mr. Safire’s outrage at these shenanigans, where important changes were made without a single committee hearing, a single day for Congresspeople to read and understand just what their vote was about?

Software patents: “It’s a little bit like paying the blackmailer before they have something to blackmail you about.”

Not a surprise: Donovan to ‘fulfill obligation’ to Leverkusen.

Not a surprise: Liverpool loses 1-0 to Monaco and loses another starter (possibly two) to injury.

Christopher Byron, a business reporter building quite a reputation in my eyes, has the kind of article in today’s NY Post (Not So Fast, Eddie) that you really want to see more often in more newspapers. Byron looks closely at Ed Lampert, an investor behind the emergence of KMart from its recent bankruptcy as well as the in-process merger of KMart and Sears. For starters, his hedge fund is the controlling investor in both companies. Anyway, sounds like some pretty shady dealing that I’m surprised to see in this post-Enron, Elliot Spitzer atmosphere. Maybe Byron’s piece will open the relevant eyes.

The Mercury News runs a daily Q&A on reader questions regarding traffic, road and public transit construction and even basic driving techniques and laws that is often interesting. However, today’s column includes a letter about the possibility of allowing, for a non-trivial fee, single occupancy vehicles into the commuter lanes and not for the first time Roadshow writer Gary Richards ducks the asked question. I wrote him to ask why:

Gary,

I’m a little disappointed that twice now, including today, I’ve seen you respond to questions regarding the economic equality of government plans to offer single vehicle drivers access to HOV lanes for a few dollars by not addressing this point but sloughing the writers off with fairly vague comments like “seems to be working” elsewhere. Roadshow is your column and I’m not trying to interfere with the choices you and your editors make on which letters to print and answer but if you do print somebody’s question I think you should at least actually answer their question instead of one they didn’t ask.

Can you explain the criteria for judging the effectiveness of the San Diego and Houston efforts that lead to your answer? That is, what does “working” mean in this context? More importantly to me, how are the government officials making this decision justifying what Mark Mayol (rightly) calls “the separation of the haves and have-not?”