Category: Personal

Some day I will get the hang of date arithmetic in PHP. Until then I’ll be spending an extra hour or two for every class I try to create that needs it. In the end, I did triumph and create a new class that manages a countdown list of events such as the one in the right hand column on my main pag: bstCountdown. The events themselves are stored in a database table and filtered by list name (category). The code will be posted soon but I’m still working through an issue with a subclass. Take my word for it, this is very cool.

Okay, it’s GoogleFight, a fun new(?) use of the Google API that lets you enter two terms and returns the number of hits for each. MetaFilter has a long and mostly amusing thread. My contribution:

“Never having gotten over fighting with my sister when we were kids, though I love her dearly now:

Bill vs. Joanne

For once I win in a landslide! Woohoo”

One of my favorites: farty pants vs. poopy head

Vaxgen executives knew that, as promising as it will be in the next few years, their AIDSVAX AIDS vaccine alone is not enough to build a successful company. The two top managers, CEO Lance Gordon and President Donald P. Francis, are seasoned researchers in the field of seriously nasty viruses so they went out and won a contract from the US Government to develop and supply an anthrax vaccine. Which has given the stock price a nice boost over the last few days, from a low of $8.35 Tuesday to today’s close of $10.40 even though the NASDAQ Composite has continued down. Though this is nothing compared to what the stock price will be after AIDSVAX passes the last clinical trials early next year and gets FDA approval.

Evan and I went to the Expo at Web Services Edge 2002 at the San Jose Convention Center. The economy’s bad, I know, but even so attendance was amazingly low by both visitors and vendors; maybe 25 booths and less than 150 people, maybe closer to 100, walking around and I’m not sure how many of them were vendor staff wandering around out of boredom.

I did visit with a few interesting companies. In particular, DreamFactory and Vultus had very interesting tools for developing front-ends to web services and Actional had superior management solutions. Far too many of the vendors were showing me-too products that seemed like attempts to stretch J2EE-related products to cover a new buzzword.

I did run into two old friends from pre-Sun NetDynamics days, which was nice. One (now the Marketing VP) was staffing her company’s booth; the other said he was a walking booth (he’s the CTO of his company). Both are working hard, really hard, to get business done in this tough sea.

Strangest of all: I saw a woman I would swear is my ex-wife. But I haven’t seen her in over five years and she didn’t seem to recognize me though she looked straight at me. I couldn’t see her badge and the face did seem a little different. Even if that was her, I have no clue what we would say to each other.

Do you eat fruits like bananas, pineapples, mangoes, or oranges? Guess what? Any of them that come into this area on boats will be going up in price by serious amounts starting tomorrow and continuing as long as the ports are shut down. At the market today, the manager told the person in front of me in line that the cost of bananas will go from $11 per case to about $30. Good thing bananas are not allowed on Atkins!

From: “Bruce Springsteen”

To:

Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 5:09 PM

Subject: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON SNL THIS SATURDAY

> BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON SNL THIS SATURDAY

>

> BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON SNL THIS SATURDAY!

>

> Live from New York!

>

> It’s Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band!

>

> Don’t miss the season premiere of Saturday Night Live

> this Saturday, October 5th.

>

> Bruce & the band will be performing

> “You’re Missing” and “Lonesome Day”

> from their critically acclaimed album,

> “The Rising”

>

> Saturday Night Live can be seen

> at 11:30pm on NBC

> (Please check local listings for exact time)

>

> Bruce online, 24 hours a day: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/

The season has gone well so far for Liverpool: sitting only two points behind Arsenal at the top of the Premiership and a key victory yesterday to put them in good standing to advance in the Champions League. Now this: I want to play up front, Heskey tells Houllier. Uh oh!

I’d always wondered about the way European sides, the top ones at least, stockpile extra players. Especially up front on teams that play 4-4-2 alignments (two forwards, that is). Liverpool has Michael Owen, who is only 22 years old and simply owns the righthand forward’s spot and then Heskey, El Hadji Diouf, and Milan Baros; even John Arne Riise, who’s been playing defense recently, has had a start or two up front and done well. Aside from Arsenal and Man Utd., these four would be stars on any English side. None of the strikers, other than Owen who came up through the club’s youth system, were gotten cheaply either. Heskey cost about $16 million two years ago, Baros about $5.5M a year ago, and Diouf was the big acquisition, for $15M, over the summer.

Manager Gerard Houllier is not one to take public complaints lightly. At least once in the past month he told the press he would not tolerate any whiners on the club. A fan poll on the club’s website after yesterday’s win gave Heskey man of match honors. Sounds like a collision, not a good one for the team with the transfer window shut tight until January, could be on the way.

No, I’m not reprinting headlines from 1917! Just reporting on the glorious 5-0 victory by Liverpool FC today at home against Spartak Moscow in their third match of the current season of Champions League play. Vastly better than last week’s 1-1 draw with Basel.

Since ESPN2 has the US broadcast rights to Champions League matches and is currently only braodcasting one match per week (Tuesdays, 11:30 a.m. PST), this game was once again not shown. However, the reports indicate that the Russian side simply could not keep up with LFC’s speed even though Emile Heskey started up front and not Milan Baros; didn’t hurt that Heskey scored two goals. Bruno Cheyrou took Heskey’s previous space in midfield and also contributed a goal and John Arne Riise remained at left back though Jimmy Traore did come on as a substitute for the recovered Stephen Henchoz at the hour mark.

Excellent result for a home match and, combined with Valencia’s 6-2 drubbing of Basel moves the Reds into second in their group at the halfway point of the first round.

Next for the boys is a tough Sunday Premiership meeting with Chelsea at Anfield.

Like many stories, The Fear needs to go back in and retool. I’ve been able to take it in an interesting direction, or so I’ve been told, but the current scene at the side of 101 is just getting way too talky and going on too long. And I’m stuck, with the current structure, unable to get Jamie moving again.

I do have a plan for making things work again but this will require a little time. So for now I’ve taken down the featured link, though the page will remain as is. I hope to have a new draft to release by Monday that includes most all of the content so far; please bear with me as I struggle through the authorial process. Please?

RL paused and looked over at Jamie. He rubbed his chin, as if that morning’s shave hadn’t been close enough, and pursed his lips, made a tight sucking sound. The cars on the freeway roared past them and RL leaned in to be a little closer.

“Well as you can imagine, the nephew was more than a little surprised. Not at the secret or that another successful family had come from their little village on Sicily. But he couldn’t understand why his uncle was letting him in on this information. So he asked, ‘That is astonishing, uncle, truly good fortune.Respectfully, though, I must ask why you are telling me about it now.’

“‘Joseph,’ the uncle answered, ‘I am telling you because I wonder if you can make something more out of this than your father or I have. We must be very careful to use this precious thing as little as possible so that it is never discovered and we never bring shame to our friends and their family. Few times we have had favors from these men, yes, but important ones. Times are changing though, I have seen many things in the last decade that I never expected. Change has come to this thing of ours and we would be well advised to find a new way to continue. So I tell you because you have studied things very different from what your father and I, and all our friends to tell the truth, know anything about.

“‘Now your education is complete and you come home to join with us. We are very proud of what you have achieved, even if these machines are a mystery to us. I have been thinking that perhaps you can find ways to help us move beyond our troubles, perhaps these new machines can help, but I want you to know of all the important resources that we possess so that you may do your best.’

“‘Uncle,’ Joseph said, ‘I thank you for your confidence and trust. I will do my best to live up to them. This brings to mind a saying my professors had: garbage in, garbage out. I know, I know, what does trash have to do with computers? But this simply means that if you put bad information into a calculation, you cannot end up with a good result.'”

RL said that the two men shook hands and parted, the younger wanting time to sleep and ponder his new assignment. And surprising to his family, thogh it would not have surprised his teachers, he approached the task as if he were researching and writing a new thesis for school rather than a business plan to modernize La Cosa Nostra. He went to the office with his father, went on rounds with his uncle, sat in on meetings they had with other capos. Joseph, or Little Joe as he was called, spent the summer listening to music his family would never appreciate and devising the most brilliant criminal business model anyone had ever thought of.

This one is sure to be all over the web, email and blogs, but still: Viking kittens. A great Flash animation by Joel Veitch using Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant’s Song as its soundtrack. And you get Veitch’s version of the always misunderstood lyrics. After watching I was sitting here plotzing for…well…minutes. [via Metafilter]

One category of food that most people scream about giving up when confronted with the Atkins diet is bread. I didn’t scream but I always answered with that when asked my favorite food. So it’s with relief that I can tell you that there now are reasonable choices for us. In the last two weeks we made batches of blueberry and banana nut muffins (both yummy) and country white bread. Note that all these mixes are not cheap: we got a dozen muffins in each batch for $5/box and the bread, which makes one medium loaf, is $6. Each muffin or slice is only 2-3 grams of carbs, though, so we’re looking at sandwiches for lunch tomorrow!

The bread’s just out of the oven, so I’ll update on the taste later, but I can tell you it looks decent. See for yourself:

My plan for dinner tonight is this: one slice of the bread toasted, as a base; next layer is the sauteed (with garlic) cap of a portobello mushroom; and the topping is a small omelette filled with the mushroom stems chopped into small pieces, a little oregano and parmesan cheese for topping.

Update, 8:50 p.m.: Well, the dish came out almost exactly as planned though I forgot to butter the toast. Still, cap was moist enough and I did use a little butter in sauteeing them. Here’s what it looked like (with a couple of bites alread in the Sweet One’s tummy):

Winterspeak (Zimran Ahmed), a very competent economist and techhead, gets the nitty gritty on Xbox.

The new Jackie Chan flick, The Tuxedo, opened yesterday and frankly I expected it to steamroll Reese Witherspoon’s Sweet Home Alabama. Neither got great reviews but the Chan appeal, with Jennifer Love Hewitt providing the hottie factor, should have done the job. Surprise, surprise because according to Box Office Mojo, the Southern fried romance walloped this one on opening night, 12.8 to 4.5 (millions).

We went with Chan, though, and our theater at a lunch time showing was mostly full and a friend reported being left in the cold by a sell out in Daly City. And though the reviewers had nothing good to say about The Tuxedo, we enjoyed ourselves and had many laughs. Chan is 48 years old now, still able to outfight the baddies but willing to take it easy if it won’t hurt the film. Regardless of what was written, Chan made reasonable choices in this film.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not the film of the year of even the best film I saw this month. It is, however, funny and creative. There’s one scene in particular I’m thinking of here, where Hewitt is in her office on the phone with Chan and one of her coworkers keeps holding up “I love you” notes to her, which she crumples and tosses. Screenwriter Michael Leeson has a very impressive oevre going back to Love, American Style and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, so that’s not too surprising.

Recommended for the fun

After a few weeks off channels that I get, mostly draws that Liverpool Football Club should have won, Fox Sports World finally came through with a Saturday match on the road at Manchester city that was no trouble at all and we ended up on top 3-0. The best thing about the afternoon, against a team fresh up from Division One, was Michael Owen finally getting the ball to go in the net; after getting only one goal (and that on a penalty shot) in the first ten games of the year, Number 10 scored all his side’s tallies for a hat trick.

Abel Xavier was nowhere to be seen, not even on the substitute list, and manager Gerard Houllier had a surprise: he also benched defender Stephen Henchoz, moved Jimmy Traore into center to partner with captain Sammi Hyypia, and moved John Arne Riise to Traore’s left defensive spot. Henchoz was reportedly out due to a strained hamstring. Emile Heskey stayed in midfield and Milan Baros took the other striker spot.

Baros and Owen have major speed and gave the Man city defense troubles all afternoon, though Baros couldn’t find the ball in the second half and made way at 70 minutes for El Hadji Diouf. The Nigerian didn’t score but did show significant improvement in effort from the beginning of the season and after four games on the bench one wonders if he’ll be back alongside Owen in the starting 11 on Wednesday as the Reds host Spartak Moscow in a must-win Champions League game.

Besides Owen, props have to go out to Dietmar Hamann and Danny Murphy in midfield, Riise, Hyypia, and Traore on the backline, and, without question, Jerzy Dudek in goal. Dudek took two major elbows to the head from MCFC’s Marc-Vivien Foe and almost had to leave the game but instead stayed on to bring another clean sheet into the locker room.

The win keeps the Reds second in the Premiership behind Arsenal (who won 4-1 on the road at Leeds) and four points ahead of number three Middlesboro and Manchester United. Only Arsenal and Liverpool have yet to lose a match this weekend; the difference in the standings is one more win for the Gunners. If the boys just hadn’t given up that last minute goal to Birmingham City earlier in the month!

Some home projects are bigger and more impressive than others. My buddy Byron, for example, has done some major ones: underground lawn sprinkler system; a very large, multi-level back deck; a 8×10 shed in the same backyard; hardwood flooring in his entryway and short staircase; and, even some wood furniture. All of them turned out really well, you’d be hard pressed to see where a professional could do better.

Another one of my buddies, Evan, is pretty similar though his interests tend to focus more on electronics than wood and, of course, Evan rents an apartment while Byron owns a house with backyard. Even is currently experimenting with robotics and specialized processors and controlling them via a PDA. And you should see his workroom–just jammed with computers, monitors, Black and Decker power tools, drill bits, hole punches, and more. Amazing how much he gets in there and leave enough room to still work.

So those are guys who do bigger projects. Me, on the other hand, I have little in the way of this kind of skill. What’s the opposite of mad skills? That’s me. On rare occasion, though, I do get an urge to be primitive and make something real. Not just bits in a computer. With all the cooking I’ve been doing, I decided that a small shelf in the kitchen to hold my little spice and herb bottles would be very handy. Nothing I found looking in a few stores really struck me as suitable, so Evan and I cooked up a little plan and bought the parts at OSH.

Well, yesterday and today became construction day. Evan did a little cutting and drilling, I did some work with glue, nails, and a hammer. Back to Evan for some serious sanding and a few more nails, then back home for the paint job. Right now I’m waiting for the paint to really dry and then it gets put in its final resting place, under the cabinets in my far too small kitchen. Next question: what goes in the now empty cabinet?

I’m constantly amazed, though you’d think at 41 I’d expect this crap already, by the depths to which some people will sink to ‘legitimately’ make a dollar. The latest example comes from the companies making the software that record companies hate the most: P2P file sharing companies like Morpheus, LimeWire, and BearShare. I’m not getting down on them for providing people a way to share files. Nor even for the copious advertising they send out or the spyware they install on computers along with their software (although this is the reason I have refused to install any of it).

No, today’s new levels of craptitude comes to us via the New York Times: New Software Quietly Diverts Sales Commissions. These shmendricks are setting up users’ computers so that whenever they shop at a site with an affiliate program (like Amazon’s), the commission paid goes to the file sharing company and not to the website that really referred the customer. Talk about your major sleazage!

The article quotes executives from several of the companies who claim that this was done inadvertantly (LimeWire) or was accepted by the user when the user clicked okay on the EULA (Morpheus). Merchants are trying to fight back and make sure the right company gets credited but the slimesters, like spam marketers, keep finding ways to ooze back in.

Gee, do you think the words I’ve used in this entry really express the depths of my contempt for these people?

One of the weakest points in soccer, and most disputed by teams and fans, is the offsides call. Particularly when the referee’s assistant who makes the call is not in good enough shape and consequently is a dozen yards upfield when raising his flag. Germans Invent Offsides Computer reports that the Cairos System, developed by the Frauenhofer Institute in Erlangen and Munich’s Technical University, should be available for sale next Fall. The $245,000 system uses small sensors inside the ball and the players’ shin guards to feed a piece of software that runs real time analysis; it will also tell the referee if the defender wall on a free kick is set back the minimum required distance.

Way cool!

“That’s the $64 question, pal. You just got hauled out of your comfortable, cushioned little programmer geek world and into one that’s likely to give you a huge load of trouble. I’m gonna try to give you enough to stay alive until dinner time and then we can see what comes after that.”

Jamie looked up at RL but his head would only make blocky, robotic moves and the sun glared into his eyes. RL dropped his CHP helmet, tugged off his leather gloves, and sat down, leaning against the car next to Jamie.

“There’s a little history here but I’ll try sticking to the highlights; this first part is really hard to believe but I heard it told myself from someone who was there. This starts in 1967, during the Summer of Love, when some major East Coast Sicilians got smart–really, really smart. One of the Dons’ kids had just graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering. What he really studied, though, was computers; in fact, he was probably the first mafioso to know anything about them.

“What made that important was that his uncle, another man of respect, was deep in worry. The Feds had been after the Families for years and ever since the big meet in ’58, they were beginning to break through and put people in jail. Life had always been dangerous for these guys, with wars breaking out every five years and all, but now men in the lower levels were beginning to talk, trying to save themselves from 20 years or more behind bars.

“One night the uncle and the son were sitting together after a nice meal, taking their espresso and talking. The son was full of the possibilities that computers and other brand new tech and he went on for at least an hour before the uncle cut him off. ‘This is all well and good,’ he said, ‘but how’s it going to keep us in business and out of jail?’

“The younger man had to stop and think. He knew that just computerizing the accounting would make a huge improvement and they could adapt some of the forecasting already in use by big businesses. Good but not enough, though. They needed something more, and he said so.

“This time it was the uncle’s turn to think. Finally he told his nephew a secret. One so closely held that only four other men new it. ‘You know that our family comes from Trappani, a little village a few miles west of Palermo. We came to America after the first World War, when your grandfather made a very bad decision regarding some soldiers. What we never told you, something you can never speak of to anyone but me and your father, was that there was another family that came across the ocean with us. And now, as we have become more than just a family of immigrants, so have they. One man is the Assistant US Attorney in Manhattan and another, younger, is with the US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn. And they are our friends.'”