Category: Personal

World Cup Blog asks – Where will you be watching the final? Me and the Sweet One plan on getting up at 4 a.m., downing the java, and enjoying the sight of Brazil’s flair and passion beating Germany’s sizeable technicians.

All the games that have been played, all the mess with scheduling, and you’d think that with only two games left the scheduling geniuses could do a decent job. But no! The third place match, which turned out to be a decent, interesting game, wasn’t available live, only delayed. 11 hours delayed here on the West Coast which made it impossible to not know the result. Between ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Classic, they couldn’t find a two hour space to show it? Then do the tape delay thing if they want, too. What a bunch of morons!

Looking for a funny, sweet romantic comedy that doesn’t descend into treacle or formula? Then go see Nia Vardalos’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding and watch Vardalos and John Corbett (Sex and the City, The Visitor, Nothern Exposure) fall in love amidst the foils of family expectations. There are laughs big and small in the script written by Ms. Vardalos and the direction by Joel Zwick avoids the expected. Michael Constantine, who I haven’t seen in quite awhile, plays the Greek father who only wants to continue his family’s heritage and Lainie Kazan his wife who understands a daughter should find her own way, regardless of what the father says.

Don’t you hate that? – When you unplug one appliance to use another, forget to switch back after, and then try to use the first, forgetting the switch and then you wonder, why is my bagel not toasted?

So Arthur Anderson was found guilty, but their case was somewhat unique. The real crimes involved individuals in positions of trust enriching themselves by abusing that trust–are you listening, Andrew Fastow?–and the feds have filed their first case. The 3 Ex-Bankers Charged in Enron Scheme worked for National Westminster Bank and “were able to siphon off $7.3 million in income that belonged to their employer, the Justice Department alleges.” This sounds like the real meat to me and I expect the government to use it as a kind of Off-Broadway tryout, seeing which of the accumulated evidence gets admitted, which witnesses do best in front of a jury, which arguments go down best with judges, and only after this will we see brazen criminals like Fastow indicted. No need for speed here when what we want is the right result.

Okay, so Elton was singing about Marilyn Monroe (first) and Diana (the second time) and not Bill Gates’s suddenly disenfranchised older operating systems. And it wouldn’t be the dogs of society howling, it would would be the Linux fanatics laughing and corporate IT managers crying. But Scoble has the lowdown from the inside on the sayonara: after this Sunday (6/30/02), system vendors will no longer be allowed, contractually, to ship PC systems with any version of Windows other than some flavor of Windows XP installed. To paraphrase another great artist of the ’70s, “Buy XP or we’ll shoot this dog!”

Update: Joshua Allen, a Microsoft employee who blogs, comments indirectly on this topic in a post titled Programming Soviet. Unusual for Joshua, he misses this one like a homerun hitter whiffing on a changeup, and claims that people complaining about forced upgrades must misunderstand the situation. But, one wonders, what about the people who don’t want certain wonderful new features (*cough* product activation *cough*) in XP?

And Joshua, if you happen to read this, what about Palladium? Is Cringely so far off base?

Another sign of aging, they say, is going to more funerals than weddings, looking at the obituaries before the sports page. Well, glad to say, I’m not quite there yet but the people up ahead of me are getting closer. Today saw the passage from this plane of existence of Who bassist John Entwhistle, just one day before the first concert of the group’s US tour, at age 57 of an (alleged) heart attack in his sleep and Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White, age 50, from a heart attack in his office.

I’ll never forget the original sound of Entwhistle’s pounding bass, especially in the early years of the group before fame went to Pete Townsend’s head, where John played more like a lead instrumentalist than just another rhythm picker. How about his vocals on “Boris the Spider”? And the few songs he ever wrote, like “Boris” and “My Wife” showed he had some real potential. For a long time, the driving sound, John’s plaintive vocals, and the near panic of the the lyrics made “My Wife” my favorite who tune. Later on, “Baba O’Riley” surpassed it for me but I still jump up and down playing air guitar the few times they play the song on the radio.

White was less well known to the general public but as an aspiring rock journalist back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, his writing (along with that of Cameron Crowe and Dave Marsh) made a real impression on me. I saw that you could be a fan of the music and let your love of the music show through but keep your articles professional and readable. Lester Bangs may have been more influential and possibly more acclaimed but he generally crossed the line (between fan and journalist) too many times. White left behind a wife and 10-year-old twin sons and my condolences go out to them.

The NY Times is reporting this morning on developments in a lawsuit in which a Muslim woman alleges that Lifting Veil for Photo ID Goes Too Far and violates her religious beliefs and her “reasonable expectation” of privacy. <Insert explective of disbelief of choice>! The point of having a photo on a driver’s license is so that a police officer or other official can quickly determine whether or not the driver is the person who was issued the license. Police don’t stop a driver unless they have a reason (generally, let’s not get into the bad cop thing) and in such cases identifying the driver is important and reasonable.

This woman’s lawyer claims that the full facial photo demand is “bogus” because his client offered DNA, fingerprints, or other data by which she could be identified. And is offering to supply the state of Florida and all police cars with the equipment necessary to match DNA or fingerprints on the spot? As far as I know, science fiction TV shows aside, there is no way to do this away from the lab or office so these identifying datum would not satisfy the situational requirement.

This lawyer further states that “his client should not be subjected to unreasonable restrictions simply because of her religion.” But that argument is sophistry: she claims the restrictions are unreasonable due to her religion; Florida is NOT attempting to apply a special standard to her based of religion. Another bogus element of their complaint is that since other states allow veiled photographs on a license, Florida is unreasonable in not allowing it as well. The refutation here is easy: the whole point of allowing states to make their own laws is to provide for local communities to control local decisions. What’s agreeable to one community is not in others. To cite a very well-known example, what’s obscene in private in Salt Lake City is legal on the street in San Francisco.

Of course no one is claiming that this particular woman will ever violate the law. That doesn’t mean she should be exempted from it. Because, as we’ve seen time after time, there are plenty of people who will take advantage of any loophole or evasive technique to get what they want. *cough* Enron *cough* Worldcom *cough* bin Laden *cough* World Cup host nations *cough* Martha Stewart *cough* Richard Nixon *cough* identity thieves *cough*

Following on yesterday’s post about the coming Springsteen release, BillSaysThis is proud to bring you the first trailer for Star Trek: Nemesis. Or at least give you a link to it, let’s not get all bigheaded over three friend’s links. Now in all honesty I will admit to being a major Trek fan, watching the TV shows, even reading many of the novels. Still, the trailer looks awesome, the Remans look like they can kick serious behind, and December 13 can’t come soon enough!

Just what the heck do they mean by “A Generation’s Final Journey…Begins”? Trek maestro Rick Berman says “I think that to say there won’t be another movie is silly,” he says straight out. “There will be STAR TREK movies for a long time — whether they are going to be NEXT GENERATION movies or movies based on other series or ENTERPRISE or movies based on brand new characters, I just don’t know.”

Two of my closest friends, who are also friends, happen to have daughters born in 1988. The two students graduated from their respective middle schools last week. Though it seems very strange to me to have friends with children this old, I actually have friends with children older than these! Here we have a picture of Carol and her mom Pam (names withheld to frustrate the insane) celebrating Carol’s achievement:

When I’m done doing Blogger support!

Byron shows off his diving skills in the waters off Grand Turks

And he takes his own picture:

x++: The World’s First Full XML-Based Programming Language Released! – this looks wild! [via Kimbro Staken’s XML Database JuJu]

Never wonder again where that piece of meat you’re about to eat sits on the cow:

Cause it’s all about the Beef

Conspiracy, anyone? – Not that I want to get a reputation like my mother’s sort of namesake of Area 51 fame. Is it a coincidence, though, that the day after Bush unveils his new Middle East policy that the US Space Shuttle fleet gets grounded due to some baloney about hairline cracks in a propellant line, in one shutle, just a few weeks before the first Israeli astronaut ever goes on a mission?

Got up at 6:05 to watch Germany – Korea with nothing in the house to eat (well, I’m too lazy to cook the eggs) and then I found the Springsteen news, need to get my ass over to the coffee shop for the morning energy! Germany, showing their trademark precision, was never really in danger and American-killer Michael Ballack gave them the only net they needed. Other than Oliver Kahn–who will have to be tournament MVP if Germany wins–the team showed no passion and since Ballack will be disqualified after geting his second yellow card of the knockout stages, have to be the underdog if Brazil come through. If Turkey pulls off a miracle, all bets are off, I wouldn’t even try and pit my scant soccer knowledge against such confusion. So I still see Brazil as the best choice to lift the ugly thing.

Come on up for the rising! The title track for Bruce Springsteen can now be heard on his website–the whole thing, not just a 30 second sample! Latest news on the release:

• Springsteen and the E Street Band will play four songs from The Rising on the Today Show on July 30
• In addition to the standard CD, there will be a special limited edition deluxe package including the CD in a hardcover book with a 40 page, full color booklet filled with extra photos and handwritten lyrics.
• Three more songs from the album–“Lonesome Day,” “Into the Fire” and “Mary’s Place”–will premiere on July 8, 15 and 22, respectively, on AOL Music (music.netscape.com or AOL Keyword: First Listen)
• You can enter to win a ticket to a pre-release listening party in 19 cities–San Francisco’s is on July 11 (would it be too much to ask to win one?)

What did I think of the song, you ask? It rocks, hard, with terrific lyrics and I love the swirling mist of Frederici’s organ and the crisp drive of Max’s drums. Bruce may be coming up on his 53rd birthday in September, The Rising may be coming 30 years after Greetings from Asbury Park, but he still makes the music that reaches right inside of me better than anyone else.

Read, it is to weep:

Kevin Phillips: DYNASTIES!

Paul Krugman: The Reality Thing

Two highly recognized commentators, not just guys throwing grenades from a foxhole, bring us very different commentaries on our wonderful president that wind up at the same conclusion: Bush and his top aides are not in touch with reality and, what’s worse, they don’t care about it. Meanwhile life for the people in the real world gets worse by the day. Depressing

First mover disadvantage – Do you really need an app server?: “The real long-term losers become BEA and Sun. The company that launched the Java revolution (Sun) will ultimately be swept away by the companies who perfect the application server environment that makes truly scalable enterprise applications possible (IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle).” [via Karl]

Took me a few years and the urging of The Sweet One to finally catch up with this quirky German production. Run Lola Run stars Franka Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu as pait of young lovers caught up in circumstances threatening him with death at the hands of his ruthless drug dealer boss. They have 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deusche Marks that he was to deliver but lost.

Director Tom Tykwer has Potenta (Bourne Identity) literally running for Bleibtreu’s life. Three times he retells those 20 crucial minutes, from the phone call from him to her explaining until the scenario runs out. Though the starting point, with Potente hanging up the phone and racing out of her apartment, is the same, each runthrough quickly takes a different turn. Lola’s father is featured in a short subplot and gives Tykwer a strong mirror story. He’s involved with a woman at work and his results more or less reverse Lola’s. As the director himself explains: “It is this woman’s passion alone that brings down the rigid rules and regulations of the world surrounding her. Love can move mountains, and does. Over and above all the action, the central driving force of this film is romance.”

Like most movies, this one has fans willing to be more enthusiastic and detailed than me.

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