Category: Personal

Flangy is undecided on the big Krispy Kreme opening

Adam says he might ride out for the big sore opening or then again, maybe not, linking to a Seattle Times article pointing out that off-duty police will be there keeping order. I say go, what could be more fun than the anticipatory line smelling those tasty pastries hot off the oven! Certainly not waiting weeks in line for a movie. Paul is so taken with the little tasties he’s started a Bay Area Krispy Kreme page. I know a certain friend of mine, diet or not, has a tough time resisting a quick half dozen on the way home from the office; he’s in big trouble when the Daly City store opens in two weeks.

Another college football ranking controversy

Well, the folks at the University of Miami (FL) are pissed off again and I can’t say I blame them. The secretive computer rankings put Oklahoma ahead of them even though the Hurricanes are undefeated and top-ranked in both the writers and coaches polls. With a bad break or two, Miami will see a repeat of last year, when they were ranked higher than Florida State but were left out of the championship game. Okay, this is unlikely since either Oklahoma or Nebraska must lose at least once more this year (if both teams win out, they will meet again in the Big 12 Championship) but it still seems like a raw deal to me.

Reading up on the Bowl Championship System at CollegeBCS.com, I have to wonder why public universities are allowed to participate since most of the computer ranking systems don’t publish their formulas. After all, the end result of the BCS affects distribution of serious dollar amounts to the schools who get to go to the BCS bowls; we’re talking about millions of dollars difference between the payouts from, say, the national championship game (this year, the Rose Bowl) and a minor bowl like the galleryfurniture.com Bowl. Anyway, the decisions made by the BCS administrators don’t make sense to me but they sure do have an impact. The BCS is comprised of six top college conferences and is completely independent of oversight from, say, the NCAA; its all about the Benjamins and I really wonder who can make them more accountable. Why is this system not under the control of a more public and impartial group?

Sidenote: CollegeBCS.com uses frames, so I can’t point to specific pages even though I’d like to link to the Ratings, FAQ, and Quality Win Explanation pages directly.

Even cowboy coders get the blues

Joel Spolsky is emerging as an important voice in software development. Currently, his company is in the beta test phase with a new product and he’s journaling his experiences. In Working on CityDesk, Part Four, he discusses one of the horrors of the modern developer’s life: relying on someone else’s code library. Although he doesn’t make the connection, it’s clear to me that if he were using an open source environment instead of Windows and Visual Basic he would be able to resolve the specific problem gracefully instead with a hack. OTOH, using Windows does offer somewhat better opportunity for an actual profit so one cannot be too harsh in criticizing.

Synergy doesn’t work in the software biz either

In the 1960s and ’70s, big businesses got bigger by becoming conglomerates (GE, Litton, ITT, to name a few) only to find they had to be unwound in the ’80s because there was no benefit to wrap so many products together. Entertainment companies took a swig of this juice in the ’80s and ’90s (Sony, Seagrams). For the most part, the software industry has avoided this mistake (Borland, trying to compete with Microsoft, didn’t and Microsoft has become a conglomerate through internal growth and acquisitions) but Merant made it. Starting life as three separate companies making essentially unrelated products (PVCS version control, Micro Focus COBOL, and DataDirect ODBC drivers), the merged group, which is headquartered around the corner from my house, never made any real headway even though each of their product lines itself is a good one. Now, they’re unwinding, acknowledging that enterprise customers aren’t shopping at a supermarket; what was PVCS (plus a product acquired from the departed NetObjects) is the only major line remaining, now that Golden Gate Capital Ventures bought the DataDirect and Micro Focus groups.

Talking Moose: Useless guide to Porn on the Internet

The Moose has been spot on so often that you want to read any new essays and get that good hit again and again. With The Talking Moose’s Guide to Pornography on the Internet, rates about a 3.5 on a scale of 10 and makes me wonder why he even bothered. He starts with a big warning of what’s coming, security and cleanup tips, and then the meat. Only there is no meat. The Moose mentions one site as the “best” porn portal he’s found. Warns that–big surprise–pics are free but video requires a credit card and the free material is mixed with advertising. He gives us a pointer to a site that hosts sex weblogs. I expected better from someone who spends his days naked in a mud bog; doesn’t a guide usually have more than two items listed and saying “Anyway, that’ll get you started on the porn road” doesn’t get TM off the hook.

Yesterday’s book: American Empire: Blood and Iron

Harry Turtledove returns to the alternative history world and characters he created in the novel How Few Remain and the Great War trilogy in the first novel of of the new American Empire trilogy Blood and Iron but this time his focus is politics and personal struggles rather than the fortunes of war. All of the featured characters who survived the Great War return here and Turtledove continues an unusual literary device as well: there is no single antagonist or protagonist, and instead a set of characters whose lives we follow in parallel but who mainly have little or no interaction with the others.

All alternative history stories hinge on a single changed event; in this series the difference is that in October 1862, a courier from Stonewall Jackson to Robert E. Lee completes his delivery that allows Confederate forces to exploit their advantage and thereby win the War of Secession and become a separate nation. 60 years and three wars later, the North has finally defeated the South. One of the Confederate characters becomes a Hilter-like character, racing to the heights of CSA politics. The lives of the other characters are perhaps less thrilling but Turtledove makes them all compelling in their challenges.

Where does Turtledove expect to go with this series? The title of the next volume is The Center Cannot Hold.

America: It’s good to be here

Maybe it’s the medicine, maybe it’s the hokey flagraising but I really felt proud and happy to be an American while listening to Jewel (what a gorgeous woman!) sing the national anthem just now during the World Series game 1 preshow. Earlier, I was reading about some of the usual stupidity and idiocy that Steven pointed out and was bumming about my compatriots. But I got a chill watching some of our military unfurl a huge American flag in the outfield and the color guards from the Phoenix police and fire departments carry more flags, and then there is Jewel in that great t-shirt.

And Bernie Williams’ lovely slam into leftfield driving home Derek Jeter home for an early 1-0 lead is sweet. But I’m not writing fast enough, as the dastardly Greg Counsell just tied things with a blast to right. Go Yankees!

Update: Well, so much for the early lead, eh?

Yesterday’s movie: The Watcher

Creepy Keanu Reeves (an odd thing to say, I know) is playing a game with sad and sick James Spader, a very nasty game, in The Watcher. See Reeves is a serial killer of pretty young (loner) women and Spader is the FBI Agent who was assigned to the case when it originated in LA. When things went too far in one instance, Spader went over the edge and moved to Chicago. Reuperating, barely, he sees psychiatrist Marisa Tomei and somehow continues to be employed by the agency even though he isn’t capable of working. Reeves, though, misses his ‘brother’ and moves to Chicago as well; he gets Spader involved by Fedexing him photos of the girls and finally by offering him a day to find the women before Reeves acts.

The first film directed by Joe Charbanic, The Watcher is full of stylish touches and has decent pacing. One of the weirder choices is that whenever the film shows us Reeves’ point of view, it does so through a grainy, frames-missing filter. Nice use of characterization, foreshadowing and visual cues. I would have liked a stronger plot, though, because we never get a real sense of why Spader fell apart. Still, a good flick for a cold winter night.

Yesterday’s movie: Hello, Dolly

A friend was kind enough to bring me some groceries and stayed to watch this wonderful Barbara Streisand musical, which somehow I’d never seen before. Hello, Dolly! is a delightful movie based on the Broadway play by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart.

Unlike many stage dramas and comedies, musicals often move well to film since they can take advantage of the broader canvas. In Dolly, for example, we can actually see Yonkers and the contrast between it and Manhattan, something much more difficult to do on stage. Even more vivid, perhaps, is the contrast between Vandergelder’s Feed and Hay Store, which has made Walter Mathau’s character a rich man, and the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, where Vandergelder is simply one among many. Many great songs, especially the number by the waiters at Harmonia Gardens before Dolly enters and then right away, the showcase title song when Streisand comes into the restaurant. We even get Louis Armstrong as the bandleader there, in his last screen performance, doing a verse and chorus with Streisand. Of course all ends well. Recommended!

Another reason to love the web: listen to Streisand sing a Dolly medley on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Bill really is sick

The sore throat never went away and so today I visited the doctor. What did he tell me? I have Tonsillitis, which I always thought was generally confined to younger people. Oops, guess not. Fortunately, this case doesn’t seem to be serious enough to require an operation, just antibiotics and with any luck relief is only a couple of days away. In the meantime, I can’t really talk since it makes me nauseous. That doesn’t make some people too unhappy.

Is this a wedding announcement?

Many, many years ago I worked at a local newspaper and the one type of story I was not trusted to do just right was the wedding announcement. The managing editor, who was a woman and wrote all of them herself, said that these articles were too precious to the people involved and had a very specific style. Now I happened to see the announcement for Amanda Kahn and Mason Kirby in the NY Times and I am scratching my head in wonder. Two key quotes that illuminate:

– “The relationship took off and continued for four years, until Ms. Kahn mentioned marriage. Then, she said, Mr. Kirby ‘freaked,’ and said he wasn’t able to make that commitment, she remembered.”

– Kirby got appendicitis two years later (apparently they stayed together after his freakout) and Kahn “nursed him back to health.” Coming to his senses, Kahn said “The realization of my own mortality added a sense of urgency. I completely realized what I wanted and that what I had with Amanda was more than I could have expected.”

I’m sorry but this just isn’t the level of discretion and decorum one expects in a wedding announcement, especially one in the New York Times.

Turboing, or what happens when the customer is really pissed

Rob Levandowski, a UNIX system administrator and former tech support engineer has written a very enlightening article called The Art of Turboing and a follow up case study analyzing an experience with CompUSA. Turboing “refers to the actions of a customer who goes around the normal technical support process by contacting a senior person in the chain of command.” In other words, a customer for a variety of reasons, sometimes good and sometimes bad, decides the tech/customer support team can’t resolve the issue at hand correctly or quickly enough and calls the CEO or other high ranking executive to try and get the desired result.

I ran into this many times in the 18 months I managed the NetDynamics Tech Support team. The situations played out in one of two ways: a game of hot potato, where the upset customer was handed down the line from CEO to VP to Senior Manager to me, or, less unpleasantly, when the customer asked the support engineer to speak with his manager. There were some customers who thought, since they had met our CEO, that they were always entitled to call on him for the slightest problem. There were others who automatically called me after filing a support ticket to scream in my ear about the cost of downtime to their company. Not pleasant and usually doesn’t help that much in the big picture but it surely happens everyday.

Yesterday’s movie: Return to me

David Duchovny and Minnie Driver star in this movie that could have been a great romantic comedy. Writer/director Bonnie Hunt, who also plays Driver’s best friend even though she looks too old for the role, is to blame for not realizing the potential of Return To Me. Maybe its the influence of marketing focus groups impinging on director’s creativity because there are too many examples when this film attempts to crossover into slapstick.

Maybe it’s because the role of Duchovny’s mirror is split between the David Alan Grier and Jim Belushi characters, Driver’s mirror (Hunt) is not strong enough in that regards, and the script throws in an extra mirror for the two stars as a couple in the characters played by Marianne Muellerleile and William Bronder. A mirror is a supporting character who’s action and dialog are intended to point out important facets of the lead characters. Sometimes the antagonist will be a mirror of the protagonist, as in, say Superman and Lex Luthor, and other times it will be a supporting character as in this movie. But if the director spreads the mirror aspect too widely, as in this movie, the audience isn’t able to appreciate it.

When Hunt keeps the film focused on the romance (and by the way, she takes too long to get there), it’s great. To use a baseball analogy, this film is like a long fly ball that the outfielder has to climb the wall to catch; it almost gets a recommendation but not quite.

Feeling ill

I’m not feeling well today, so I don’t expect to post much. Chicken soup and tea re being consumed in hopes of a fast recovery.

FBI frustrated, looking to cross the line?

Sources are telling The Times of London that the FBI is considering truth serum, torture, and other techniques that go beyond what is legal in the United States to break a wall of silence from four men being held in connection with the Attack on America. One wonders how this report is possibly accurate since the number of decision makers has to be tiny and the odds of any of those people talking to the press is nearly nil. I could see the use of a truth serum, although I’m not clear on the science.

Political Cartoonist gets to the heart of the matter

Thanks to <a href="http://www.oliverwillis.com

“>Oliver Willis we see a cartoon by David Horsey from the Seatlle Post-Intelligencer that with three characters and two sentences captures the essence of the problem I have with pacifists in the current environment. Steven, as usual, has an excellent response to the logically fallacious anti-war faction; essentially logic is a fundamental truth of the universe, not subject to personal interpretation, even though some people would like to believe otherwise.

Tonight’s movie: Bandits

Director Barry Levinson recaptures his comedic touch in Bandits, a story of love, money, and brotherhood. Levinson blew me away with his debut film Diner, which he wroted and directed, following up with a string of majors: The Natural, Tin Men, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Rainman. Then he turned to mostly dramatic movies in the ’90s: Avalon, Bugsy, Disclosure, Sleepers, Sphere (why was Levinson directing an SF flick?) and Liberty Heights, and he was trying, I suppose, to be a serious filmmaker but he’s best at comedy. Even in the ’90s he slipped in Wag the Dog.

Bandits gives us Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton as escaped convicts who go on a bank robbery spree and pick up neglected but housewife Cate Blanchett, who falls in love with both of them, along the way. There’s a surprising ending. But the film was just hilarious. Willis is great at these adult comedies (as in The Whole Nine Yards), Thornton is swell as the smart hypochondriac, and Blanchett is funny and totally radiant, bringing nice depth to her character as the relationship between the three evolves. The first shot of her, as she screws in a blue light bulb, is gorgeous, amazingly well-suited to her coloring.

Bobby Slayton, one of the funnier standups around today, does a nice supporting turn as the host of a true crime TV show, which Levinson uses as a framing device for the movie.

U.S. foriegn policy: inconsistent over the years

I ran into a friend this morning at the coffee shop, which was great, and we had an interesting conversation. He is a native of India, here working for several years on an H1-B visa, and naturally has a different perspective on what’s happening in Afghanistan just now. He has not problems with the U.S. military actions there although like myself and many others he might have changed some of the details had he been in charge. But the interesting part of our conversation to me is that he pointed out some inconsistencies in American foriegn policy over the years, all of which I’ve come across before but this put the whole together in a different light.

The big one that everyone points to is of course that we supported bin Laden’s side in the ’80s against the Soviets. Of course anything to mess up the Soviets during the Cold War was good. Now we’re fighting them. Second big one: we supported Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the ’80s when they fought Iran. Of course, Iran was sponsoring terrorism, threatening our allies, and had held our people hostage. We’ve been fighting him for ten years.

We claim to be all about democracy and freedom. Yet we back the House of Saud and have since the family founded the country even though they are corrupt and anti-democratic and their regime has so dissafected Saudi citizens that they flock to bin Laden’s cause or fund it. We ally ourselves with Pakistan even though that country has been ruled by the military for most of its existence (and even the politicians have been mainly corrupt) and even though they have supported terrorists in both Afghanistan and Kashmir. There are plenty (dozens?) of examples from the past century where our government backed dictatorships and other repressive, undemocratic regimes around the globe and in the long run had terrible results just from a policy perspective (not accounting for the harm to the citizens of said countries).

I really wonder if we (and by we I mean the American government) will ever learn to look at the big picture and act more rationally. Don’t get me wrong, when America is attacked as it has been now, we must repond with appropriate force. But instead of looking for ways to manipulate other governments, we need to focus on our real goals: promoting a better life for as many people as possible through freedom (including democracy), health, and prosperity. Taking shortcuts just puts us further from these goals.

New photos posted

The more observant of you may have noticed a new gallery on the navigation bar at left, Odds and Ends. Included are photos that don’t really fit elsewhere, like one of Joel Henderson, Mitch Scaff, and myself at the Jan. 1998 NetDynamics Holiday Party at the New Coconut Grove in San Francisco and this one of two ‘naughty’ antelopes. I also found a picture of my sister at the Blarney Stone (the real one in Ireland) and added it to the Family and Friends gallery.

Psst, they’re on to us!

The tech press is usually pretty friendly towards tech vendors. After all, tech vendors buy the advertising, buy lots of the subscriptions, and sponsor and exhibit at the conferences. But CIO Magazine has published a customer rant on software quality, saying Let’s Stop Wasting $78 Billion a Year. They quote high level IT managers at major American companies who are just fed up with the perpetual beta-quality upgrades for which they pay more and more each year. Important article spotted via WinterSpeak.