BillSaysThis

When I first began this time away from employment, I decided that refreshing some tech skills would be a good use of a portion. I learned to be moderately conversant with two free (as in beer and as in speech) systems: a programming language called PHP and a database called MySQL. In fact, I wrote most of the code that powers this website using those two things.

But time keeps moving along the Y axis, so to speak, and I still find myself with free (as in unpaid) time. Scoble was very vocal about learning C# and look where it got him: a tasty job with the company with which he most wanted to work. One benefit for me in him going there is cheap access to software at the company store and so yesterday a nice box with many CDs inside showed up at my door. So many CDs, in fact, that combined with the slow speed on my CD drive, installation took something like two and a half hours.

C# is significantly more complex than PHP or any other language I’ve learned before. I did get somewhat familiar with Java at my last employer, including writing product documentation for a pre-J2EE (at the time) application server, but never to the extent of actually being able to write real applications with it. And I’m not saying I expect to become the next Chris Brumme or Rob Fahrni, just to name two well known C# ‘Softies. Today (so far) I sat down, made sure the VS.NET IDE actually starts up and does the basics, and cracked open a book called C#: A Beginner’s Guide by veteran author Herbert Schildt and read Chapter One. Now that my brain muscles hurt, I need a break. Good thing I have this blog.

Where the hell where these when I was a teenager. Although the rule about not letting lust mix in kind of works against me, I have to admit.

1937 was a difficult year in the United States (and elsewhere as the Nazis and Imperial Japanese began using the power accumulated in the first part of the decade) but offered artists a window to create works with challenging, personal visions. I hardly want to go overboard in praise for Dead End yet this film demonstrates many qualities we are hard pressed to find these days in films featuring teenagers.

For a start, director William Wyler, working with screenwriter Lillian Hellman, crafted a nearly documentary look at life in a changing Manhattan where the poor folks where really poor and the rich folks were completely divorced from that reality, uncomfortable when it came in contact with them, and as always taking whatever they want from their lessers. In one scene, to illustrate, a woman seeking a comfortable life fell in love with a poor but noble guy from the neighborhood and was even thinking she could give up her easy life for him until she saw the huge cockroaches crawling on top of the garbage bin in the hallway of his tenement building; she raced out of there fast as her legs would run down the staircase.

Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, and Sylvia Sidney are the adult stars and each has a strong performance. McCrea and Bogart grew up as part of an age group in the neighborhood but while Bogart left to become a big time hood and killer, McCrea scraped through college for a useless (due to the Depression) degree in architecture–he’s the noble guy I mentioned–and Sidney, very young and beautiful, is simply trying to earn enough to keep her and her teenage brother fed and under a roof. She loves McCrea but until just before the end, he sees her as the little girl she was growing up and not the adult beauty she’s become.

The key characters in this film, though, are the teenage boys around whom most of the action revolves. In subsequent movies, most of the crew became known as the Dead End Kids, but this was the first to feature them. I’m talking about Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Billy Hallop (he plays Sidney’s brother), the whole gang, which sometimes was called the Bowery Boys. These kids were kids, spitting at authority because they knew there was nowhere lower to go and reform school was little different from a life where their clothes were always torn and they had nothing better to do than fight each other or the gang two blocks over.

Definitely recommended

Run someone over with your car and speed away from the scene. In a panic, many of us might do that driven by our fight or flight instincts. A high ranking official of the Roman Catholic Church, though, is supposed to fall into the “know better” group. Apparently not. Hey, even someone like a bishop might panic but I’d still expect him to call the police after getting home and having a few minutes to calm down and to think the matter over. Again, not Thomas J. O’Brien. Then again, this killing (I refuse to call these things accidents) took place mere days after the man barely escaped prosecution for his part in covering up child molesting by priests in his charge.

145 comments so far in this thread launched by an article regarding a prosecution under British law of a football fan who chanted a racial epithet at another fan during a match. Some very articulate (including a few from myself) and others not so. Of course you get into the whole cultural differences thing not to mention the difference between US and British laws on speech and the freedom thereof; no constitution or anything quite like our First Amendment there.

What interest me most about this is the concept of how different people try and draw lines between right and wrong. If I intimidate someone by using offensive language, some say, than that is wrong and the law ought to back the offended person up by penalizing my speech. Might push the less, err, thoughtful people who hear such things over the line into violence. Others (like me) reason that without free speech we’ll quickly start circling the drain because such openings are always taken advantage of by someone looking for power or control.

For a number of years, young Americans have been talking more and more about the probability of Social Security just not being there when we hit retirement age. Some people mistakenly believe that the deductions we pay are like making deposits into a bank account, earning interest, and one simply makes withdrawals after age 65. Oops, they raised that to 67, didn’t they? That change was one of the few results of several highly visible blue ribbon political panels over the last 20 years, by the way.

Of course Social Security is not like a bank account: what gets deducted from a paycheck goes out to the people who draw SSA checks today. Whatever’s left goes to buy US Government bonds. The money gotten from those bonds goes out the door today to finance, for example, the War on Terrorism and paying Halliburton to rebuild Iraq. Demographics show that in the future, we just won’t have enough working people to pay the benefits today’s workers are accruing.

Now Europe, especially the Western nations that weren’t part of the Soviet Bloc, is facing the same mess and a lot of people there don’t like it. There are strikes and political rebellions. And for all the trucks they block and the signs they carry and the governments they vote down, the demographics aren’t going to change. (Okay, they could start having a lot more babies ASAP but since the unemployment problem is way worse in Europe than in the US–bad as it is here–I don’t see that as being much help.)

Bottom line, best as I see it: There will be a lot of angry people looking for money to live on when they get older, unless the governments really spin up the printing presses to push the problem to the next generation. Chirac, Bush, Cheney, Blair et al and whoever, they better think about how to deal with this dilemma and I have one hint for them: privatization is not the answer.

Last Summer we saw the Al Pacino/Robin Williams version of this movie, so it was a no-brainer to watch the subtitled Norwegian original when it came across a movie channel. I thought it would be interesting to see the difference between European and American perspectives on a twisted detective flick and I was right.

Insomnia stars Stellan Skarsgaard in the role Pacino played, as the big rep city detective flown into a small Arctic community to solve a teenage girl’s murder; none of the other actors have a name in America, though they are reasonably good nonetheless. Skarsgaard, though, has appeared in a number of US films including the recent cable miniseries Helen of Troy and the cool Frankenheimer/DeNiro hit Ronin. His detective is even more out of place than the American version: called up from Oslo, he’s only come over from the Swedish police a year before after embarrassing his chief while Pacino only had to deal with the flight to Alaska from LA. No one, of course, plays tired as well as Pacino and so I’m not surprised Skarsgaard didn’t match him on that score.

Director/writer Erik Skjoldbjerg has crafted a more complex, subtle version than Christopher Nolan could squeeze through the American studio filter. I’m not quite sure why this is so, but American films always need to have circumstances and dialog more explicit than films I see made in other parts of the world and the difference shows up in this film as not wasting 10 minutes of screen time. Characters don’t need to be so decidedly good or bad, which means our detective can collaborate with the real baddie (Williams’ character in the American version) even though the novelist meets the same end.

Recommended

Harlan Coben wrote a superbly touching tribute to his dad for Father’s Day in the New York Times. I’m sad for Harlan, that he lost his so long ago, but I’m very glad that my father is still around, still able to gift me with his understanding of the world and his generosity of spirit. I remember some of those Little League days, though Harlan was a year behind me and I never had his dad as a coach; I’m sure he remembers the one coach I do, Mr. Speigel, who was, um, very eager to win and therefore left me on the bench as much as possible.

Just want to give a big thanks to my SpoFi pals, especially Squealy, SF, Grum, Samsonov, and especially Worldcup2002 for helping me begin to grasp the real football. For example, they turned me on to some good articles on field formations. Liverpool’s season may be over, ending in serious disappointment due to their last match laydown against Chelsea that gave away the fourth English spot in the Champions League, but their are some interesting national team tournaments over the Summer: Euro2004 qualifiers (where our boy Michael lifted England to victory a few days ago), Confederation Cup (which isn’t on English language TV here for some unknown reason but I’ll try and watch in Spanish), and next month’s Gold Cup (again, US National Team looking for a trophy against tough competition), all leading up to the Women’s World Cup here in the US in late September with the American women favorites to repeat.

The San Jose Mercury News publishes a consumer help/advocacy column called Action Line. People write in with questions, there’s some investigation or a phone call made, and then it gets printed along with maybe a recall notice or two. Recently, someone wrote and asked whether Costco is within it’s legal rights to inspect outgoing carts and match the items against a person’s receipt. Costco’s standard answer is that the practice is legal because permission is granted by all members in the membership agreement form we all sign and that it’s good for the customers because the check ensures the prices and total amount charged are correct. LMAO!

The (newly promoted) writer responded by quoting Costco’s PR. Urp! Today’s column was three letters calling him on the obvious silliness of the answer, pointing out that the real reason is to try and help prevent shoplifting. Although to be honest, I’ve never seen the door check actually catch or turn back anyone. The columnist simply printed these letter with trivial responses, the most substantial of which was “Apparently not.” Is this what you expect in an actual printed newspaper for which you pay money every day? Doesn’t even come close to my expectations, so of course I had to write in.

Here’s my unhappy letter to them:

I realize this is your first week in a new job but as you wrote, hardly your first week as a Mercury News journalist, and the way you’ve responded to the question and letters about Costco’s receipt checking is not what I would call real journalism. First time out, you blindly posted the company’s blatantly false but standard response. Strike one. Then when the predictable wave of letters came in calling you on it, you printed them but accepted no responsibility. Strike two.

Where, I wonder, is the journalism subscribers like me expect in the morning paper? Simply because you write a specialized column, does that absolve you of the responsibility to ensure that you publish meaningful and accurate answers? When I saw today’s column, I thought perhaps your response would include an apology for the initial answer plus some statistics on shoplifting and how this helps Costco keep their costs (and prices) down, even if the company won’t admit it. How sad that none of that was included.

Ever since Ben and Meena came up with the Trackback feature in MovableType, I’ve been waiting impatiently for Blogger to add it. They haven’t even got it in the new Blogger. But Adam Kalsey and Kevin Aylward have brought out, on the same day no less, standalone implementations. While neither (just yet at least) has posted the code for others to use, sending the pings only requires filling out a form; I at least want to try it. Hence this entry. (True, the Trotts have posted code for a standalone TB server, not overlooked, but it requires CGI and Perl and I’m not much good with those, or at least too lazy).

Want to find blogs by location? The oldest such source I know is the Pepys Project. Interestingly visual is GeoBlog. It’s Saturday, I don’t feel very interesting today, should probably go and shower instead. Resume your own lives now.

Met the might, mighty Whump over at his place of employ today and we ate in their cafeteria. Let’s just say I’ve eaten in the cafeterias at Sun and Amazon and Apple has them both beat. Maybe somebody at MS Mountain View should invite me there so I can write a roundup review; do any of the MS blogging army work in MTNVW?

How odd is it that both of us are named Bill, live in Mountain View but did not grow up here, wear glasses, program computers in PHP using MySQL, and have personal websites featuring weblogs? Pretty creepy, I think. Still, Whump does have a job (and from what I saw a cool one which he does well) and uses Macs, even before he started working there plus he wrote his own weblog software. More creepiness: we both had salads with grilled chicken for lunch! Do you hear the moaning of ghosts by now?

Other than socializing, the main purpose of my visit was to get some up close insight into his More Like This weblog software. It’s written in PHP, uses MySQL, and the code is free for the asking, if one asks nicely. Supports Trackback, RSS, and categories (which of these three is not like the other?), all must haves. But now he’s got me thinking that I ought to do the really cool, jump in off the deep end thing and write my own system. Egads!

The other way you can tell us apart, just to show we’re not the same guy, is that Whump is thin and I am just a wannabe!

“Over 150 Sun Partners Attest They Do More with Java Technology” is the title of a press release issued today by Sun Microsystems. Attest? That’s the best word the high paid flacks at Sun can come up with? Just a quick look at a thesaurus gives better choices like assert or testify. How do they sound to you: ‘Over 150 Sun Partners Assert They Do More with Java Technology’ or ‘Over 150 Sun Partners Testify They Do More with Java Technology’. Either is much stronger.

More like, the SUV for people who really want a Minivan but can’t admit it. Threat to the manhood thing, ya know.

Since I’m all about the self-congratulations, and even though it didn’t take open heart surgery to make me do it, I want to congratulate myself on passing the two year mark of not smoking yesterday. <elvis accent>Thank you, thank you very much.</elvis accent> And props to my boys Lord B (2.25 years last week) and Grandmaster E (1.28 years) for the same stellar accomplishment.

My old high school, Livingston HS back in Jersey, made it on to this list of top schools in the entire nation at number 488 and doesn’t that impress the heck out of you? “Public schools are ranked according to a ratio called the Challenge Index” which measures the proportion of the graduating class taking an AP or IB exam. Private schools, which bias their student bodies by using scholastics as an entry criteria are not included. So 488 but then you leave out all the schools that have only good students, meaning the 488 is fairly meaningless, eh? One oddity that struck me in perusing the top of the list is how many schools from Long Island are in the top 30. So if students are encourage to take these exams, regardless of their results, the school gets a boost. [via Steven Vore, who should still be proud of his kids!]

Uggh, the postings to Craig’s List got plenty of clickthroughs to view the sale page but not even a question about the price or something close to an offer! So I sprang for $10 to buy a textad on MetaFilter, let’s see if this gets anywhere.

[Note: First in an occasional series that will run whenever I feel like it]

Things are in the crapper at the Air Force Academy after all the problems uncovered with sexual assualt and harrassment of so many female cadets. Yet Sen. Larry Craig (Republican, what else?) of Idaho thinks some eight year old promise to house four freaking cargo planes at an airbase in his state is more important than the real needs of our nation’s military today. What a jizzbot!

When you drink beer, “life is good!” And yummy stew!