BillSaysThis

Tasty but disgusting

Glish points us to a reference on the innocuous-looking Maraschino Cherry. The mysterious people behind the Cocktail book admit that the truth is unpleasant. I wonder if I will ever eat another one of these nasty little things.

And I am your host, Bungo Burrows of Tuckborough, according to Chris Wetherell’s amusing webtoy Hobbit Name Generator. Some other Hobbit names:

George Bush – Squinty of Simpleton

Bruce Springsteen – Togo Loamsdown of Deephallow

Andy Pettite – Podo Bumbleroot

Julia Roberts – Polo Moss of Lake-By-Downs

Hillary Clinton – Minto Knotwise of Michel Delving

Hey, the movie is only weeks away, are you ready?

Letter to the Editor: Eliminating the USPO

Following up on the poorly thought-out column mentioned here previously, I wrote a letter to the editor of the SJ Mercury News Personal Technology section in response to David Plotnikoff’s column:

To the Editor,

In in this week’s Personal Technology section David Plotnikoff ponders whether, given current circumstances and his own highly-connected lifestyle, the federal government ought to jump on the technology bandwagon and eliminate the US Post Office. I’ve been reading the Mercury News for about five years now and am sad to see the decline in writing that this column evinces. Plotnikoff completely fails to consider the larger issues involved in such a transition, economic, social, and political, which ought to be part of any serious discussion.

First, not everyone can afford a PC and an internet connection or perhaps feels there are better uses for those dollars (and since your paper consistently comes down on the side of personal freedom of choice, one would think this is a valid objection). Second, not everyone is willing to turn their life interactions over to technology; just because Plotnikoff no longer writes letters doesn’t mean everyone has to give up that pleasure. A sub-argument here is that some of us actually still receive magazines and other publications through the mail and I am not yet ready to read them on a computer screen. Third, there are 900,000 people directly working for the USPO and I daresay that no one has the political capital to eliminate all these jobs, especially in today’s poor job climate.

Plotnikoff, after suggesting we can eliminate paper mail and replace it with online banking, then goes on to diminish his own argument by complaining about the poor implementation of his bank’s software. David, maybe you need to change banks because the one I use for 90+% of my payments does not suffer from quite so many usability problems.

Bill

Disco kills!!!

This is something that right-thinking individuals have know for years but now scientists have proved that disco kills. Sadly, a few mice had to be sacrificed in the experiments and of course the methamphetamine they fed the little tikes didn’t help either.

Microsoft: a useful new remedy

Curt Wuollet, writing on OPOpinion, asks the important question: Government Contracts – Why Does Microsoft Still Have Them?. After the feds and many states have been pursuing Gates & Co. for so many years, you have to wonder why the federal government is Microsoft’s biggest customer. As Curt points out, this is a no-brainer, low hanging fruit, and would open up some big opportunities for Microsoft competitors–not to mention providing a powerful incentive to Microsoft to clean up their act.

For all his ranting, how come Dan Gillmor hasn’t brought this one up by now? Or the high paid lawyers at ProComp and the other anti-MS groups?

Book Reviews page now online

I know you’ve searched through the site, salivating over every new critical appraisal, novel or non-fiction. Okay, now they’ll all be indexed in one easy to find place: the Book Review Index. Save the applause, send cash.

Save the Post Office!

John Robb, President and COO of Userland, writes today in his Weblog that the time has come to shutter the USPO and get the 300,000 people who work there into jobs more in tune with the future. I humbly disagree.

Probably the most critical use of regular mail is bill paying. Even for the computer-abled of us, though, not every transaction can be handled electronically, at least not yet. Two examples from my highly connected life: I want to send a one-off check to a charity, do I need to go through the hassle and wait of setting them up as a payee in my bank’s bill-pay system? I need to pay Uncle Sam some income tax, I don’t think at the moment that would be approved as a payee in the system. Also, I like reading some things on paper but how do I get my Analog and Wired magazines? The tech isn’t here yet to replace them.

The biggest question, of course: What do the sizable number of people who don’t own a computer or do but don’t have an Internet connection do to pay bills? Tell them to go to the public library once a week? And how about all those people who don’t even have bank accounts, much less credit cards? They need to receive their bills by regular mail.

No, we need the post office for the time being.

Update: John posted a reponse (same link) and says we should spend the money to overcome the technology issues, which is swell except that it will take time to develop the technology and we need to safeguard the system immediately. And I think there are social issues that John is underestimating–a lot of people like getting catalogs and magazine in the mail, throwing them in a pile and reading at their leisure, there is the entire direct mail industry to consider, and what about the simple, old-fashioned appeal of writing a letter to a loved one?

Update 2:David Plotnikoff, writing in the SJ Mercury News (so I sure hope this link lasts more than seven days!), spouts the same line as Robb. He says that as “for the delivery of physical goods, United Parcel Service and Fed Ex do a nearly flawless job.” But Plotnikoff completely ignores my objections above and focuses on the fact that his bank has a really poor implementation of online banking. Come on David, you’re writing for a major newspaper, so please look a little deeper!

Amazon, NBC make a smart deal

The top etailer and the top TV network are hooking up in a deal that will post books, music, and other products recently shown on NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC on a special Amazon page. The page will be promoted with short commercials on the NBC channels.

I think this is a really smart idea. I hope over time they will expand the project to include previous posted goods–“Oh yeah, did you see that book about germs they mentioned on Dateline a couple of days ago?”–that you could look up by date or show. This seems like such low hanging fruit that I’m really surprised no one has done it before. This deal is a good example of what John Sviokla, writing in CIO Magazine, calls being a 24-hour, 3-D marketer.

The closest to this that I’ve read about is still mostly vaporware, a system that allows viewers to press a button on their TV remote control and order a product being shown at that time. Developed by Wink Communications, this system requires a cable or satellite vendor to integrate Wink technology into their settop boxes, remotes, and office systems. After five+ years, Wink hasn’t made much headway.

Teaching intolerance

Thomas Friedman, writing in the NY Times, continues the lesson on the Saudi royal family. The short and sweet:

– their textbooks do not teach tolerance for non-Muslims: Muslims must “consider the infidels their enemy.”

– they don’t want America to know the truth about their country. The one time we sent a Arab-speaking ambassador, he was forced out after six months.

Friedman, as always, is an important read. What I’d like to know is when will a reporter get someone from the Bush administration on the record on this topic.

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.