I Was There I Wrote I Lived

You Can't Topo Gaia GPS

2009-09-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

I've used a lot of topo maps in my travels - National Geographic maps, Terraserver print-outs, OpenCycle Maps, and I even gave prints of Google Terrain maps a whirl. But, nothing compares to MyTopo maps.

That's why I'm glad my company is able to provide MyTopo iPhone topo maps. In fact, Gaia GPS (released just last week) is the only iPhone app to include MyTopo's maps of Canada and the United States. Gaia GPS also lets you create iPhone offline maps for when you don't have an internet connection.

Topo maps on the iPhone are even better, in my opinion, than print-outs, because it is invaluable to see yourself on the map, particularly if you are an imperfect navigator like me.

Gaia GPS: The Best GPS iPhone App

2009-09-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

This summer has been nothing but iPhone development for me. Anna, Tim, and I have been working on Gaia GPS, and this week we pushed it to the App Store. It's doing pretty well, ranked 16th in iTunes in navigation. I think it's the best GPS iPhone app.

The Personal Website of Andrew L Johnson

2009-07-14T15:57:00.001-07:00

If you want to follow my blog, please visit www.andrewljohnson.com. That's right folks, the personal website of Andrew L. Johnson. When you think andrewljohnson, this is the site for you. Just my ramblings on programming, hiking, games, and the like.

Parks and Places at TrailBehind.com

2009-05-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a few great places on my website, TrailBehind.com.

Yosemite National Park

Allegheny National Forest

Tahoe National Forest

Martis Peak

Joshua Tree National Park

TrailBehind.com

2008-05-09T06:10:00.001-07:00

TrailBehind.com is a great hiking site.

2008-05-09T06:10:00.000-07:00

TrailBehind.com is a great hiking site.

Chef Claudio - Pittsburgh Catering

2007-06-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Chef Claudio has launched his website. He provides the finest Italian Pittsburgh catering. His site has lots of videos and recipes.

For event-planning, catering, or restaurant consulting in Pittsburgh, he's your guy.

My new blog: www.TheGreatHive.com

2007-06-05T16:15:00.001-07:00

I have created a new website at www.thegreathive.com. The Great Hive is Andrew L. Johnson's personal website.

Moving Again

2007-05-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

I am closing down this blog. I will be reposting elsewhere, but the site is under construction for now.

This time I have a great domain name and better subject matter, and I'm going to do the web dev from scratch.

Adios.

Great Quote, Unlikely Source

2007-05-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

Though you wouldn't expect it of a guy re-reporting an interview with an early 90s move star, this is a good thought:

"...patriotism is about love of one's country, not worship of government."

Why is Blogger whacky? WHy did it take away my editing buttons?

Link: http://infowars.com/articles/us/jfk_bruce_willis_says_jfk_killers_still_in_power.htm

Quotes about Microsoft Vista

2007-04-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Clipped from here, the analysis was a little dry, but the quotes are good:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

“I propose that each copy of the OS should ship with an orange jumpsuit and sensory deprivation goggles, since all Vista users have been unilaterally declared 'enemy combatants' by the content apparatchiki ” — Daniel Nevin.

“Windows Vista? And what a vista! All you see as you look around your garden is a 60foot high brick wall” — Crosbie Fitch.

“[Microsoft researcher] England has a bold plan to improve the PC and make it a secure delivery system for audio and video. England's solution involves making minor modifications to the PC's hardware to allow Microsoft to make a secure version of the Windows Media Player. Essentially, this would turn the PC into a record player as far as music is concerned” — Microsoft Research News.
“This is obviously some strange use of the word 'improve' which I've previously been unaware of” — Arthur dent.

“welcome to the new world of DRM where expensive pieces of hardware across the world could potentially be remotely rendered useless by over-zealous copyright holders. Way to go, Hollywood!” — Chip Mulligan.

“Digital rights management technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. I predict that every year, and it turns out to be true every year” — Ed Felten.

“Microsoft wasted no time; it issued a patch three days after learning about the hack. There's no month-long wait for copyright holders who rely on Microsoft's DRM. This clearly demonstrates that economics is a much more powerful motivator than security” — Bruce Schneier on Microsoft's DRM re-enabling patch for FairUse4WM.

“Good job, industry! Spend an incredible amount of time and effort developing the next generation of video quality only to step on it BEFORE THERE'S EVEN A DECIDED UPON STANDARD in the name of Copy Protection which will just be outflanked by a couple of 14 year old hackers and distributed over BitTorrent anyway” — “SweetMercury”.

“I was reminded of a quote from a Disney executive that I read a while ago [in the Economist]. The quote is: If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed. If I went to play premium content and all that shows up on my monitor is a message telling me that part of the display process isn't supported by content protection, this would scream DRM to even the most unsavvy users” — Steven Grueber.

“The only reason this debate over DRM as it applies to electronic text is still going on is simply because our opponents have what amounts to a quasi-religious and sometimes downright hysterical blind faith in the magic powers of DRM. As a test of competing business strategies in the real world of economic intercourse, the debate is over. We won, they lost — and it was a rout.” — Eric Flint, content producer and artist.

Gender Genie

2007-04-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Gender Genie presents an interesting conclusion - that there is a difference in the writing, and thus thinking, of men and women. It seems to draw much of its conclusions based on a set of specific machine-learned keywords.

Now that the computer has spit out the number 42, maybe it will answer the real question: why? Nature or nurture? Oppression or evolution?

What happens when everyone knows everything?

2007-04-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

I think, "What happens when everyone knows everything?" is a worthy and even lucrative question to ponder in this day and age. With the convergence of mass communications technology in the last decade, the information stored, shared, and produced from those very activities has created a wellspring of knowledge. The application of that knowledge keeps me in business. It's very existence shakes the world:

1. Cars and Coffins - The internet destroyed the information asymmetry between the buying public and the dealers of cars, coffins, and other commodity goods. I presume it's less lucrative to sell many things now. The internet keeps businesses honest.

2. The Meta-Media - The media is subjected to the scrutiny of the blogosphere which is critiqued by the media which is made fun of by the blogosphere in an infinite loop of information-refining debate that threatens to topple the most corrupt of American politicos and other double-talking celebrities. I don't like seeing the sausage made, but the information at the end is getting truer. See Katrina and Iraq as prime examples - we know how fucked up everything is now. Yay!

3. Collectible Nonsense - The internet provided a perfect distribution and quantification of overprinted collectibles such as baseball cards and Pokemon cards. Every sucker in south Tennessee could get their Nolan Ryan Donruss card, and prices plummeted, at least on the collectible side of the consumerist construct. I think wax packs are up to like $10 per though, and nary a piece of bubble gum to be found. Thanks eBay!

4. Information Wants to be Free - Lawyers are befuddled, but making money. The public is grabbing every piece of data that gets encoded. The RIAA is spending cash like mad to protect the old order. And interest groups are calling for everything from the freeing of all data, to a billion dollar effort to lock all the data down in gossamer chains of DRM. Give it 10 years, a couple more essays from Steve Jobs, the increased demonification of the MPAA, refinement of Linux, about faces from labels (like EMI), and there will be a new order. Copyright law, even with the DMCA just does not equate to reality. When information distribution companies (labels, studios) begin constricting the flow of information, something is broken.

5) Microsoft's Struggle - The internet has essentially supplanted the PC model for the next generation of computers. A new wave of multicore supercomputers working in tandem over loosely coupled web services and tightly coupled Java apps will usher in a new era of efficiency, cost, and functionality. Microsoft will continue to struggle until their platform becomes fully integrated with the open network and they become a good citizen. Linux, catalyzed by distributed work over the internet, will forever challenge any notion of the proprietary desktop.

6) Learning Music is Different - If you want to learn songs, particularly on the guitar, the content owners are fighting for their lives to keep the secrets to making the music off the internet. But they are failing as evidenced for a search for _[any song name] tab_ on the Google.

Photos of Recency

2007-04-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

Here you can see photos of Tim Bowen's wedding.

Here you can see photos of Anna's and my trip to Henry Coe State Park.

The Hat Puzzle

2007-03-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a great puzzle a friend of mine challenged me with. Post a solution to the comments before I post tomorrow! You can find another version of this puzzle at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_puzzle

Say there are 10 prisoners who will all be lined up facing forward by the prison warden.

They will each be given a black or white hat to wear... something like BWBWBBBWWW.

Since they are all facing forward, all they can see is the prisoners in front of them.

The game is this: Starting at the back of the line, each prisoner must say "black" or "white" and that is all. If a prisoner is correct about their own hat color, then they live. If not, the warden shoots them.

Before this begins, all he prisoners may get together and discuss a strategy, but the warden is listening in.

How many prisoners can be saved?

Impeach George Bush

2007-03-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

I guess I just want to add my voice to the clarion call for George Bush's impeachment. It strikes me that five of the top articles on reddit.com are about impeachment calls being fostered in Vermont.

This follows news that a US Court has convicted Scooter Libby for lying and obstructing justice. Their is no doubt this is an indictment of the Bush Administration as well. Scooter's head isn't enough for me... I want more. Are we finally ready to stand up and end this war, this nightmare, this darkest time in American history?

Rather than give my own argument for impeachment, I quote and embrace the Middlebury Resolution:

We the people have the power -- and the responsibility -- to remove executives who transgress not just the law, but the rule of law.

The oaths that the President and Vice President take binds them to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The failure to do so forms a sound basis for articles of impeachment.

The President and Vice President have failed to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" in the following ways:

1. They have manipulated intelligence and misled the country to justify an immoral, unjust, and unnecessary preemptive war in Iraq.

2. They have directed the government to engage in domestic spying without warrants, in direct contravention of U.S. law.

3. They have conspired to commit the torture of prisoners, in violation of the Federal Torture Act and the Geneva Convention.

4. They have ordered the indefinite detention without legal counsel, without charges and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention -- all in violation of U.S. law and the Bill of Rights.

When strong evidence exists of the most serious crimes, we must use impeachment -- or lose the ability of the legislative branch to compel the executive branch to obey the law.

Pictures of California

2007-03-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

I put up some Picasa albums of random stuff.

http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewljohnson

The Truth about Valuable Employees

2007-03-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that all the A-players at any organization tend to be doing different things, in different ways? These people have shared character traits, but what they do in their job could be anything.

Some top developers write more code, others design more algorithms, others lead and organize teams. In marketing, some people specialize in writing, others do art, others do quantitative studies, others do primary research, etc. They do different mixes of these things.

So who are the A-players? It's simple:

1) A-players are smart people. The best organizations will make this a pillar of their hiring.

2) A-players are interested people. A top source of value in any employee is how much they purely think about the company. When it comes time for a person to act on the company's behalf, they will make far better decisions if they are interested in their company, work, and industry.

3) A-players are active people. Hire employees who do lots of work, who have families and pets, and who pursue lots of interests and passions. And then enthuse them to take some of that energy and spend it on your business.

I think the culture at my company SureLogic embraces these ideas, Google too.

On Brains and Thinkings

2007-02-26T23:03:00.001-08:00

"There's a go-playing part of your head."

-Kevin Lacker

For further information, see http://www.sedl.org/reading/topics/brainreading.html

Classic Magic Battle!

2007-02-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

It appears that Wizards of the Coast has archived all of their ESPN2 Magic: The Gathering footage.

Herein you can see me get smashed by Scott Johns, who just couldn't seem to shut up. Skip to time 4:42 for the action, and you can see me lose $10K. Randy Buehler has always maintained that I should have won the match, and I of course vociferously deny that to this day.

Le Mardis Gras in Pictures

2007-02-08T16:17:00.000-08:00

SureLogic

2007-02-08T16:13:00.003-08:00

The SureLogic website has been launched at www.surelogic.com, and I think it's a beauty. Let me know if you notice any bugs or typos!

The Bots that Ate the Internet

2007-02-08T16:13:00.001-08:00

This blog post from CIO magazine really resonates with me, as I have been having problems on my home internet, and because my company has been having the exact problems described. I'm confident that humanity will think of a solution (yay shutdown all Windows machine!) but this is pretty scary and annoying nonetheless.

Everybody panic!

Dell Bloatware Update

2007-02-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

After I ranted about Dell's bloatware and business issues, Dell wrote back with this PR gem, and then I continued it with a venomous and somewhat confusing dissection of the PR flack's comment (that Dell really wouldn't have been wise to acknowledge).

They did visit back to check it out though, and quickly thereafter Michael Dell took back over as CEO, and I'm taking full credit for that. Afterall, I know from working with a Gazelles consultant recently that Dell's culture and Dell himself are particularly obsessed with reading customer feedback.

So, Michael Dell, if you are listening here's my advice:

1) Focus on fast and easy, cost and value. That's Dell.

2) Make it faster to buy a Dell online by clearing out the marketing junk and making it more obvious what the best deal is. Current profit maximization scheme isn't worth the ill will.

3) Push all the garbage software off your machines and get open source friendly. I don't think the ads are worth it, and you need to return to your roots: hardware. Open source will let you maintain your cost edge. Ubuntu or no?

4) Get creative. Make a wiki aimed at helping people understanding what the best thing to buy for their needs is.

5) Or get really creative. Make an application that provides a popularity ranked list of categories of applications like anitvirus, operating system, search, browser, and let people choose a la carte when they first turn on their Dell.

6) Speed up your customer service times. One thing you could do is create protocols for dealing with common defects. For example, just send someone a new battery if there's a good chance that's the problem. If it isn't, go from there. I bet the math works out if you account for my loss of time, on the phone with India, which equates to a negative reputational effect on you.

Anybody, what do you think Dell can do to once again become a premier PC company?

Darnnews Scoops the Julie Stimmel Story

2007-01-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

Check out this post on The Darn News which features a picture of the comely Julie Stimmel. Way to go blogsphere crushing the MSM!

Buy Weed Online

2007-01-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Here is yet another to add to the collection of things you can get on eBay, according to Google Ads. Buy weed online. Click to enlarge.

Dell Bloatware

2007-01-18T21:36:00.000-08:00

Someone representing Dell posted a long comment in response to my blog about Dell Bloatware. Here is my threaded response.

FROM LARRY OF DELL WITH MY RESPONSES (YOU SHOULD COMMENT TOO):

If you have not already received them, I can easily send you the reinstallation CDs (OS, drivers and Dell applications) for your system. I would just need to get the service tag or order number for your computer (to make sure I send the correct disks) and the address you want them shipped to. I can be reached by email at customer_advocate@dell.com (please add 'ATTN: Larry' to the subject to ensure it gets to me).

->Larry, let's kick this off with a couple questions:
->1. How many people were involved in writing your comment?
->2. Do you work for an advertising or public relations agency? Which one?
->3. Did you make an effort to contact Shawna or Josephine as listed in my article?
-> Please try and answer honestly. I worked for an ad/PR agency once upon a time, and Grey Advertisng (wink) offered me a job once.

The reason some Dell systems shipped without those CDs is that some customers requested that as an option, and after looking at it a decision was made to give it a try as it would potentially save a lot of money.

->Come, come Larry. The reason you ship your systems as you do is because your bloatware is advertising bought and paid for by software vendors. This statement is at odds with, or at least suspicious, in light of your admission below that "My understanding is that companies pay the computer makers money to include this "extra" software, which is why it is so pervasive."

Just recently that decision was looked at again, with the data from the last two years. It was decided that not shipping the CDs with those computers caused to [SIC] many problems for our customers. As of October 2006 the option when ordering a Dell changed to include the CDs (the default), or leave them off the system order for a $10 savings (for those that don't want/need them).

->Are you saying that well-publicized rants about Dell bloatware had nothing to do with Dell using an ad agency to fight the problem, with the decision to include the CD, with the option to get bloatware-free CDs on demand, or with your post here today? A simple yes or no will suffice.

Would you say that your software providers are pretty happy about this $10 incentive to not order a CD that would annihilate their software? Again, yes or no please.

The disks you are asking for are the Dell Windows Reinstallation CD (basically an OEM version of the standard Windows install disk), the Dell Drivers & Utilities CD, and the Dell Applications CD (for reinstalling Dell factory installed applications that don't have their own reinstallation disks). The OS and Drivers CDs are all that are needed to get the computer back up and running (although I highly recommend checking the Dell support site, support.dell.com, for the latest drivers for your system).

->I really don't NEED any of that, to be clear, but Dell is a behemoth predator with no scruples. Linux is availble for free but pushed out of contention by the PC makers, notably Dell, because of lucrative deals with Microsoft, hence stifling innovation and inflating prices. Dell was doing the same thing processor-wise with Intel over AMD, but changed recently due to legal danger. I can only hope the law will soon force you to provide other operating systems, or that Michael Dell will show some remorse for transforming his college dorm room business (which was so inspiring to someone like me) into a pawn for Microsoft and a fountain of wealth for a few lucky individuals.

To address your specific "Truth[s] about Dell":

1) For the most part, the people I have worked with here at Dell have been above average (some well above) for tech support/customer care reps. The overall competency of my coworkers was actually a pleasant surprise, compared to some previous companies I have worked at, when I started working here.

->You should work on this paragraph. You don't seem sincere at all.

2) Dell's bureaucracy isn't dumb, its just very large and effected[SIC] by inertia. Policies are created to handle specific situations, but the computer industry can change rapidly, sometimes much faster than a large organization like Dell. I know from personal experience that when a problem with a policy is identified, steps are taken to correct things as quickly as possible. Sometimes that can be quite rapid, other times it can take a while.

->Excuses, excuses. I think Dell isn't properly aligned around a good fundamental mission, and so all of its policies aren't working together and are made in an inconsistent way. Dell used to be about cheap and plentiful. Now, with all the support hassles and the commoditization of computers, and Dell's poor infrastructure, you have little to offer the market.

If you buy a Dell, you end up paying as much as you would anywhere else, you have to deal with tons of marketing gimmicks, and you end up calling India. That's always been my experience with Dell.

3) Dell hardware is as reliable as any other computer hardware. This is because we use industry standard parts for all of our systems.

->Woah there! First rule of PR: Don't comment on things you don't know anything about. One of the major things with computer defects is the assembly process once you buy these "industry standard" parts. One thing, and there are others, that correlates highly is how many times you touch the parts. Please provide some meaningful, compartive statistics before trying any of your hand-waving at me. Just because you use the same parts (something to brag about?) doesn't mean your computers are just as good.

The reason it appears to be a large number of failures is because of the even larger number of systems sold.

->Lol.

My understanding is that about 2% of systems have actual hardware problems (anything from cracked plastics that don't effect performance to entire systems needing to be replaced).

->Who's systems? Your's? Their's? Everyone's? Is there any statistical difference between whose systems fail more? Not that you'd provide I'm sure.

I believe Dell sells at least 40 to 50 million of each model of system during its product lifetime (a few months to a couple of years depending on the model). This adds up to a few million computers needing repair, even though that is less than 2% of the actual number of systems shipped.

->Stop trying to distract me and everyone else. The blogosphere is more unscripted argument and debate, not talking points, and your focus on this pointless arithmetic unveils a true unwillingnes to look at some numbers.

As for shipping a system without any of the "extra" software, I believe that is being actively looked at as an option. My understanding is that companies pay the computer makers money to include this "extra" software, which is why it is so pervasive. It is basically paid advertising, like full page magazine ads.

->That's the rub! Dell is getting paid to inconvenience me. Now, it is inconveniencing me soooo much, that I am wasting my time railing against you in public, and my time is valuable.

It's pretty easy to see why you are "actively" looking at the option. When I cause Dell enough problems that it is no longer profitable to cram bloatware down my throat, then the bloatware will stop.

If you have any questions about anything I've posted, just let me know. I'll be more than happy to answer them.

Larry, please answer my questions in public, spontaneously, or get someone who has the authority at Dell to answer spontaneously. All I did was write and spell-check, and I would expect the same courtesy from anyone who thinks it's their right to speak in the democratic blogosphere as an individual.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

Larry, the other thing about your post is how you talk about things like defect rates and bloatware as industry issues. That's fine, and I agree they are, but you don't represent the industry. You represent Dell.

This defective laptop infected with essentially a bundle of spyware/adware is my problem and your problem. What are you going to do about it? Here's the story so far:

0. My Mistake: Bought a Dell.
1. Battery doesn't work.
2. Andrew calls sales rep, transferred to India
3. Andrew on phone with India for an hour, who agrees to send new battery.
4. Andrew complains to India about bloatware, gets cut off during transfer back to America who handles bloatware issues apparently.
5. Andrew emails sales rep who is stalled on answering a week later.
6. Andrew gets new battery a day later.
7. New battery doesn't charge either.
8. Dell PR flack posts to blog before Dell sales rep. can take care of the issue.
9. Andrew now has to order new laptop, then return old broken one, probably stuck with Dell because lord knows you won't give me a refund and let me get an IBM, and will soon have to uninstall the bloatware on the new machine, which will inevitably break.

Fighting Dell Bloatware

2007-01-08T11:42:00.002-08:00

UPDATE: Dell responded... see my response here.

This is my story of helping the fight against Dell bloatware, which began because I read about a fellow citizen's fight, and because I had to call Dell about my battery anyway.

Thank goodness my battery didn't explode (it wasn't made in the appropriate 2-year timeframe), but it did recently just stop working. The battery in my new work Dell Inspiron 9400 quit after weeks of usage, so after procrastinating the inevitable call to India through the holidays, I emailed our salesperson Shawna.

---

Good Morning Shawna,

The battery on the Inspiron 9400 that my company recently purchased for me no longer holds a charge, so I guess it's defective.

How can I get this addressedd(sic)?

Thanks,

---

Shawna promptly called me back, apologized for me having to deal with tech support, and transferred me to Josephine in India. Josephine worked her IT magic on my computer, had me install some software so she could take control of my machine, and fiddled with settings. She had me remove the battery a couple of times and turn the computer on and off a couple of times. She seemed competent, and the whole thing took about 50 minutes, what with it being Windows, but it got done.

Then, inspired by the story I read about how I could make Dell get rid of its own bloatware, I requested a CD for my computer that just has Windows, and absolutely no other software. Josephine understood after I explained to her "as if I had bought a box of Windows in the store." She consulted with a supervisor, and then she told me that Customer Care could help me, and she would transfer me. Then, click. Lost in the void. I'm praying this was an accident, or Dell is in even more serious trouble than we know.

---

Dear Shawna,

I spent 50 minutes with customer support after you and I spoke. They are sending me a new battery.

After we went through all the stuff to get that, I had a second request.

I asked that the rep. to have Dell send me a CD with an OS image that doesn't have anything but Windows on it, since I do not want to have any of the other software that y'all bundle such as McAfee and Works and Desktop searching and whatnot. And I don't want to just delete them because that will foul up my registry.

After she understood what I was talking about, she said she would transfer me to Customer Care to handle that request. At that point, I was disconnected.

What shall I do now? I would just like to get a copy of Windows as if I had bought a box of software from the store, and not have all the rest of the stuff.

Thanks,
Andrew

---

From Shawna:

I think there is a way I can do that for you. Give me a little time to find out.

---

Truth about Dell:

1) Dell's ground people are good. Yay Dell people! You guys are fine, human, but fine. Thanks Shawna and Josephine. Really, these folks are working enmeshed in a huge corporate bureaucracy that can't seem to get a realistic view on customer service. It takes forever and the sales people apologize for it, as they should. The people actually made me happy! I think they were better at their jobs than the people at the DMV.

2) Dell's bureaucracy is dumb. You would need good people like Shawna and Josephine just to keep that behemoth of an organization lurching forward. At 50 minutes to have me on the phone with someone in India fixing a problem, it would have been cheaper and less dreadful to have me fill out an online form, then have Dell sends me a new battery, and then they pick up my old battery with UPS. It's just common sense.

3) Dell's computers are junk. But they replace all the junk that breaks if you buy the warranty thing that makes them cost as much as everyone else's computers. So, this would be only a sort of crappy business model, and their customer service people might even push Dell to the top of the market. But they would need reasonable policies, for their good people, to fix their junky computers.

I blame the management.

I'll let you know if I actually get the clean image CD in the mail, and benefit from the changes alluded to in the Dell blog post link off the CRN post above.

You should join the fight too. Make your hardware provider provide you with a clean image, free of bloatware. And if you think that the OS is bloatware too, make sure you protest paying for that too. I'm tired of living in push-economy. I'll tell you if I need your stuff and I'll find you... just use the right keywords in your website.

Pitching Stories

2007-01-06T01:37:00.000-08:00

Valleywag takes its normal (somehow pandering) swipes at Michael Arrington in this blog post, but also provides a number of great ideas for ways PR professionals can actually ply their trade with dignity (from a survey of journalists conducted by Media Survey). Really good ideas from reporters on pitching stories!

I'm happy to have this advice as we begin to rev up at work and I start pitching stories and building relationships. Here's two, but Valleywag lists tons of quotes from top reporters on how PR folks should be pitching stories, all valuable.

Greg Sandoval, News.com
Greg says he met PR pro Michael Prichinello while reporting on Prichinello's client, Kozmo. The relationship grew from there. Prichinello called Greg to discuss trends and ideas that had nothing to do with Kozmo, knowing there was no quid pro quo. The result was that "when he would call with something, I would listen. He didn't waste my time. I'll take his call any time."

Ashlee Vance, The Register
Because he writes two or three stories a day, Ashlee wants to be "off the hook, get the quote, file the story, and move along. Waiting for a call becomes another whole process." Ashlee loves it when PR knows the subject so well they can answer all questions about "shipping info, product details, (and) keep me abreast of events."

Here were some ideas I had back in November.

A Weird Wind is Blowing in MySpace World

2007-01-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

Anybody else in the midst of getting a flood of spam from MySpace faux-hotties? My gmail account is going nuts with alerts.

I wonder how long it will take Tom and his team to get this hacker under control. My prediction for 2007? The end of MySpace as other sites take its place and the whole mess comes crashing down under its own weight.

It's Worse Than You Think - Time to Check Telecomm in a Big Way

2007-01-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

Tim Wu's recent article on the recombination of Ma Bell provides a fascinating history of AT&T and explores the future of telecomm. But the article misses a major point when talking about the danger of monopoly and how to handle it - that is the potential for governmental or another party's abuse of the concentration of monopoly power. This a big reason why the "dicing" Tim refers to is also necessary.

I think most of the readers of this blog are familiar with complicity by certain telecomm companies with the US government to spy on Americans. A benefit of having several competing telecomms is that market forces check their actions. In this case, companies like Cingular were able to say that they rejected the advances of the NSA, and consumers were able to choose a spy-free provider.

Even if you disagree that the rejectors of the NSA machinations gain any market advantage from the move (their PR units thought they did), at the very least it's better for citizens that the U.S. government, or any other party, has to make its shady deals with a number of parties. Concentrating so much power leaves the door wide open to malice and greed, and enables unilateral corruption. I for one think we see it in Iraq too, unilateral corruption by the U.S. Too much decision-making power in one group is a bad thing, and I'd like competing interests running the network.

Sure, dicing up the network along regional lines has cartel issues, because with a huge database of shared historical pricing information, it was easy for the regional Bells to collude without any overt contact. Obviously Tim took a couple economics courses like the rest of us, but he clearly forgets the wise words of Lord Acton. Cliched or not, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I'm not so scared of slightly jacked prices or dampened innovation so much as I'm scared of my phone and my government teaming up to send me to 1984. We need checks and balances among the network bureaucracy itself. Demanding they play nice with the ISPs won't be enough - we need opposing forces in different rooms making decisions about the network, or one thing will lead to another as it always does.

Welcome to Wiimbledon

2006-12-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

Don't you think it's slick how the Wii easily connects to your wireless network after you set it up. While the new virtual reality UI on the Wii is fantastic, the big news is the UI combined with the internet. You can see where Nintendo is going with this.

What always made Nintendo the most fun was playing with friends, and the wireless Wii gives way to a whole new world of playing everything from the 8-bit goldies to the new Wii sports games with people across the globe. Nintendo's games, old and new, lend themselves to playing in pairs, in groups, and in tournaments.

Welcome to Wiimbledon. It's not very hard to run Wii Tennis matches asynchronously and keep stats on a central server. I think Ninetendo has this and more in mind, and you get a peek at that through the Mii Parade. Nintendo is making their first play in the a very important arena.

Went Shopping

2006-12-27T19:11:00.000-08:00

I won't do this thing justice, but I went a got a new acoustic guitar today, after consulting with my Uncle Mike on good ones to look at. I tried all the guitars he recommended in my price range, and this one felt like magic in my hands.

http://www.seagullguitars.com/productartiststudiocw.htm

Strange Lego Insert

2006-12-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

This year, I bought my nephew a big red box of legos, and the insert that came neatly folded inside gave my whole family the giggles. Just imagine, millions and millions of these things printed... I guess so people don't get confused by the instructions for making various things. It goes to show how smart the Danes think the average consumer is!

The Statistically Proven 11 Secrets of Big Diggs

2006-12-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

I have conducted an analysis of top articles on Digg and Reddit over the last 1.5 months. The results of my study are not surprising. Below I have posted the list in ascending order of the topic categories most likely to rise to the top of these two sites, as well as a graph for some back-up info.

While I make no claims about the accuracy of this study, drop me a line if you are interested in my methodology or some other breakouts I did.

The Top 11

11. Make a flagrantly liberal comment about a well-known conservative.

10. Reddit, Digg, or Fark: boobies are king.

9. Triple A: Atheism, altruism, and academia oh my.

8. Web 2.0.

7. Giant animals.

6. Haskell, Lisp, or Erlang will all do in a pinch.

5. Python or Ruby… bonus points for rails.

4. Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

3. The rich get richer.

2. Vista.

1. Best of, Top 10, Secrets, Tips, and/or Tricks. Who needs a link?

From my dad's blog

2006-12-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

In my youth, truth was as limber as my limbs and terribly important to speak or conceal. Pushing 50, truth is stiff and difficult to bend after just two hours of sitting; but, it also doesn't mean much. I am a cacophony of good and bad, right and wrong, certainty and doubt, passion and disdain. “I cast a shadow most clearly in the light. Better though, this shadow, then hiding in the night.”

http://goodsoul.zaadz.com/

A Song You've Never Heard

2006-12-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

This is a song you've never heard, but I'm sure you will hear on a radio one day. On top of being an accomplished guitarist (jazz and rock), Steve's sound brings together the classic pop sound of The Beatles with the modern flare of Neutral Milk Hotel and The Decemberists.

Summer's Ending, by Steve Goldberg.

Wii, Time, and You

2006-12-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

You've read all the stories. The Wii is surpassing all expectations and turning the console world on its ear. You've read about it 15 times on CNN.com, 27 times in the New York Times, but most of all you've seen and heard those like you, your countrymen, squawking and dancing to in celebration of what at least is a major UI innovation, and perhaps a historic step into the world of virtual reality.

The Wii isn't just the talk of the town. It's the talk of the world. My little blog, usually just a place for my sisters and roommates, now brings in hundreds of visits a day from people looking for the secrets of the Wii Tennis Power Serve, Wii Tennis Strategy, and all that.

Today, I read the Time POY article (on Reddit). While it was a little bit cheesy, it nonetheless recognized the single most important force of our generation, the global internet. We're living in a new age of reason, where everyone has a voice and access to the knowledge of humanity. At the end of it, we will recognize this as the most important time in human history.

The Time article noted that the internet had allowed humanity to take control of the global media, and here you are, and this is big. This isn't just a new way to find the best articles on the Wii, to quickly and accurately evaluate and discuss new consumer products. This isn't just a mass of coordinated people showing up the MSM.

This is a realization of a dream envisioned only in science fiction, the minds of batty futurists, and an AT&T commercial :). This is a way to harness computation, collective intelligence, and create a global brain that will cause a rapid acceleration in technology and thus productivity and economic prosperity. And also a way to download all the games I used to play on the original Nintendo, back in the 1980s, when 640k ought to be enough for anybody.

I think we are living in dangerous times, but the internet has the chance to bring us back from the brink, and bind us together into a global community of inestimable power and potential. If I were religious, I'd say we are living in a time of prophecy. But instead I marvel at man, technology, the internet, and this sleek little Wii.

Leonard and Diane Johnson

2006-12-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

There isn't much on the internet about my grandparents, but that's just a function of their generation. But if anyone's ever searching for Leonard Lester Johnson or Diane Seelye Johnson, they are my grandparents and once ran a big oil pipe company in Houston, TX. They are passed away now, but they live on vividly in my memories and this, one of my favorite photos:

Wii Tennis Strategy: Net Smashing

2006-12-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I don't blog here anymore. My new project is TrailBehind - a website for hikers and campers. I made a new blog on my site too.

This installment of Wii Tennis strategy is particularly useful against computer players, playing human on computer or when playing the net against a computer on the baseline in doubles. The fact is, even at the higher ranks, the computer doesn't hit the very ball very hard, and due to the acrobatics of Mii avatars, you can capitalize as the loopers sail over the net.

Just as in serving, you can put some heat on the ball if you hit it at the top of the arc, or close to it. Whenever you are playing the net, and a ball comes anywhere close to you, try and get it on its way up or at the apex. And remember! Mii avatars can jump like Jordan, so you don't even have to be real close to the ball to jump or dive for it. The focus on the racquet play I think is one of the fundamental strengths of the game.

The other consideration is of course which direction you want the ball to go, but usually just hitting it as hard as you can a time or two will put the ball well out of reach regardless.

If you missed my previous popular posts on the Wii Tennis Power Serve and or the Wii Tennis strategy article on the Five Magic Shots, check them out.

My roommates and I are getting a camcorder so we can demonstrate some techniques that we have painstakingly uncovered :)

Wii Tennis Power Serve

2006-12-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I don't blog here anymore. My new project is TrailBehind - a website for hikers and campers. I made a new blog on my site too.

The power serve in Wii Tennis is an absolutely critical shot. You'll notice that before either side knows how to power serve, you are at a DISADVANTAGE when serving, because you are like a tennis ball machine throwing practice loopers to your opponent.

Being able to power serve completely changes the nature of the game:

1) The power serve changes your serving volleys from a defensive to an aggressive nature. Your opponent will hit it back slower, from deeper, and basically activates your net man.

2) The power serve prevents your opponent from easy put-aways (see my Magic Shots article on Wii Tennis for how to quash a slow serve)

3) The power serve gets you aces.

How-To Power Serve
In order to Power serve, you should swing as hard as you can with a quick wrist flick at the top of the ball's arc (about 1-Mississippi count). When the ball seems to hang in the air, smash it. I can pretty much do it every time now.

Stay tuned for the following posts:

The Jumping Smasher at the Net

Video Demonstration

Chicken Romano Approximately

2006-11-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

Chicken romano is as follows.

Filet and pound some chicken breasts

Romano batter is say half a dozen eggs, a bunch of parsley, a dash of garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and as much romano cheese as you can afford.

Heat up vegetable oil in a skillet. Turn oven to 450.

Dip chicken breasts in flour and then batter. Fry until golden brown.

Move chicken pieces to oven dish.

Put chopped mushrooms on top.

Spray lemon juice in there, a lemon or two depending.

Pout white wine in (Chablis or sauvignon blanc or anything)

Put in some butter

A dash of water

Cover and bake for a while, maybe 15 minutes. As long as it's sealed, you can overcook and it will still be good.

Five Magic Shots: A Beginner's Strategy for Wii Tennis

2006-11-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I don't blog here anymore. My new project is TrailBehind - a website for hikers and campers. I made a new blog on my site too.

These five shots will serve you well.

Magic Shot #1 - Smashing the Slow Serve (Forehand)
If your opponent dares to loop one over the net to your forhand, swing a bit early with little to no wrist action. If you can do this well-timed with a quick swing, it is a usually unreturnable Agassi-like chop across the forecourt.

Magic Shot #2 - Backhand Return
I find the best way to hit back any serve to my backhand is to return the ball with a quick top-spin flick of my wrist, as quick as I can swing and flick, timed a bit early to send it right. This works equally well against slow and fast serves.

Magic Shot #3 - Backhand Follow-Up
If they manage to return a Magic Shot #2, the ball is almost always hit squarely at your net man, since it's hard for them to get around on the ball. You can usually hit it right down the middle or left to take the point.

Magic Shot #4 - Quashing the Looper
If your opponent tries Magic Short #2 and hits it to early, it will almost always go in range of your net man, and you can similarly put the ball away.

Magic Shot #5 - The Fast Serve
Hit the ball at the top of the arc. You have to wait about a second after you toss before you come down fast and with as much topspin curve as your wrist can muster.

If you play a lot of tennis, or even have just read Infinite Jest, you probably understand the analogy that tennis is like "chess on the run." This analogy to chess is even more poignant in Wii Tennis, because the framework for moving around is pretty much constant. The game is an equal balance of tactical skill and strategic skill, and this makes it my favorite of the Wii sports games.

Learn the various shots and curves and think about how the come together to form a complete game.

The Lumberghs

2006-11-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

I set up a MySpace bandpage for the band.

If you read this blog, you have probably already heard the two songs I have posted, but I'll let you know if I put up anything else.

The Lumberghs
www.myspace.com/thelumberghs

Missing You on Thanksgiving

2006-11-27T01:53:00.000-08:00

It's the first year in a while that I haven't been home to see my family for Thanksgiving, and a few brief phone calls are no substitute for being in the same house. I miss my family, who are usually smart, funny, caring, and kind.

The last Thanksgiving I wasn't at home in Houston was freshman year at college, living in Donner Dungeon. It was me, the international students, and Chewie hanging out for the weekend, buying what junk food we could at the cornerstore, and wiling away the minutes, hours, nights, and weekend with computer games and other laudably innocent pursuits.

I miss Chewie, Jason from my street, my buddies Matt and David, Dain, Bowen, Krepsik, Turian, and all the other people of my childhood and college. Though they have been scattered to the wind, they can never leave my heart and mind.

I miss the girls who I have known and loved and lived with, who taught me a lot about myself and hopefully felt they got something from me as well. A pretty remarkable group if I do say so myself.

I miss my Pittsburgh friends, Eric and Brad and Becca and Sean and the rest, who I'm glad I still have the chance to see, people who I've had enough beers with that they pretty much know who I am, and like me just the same.

Some of these people I'll see again once or twice. Some I'll never see again. But if there's nothing else to be thankful for on this greatest of American holidays, it's the people I've known and the people I know today.

Immortality on the Way... Scientists Still Working on Flying Cars

2006-11-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Futurists often overestimate the impact of technology. We know from empirical macroeconomic measurements that technology has a fairly linear impact on business cycles over time, at least if I remember Kydland's class well enough.

But this InformationWeek article (Kurzweil: Computers Will Enable People To Live Forever) is nonetheless inspiring, and maybe Dr. Kydland underestimated the possibility of an exponential increase in productivity through computing. If you believe Ray Kurzweil, MIT professor and recipient of the National Medal of Technology and the Lemelson-MIT prize (from the article, paraphrasing a speech at SCO-06):

—Doctors will be doing a backup of our memories by the late 2030s;

—By the late 2020s, doctors will be sending intelligent bots, or nanobots, into our bloodstreams to keep us healthy, and into our brains to keep us young;

—In 15 years, human longevity will be greatly extended. By the 2020s, we'll be adding a year of longevity or more for every year that passes;

—In the same timeframe, we'll routinely be in virtual reality environments. Instead of making a cell call, we could "meet" someone in a virtual world and take a walk on a virtual beach and chat. Business meetings and conference calls will be held in calming or inspiring virtual locations;

But still no flying cars.

Ding Dong!

2006-11-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

Photo Sensate

2006-11-19T20:58:00.001-08:00

My dad takes a lot of good pictures, evidenced by the number of people who select them as favorites on Flickr. Obvious themes: animals, children, landscapes, women in bikinis :)

But that's a fucntion of what people like to see pictures of, since this is a favorites collection:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodsoul/sets/72157594275836254/

Top 9 Blogs for Entrepreneurial Software Nerds

2006-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

www.reddit.com

www.digg.com

www.valleywag.com

www.onstartups.com

www.joelonsoftware.com

blog.guykawasaki.com

sethgodin.typepad.com

elliottback.com/wp

www.scripting.com

Of course, there's no accounting for taste. What do you and your friends read?

Good Press Releases

2006-11-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

Corporate America and the PR army that serves it would do well to pay attention to the politicos for advice on how to write a good press release. Where corporate press releases are often confusing double-speak, full of branding and jargon, political PR can be refreshingly to the point, probably because it MUST appeal to the masses.

Case in point, Chris Dodd's release promoting a bill to chastise Bush and restore human rights to terrorists is simply worded and even includes bullet points to give you the really meaningful insight. Good job Chris Dodd's PR guy! I have a job for you!

Is it the ads or the product?

2006-11-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

An advertising agency is a lot like a venture capital firm, a different cost structure, but still focused on finding winners. I think that’s part of the success of the agency I used to work at, the ability to choose clients who are growing and selling. As much as good advertising makes a product look good, a good product makes advertising look good (and profitable).

BAA USA, a client from my last job, is the branch of the British Airport Authority that designs and manages retail in airports such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Boston. They focus on providing, at worst, “regular mall pricing” in airports and giving you the same sort of selection you get at the mall as well.

Paying $3.05 for a bag of M&M’s, $2.9 for a bottle of water, and $6.25 for a glass of wine tells me that the concessionaire at the Oakland (OAK) airport has a different, and probably inferior, idea about how to run airport concessions. The idiots in charge of this circus don’t even have an Apple outlet in the whole complex, despite being a few miles from Cupertino and being a portal to a city (SF) that plasters iPod ads all over, particularly on freeways leading to the Oakland Airport.

It’s not even greed, just stupidity that makes the Oakland airport host crappy food, generic retail, and an experience worth forgetting. You can only gouge people so long before they start packing their own M&Ms and cutting the concessionaire out completely.

Cubes

2006-11-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

I don't work in a cubicle, but nonetheless I can feel the dull dreariness set in sometimes. This blog post relates the oppressiveness of American working life very well. Sounds like the guy had a rough night.

10 Rules for PR Success

2006-11-13T23:53:00.000-08:00

Prompted by Seth Godin's post on the Zune player, here's the lessons I learned talking technology to a bunch of careworn reporters as part of my gig at a boutique ad agency.

I've been thinking a lot about what I learned from agency life, as I start to think about PR for my new venture. These are more along the lines of how to build relationships. I'll save what a good "press release" looks like for another post, but this company has the best in the business.

10 Rules for PR Success

1. Don't expect to get a story placed unless the reporter knows your first name. Better yet, knows your favorite football team, your birthday, and likes to catch lunch with you when they're in town.

2. If you have news about your company, call the media early. These people work long hours, run around, and in general have a lot of people trying to talk to them. Weeks, months early. Tell them as soon as you know... they like news.

3. Do you answer spam? Neither do they. A good PR operative can call 4 reporters and place 2 stories. A bad PR operative will email 100, place 1 story, and alienate the other 99 who didn't need a pinch story for a deadline or have some online text dump. Build up an opt-in RSS subscription to your company's blog or get personal permission from a reporter to send them links and two sentence announcements upon occasion via email. A good PR operative will eventually begin to pull incoming phone calls, inquiries, and traffic to the company's press site, rather than just pushing out information.

3. Be a resource, not a pest. Schedule interviews effectively and quickly, call reporters back quickly, and don't BS them. It helps to be a little deferential, because they (the media) are "noble," and you (the corporate sell-out) are "well-paid."

4. Think about what they care about... stuff in their domain expertise/beat, elements of a good story, credible sources, and a pitch that shows you care at least a little bit about technology and in particular your company's technology or whatever you are selling.

5. Give reporters insight into your company's vision and strategy. Lay out your product roadmap as much as you can. Make them think you know something. Get them interested.

6. Don't tell the media about: Your Company's Mundane Hires, Your Company's Sales Figures, Your Company's Crappy Deals, Your Company's Awards in Trade Rags

7. Do tell the media about: Your Company's Incorporation, Your Company's Deals With Fortune 500 Companies With Case Study And Interview Back-Up, Your Company's New Products, Your Technical Staff's Research and Event Attendance (to the appropriate outlets)

7. Your media list is treasure to be polished and expanded and cherished. Look in Bacon's, competitor news clippings, Google, etc. Keep a copy somewhere for a rainy day.

8. Local media is your friend. They like local stories and they like local success. Front page business stories in the local leading daily look good in a clip book and on a resume.

9. You must give exclusives to get your company into national media. The exclusive is your friend, and once it breaks, it ceases to be exclusive.

10. Everyone is a publicist. The internet gives most anyone enough information to make a go a PR. If no one at your company is calling the media, then you should probably start tomorrow.

Boom in Code Quality?

2006-11-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

Compare and contrast the static nature of these two Web pages and the CS professors who have made them happen in preparation for the commercialization of their research.

http://www.surelogic.com/
http://www.quviq.com/

Hopefully we can get our Website up before they do! Either way, Java is way cooler than Haskell :)

Feel the bubble swell below you! Invest now!

The Lumbergs?

2006-11-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Lumbergs is what my new California friend suggest for the band name, and the band is starting to seem more band-like now that Kevin purchased a cherry red Ibanez bass today.

He based the purchase on my patented strategy for buying your first guitar, which is to buy the second-to-cheapest one, because there's a reason the cheap one is the cheapest.

Kevin is going to be a good addition to the band. He is sort of anal about things, like calculating deep tactics in go and chess, where I am more prone to play sloppy and count on my strategy to get me through. He is also already encouraging us to "rock" more than I tend to do, as I prefer a more poppy, folksy sound. But if we are going to have gigs at dives in the Haight, he's right. We gotta rock.

Look for the Lumbergs in concert next summer.

Anyone got a drum kit?

Sunday

2006-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here with the back door open. Sunshine is pouring through the door's portal, and flies are chasing each other merrily just outside. I'm sure that they will eventually start to invade, drawn by the hardening lasagna pan and glasses with droplets of sticky wine clinging from the night before. I don't mind their buzz very much, especially in exchange for the warming glow of the sun, the humming of the humming birds, and the chirps of other avians.

San Francisco has funny weather. It could be warm all morning and then drop of in the afternoon. Or it could be foggy all day only to burn off to create a pleasant 4pm. Or it could be cold and foggy one day and warm and beautiful the next. Thankfully, it seems to be more of the latter so far.

Maura Amidst The Wreckage of Someone Else's Evening

2006-11-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

Learning

2006-11-11T02:05:00.000-08:00

Always wondering, always learning. Watching, thinking, asking. That's the way to be. Eternally curious. Analytical. Different-angle approaching. Finding insight into one aspect of life from another. Skeptical and hopeful. Inquisitive and searching, never satisfied.

There's truth in music and conversation, the Internet and wine. Things to be learned from games, from living, from failing, and from succeeding. From the people you respect the most and the people you like the least. Learn to understand, learn to love, and learn to learn. We live to learn and to teach what we have found. And as each iteration passes, we leave something behind to be built upon and a future so bright we cannot even imagine it.

Kevin on Secret Mission to Korea

2006-11-09T00:28:00.000-08:00

Jamie Lidell

2006-11-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Jamie Lidell was not at all what I expected. But then again, I really didn't know much of what to expect, since I didn't even really read the snippet of text on the guy that Cass sent me before I agreed to go on Thursday.

He was supposed to be a soul singer, which he is, but he's also this incredible beat-boxing DJ, and from my bopping vantage point at the front of the stage at Bimbo's, it was a hell of a show. If you only heard him sing, you'd think he was some 70s black dude with a fro, but he's actually a scrawny white kid.

The only points of the show I didn't enjoy were when Jamie Lidell turned up the bass so high that the wax in my ears started vaporizing and my sternum began to shake its way out of my skin. Other than those moments, I was jumping and dancing and wowed by his incredible voice, vocal tricks, and mastery of the beat.

Check out Jamie Lidell's release Multiply.

p.s. The venue was really cool too, Cass, really :)

TransAmerica Building

2006-11-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture, courtesy of Russell and his camera phone.

Halloween in the Haight

2006-10-31T17:53:00.000-08:00

Gear: Robe, Cross, Rosary, Bible, Sandals

Accompanied by: Cave Woman, Betty Rubble, Dan

Goal: Drink, drink, drink

Happy Halloween!

Shrimp

2006-10-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

There are few things as pleasurable as reheating leftover food and finding a lot more shrimp than you expected.

Boulders Keep a Tumblin' Back Down

2006-10-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

That was last week, and I'm hoping I can avoid a similar experience in the current one. Specifically, I am pushing the following boulders up a hill:

1) Sales Presentation
2) Corporate Identity Design
3) Stationery
4) Technical Documentation
5) Website
6) PR Campaign

All of these things kind of depend on each other, and there is lots of consensus-building involved in making each one, so it is a process that is at times painful. But it's fun, and I expect it to be fulfilling as each gets completed.

Then, they all become living documents that you have to tend to like a shepherd, killing and eating the ones that are no longer valuable and bringing in new sheep to the flock as times dictate. And if the herd gets big, it better be useful, and then you need some other shepherds to come in and watch some of the sheep, or at least tend to the shearing and whatnot.

Back to the Left Coast Tomorrow!

2006-10-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

Heading back left tomorrow, invigorated with more to do workwise than I could possibly finish in time and some interesting social possibilities on the horizon ;). I left for Pittsburgh a bit pessimistic on my new job and somewhat doubtful of myself, but I'm coming back with my optimism restored.

Currently Reading: On the Road
Currently Interested In: Go
Currently Working On: Manuals for Our Tools
Currently Thinking: What's for dinner?
Currently Musing: What Dreams May Come?

SureLogic Begins

2006-10-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Completely Spontaneous Picture! Here's
Edwin, our head developer, and Steve, our
fearless leader.

Here is me attempting to levitate at our new
offices.

And Chuck, our resident silver-tongued devil.

The Oreo Fork

2006-10-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

Bill Jester showed me something today that may stick with me the rest of my life. It's a technique that takes a little practice, because Oreos are a fragile thing. But, simply put, you stick a fork into the white part and dunk the forked Oreo in a cup of milk.

This simple innovation is the answer to the age-old dilemna of Oreo-eaters everywhere... the trade-off between milk on the fingers and the satisfaction of a deeply dunked oreo wih enough time to get it saturated. Veteran fork-oreo dunkers wil tell you to watch the bubbles to know when the oreo is ready to eat.

Too Busy To Blog

2006-10-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

I'm really too busy with work to be blogging right now, but since Brad sent a scolding email to the crew, I will provide the obligatory three sentences that he demanded from all of us.

I'm becoming more and more fascinated by the intricacies of the game of Go, particularly since I have been reading a book by Peter Shotwell on the subject that combines history, philosophy, and strategy into one terrifically insighful book. The depth to which the game of Go is intertwined with Eastern religion is remarkable, and the history of the game is a fascinating soap opera of murder, disgrace, and brilliance.

And now, in our modern era, Go is (paraphrasing somewhat here) the last frontier of the human mind, gaming wise.

It's unconquered by computers and probably better described as competitive art than a mere board game.

Talking with Mothers

2006-09-21T20:34:00.000-07:00

I never did mind chatting amiably with someone's mother. Today, I ran into a mother who has scolded us a bit for making a racket on the porch after hours. She was outside playing with her cute 2-year old in the afternoon and we struck up a conversation.

I guess being a mother makes you want to interface with adults, and since, as I learned, she has a product management job she does from home, she never escapes. Brad's mom too can really chat up a storm, as I learned crashing at his house for a week or so just before I ejected from Pittsburgh. Maybe my perception is skewed because mothers all want to give me personally advice, since I probably seem so in need of it. But there have ust been so many chatty mothers.

While I know multiple anecdotes does not equal data, I believe mothers are a chatty bunch, and we should all remember to talk to our own and others once in a while, though I am perhaps the most guilty on the planet of neglecting my own mother. Sorry mom!

Be nice, because the mothers do the birthing and the raising, until Sara4 has her way and men get special genetic enhancements to enable them to bear children and share the burden that has kept women subdued since random chance created our mottled universe.

Pictures of Me

2006-09-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Since I resucitated my laptop for the move out west, I came across a host of pictures from my college days. I culled the ones of me and posted them on www.myspace.com/darnjew

See if you can pick out all the ex-girlfriends :)

Thank You, Mister Window Smashy Man

2006-09-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

Thank You, Mister Window Smashy Man.

I know I was dumb to leave an iPod charger cable in sight, and that lockbox that could have had money in it in plain view. Why didn't you steal the charger cable? The contents of that box weren't nearly as valuable.

I'm sure you liked examining my dice, small glass stones, geodes, and my little stacked turtle statue made of shells with heads that bob that my Grandma (God rest her soul) gave me because I always loved turtles.

I'm sure you are enjoying the foreign coins from all of my travels, my old pennies, and the small section of Bic pen tube with the suspicious blue residue on it. I surely hope that my passport serves you well, my rubber bands, and the statuette of the Egyptian Jackal God(EJG) that one of my ex-girlfriends brought me as a souvenir.

Maybe you will come across this post, and if so, what can I give you for my knick knacks and memories? You can keep the Gameboy games... I've beat them all and they wouldn't sell for a dime. I hope the EJG eats your face.

Wrong Andrew

2006-09-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the best misfired email that I have ever gotten, fresh off the presses, received this morning, complete with one-hour later follow-up after realizing the mistake. This was from a recruiting manager with a firm I had been in talks with:

--------------------------------
Subject: Worms

Andrew,

Yep…that can has been officially popped open. Ut oh….i better watch out.

How are you today?

I am wearing a skirt…if you were wondering : )

Kim
--------------------------------

Talking about your skirt in a work email... tsk tsk tsk. Her follow-up isn't nearly as amusing:

--------------------------------
Subject: SO Sorry!!!

Andrew,

I just realized…that my e-mail went to you and not my friend Andrew. I profusely apologize!!!

Kim
--------------------------------

The Trouble with iPods

2006-09-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Must have been last night, some drug-crazed lunatic wandered up a terribly steep hill to my car and smashed in my passenger side window. I can only assume, since they didn't take anything, that they were allured by the iPod charger cable that I foolishly left in view.

I can only assume because they didn't even rummage through the rest of the car, which contains most of my worldy stuff, including an electric guitar, an amplifier, and a nice set of speakers, among other things. If they only knew what the fishing rods were worth, they would have taken those.

Thanks you Mr./Ms. Thief for not taking my iPod charger cable. I only wish I could have made you sweep up all the glass around the car and deal with this new expense on my "just moved to California and rented a $900/month apartment" budget.

P.S. Brad, now I know how you feel.

Apartments in San Francisco

2006-09-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

After a long, arduous search, Kevin, Dan, and I have found a San Francisco apartment that left us all wide-eyed with excitement as we glanced furtively at each other to ensure we all felt the same way upon viewing. We just hadn’t seen an apartment this nice, with all the accoutrements that we went in wanting, and mostly uncontested based on poor computer use.

We’d seen some stuff during the week, probably about 10 apartments over the last two weeks, but they were all majorly imperfect. Some had rooms that were about 8 x 8. Some were in the Mission, but had no parking, laundry, gas burners, or porch. Others were just in the Sunset, oh so far away from everything and even colder than everywhere else.

As it turns out, when looking for apartments in San Francisco, you get good ones the same way you get good deals on eBay. You look for the misspellings and mispostings that everyone’s well-designed queries were missing. After we did our normal 3 bedroom, less than $2500 search, couple with a 4 bedroom, less than $3300 search, and set up some appointments, Kevin went trolling through all the apartments until he found our gem.

He found a place which had no price listed, that was categorized as Bernal Heights, but was really more of the Outer Mission. So we scurried over there and found that it fell just barely in our price range, was close to everything, was a cool nook with three well-sized rooms, and included a breathtaking view of the city from our porch. You can see the entire Downtown and surrounding resedentia, along with a piece of the Bay.

It’s sunny, has gas burners, our own washer and dryer, dishwasher, a loft in one of the rooms, and is no more than .5 miles from Mission restaurants and shops. Pending approval of our application, we’re set to move into perhaps the best apartment in all of San Francisco about the 25^th of September.

Kevin’s girlfriend Anna also found her San Francisco apartment similarly, by responding to a sparse ad and finding it terribly cool. Part of the reason the ad for our house was so short was that it was posted from a PDA. I guess the key to finding apartments in San Francisco is just persistence and thoroughness. Showing up at two open houses with 50 people waiting half an hour early with pre-printed applications is just not going to cut it.

Pictures of our breathtaking view are forthcoming, which only cost me a bit more than triple what I was paying in Pittsburgh.

Lyrics, Before I Lose Them

2006-09-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

I Can Tell

I can tell how much you love me.
It shows in the things that you do.
And not the things that you say,
Nor the things that you pray,
Could ever make me love you the way that I do.

I can tell how much you love me.
It shows in the things that you do.
And when you're not around,
I get to feeling pretty down,
And it makes me want to go right home to you.

I can see we'll be together.
We'll wile away our glory years.
And when the time comes,
When we're old, grey and glum,
I'll be there to call you my dear.

Each verse I play with this chord progression: G A7 DD G A7DD GA7D GA7DD

And a refrain between the 2nd and third verse with a lead guitar: GGG DDD GGG DDD GA7DD

I'm working on a verse with these chords to go with: G Bmin C D

New Hobbies

2006-09-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

If you are going to be in the software business and live with two programmers, I guess you have to participate in the odd CS puzzle game:

Imagine a graph that consists of directional links between nodes identified by small non-negative integers < 2^16. We define a "cycle" in the graph as a nonempty set of links that connect a node to itself.

Imagine an application that allows insertion of links, but prevents insertions that close cycles in the graph.

... Very fun, it's nice to be living with hardcore nerds again.

Slight Change of Course, Outlook Still Warm and Sunny

2006-08-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

It looks likes I will be couch-surfing for the remainder of this month at friend Kevin's abode. With his lease ending at the end of September, and Dan looking for a move to the city, we are going to find ourselves a cozy 3-bedroom apartment. So the Craigslist quest continues, but with a different bent. Hopefully, as September wears on, the pickings will become fuller with students settling on housing and leaving leasers looking to get leasees in a hurry.

Tonight I have to find an interesting place in the Mission District to meet someone I met on Craigslist, and in the meantime work on an assignment I got from E/S in Pittsburgh. Next week, the SureLogic work will begin with vigor, and I have to think about better arrangements besides Kevin's couch.

For tonight's adventure, I'm thinking taqueria, lively coffehouse, or a bar that's not too terribly loud. Cass suggests Yelp.com for help with deciding.

Craigslist and Me

2006-08-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

I have spent most of my waking hours in San Francisco scouring the pages of Craigslist for appropriate housing, and it's a competitive jungle out there, full of strangers, strange situations, and odd accomodations.

It will be a nice place to call home if I can ever break into the city proper. Sooner better than later too, since my company finally got its funding and I need a desk at which to work.

Soaking Eggplant

2006-08-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Soaking eggplant... ripped from the pages of The Darn News:

Here it is. To make good eggplant, you should soak it (sliced up) in salt water for at least a couple of hours. I usually soak it over night. My cooking mentor Claudio Masci likes to soak it, coat it with flour, dip it in eggs, and then fry it in vegetable oil. Then he'll smother 3-4 stacked slices in sauce, put some provolone on top, pop it in the oven, and voila!

Soaking eggplant in saltwater makes it more tender and less bitter.

Witness the Birth of Arlo Asa Silverman

2006-08-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Brian and Phyllis, who just had this beautiful baby Arlo. See you in L.A.!

7 lbs. 3.5 oz., 19 inches.

Look at my cute sleeping face. Look at it.

Baby Arlo and mama.

Arlo, "ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz."

The White Group Escapes

2006-08-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Here is the final position of a go game I played with my buddy Mike the weekend I was moving out of my Pittsburgh apartment. He ended up winning by about 10 points because I screwed up and let a big group of dead white stones escape in the end game.

Thanks for sending me the pictures of the game Beth!

Does Washing Your Car Improve Mileage?

2006-08-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting discussion on this question based on a claim that regularly washing your car could save you 7% on gas mileage. The discussion is much better than the blog post, and one comment hit it right on the head with, "How dirty is your car?" I tend to believe that your car would need much muck caked on before you saw even a 1% difference.

I would be happier if the Internet were less anonymous and we could see the physics credentials on the spreadsheet guy and everyone else who makes a deductive claim. Dan and I were discussing the direction of the Internet in terms of its quasi-anonymous nature just last night. This discussion could really shed light on the question if we knew who to believe.

http://www.dailyfueleconomytip.com/?p=62

Home at Last, But Not Home-Free

2006-08-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

My travel plans went slightly awry, and here I am in Santa Cruz at Dan's early. So I am essentially home, but have no permanent place to live as of yet. Home, but not home-free.

Since I got in this morning, just as Dan was heading out to work, I have showered and tooled around on the computer, staying awake so I can get a good night's sleep tonight and be on the same normal human being schedule as my friends here.

Now, the only thing left to do is to try and find an apartment before Arlo Silverman's bris in eight short days. Brian told me Phyllis delivered a beautiful baby boy last night, complete with all fingers and toes and other necessary apparatus.

Back to the jungle of Craigslist for me now and a few more hours of wakefullness. No telling what you will find on that thing. At least some things in the housing department are obvious no goes.

Food Psychology

2006-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting tidbit from an article I found on Fark. I'm curious as to how much these factors weigh in comparison to other deciders of food liking:

"We know, thanks to recent findings, that people drink more than a third more fruit juice when they pour it into a short, wide glass instead of a narrow, tall one, and that people will eat more of a product if it comes in a bigger package. We know that people will report that a breakfast bar tastes worse if the packaging describes it as containing soy, even if it contains no soy, and that Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake tastes better than Chocolate Cake, even when the cakes themselves are identical. Above all, we know that just because people say they want to eat more healthily, it doesn't mean they really do."

Read down a good bit to read about how to fatten people up just by providing a bigger spoon through the wizardry of "unit bias."

Almost to Paradise

2006-08-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

I have gone now 3,000 of my 4,000 miles of travel, arriving after nearly the entire length of I-10 at my cousin's palatial estate in Tucson, AZ. I bet it's always beautiful here, but heavy rains have turned it recently into a green summer paradise smelling of fresh sagebrush.

I think ranch house may be the way to go after seeing my cousin Ben's here, and my friend Russell's house back in Pittsburgh. I love the kitchen most, which wends its way around a centerpiece stove with plenty of counterspace and utility on all sides. Pool, stone floors, and a big friendly lion of a golden retriever... what more could you want out of an abode? Plus, you can tuck the kids, or the recording studio, into one wing for maximum harmony.

Next stop is San Diego to see Brad's sister, then up to Elsinore Lake to visit Jeannie, and then on to Brian and Phyllis's house in Los Angeles, before arriving into San Francisco about Friday. Though, with Bri and Phyllis's baby due the 27th, this trip could go haywire, and I also need to find a fishing hole and make use of the gear I just got (thanks mom!).

Favorite Albums of the Trip:
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
Jack Johnson - Brushfire Fairtytales
Jim Croce - Photographs and Memories
Joni Mitchell - Blue
Led Zeppelin - Box Set
Neil Young - Harvest

Favorite Songs:
"New York's Not My Home" - Jim Croce
"Unknown Legend" - Neil Young

Most Skipped Music:
Rakhmaninov's Liturgies (wtf?)
Tom Waits (oops)

Halfway Home

2006-08-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

I am now sitting in my hometown of Houston, recharging after the first 2,000 miles of my journey. Tomorrow, I leave for Tucson to see some family members and make that last charge across the desert to paradise. My stay here has been pleasant, but I am antsy to get to San Francisco, find an apartment, and go to work.

On Wednesday, I chose to gamble a little bit and turned down a position with Grey Advertising to instead work with a new start-up based in Pittsburgh. While we are 99% sure the funding is coming through, there is still the odd chance that I threw away a good position for nothing. So the last half of this trip will be tainted by a nagging worry, but I'm confident nonetheless.

It has been nice to reconnect with all the Pittsburgh expatriates as I go. It seems that they are all getting married, and I will be going to three wedings in the next year or so.

Lyrics, Before I Lose Them

2006-08-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

Now the time has come for leavin'
Only time left to pack our bags.
See you soon and travel well
Life is strange and you never can tell
And I always got my dreams.

The Right Search

2006-08-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

My (soon-to-be-ex) boss asked me this morning to find a statistic on average advertising expenditure as a percentage of revenues. She had quoted 3% to a client, a figure she has used somewhat religiously for many years, and he asked for a bit of supporting evidence.

I toiled mightily on Google and various media Websites. I searched for _advertising expenditure services industry_ and _advertising expenditure statistics_ and all sorts of variations with quotes and synonyms. I banged away at Google for an hour, but couldn't come up with a nice concise conclusion. I dredged up statistics on revenues by industry and cross-referenced them with statistics from Ad Age on expenditure. I tried to be narrow and I tried to be broad. Everything seemed contradictory, particularly when you delve into the debate of whether you should calculate your ads as a percentage of revenue.

But Eureeka! I wasn't looking for a statistic, I was looking for a rule of thumb. And when I asked Google for an _advertising budget rule of thumb_ my boss was very happy with the answer I found on a nice, credible .gov site.

The Cellular Age

2006-08-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

What did we do before we were blessed (cursed) with the cell phone? Those little chirping beasties that permeate everything we do and how we do it. They connect us in real-time. They make it a hell of a lot easier to find friends for a rendezvous in the middle of a debauched Saturday night. They interrupt movies and classes with their shrill incessant whines, but hopefully it’s the emergency room doctor getting the call at least some of the time.

They are also kind of a social pulse. You can feel your own social pulse through your cell phone. Who’s calling you? Do they want a favor or just to chat? Does it go off over and over on your birthday? Are people always calling you because they need you at work? You can feel the ebb and tide of your relationships in buzzing and beeping. A name will appear constantly for months, calling you all the time, and then nothing. Sometimes a relationship ends, and at least for me, my cell phone list gets a little shorter.

And if you can pay close attention, if you really want to be neurotic about it and sort through the mess of the cell phone social network, then you can start paying attention to the calls that your friends accept and decline. You can tell who’s on the outs with who, who fits where into everyone’s ladder of friends, who’s popular, and who’s not. And it’s just about enough to drive the world crazy.

There are many unintended consequences of the cellular revolution. Sure, it makes it easier to pick someone up at the airport, or to call the sys admin when the network goes down. But conversely, perhaps, cell phones ruin our accountability and feed into the instant gratification complex that plagues the modern world. If you’re going to be late… why hurry? Just call ahead, and they can keep busy until you get there. And you don’t have to bother paying the sys admin to be on call. Just another annoyance to ride their belt. It’ll never come up until it does.

The last time I lost my cell phone, I realized exactly how much I depend on it. So it goes.

Chess Books for Beginners

2006-07-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't picked up chess pieces recently, but my mind has been on strategy and gaming. The books that originally propelled me into the lofty stratosphere of above-average club player were from the nice series "Winning Chess X" by Yasser Seirawan.

The books have a nice mix of diagrams and prose, not too dense. Winning Chess Strategies has "must-know" concepts for any chess player, and Winning Chess Tactics will really take a beginner to the next plateau.

And I also like playing chess here.

Child Soldiers

2006-07-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is a particularly odd photo, a little sad, a little bewildering. I am a big fan of Yahoo's most-emailed photos, and not just for all the beautiful women captured therein. World, meet the rebel general Johnny Htoo and his brother Luther, from the quiet corner of the world called Myanmar:

Read the story of their surrender.

The Spiders of Pennsylvania

2006-07-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

There are only a couple of really troublesome spiders in Pennsylvania. Perhaps the scariest of them all is the brown recluse spider. In addition to neurotoxic effects that can cause nausea, fever, chills, as well as other symptoms, the brown recluse's bite will also cause the tissue around the bite to grow gangrenous and die. This entire process, I have heard, is extraordinarily painful. Luckily for Pennsylvanians, there are few of these dangerous spiders around, and your most likely shot of running into one is if it makes a home in a box and gets shipped here.

The other scary spider is of course the black widow, that sexy arachnid with the black carapace and red hourglass on its belly. The good news is, when it first bites you, it won't hurt all that much. The bad news is that its venom is highly neurotoxic and will make you very sick. The bite of the black widow has been known to kill, but usually only infants and the elderly.

Beyond those guys, Pennsylvania is pretty safe. The worst you can expect out of a spider bite is a little pain, maybe a little nausea. I was a bit scared last night when I got bit by some little brown spider, but I survived, and I am stronger for the experience. I think its my first spider bite -- it felt like a bee sting. It was wierd too, as my hand was bitten when I swatted it, even though it was crawling on my leg.

-reposted from my original entry on The Darn News

Camping Yesterday

2006-07-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Brad and I saw the strangest alien creature in Laurel Canyon yesterday, and we may have been observing the beginning of some fey alien invasion.

We were mucking along the river when we spotted a luminescent green caterpillar eating its way across the algae on some damp rocks. It had a bright red head that swiveled around and looked at us eerily when we crouched to observe its life.

Getting out to the woods and interacting with plants and animals is a good way to give yourself a little perspective about the world. Everything is aware, everything is trying to live together, and it's all very beautiful until we start blowing stuff up.

Questions I would still like answered:

1) Do mushrooms grow overnight?
2) Do birds gossip about animals and campers?
3) Can people really rub sticks together to make fire? We had a hard time with twigs, a knife, a lighter, kindling, and branches.
4) Did cavemen keep fire going since the first time they figured out it was useful? Where did they get this fire? Lightning? A forest fire? Will there ever be a Delorean capable of taking us back in time to find out?

Actually, most of question 4 is Brad.

Go Go Gadget Go Game

2006-07-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

I have rekindled an interest in the intensely geometric pursuit of Go. I have been using the Kiseido Go Server, which seems reasomably good once you get a game going. However, I have yet to uncover the mechanism for challenging someone to a game. The below image is me against Big Mike in a fun but blunder-filled game. I dropped a couple of stones early on, but still managed to get most of the edges.

The Great American Freedom

2006-07-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Roz has given me a green 1997 Subaru Outback, totally cherry, which will take me across the country to my new home in San Francisco. This generous gift caps seven years of support and kindness from the entire Silverman family, during my stay in Pittsburgh. From food, to job contacts, to emotional support and now a car, my life would have turned out far differently, and probably far worse, without their help. Reconnecting with them has been a true blessing.

Hopefully, I won’t have to do too much day-to-day driving once I reach my destination… walking and biking are after all the California thing to do. But this car is a great enabler of freedom and my ability to go set up shop elsewhere. Around August 10, I will pack my guitars, clothes, books, and computers in the wagon, dump everything else, and follow the sun.

Ripped from the Pages of Euromoney

2006-07-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

This is an amusing piece of journalism.

Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2006
Off the Record Special
http://www.euromoney.com/article.asp?ArticleID=1042057

“Whooooooooooo! I love you! I love you, man! Yes!”

-A PR official’s enthusiasm knows no bounds after he is informed of his bank’s global award

“Well fuck you then!”

-How the European head of financing at a blue-blooded US investment bank responded when told that his firm was unlikely to win the award for best equity house in western Europe

“I’m on the ground with my clients, not in some imaginary whiteboard space like those guys”

-A Citigroup banker pitching for a Euromoney award points to a rival’s shortcomings

“It’s a shadow of its former shadow”

-An M&A banker describes the fall from grace of Credit Suisse (or more accurately the old First Boston) in US investment banking

That Girl Emily {[(DEBUNKED)]}

2006-07-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

This post modified so as not to pollute the world with lies ;). The blog mentioned is some marketing campaign. Still funny though.

Check out this particularly funny, vengeful blog, and remember to treat Helga better when you get home.

There was more to the post, but I fat-fingered it and refuse to do it over.

Bush "Unplugged"

2006-07-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Media and citizens were treated to a "candid" conversation between George Bush and Tony Blair at a lunch the at the G8, when Tony Blair left his microphone on. This situation reminds me of the time that Utopian President Jed Bartlett made a similar "mistake" in the mystical fairyland of television, interpreted heavily here for your amusement.

Tony and Georgie seemed a little too on message to me, essentially recapping everything we heard publicly, but in casual terms.

The Hood Gang

2006-07-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

I was surfing around, hoping to find a mainstream review of the Pittsburgh Counting Crows show, but I guess the media can't keep up with the music.

I did see a good band on Friday at The HKAN. I wandered into, unbeknownst to me, a costume party led by a Beastie Boys type band decked out in full superhero regalia, complete with foam muscles. The Hood Gang was a tight little band, though I don't usually tend to like the rap-rock genre - the rhythm section kept everything in the groove. They played together and deftly executed several energizing medleys. They were jumping around, and standing on tables, and the entire crowd was following along. They even attracted a heavy group of onlookers outside.

'Round Here

2006-07-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

The Post-Gazette Pavilion is like a hundred other corporate venues throughout America. A huge grandstand fanning out in front of thousands of seats that fade off into a gay grassy knoll behind, festooned on flanks with a village of retail huts.

The beer at the Post-Gazette pavilion starts out at a base cost of $5 for 12 oz. of swill. But there's the extra $2 you have to pay to get the 16 oz. cup. Also, built into the equation is a high tip over rate for the beers. Based on various things they treat the hill's dirt grading and grass with, and the specifically engineered dimensions of the cups, beers are guaranteed to spill on average 1/3rd of the time. Which brings the total cost of the beer to: $7 * 1.333 = $9.3

The show itself was unremarkable. The band wheeled out its time-worn hits, though the drunken catcalls during the exodus afterwards indicated that "Mr. Jones" should have been on the agenda. And though there was a song or two I had never heard, nothing sounded new. I just wish they had played "Einstein on the Beach."

The Counting Crows do a great job of capturing that blue-collar AND downtrodden sentiment of America, which plays particularly well in Pittsburgh. "Omaha" and "'Round Here" were faithfully rendered and both well-received. But Counting Crows is such a troupe of hired musicians playing such a known roster of standards that you come to expect more in terms of innovation and on-the-fly guitar mastery. I counted at least 3 guitarists on stage, and while none of them missed a note, their playing was unadventurous.

The Counting Crows are going to need to reinvent themselves on the road if they don't want to fade slowly into the sunset. They need to become more of a festival jam band, because they do have a special sound, a heartfelt singer, and the technical skills to bring down a house.

The Counting Crows left the Post-Gazette Pavilion stage at about 11:15 pm. The encore was one song if that's what they call the thing on the end. I bought a t-shirt for my boss, consulting co-worker Maura on the size so as not to destroy my career. Mike and Sean wandered back from the bathrooms. And we all went back to hang out and then to sleep it off.

I Was There, I Wrote, I Lived
The Counting Crows show, July 15, 2006.
Post-Gazette pavilion, formerly known as Star Lake Amphitheater.
Goo Goo Dolls also (sadly) in attendance.
Slightly tipsy, friends in tow.