February 29, 2004
Scott Tournament of Hearts
Warning--curling posting...
I hope that the Quebec team comes away with this lesson--you win the tournament on ability, not on marketing.
Putting aside the end of the 4th complaint to the officials about Team Canada too quickly moving the rock at the end, the Quebec team must have decided that the way to win the tournament was to get the crowd not so much behind them, but against Team Canada.
And some of the audience went right along with it, and I hope they wake up tomorrow and realize what a bunch of pathetic dupes they were.
So, what was it guys--did you fall for the "oh, we're in out 20's and those nasty 30 and 40-something women will likely clean our clocks". Hey kids--the skip played on mixed teams--she's used to playing with a lot rougher crowd than Colleen Jones' crew. Was it the "Colleen Jones is too damn successful and needs to be taken down a notch?" Remember the Olympics? Think *that's* not painful? You confusing confidence with arrogance, maybe?
Colleen Jones was a class act at the end, and kudos for Scott Russell of CBC Sports for pointing out, oh so politely, to some of the crowd what a bunch of twits they were...
I watched 15 minutes of Xanadu
Wow--that's a *bad* movie. I admit to watching it, but only for shots of the Pan Pacific Auditorium (a great artist's rendition here), which was a testament to Streamline Modern architecture. What's not to love--multiple projecting facades that looked like the grill from a Chrysler, all that smooth concrete, and it was screaming SoCal turquoise. Wow....
It was also where the LA Monarchs of the old PCHL played in the 40's. I have a number of programs with black and white photos of the Pan Pacific, but colour shots are really hard to come by. The Pan Pacific is likely the best thing about that movie.
Because, damn, why didn't someone wander by and say "Y'know--the foofy dress with the leg warmers and high heels--bad idea!" That would have save a lot of fashion disasters.
I have to say the only time I wore leg warmers was a layer over my jeans when it was *really* cold outside. Even before I blew out my knees, I wasnt a fan of high heels. And as I have shoulders that would make Garth Snow or a Green Bay Packer halfback weep, I never *needed* shoulder pads--I just ripped them out of the sweaters, and filled in with original equipment.
It seems that the repeat of the 80's fashion has died a quiet and early death. Whew. Now all we need to do is burn those 70's revivals polyester stretch shirts and the peasant blouses. Believe me, ladies--you will destroy those photos in five years....
February 23, 2004
More darn fun than a person should have
No, really, up until 1:30 today it was just fine.
But then I noticed that I was getting virus-ridden email on my PC. Yeesh. At least I run Eudora, even if I have to run it on a piece of crap Windows system.
So, I get rid of the cruft, and after a bit of IM discussion, I head off to the usual web sites to get my defs updated.
Then I suddenly hear nasty, nasty *LOUD* tone through my headphones. My lovely Sony Studio Monitor MDRV6 headphones, which should filter out anything. So my first worry is that something in the phones has gone nuts.
Nope--it's the effing fire alarm, going off. Oddly enough, there's no strobe for visual reference. Need to tell facilities about that. No worries about not noticing, though, since the harmonics are resonating through my head. People are out in the hall, heading out.
The sound finally cut off.
*sniff*
*sniff, sniff*
My *nose* is bleeding. Not badly, but it's *bleeding*. I go back to my office, pinch the nose, put some cold wet paper towels on the whole thing, and get *that* taken care of.
Then another set of really, really annoying noises, and an announcement that the evac alarm was bogus. Well, I hope so. Back to virus prevention.
But I'm beginning to wonder about this office. I've sliced both hands open in the office, and now my nose bleeds. Seems to be a rather bloodthirsty place to work...
"Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?"
I may take this again when I'm not eating anti-histamines....
YOU ARE RULE 8(a)!
You are Rule 8, the most laid back of all the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. While your
forefather in the Federal Rules may have been a
stickler for details and particularity, you
have clearly rebelled by being pleasant and
easy-going. Rule 8 only requires that a
plaintiff provide a short and plain statement
of a claim on which a court can grant relief.
While there is much to be lauded in your
approach, your good nature sometimes gets you
in trouble, and you often have to rely on your
good friend, Rule 56, to bail you out.
Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
February 22, 2004
Speaking of degrees
Could someone tell me why some people take so much umbrage at people who have multiple degrees? Or degrees in multiple areas? I made a remark about a "product design with an MPD" to someone at work, and she asked me what an MPD was. Okay, that's a Multiple Personality Disorder--and I made the joke that I had to use the Psych degree for *something*.
Now, this is someone I may talk to once a quarter or so, and then it's usually about something exciting like the new bug tracking tool. I got a 30 second lecture on being over-educated, and then she stalked off. Weirdness.
Off-shoring
Boy howdy, there are a lot of folks riffing on off-shoring today.John Robb has his piece/peace , and Thomas Friedman takes a crack at it in his NYT column.
And then it hit me--I was explaining the concept of double declining balance as a depreciation method for capitalized hardware (be frightened--I have an MBA, and I know how to use it. Part of that is being very happy that there are accountants who love their work.), and how accelerated depreciation schedules are a total bitch for the dept, but work out nicely at the corporate level (corporations pay taxes--depts just take it in the shorts).
Which is just it--if you're part of a corporation or industry that is off-shoring, and it isn't *your* gig that gets nailed, you might do well from it. If you look at the industry or the economy in the "long-run", you might see where this is going to create scads of demand down the road from places like India, which might ultimately generate work and money coming back to where you're from--ten to twenty years from now.
But if you're in IT or support, and you've just seen your livelyhood wander across the ocean, it certainly sucks to be you.
Professionalism and Attitude
So, Chuq and I were hauling stuffage up to my new office. I park in a building I don't have my office in, because my office is the first one on the other side of the bridge. It turns out it's lots faster to park in the Big Red A "home for products people" building and hike over to GSA-land, than to park in the GSA building, do a double sprial to the elevators, and then walk to the other side of the building.
Whatever
I'm in the middle of getting Chuq signed in, and along come a couple with kids in tow. He has a badge showing, and she doesn't. The security person asked very nicely if the woman would like to sign in--everyone above a certain age wears a badge of some sort if you're in these buildings.
Well, wife and hubby get a bad case of the huffies, and point out that wifey works at Big Red A as well, and she finally digs out a badge to prove it. Note that she didn't have the badge where it could be seen, and unless the badge readers are a heck of a lot more sensitive than I think they are, could the badge be used.
Hey, snotty couple? Part of the gig is being polite to the security people, okay? Security wasn't out of line, and she was smiling and nice the entire time. And do you really think that all of the security staff is going to know who the heck you are? Why?
Geez....
February 15, 2004
Why I didn't buy the Prius
Why?
1. The waiting list was 3 months, minimum. The Prism had an electrical system that was increasingly randomizing. I couldn't wait that long.
2. The sales manager at the local Toyota dealer was a total asshole. After I sent in an inquiry, he made it very clear that I needed them more than they needed my patronage.
You know, given I was going to come in, write a check, and drive away, you'd think they would either have an interest in keeping me interested, or try to get me to buy one of the other Toyotas.
Look, in 3-5 years, the Prius is going to be one of many, and it's going to suffer from being the first generation of the hybrids. Unless they want to find themselves in the same situation as the Chrysler PT Cruiser (which has been labelled as a "chick car", and that's death for sales) dealers, they'd better work on keeping potential customers happy....
Bought the Car
I now have a BMW 325i, oxford green.
The whole deal, once I decided on what I wanted to buy (there were three cars, equipped the same, that I wanted to look at--I did all the upfront on the BMW website), I took the car out for the obligatory drive, told the sales rep what I was going to put down (a sizeable chunk), what I did and didn't want added in, that I didn't want to be "up-selled", and if he was cool, he'd have his commission, and we'd all go home happy.
He was cool.
You get a lot of stuffage along with the car. DVD of care and feeding, a bazillion manuals, and apparently, these guys become my bestest friends for the life of the warranty and maintenance. Okay.
So, now I have something that I can not only make the road trip to Seattle in, but would be *fun* to make the road trip to Seattle in...
More mind-warping Saturday morning fare
Okay, I'm a little relieved to know that I wasn't the only one who thought that Sid and Marty Krofft were just plain evil.
I couldn't see what my peers thought of HR Pufnstuf, weird-ass drug references, aside. One, accents didn't thrill me--I had a whole passel of relatives who were still doing FOB from Edinburgh, 50 years after the fact--big whoop. And bad panto and worse slapstick just made me cringe.
Pufnstuf was the only one I was subjected to--I managed to avoid or miss the others. I have been told by others that Lidsville left them scarred for life.
What happened to the Kroffts, anyway? Did they invest all their money in clinics to cater to the victims, as when their neurons start to wear out, keep having those effing songs roll around in their brains?
You can tell Lent's coming up
The ads for Tuna Helper have shown up in the Sunday stuffer.
And what did Aunt Laurie do pre-Tuna Helper? Well kiddies, you don't remember the pre-Vatican II days, when we did the "no meat today" on every Friday. And during lent, it was no meat on Wed and Fridays. That meant a lot of interesting school lunches, believe me.
Well, not so interesting, since it was the choice between Mac and Cheese and fishsticks. Note that there is now a "Breaded Fish Filet and Mac and Cheese" Marie Callender's dinner. Holy Parochial School!--they have to be selling to the Boomers who are flashing on those too-darn-long-ago days.
If you were really living high on the cod, you were able to cop a Mrs Paul's Fisherman's platter, which did have the aforementioned cod, some odd piece of deviled whatsit, and breaded shrimp. Woo hoo! the gold standard for Lenten fare! Do they make that anymore?
If you were really lucky, you might get the whole basket of shrimp (unlike the plate o' shrimp, thank you "Repo Man" for planting that meme in my brain) dinner, with the cool sauce made of combining tartar sauce and ketchup.
Then there was the fried perch, or if Lent was late that year, fried smelt. That meant the magic chef deep fryer, with the eyes that glowed red when the oil was hot enough. But do the fries first, okay?
Personally, I think Tuna Helper just ruins the whole thing--there are a lot of kids out there who aren't getting an honest helping of Mazola in their daily diet, due to Tuna Helper and its little friends....
February 08, 2004
How low-carb is that low-carb item?
Back in Januaray, I blogged about how the "bloom was off the low-carb rose", and how a bunch of food companies are getting on the low-carb bandwagon.
Okay, now we have our first "hey, maybe these things aren't as low-carb as we thought" from the nice people at KCBS. The one that struck me was the 55 g of carb bagels that had been advertised as 15 g. Ow! That group is claming "bad formulation in that batch". Geez guys, glad you aren't doing pharmaceuticals!
A couple of thoughts on this:
1. Some of the "low carb" stuff they talk about isn't what I would call that Atkins friendly, unless someone is on maintenance. Maybe this is the big carb splash for the day, or the hook to get the one low-carber in the crowd into the restaurant.
2. Related to #1--being on a low-carb diet doesn't mean you get to turn your brain off. If something looks/feels wrong with the food, or the description of the food, *pay attention*. And if you're going to do low carb, *learn* what's in food. And know how your body reacts to the food. Some people can handle the sugar-alcohols (sorbitol, maltitol, etc). Some can handle only some of the sugar-alcohols. Some can't handle any of them.
And learn what the manufacturer means by "net effective carbs". The same thing happened with the low-fat foods years ago, when manufacturers were putting all sorts of interesting goodies (remember MCT? yuck!) that weren't "fat" into foods. So, is "not really a carb" pure cellulose fibre (hey, remember when they were putting wood pulp into bread? That was an interesting discovery), or something like glucomannan? Do the calories add up? If not, why not?
It's too bad--it appears that low-carb is the way for a number of people to be able to take off the weight, and having some walk away from the diet when it's someone else sneaking in the carbs just stinks.
Feb weigh-in
It's another -5 lbs for January, so things seem to be pretty consistent. I'll take consistent.
The flavourants of the month are something in the toasted onion category, and *peppermint*. Those * are for a reason--I did the usual "pour a little on your hand and taste it" test, and cleared my sinuses. Whoo!
So, time to look for clothes one size smaller for Spring. All I need is time and something I want to buy!
February 04, 2004
Why yes, I am in a foul mood
Eight hours of meetings today. Eight effing hours of meetings. And somehow I'm supposed to get my usual work done as well. I'm amazed that I'm coherent at the end of eight hours of meetings, much less functioning.
And I'm moving offices on Friday as well, so in my spare moments I ran back to my office to pack another box. I fully expect that people are going to insist on having meetings in my office tomorrow, and they can just work their way around the boxes.
I have seven hours of meetings tomorrow.
Which Founding Father Are You?
I remembered that I took this quiz a couple of months back, with the same results. Not sure what that proves, other than I was in the same shitty mood then as tonight...
February 01, 2004
Janet Jackson's ta-tas
CBS has already done the mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, but honey, what ended up on tv has more to do with the plastics extrusion industry and civil engineering than anything that's found in nature.
Managing Smart People
From UIWeb, a nice piece of writing by Scott Berkun on How to Manage Smart People.
What he said...
One of the reasons I grew disenchanted with I/O Psych twenty-some years ago is that besides being the branch of psych that assumed everyone was rational, all the "how to deal with your staff" was based on the assumption that your staff was operating at a lower wattage that you were. Besides being insulting to your staff, when you're dealing with scientists and engineers, it's also going to be highly unlikely. I did some research on motivational methods for scientists and engineers, and then took off for Silicon Valley as fast as I could.
I've been on both sides, managing and being managed. And one thing that really cranks me is when I have managers who have decided to treat the local girl geek (me) like an escapee from a freak show. I had one manager who used to go into hysterics in meetings and repeately ask me "Laurie, how do you *know* all this stuff?". Gee, I dunno--maybe a high IQ, a good education, and a fair dose of eidetic memory?
I didn't like what he did, and it made him look like an utter ass.
The other reaction is the manager, usually one I inherited in a re-org, getting nastily into a "burn the witch!" mode. The painful part is that these have all been women. Is there something in the non-technical manager's make-up that makes them especially threatened by a technical, intelligent woman? Maybe it's just bad sampling on my part, but it's made me not want to have a woman as a manager if I have a choice. Oh well, guess the revolution has to proceed without me.
But given the choice, I want absolutely fucking brilliant people working on my projects, and I want to get them all into a room and discuss and argue concepts. And engineering group where there is no discussion or disagreement worries me, because I'm not going to get the best results, and they aren't going to be happy.
I've picked up more than a few "problem children" because of the inability of some managers to deal with smart people. Then I have people think I must either be putting psychotropics in the Diet Pepsi or have some magic method for dealing with the engineering hotbloods. It's all about respect and trust. Respect the intelligence, and trust them to know how to use it. It hasn't failed me yet.
Teaching Project Management Tools
Johanna Rothman writes about teaching PMs about scheduling and whether she should teach Microsoft Project as well.
My answer was that Project should be taught as one of the many tools available.
Why? Well for one thing, a PM might not find themselves in a Windows only environment--why teach only a tool that won't be available? Maybe they'll be using FastTrack, or the tool of choice might be one of the open source packages available.
The other thing is that Project just gets in the way. I've dealt with MPP files that charted projects that ran well over a year, and involved multiple groups of engineers, UI specialists, business architects, marcomm, and everything else in-between. Project breaks down badly the more non-linear and the more groups of tasks to be tracked are created. It has memory leaks, and doesn't like to work with any non-Microsoft product. Oh yeah, the fix is *not* to go Microsoft only. The fix is to get the package to work.
Okay, end rant....
But why make the student have to suffer with a package that would just get in the way of the learning process. I'd rather have a student come up with a method that works for them than learn how to do things only one way. That way they understand the whys of the process, and not just the how.
When you're teaching concepts, it should be as tool-independent as possible.
First movie of the summer season
At least on May 7, I'll know where my coders will be. Hugh Jackman is playing the lead as Van Helsing, which is a plus. Lots and lots of neat toys to be had.
And that *is* one of the nastier looking Frankenstein's monsters I've seen.
I'd say more, but it seems that a lot of people are madly trying to download the same Quicktime file.
Typography and contextual language fun
Okay, can anyone explain to me the contextual logic for Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplied text? I had to do some serious work-arounds when I was creating graphics in Photoshop from some text files.
Japanese and Korean? No worries! I can cut, paste, and edit to my heart's content without chracters dropping or altering. But CT and CS were very happy to change characters when cut and paste.