Acorns From An Okie

Allen September 30th, 2005

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa via Yahoo!)

I didn’t know Johnny Damon was a pitcher.

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Allen September 29th, 2005

Jumbo Joke illustrates the Parallels in History.

"What the American people have seen is this incredible disparity in which those people who had cars and money got out and those people who were impoverished drowned."
–Ted Kennedy on Hurricane Katrina

"Ditto."
– Mary Jo Kopechne

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Allen September 27th, 2005

In honor of Hurricane Rita, I present the Rita ‘Rita:

Ingredients and Hardware:

One standard bar blender.

Hammer.

Sledgehammer.

10 pounds of ice.

3 gallons of Tequila in metal container.

3/4 oz. Triple Sec (or Cointreau).

Splash of Sour mix (optional).

Dash of Fresh lime juice.

Procedure:

Have a friend drive the 3 gallons of Tequila 5 miles down the road.

In the blender, place the 3/4 oz. Triple Sec and optional splash of Sour mix.

Place 1 pound of ice in blender.

Hammer down.

Place another pound of ice in blender.

Hammer down.  Use sledge hammer if needed.

Repeat until the contents of the blender is a solid block of ice.

Add dash of lime juice.

Start blender.

Watch the blender attempt to mix up the giant block of ice until the motor burns out.

Hike the 5 miles down the road to the Tequila.

Drink Tequila until you are plastered.

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Allen September 23rd, 2005

Jay Tea examines Poor Liberal Thinking and comments on George Will’s three four rules to keep out of poverty.

1) Graduate from high school. School attendance is mandatory until the age of 16, and free. Further, the law encourages kids to stay in school — our labor laws are designed to encourage kids to stay in school and out of the work force until they are 18.

2) Don’t have a baby out of wedlock. Again, this is one you gotta work at to violate. It’s been about 2000 years since anyone just "woke up pregnant" — it’s pretty well established what sorts of things lead to pregnancy, and the vast majority of pregnant women did those things willingly. Yes, there are exceptions, but those are very rare exceptions.

3) Don’t get married as a teenager. This is an expansion of the above one. But it also reminds people that marriage is supposed to be forever, and that’s a hell of a commitment to make before one is 20 years old. Even military enlistments are only for a couple of years, and nobody in their right mind is gonna give a 20-year mortgage to a 19-year-old. Take a couple of years as an adult to establish yourself, find out just who and what you are, before making a lifetime commitment.

4) Don’t get hooked on alcohol or drugs. Again, those are active choices. Nobody wakes up an alcoholic or a junkie; it takes a bit of work and effort to develop an addiction. In fact, teenagers have to violate the law to even get their hands on it, let alone regularly enough to develop a dependency.

As my father noted, no one ever starting drinking and doing drugs saying, "Boy, I can’t wait to get hooked on this stuff."  All addicts started out as "someone who can handle it."

So adding my rule to those above:

5) Don’t get in debt.  Or stated another way: If you can’t afford it now, you can’t afford it later.  Most people who haven’t violated the four rules above get into trouble by purchasing "stuff" that they can’t afford.  Whereas society discourages the violation of the previous three laws (well, depends upon what segment of society you are talking about), you don’t find many champions of the fifth rule.

Although our family is not poor, the fifth rule still gives us fits.  As it probably does for most Americans.

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Allen September 23rd, 2005

ScrappleFace: Poll: Most Americans Not In Iraq

A unnamed CNN reporter, stationed in a Green Zone hotel lounge in Baghdad, said the new surveys "simply reinforce what I’ve known for two years — the war in Iraq is unwinnable. For some reason, America seems to have lost her will to fight for freedom."

I’m starting to hear Republicans going wobbly on the defense of Iraq.  Most of the defeatism regarding Iraq (and for that matter Vietnam) came at the hands of reporters with a political agenda.

One wonders how CNN/MSNBC would have reported the American Revolution or the Civil War.

[Updated immediately after posting:  Who am I kidding?  I know exactly how MSM would have reacted to previous wars.]

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Allen September 23rd, 2005

Great article in Unpeeling Apple’s Nano. Apparently the new Apple Nanos have a profit margin of 50% before distribution and marketing which I assume are quite large and cut into that figure.

But my caveat emptor came at the end of the article:

As of 2004, the top three manufacturers of flash-based players were iRiver, Creative Technologies (CREAF ) and Samsung, according to IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian, with Sony (SNE ) lagging far behind the pack. Other companies in the business include Dell (DELL ) and Matsushita (MC ), which sells players under its Panasonic brand. Still, some are feeling heat. D&M Holdings, owner of the Rio brand, recently announced it was getting out of the business.

Sigh.  Figures I find this out after my latest purchase.

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Allen September 23rd, 2005

At the end of Kathy Sierra’s essay Creating Passionate Users: Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide, she states:

[Be warned, though, that I was asked or rather urged to leave Sun as a result of some of what’s in here so… I wouldn’t be taking advice from me if I were you ; ) I finally got the "you’re not a team player" warning and put on probation (and eventually asked to leave), but my response was, "Oh, I AM a team player. It’s just that I’m on the user’s team." (I left out the part about, "Since clearly nobody ELSE around here is…") ]

So with that warning in mind, I highly recommend getting into the mindset of asking yourself, "How does this help the user kick ass?"

Having worked at a large corporation and now for an even larger government organization, I think this question should be tattooed on every developer’s head. 

Well, not sure my wife would like that, but still it is a question that deserves asking every day when developing software.

[Via 43folders]

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Allen September 23rd, 2005

I‘m not getting didn’t get you anything.  I hope you’ll do the same for me.

And BTW, Discardia this year was from June 21 to Sept 22.  But if the notion that you’ve missed Discardia gets in your way…

[Via 43folders]

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Allen September 22nd, 2005

Yesterday Oklahoma City announced (officially) that the Hornets will play 35 games at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.  Baton Rouge will get 5 games and a whopping 82 games will be on the road. 

But John DeShazier of NOLA.com is not happy — you’ll have to scroll down to get to the story entitled "Hornets aren’t playing enough games in Louisiana".

Saints fans who felt slighted at the prospect of only having a
realistic chance of seeing their team in person for half of its
allotted home games now appear to have landed a windfall, compared to
Hornets fans who will see their team play about 15 percent of its
available home dates in Louisiana.

…

The money concern is understood. Every fan understands that operating a
franchise is a business, employees must be paid, goods and services
aren’t free.

It’s understood that the opportunity to make money and play in an
NBA-type facility best is presented by playing in Oklahoma City, at a
19,675-seat facility that has more than 3,000 club seats and nearly 50
private suites, rather than in a 13,000-seat college arena which has a
lack of premium club seats and box suites.

There aren’t any date conflicts to play at the Ford Center, whereas
LSU’s weeknight home games overwhelmingly are played on Wednesday
nights, which is the same night the Hornets play many of their
weeknight home games.

And Oklahoma City is providing money to help pay for the Hornets’
relocation and providing cash guarantees in case the team’s revenues
dip.

But even with all those pluses tilted in one direction and the
negatives galloping toward the other, and the fact that it’ll be 10
times the hassle to play at the PMAC than at the Ford Center, the
franchise still should have fought like hell to play as often as
possible in Baton Rouge, to show more allegiance, to reward the fans
from the city that have embraced it.

While I can certainly understand the feelings that Mr. DeShazier is expressing, what are the real prospects of the Hornets playing under the conditions that would have been present in Baton Rouge?  Scheduling conflicts in a smaller area?  What are the chances that any major business "should have fought like hell to play as often as
possible in Baton Rouge"?

He don’t know too much about big business do he?

I hope for his sake that the New Orleans Hornets can return to their original home New Orleans.  I hope for our sake that they remain here in OKC.

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Allen September 22nd, 2005

Here’s your Get Out Free Card, provided by Intuit QuickBase.

A list of how to navigate the phone systems of major corporations to quickly speak to a "real human".

Apparently Klein bottles can be found at AT&T Wireless and Compaq.

Of course, with the spread of this knowledge, I wouldn’t be suprised to see major players break up their menu systems and present different choices to randomly chosen users.

Interesting note:  Intuit is not one of the companies listed.

[Via BoingBoing]

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