Observations

2009-09-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Why are we still seeing mispellings (<-) in written works?

I just finished reading an awesome book entitled "Implementing Lean Software Development" by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. They preach some of the best practices in lean agile development for eliminating wasteful processes and eliminating mistakes. Yet on page 231 the word "manager" is spelled "manger". Manger is a word for a box that a horse or cow eats out of. I just wonder in this day and age how a publisher let this mistake go to print? Are they not using spelling and grammar checking tools? If they are, the software needs to be refactored to produce correct results. Maybe the publishers should read and incorporate the lessons from there own book!

2009-09-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Bike Stealing by Victims of Stolen Bikes

I've lived in Marina Del Rey for about 10 years and have had 3 bikes stolen to date. My neighbors have had their bikes stolen at one time. In the local newspaper there are always reports of bikes stolen. Who's stealing our bikes?

I was talking with a colleague about this yesterday and she told me about a study/sting operation (still confirming) conducted by the University of Santa Barbara (USB). According to her, they setup cameras where bikes tend to get stolen.

The big surprise was that the bikes were not being stolen by one or two individuals but by several people who've had their own bikes stolen. Somehow they had justified in their heads that it was alright to steal a bike because they were also victims of bike thievery.

Mind boggling if true.

What if the very first person "thought" they had their bike stolen and had actually misplaced it. Thinking they were a victim, they decided to steal someone else's bike and thus bike thievery was born.

Assuming the USB story is true, can an individual start a mental process today that will cause the next person to do the same and the next and so on? What subprocesses are in play now in our heads that are the result of someone else's actions.

Very interesting.

2009-09-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

That's the number 1 and not the letter l

The confusion is everywhere.

Its in passwords, serial #s and unfortunately in software.

I'm talking about the confusion between the letter O and the number 0 as well as the letter l and the number 1.

Time and time again I think we all run into this.

So whenever i'm helping someone setup an account with passwords i'll tell them to stay away from these alphanumerics, or else i'll let them know to annotate with something like (<- that's the number 1 and not the letter l) .

Lets just standardize the number 0 to the slashed version, ∅ .

If you are a coder i'm sure you've wasted lots of hours deciphering programs only to discover the problem was with the confusion between these two numbers and letters.

In code, just write explicit variable names like origin = 200 instead of o0 = 200.

This may seem trivial, but google on this matter and you'll be surprised how often this comes up.

s

2009-01-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

Kevin Rose is the Man. At the following link he offers some great TWITTER advice.
http://tinyurl.com/cs6nkv

2009-01-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of the show Ugly Betty. In the last episode Betty is given tips on networking at a club.

Steps
1. Forge your bond. Your name, where you work and one memorable fact.
2. Gathering information. In order to get info you're going to have to give info. Trick is to make it sound juicy but really mean nothing.
3. Exit Strategy. Get in. Get info. Get out.

Fortunately for me, this episode aired the day before the 2008 Crunchies Award Ceremony in San Francisco, which is considered the Academy Awards for internet technologies.

My goal was to meet some of the top players in the industry and the first person on my list was Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product and User Experience. I'll admit I was nervous. She was there with her fiance talking with another bloke. I tried not to seem like i was hovering, glancing occasionally to see if she would look over to invite me over. After 5 minutes, which seemed alot longer my friend went up to her and told her that i wanted to talk with her. I was pissed. I'm CTO of a company, went to MIT, served in the Air Force and yet my friend and I were acting like high school buddies. Anyway, it popped into my head what she and i had in common which is virtual worlds. I introduced myself and asked her why they had shut their LIVELY virtual world down. She told me it was a combination of things including porn. I told her we try to mitigate the porn in the chat rooms thru whitelisting, etc. I asked her if i could talk to the lead developer and she stated Niniane Wang was no longer with Google. Marissa then gave me her business card and asked me to email her for Niniane's contact info. With that we shook hands and parted.

The second person on my list was Mark Zuckerburg, the ceo of Facebook. There he was, surrounded by several people that wanted to talk with him. Feeling empowered by Marissa, I nudged my way into the crowd and just as i was about to introduce myself an elder gentleman with einstein hair grabbed him for a conversation. I waited another 5 minutes before Mark turned towards me and i blurted out "You ever hire MIT people?". His eyes got big and he looked intrigued. I said I was just kidding and gave him my card. I asked him if there was any interest in his part about developing virtual worlds and he said no. But that we should consider building our own on top of his platform. He then said it was nice meeting me and we shook hands. I was so awestruck i forgot to ask for his card.

Third person on my list was Evan Williams, founder of Blogger & Twitter. I looked for him but couldn't find him. After meeting some more folks, my friend and i decided to leave the venue. As we were walking I saw Evan and I approached him stating it was an honor to meet him and thanked him for twitter. I gave him my card and we briefly discussed how we can incorporate twitter into our virtual worlds. He didn't give me a card but shook my hand.

Marissa, Mark and Evan were so nice and approachable, which really capped the awesome evening nicely!

2005-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Do people who have lost memories due to brain damage, like Alzheimers, recover them in the afterlife?

Can this case be used to debate that there is no afterlife?

Or can this case be used to debate that the afterlife is not tied to one individual but to a greater force that is the sum of the individual life forces.

2005-09-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

I just realized that we all may be able to improve gas mileage by NOT filling up our tanks.

Gas weighs about 6 lbs per gallon.

If i filled up my 14 gallon tank i'd be initially lugging about 84lbs of extra weight.

Since I "average" about 25 miles to the gallon, I can travel 350 miles on a full tank.

My drive to work and back home is about 10 miles each day, which means i only need to fill up every 35 days.

However, what if i only filled up with just enough gas to drive for the week.

At my current estimated gas mileage of 25miles/gallon i would only need to carry about 3 gallons of gas to get me thru the 70 miles a week.

This means i only need to lug around an initial weight of 18 pounds of gas each week.

My car would be lighter and i may see a better improvement in gas mileage.

Maybe I only need 2 gallons of gas per week?!

The downsides would be that i'd have to stop at a gas station each weekend, and that gas prices might be higher which may cost me more money.

But the point of this observation is how to improve on gas mileage....NOT how to save on gas costs.

2005-09-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today i rediscovered why I dislike moving clothes dryers.

For some reason people love to install these things with the shortest accordian like vent hoses.

So when one moves the dryer the hose becomes disconnected and it's impossible to put back on.

Today I got behind the dryer and pulled it towards me as close as possible in order to attach the short vent hose.

However, if i was successful i'd have to climb over the dryer with my 225lb weight and hope i didn't buckle the top of the dryer.

30 sweaty minutes later, the end of the vent hose became shredded and it was not going to attach to the dryer.

So for those of you in similar situations just go to Home Depot and buy a really long hose.

It'll save you alot of time and frustration.

2005-09-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about blogging and what people were paying to get blog sites built i was rolling my eyes.

I'm vice president of technology for an entertainment company in hollywood and understand blogging technology very well.

It is nothing more than a simple website with a backend database.

It cracks me up when i hear of people spending up to $150,000 to have their weBLOGging sites built for them.

Most people aren't aware of free blogging sites such as blogger.com.

So hopefully this is the first of my many observations in life i hope to share with everyone.