Beadies

Michael Jackson

2009-07-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am surprised (and somewhat pleased) by all of the positive press Michael Jackson has gotten since his death. I think the media has done a good job in balancing the genius of his career with the oddness of his later years.

They don't really have to remind us of what a weirdo he was; the picture of his face will do that. They only real fault you can find with the media is the amount of coverage has been enormous.

The next year or so will be the biggest lawyer party since the death of Elvis, a comparison that could be relevant in several other ways.

Obama in the middle east

2009-06-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's going to take more than one speech to make peace with the Muslim world, but this might be a good start.

What a lot of conservatives fail to realize is that we have done a decent job fighting the extremists, but we have done a terrible job of building bridges to the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim population. When Osama Bin Laden is considered an admirable leader by otherwise moderate muslims, this shows how much needs to be done.

A good example is Indonesia. The Indonesians are moderate and tolerant, but identify themselve as Muslim. We have done almost nothing to build bridges to these people, and as a result, and Arab Wahhabist ideology (which should be completely alien) has made inroads into a relatively secular Indonesian society, through the rhetoric of "Muslims everywhere are under attack".

Lets hope Barack can start a (long) process of reconciliation.

Tax credit

2009-05-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

We are going to try to take advantage of the tax credit for energy efficient windows that you can use in 2009 and 2010.

You can get a tax credit of 30%, up to $1500 for installation of approved energy efficient windows. That means we can get $5000 worth of windows for $3500.

A lot of the windows in our house are pretty drafty, especially the 4 big windows in our north facing bedroom. It gets very cold in winter and the windows rattle in the wind. We even use plastic sheets over the window frame all winter long.

We are going to try to do this in both years, and save $3000 on windows.

American Idol

2009-05-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

I have been watching this nonsense lately because my 7 year old loves it and it is a good family bonding type TV show.

Last nights finale really summed up everything I dislike about AI.

1. 2 hours and 10 minutes of filler. A really cynical manipulation to milk every last advertising minute.

2. The performers are no good. The final 2 contestants are both in their 20's, been trying to make it in show biz for a long time, and have had no success. There is a reason for this: they suck. The finalists are only good in comparison to the others. Seeing these contestant paired up with Rod Stewart, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Ritchie and Kiss really just points out how awful their voices are. I had to go and download "Every Picture Tells a Story" to remind myself of what a brilliant performer Rod Stewart once was.

3. The judges are buffoons. None of the judges has ever said anything helpful or insightful to any contestant. I know they are all in the music business, but they do not appear to be able to express a coherent thought.

4. Every arrangement sounds like the singer is doing a Broadway show tune. Even the Kiss number sounded like "Kiss on Broadway". Kris (the winner) has a passable voice, but Adam sounds like a kid who spent too many years singing along with "Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the local theater every weekend.

Shantaram

2009-03-04T07:41:00.000-08:00

I finished this interesting book called "Shantaram" recently. It is about an Australian guy who escaped from prison and made his way to India, where he eventually became part of the Mumbai mafia. He learned how to make fake passports, smuggle weapons and lots more.

The story is a novel, but based on events in the life of the author. The story is currently being made into a movie starring Johnny Depp.

Layoffs

2009-02-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

Layoffs almost seem inevitable now. I did get a raise and bonus this year, but I think it is quite likely that there will be layoffs at my company within the next few months.

Executives hate to be the only ones at the club who can't brag about how many people they have cut. So few of them can think for themselves that it is always safer for them to follow the herd, even if they don't have to.

Hudson river plane crash

2009-01-16T04:59:00.000-08:00

Everyone has seen the pictures of that plane that crashed into the Hudson River yesterday.

An amazing scene, to see all those people standing on the semi-submerged wings of the plane. Kudos to the pilot, who happens to be an expert in the psychology of flight crews in emergency situations.

I still can't understand why the plane didn't sink. The cabin doors and emergency exits were open, and some people said the plane did take in water. I really wonder what kept it from sinking like a rock.

Vacation

2009-01-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

We just came back from 8 days in Siesta Key Florida, our new favorite vacation spot.

We had a nice second-floor one bedroom condo right on the beach, and we watched the sun set over the gulf every night from our patio. The weather was sunny and 75-80 all the time. Really perfect weather.

We really had such a nice time, building sand sculptures (a whale and a fish this time), collecting sea shells, and playing in the ocean.

We only ate out a few times, for a lunch and some breakfasts. We spent a lot of money on the place but not much on airfare and rental car.

Auto Czar

2008-12-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

Here's my pick for Obama to name as the new Czar of the Auto Industry:

Mitt Romney

This is the right choice for several reasons:
1- Bolsters Obama' non-partisan credentials.
2- Auto Industry will respect him, since he is pro-business Republican.
3- Track record of success in business.

Romney is a team player and will work hard for Obama. Obama needs to set a strong direction for a rapid move away from cars that run on liquid hydrocarbons to to plug in hybrids.

Bill Clinton has no business experience, and his personality would overshadow the job. Ditto for Rudy Giuliani.

Appointing an ideologue from either party is the wrong move. Romney is pragmatic and forceful. Give Mitt a chance....

Auto Industry

2008-12-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

So yes we will bail out the auto industry in one way or another.

And not for the right reason.

These companies know full well the distribution of auto related jobs across the country and they that fact works for them.

This is the same reason why weapons systems are so hard to vote down. When a new fighter jet is being made, the companies make sure that hundreds of congressional districts have some small amount of manufacturing supplying parts. They make sure hundreds of congress members have at least some local economic stake, and they use those numbers to their advantage ("Congressman, cancelling the XYZ bomber would eliminate 123 jobs in your district"). Most congressmen would vote to spend billions if it means they cannot be accused of destroying jobs.

Autos are the same way. The biggest point we hear is that it is not so much the direct employees of the big three, but the parts suppliers and ancillary industries.

I think we should bail them out, but the reason should be that we need to use the auto industry as a springboard into the future of reduced dependence on imported oil.

Bail out the companies, with the condition that all R&D going forward is dedicated to producing plug in hybrids exclusively within 10 years. No more cars made in the USA should burn oil as their primary fuel. There is a lot of electrical generating capacity in the US, especially at night, when most hybrids would be recharging.

That is the right reason to bail them out.

Obama

2008-11-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

We've had a few weeks to let the election news sink in. How much more can be said about the historic nature of this election? I'll leave it to Oprah to think up something new to say.

I do think it is worth noting that even with the most unpopular president in history, a cratered economy, and 2 wars in progress, that Obama still did not win with a popular vote landslide.

I cannot help but think that Hillary Clinton would have achieved a much higher popular vote.

Craigs List

2008-10-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

I do not understand Craig's List. It is the biggest mess I have ever seen, like some teenager's MySpace page.

I just don't understand what is so cool about Craig's list. Seems like most of the postings are spam - the kind "Make Money Fast" junk your email filters are built to kill.

I don't get it.

Sickening

2008-10-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

I just read an article that describes how the senior management of AIG, after securing a government bailout, took a spa vaction for themselves at a high end resort.

They spent over $400,000 on their getaway.

Doesn't this piss you off?

Great book

2008-10-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a great book called "A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath" by Truong Nhu Tang.

The author was one of the founders of the South Vietnam revolutionary movement, of which the VietCong was the military arm. Truong was never a warrior; he was a member of the Saigon aristocracy, French educated and destined for a great future.

He became politically aware while in France and returned to Vietnam to fight for independence. He operated undercover as a senior member of the NLF, while outwardly serving as a senior executive with the national sugar exporting company.

Eventually he was discovered and imprisoned, ultimately being released in a prisoner exchange, and spent 8 years in the jungle and became a member of the PRG, a government in waiting, allied with the North Vietnamese. He was named Minister of Justice for the government they assumed would take over control once the war was won.

The book describes in detail living in the jungle, the horrors of the B-52 attacks that killed many compatriots, and the political machinations and tension between the southern revolutionaries and the northern communists.

One thing I found very interesting was the description of how aware the PRG officials living in the jungle were of the American political scene and how important the US antiwar movement was to the the NLF and PRG.

Another interesting fact: the Vietcong hiding in the jungle were given forewarning of B-52 attacks, by receiving reports from Russian spy ships in the Pacific that tracked bombers taking off from Guam. They would compute the flight paths, and radio the information to Hanoi, which relayed likely target areas to the VC so they could move away from the target areas. This saved many lives over the years, and it is not clear if the Americans ever realized this was happening.

The book ends quite sadly when it becomes more and more obvious that the northerners never intended to share power with the southerners. Immediately after the war, the southerners were edged aside in favor of rapid socialization. Many people were rounded up and put in reeducation camps. In one very tough event, the author drives his own brother to a prison camp, assuring him it would be only 30 days of reeducation. 9 years later the brother was still imprisoned.

Eventually Truong engineered an escape from the country and has lived in exile in France ever since.

I found this book extraordinarily interesting, opening complex aspects of the war I had never realized.

Link to Amazon

The market

2008-09-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

is lurching back and forth, down 777 yesterday, up 300 today.

Very scary for those of us who dream of retiring with our hard-earned 401k money sometime in the next 10 years.

Website work

2008-09-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

I did a lot of website work this weekend and sent out our September newsletter (just in time).

We are doing the Michigan Bead show again this coming weekend, last year was pretty good, this year we have a lot more Seed Beads so I hope it will be even better.

New lawn

2008-09-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

I stripped and replanted the grass in my front yard over the last few weeks. I finally sowed the grass seed and threw down straw last night.

What a big job that was! First I sprayed the grass with Roundup and then about 10 days later I started stripping off the sod. I went out and bought this thing called an Italian Grape Hoe, that is like a regular hoe on steroids. It has a large heavy head and works great to slice off a layer of sod. That took several evenings and a couple of weekend days, and filled up about 30 yard waste bags (halfway so they weren't too heavy).

Next I had to regrade the yard, as there was a real high spot and several dips. I borrowed my neighbor's rototiller which made it a lot easier to bust up the dirt under the sod. I moved a lot of dirt around, building up the area nearer to the house and trying to add a gentle slope toward the street. This was probably the hardest part, trying to get the grade right.

Next I used an ancient concrete roller to compact the soil, and kept going over it with a yard rake to get a nice looking grade.

Next I got 3 yards of screened topsoil (and a bale of straw) delivered and spent a couple hours spreading the soil around on top of the grade. Having the yard graded out made that a lot easier, I just had to rake out the soil evenly.

The I added some hydrated lime, starter fertilizer, and then the seed. I used a sun/shade mix from a local garden center. Then I added a thin layer of ground peat moss, and ran a leaf rake across the whole mix to get the seed mixed in with the soil. I followed that with a thin layer of straw, which I then secured down with several lengths of twine, to keep it from blowing away.

Finally I put up some posts and tied more string between them and tied lengths of rags all the way around to keep people off the new lawn. Then I turned the sprinkler on and watered for about 30 minutes, which I will do twice a day until the seeds sprout.

One smart thing I did was save about 10% of the grass seed so I could fill in any thin areas later on this fall or in the spring if I need to.

Several people walking and driving by stopped by to comment on what a great amount of work it was and how good it was looking.

Hope I can say the same thing in a few weeks when the grass is nice and green!

It probably cost me about $250 in materials (hoe, fertilizer, seed, lime). The hoe was $45, but I can definitely reuse that thing, anytime I need to do some serious sod busting. I have no idea how much it would have cost to have a professional landscaper do it, or if they would have taken as much care in re-grading the yard.

Removing the sod was really hard, especially after the one full day I spent on it. The next day I felt like I had been in a car accident; all my muscles and joints hurt. I still have a huge bruise on my right arm, but I do not know how it happened.

The financial crisis

2008-09-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, everyone else is talking about it, why shouldn't I?

Once again I feel we are experiencing the true legacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan convinced everyone that government was the enemy, and regulations were just handcuffing the creative and entrepreneurial forces of the American people. The market was rational; bad players and corrupt practices would be weeded out by the the power of market based control.

Are we de-regulated enough yet?

I also place a lot of this on peoples unconstrained greed. Everybody thought it was great when speculative bubble after bubble arose and Wall street guys were making multi-million bonuses for doing things none of understood (derivative "swaptions" what the hell are those things).

Nobody was calling for regulation while the party was going and Joe Homeowner was refinancing his house and spending the money like it was free. Nobody was calling for corporate oversight until the market crashed and it was obvious that crooks like the guys at Enron were running the show at some major corporations.

The only way regulation can work is for people to realize that to prevent the bad times the good times have to be tempered as well. You cannot have these market run ups and esoteric financial products that appear to make you rich and expect to regulate them after the fact.

I'm not sure what people want is a more disciplined economy. I think most people want the bad stuff to go away and what they really want is another bubble.

Just like the old Texas bumper sticker: "Please God, give us just one more oil boom, and we promise not to screw it up this time".

Obama

2008-09-11T05:24:00.001-07:00

will most probably lose this election. I am quite unhappy about this for a number of reasons.

I am a strong liberal Democrat, and I think republicans have been visiting chaos on our economy and social fabric since 1980.

However, I am just as angry about this because I am confident that if Hillary Clinton had been the nominee (my choice) then this election would be essentially over. The Palin choice would have been neutralized (probably would not have happened) and she would be fighting back like mad.

It seems like Obama is on the verge of pulling a John Kerry: failing to attack. Where are his proxies like Biden and Clinton who should be out there savaging Palin and McCain?

Karl Rove telegraphed a long time back that this election would be about personality not issues. Did Obama's people really think that the adoring crowds of Democrats who propelled him through the primaries would somehow magically win him the general election?

If the Democrats lose this election they have noone to blame but themselves. The economy is as bad as it has been in 50 years, the sitting president is profoundly unpopular, yet somehow the Republicans have been allowed to shift the momentum to the point where the press is focusing in stupid remarks and Sarah Palin's "likability".

This should be like shooting fish in a barrel. The right candidate was passed over, and if Obama loses the whole party owes Hillary the biggest apology in history. If she ever consents to running again for president, the party needs to embrace her 100%.

There is no point in blaming the media for its shallowness. The GOP learned a long time ago that the key to getting elected was to manipulate the media's power to distract people with triviality and lurid stories designed to evoke an emotional response.

Sadly, this is how elections are won. Just another indication that we are becoming a 3rd world country, both in our economic structure and our approach to democracy.

Politics

2008-09-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't paid much attention to the RNC convention. It seems like the GOP is really in a defensive position, trying not to lose too badly. I do not think Obama is a guaranteed win, but I do think (hope?) the Democrats have enough momentum to win some of the key states up for grabs, like Ohio, maybe Florida, Colorado and New Mexico.

Just enough to win the Electoral College, but probably not a landslide. Which is disheartening in a way. With all of the fiascoes that the Republicans have presided over in the last 8 years it seems like the Democrats should just run away with the election.

My take on the Palin choice: I think the GOP did not want to waste their first string choices on an election they think they have a good chance of losing. This reminds me of when the Democrats nominated Walter Mondale to run against Reagan in 1984, knowing it would be a blowout loss. Or when the GOP ran Bob Dole against Bill Clinton in 1996; who gave him any chance at all?

I suspect that guys like Romney and Huckabee want to keep their powder dry to run against a likely Obama presidency in 2012, and again in 2016.

Vacation

2008-08-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 2 week (mostly) "staycation". We did go to Niagara Falls for one night, the Canadian side. The falls were great and we took our daughter on the Maid of the Mist, which was pretty exciting for a 6 year old. I always remembered the US side as being a tacky tourist trap, but the Canadians have really caught up. Junk stores and indoor amusements, all with blaring speakers out on the side walk. It really was stressful walking through all of that stuff, and I noticed a lot of people arguing and bitching at their kids. The next morning we walked down the stairs by the Skylon tower (another tourist trap) which was much more relaxing.

We also spent a day at Kelly's Island in Lake Erie, which was very relaxing. Long drive to the ferry in Marblehead though. We rented a golf cart and drove around to the beach and through the laid back island community. Nothing like Put-In-Bay, perhaps the most obnoxious place I have ever visited.

War in Georgia

2008-08-08T08:48:00.001-07:00

No coincidence that Russia waited until the opening day of the Olympics to start aggressive actions in the Caucasus. The news outlets will be too busy covering the games, and we all know they can only cover one story at a time.

Seems like they might have duped the Georgians into attacking South Ossettia, and are now reatliating with an invasion. Glad that we would never do anything like that..:--)

Yahoo Stores Fiasco

2008-08-04T05:34:00.002-07:00

A few weeks ago I signed up for a Yahoos Stores account. After a lot of thought I felt it was time to convert to this platform. My decision was based a desire to simplify my programming, improve inventory management and order tracking and to able to have more sophisticated sales, discounts and shipping options.

What a disaster this turned out to be. Getting up and running was not so hard, using the online wizards. One big problem I ran into was the Store Editor function. I downloaded a detailed 300 page PDF file that was a guide to Store Editor Version 2.0 Lots of good walkthroughs. After working with for a while I realized that I was working with Verison 3.0 of Store Editor which was considerably different. But there is no equivalent PDF guide for the new version (and 3.0 has been around since 2006). I called tech support and they told me to use the online help files, and I pointed out that these file were nowhere near as detailed as the downloadable guide. In the end I had them switch me back to using version 2.0, so at least it matched my guide.

So far so good. As I worked through the Store Editor I became more and more disillusioned with how the platform worked. To go beyond a very basic inflexible design you have to learn how to manipulate page templates with a proprietary language called RTML. The main point of trying to use Yahoo was to simplify the programming involved in maintaining the website, yet now I have to learn a new scripting language. And by the way, Yahoo provides no resources for learning RTML, instead pointing you to 3rd party developers who can build your store for you: the last thing I want.

I gave it good 2-3 days and finally called it quits. Yahoo gave me a prorated refund, so I guess it was worth the $60 to learn that for sure I do not ever want to use Yahoo stores as my ecommerce platform.

Back to PHP and MySql I guess.

July 4th

2008-07-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Lots of kid stuff this weekend

Friday we took our daughter to the parade at West Park. Lots of firetrucks and mostly politicians. George Voinovich (US Senator) was there. Last year Dennis Kucinich was there, but I didn't see him this time.

Later we went to the Bay Days carnival in Bay Village. My daughter loved going on the Scrambler, saying that "Mom would puke on this one" several times.

Finally, we went to the fireworks at Clague Park Friday night, which was great. The only problem, which happens every year, is the number of really small kids running around playing with sparklers. This seems really dangerous to me. What is the difference between giving your kid a white hot sparkler to wave around and giving them matches to play with?

Saturday she went to see the "Kit Kittredge", the American Girl movie. If you don't know about American Girl dolls, then you definitely do not have a girl under the age of 10 in your family.

Sunday was more laid back. My old friend Glenn was in town visiting his family. He came over for a few hours and we couldn't get over the fact that we met in college and have known each other for over 25 years now. I've seen his kids grow up and go off to college. He lives in Indiana, so I only see him every year or so.

The end of Windows XP

2008-06-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft stops selling Windows XP today.

Coincidentally I just got my work PC upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP just last Friday.

On the cutting edge....

PHP

2008-06-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

I have been working with PHP at home lately. Currently I generate my web site as static html pages using Smalltalk (the best programming language ever created).
One problem we have, though, is that we have a lot of products and we run out of inventory, causing back orders.

So, I have been prototyping having my page generator create PHP pages instead, which will create product rows by reading a MySql database each time the page is loaded. If the inventory level is below a threshold, the product row will show "Out of Stock".

The cool thing is that the shopping cart service I uses (mals-e.com) can do a silent post back of order information to a php script, so I plan to use that function to automatically decrement inventory.

One of the trickiest things is getting it to work on my local Apache server, while still reading the database that sits on my hosting account. I had to tweak the Apache config settings, and tweak the PHP config settings. The PHP database connection settings are different depending on which platform you are running on. Fortunately you can detect this pro grammatically, so I can run the same PHP code base on my windows XP machine running apache and on my Linux hosting account.

The design is not perfect; returns and exchanges have to be handled manually etc.

I have built the MySql product table and the table that links products to pages. I have also started prototyping a C# desktop application to allow table maintenance: adjusting prices, removing products from pages etc. The tough part was getting the connection to MySql and the datagrid to display and update rows. That took a couple hours to figure out. Still a lot left to do.

It is kind of ambitious, but it will give us some big benefits like being to run reports of products we are running low on, and drastically reducing the number of back orders we have to deal with.

"The Road"

2008-06-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last month I read "The Road" by Cormack McCarthy (the guy who wrote "No Country For Old Men", recently made into a film).

"The Road" is a post-apocalyptic horror story, all the more horrifying because there are no monsters.

The story takes place about 5-6 years after the world has been destroyed by some unnamed cataclysm. At first I assumed it was a nuclear holocaust, but as time went on the descriptions of the devastation made it seem more like a catastrophic meteor strike: the skies are eternally gray, mountainsides are scorched, ashen dust covers everything, even clogging the oceans. Almost everything is dead, nothing will grow, and the few human survivors band together in groups of cannibals and scavengers.

A man and his young son are following a road south, desperate to find food and avoid cannibals. They witness horrifying scenes of destruction and cruelty, and the book is relentlessly despairing. It is really hard to see how any redemption can be pulled from the horror. Bleak doesn't even begin to describe this story. I really dreaded the end because it seemed to be leading only into deeper tragedy.

In tone the book reminded me of the darker works of Harlan Ellison, but without the fantastical elements. I read a lot of Ellison in the 1970's, and found the nihilism perfect for my teenage years. McCarthy is a more disciplined and controlled writer than Ellison, and thus his horrifying story is much more believable.

McCarthy has been described as one of the greatest writers in American literature. His story was so sparingly written and so evocative of an imagined place and time that I think I'd have to agree.

George Carlin

2008-06-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

I just read that George Carlin died last night of heart failure.

I had a lot of respect for Carlin, I watched a couple of his HBO specials and I remember watching him host the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. I was 17 that year I remember thinking that I was watching something completely new and revolutionary.

Carlin morphed himself from nightclub comedian to counter culture hero to senior curmudgeon. He managed to pass through the 70's without getting typecast in the Cheech and Chong mold. He was profoundly anti-religious and not afraid of power.

Surely he won't get the attention that Tim Russert got, but in his own way he was an important contributor to the modern culture.

Slow news week

2008-06-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back Tim Russert's death would have been a two day story, but now that the nomination races are over, there isn't a lot to talk about.

Larry King bumped Steve Carrell to talk about heart disease last night, he was happy for the diversion.

I didn't watch Russert; haven't been a fan of the Sunday morning gab shows since I was in college. I did read his book "Big Russ and Me" and I really thought that it was a great marketing approach for a book. For a famous guy to write a book about his dad makes him see like such a great guy, but I am convinced that a lot of people who lathered up tim Russert over this book never actually read it.

The first 25% of the book is about "Big Russ" and the whole rest of the book is about "Me". The book really is an autobiography of Tim Russert, marketed as an homage to his father. I am sure he sold thousands more copies because of the sentimental appeal of a son writing about his Dad.

Not that it was a bad book, I just think it was marketed rather deceptively...

Death of the SUV

2008-06-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

A recent article documented the collapse of SUV sales in the US (the only real market for them).

This is due to (surprise) soaring gasoline prices.

SUV plants are closing and thousands of auto workers are losing or leaving their jobs. I understand that the auto companies "give people what they want" but I don't understand how the Jpanese companies seem to be able to produce a mix of high quality, reasonably priced cars that people want to buy. Toyota and Honda and Subaru etc produce all kinds of cars from ultra-cheap to ultra-chic and seem to be structured in such a way that they can respond to changing consumer needs.

Could it be that US companies were greedy for the fat profits SUV's gave them and got caught with their pants down when gas prices went up so fast?

No, never. Must be the union's fault...

Yahoo Pipes

2008-06-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

I just was reading about a neat little online gizmo called "Pipes" from Yahoo.
Basically a mashup tool that lets you wire different types of feeds into some canned library modules to sort/modify/display and re-aggregate data.

You can publish your Pipes with a unique URL.

You have to have a Yahoo account to use but it looks like it has a cool visual editor.

Seems kind of neat, I will have to play around with it when I get a chance...

Nepal abolishes monarchy

2008-05-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

Today Nepal officially ended its 240 year old monarchy. Although I am no fan of monarchies in principle, I fear this might be the beginning of the end for Nepal's democracy, such as it is.

I visited Nepal for a month in 1999, trekking in the Himalayas, lounging in Kathmandu, hiking through rhino and tiger country in Royal Chitwan National Park.

Nepal was (is) a desperately poor place with a corrupt and unresponsive government, both on the elected and monarchic sides. I talked to several people who openly expressed sympathy with the Maoist revolutionaries.

Communist revolutionary movements can only take root in places where a significant number of people are so desperately alienated from the economy and political power that there seems to be no alternative. Democracy has done little for the majority of the people, and the country that attracts billions of dollars of tourist income sees it vanish into the hands of corrupt officials.

Most Communist revolutions have occurred because the powers in charge made life so intolerable that anything was better. Thus I believe that the revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua were all justified by local events.

Unfortunately in all these cases the problem became that the revoultionaries stayed in power. Communists are great at mobilizing revolutions to overthrow corrupt regimes, but they are horrible at running societies and economies.

I think the Maoists in Nepal are playing a crafty game of temporarily sharing power, orchestrating the ouster of the monarchs, and then they will try to use the electoral process to seize complete power. Then they will left to run things, which they will do badly. Tourism will collapse, India will fear China's influence over the local Maoists, and the people will be repressed.

You heard it here first, folks....

Gas Prices...

2008-05-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

continue to hit new highs. Makes me wonder how much can be absorbed before people really start to make major lifestyle changes based on fuel costs.

It hasn't happened yet, as far as I can see. Just as many cars on the highway, almost all carrying one person. Most city busses are almost completely empty, and most bus stops are uninhabited.

I drive a small car, so gas prices are not huring me so much. I really notice the increase in food prices though. I shop pretty carefully and I have just been unable to keep my grocery budget in line lately. I used to be able to buy most of what we needed for about $300 every two weeks, but I am now spending closer to $400 for the same stuff. We only have 2 adults and one child in our family, I would hate to see how much people with 2 or 3 teenagers are spending.

The increase in grocery prices is definitely hurting more than gas costs, for me anyway.

Latest Book

2008-05-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Fortress of Solitude" by Johnathan Lethem.

I read this author's previous book "Motherless Brooklyn" about 5 years ago, and I was not overly impressed. "Fortress" has won several national book awards and received very good reviews when it came out.

The story is about a white kid growing up in early 70's Brooklyn, at the early stages of the gentrification of the city's brownstone neighborhoods. The boy, Dylan, suffers with being the only white kid around, a distant artistic father and a mother who abandons them both when he is about 10. Dylan is at the mercy of tough black kids and develops his own persona through friendships with a black neighbor and another white kid who shows up later.

The story takes a turn into magical realism, which greatly affects the plot towards the end of the book. The second half of the book jumps several years into the future, after Dylan has moved to Berkeley and become a freelance music journalist. Dylan is still coming to grips with his past, and the mystery of his mother's abandonment by the end of the book.

Ultimately I found this book to be unsatisfying. Although Lethem is a very good writer, the real point (or plot?) of the book escaped me. The story entertained and saddened alternately, but I could not ever comprehend the significance of Aeroman or the nature of the internal conflict Dylan was struggling with.

Maybe it was just too deep for me...

Merck

2008-04-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently the drug maker Merck has gotten busted for writing "research studies" and paying prominent doctors to publish them under their own names.

I am no basher of big pharma, I think they are important companies, and it is not fair to hang the dismal state of health care costs in America at their doorsteps.

I do think however that this is just another in a very long line of the consequences we are suffering from the Reagan revolution. Reagan told us that big government needed to "get out of the way" and let the marketplace and free enterprise thrive.

Well, this is what we get: a culture of corruption in business, cozy relationships between regulators and the industries they are supposed to oversee, no sense of responsibility for doing the people's business on the part of the people running governments agencies.

I fear America is heading in the direction of 3rd world countries: where greed, fear and corruption become the guiding principles.

I recently heard a report from an American living in China. The feeling there is of unrestricted optimism, that anything is possible, and that government is moving in the direction of being a force for the benefit of society.

Doesn't that sound like where we were fifty years ago?

Another report I heard from an American living in Thailand talked about how much people in Asia dislike travelling by air in America. They think it is uncomfortable, inconvenient and plagued by delays

Isn't that what we used to think about airplane travel outside the US?

What the hell has happened to us?

Spring

2008-04-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

The weather finally got a little better this last weekend. Temperatures in the 60's. I got out our bicycles and my daughter and I went for a ride. She just learned to ride her 2-wheeler last summer so had to get used to it again. It only took about 10 minutes to remember all about steering and brakes and we were off.

She really did great and I can foresee a lot of bike riding this summer. I remember when I was a kid how much the world opened up for me when I learned how to ride my bike around the neighborhood.

Jobs and more

2008-04-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

80,000 jobs lost in the US economy in the last reported month.

Almost 80% of the US population thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Is there any real doubt as to which party is going to win the White House this year?

It is so painful to see the economy reeling this way. I had hoped to never see bad days like the 70's again, and it is especially unnerving to see widespread job losses.

Taxes

2008-04-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

I did my taxes this weekend using TaxCut software. I have been using it for a few years and I like it. I think all of the major tax packages are equivalent functionally. I just use this one because it imports last years information easily and costs $39.95.

This is the first year I e-filed. It burns me that it costs $19.95 to file elctronically. I mean it actually saves the government money to have the information delivered in electronic form instead of having to pay for data entry. I did it because I have a pretty good refund coming and I would like to get it as early as I can. No way was I going to pay another $19.95 to e-file my state return though!

I don't get all worked up about taxes like a lot of people do. Republicans want to cut taxes, but not spending, so they end up with big deficits and user fees for stuff that used to be free, like entrance fees to National Parks, fees for airline security, more sin taxes to pay for public works projects.

Barack Obama

2008-03-31T05:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to listening to Barack Obama's speech on race in the United States. This was a great speech and truly articulated the complexities of America's "original sin" of slavery and why its ramifications will be felt (in my opinion) for at least another 100 years.

A great speech, indeed. But in the end just a speech.

Mario Cuomo gave great speeches; Jesse Jackson gave an unforgettable speech to the 1984 Democratic Convention which I watched live, mesmerized by his oratory.
Ronald Reagan gave fantastic speeches, and look at the hoodwinking he pulled over on the country.

Reagan taught me to distrust speechmakers. I can enjoy their performances, much as I enjoy watching Sean Penn act, but I will not base my decision to vote on the quality of someones speechmaking.

Barack Obama says that experience is not as important as judgment. I think he showed an unforgiveable lack of judgment by not disassociating himself from his radical pastor as soon as those offensive statements were made. Going even further, I think this shows a failure not just of judgment, but of character as well; an even more important flaw.

Tibet

2008-03-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

There have been anti-Chinese demonstrations throughout Tibet this week. Now we hear that Chinese troops are pouring into the are, undoubtedly to provide the means for a violent suppression of the protesters.

I have a lot of admiration for the current modernization going on in China. The government is trying to balance the need for greater personal and economic freedom with the fear of the kind of post-Soviet chaos that occurred in Russia. The majority of Chinese are living far better lives than their parents could have imagined. Political freedoms are limited, but moving in the right direction (although very slowly).

It is hard to reconcile this with the heavy handed treatment that China is using towards Tibet. They seem to be motivated by a real fear of the influence of the Dalai Lama, who they label as "a devil". I think that they are afraid to consider the idea of limited autonomy, and they are waiting for the Dalai Lama to die.

Could it be a coincidence that this round of protests is occurring as the country really starts to ramp up for the opening of the Olympic Games? The Tibetan exile community is quite sophisticated in managing its image and tactics: they have a lot of support amongst influential people in the West.

This presents a real problem for China with regards to the Olympics. If they let the protests continue it will keep Tibet on the forefront of the news, a distinct embarassment to the government. On the other hand if they use military force to crush the protests, they run the risk of a boycott of the Olympics.

I am not sure that the Chinese government has a subtle enough understanding of world opinion to do the right thing in this case. I fear that paranoia will win out over caution, and Tibet is in for some rough treatment in the near future.

Gasoline

2008-03-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Gasoline prices will spike up to close to $4.00 per gallon within a few months, it was reported today. It really is painful for the economy and hits lower income working class drivers the hardest.

This reminds me of the mid 70's when the economy seemed to take one punch after the other and spiralled downwards into stagflation. Remember Gerald Ford's WIN buttons and Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech?

Hopefully this generation will be able to learn what others before have: the good times don't always last so have fun while you can but have a plan for what to do when things go bad...

SNOW

2008-03-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here in Cleveland we got a ridiculous amount of snow this weekend.

Close to 2 feet fallen, with massive drifts everywhere. So much that the airport closed completely for a day. I know 2 people who were out of town and got stranded, but one was in Mexico, and the other was in San Francisco, so things could have been worse (they could have been in Buffalo).

I took my daughter sledding last week before the snow started, on the remains of last Tuesday's ice storm. We flew down the hill together, and she loved it. We might go tonight on the new snow.

Of course we will hear the chorus of morons shouing "What global warming, look at all of this snow!". Seems like a knee jerk response that someone has to make in any group of 4 or more people.

Go Hillary!

2008-03-05T17:26:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton was the big winner in Tuesday's primaries.

I am really glad she is still in the race; I would hate to see Barack Obama ordained as the nominee. I hope that if democrats can take the next few months to evaluate these 2 fine candidates outside of the context of the primary horse race they will realize that she is the better person for the job.

I also hope that the Obama nation people can see the big picture enough to realize that even if Barack is not the nominee, it is much more important to elect a Democrat than it is to sit back and sulk during the November election, allowing yet another Republican administration.

I am a big Hillary backer, but if Obama gets the nomination, then I will close ranks and support him 110%. Let's hope the Obama supporters can do the same if the situation is reversed.

Ohio Primary

2008-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Ohio primary and I plan to vote for Hillary Clinton. I never got on the Obama band wagon. As cool as it would be to have a non-white president (I hestitate to call him Black, as he has one white and one black parent), I think Hillary is the better person for the job, regardless of perceptions of "electability"

My vote is based on a couple of considerations:
1. I have waited for 10 years to cast a vote for Hillary, and this may be my only chance, given that Obama may lock it up tomorrow.
2. Hillary is the person that the Republicans hate the most, which makes me want to vote for her the most.
3. When I ask myself who would do the best job if another 9-11 happened, or who would take reviving the economy most seriously, or who would make the strongest effort to restore the honor and dignity of our country in the world commnunity, I only get one answer, and that person is Hillary Clinton.

Go Hillary!

Yoga

2008-02-19T04:25:00.001-08:00

I went to my first class at a local Yoga Studio last Saturday.

I got some coupons for Christmas (I asked for them), and I finally got around to going. I had done yoga informally for a long time, mostly using videos and books, but I had never been to an actual studio.

I loved it!

The session was called "Yoga Basics", so it assumed some experience, but was not too advanced. It was 75 minutes of continuous movement, and became very strenuous for me. I was sweating like crazy by the end of it, and I left feeling like I had both a good workout and a relaxing meditative session. I think it is the feeling of relaxed invigoration that makes yoga different from other forms of exercise.

It was a lot different from doing it on my own, as the instructor kept everyone focused and moving, with no rest. Noone was listening to their mp3 players during this class! I really enjoyed it, and my muscles still feel worked, but not strained.

I really think yoga has a great ability to keep you healthy, in many ways. Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years, and predates most surviving forms of medicine.

My only regret is that I did not pursue a more formal practice years ago.

Florida (again)

2008-02-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

We just came back from our second Florida Vacation since Christmas. This time we spent 5 days at Siesta Key, in the Sarasota area.

We really enjoyed the soft white sand beach, a world class beach; very wide and spacious.

My daughter and I made some sand sculptures, a big lizard and a butterfly decorated with seashells. Lots of people walking by were very impressed, and my daughter was quite proud of making them with her Daddy. It was cool to see them still there after a couple of days.

We spent a lot of time on the beach, with rented beach chairs and umbrellas. I got sunburned.

We also spent 2 days at the Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld, a first for me and my daughter. It was a good experience, mostly because the weather was great and it was not as crowded as I expected. We saw the parade and the fireworks, and went on a bunch of rides. Surprisingly enough, my 6 year old girls' favorite ride was the Speedway, where you get to drive cars around a track. You cans teer but a metal rod keeps them on track. She loved it and wanted to go back several times.

Disney is really all about illusion. MK seems like a really big place, but we took the steam train around the perimeter it only lasted about 10 minutes, with 3 stops. The place is architected such that you cannot see very far between the different areas, so it is hard to get much perspective, but the train ride reveals that it is quite a bit smaller than you would think.

All in all a good trip, and a great break from work and the snow.

Bobby Fischer

2008-01-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

Chess grand master Bobby Fischer is dead. I remember this guy's shenanigans from the early 70's when he had those legendary matches with Boris Spassky.

In the last 30 years he seems to have turned into a complete nutcase, violating the US ban on trade with Yugoslavia during the Bosnia war, getting arrested for travelling on a revoked passport, and much more.

His life really illustrates the stereotype of a tortured genius. If the guy wasn't a chess grand master he would just be considered a lunatic.

File renaming

2008-01-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

For some reason I find myself having to rename/retag large numbers of files a lot. I always used to use DOS command lines but I found a nice shareware utility that does everything I need.

Its called FlashRenamer.
It has dozens of options, can modify timestamps, alter case, change attributes etc. And it is very fast. I lowercased over 3000 files in just a few seconds.

Always nice to find a useful utility!

Bosses

2008-01-14T09:12:00.001-08:00

I read recently that the #1 reason by far that people look for a new job is their boss (followed by salary and growth potential).

It seems like companies would really want to take notice of this. Replacing employees is expensive, and a lot of institutional knowledge walks out the door when someone leaves.

What do people want from a boss? What are bosses doing wrong that is enough to drive people away from a job?

Good bosses can make good employees more satisfied. Unless of course you want people to leave, and I guess many companies do...

Countrywide Financial

2008-01-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

Looks like Bank Of America is buying the remains of Countrywide Financial, one of the big losers in the subprime fiasco.

I really hope the housing market turns around. A lot of people have lost a lot of equity value in their homes through no fault of their own. Long term homeowners are not speculators, and yet all have suffered due to the bad decisons of banks and lenders out for quick profits.

Is it time for stricter government regulation of this industry? The lending industry in all its forms seems determined to prove it can screw up whatever freedom and de-regulation it is given.

Credit Cards

2008-01-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

I read the other day that credit card companies are quietly changing the terms of the cardholders agreements.

They are changing their ability to drastically increase interest rates even in the event of a single late payment on an otherwise perfect payer.

They do not have to inform the customer, they just jack up the rate to 20, 25 or even 30%. So your rate could go from 9% to 25% if your payment is just one day late, just one time.

Credit card issuers are mostly banks, and banks are hurting from the subprime mortgage disaster, so they are looking to screw their customers as a way to shore up profits.

Vacation

2008-01-03T09:11:00.001-08:00

We just got back from a week in Vero Beach, Florida. We flew into Orlando on Xmas day and the next morning we drove 90 minutes southeast to Vero Beach.

VB is definitely the most liveable city I have visited in Florida. Right on the ocean, not especially touristy. Lots of upscale retirees make real estate a bit expensive, but there are relatively few of the high-rise condos you see further south.

The weather was 80's and sunny everyday. For two of our days there Red Tide was a problem. I have heard of this kind of algae bloom, but I thought it was only a problem for fish eating, but this stuff causes respiratory problems when you get within a few hundred yards of the beach. Walking down the seaside avenue in Vero Beach you could hear everyone coughing. Would have been bad if it had lasted the whole vacation, but we only felt it for 2 days. For those days we just went to the pool at our motel.

All in all it was a great time. We had two great meals at a little hole in the wall Cuban restaurant called Felix's; wonderful roast pork, fish stuffed tostones(fried papaya) and mango cheesecake.

To top it off, the day after we came home we had a foot of snow in the driveway...

The Writer's Strike

2007-12-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

Here's my take on the Hollywood writer's strike.

I fully support the right of organized labor to strike, and I sympathize with the economic hardship associated with people being put out of work.

However, could there be something less important to the overall functioning of the economy? These jobs are not going anywhere; so the flow of product will be interrupted for a while, so what? There are billions of dollars worth of productivity going to China that will never return to this country.

Striking writers are not going to force the producers to get Chinese writers to scab for them.

So people don't get to see fresh episodes of CSI or Desperate Housewives for a while, and they have to watch something that is slightly crappier than normal.

Entertainment is an important industry to the USA, one of our leading exports. Strikes are just another one of the economic checks and balances that help the marketplace adjust.

Don't worry, it will all be over eventually and we can get back to watching our normal stupid crap.

Queen Elizabeth

2007-12-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Queen Elizabeth today became the longest lived monarch in British history, surpassing Queen Victoria.

She is not yet the longest reigning monarch, still 8 years short of Victoria's 64 year reign.

I think last years movie "The Queen" did a lot to improve the popular image of Queen Elizabeth. It was really a great film and effectively brought out the difficulties of being in such a publicly scrutinized position for your entire life.

Central banks cooperate

2007-12-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

The central banks of several leading economies have agreed to cooperate to reduce the affects of the current ongoing credit crisis.

How much better would the world be if the elected governments could decide to cooperate so easily, instead of filtering everything through the lense of national pride and electoral politics.

Led Zeppelin reunion

2007-12-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

Another popular culture event that I should relate to, at least based on my age (49). In fact I find the current Led Zep reunion tour entirely uninteresting, much like the fact that the Eagles have a hit album right now.

So what, am I supposed to get all excited about some fat old millionaires playing 30 year old songs to a crowd of fat middle-class, middle-aged hippie-never-were's desperate to latch on to a long passed image of their own youth?

Now, if they could actually make me 18 again, that would be worth paying for...

Christmas Shopping

2007-12-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Shopping for Xmas presents always gets me down. Most gifts for kids end up getting forgotten after a few weeks, and gifts for adults tend be obligatory gifts.

I much prefer giving and receiving birthday gifts. It always seems more personal and genuine.

I'm tired of being told endlessly that the fate of the U.S. economy depends on me spending gobs of money on useless junk that noone needs or wants.

Little kids are the ones that deserve and appreciate Christmas presents

Media MVP

2007-12-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

I bought a little box (Hauppage MediaMVP) that hooks up to your TV and your home network that allows you to stream video and music from your computer to your TV and stereo.

I bought the hardwired version. There is a wireless version, but my router is close to my TV and had an open port, and I thought it would work better running wired, based on some reviews (also it requires 802.11G and I have 802.11B).

The server software that comes with the MediaMVP is really awful, constantly froze up, so I ended up buying a copy of SageTv with support for MediaMVP, which works like a champ. SageTv is a bit of overkill, since it supports PVR cards with scheduling and full DVR functionality. For me I am just using it to play downloaded AVI files. I used to download AVI's and burn them to DVD's, which was time consuming (4 hours to convert a 2 hour movie), and wasted a disk.

You need a decently fast computer as your video file server, but the MediaMVP box does the decoding onboard. It has a CPU and starts a version of Linux internally. I think the SageTv software replaces the Linux it comes with, though. You can do all of what SageTv does using open-source software and a lot of time, but I just wanted to watch my TV, not play with software.

This is a really good solution if you want to watch AVI files on your TV, not on your computer screen, but don't even bother to try to get the MediaMVP software to work.

CEO resignation season

2007-11-30T06:35:00.000-08:00

Lots of CEO's seem to be jumping or being pushed from their jobs lately. Hopefully they won't find themseleves too short of cash. Most seem to be getting decent severance packages, far in excess of the 2 weeks pay for every year of service that most of us get.

Republican YouTube Debate

2007-11-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

Just exactly what makes these YouTube debates so revolutionary continues to elude me.

Thousands of questions are screened by the debate organizers, so they may as well have just written them all anyway.

Seems like just another expression of the personalization of everything.

Is the YouTube generation incapable of understanding (or paying attention to) a political debate without having to be amused by some jackass asking the question while performing for the camera?

Are the questions not interesting unless the viewer can relate personally to the asker?

Stem Cells

2007-11-20T10:44:00.001-08:00

Today I saw an article about a new breakthrough in stem cell research. Scientists have been successful at making skin cells act like embryonic stem cells. They anticipate working out all of the remaining problems pretty quickly.

I find this topic to be extraordinarily interesting. It seems like it could be one day possible for injured people to regrow their skin, spines, eyes or livers. Maybe even a lost foot could be regrown. Truly amazing, and I hope I live long enough to see some of the incredible things that will develop from this technology.

Out of the action

2007-11-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I posted. I haven't had much to say lately and work has been hectic.

We watched the movie "The Hoax" at home this weekend. It is about a writer in the early '70's who forged a biography of the crazed billionaire Howard Hughes. It was based on the antics of writer Clifford Irving, and a lot of it was fictionalized, but the core story was true. He did this while Hughes was alive, and managed to get away with it long enough to get a million dollar advance from his publisher. There was a lot of intrigue and the book had a role to play in the Watergate scandals that took down Richard Nixon. Irving, along with his wife and his co-writer, eventually went to jail for fraud. He is still a published author today.

Richard Gere was the star. I really like him when he is not playing a simplistic good-looking guy. He is a great actor and was particularly good in this role.

New treatment for Schizophrenia

2007-09-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

A new drug that attacks schizophrenia in a completely novel manner seems to be safe for patients. There is an added benefit of reduced side effects compared to established drugs used to treat the disease, researchers reported on Monday.

Eli Lilly compared the older drug Zyprexa with the new compound (not yet named) and found it did not alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia quite so well, but also did not produce a lot of the side effects. Older drugs produced side effects such as hormonal fluctuations, weight gain and cholesterol increases.

Presumably testing and development will continue, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness while retaining the diminished side effects.

Fires in Greece

2007-08-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

I was sad to see the forest fires happening in Greece this last week. In all of my travels I really enjoyed Greece. It is exotic without being overwhelming, laid back without being boring, and best of all, inexpensive.

My wife and I spent about 6 weeks in Greece, a few days in Athens, then to the islands of Hydra and Aegina. After that we visited the Peloponesian peninsula, mostly the pretty town of Nafplion. Nafplion is an old Venetian city and the architecture looks more Italian than Greek - lots of red tiled roofs.

After that we took an overnight ship to Crete, where we stayed at the really cool old city of Hania. It is an old town with winding narrow alleys and a perfect little port with a great waterfront. There is a great wide sandy beach.

Then we travelled by bus through the picturesque mountains of central Crete to the South coast, to some rocky little beach towns with hidden nude beaches strung along the coast. We spent the next 2 weeks like this, moving to a new little town every few days.

Finally we left for Santorini, where we spent 4-5 days, and celebrated Linda's 40th birthday. Santorini is one of the most spectacular settings in the world, and a great place to finish our Greek vacation.

Credit Crisis

2007-08-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Watching the stock market meltdown over the last few weeks has been interesting but too not too disturbing (as long as I don't check my 401-k balances).

I did hear a good analysis of how it happens that over-rated mortgage backed securities can cause such a drop in the DOW. Banks lend to each other over night, and the collateral they use can include large bundles of mortgages that have been sold on the market. Since everyone knows they have been historically overvalued due to mortgage credit being extended to subprime borrowers, as the housing market softens the lending banks start to get nervous about loaning to other banks with such collateral. Not being able to borrow overnight means banks cannot lend as much, putting upward pressure on interest rates, and making businesses nervous.

Many European banks have invested in these mortgage backed securities, which spreads the fun internationally. Eventually these securities will become properly valued and credit will return to the markets. However there will be spasms of overreaction, both market level and regulatory, causing continuing upheaval and inefficiencies in the markets.

Construction Project

2007-08-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

They finally laid blacktop on my street yesterday after a six month project. They replaced water lines, storm sewers, sanitary sewers, cement roadway, sidewalks and driveway aprons. What a mess that was! We had to park on the next street over and walk for a few weeks while they were tearing it up in front of our house.
It was noisy and very dusty but now it is a brand new street. We really had needed new sidewalks. Next year the city is going to plant trees along the tree lawn. They had to rip out a couple of old trees to do the work.
My daughter was endlessly fascinated by the huge machinery and giant holes in the road.

Glad this is over!

Things I don't care about

2007-07-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

American Idol (or any amateur hour type show)
I-Phones
Harry Potter
The Simpsons Movie
YouTube (and the YouTube debate nonsense)
Text Messsaging
MySpace

How to Earn $1 Million by Not Watching TV

2007-07-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

I saw this article on Yahoo finance. The headline touted "How to Earn $1 million by Not Watching TV". Intriguing enough, so I read it.

What a bunch of BS. After several paragraphs of dubious arithmetic, you have to read almost the whole article to find out that that 80% of the money you will "save" is the money you would have spent due to the influence of TV commercials.

This article was from thestreet.com, a site supposedly dedicated to financial education.

There are a lot of good reasons to limit TV watching, but not the expectation that you are going to end up with $1 million in your pocket.

The Seven Wonders of The World

2007-07-09T04:25:00.000-07:00

The seven new wonders of the world were chosen by popular vote recently and, having visited several of the nominees, it is clear the vote was one of popularity, not an objective ranking of the sites. The final 7 chosen are:
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
The Great Wall, China
Machu Picchu, Peru
Petra, Jordan
The Roman Colloseum, Italy
The Taj Mahal, India.

Of these, I have visited Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, The Great Wall, Macchu Picchu and the Taj Mahal.

My first observation is that any list of wonders that does not include the temples at Angkor Wat is fatally flawed. I consider Angkor to be the #1 wonder of the world I have seen (never saw the pyramids of Egypt). Angkor far surpasses Chichen Itza and Christ The Redeemer in its powerful beauty and scale. Clearly the Brazilians and Mexicans cast more votes than the people of Cambodia.

Next, I cannot understand why the manmade rice terraces of China and Central Bali would not be considered a great wonder of the world. It is a truly awe inspiring sight. Not a monument to the greatness of a regime like the others, but an active work of communal architecture that supports the lives of millions of people.

Lastly, the Great Wall: I am fully in agreement with this one.

Scooter Libby

2007-07-03T05:43:00.000-07:00

It makes perfect sense for George Bush to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby.

There really isn't anything Bush could do to diminish his reputation even further, so why not do something to shore up the hard core conservative base of the Republican Party? What's the downside: Democrats and moderates will lose respect for Bush? They already have no respect for him.

Bush could pose nude with Ann Coulter and a penguin and the conservative base would praise him for it. On the other hand he could personally behead Osama Bin Laden and the Democrats would find fault.

iPhone

2007-06-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

Ho hum, another electronic gizmo is on the market. Forgive me for failing to get excited about the latest toy that encourages already self-obsessed Gen-Z'ers to identify themslves through the crap they own.

I want Steve Jobs to stop making toys and figure out how to get the marketplace to provide universal health coverage to all Americans.

That I will get excited about...

Dead goldfish

2007-06-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

One of our goldfish died yesterday. It was 2.5 years old, and part of a small aquarium I bought with my daughter a couple christmasses ago. They had been doing really well and this was a real surprise to find him just resting on the bottom of the tank.

My daughter is 5 and she is not really too concerned about death yet. When our dog died last year, I mustered up all my courage to tell her that our doggie had gone to heaven and she looked up at me and said "Does that mean we can get a kitten?".

Anyway, gotta go to the pet store and buy some fish antibiotics and clean up the fish tank tonight. Might have ben a bacterial or fungal infection.

Metabolic analysis

2007-06-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I had a metabolic analysis at the gym where I work out.

They hooked up an oxygen sensor mask and heart rate monitor and had me ride a bike for 30 minutes at increasing resistance rates.

The idea is to try to determine at what heart rate your body crosses over into non-aerobic exercise, and you are no longer burning fat, but rather stored glycogen.

They pretty much told me I was exercising too hard and put me on a program of 4 days per week of exercise (instead of 5). Each day is different and pegged to a different combination of heart rates. One day is ure interval training, alternating between 120 HR and 160 HR. Other days are 20 minutes at 120, 20 at 130 and 20 at 140.

The theory is that you can increase the heart rate at which you are still burning fat. I go back in August for the same test and we will see if I have moved my numbers.

Work Stuff

2007-06-25T03:56:00.001-07:00

I'm getting close to finishing a big project at work. We are adding a whole new line of insurance coverage to the company website.

I have been working on this for about 3 months full time and 3 months part time before that. The programming part is almost done and we are about to begin a long period of testing. It's good to see the new functions coming online and testing is a necessary part of it. The testing phase can get really stressful, especially as the deadline gets nearer.

The company is going to get a good return on investment for the effort though, the payback will be under a year. Not sure what my next project will be, probably a continuation of this one.

Sopranos Finale - my 2 cents

2007-06-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

My opinion on the Sopranos finale is about as worthless as everyone else's.

I liked it. It wasn't what I expected or even wanted but I have to see it as a piece of art.

When I go to the art museum and look at Monet paintings I go to appreciate what the artist did, not to try to figure how he could have done it better. I can only say that I like this painting and don't like this other one. They make me feel a certain way and that is all. The one thing I can't do is say "I really would have liked this painting better if Monet had just done..."

A professional filmmaker has standing to criticize technique or form, as a trained artist might with Monet's work, but that is an altogether different arena of criticism. My only place to stand is "have you entertained or surprised or enlightened me?"

I do think it is interesting/funny all of the symbolism and metaphor that people have been pasting onto the series finale. On NPR Daniel Schorr used the blackout imagery as a metaphor for something or other in modern culture.

My only (so far) unique observation is that maybe people are pissed off about the finale not being what they wanted because the new media technology has been able more and more to give them exactly what they want when they want it. Isn't that the whole point of iPod's, DVR's, streaming video, pay-per-view and YouTube? If you feel like watching a video of a guy performing the national anthem using hand farts, there are at least 25 of them on YouTube at any given time.

I hope that the on-demand world is not reducing our desire or ability to be surprised. If the media stream is flexible and rich enough to only ever give us what we want then what does that do to our ability and willingness to be exposed to new ideas?

I've been bothered by the reduction of the shared cultural experience resulting from the on demand world. I think in many ways the country became a unified society because of the shared experience of popular culture, starting with silent films and newsreels, early radio, the golden age of Hollywood and the glory days of network TV prior to cable. I hate to single out a particular moment in time, but in the 1960's everyone had TV, cable was in its infancy, so everyone watched the same small set of programs. Not to say this was quality entertainment (Gilligan's Island was a number one show), but the point is that everyone from Florida to Oregon had at least some shared cultural experience that was uniquely American.

Many have decried this as homogenization of culture, and I can't argue against that. It does seem however that we have lost something. We still do have the shared experience of "American Idol" and such things, but the fractionalization of the media stream has greatly reduced the number of people sharing any particular event at any given time.

I can't believe I am here defending the bad old days of network TV. I feel like my grandparents lamenting the golden days of radio. It sucks getting old.

Beadies Site Redesign

2007-06-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on redesigning Beadies Beadwork

I am updating the fonts, colors and backgrounds and standardizing the look and feel of the site. Over the years I got lazy creating some of the pages. I use the Smalltalk programming language to generate most the pages, so I bit the bullet and pulled all of the pages into Smalltalk, so I can change the fonts and colors with one method.

I also added context sensitive side links to every page. We really like the new look and feel. Hopefully we will have the changes published in the next 2 weeks.

Sopranos

2007-05-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

I watched the latest episode of "The Sopranos" last night. Probably the best episode ever of the best TV show ever made. AJ made a lame attempt at suicide and Tony almost killed a creep who harassed his daughter. The feud with Phil Leotardo is about to boil over.

Tony's interludes with his psychiatrist are what makes this more than just another mob drama. The show would be good without that circumspective aspect, but it is truly great with it.

It is clear that the series is coming to an explosive end. I think they have dropped a number of hints about what will happen to Tony Soprano in the next 2 final episodes. I think the obvious outcomes are Tony's death or his imprisonment. There is one other possibility that I haven't heard anyone mention, so I won't do it here. It has been alluded to in the show, though.

If you haven't watched this show, get the DVD's or download the torrents. This is some outstanding TV.

Covered calls

2007-05-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

Every month I buy stocks to sell covered calls on them.

Last month I made a couple hundred dollars writing calls on a steel company called Steel Dynamics (STLD) . I sold an in-the-money call at the beginning of the option cycle for May, bought it back once when it dipped (netting $150). A few days later on the upswing I sold it again for the original price. I let that one run to expiration and got called out over the weekend, netting another $200.
This morning I bought 300 shares of AK Steel holdings (AK) for 33.75 and sold 3 June 32.50 calls for 2.75 each. This will net $450 (3x150) if I get called out as planned, maybe a little more if I get the chance to buy it back on a dip and re-sell it.

This works out to about 4.0% a on $10,125 in play for the month, less transaction fees (about $35 total). Not bad for a moderate risk.

I have had the best returns in the last year or so on steel product companies, and the copper company Souther Peru (PCU). Not sexy or cutting edge, but for some reason, steel companies have had good, predictable returns on covered calls.

I am basically playing the time-decay game, using selling in-the-money near options and planning to get called out. I have lost a few times, mostly when I go against my general guidelines, but I average 2-3% per month, and never a catastrophic loss (almost though!). I set up these trades at the beginning of the monthly cycle (the Monday following the 3rd Friday of the month). Then I monitor them to see if there is a buy back opportunity. It takes discipline to keep from buying back prematurely.
If my options close out of the money, then I decide whether to write a call for the next month or liquidate the position and try something else. In these cases I usually break even.

I avoid high tech, pharma, companies that depend on interest rates (like lenders of any kind), companies that depend on government contracts, companies that are announcing earning before the options I want to write will expire, and companies with a PE over 35 or so. I also look at the 6 month Bollinger bands and 120 day moving averages. I am not a technical trading expert, but I look at these indicators to get a general view. If an otherwise great stock is bumping up against its upper band then I am very wary.

The times I have lost money have been when I violated one of these basics.

Santa Amulet bag

2007-05-10T04:02:00.000-07:00

This image is a great example of a Chris Manes Amulet bag

Harry Shearer

2007-05-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

I really like "Le Show" by Harry Shearer, which is broadcast by KCRW public radio and downloadable from their site. He presents an hour long monolog with musical interludes, and very acutely skewers the current political scene, with particular sarcasm towards republicans.

A regular feature is the "Apologies of The Week" where he recounts the various public apologies made by public figures and institutions over the previous week.

Definitely a cut above the Colbert Report and the Nightly Show, both of which I find too hip and ironic for my taste. Shearer is more Bill Maher than Jon Stewart (and that's a good thing IMO).

The KCRW podcast page is www.kcrw.com/podcasts

Also, links to past and current shows for download can be found at Harry's site:
www.harryshearer.com/index_2.html. Click on the "Le Show" link.

Seed Beads

2007-05-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Seed beads have been selling more and more lately. We get almost as many orders for seed beads as we do for Delicas. The seed beads we sell are high quality Miyukis, in 4 sizes. They are much better than Matsunos (more uniform shapes and more vibrant colors), and far better than cheap Chinese imitations.
We will continue to add more colors as time goes on
Click here for Seed Beads

Resignations?

2007-05-01T05:20:00.000-07:00

Isn't it time for both Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales to resign?
Perhaps they could form a consulting group in Washington and advise clients on how to ethically manage personnel issues.

Boris Yelstin

2007-04-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

Boris Yeltsin died Monday.

I remember back to the end of the Reagan years when all the neocons thought that the end of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history"; there wouldn't be anything more to get excited about. The cold war was ending and the world was entering a period of democratic capitalist utopia.

Yeltsin to me was emblematic of that naivete. He tore down the Soviet system and replaced with a free-wheeling (and free-drinking) openness. The childlike belief was that destruction of the old world was all that was necessary to create a new world. (Sound familiar Mr Rumsfeld?)

What actually occurred in Russia was the dawn of a chaos that fostered a environment of criminality and corruption.

So twenty-odd years on from the Reagan era and where are we?
Russia has veered off into semi-authoritarianism; the radicalized Muslim world is making us nostalgic for an enemy we could understand; China hasn't exactly eaten our lunch yet, but they are setting the table...

2007-04-23T04:30:00.000-07:00

Beadie's Beadwork just added a selection of 3mm and 4mm Miyuki cubes this weekend.
These are great quality cube beads with a small diameter hole, perfect for stringing and bracelet making.

Check it out at: www.beadiesbeadwork.com/miyukicubes1.shtml

2007-04-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Dell just announced they would resume offering Windows XP as an operating system for new computer buyers. Previously they were offering Vista only.

Apparently consumer response was less than enthusiastic.

I had some experience with this. My mother recently bought her first laptop from Dell. She didn't ask for my help in picking it out. I was surprised when the laptop arrived with Vista pre-installed. She lives far away and helping her out over the phone has been difficult, as I do not have any machines with Vista installed.

I really wish they had done this a few months ago. It's probably too late to install XP on her computer now. Too bad (for me).

Delica charts

2007-04-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Beadie's Beadwork has some great high quality Delica Charts. They have ultra high quality images of all 800 plus Delica colors, and are printed on HP Premium plus Photo glossy paper.
Size 8 charts available too!
http://www.beadiesbeadwork.com/delicaChart.htm

Welcome

2007-04-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

This is the introductory posting to the Beadie's Blog, hosted on blogger.com

I will be posting all sorts of stuff here, some related to the world of seed beads and delica beads, some not.