Storage R Us

After watching the Super Size Me extras and reading this excerpt from Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation .. I can't bring myself to stomach McDonalds' fries again .. (maybe i just miss the real saturated beef fat)

Well, after another late night over in our windowless AT&T Lab working on their systems .. having those strange forgettable dreams again

If we think the unthinkable, can we do what can't be done?

I'm a little tired of re-architecting many poorly thought through schemes and plans which are often more of a lesson in diligence (to counter much of the lack thereof) - or dealing with product teams that seem to have little accountability for the lack of flexibility, forethought, and field experience intrinsic in some of their designs.

I guess it's nice to have Jonathan bringing his party 3 blocks away from my home .. (he seems to carry a pretty big entourage these days - and with our workspace reductions it's hard to find office space) .. we still seem to have a few cool ideas and products in the pipe, but to borrow an idea from Wittgenstein - "computing is use" .. so i guess we'll see

There's this jaded look i see around sun all the time .. the look that says:

"i've seen it all before and i'm tired of explaining it all to these people
for problem X .. you just need to look at A and B, and then go do C"

I think this is in direct response to dealing with the same sorts of problems over and over again. we basically become bored when there's a lack of variety of interesting problems that aren't stretching our (perceived) mental prowess. The downside to this, is that we begin to see most problems in the same light and often won't hear the subtle differences that a customer might have. Additionally, there is the tendency to develop superiority complexes and we look down on ppl around us who may be asking the same questions we once asked.

I'm beginning to develop a new set of corollaries for dealing with certain problems. If we start with these two conflicting ideas:

1. the solution is not necessarily as easy as it seems
2. the solution is probably easier than it seems

we should be able to cover a majority of concerns from both the people who are often overconcerned (East) and the people who are often underconcerned (West). If we need a better problem to solve, why not start with our own pride .. to quote Bruce Cockburn and his admirably better songs (imho) from the 70s:

.. and if mankind must have an enemy, let it be his warlike pride
  -- It's going down Slow, "SunWheel Dance (1971)"

after talking with MLB.com again today .. (a project that was put on hold for about 7-8 months because their extensive array of lawyers wanted to meet our extensive array of lawyers) .. and finding more FUD in my email using the "scary lawyers might get you" tactic .. all i could think about was this .. (apologies in advance for politically incorrect stereotypes)

"An american executive was traveling on a train with with a russian czar
and a cuban military officer.  The russian pulled out an expensive bottle
of vodka and proclaimed, "In Russia we make the best vodka in the world,
and since we make so much of it .." with that he took one swig of vodka,
and threw the full bottle of vodka out of the train window.  The Cuban
officer, not to be outdone, pulled out a very fine cuban cigar and 
proclaimed "In Cuba we have the best cigars in the world!" and with that
took one puff of his cigar and threw the entire box of cigars out the
window.  The american executive walked over to his lawyer (who was
dutifully travelling with him), picked him up, and simply threw him out
the window."