Sunday January 06, 2008

why There are many reasons to live here. Even with all the hard work days like today are one of them.

( Jan 06 2008, 06:19:00 PM PST ) Permalink

Saturday January 05, 2008

glad I don't have to drive This is the reason to keep up with your snow blowing (roughly 36 hours into this storm sequence). But a little snow blowing and shoveling and at least we won't have to work so hard tomorrow!

( Jan 05 2008, 07:04:37 PM PST ) Permalink

Thursday December 20, 2007

adjusting to the playing field If you coping strategy involves the use of drugs I can see allowing their use in competitive situations. Adjusting your brain chemistry to be something closer to optimal is something that you can do throughout your life unlike adding more time to every situation. Still, most of these chemicals have had very little real time in the market. Buyer should be careful. ( Dec 20 2007, 09:43:01 AM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday December 19, 2007

Leveling the playing field? I was recently talking with a neighbor who mentioned that his youngest child in college was getting extra time on tests due to his ADD. This was an attempt at "leveling the playing field". My first reaction was to wonder how many of the resumes I'd recently looked at included this bias. You don't get to dumb down the smart guys or slow down the fast guys or even the playing field in any business competition. I think helping students build coping skills in the real world especially before college makes a lot of sense. But college is a time of learning how to be independent and learning how to deal with the real world in a somewhat softer environment. Reducing the amount of competition seems like a poor tradeoff to me. I found a fewlinks which cover this issue. This article gave me a better feel for both sides of the issue. ( Dec 19 2007, 10:49:46 AM PST ) Permalink

Monday December 17, 2007

Security Feelgood? While ordering things for Christmas I had a few large items sent directly to the recipient. One vendor requested that I contact my credit card company to put an alternate address on file. Neither the vendor nor the credit card company seemed to be able to do much in support of this procedure other then to mutter "identify theft". Now, if I was going to steal using a credit card I would think having the items send to a residential address wouldn't be so smart. It leaves a pretty easy to follow trail and to do any real damage would mean a pattern of purchases that would be easy to detect. Does the public at large think this increases their security by the same amount that it costs the credit company and ultimately the consumer? ( Dec 17 2007, 04:13:55 PM PST ) Permalink

Monday December 10, 2007

quick My current project team conducted a two day intensive review. We have team members in Ireland, the east and west US coasts, and Beijing. Generally we use a combination of email, phone, and irc to make this all happen. For this review we used a morning component that including our developer in Ireland. I took notes during this part of the meeting using Sun's externally available wiki. We then spent the afternoon annotating those. While we slept in the pacific timezone we got comments from our engineers in China and our engineer in Ireland did some additional annotation. And then we repeated it all. I'm sure there are better integrated tools to achieve this type of collaboration but these simple ones worked well for us. ( Dec 10 2007, 02:31:38 PM PST ) Permalink

Sunday December 02, 2007

not a cribbage board... I went into the liquor store at the stop of Kingsbury grade this evening and saw a sign stating they had poker chips for rent. The hand written sign didn't state a price so I asked the attendant. He said $4 per night. He followed that up with a comment that they had requests over a period of time so they had brought in several sets for purchase. Those wouldn't stay on the shelves so they decided to rent instead. Not sure I quite follow that as this liquor store mostly services local vacation rentals so I'm pretty sure you could squeeze people for a lot more both on markup and rental fee. I commented that people were probably too lazy to just go down to the casino and buy some chips to use for the evening. He didn't seem to get it stating that sometimes casinos discontinue chips. ( Dec 02 2007, 09:56:26 PM PST ) Permalink

Saturday November 03, 2007

cool stuff inside only Kudos for driving the economies of scale and some neat concepts in software in producing a 200U$ computer. Thats a price point that people are comfortable buying game systems at. And even without MS there is an impressive amount of functionality in this box. But to really make this grab the consumer it is going to have to look a little better then a cheap whitebox. A PS3 or Mac Mini form factor would be orders of magnitude better. I'm sure the chicken and egg issues of creating a market and having the resources to do the miniaturization are part of the issue but given the already existing industry in mini-itx and like cases that the gamers and others like that seems like a weak decision. ( Nov 03 2007, 06:15:51 PM PDT ) Permalink

Online Attitude After having not played any online poker for months I played a few sessions lately. Low limit NLH ring games, PLO8 ring games, or NLH tournaments to get my feet wet and see how the environment has changed. One thing that hasn't changed is that people still act in ways they wouldn't in meatspace. Its amazing to me that you could get interested in a competition like poker in which you gain from your opponents mistakes and be unable to not lecture your opponents when they make a mistake. In an amusing moment I misclicked between two windows and an action intended for one game ended up in another and then I ended up sucking out. For whatever reason these are the only times I feel a little remorse. The rest of the suckouts are just part of the lack of complete information and chance in the game. But before I could say oops my opponent started "helping" me with my game. Remorse gone. ( Nov 03 2007, 05:32:03 PM PDT ) Permalink

Monday October 08, 2007

Panic Welcome I saw the 9/27-9/29 concerts at the Paramount in Oakland, CA. The Paramount is a beautiful venue and Panic turned out 3 different but very good shows. Given the recent changes in the band I was worried that the shows wouldn't have the typical panic variety but there were no overlaps between the three setlists. Hopefully Jimmy's comments are good for a while because I think this form of the band could become ever better as they spend more time playing together. I started seeing Widespread Panic on 9/20/91. They have often been the then song in the back of my mind that kept me sane during the tough moments. ( Oct 08 2007, 11:01:36 AM PDT ) Permalink

Wednesday June 27, 2007

best map so far This appears to be the best map so far of the fire area. Its dated as it appears a back burn turned on the fire fighters and crossed 89 yesterday threatening tallac village and the area towards Tahoe keys and Venice Dr. ( Jun 27 2007, 12:18:30 PM PDT ) Permalink

Monday June 25, 2007

Angora Ridge fire This map (credit to Chris for the pointer) gives some idea as to the area of the fire. My house is above Chris's 1500' in elevation or so we are also not currently threatened. dmorr points to a prettier although seemingly less (?) accurate graphic from his blog. Current numbers seem to be that earlier this evening containment was at 40% with ~200 structures destroyed. Weather reports have light SSW winds tomorrow. Lets hope this leads to further containment tomorrow and that those that have been made homeless can find shelter and help. ( Jun 25 2007, 10:09:44 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Friday February 09, 2007

friends don't...

Driving around Tahoe I saw a bumper stick on a SUV with Alaskan plates which read:

Friends don't let Friends
Eat Farm Raised Fish
Support Alaska's Wild Fisheries

There was emphasis and capatilization used radomly which I certainly have mangled. My first thought was that given the first and last lines I could write a bunch of middle lines. But instead of either of the extremes what is wrong with advocating managing our reusable resources in a long term manner? Are we so resource constrained that we have to fight for every morsal ignoring the future? ( Feb 09 2007, 12:49:15 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Thursday November 23, 2006

lucky

I worked through lunch today and then walked my dogs in the mid afternoon. After getting back I spent time trying to rationalize some design ideas for one of the projects I am working on. Finally close to the end of the work day I took my problems, a good panic CD I hadn't listened to for a while, jumped in the hot tub, and watched the above develop.

Thanksgiving looks back to a time when we would be glad at this time of the year that we had time to bring in the harvest and prepare for the wane of the year and hopefully for the rebirth and renewal of spring. I feel very lucky that I can sometimes experience the wonder of a beautiful sunset to remind me that the simple cycles of the world still exist even if they are hidden by intense work schedules, commitments to friends, family, and self, or heavily commercialized holidays. ( Nov 23 2006, 01:23:56 AM PST ) Permalink

Friday November 17, 2006

poker politics

I found it suprising that an article in our local pro Nevada casino conservative newspaper wasn't written (or edited to have) a completely anti online casino bias. Its even more suprising that it was on the front page.

Unforunately I don't think we have a prayer that UIGEA will be repealed nor that the real indecenciess of how it was passed end up getting reflected in what kinds of people get elected to our governing bodies. I guess we have some hope that those making up the rules by which UIGEA will be executed will be political in nature and will create rules that are kind to online poker. But at best thats an uneasy and unspoken truce.

I wouldn't be completely suprised if we hear about the President playing poker in his youth at some point in the near future. Not for real money of course 'cuz that would hurt his abilities to attract the moralists but for fun so he can "connect" with the blue collar player who might vote for his party next time around. ( Nov 17 2006, 05:01:58 PM PST ) Permalink