Sorry, I know I’ve been posting a lot of random stuff lately, but I couldn’t resist this one.
Someone has put together a set of images of all the Battlestar Galactica characters as Simpsons characters.
Thanks to Scott Kleper for forwarding this to me.
Drat.
I really like Battlestar Galactica. It has been one of my favorite shows for the past couple of years.
I don’t want to criticize it. I don’t want to be annoyed by it.
But long before I liked Battlestar Galactica, I loved Greek & Roman mythology. And they are making really stupid mistakes.
In this last episode, the writers have clearly gotten confused as to whether the religion of the humans is based on Greek or Roman mythology.
Baltar, in this episode, is decoding some pseudo-prophecy from one of the Baseship hybrids. He decodes a reference to cow eyes as Hera, as she is sometimes referred to as “cow-eyed” in Greek mythology. So far, so good.
He then jumps to her husband, “Jupiter,” and maps this to the location of the artifact they are looking for as they search for Earth.
This might be nit-picking, but Jupiter is the Roman name for Zeus. Zeus & Hera are the Greek names. Jupiter & Juno are the Roman names.
This has been annoying me since I watched the episode on Tivo. It’s such an easy detail to get right, and they are really messing it up. Everything else is Greek. Athena, not Minerva. Apollo, of course, has the same name in both Greek and Roman.
Drat. Small detail, maybe, but they are even calling the final episode next week “The Eye of Jupiter”. Drat.
Sorry, but I found two Apple/Microsoft snippets worth posting today.
This ComputerWorld article is amazing.
Jim Allchin is the long-time development chief for Windows at Microsoft. ComputerWorld is reporting that a 2004 e-mail from Allchin chastizes Microsoft for having lost focus on the user, and says that he would buy a Mac if he didn’t work for Microsoft.
“In my view, we lost our way,” Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp.
“I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.”
I haven’t read the email in detail, but as much of an Apple fan as I am, I think his tone represents more of your typical “wake-up call” email that gets sent from time-to-time as a senior executive in software.
Even great software teams and companies can easily get caught up in their own internal analysis, politics, and design cul-de-sacs. Great UI designers can get caught up in their “frameworks”. Great product managers can get caught up in their “strategies”. Sometimes, the needs of the end user can get lost in the passion of pursuing the perfect model for your software application.
As a result, it’s hard as a leader as a software company to not be forced to remind your team periodically that it is the customer that matters. Listen to them, focus on them, respect them, and delight them. Not your competitors, not your frameworks, and not your strategies. Sometimes, to be emphatic, you try to evoke a passionate response by invoking taboos. I have to imagine that the head of Windows saying that he would buy a Mac is as taboo as it gets.
I don’t fault Allchin here, although these days you pretty much have to assume that any executive email at a large company can get circulated publicly.
Found this funny snippet today online. Looks like Microsoft was caught with an Apple icon on one of its properties.
Here is the image from Microsoft’s website for Vista Business Edition:
Here is the original version from Apple’s Workgroup Server:
Funny snarky comment from the blog where I got this:
Think of a snarky comment making fun of the fact that Microsoft can’t even copy an icon without screwing it up by resizing it. Bonus points if you can work in a crack about the misspelling (“Busines”) in Microsoft’s web page title.
The full play-by-play is here, along with some amusing follow up screenshots of Microsoft’s hasty efforts to replace the icon.
I don’t really fault Microsoft here – quite a few web and graphic designers have been known to grab artwork from time to time as temporary placeholders. Sometimes, they sneak through as people forget that they aren’t the final artwork, or forget they were “borrowed” by someone else. It’s possible on big teams. Maybe there was a Mac-fan on the Vista team here who thought this was a funny inside joke.
Still, given all the history of Microsoft and Apple, and the obvious comparisons of Vista’s new look and feel to Mac OS X’s old look and feel, you’d think there would be a special memo out about not borrowing icons from the Mac.
Gotta imagine someone is getting fired over this. You just can’t steal intellectual property as part of a commercial product.
It may seem weird to talk about tomatoes in December, but the time has come to say goodbye to my tomato plants from my first year growing them here in Sunnyvale.
Mr. Stripey is a heirloom variety that uniquely produces a red and yellow striped fruit. I harvested most of these in the summer, but there were a few still growing on the vine, and I found one more good one to close out 2006 a couple of weeks ago.
This one wasn’t as ripe as others, so the red looks a bit pink. Still, you can see the unique, mottled interior, and based on the fully sliced fruit, appreciate the size.
I noticed on most gardening sites Mr. Stripey doesn’t get very high ratings. True, the vine didn’t produce a lot of fruit (maybe 6-12 good tomatoes through the season), but I thought it was a lot of fun to have this multi-colored tomato. We found it very sweet & firm, and definitely colorful.
One of the comments from my last post on my 7 foot tomato plants was that I didn’t include a picture of Mr. Stripey. So here it is.
Anyway, the vines are coming down next weekend, even though they are still bearing fruit. I’m pretty sure these frosty mornings are going to kill them soon, and I’m not eager for the first serious rainstorm of the winter scattering tomatoes everywhere.
I feel lucky to live in Silicon Valley, though, where I can actually harvest my garden into December. Very lucky.
I decided to take some of the information I’ve gathered on the new US Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program that launches in 2007 and share it with the eBay community.
Collecting the New Presidential $1 Dollar Program Coins
Please take the time to check it out, if you are interested, and if you are an eBay member, vote for the guide by answering “Yes” to the question on whether it was helpful or not. The most helpful guides rise to the top on various pages at eBay, so the more you vote for it, the more people who will get a chance to read it. (Please note: you can only vote if you are an eBay member)
I’m still very excited for this program, despite it being a rather transparent attempt for the US Mint to get more money out of me. It looks like it is going to work.
As a side note, not many people realize that the same bill in 2005 that authorized the new Presidential dollar coins also authorized the new American Buffalo gold bullion coin, the first 24K, 0.9999 fine quality gold coin ever produced by the US. The same bill also authorized the new versions of the Lincon cent that will debut in 2009 to celebrate 100 years of having Abraham Lincoln on the penny.
2009 will feature the last year of the State Quarter program, the third year of the Presidential dollar coin program, and four new penny designs. That is going to be quite a year for proof sets!
Other posts I’ve had recently on similar topics:
Here is a fun video that runs through the history of several genres of video games. I think I played most of them. See if you can name the game and the platform.
Too good not to share. Thanks to Chad Alderson for finding this.
Another fun little post for tonight.
Most of you probably know that one of the great new features of the Nintendo Wii is the motion-sensitive controller that lets you really swing the controller to control the game. You can swing a golf club or tennis racket, punch in boxing, bowl, and swing a sword in Zelda. Pretty cool, although I personally have commented that this is likely to be a short-lived gimmick.
This website has a lot of the Wii commercials loaded, in case you want to see it in action.
Well, no good deed goes unpunished, and no innovation happens without unintended consequences.
For the Nintendo Wii, the unintended consequence seems to be… Wii Damage!
There is a whole website now dedicated to damage that people have done swinging that new controller around playing games! Cracked projection TVs, glasses, windows, some cuts & bruises. There is even a photo of a Wii remote that cracked the case of a TV and got stuck!
Love it.
I haven’t posted a lot this week due to late nights and early mornings for work. However, I had to share this tidbit while it was still timely.
First, I hated the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, “Unfinished Business”. I found this post on the Table of Malcontents that sums up my feelings:
It is with a heavy heart that I am forced to confront the possibility that the once-great show Battlestar Galactica may be heading to fraktown. After Friday’s head-clutchingly bad episode, which combined boxing scenes with barfy romantic flashbacks, my sense of foreboding has escalated into franchise panic. Will our beloved show go Star Trek:TNG season 7 on us? Or, worse, Buffy season 6? Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Read on for the ten signs that Battlestar Galactica is turning a dangerous corner . . .
The article goes on to list the 10 signs that the show might be close to jumping the shark. We’ll see. Truth be told, I’m pretty easy going on science fiction that I like, and I even likes Star Trek TNG season 7. (I even liked the last season of Enterprise, so there.)
In any case, in all places, the Lucy Lawless (yes, Xena Warrior Princess is on Battlestar Galactica now) fan site has a spoiler for the upcoming mid-season finale, “The Eye of Jupiter”.
Check it out here.
Kind of neat that you can go see it on the big screen. I’m hopeful that there are several more good seasons of Battlestar Galactica left before I have to go fishing for a new sci-fi series.
Sorry, but I couldn’t pass this one up.
The introductory letter to the recent 2007 Investor Guide issue of Forbes magazine (12/11/2006) has a really neat little tongue-in-cheek reference to a new way to beat inflation. First, check out this graph from the article:
Yes, that’s depressing. Most people learn that typical “money market” returns for cash match inflation over time. That means that the interest you earn on cash accounts historically lines up with the amount prices go up every year. It’s why many people use money market funds and other similar cash equivalents, like certificates of deposit, to “protect” their savings.
Unfortunately, what this chart shows is that your cash equivalents only keep up with inflation when they aren’t taxed. T-Bills, which are the basic proxy for the cash equivalent market, actually lose money against inflation because the US government taxes their gains.
The chart plots what would have happened to a hypothetical dollar invested in T bills by a top-bracket taxpayer. The government that issues these bills gets you two ways. First is via inflation, what Ronald Reagan called the “thief in the night.” The other is to send around the Internal Revenue Service to rob you in broad daylight. Your real aftertax return over the past 75 years is a cumulative –72%.
Interestingly enough, there are real investment options today, in both Europe and the United States to protect your money from inflation. Several options, in fact:
In fact, the only limitation are the 1-year waiting period to cash out, the 3-month interest penalty you pay if you cash them in before 5 years, and the $30,000 per-person, per-year maximum (which I doubt many people hit).
But I am here today to mention a humble, fourth opportunity for inflation protection:
The new “Forever Stamp” proposed by the US Post Office.
The basic idea is that the post office will issue a new 42¢ stamp in 2007 (yes, another price increase), but one that will hold it’s value forever. No more price increases. The stamp will always be good for one first-class mail item, up to 4 ounces.
Let’s think about that.
First, we know that the US Postal rates have approximately kept pace with inflation over the past 25 years… maybe a bit more than inflation.
Second, there is no proposed “time limit” on the stamp. I guess the stamp will be valid as long as there is a US Post Office?
Third, there is no limit on resale. So, I am assuming that if postal rates increase, you could resell your stamps to someone else who needs them, for approximately full value.
Fourth, there is no accumulation limit. You could theoretically by $1M worth of these stamps, if you wanted to.
Fifth, no taxes. At least, right now, the IRS has not said that it will tax you on the appreciation of your first-class stamps. At minimum, there are no taxes until you “cash them in” by selling them.
The blog Marginal Revolution asserts this just gave the Post Office the ability to print money. Since the Post Office is effectively backed by the US Government, they can just print stamps to effectively increase the money supply. (I do love it when the stable money fanatics get worked up.)
The blog Economist’s View has another interesting take on the proposal.
There you go… tidbit for the day. If you are looking for a safe place to park your money, you may now have a new friend in the US Post Office. I will say that this looks like a very hot item for the Stamps category on eBay…
There are a lot of these floating around right now, given the recent passing of Milton Friedman.
Still, I was reading the latest issue of Forbes magazine (the 2007 Investment Guide issue), and there were a few more I wanted to call out, mainly for their clarity and brevity.
“A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.”
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
“Inflation is taxation without legislation.”
That last one is particularly topical for me of late, as I’ve been thinking about long term investment returns, retirement, and the amazing burden that inflation puts on planning for the future. My next post will feature a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the monetary monster.
I don’t know why I am into self-diagnostics on the web right now. But this was too amusing to pass up.
In Silicon Valley, where legend is based on people making $1 Billion before they are 30, age can be a funny thing. Health is also paradoxical in Silicon Valley. Being in California, it’s not hard to find a large number of people eating well, working out, running marathons, and generally being Californian. At the same time, the engineer culture doesn’t always emphasize good eating (jolt cola, mountain dew, pizza) or good exercise (Warcraft III doesn’t get you outdoors much).
The Real Age website obviously is playing of the current trend of emphasizing that depending on your health, you may actually healthier or less healthy than average for your age. They seem to want to sell you programs and information on how to improve your “real age”.
It’s funny… if I click the other tabs, it tells me I can get down to 21.5 in just 90 days! But if I go the wrong way, I could be as old as 43.4 in the same time.
Maybe the reason this caught my eye is because I’m still smarting from the practical joke Seema Shah played on me for my 30th birthday at eBay. She was assigned as my birthday fairy, and she put posters all over the building saying, “Happy 40th Birthday, Adam!”
The worst part was that people believed it… they kept saying things like, “Wow, I didn’t know your were 40! You look good – I would have thought you were 36 or something.” 😛
Well RealAge says I’m 25.2… so I’m going to run with that for the rest of the day.
So, if you’ve been reading my blog for the past few months, you’ve already figured out I’m a geek. As a result, it should come as no surprise that I have read all of the Harry Potter novels, and that I’ve seen all the movies.
The movie for the fifth book, Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, is coming out July 2007. I’ve seen the trailer in the theater, but it isn’t posted online… or is it?
Sure, there are low-quality DV & cell phone videos of the theater version on Youtube. But I’m spoiled. I depend on the Apple Quicktime Trailers site for high quality trailers.
The US Harry Potter site still seems to be featuring the DVD for Harry Potter 4. Lame.
The wonders of the blogosphere have granted me the trailer, however. I found it linked off a French blog, which links to the UK Harry Potter website.
So here it is:
I started reading personal finance blogs with the discovery of My Open Wallet. Since then, I’ve started following more than a dozen of these sites, where real people anonymously provide significant details about their own finances, questions and progress towards their own financial goals.
Today, for some reason, the post on the blog “2Million” really resonated with me:
Do You Know What a Dollar Is Worth?
It’s a simple post about his first job as a dish washer, and the incredible realization that after a whole day of work, the end result was a $35 paycheck.
If you don’t count the times that my brother & I went door-to-door with a wagon selling lemons from our tree for a quarter, my first job was actually in the software industry.
It was the summer of 1991, and the father of a friend of mine hired me to work at his software company, an enterprise software play focused on one of the hot themes of that era: “Expert Systems“. The company was called Expert Edge Software. I was 16 years old, and it was the summer before I started college at Stanford University.
Like any normal Silicon Valley start-up, we had a small office space in a non-descript building in Mountain View. My job was to actually make the software. No programming – I literally was in charge of:
8 weeks, and I was paid $4.25 per hour (minimum wage), before taxes.
Ironically, I almost worked myself out of a job in the first week. I quickly learned the task, and spent the first day forming an assembly line. On day 2, I made 20 copies of the disks (4 per set). I then tested them all, typed all the labels, made 20 boxes, and shrinkwrapped them all. On day 3, I met with my friend’s father (the CEO), and showed him the progress. He wasn’t thrilled.
Apparently, what I didn’t understand at the time was that for an enterprise software company, especially a startup, 20 copies was more than they were likely to sell in a year. Previously, the lead engineer had been packaging the software, but because he had much more important things to do, he rarely made more than 1 or 2 copies in a week. I guess somehow no one realized that making 20 boxes of software wasn’t going to take a whole summer, even for a high school student.
Fortunately, there is always more to do at a startup. I spent the rest of the summer learning about direct marketing. There was no email back then, but I learned how to purchase and mine commercial databases of contacts, and I put my assembly line skills to work sending out thousands of marketing brochures to manufacturing executives. I am still a force to be reckoned with, when it comes to Microsoft Word, Filemaker Pro, and Mail Merge. 🙂
Most of my memories from that summer are not from the work, but from the people at the company. I didn’t know them well, but I would hang out with the engineers, and we’d go to lunch in Los Altos or Mountain View. It was actually the summer I discovered Bueno Bueno Burritos & Yogurt, still my favorite burrito place (on El Camino, near San Antonio). I remember getting my lunch and realizing that at about $8, I was working almost half the day, after taxes, just to buy lunch.
Just one of those experiences that help frame your life. Thought I’d share.
Psychohistory 