Random Musings: Blog

The Weather in Puget Sound

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:29:49 GMT

I really don't know how people have lived here and remained sane. Maybe they haven't, which is why this area produces more serial killers than anywhere else. Here is what I do know: the weather people in the Puget Sound area should just go do other stuff and they shouldn't bother trying.

A mere five hours ago, we were due 4" of snow with the possibility of rain by morning. So the kids stayed up a little longer, we felt pretty confident of a late start in the morning, we watched a movie with them, etc.

Insert now: whoops, boy were we wrong folks, no snow at all. In fact, it's going to rain and by morning everything will be gone. We're sorry. Our bad. "But it's really hard to tell the weather here, folks." Then don't bother.

I'm used to living in two different regions of the country. The Bay Area, where I grew up, was pretty steady. It was either going to be sunny, or it was going to rain. And they were hardly ever wrong. You got rain if they said it, and you got the sun if they said it.

Then in Boston or upstate NY, you may not get all the snow they said you were going to, but you got it. And you could tell when thunderstorms were coming, and you knew when it was going to be sunny.

This area? No. We had a summer that wasn't a summer at all. We are now having yet another maddening winter of "nobody can tell you what is going to happen." It's the weather lottery, and you just have to be used to not knowing ever what is going on.

Insane. I've lived here six years now and I can't wait to leave.

TV Show Recommendation

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:44:27 GMT

I just recently discovered a show that I found fantastic. The show just finished it's second season, but you can get them on DVD and/or iTunes, etc.

The premise of the show is that Dexter is a serial killer who's cop father raised to only take out bad guys. He works for the police as a forensics expert.

Michael Hall, who was awesome on Six Feet Under, is the main character and he should get an Emmy for this show.

Check it out, see how you like it. Warning: based on the subject matter, there are some "disturbing" scenes, so if you are squeamish, find another show.

Update on hardware woes

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:18:37 GMT

Okay, so after a lot of dinking around, I got the Blackjack II working better. It seems to have needed to completely drain, then charge back up and suddenly I was getting massive battery life. I thought we were past those days, but apparently we are not. So goodness on the Blackjack front.

I have my second Xbox 360 dying on me. Of course this comes on the heels of making the switch from Tivo to MCE, so it's more painful as it's the only way to watch recorded shows in the family room. *sigh* We turned it on this weekend and got 3 rings of red. I reset the box, but now it's randomly freezing. *sigh* Can't win for losing. I won't buy another XBOX 360 (two failed units is enough for me), so now I have to wait for extenders to come out. They are late.

God Bless Julie Newmar

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:00:12 GMT

Growing up as a young boy, who could have known that one TV show could impact not only my love of comics (I am a Batman fan, after all), but my taste in women?

Julie, meow back at you.

Remember though, she wasn't the only woman to have played Catwoman. Do you know the rest?

MS solutions are killing me today

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:18:00 GMT

*sigh*

Okay, so today here is the situation with my Windows solutions. I have a 1 month old new ThinkPad Tablet (X61) which I really enjoy. However, many times a week I will go to put it to sleep and it will turn off the LCD, but never sleep. The only way to get it back is to force shut down and deal with the data loss. Come on, really? My MacBook Pro closes and opens all of the time with none of these problems. Dammit -- I want our stuff to work! So now I have to rebuild some stuff on my laptop.

And so we move on to my brand new 1 day old Blackjack II. Ah, yes, good times with that as well. I decided to sell my iPhone and move back to the Blackjack, not only to stick with Microsoft solutions, but to have my calendar, etc. So I pick up the BJ II yesterday. I charged it overnight and set out today with it. At around 10, I plugged it into my computer to install some stuff. It sat there on the power of USB. I go to a meeting with it and by 3 PM -- low battery alert! WTF? I charge it again another 1.5 hours. 1 hour later, low battery alert. Come on, really? No bluetooth enabled, just push Exchange, and you can't last 1 flipping day?

*sigh*

So, let's review. Nice Thinkpad X61, can't sleep. MacBook Pro, sleeps just fine and wakes up in like 2 seconds. My iPhone ran for 2 days and that was me doing heavy surfing. My BJII, not so much.

Shoot me.

DRM is Satan Spawn

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:44:46 GMT

It is no secret that I really detest DRM and find it reprehensible. I don't like it in our products that require PIDS to install them, and I don't like DRM when it stops me from doing a perfectly reasonable thing.

It makes makes no sense that the music I buy from iTunes is DRM'd, but a higher quality file I get off of the CD I have isn't.

My latest venture into this was deciding to try to take my house "All Microsoft" and give up my Tivo Series 3 for a Windows Vista Media Center PC that costs 4 times as much. Yeah, I know, but I'm trying to be a good guy and I felt I could have one system where all of my content comes in and I could then get to it from every tv in the house as well as dump shows to my iPod (nee, Zune) and such. So after a week of fighting with comcast and getting some great help from the MCE team, I got my nice system with cable card readers all working.

So pretty cool, right? Well, not exactly. I then went this morning to dump a few shows to my iPod. Hmmm, the video convert isn't working.

Want to know why?

DRM. Turns out that Microsoft bent over for the cablecard people and wrapped every file in DRM even if the show itself isn't DRM'd. So as an example, if I record something off of KCTS, a PUBLIC station over clear QAM in beautiful HD -- that is fine. No problem. But if I record the exact same show over the cablecard reader, no dice. We encrypt it and you can't touch it.

Note that Tivo Series 3, which also uses cablecards, does not have this limitation. So, once again, my attempt to embrace the Microsoft ecosystem bites me in the butt. Now I have to implement some other tuner hack to just get unencrypted recordings so that I can put them on a device for the kids to watch on long trips.

Really, I don't understand why we embrace Hollywood's deep desires around DRM more than any other company on the planet. If Tivo was able to ship with the ability to download and share unprotected content, why wasn't Microsoft allowed the same thing?

I hope the MCE thing works out long term. Otherwise, it was an interesting experiment.

Note to the Tivo lovers: if Tivo had been smart and implemented multiroom viewing via streaming, I would have just bought a second TivoHD and called it a day. It would have cost me $300 (a lot cheaper than an MCE pc) and I could still download content to my computer and save to my devices. But they don't do the smart thing here either.

*sigh*

He should have listened to himself

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:21:21 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9YuD9kYK9I 'nuff said

A Decade in Review

Wed, 16 May 2007 15:32:56 GMT

So today, a milestone. I have left my 30's and begin a new decade. I have a lot to look forward to.

I have spent my entire 30's working for Microsoft. I remember the night I turned 30. We were working at WWDC (I was in the MSBay group at that time), and after a long day we all headed to some Irish pub across from the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. It was May 15th and as the clock struck midnight, we all toasted with a Jameson and welcomed in my 30's. My Wife was 29, my daughter was 3, and we were living in San Ramon in an apartment, if my memory serves.

So I thought I would recount the highlights of my 30's -- the things I remember.

Saw the birth of my two boys, Will and Galen.
Met some new friends, lost touch with some old ones.
Moved to Redmond, Washington.
Moved back to California.
Moved back to Sammamish, Washington.
Shaved my head.
Went from a dev manager, to a group manager, to a group dev manager, to a pum, to a general manager, to a group program manager.
Started playing golf.
Had 3 holes in one, in successive years, in the same month.
Lived in 4 different houses.
Set the record for the longest time ever living in one place in my entire life (Sammamish)
Lead a design team. Twice.
Started drinking my coffee black.
Saw Loreena McKennitt twice.
Attended a bunch of weddings. Saw a bunch of divorces.
Left the country for the first time and went to London and Dublin with Rick.
Went to Korea, Japan and China.
Lost 30 pounds -- yes, I used to be even fatter than I am now.
Became an uncle three times.
Went to NYC with Rick and Thomas Reardon and sat in the shadow of the WTC.
Watched in horror on TV as the WTC came crashing down a few years later.
Lost my passport.
Got the norovirus.
Bought a company.
Saw my father twice.
Consumed a great number of gallons of beer and other adult beverages.
Went on a Disney Cruise that was delayed because of 9/11.
Scheduled another Disney Cruise that was canceled because of Frances.
Had 3 bosses.
Went through about 40,000 VP's

I will continue to add to the list as I think of things. It's a good start though.

300

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:26:05 GMT

Critics be damned, 300 was an amazing to watch movie. I'll be waiting for that DVD with major baited breath.

A friend's wife called it "War Porn" and she was right -- a gore fest. What got me though was just the nature in which it was filmed.

I would absolutely LOVE to see a Sin City/300-esque Dark Knight. I think I would not leave the theater for a week. Maybe more.

Wii Acquired

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:43:47 GMT

Okay, got one last week (through expo). I had to pay slightly more than retail, but it saved me having to stand in line every saturday with false hope. :)

The unit is quite nice. The kids love it. The downloading of N64 games was brilliant. They can plug in their game cube controllers and use them, and it's fun to watch them bowl and stuff with the other controllers.

Good job, Nintendo.

Gamers, I need your help

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:26:08 GMT

All my son wanted for Christmas was a Nintendo Wii. He was a disappointed boy Christmas day when the Wii did not materialize. His father tried -- he checked in at EB Games every day for weeks. Never got there in time, never knew when they were coming in. Other people were finding them though, so they were to be had.

I just got back this morning after standing in the rain for 40 mins at Fred Meyer to get one. I had been told by their electronics guy that Saturday was the day to do it, and to get there first. I was first, I was not alone, and yet, I left without a Wii because "Oh, we don't get them EVERY Saturday." Needless to say, my boy is very disappointed and I'm feeling like a failure for not finding something that other people are managing to make happen.

So, I give up -- where are you people finding them? I am not going to pay $400 on ebay for a $250 item. That's ridiculous. So I must be doing something really wrong. We aren't power gamers here...we are just a house with a 9 year old boy who loves Mario.

WHERE DO I FIND A G-DAMNED WII?

BTW, friends on the Spaces team, why do I have to enter breaks manually in Safari???

My poor truck

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:55:11 GMT

This was what I got to wake up to today. Kickass.

Mr. Doom

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:53:15 GMT

Since everyone has been telling me lately that I'm Mr. Doom and Gloom, I'll try to be a bit more cheerful about the things going on. So, some good news:

No huge mold problem in the house. That took $500 and someone poking around my walls to tell me, but at least it was good news.

Right now, the builder of our house has admitted something is "wrong" with the design of the pipe and a guy has been in my crawlspace since 8 this morning fixing it. Now we have no water for a few hours while the cement sets, and we wait for him to return to check his work and turn our water back on. Amy, naturally, is pissy about having no water as it makes it hard to clean, etc.

And so it goes...

Global Warming (yawn)

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:07:57 GMT

This is a great read. It's something I think we all need to think about as everyone around panics in a massive reactive mode to science influenced by politics.

2007 not really doing much better

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 04:11:28 GMT

So today we started the process of fixing the home office from the damage of the water leak sometime late in 2006. It didn't quite go as planned.

Amy and I went out Saturday to get flooring and all the accessories for putting it down. Rob was going to come over to help us, as was our friend, Dan.

Today, we got to cranking and got the furniture out of the room and the carpet pulled etc. Then Rob went to take off the baseboard and all came to a screeching halt. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but you'll understand why I now have to get inspectors and find out how big of a job this just became. Stay tuned.

Goodbye 2006, you sucked

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:32:19 GMT

For a great number of reasons I won't enumerate here on this blog, 2006 was a fairly sucky year, particularly from the summer on. The end of the year was capped off by a vacation filled with high wind, power outages, and frozen tundra unsuitable for golf. Oh, yeah, and a pipe burst under my house again God knows how long ago just as it did in 2004...only this time, I get to pay for it. So forgive me as I give the finger to 2006 and welcome with open arms and a hopeful heart, 2007.

Continued frustrations with computers....

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 06:57:23 GMT

Oh, the good times continue... I just tried to do XBOX LIVE for the first time. I'm all setup and working, and having a great time exploring the MCE interface (connected to my Mac! wow!) and then went to try XBOX LIVE. Not so much. Could not connect. Hmmm, maybe my router? Nope, it's a Microsoft router (remember those?) and it's on the list of supported stuff, and I have the latest firmware. So, that shouldn't be it. I run the tests, and it gets through all the tests with flying colors until it gets to the xbox live test. It then fails. There is a "More Info" box that I'm supposed to click, so I do. Blank. Nada. Nothing in it at all. Good stuff. And so now I shall have to call tomorrow and see what the first line of support can do for me. Stand by. Tonight, no XBOX LIVE.

Will someone PLEASE make a DVR that I can use?

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 05:57:50 GMT

Oh, the frustrations. Here is what I want:

A DVR with dual tuners that records HD, has a 500GB drive in it (60 hours of HD content), and doesn't crash every day. Let's look at the units in the running:

MCE. Nope. No cable card support, thus no real support for HD unless it's over the air. Maybe the vista version, but then I can start complaining about form factor, blah blah blah. Scratch MCE.

Tivo. Nope, HD Tivo not out yet.

DirecTV's DVR. While it has what I ask for, it doesn't have locals for Seattle yet except for 2. Not going to work.

Comcast DVR. Don't even get me started on this. That my own company put their name on this is embarassing enough. Small storage, crashes all the time, and tonight, it lost all of my shows. All the data is gone. So now I hate the Comcast DVR with my soul.

Maybe Apple will create a DVR that meets my expectations. Who knows. Right now, I just know I can't have what I want and I just have to suck it up.

Installing MCE, The Joys

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:31:25 GMT

Okay, so not working as I had hoped. XP got all the way through the install then gave me a little blurb about not being able to find hal.dll. A lot of reading shows me that this is not an easy fix, that nobody really knows why or how it breaks, but once it does, you're fubar. I'm attempting a reinstall, but I may be failing in my quest for an easy HTPC. So close, yet so far.

BTW, to any friends of mine in Windows Installer Land: your product needs serious work. Both OSX and Linux have your ass kicked in this arena and we need to shape it up. Setting up my PC the other day took over 2 hours of installs, updates, reboots, more updates, more reboots, etc. I counted 5 by the time I was done. Unacceptable.

Quest for the Holy Grail: HTPC

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:59:22 GMT

One of my quests the past year is to have my "Ultimate Tivo" kind of setup. Two years ago, I tried MCE, and it was not working out for me. The box was noisy, the MPEG streams would get corrupt from time to time, and in general, I didn't want to have to recompress digital streams I already had over the wire. So I gave that quest up, and stuck with the lame DVR's supplied to me by the manufacturer. I have a DirectTivo (HD), and it's one of the coolest, yet slowest, pieces of technology around. I also have the Comcast DVR running Microsoft's software and I have to say: it sucks. As a dvr, it just drops the ball too many times.

So given I am on vacation for a few weeks, I have made it my mission to try again. I have expermimented with Macs running Front Row, but that is an incomplete solution. MCE still lacks the cablecard "don't recompress the streams" problem, but i'm going to have that no matter what. If MCE had support for unencrypted HD over the cable, I'd be happy, but alas, we lack that too. We'll have to make due.

Front Row

So I picked up a Mac Intel Mini. First of all, no PC manufacturer yet makes a great computer in a package this small. This PC is quiet, it's tiny and it connects to my HDTV and recognizes it immediately. It's an ass kicking little machine. We should make one of these. *sigh*

Okay, so Front Row does what it does reasonably well, but it absolutely blows in other ways. No VIDEO_TS support is the first such suckage. That alone makes it unusable.

MCE

Okay, so I am back to trying (for the third time now) MCE 2005 with Rollup 2. I am going to maintain a server in my office with VIDEO_TS files, and map that drive to a drive on my Mac Mini (which is currently installing MCE as we speak). I will then use the Mini to watch all of our DVD's. I won't use it for any recorded TV, which is a shame, but I'll live with it.

I'm dinking around with some other firewire based solutions for extracting streams from the motorola boxes that comcast uses, but that is going to take some time. On the Mac, of course, all you need is the firewire SDK and some examples and you are off and running. Not so much with the MCE solutions -- lots of hoops to jump through.

I imagine my ultimate system will exist in about 5 years and I'll be happy. What is my ultimate system?

Must have central DVD storage accessible to ALL TELEVISIONS.
Must have central TV recording (HD) accessible to ALL TELEVISIONS.
Must have small boxes at each TV that connects to the central hub to get the job done.
All my music, photos, etc must be grabable from each place as well.

We're almost there. Hell, I may just have to build one of these things and see how it goes The trick is the small unit for each TV.

Why is Windows so loud?

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:31:25 GMT

I have been experimenting lately. I have a pretty souped up PC, dual core 3GHz with all the bells and whistles. With MCE installed, the PC is loud, fan is always going, I can hear its constant hum and it makes me crazy.

I was going to sell it, so I wiped the machine and then on a lark I decided to install Linux for the first time in years. I got the ISO for Ubuntu, installed it and was on my merry way. Some observations:

Ubuntu installed flawlessly. I was quite stunned because I remember RedHat being a pain in the butt years ago. It recognized everything but the video card, and that was just a script away.
Ubuntu on the same machine is as quiet as a church mouse. I can't hear a thing.
When I went to put XP back on the same machine, it didn't recognize my ethernet card, my sound card, etc. So Linux did a better job. Insane.

So, to those of you out there who know: why would MCE keep my PC noisy and loud, and another OS on the same machine be super quiet? I thought all of that stuff was controlled by the BIOS. Does the OS interface with the BIOS to tell it when to crank the fan on?

I hate loud computers. Hate them.

UPDATE: Yeah, and why can't MCE let my screensaver activate?

Superman Returns Review

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:15:43 GMT

Okay, folks, here is my review of Superman Returns. I will just put down thoughts as I want to see it again without the 3D, which was very distracting. Not a fan. Anyway.... SPOILERS

I really thought I would like Spacey as Luthor, but found myself just not liking Luthor at all in this movie. I think it is due to me really liking Luthor in Smallville and preferring the industrialist Lex to the crazy criminal campy lex.
The opening credits were shitty -- not sure why he decided to just be Donner.
The car brake scene was silly and stupid and it took me right out of the movie. Too much like the bit they used in the first Superman where the Damsel in Distress was used to get the missle.
Superman was awesome, but he still appears too young for me. I really desire an "older superman" movie.
I loved the bit about him standing still in the upper atmosphere listening for trouble. Very cool concept.
The special effects were naturally quite amazing. Everytime he flew, I thought it was fantastic.
If he was doing any remote continuity with the previous 2 (which I still think was a mistake, btw), Lois is not supposed to remember she and Supes got their freak on. So she should be really bothered that she had a super baby. Really bothered. Like "did superman rape me and I don't remember?" kind of bothered.
I did, however, love that the kid has super strength and is still a health mess. :)
Now I know why cyclops had to die in XMEN 3, because he was doing this movie. Not sure why he chose to do this really boring role over doing a much cooler cyclops role, but whatever...I'm not him.
Superman didn't do ANYTHING in this movie except pick things up. We have really got to get to a villain that he can fight. Maybe doomsday, I dunno.
One of the reasons I want older superman is I'm tired of kryptonite. When are the bad guys going to learn that all you have to do is make a bullet laced with the stuff and you can kill Superman. Stabbing him with a shard seemed really, really stupid, and it's not what the Smallville Lex would do. He would immediately turn the green rock into a really cool weapon and take Superman's head off. Older Supes, however, really isn't bothered by the green rock, which is nice.
I thought for sure in the hospital the little boy was going to find clark's glasses in the superman suit and show his mom. The whole superman/clark thing is silly, and we all know there is absolutely zero chance Lois can work with clark and not know he is superman or even mention "god, you look at TON like superman." Jesus, all he has to do is stand next to the picture. they have to figure out a better way to explain that beyond "but clark is so goofy."

Those are my initial impressions. I enjoyed the movie, but not as much as I hoped. I left it feeling like I had just seen a really good movie. When I left batman begins, I was in a stunned "OH MY GOD" silence, so the two are night and day for me. Not even in the same league really. I need a Superman movie with an edge. This wasn't it.

Member/Member: BLECH

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:38:49 GMT

Well, no great way to say this, so I'll come on out and say it: I was not quite up to snuff today in our member/member tournament. Definitely operated as the weak link in the team, shooting a full 7 shots above my handicap and spending the first six holes getting almost no points for the team. Paul played his best there at the beginning while I was sucking, but his efforts were for naught.

At the end, I had 7 double's, 6 pars, and 5 bogies. I felt great about the pars, having a nice stretch of holes there, but the doubles were the killer. I could not chip for the life of me -- the greens, which were as hard as a rock, got into my head and I was gunshy on almost every chip. Oh well.

Overall, Paul and I did much better than we did last year, but still, not quite up to our potential.

The lessons of sports

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 05:39:10 GMT

I have watched a lot of football in my days, and I'm not even what you would call a seahawks diehard (I'm a 49er fan, through and through), but I have to say what I watched today stunned me.

The officiating was horrible beyond my imagination. The first BS penalty against Jackson in the end zone when he scored an amazing TD catch that was called back -- horrid. You may say I am being a bad sport about it, but really, did you notice in the second half they were more calm (the officals) about calling stuff? They were more active in this game than most officials in a super bowl. Very odd. And that, I am sorry for those of you who love the Steelers, was a BS call. As was the TD by the QB of the Steelers. That ball NEVER crossed the line. That official just didn't want to bust his buddies -- that was an awful call.
The Seahawks receiver...Stevens?....God did he have a bad game -- every time they made what I thought was a great play, he cocked it up by dropping the ball. Wow!
The Steelers had great trick plays that completely humliated the hawks defense.
Everything: the fans in the stand, the officials, the bookies, the freaking commericals constantly showing STEELERS holding the trophy during the game, they were all tilted toward the steelers. Nothing went the hawks way.

In my mind, this was a 17-17 game that wasn't. The Hawks should have had their TD, and the Steelers should not have. This would have resulted in a 17-17 game at the end. It just didn't happen.

One thing I like about golf is that you can't really get away with the lie. In football you try to convince people you made the TD -- in golf, you call a stroke on yourself for touching the sand before you take your shot -- that's the difference in the sports.

Anyway -- fun to watch, bummer of a result, and I don't really believe the Steelers "won" that game.

Being a customer of our own stuff...

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:50:32 GMT

Due to bad planning on my part, some really bad management at EB Games, and general shortages, I was unable to secure an XBOX 360 before Christmas. No biggie, I thought, they will get more available after the new year.

Well to my surprise and glee, a coworker of mine was able to secure one through her brother in Montana, and I happily set it up.

Within days, I unhappily discovered I was one of the very few people who got a bum unit. So I called support, a box was shipped to me, and off the box went with my xbox this week. I called today to see what the status was, and was SO HAPPY to hear it shipped yesterday. They gave me my tracking number and off I went.

Only, the tracking number didn't work.

Called back. No, that's the number, maybe it really hasn't shipped yet.

Waited. Called back. I get the same error, dude. Let me see what I can find out.

And so it goes....

They come back and say "yeah, that's a bad number alright -- what you need to do is call UPS and give them your address and phone number and they will track it for you."

And so it goes....

UPS, naturally, says they can't do that as it's against policy, and then asks me to call xbox back and make them do it.

I've now been at this for 30 mins, my wife is frustrated with me, and somewhere in the ether, my $400 xbox is gone awol.

Stay tuned...I'm now on another 20 minute hold cycle with XBOX.

UPDATE: after 50 mins total, I was told they were closing, would have to take my number down, and someone would get back to me in (get this) 72 hours. HA HA HA HA HA. Fantastic.

Goodbye, 2005

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:50:19 GMT

I know, it's been a long long time since I wrote last in this space. So much has happened in the past 6 weeks, so much activity and stress ... I never felt compelled to sit down and actually get to work here.

Where to begin? Well, the biggest change is in my job. I gave up being the GM of two products I absolutely love, Hotmail and Spaces, to take on a new challenge around leading up the Design and "shared architecture" team for MSN. In many ways, I feel that all of my experiences have lead me to this one place, right now.

Follow the Omens, as they say.

Was it a hard decision? Yes and no. Obviously, having started the Spaces team and set the original goals, I feel a specific loyalty and desire to "finish the job." Hotmail, on the other hand, has been such a part of my history at Microsoft...well, let's just say the decision to give them up was difficult. However, the new challenge in front of me is something I have dreamed of, talked about, and pushed for for a very long time: taking Microsoft and turning it into a design focused company. I truly believe we are, as Daniel Pink would argue, moving out of the Information Age and headed deeply into the Conceptual Age. The future belongs to the Creatives. I hope to contribute meaningfully to Microsoft moving into this world.

I am, at the moment, laying out my goals for the next year, personal and business, as I imagine many people do at the end of the year. 2005 was a busy year and it's hard to believe how fast it screamed by. Here is to what 2006 can bring us!

Snow Tease

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:06:37 GMT

One of the things that cracks me up most about living in the Pacific Northwest is that the weathermen here have absolutely no clue what the weather is going to do at any given moment. I live in a whacked out weather region. At the beginning of today, snow was a certainty. By evening, "we aren't sure." And now it's like 11 PM and the weathermen are now explaining that becuase some warm air is here, no snow for us.

All within 12 hours.

Contrast this with Boston or upstate New York when I lived there. If they said it was going to snow, it snowed. A lot. Often.

I yearn for that level of certainty, and my kids certainly would love knowing if snow was coming. I feel bad for them in a way because they get all excited and then it all goes to hell on them in the space of hours...

The Puget Sound, land of uncertainty and letdown.

Words to live by

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 00:06:32 GMT

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

John Galt
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

Floodgates

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:38:05 GMT

Weird week. After a ton of waiting, this week has seen:

The new driver arrive.
The wedges arrive.
The new ceiling mount for the projector arrive.
The electrician actually show up to do the work in the theater room.
My new laptop arrive.
The new monitor for my home PC arrive.

I am one new projector lamp away from nirvana. What a week!

UPDATE: the wedges were, of course, ordered incorrectly by my club, so they get to go back tomorrow and we'll see about getting replacements zippy quick. What a pain in the butt.

Golf Redux

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:07:19 GMT

So over the past few weeks I have tried to settle down and focus on being "calm" during golf. I shot my career best 83 and then a few days later a 91, and again a 91. The problem is consitency -- I ain't got none. Essentially what happens is that if my game is on, I can shoot a really great score, but if I'm off, I am way off and I lose balls galore. I'm not really sure how to fix that and get it under control.

Paul would argue that "if 91 is your worst score now, that's great" and I guess to some extent there is truth in that, but what I really want is consistency. My handicap is the product of really bad rounds and really good ones, but not a real indicator of which golfer is going to show up that day. Paul knows what range his score is going to be on any given day -- I would love to have that kind of game saavy.

Channel 9

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 23:47:59 GMT

Even Galen likes Channel 9.

Benching myself from golf

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 01:06:14 GMT

Probably a long time in coming, but I am giving serious consideration to taking a break from golf for the next month or two. I put a lot of effort into getting better this summer, and my hard work culminated today in a humiliating defeat of 8 and 7. I popped up a ton of tee shots, removing myself from hole after hole. You can't be a guy when you give him a stroke on every hole by throwing away your tee shot...you just can't.

Today I:

Popped up 4 drives.
Lost 2 balls in hazards.
Hit zero fairways in 11 holes. Seriously -- not a single fairway.
Hit zero greens.

So, anyway -- it may be time to step away for a bit and think about why I play and what my goals are.

Berkeley has already corrupted Dave

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 17:24:39 GMT

Reading Dave this morning, and somethings I just think the air gets to him. To think what happened in New Orleans happened because of race is, forgive me, just moronic. Never ascribe to malice what can easily be ascribed to just incompetence. Obviously, 9/11 taught the government NOTHING about how to react to emergencies, and a lot of heads are going to have to roll. But the failure wasn't because the people were black. The failure was that they were poor, and their city government, state government and, yes, the federal government let them down.

If nothing else, this should teach socialists why reliance on government is a flawed idea. In every possible way, every branch of government screwed the pooch. Both parties too, as LA is a heavily Democratic area. The image of poor people unable to evacuate while the Mayor and Gov. left all of those buses empty should stick with us all.

Dave, it's okay to say people blew it, but to point to racism as the root cause is, in my mind anyway, inflammatory garbage. You're smarter than that.

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 16:30:40 GMT

As most of my friends know, I am a huge fan of Batman. Always have been, always will be. So last night, I sat down with my kids and forced them to watch the original 1966 Batman movie.

Their reactions were mixed. The 4 year old thought it was fantastic. The 8 year old thought I was crazy and kept asking why Robin didn't have any pants, and the 12 year old (today, happy birthday katie!) actually enjoyed the campy humor, especially Robin's "Holy heart attack!"

The title for this entry is my favorite quote from the movie when Batman runs around forever trying to dispose of a bomb and runs into a woman with a baby, nuns, ducks, musicians, lovers in a boat and then utters the line above. Fantastic.

My kids have grown up on the more grim Batman in the cartoons. When we were kids, I had to go to the comic book store to get my grim batman. Otherwise it was the crap on Superfriends and Scooby-Doo, or this TV show. Tim Burton changed all that when he decided to go grim. God bless you, Tim Burton.

The biggest downside of this movie is that Julie Newmar did not play Catwoman. I don't know about you, but growing up on Julie Newmar made a curvy man out of me.

And the movie ends with this line, which is also fantastic:

Who knows, Robin? This strange mixing of minds may be the greatest single service ever performed for humanity! Let's go, but, inconspicuously, through the window. We'll use our Batropes. Our job is finished.

And to show I am fair

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 01:29:49 GMT

This, quite honestly, sucks.

New Orleans and Politics

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 03:41:56 GMT

A few of my friends have decided that GWB is the Devil in all of this Hurricane madness and are mad as hell. Understandable, as he's the President and shouldn't he be Superman? Well, in this case, not really.

I did a lot of reading tonight and learned a few things that I hope my friends also go and investigate because it's quite interesting.

The Washington Post (no friend to the Right Wing), reported that the federal government did not, in fact, skimp on money to fix the levees. In fact, Lousiana got about $1.9 billion in the 5 years GWB has been President for public civil works projects, while California, a state more than 7 times its size, got $1.4 billion. And much of this money was spent just keeping New Orleans dry. So that's one myth we can all let go of.

It also turns out the Red Cross was ready with support from day 1. Why weren't they sent in by FEMA? Well, as it turns out, FEMA is not allowed to send anyone in. They have no jurisdiction. The Red Cross had a ton of trucks ready with food, water, etc to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center. So where were they? Are you ready?

The Lousiana Department of Homeland Security told them they couldn't go. What??? And that's not a branch of the federal government, btw -- that's the state's own agency. They felt that if they sent the Red Cross there, it would attract more people to come there and they wanted people to leave. So essentially, while they were screaming that nobody was helping them, they were at the same time holding off help. Madness.

Then we get to why the National Guard wasn't deployed. FEMA also doesn't have control over them, the state does. Kathleen Blanco, the govenor of the state, made a calculated play to not use the guard for specific purposes and she was VERY against not letting the Federal government take control of the situation, so she turned down the offers for that as well.

The Red Cross has a FAQ about the Hurricane in which they say:

Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

Lesly Simmons, spokesperson for the Red Cross has said that the shipments were NOT turned away by the US Dept of Homeland Security, but by the Lousisana Office of Homeland Security.

So, my dear friends, while your wrath may turn right now to the President you just don't like to begin with, you really need to do some digging around to find that this disaster was manageable and spiraled quickly out of control because the govenor of the state decided that politics mattered more than people did and she held control until it was too late. She made the wrong bets and at the end of the day, once the smoke clears, her career will be over.

This is not to say the federal government is blameless -- I am sure we will find a great number of stupid things about what happened, but I would just like people to be fair and lay the proper blame for where this madness started and it's at the local level. This scenario has been known for quite some time, they have had drills, they have practiced, and they knew what they needed to do, and they pooched it all around. It's criminal.

New Orleans

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:33:06 GMT

So I'll say this: I can't believe in this day and age that New Orleans, let alone the state in which it exists, had no plan for a flood of their city. By the reaction of all involved, you would think that this never occurred to them. "Holy Shit! We live in a city under water! Holy Shit!" I mean, come on guys! And now everyone is blaming the feds for not responding fast enough. I'll say this: Rudy stood up and took control of his city after 9/11. The mayor of New Orleans is obviously no Rudy. But they need one, bigtime. It's a horrid thing to watch on TV and I can't believe it's happening in this country.

I agree with Peter Ford: blame the French for building a city under water.

Why I rarely go to the movies...

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 16:06:11 GMT

This article talks about how the Hollywood warlords are bemoaning the fact that nobody seems to go to the movies anymore. As someone who used to wait in lines for up to 3 hours to see opening night movies at the famed Century 21 theater in San Jose, I can give them lots of reasons why I don't go.

I believe it started when more and more cellphones started going off during the movie. Perhaps it was when people started bring babies or very small children to movies that were entirely inappropriate for them (The Mummy would be an example of that). I remember going to a movie near the SVC campus in a brand new theater and there were so many babies at the movie, I wondered what memo I missed that made it bring your baby day. Then I started noticing the teenagers laughing and talking through the movie more. Essentially, my "movie experience" sucked, and I wasn't happy having to pay a ton of money for it, especially once I had kids. If Amy and I go to the movies, here is what it looks like:

$20 tickets
$30-$40 babysitter
$40-$50 dinner (if we go to dinner)
$20 drinks/popcorn/etc.

So that movie that Hollywood so desparately wants me to see has now become a $120 deal. Even if I skip dinner, it's at least a $60 movie. Not many movies are worth that. Batman Begins was one of the few worth it movies, and it was at an IMAX and the crowd was more of an "enthusiast" crowd, so no babies or cellphones.

When I can wait a mere 4 or 5 months for a $4 rental, why on EARTH would I go to the theater?

You want me to come see a movie there? Do this:

Ban all babies from movies unless it's a specified showing for those with babies.
Throw out anyone who has their cellphone go off, or better yet, install blockers for cellphones.
Enforce no talking policies. Really: enforce them.
Stop showing me 30 mins of commercials before the movie. When I saw Batman Begins at the IMAX it was about 2 mins of IMAX related commercials then on with the show. Fantastic. It's bad enough they do it there, they are starting to do it on DVD's too -- argh.

Do that, and I am way more likely to come sit through a movie. Otherwise, I'll watch it at home on my home theater and enjoy the fact that I am the boss.

How to spend your time on vacation

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 02:28:40 GMT

So instead of using all of my time to golf during my vacation, I instead focused on the boy's room and making it cooler. I hope they like it. They will see it Sunday.

Clever Thieves

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:06:37 GMT

I almost got scammed last night. Yesterday I listed an old film camera of mine (film, what's that?) on craigslist and was pleasantly surprised when an hour later, I was pinged by a lady who wanted to buy it for her son's birthday. So she said she would Western Union me a money order and then I could ship it. Fine, I thought, no worries.

So later last night I get the first of two confirmation mails from "BidPay" letting me know the money was being processed. I see that the woman is from the UK, but the mail looks legit. But then I notice something else: the return addresses for everything are not "@bidpay.com" which I would expect, but instead "@consultant.com." Hmmmm, says I. A few searches later, and I see that this is a common scam. Unsuspecting user gets the mail, gets told to send the goods and provide a tracking number to get their money order, and user is then screwed. The mails look amazingly real, and had I not being paying close attention, I'd be out a $500 camera.

It occurs to me that we can help our customers out more on mails like this by flagging them. As soon as we know a scam is out there, we should know how to parse the mail and flag it. I'm sure there are privacy concerns with doing so, but I think the benefits of not losing money to a thief outweigh the worry that somehow Microsoft is out there building a database of Evil Doing (which of course we are not).

So be careful out there -- these crooks are getting really, really good at this.

Team Rick and the Member/Guest

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:07:45 GMT

It was a lot of golf this past week. First we had the MSN Tournament where I played with Paul, Dan, and Kevin. As a team, we did really well and unfortunately some other teams did even better and we ended up, I believe, in 4th place.

Starting on Thursday, we had the Member/Guest tournament at the Plat. Rick Liotta joined me (thus Team Rick), and my main impression of the entire experience is: wow, we exceeded my wildlest expectations. Rick and I won our Flight pretty handily. We scored more points than another other team in any other flight, and we didn't lose a single match (we pushed one, but that's not losing.

Rick really carried us for the first half of Friday. I was playing like complete dog poo, and Liotta was on fire. So much on fire that people questioned his handicap. Liotta was hitting irons an insane distance and hitting the fairway over and over again. It was a beautiful thing.

In our second match on Friday, things were getting pretty grim. We had seesawed back and forth with our opponents and I had managed to remove myself from hole 14 by topping two drives in a row. Liotta noticed that I was hanging back on my right side and he mentioned it to me. When we approached 15, I told myself that I didn't care what happened to the ball, I just wanted a nice divot and to get through it. For those who don't know...I am hole 15's bitch. I snap hook more irons into the crap there than any other hole -- it contributes, on average, 2 shots to my handicap. So our opponents tee off first. One is in the bunker and I frankly can't remember what the other guy did, but it wasn't a stellar shot, that much I remember. I then step up with my 9i and stand over the ball, breathe in, try to relax and tell myself to get through the ball. I swing and off it goes, starting right of the pin as I wanted, and slowly drawing towards it. It lands and runs right at the hole at which point Liotta is screaming: GO IN GO IN, and boom, it does. A few girly screams later, people cheering from the other fairway, and the wind completely falling out of the sails of our opponents, and we were back to being in the match.

That's now 3 holes in one, each in July, three years in a row. I can't explain it -- it's bizarre, but that's how it is.

We then proceed to trade some on the next hole, I manage to make a key putt on 17 to win the hole, and we end that match all square.

I felt I did a much better job on our third round actually contributing some holes and not letting Rick have to take all the pressure...I still had a lot of issues topping the ball...something I have to work on a ton.

Saturday came along and we had a shotgun start. We played against these two older gentlemen, Tom and Harry, who were an absolute joy to play. Tom wasn't very long off the tee, but he was quite accurate and if his putting had been on, he would have made us work more. Rick and I both played reasonably well and we got through that match with 7.5 points. When we returned to the clubhouse we found that we were still ahead, but that the group closest to us were going to play Tom and Harry...we thought we were doomed. We went into our last round and both of us did not play to our best ability, but we managed to win enough holes and get some luck on our side to win the match 1 UP. That gave us 6.5 points and left us in a good spot. As we drove back to the clubhouse, we saw Tom and Harry and they told us they had pushed on their round, so that was it: we had won our flight! Suh-weet. We were onto the horse race.

The horse race is an interesting thing. EVERYONE who won their flights had to tee off, then one by one you all play until you're on the green, etc. What was amazing is that nobody sent one OB. I hit before Rick and pulled my 3i a bit, but I was okay on the left side in the rough. Rick stripped his 2i to the left fairway. He hit the green, I landed next to the green, and we got out of the hole with a par. Three teams that didn't play as well got eliminated and we moved onto our second playoff hole.

I hit my drive high and right, landing at the base of a tree on the top of a knoll. Rick also pushed his tee shot right into the rough. I was forced to hit a 9i layup to about 190. Rick decided to go for it and took out a 3 wood to blast out of the rough. Unfortunately, that turned out to be not a great play, and Rick's ball fell into the crap. Ugh. So now I had to play more conservatively as 190 is not a strong distance for me. I hit my rescue, which faded to the right of the greenside cart path. Rick dropped and nuked an iron (he was doing that all day) too far right over the top of my ball and almost into the crap, but landed safe. I now hit my 4th shot as a high lob wedge into the green, missing slightly right and just off the green in the second cut. I chip up, falling a bit short of the hole. Now I have the big test. I have a 3' putt, breaking slightly left to right. if I make it, we move on to hole 3, if not, I am in a chip off. I step up to the putt and unfortunately didn't hit it hard enough, the break took over and I missed it to the low side. I was pretty broken up inside about that -- Rick had carried us for the first part of day 1, and I here I was not able to make a 3' putt that was pretty simple. So now I had to make a chip off. It's between myself and one other guy. He turns his back so he can't see what I do, I chip up to 10', which I felt was okay, but not great (thought the ball was going to turn toward the hole and it didn't), and then the other guy chipped closer. We were done. Then it was time to go cheer Paul and Chris on.

I feel really good about how far we made it, but I still am stung by the fact that I had two chances to keep us going and I muffed up both of them. I honestly believe we would have been in that final group with Paul and Chris if we had make it past that hole...but it wasn't to be. Maybe next year.

Quest for the tee game

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 23:56:34 GMT

Things over the summer to do with my golf game:

Find a driver that fits my swing
Lock in the 3w/5w spot in my bag
Fix taking the club too far inside
Fix standing up in the swing (take smaller swing)
Look into a good short game school

My tee game has improved steadily and I'm hitting more fairways, which is nice. I am currently using an Ignite 460 and I'm pretty sure it's not really right for my game, but as we have no launch monitor equipment in the area, I have to live with that. I hit a new FT-3 the other day with the draw option and I have to say that once you get past that sound (thunk), it's a damned forgiving and long driver.

In the three wood area, I have been on quite a quest for a long time. I am currently locking in on the Sonartec MD series as a three wood/five wood. The pro that fitted me picked the wrong shaft, so they are off to Sonartec to be replaced, hopefully soon.

All in all, it's been a horrid month for golf. June saw my scores go right back up to near 100, and I expect my handicap to rise accordingly. I am missing greens from 150 yards in, and missing them very badly. I often miss to the wrong side, or hit rock hard mounds that send my ball into the crap. Today, as an example, I lost 8 balls. I shot a 98, which tells you the difference between hitting in the 80's at the Plateau Club, and hitting in the high 90's. You can't get away with that. So, we will just see how that goes.

Batman Begins

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 16:11:30 GMT

Talk about a movie that exceeded my expectations! Holy FRICK that movie kicked ass! I saw it Saturday at the IMAX in Seattle and was blown away by the entire experience. Finally, a movie where Wayne/Batman are the main characters and not the bad guys.

Hats off to Nolan -- I hope he sticks with the franchise for a while so we can get some other great stories. The ONLY complaint I had about the movie was that I found it hard to believe a man in armor would have a hard time fighting a man without armor, even if that guy is the Uber Bad Guy. A minor quibble, to be sure.

Member/Member -- UGH

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 00:36:10 GMT

A very humbling three days, I have to admit. Paul and I played in our club's Member/Member tournament this past weekend. The festivities began with a round on Friday to "practice." Then that afternoon we had what's known as a "Calcuta" which was a format where each member teed off, then hit the other person's ball, then you would pick one to play from that point on alternating shots. Paul and I did not do so good at this format.

Saturday brought round 1, and I felt pretty good going into the round. Paul and I played "okay." I shot an 89 (4 above handicap of 85) and paul shot an 87. So we didn't get a lot of points, unfortunately. But it was okay, we were still in it and looking forward to Sunday.

Today was the last day of the tournament and it was pretty ugly from my side. I went into a frenzy of topping the ball and just hitting really poor shots. I ended with a score of 100 (15 above my handicap...UGH), and Paul had an 86. So while our team didn't quite come into last place, we were very, very close.

But, there were some positives. I got to meet some great guys out there during this tournament, and I got to watch some great shots from everyone, including Paul and I. On Saturday, Paul's shortgame was a thing to behold....our playing partners kept talking about it.

I'm glad I did it, but I wish I hadn't played soooo poorly today. I simply forgot how to swing a club, and obviously need some work.

Raja

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 19:31:13 GMT

My High School type

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 07:30:33 GMT

Drama nerd75%

Punk/Rebel50%

Prep/Jock/Cheerleader38%

Geek25%

Goth19%

Loner19%

Ghetto gangsta6%

Stoner0%
What's Your High School Stereotype?
created with QuizFarm.com

More on Star Wars

Fri, 27 May 2005 04:55:04 GMT

Okay, so I have given the movie more thought, and here is my main gripe:

Lucas has had like decades to think up this story, he explains in Episode IV that Vader was power hungry, etc, then, after all that, we are to believe that the reason he went to the Dark Side was his wife might die in childbirth -- that for this reason alone he slaughted children and all of his friends.

Right. Like that makes even one iota of sense. He couldn't do better than that? Ugh.

Rob

Wed, 25 May 2005 02:48:22 GMT

My brother.

That said...

Mon, 23 May 2005 05:08:33 GMT

I think this latest Star Wars, which I finally saw today, was a fantastic movie. So Empire and this stand out for me on best of the 6. I still, however, remain confused on how Grand Moff Tarkin gives orders to Vader in Episode IV. How does Vader go from being El Hombre to Guy Who Takes Orders...that didn't get answered. But over all -- thanks to Lucas for finally making a move for me, and not my 11 year old kid.

Star Trek vs. Star Wars

Wed, 18 May 2005 21:50:20 GMT

Probably not a popular opinion, but I would much rather watch the adventures of Kirk and crew than Star Wars. I liked Star Wars, but I never loved Star Wars.

Oh, yes -- and it's TOS, not TNG. TNG had some highlights, but overall, I prefer my authentic Trek. :)

Quote

Use the force, but live long and prosper - Forbes.com - MSNBC.com