Mediocrity Inaction

Side gig

2011-11-22T20:44:00.002-06:00

So I'm thinking about starting a side blog to post things specific to my area of professional speciality. You may wonder what that is. Some times I do to! In a nutshell I am in control of a Statistical Demand Forecasting and Inventory Replenishment system for a small to medium sized company with corporate offices in 5 countries and a global supply chain and customer base. I'm particularly thinking about posting about forecasting issues, global trade and process management, and my efforts to equip the line forecasters with the tools they need (both technology and training).

I'm open to suggestions for naming and anything else.

Not so triumphant return...

2011-11-22T20:25:00.002-06:00

After a 24 month or so absence, I'm thinking about returning to semi-regular blogging. I've taken a different professional position within my company that has pulled the hours and stress level back to a reasonable amount. Further, I kind of feel like I might have something to say again. We'll see of course, the proof shall be in the pudding.

Also, I'm going to close comments on the old posts as they seem to have been taken over by randomness anyway. Don't know if I still have any readers left, but if so "Hi"!

What I've been reading since 1/1/11

2011-01-26T11:57:00.003-06:00

Lair's Poker by Michael Lewis - a quick entertaining read about being inside the Wall StreetMachine during the bond boom that started in the late Eighties. Features the most understandable discussion of CDO's I've seen! (CDO being "collateralized debt obligation" otherwise known as the financial instrument that helped to fuel the demand for investment in mortgages which ultimately helped create the conditions for the panic of 2008.)

Churchill by Paul Johnson - a loving biography of Winston Churchill by a man who knew him and obviously respected him. Assumes reader familiarity with Churchill to already exist, so at least read wikipedia before starting. Nice, Warm biography of Churchill - short ones are quite rare!

Next to read: Great Fortune - Daniel Okrent Update - read it. Great book to describe the Rockefeller Center project.Read a lot of other stuff too - maybe I'll get around to posting about the highlights.

Reason to fear China

2009-07-25T21:28:00.001-05:00

One common argument — at least prior to the crisis — was that sovereign investors, because of their long-term focus, were generally a stabilizing presence in the market. Sovereign wealth funds in particular. And presumably central bank reserve managers as well. After all, in many cases, the line between a sovereign wealth fund and an aggressively managed central bank reserve portfolio is rather thin.*

From my google feed
Sent from my iPhone

Alton Brown is a genius!

2009-06-06T12:55:00.003-05:00

I was inspired by a Good Eats episode (Specifically the episode titled "Q") to build a smoker from scratch.

It turned out incredibly well. I smoked 4 bone-in chicken breasts and 2 turkey Keilbasas on Saturday. The chicken was ready in about 4 hours. I smoked a 4 pound Pork Butt and some Polish Sausages on Sunday. The Sausages were ready in about 3-4 horus and the Pork Butt I took off after 8 hours, but probably should have gone a couple more. It was DELICIOUS, but it wasn't completely fall-apart-on-its-own yet.

What you'll need:
3 bricks
2 terra cotta pots, I suggest one 16" and one 14"
A replacement grill thermometer
A 13" replacement grill grate (round)
A cheap hotplate
A heavy duty pieplate or subsitute
Hardwood Chips
Meat

1: Take the large pot and set it right side up on the three bricks so that you have clear access to the drainage hole on the bottom (making sure that said hole can get airflow).

2: Turn the hotplate to high and set in the bottom of the pot, run the cord out through the bottom. Do not plug in yet.

3: Set the pieplate on the heating element of pieplate. And fill with your choice of wood chips.

4: Set the replacement grill grate in the pot. It will catch on the sides and wedge in pretty securely.

5: Arrange your meat on the grate.

6: Place the smaller pot upside down over the lower pot and try to align for a "good" seal. The seal won't be great, but hey, this is cheap.

7: Place the replacement themrometer in drainage hole in the top pot.

8: Plug in hotplate.

Housekeeping

2009-03-29T16:22:00.003-05:00

I've added a few things to the sidebar lately.

First, a box linking to my results at Predictify, a site which very comes up with a knowledge market pretty slickly. By publicly posting my results, I force myself to be try to be right more often, rather than voting for which option I *hope* comes true, thus increasing the validity of the results.

Second, I use Google Reader to keep track of RSS feeds from my favorites sites. This has an added advantage to me of being able to mark posts I think everyone should read and having them show up in my sidebar. If you want to know what I think is worthwhile, that's a good place to go.

I think that's everything, have a great spring!

New Year Economics Post

2009-01-03T09:35:00.002-06:00

Things could be better.

The way I see it, and there are LOTS of ways to see it, there are three phases to an economic contraction. Looked at from an employment perspective, I think it looks like this:

Phase 1: Layoffs in "backrooms". Mergers almost always produce these as the combined entity looks to eliminate duplicate job functions. Also, call centers, data processors and other "non contact" areas see losses. Most often spotted in service sector businesses. Most contractions stop here.

Phase 2: Layoffs in "production". The GM work holiday is a good example of this. These are layoffs in manufacturing and other profit generating centers of the economy. This is when you know things are not good. The cuts happen because the job losses sustained in Phase 1 are great enough to shift aggregate consumer demand low enough to impact the profitability of entire companies. The 80's recession stopped here.

Phase 3: Layoffs in "Sales". This includes not just salespeople, but any other area which directly impacts the way a company see itself directly generating demand for it's goods or services. This is easy to misinterpret as there is a lot churn in this area, particularly in "Sales Person" type jobs. However, when companies begin to meaningfully cut their sales staff (and hence sales potential), they've pretty much given up hope. As a company goes bankrupt, the sales jobs are often among the very last to go.

Right now, I believe we're several steps into Phase 2. The production layoffs are currently happening in mostly only marginally profitable businesses, but over time they'll spread into business which were very profitable a few years ago. When they do, the businesses cutting production now will likely be cutting Sales capacity.

Have a look around yourself, think about the people you know who've lost their job or cuts you've heard about. Let me know in the comments what you think. From my current employment, I'm seeing lots of Phase 1 and some Phase 2 cuts at both our customers and vendors. Right now our vendors are in worse shape as a whole, than our customers.

I Voted

2008-11-04T18:23:00.002-06:00

I voted today. I'm not going to list who for, but as is typical it was a very eclectic ballot. I particularly enjoyed the "ballot initiatives" on the ballot. Do I support outlawing cell phone use on city streets? Um, no. Do I support alternative voting schemes? Maybe, but the poorly worded question does not encourage me. Do I want Illinois to have a new constitutional convention? Only if a different state will write the constitution!

I voted a little before 7am, and waited about 15 minutes. There were more voting booths than I remember from years past and the poll workers seemed better trained. Both positive outcomes.

Darts?

2008-10-27T20:18:00.002-05:00

So...let's play a game.

Let's assume that 10% of the people you know right now are unemployed. Let's also assume that in 3 months that 10% will have a job and a new 10% will be unemployed. Rinse, and repeat for 10 cycles. Everyone's been unemployed now for 3 months, at different times. Make sense?

Ok, in this imaginary situation: Why type of businesses do well? Obviously temp agencies have a bright future, as well as collection agencies. What else can you think of?

Well this should keep things interesting

2008-09-29T13:24:00.001-05:00

The bailout failed. Bad news, we will see how robust our markets are. Watch your money held in money market funds. The government has pledged to back the share price, but there's only so many dollars we can print before that stops working.

On the bright side, we are entering the phase where the banks are "all in". Soon we'll know who has bad books and who has good ones. Once we know that, credit will begin to flow again.

Sent from my iPhone

Yipes

2008-09-19T07:51:00.001-05:00

I have a lot if thoughts running around in my skull regarding the unfolding credit/liquidity/confidence crisis. I am not smart enough to distill them into anything succinct enough to post.

I can say that given the actions of the the Fed over this last week, I have a lot of confidence in the people in charge of this independant entity. They seem to be identifing the correct risks and acting mostly prudently to attack the most urgent issues.

That is not to say that I think we are not under a large amount of risk, even at a personal level. This is like the fist act in a long and compex play. Things are going to hurt before it is solved. In a way, we have an unprecedented contemporary view given that we know about this because all the entries are publicly owned. A century ago we would have only heard about much of this well after the fact.

Be careful out there. Don't take too many unnessessary risks.

Sent from my iPhone

The new iPhone software takes screenshots

2008-07-13T08:19:00.001-05:00

Sent from my iPhone

Success!

2008-06-30T22:13:00.001-05:00

It worked! I now have a completely (I think) functional internet database of the information!

This might work.

2008-06-26T19:46:00.000-05:00

Found some 5.25 disks on ebay. Using the archive function of xcopy in
ms-dos 3.21 to move the whole directory onto the disks.

It looks like it worked. Now... Need to find a company in town that
can pull the data off and give it back to me.

Then, see if the newest version of personal ancestry file can still
read these data files. Hopefully I'll catch a break and it will.

If so, next step is exporting from that new version the GEDCOM format
and uploading into the "production" machine.

If wish I was a little bit smarter

2008-06-22T20:14:00.002-05:00

I have gotten myself into quite an interesting situation.

I've started a project to try to migrate genealogical data from a very old computer owned by one of my grandfather's brothers to a modern machine. (Final goal is internet enabled display and usage of the data.)

The machine I'm trying to move data from is an old IBM Personal Computer XT running DOS 2.31. The genealogy software installed on its "Personal Ancestry File" (PAF) version 2.2. I have a couple layers of problems to solve.

Hardware: The machine has an internal hard drive, that's where the data is stored. It also has a 5.25inch floppy drive. That floppy drive is the only way to get data in and out. Well, I suppose I could try to track down an 8 bit ISA ethernet card and open the machine up, but I'm not willing to do that. If I do anything compromise the computer OR the data in it, I'll be making a big mistake. This stuff is irreplaceable. So I need to find a way to get data out of the computer (probably via floppy) and have it transfered to a more modern computer so that I can work with it. CURRENT PLAN: find someone with DOS experience and floppy disks to help me move the PAF directory onto floppy so that I can move it to a more modern computer (but still with a floppy drive) to store/manipulate it on.

Data Format: The standard file format for genealogy information is GEDCOM. The software waiting to receive this data on the modern computer (a Mac Mini running phpGEDview, if you're interested) will happily read GEDCOM files. I need to convert this data into GEDCOM. Sadly, PAF 2.2 does not export GEDCOM files. So, I need to get the PAF 2.2 data into another program which can read it and use that intermediary program to generate a GEDCOM file of the data. CURRENT PLAN: copy PAF 2.2 data to another computer, install a newer version of PAF to convert the data and then use this newer version of PAF to export a GEDCOM file. The GEDCOM file can the be burned to a CD/emailed/directly uploaded to the phpGEDview server.

Before typing this post I was pretty overwhelmed by this. However, the process of typing this out has helped me organize my thoughts. The key is going to be finding a knowledgeable and helpful person with DOS experience. I have a bit of hope someone in the IT department at my workplace may be able to help. If not, I'm in a difficult place.

Success!

2008-06-21T16:43:00.001-05:00

I have about 300 years of family history in my car right now!

Sent from my iPhone

Not a bad thing on a Sunday in June.

2008-06-08T18:43:00.001-05:00

Steve Forbes ties the civil war and the falling dollar together - gets a gold star for the day from me

2008-05-13T08:15:00.004-05:00

I was listening to a local talk radio station on the way to work this morning and they were doing a phone interview with Steve Forbes who you may remember as "the flat tax guy"

Mr. Forbes compared Hank Paulson's relucantance to attack the falling dollar to General George McClellan's seemingly unexplainable inability to act in attacking the Confederate Army during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia in 1862.

(Incidentally, McClellan's struggle there is one of things I learned in 8th Grade that really propelled me to study history in college. On paper McClellan was a great candidate for a Civil War General. In practice, he tended to overstudy and overprepare, unlike the two most widely known Union Generals now, Grant and Sherman. I'm sure someone has already written a book contrasting the styles of the the first well known Union General and the last. If not, I'll buy it when someone does.)

The falling dollar presents a similar (if not direct analogy) for Mr. Paulson. He is faced with a complex problem involving an actor (the dollar) which he knows a great deal about. None of his options to win are "easy" or can be done without causing pain and/or suffering to his country and career. In the face of this it seems he's chose to "keep looking" rather than to do something, a common curse. In this case, unlike during the Civil War, Paulson can look to history. Specfically Paul Volcker, who wrangled a similar problem under control in the early 80's (Albiet at a great short and medium term cost to his career and country.)

Moral of the story, things will get worse before they get better. The speed at which they get worse is directly proportional to how quickly things will get better.

2nd Moral, it takes a rare combination of Civil War history and Monetary Policy to get me to post a real blog entry.

edit: 3rd Moral, be careful how up post from email as it can do VERY nasty things to your formatting.

Marginal Revolution: Exporting Electrons

2008-05-01T08:29:00.002-05:00

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/05/exporting-elect.html

Google's profit rose as a consequence of the falling dollar. There is
one sector of the economy which exhibits this behavior predictably.

Exporters.

Google exports something to the rest of the world, but it isn't a hard
good. Herein may lie the future of the American economy. Think.
Discuss.

Sent from my iPhone

False promises

2008-04-29T13:37:00.001-05:00

I did the first little bit of a blog redesign last night. I'd tell
you to get excited, but I don't know how well I'm going to stay on
track.

Google is slowly stringing together a social network through its many
facets. You'll notice on the right sidebar that there is a grouping
of items I've plucked from my google reader feed to share. There is
even more coming I think.

Sent from my iPhone

Mostly for my reference

2008-04-09T09:10:00.001-05:00

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/04/the-fall-was-a.html

This is a pointer to an article which looks absolutely fascinating.
It is possible that historians have massively under estimated the
material wealth of average people from the middle ages backward.

Sent from my iPhone

Comcast broke my interwebs

2008-02-20T09:01:00.001-06:00

Apparently the Insight high speed Internet equipment was moved to
comcast this week. This broke me, mostly. DNS resolution now takes
15 or more seconds, and seems to need to happen for each element on a
web page. For example, this blog took over a minute to completely
load on my last refresh.

Further, my lovely wife used her Insight email as a primary address
and was shut off yesterday without warning or instructions on how to
transition.

Comtastic!

Sent from my iPhone

Wow

2008-02-05T19:43:00.001-06:00

Holy crap is this a lot of rain! This is the worst I've seen it since I've lived in this house. My poor sump is working as hard as it can. Don't give up little guy!

Sent from my iPhone

Go vote!

2008-02-05T12:26:00.001-06:00

I'm going to vote tonight, are you? This might surprise some of you,
but I'm going to pull a non-partisan ballot. I'm not excited about
either of the Republican candidates, and I don't want to disengenously
pull a Democratic ticket for this election only.

Sent from my iPhone

The Stomach, your most inner economist

2008-01-29T07:30:00.001-06:00

I've been reading Tyler Cowen's book, Discover Your Inner Economist
I've often claimed that the best food (particularly when one is looking for "bar food/tavern food") is often found at the "nastiest" places, assuming of course, that basic sanitation is a given. My reasoning is that first, to stay open the nasty place has to offer a high value proposition and second, it takes a lot of time to get "nasty" and that time usually seasons cooking surfaces nicely. Cowen has an entire chapter devoted to how to maximize your "dining out" utility. His logic is different than mine, but the conclusions we reach are similar enough that I'm taking the time to pat myself on the back here.

Variable road tolls?

2008-01-16T08:52:00.001-06:00

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/01/congestion-pric.html

Sorry for the ugly link, but I am still looking for a more elegant
mobile posting solution.

Any one have any thoughts on this? It's a very libertarian notion. I
don't completely disagree with it, but I have reservations about it in
practice, both from a civil liberties/privacy angle and a belief that
charging users of roads would not reduce the amount collected by the
government even though road maintence would now be a profit center.
(wow that's a long setence!)

Thoughts?

Sent from my iPhone

New research on prediction markets

2008-01-07T11:25:00.001-06:00

Hopefully I'll be able to write more on this later today. Marginal Revolution (see sidebar) has a post about new research (summary by the NYT) on predictive markets, one of my favorite topics. I hope to update this post later, but for now just go read!

Sent from my iPhone

Update: (not from iPhone) - links added to source material above.

Ok, so there is a lot to think about about in just the NYT summary. I haven't even begun to work through the actual paper behind the summary. Most importantly, this is a story about a company using predictive markets in more than just a "novel" way. This is a big deal. Secondly, it shows some of the possible "gotchas" for an organization looking to implement a similar system. Employees want their organization to "win". They tend to think that they will accomplish goals within the times targeted and believe that continuing goals (like sales) are attainable. Thirdly, the proximity factor is much, much stronger than I would have anticipated. It is well known that "proximity makes things happen", and in my sphere of control I've worked to keep related positions near each other.

I'm sure I'll find some other interesting tibits when I get a chance to review the article. This is also making me want to start up with the predictive market site NewsFutures.

Watching the Rose Bowl

2008-01-01T18:12:00.000-06:00

Sadly, we're not winning. At least the food is good!

2008-01-01T10:23:00.000-06:00

I'm watching the Rose Parade with my lovely wife. Happy New Year!

2007-12-28T12:31:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting in the waiting room of my car dealership waiting for my loaner car. Thank goodness for this iPhone! Now I'm still connected to pretty much everything. Fun!

I'm a bag blogger. Who knew?

2007-12-27T18:56:00.000-06:00

Why hello!

I'm surprised you dropped by. It's not like I've provided any sort of content to bring you back in the last 3 months. It appears I'm a bad blogger again.

Hope, however, springs eternal.

My exceedingly fantastic and lovely wife has provided me with a new tool of mobile connectivity. It's a wonder of modern engineering and I still can't believe I actually have it. She gave me an iPhone for christmas! It's absolutely amazing.

At any rate, I'm hoping my increased connectivity will spur me post here more often. I've gotten past the difficulty (for the moment) in my position that required roughly 99% of my cognitive capacity. Hopefully I can use my spare cycles to think of semi-interesting thoughts to share with you all, assuming any of you are left. Additionally, iPhone seems to take pretty decent pictures (much better than my old RAZR), so I may be able to do a bit of photoblogging. It would be nice if Flickr or Blogger would get onboard and optimize an upload weblet for the iPhone, but it's not a dealbreaker since I've got a pretty capable web browser in my pocket all the time now.

At any rate, thanks for reading. Hope to see you again soon!

I am a hero!

2007-09-15T12:53:00.000-05:00

Today, I saved the Democratic People's Republic of Urbana from what it referred to as an "imminent hazard". And I did so in 15 minutes with only a pair of pruning shears for defense.

It seems the lilac bush in my backyard was deemed some sort of outlaw, and the city directed me to tame the fearsome beast by any means necessary. It apparently was attacking the one car a month that uses the alley behind my house. After taming said fearsome lilac, I throughly checked the area for the remains of victims of this "imminent hazard". Thankfully, it looks like the lilac had not been able to completely trap any naive passerbys in a leafy, pleasant smelling doom. I also gave the bush a good talking to lest it harass an alley goer again. I feel I have served the DPRU admirably and I will be excepting some sort of reward. A statue downtown sounds nice. Some sort of heroic pose with my shears held high, lilac leaves strewn pathetically around my feet. Yeah, that will do nicely.

Multimedia message

2007-09-01T13:26:00.001-05:00

I'm not a baseball fan, but I can enjoy a late summer day at wrigley feild.

Global economics on a small scale

2007-08-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

We've all heard about the trade deficit. Simply defined, the trade deficit is the dollar difference between the things we buy from other countries and the things they buy from us. A trip to pretty much any retail outlet will explain many of the types of things we buy from other countries.

It's my job to help make that happen.

I spend my days deciding how much foreign material the organization of which I am part will bring into the US and when it should arrive. Other people, my coworkers, think of new ideas which the organization then sends to other companies in other countries to actually bring into the physical world. Essentially, the ideas are created here and they become real somewhere else. Then the real physical manifestation of these ideas are purchased here.

In this way, I am one of manifestations of the "invisible hand" Adam Smith wrote about in The Wealth of Nations. Every day, I create economic activity in a poorer country. The profit motive of my organization (and hundreds of others) is slowly raising the standard of living in a wide variety of developing countries.

And right now, I have a horrible sinus headache and can't really figure out where I was going with this. Consider this an incomplete brain dump.

Feasting on Asphalt Season 2 Episode 2

2007-08-22T21:11:00.000-05:00

I'm late on episode two. I haven't had a chance to get a second viewing until just now. My deepest apologies.

Alton starts the episode learning the "authentic" way to make File' a pulverized version of sassafras leaves. Of course, he's still in Louisiana. I'm embarrased that I haven't use file' yet. Don't tell anyone!

He hilarously picks up a dozen donuts in Natchez Mississipi at 3:15 in the afternoon on a Sunday. Fresh donuts. Then more hilarously, stops by a blues festival and has catfish and spagetti. Apparently, the spagetti is quite good. He spends many, many (4 actually) attempting by a mixture of badgering and begging to get the "secret" to it. At one point he collaspes on the ground faking a food allergy.

In this episode, he reveals that Feasting On Asphalt is officially CHEATING this year. They brought a motorhome. This means no more fantastic moments when he would cook in someone else's motorhome.

A stop for some fried chicken at what must be an excellent spot yeilds a slightly unsettling proprietor. Although my lovely wife is quite fond of musicals, I'm generally suspicious of anyone who randomly breaks in song. Then - On to Vicksburg. Alton gives a short history lesson that I am already immensly familiar. Vicksburg is on my list of places to visit at some inderminate point in the future. The stop yeilds a fairly interesting bit of trivia about the first bottling of Coca-Cola.

It is at this point in the show that I'm again reminded that breakfast is the best meal of the day. Alton gets a pancakes and rib tips. I challenge any reader to email me a scanned menu anywhere with printed on it. They seem to go over really well. he picks on other members of this traveling party who were unfortunate enough to not follow his lead.

This show was heavy on the humor and really showcases the group that he's with. By inviting us along, we feel like one of the cool kids for an hour.

[feasting on asphalt]

Multimedia message

2007-08-18T20:26:00.001-05:00

Streetfest in downtown champaign.

Feasting On Asphalt Season 2 Episode 1

2007-08-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

Hooray! A new season of Feasting on Asphalt! To be honest, I wasn't sure we'd get to see another. I loved the first season, but the show seemed so narrowly focused at my personal tastes that I didn't think it would be commerically successful. I'm very glad I was wrong.

Season two is "The River Road", a travelogue of the Mississippi. (I think this also makes St. Louis the center of gravity for the show.) And any good story about the Mississippi has to start or end with New Orleans. In this case, Alton starts with NOLA. He discovers alligator, and spends the rest of the episode working his way up the Louisana section of the river. Crawfish, anouillie, bread pudding, red beans and rice... all of the food you'd expect are explored. All in all, I think the show did an excellent job of taking the viewer through many of the celebrated flavors of Louisiana.

And again the strength of show is Alton Brown in his unscripted element. He really relishes the spotlight, enjoys interacting with both people who are impressed by his celebrity and people who don't seem to really know who he is. He's the kind of person who makes his audience feel smarter through his delivery and enthusiasm.

I love "Feasting". I'm happy to have it back again for few episodes. I hope you all enjoy it too.

[feasting on asphalt]

Multimedia message

2007-07-28T21:04:00.001-05:00

Only in Urbana.

Rest in peace, Ronnie.

2007-07-21T22:16:00.001-05:00

Work

2007-07-08T11:13:00.001-05:00

In miniature.

I'm a bad blogger.

2007-03-13T20:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah so...

I'm bad.

But Ask A Ninja is good. Very good.

Go. Enjoy.

I'm sorry I haven't posted more.

Random blog droppings

2007-01-29T05:40:00.000-06:00

It's 5:45am. I've been up for almost an hour. The sad part is that this is now normal. I've started getting up much earlier in order to head to work a bit sooner. I find the time quiet time in the morning incredibly productive.

We finally took the jump and picked up a DVR box and an cable on demand. The lovely wife and I are both in love with the machine. The "on demand" free episodes of many cable shows (particularly from the History Channel and The Food Network) are very handy. The contents of our DVR show our wildly divergent TV viewing habits however.

One last short note, I'm watching the presidential candidate field with a mild interest. Mostly, I'm curious to see which mainstream candidates from each party have a PR disaster (a la 'The Dean Scream') first. If I had to pick who might come out on top at this early date, I say we'll be looking at an Obama/Guilianni race in '08.

Ah...football

2007-01-08T20:12:00.000-06:00

Alright, first a confession. This will be the first full football I've watched this year.

Illinois football was just too depressing. I went to a few games this year, but we left at halftime, usually because it was just too painful. I lost touch with the NFL after my fantasy league disintegrated a couple years ago. I still love to watch football, it's just getting harder to set aside 3 full hours without a dog in the fight, so to speak.

Anyway, I'm watching the BCS championship game. It's Ron Zook's (Florida) players versus the Big Ten team. (Ohio State, of course) I almost don't know who to root for. Of course, at this point in the game it's not much of contest. Ohio state ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, but hasn't done a thing since. Florida is marching up and down the field like this is scrimmage. This is not the game I expected to be watching. The thing is, I probably should have expected something akin to this. Superbowls are generally the same way. So much is riding on the game, it's been so long since the guys have played an actual game and they're so keyed up one team always falls apart a little bit. Sometimes they can pull it back together, but not very often.

I apologize for the utter lack of substance here, but I'm in my sweats and I'm watching football - what did you expect?

Christmas cat 2

2007-01-05T08:18:00.000-06:00

This is the last one, honestly.

Something exciting this way comes

2007-01-03T21:28:00.000-06:00

So something exciting must be coming down the pipe, right???

I'm in the market for new a Apple laptop. Of course I hope for news on that front. There are a few more options Apple can bring to the party: an Apple branded phone is a good bet, a set-top box almost assured...

But what else? What's The Steve's next "just one more thing"?

I really am going to miss being able to watch the keynote live while at work.

Christmas cat

2007-01-02T22:29:00.001-06:00

See? Pictures!

Success!

2007-01-02T22:05:00.000-06:00

Moderately good news on the giving-you-something-to-read-here-regularly front: My cellphone now posts directly to this blog. Given that's it is still a cell phone and not some newfangled smartphone with a real keyboard, text will be at a minimum. Alright, that's not funny. I actually heard one of you cheering when I typed that. Anyway, the main function of this will be for me to upload relatively crappy pictures from my phone or maybe short video. Good students will realize that is step one toward eventually becoming a gargoyle.

This raises interesting concerns about revealing my true identity through this blog. Of course many if not virtually every single one of my readers already knows who I am. However, my intent is to maintain at least a serviceable amount of 'disembodied narrator' voice here. So, please refrain from stalking me based on my photo uploads. Unless you are handing out $100 dollar bills. Then, stalk away dear benefactor!

Ideally, (read: help me know if you the solution) my phone would actually post the pictures to the Mediocrity Inaction Flicker account and Flicker would generate a post here containing the picture and any accompanying text. This would allow me to later go back in and geo-tag the pictures, adding to that amazing way of categorizing information.

That's it for tonight.

2007-01-01T13:30:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year!

Suprise, I'm posting again. :) My half-assed new year resolution is not to let my lifeforce draining (newish) job preclude my posting here any longer. Of course, gone is my ability to post from work now that I'm no longer the resident computer expert (among other titles I had in that position), but I hope to be able to upload little bits of my brain in the evenings or on weekends. Further, if I can just my new RAZR to spit out an email from something other than a webmail account I may be able to post short notes and hopefully PICTURES from it.

At any rate, I wish all (or both) of my remaining readers a happy and prosperous New Year. I have moderately high hopes for the coming year, the beginning of my first full year as married man.

Thanks for sticking with me, dear reader(s)!

Politics

2006-11-08T21:29:00.000-06:00

Only a few people will understand how busy I must be when I admit that I haven't had time to read/listen or even spend some time thinking about the election. I heard the Mike Frerichs won a seat in the State legislature. I'm happy he was finally elected to some office, he's been trying for a decade. I wish we could run Illinois without a governor. I'm impressed with the turnout numbers locally and the general lack of trouble with the new equipment.

Rumsfeld is out. I'm not sure why this took this long. He's been demonstrate for so long that even if I completely trusted in his leadership and ideas it would be hard to keep him on. He had some good ideas on force structure and was effective in shaking up the Pentagon.

Speaker Pelosi. Yipes. I hope her new tone stays. I'm glad to see that Hastert isn't running for minority leader, I've had more than enough of him. His jealous guarding of William Jefferson's secrets and assertations of "office privilege" for congressmen really made me squirm.

It'll be neat to hear how the final senate race falls out. I'm sick of these contested elections however. It's a slippery slope that we've already headed quite a way down. At the bottom is virtually every election contested and the act of voting becoming even more questionably futile.

All work and now play makes MDW a bad blogger.

2006-09-27T21:32:00.000-05:00

I've been a bad blogger. I'm sorry for that.

I recently changed jobs and, frankly, have less "free" moments during the day. This isn't a bad situation for me and I'm certainly not complaining. I have less time to ponder the mysteries of life and local politics. Depending on your opinion of me and my opinions that may or may not be a bad thing. Heh.

I'll leave you with one short thought:

It took food network far too long to realize that "Ham on the Street" is a much better to follow "Good Eats" than anything involving Rachel Ray.

That is all.

Where were you?

2006-09-11T06:46:00.000-05:00

On 9/11/01, I was eating breakfast at the table of my parent's house. I was watching CNBC and Mark Hines announced that it seemed that some sort of recreational aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. They anchor crew didn't panic, and for the first few minutes they actually started to go back into regular morning news coverage. But as additional video came in they started to realize that it was actually a much larger plane. Then I had to leave for work.

At my desk, I turned on the local news-radio station, AM 1400. At the time I believe they were an NBC affiliate. It was then I heard reports of the second plane's impact. The radio news feed was chaotic, as the manager/editor tried to keep current with new information by switching reporters constantly. When the 3rd plane hit the pentagon the woman reporting it lost her composure completely saying, "This just keeps getting worse." A few moments of radio dead air and she brought herself back together and the station stayed with her for quite a while. Until the first tower collapsed.

I can remember wondering what was next. During the early 80's part of cold war I remember learning that as a major hub for the then largely unknown internet and the location of PLATO, the U of I would be a secondary or tertiary target for Soviet ICBM's. I was pretty sure that wouldn't be the case for whatever was happening that morning. Whoever it was attacking us wasn't going after our ability to make war or even attempting to blunt our response.

What I do remember was wanting to help. I wanted to drive my car to New York, but realized there would be far more help there than they'd need. Instead, I finished out my workday.

What where you doing that morning?

The Manolo, he is funny.

2006-09-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

Occasionally, I pass across a link to something written by the Manolo, the top of the food chain of shoe/fashion bloggerdom.

I encourage you to check out Manolo's post on Dictator style. It's Fabulous.

Labor Day Weekend

2006-09-04T09:03:00.000-05:00

In celebration of The American Labor force, I decided to scrape and repaint the outdoor stairs at the Mediocrity Inaction HQ. I gathered the will to begin this epic task at about 9am yesterday. After spending what felt like 8 hours (but was actually only 2) scraping the railing and most of the steps, I retrieved the paint and primer. Sadly, the primer and paint must have frozen at some point over the winter and became worthless. Undetered, I purchased headed to the store to buy new paint. I was able to procure both primer and white porch paint, but no "porch gray". The steps remain unpainted due to this fact. However the railing shines like fresh snow.

As I was Laboring on this project I spent some time thinking about how "work" has changed for a vast number of my countrymen. I'm aware that there are still a LOT of people who do manual work for wage. However, the percentage is much smaller now than at any point in our history. More and more of us are doing "knowledge" or "service" work, as opposed to pounding nails or driving rivets. I'm not sure how this affects the country. I do know it's more difficult to unionize people in "incentivized" positions, which many service and knowledge positions are. Does this change our national character? Probably. It's not going to usher in a new era of Teddy Roosevelt style "rugged-individualism", we're too far abstracted from nature for that. Does it drive us to silly extremes of conspicuous consumption? Sometimes, although I believe that impulse is moderating after peaks in the late 80's and again in the late 90's. What I am sure it does do, however, is make us more dependent on each other. As we dedicate more and more of our minds to the increasingly specialized knowledge required in our work, we lose some of our ability to be self-reliant. We -have- to call a plumber because we never learned to fix leaks. We use financial planners, personal trainers and therapists.

We're increasingly good at whatever we do individually, and that bodes well for all of us.

Blog Day

2006-08-31T08:32:00.000-05:00

Apparently, today is "Blog Day". (Which overloaded BlogDay's servers. At press time, the link didn't work.) It seems I'm supposed to suggest to you, my innumerable loyal readers, 5 blogs you may not have discovered so far. Far be it for me to ignore this long-standing and noble tradition.

WARNING: You're not going to be fascinated by every one of these, but they're interesting it me dammit, so there.

In no particular order:

1: Ars Technica. This is essentially a group blog/magazine/thing written by some of the smarter people you'll find. It's usually bleeding-edge stuff in computers, biology, and physics. At first, you don't think these go together, but keep stopping by for a few weeks. You'll see how it all fits.

2: Hot Air. Started by (blech) Michelle Malkin, who I am -not- a huge fan of, this site serves amateur videocasts about a wide variety of things. Most of the content is going to be a bit republican for some of you readers, but it's worth checking out just to get a preview of where this blogging thing can eventually go.

3: James Lieks. He's on my blogroll on the right sidebar so this is cheating, but you should be reading him. He's a columnist for the Star-Tribune, but the blog portion isn't a column type thing. It's worth a few minutes of your time every day.

4: Michael Totten. Mr. Totten is a freelance journalist who finances his foreign correspondent writing purely on income donated through his blog. He's been in Israel for the last few days, having previously spent a lot of time in Beruit, Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey. He does a wonderful job of getting to the 'inside' of places we only hear about in the news.

5: The BBQ Blog. A group blog about BBQ, BBQ competition and the BBQ culture. If you're hungry, I suggest putting this one off until after you've had something to eat, otherwise you may go on a six state eating spree.

Cookblogging

2006-08-30T18:22:00.000-05:00

Chicken With Feta Topping,
originally uploaded by mediocrityinaction.

Ask you you shall receive!

This is Chicken with a topping of feta cheese, sun-dried tomato, shallot and garlic. Side of plain old canned corn (spiced with a bit of pepper and garlic by my lovely wife). The "black things" are actually the chopped tomatoes which caramelized nicely on the grill.

This dish was adapted from page 172 of Weight Watchers "New Complete Cookbook". I give it 4 stars (out of 5).

This is the fourth dish we've made from this cookbook and so far they've all been excellent. I heartily recommend the gumbo, but I'm sure I'll blog that before long. It's a great leftover destroyer.

I don't want to reproduce the entire recipe and violate the copyright, but the original title is "Turkey With Feta Topping". You may be able to google your way to it. Changes: Obviously, I substituted chicken breasts for turkey cutlets. I also cooked this on this on the grill rather than in a broiler as the book suggested. (Mostly because my broiler is -very- old and has poor cooking potential.) Next time I make this I'll turn the chicken in cutlet sized pieces, which should allow a greater surface area for the tasty topping. A side of asparagus would be a better compliment than the corn I grabbed in a pinch.

Where did you take that picture?

2006-08-29T11:04:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been asked that question and not been able to describe exactly where it was taken? Or, have you ever asked that question and not received an intelligable answer?

The photo-sharing site Flickr has added the ability to "geo-tag" photos. Essentially, you drag a photo from flickr library onto a map to tie to the place where you took it. This is incredibly cool from a user standpoint, allowing you to view photos of a specific area.

For example, this link should take you to a detailed map of Champaign-Urbana and show all of the geo-tagged photos for the spots. It's a bit sparse right now, but things are just getting rolling.

I will be geo-tagging all of my 'about town' photos in the future.

Another cryptic post

2006-08-27T14:02:00.000-05:00

Hint #2.

Misc.

2006-08-25T15:12:00.000-05:00

I'm really, really going to miss this 19inch LCD monitor. But that's about all.

Things I'd like to start doing.

2006-08-23T15:13:00.000-05:00

I always have these little ideas that I'd like to do but lack the motivation to carry out. I'll lay out a couple and if there are any you guys would like to see show up on this blog in the future let me know. If I know there's an audience watching, I'm more likely to actually do a few of these things. Here are your options...any other ideas are welcome as well.

1) Semi-daily photoblogging - either at home or about town (if there's demand for either one). I've got a Flickr account set up and everything, just haven't gotten around to it.

2) Cookblogging - The lovely wife and I have started regularly preparing home-cooked food again as part of our continual effort to be thinner. I can post about recpies and what we thought of them. Cookblogging will probably involve pictures as well...when I remember to take them.

3) Book reviews - I've done a few of these. Do you find these useful/interesting at all? I can do more...I don't review every book I finish. I'll probably still do them for myself even if everyone hates them, but I can adjust the formatting or something to minimize the impact.

4) Something else? As always, if there's something you might enjoy from the Mediocrity show, let me know. I'm always on the lookout for stimulating ideas.

Feasting on Asphalt #4

2006-08-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

Last one!

Two words that will stick with me from this episode: Cop Food. That hot dog with pastrami would scratch an itch I didn't even know I had.

Of course there was much more to the show than heart attacks on buns. Alton loses control of his bike in loose dirt/gravel and injures his shoulder. We explore the world of mobile kitchens of the semi-tractor and RV variety. One of his companions makes a stew by strapping it to his muffler for 200 miles. Alton makes a meatloaf with a cigarette lighter oven contraption (well, on the second try). They accept an offer by a Native American family to visit during a birthday party and gets to try lots of unique cow based dishes. My lovely wife could have done without seeing the back fat and the intestines on the grill, however.

I've been trying to think of a way to tie up my thoughts on the show, and really I'm torn between abject character worship of Brown and trying to figure if I would have liked the same show with a different host. I'm not entirely sure I would. AB's singular personality drove the show forward. It's entirely possible I wouldn't have been nearly as interested if a different 'star' from Food Network's stable had done the same thing.

Feasting on Asphalt #3

2006-08-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

This was my favorite episode so far. Alton Brown seems to be a genuinely good guy. He seems to be loving the road, and really enjoying the people along the way. He goes a little "Good Eats" by visiting a historian about the St. Louis World's Fair, and heads to Kansas to visit a "Harvey House" - which he labels the first chain fast-food restaurant. But he's planned his arrival to coincide with a city festival where he helps prepare food, buys a ton of cake and auctions off AB memorabilia. He's not a bad auctioneer either. After visiting with a couple sweet old waitresses, he makes a cup of coffee on the top of Pike's Peak. He introduces us to "Frybread" a quick-leavened bread fried in hot oil. The swinging steaks looked quite interesting as well, but my video tape cut off before that aired.

A great episode. He really did the Kansas town a favor showing up and essentially donating a few hundred dollars to their Labor Day celebration. He's genuinely enthusiastic and I'm really looking forward to the next (and sadly, last) episode.

Further, Ted's (the Frybread joint) also made tacos. Real tacos. Now I need to go visit La Bamba, as it's the only 'real taco' place we've got in this town. Perhaps I can talk my lovely wife into an excursion this weekend.

Slight format change

2006-08-16T15:26:00.000-05:00

Little bit of housekeeping info.

You've probably noticed I've added a "Google Ads" banner at the top of the blog. Supposedly, the All-knowing "G" will parse my entries on the page and display ads which are at least marginally relevant. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, if you click one of those ads a penny or two might end up in my pocket. Just trying to find some change under my blog cushions, as it were.

(Also, if you feel like supporting my blogging efforts -meager though they are- you can buy stuff from Amazon after clicking through one of the items in the "What I'm Reading" Sidebar. Amazon cuts me a percentage of whatever you spend. I'd like to thank the one loyal reader who did such a thing last month!)

It is a wonderful time in which we live

2006-08-15T12:27:00.000-05:00

Even though there is a nearly unthinkable amount hate and danger present in the world right now, it's still an amazing time to be alive.

Case in point:

Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey, writes a post about the eternal mystery of where socks go.

We all have so many life experiences we share on a day to day level, regardless of country, class or race. Sometimes blogs can shine light on them.

They also provide us with insight we may not otherwise have access to, such as Sandmonkey commenter "David V.S." who informs us that "Socks are the larval form of coat hangers."

It's a little known fact that I enjoy the Muppets

2006-08-10T09:16:00.000-05:00

I've always enjoyed Muppet productions. I even made my lovely wife sit through the "Muppet Christmas Carol" last year. And she still married me. Go figure.

Anyway, Jim Henson's son (Brian Henson) has an improvisational show for adults in addition to the shows aimed a family audiences. I think that's a brilliant idea.

Correlation & Causality

2006-08-08T09:57:00.000-05:00

I was close to beating my head against my desk this morning after reading this AP article: Study: Sexy music triggers teen sex.

Huh? Either the reasearch is braindead or the journalist is braindead. Correlation does not equal causality. Period.

Luckily the fine men of Freakonomics are on the scene.

Apple Goodness

2006-08-07T12:59:00.000-05:00

Live keynote updates can be found via thisMacworld: News page.

Highlights so far, New ~~PowerMacs~~ MacPros. Dual-dual core intel Xeon processors. That's 4 (FOUR) processing cores for those of you keeping track at home. Each at up to 3ghtz.

Details on 10.5...click the link to read about that.

Wants: A new MacPro and MacBook.

Best quote of the day.

2006-08-02T15:57:00.000-05:00

Over at Marginal Revolution: "The Pentagon is the Post Office with nuclear weapons."

Also - if you're interested in the recast of Feasting on Asphalt it's on TONIGHT from 9-10 central. Channel 42 on the local cable. Let me know if you watch it!

edit: Link fixed to Marginal Revolution - now goes directly to the article in question rather than the 'site front page'. Sorry about that.

First Impressions: Feasting On Asphalt (Food Network)

2006-07-31T07:17:00.000-05:00

I swear this blog isn't going to become all-reviews-all-the-time. It just looks that way right now. Promise.

You may or may not know that I have a platonic man-crush on Alton Brown. I'm an avid consumer of Good Eats and own a couple of AB's books. Obviously, I couldn't help but be excited for Alton's latest project, Feasting On Asphalt.

Having watched the first episode, I have a few thoughts I'd like to share...

First, the show seems to be a pretty straight-forward clone of the typical Food Network "little places highlighted by FoodTV stars" series of shows like Roker on the Road, $40 a Day or Tasty Travels. That's necessarily a Bad Thing, and I'm not sure how you'd do a traveling food show much differently.

However, this is an Alton Brown show and as such has some quirks. It's part motorcycle diary, part "buddy movie" and part "On The Road". Alton injects a lot of his singular personality into this show. He's the narrator, principal speaker and seemingly makes all the decisions regarding destinations. Oddly, he introduces his 3 (or 4?) riding companions and then never mentions them again until 3/4's of the way through the episode.

The first episode was enjoyable if a bit rough. It felt a little rushed, I'm not sure if they tried to cover too much ground or just didn't want to leave anything on the cutting room floor. He establishes a "Road Food" rule of "Don't betray your DNA" (e.i. if you're a hot dog stand - SELL HOTDOGS), and then violates it by visiting a restored diner serving "haute cuisine". I was actually a little upset that he didn't issue a mea culpa until 10 minutes later in the show, and still doesn't come right out and admit what he'd just done. The short vignette where he samples his first pickled pig's foot while trying to remain composed about it is hilarious. The last two joints he visits hit the mark I'd assume he was aiming for.

Feasting On Asphalt is a very different show from Good Eats. The pace is slower, it's less technical and it's not entirely about food. I almost feel like it should be on in a Sunday morning time slot (a la Charles Kuralt). It's a relaxing tour as opposed to fast paced science.

I continue to have high hopes for the show, despite some tempered expectations. As AB leaves his south-eastern homeland, I expect things may get a bit more interesting.

Anyone else watch it? What did you think?

From the "Huh?" department

2006-07-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

I subscribe to a daily mailing list of mac-related "deals". Today their 'headline item is: iCarta iPod Toilet Paper Holder

I think this might actually be a real product. Words fail me.

Book Review: The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford

2006-07-24T19:02:00.000-05:00

From the inside the cover blurb: "An Economist's Version of The Way Things Work this engaging volume is part field guide to economics and part expose of the economic principles lurking behind daily events explaining everything from traffic jams to high coffee prices."

The one sentence fails to excite me at all. And I'm a self-professed economics nerd.

This book, however, was absolutely wonderful. It's a light economics book in the same vein as Freakonomics. However, I would suggest this book as a "primer" to pretty much any other pop-economics book.

Tim Harford has an impressive resume. He writes for the Financial Times Magazine, works for the World Bank and is a former economics tutor at Oxford. With that caliber of background, you might assume this book would be a bit dry and boring. You'd be wrong. Harford uses a very accessible voice in this book, you can almost imagine him sitting next to you explaining the global coffee trade over a cup of joe. He's picked his topics carefully, using everyday industries and products that we're all familiar with to explain basic economic concepts such as marginal costs, demand elasticity, price discrimination, information imbalance and competitive advantage. If those terms are foreign to you, they certainly won't be after reading The Undercover Economist when you'll understand them nearly as well as most 2nd year economics majors.

In one of the first chapters, Harford walks us through why coffee costs so much and how it's related to why Starbucks can open a store on both sides of the street and make money in both, even with cheaper competitors just down the street. In fact, Harford uses coffee again to explain some facets of globalization to great effect. Information imbalances are succinctly dealt with using the oft-maligned used car market. Other highlights are Harford's treatment of why some poor countries stay poor while others improve, a fascinating take on how to handle health care costs and how to sell a $300,000 house for $3,000,000!

At any rate, if you haven't already figured it out I highly recommend this book. In fact, I'm going to force someone to borrow the copy I have. I'm mean like that. If you liked Freakonomics at all, you'll enjoy this book. If you want to get someone to read Freakonomics, get them to read this book first. You'll find yourself looking at the world around you slightly differently, making you a smarter buyer and seller and a wiser student of human nature and your surrounds.

It'll also do your laundry and wash your car.*

* Not really.

Book Review: Guns, Germs & Steel

2006-07-17T22:14:00.000-05:00

Let me begin this book review by stating upfront that I don't feel qualified to provide an opinion on the validity of the Jared Diamond's theme in this book. I'll explain in a minute, but I wanted to put out the warning that this review may be without a lot of real substance.

Guns, Germs & Steel is an epic work. Diamond spends almost 500 pages taking the reader through the long pre-history and ancient history of the human species. He attempts to explain the evolution (sometimes independently) of human societies, culture and technology. In my (completely worthless) opinion he does a hell of a job.

Diamond uses his experience working with the isolated populations of New Guinea to provide anecdotal evidence and illustration of many of his major points. The New Guinean anecdotes are highly interesting, and reminded me a bit of the old "travel journals" explorers used to write. At times, the weight of so many examples from such a small population (and the resultant extrapolation) feels a bit unbalanced. It's obvious that Diamond believes he has a found a natural workshop for cultural study in those islands. I can't honestly say that this detracts from the value of the book, or his work, however.

I don't want to give away too many of the punchlines in the book, so I'm trying to steer clear of summarizing point-by-point the conclusions you'll find as you read. Alright, alright, I'll give one away. Diamond finds absolutely no evidence of genetic predisposition toward greater cultural/scientific development. That is, there is no racial basis for the differences in cultural and technological achievement. Obviously, this isn't an earth-shattering discovery. Most of the book is a connect-the-dots exercise, which sounds simple until you remember the global scope and the length of study encompassing over 50,000 years.

This book isn't for everyone. You've got to have a pretty decent "nerd" streak to find this material interesting in this quantity and density. The prose can be a bit dry at times, as Diamond lays down the basic knowledge foundation you'll need to understand his more complex points. But, if a "God's eye view" of human history is something you think you might find interesting, I don't hesitate to recommend this book. Just be aware of what you're getting into. I started and stopped this book 4 times before finally being able to finish it.

It's been a while...

2006-07-14T16:32:00.000-05:00

I haven't done a friday "change of pace" entry in a while.

I present to you, the ultimate in 'mash-ups'. Hugh Jackman in:
YouTube - X-Men-3:The Last Standing Ovation Trailer

You must go watch this. No, not later. NOW!

Apologies

2006-07-12T10:06:00.000-05:00

Please accept my apologies for the dearth of postings lately. Life has been rather busy, and I haven't had time to think any worthwhile thoughts.

I did finish the epic "Guns, Germs & Steel" referenced in my pre-wedding post. It's quite a book and I'm still attempting to distill it into something I can make a sensible post about. Rest assured I'm working on it in my spare cycles. Also, the BBP series is still in production, awaiting a bit of uninterrupted work time.

One bit of local interest I did want to point out, however. The cities of Champaign and Urbana combined issued building permits in 2005 for new construction valued at over 320 million dollars. Assuming an average home price of 200k, that's 1600 homes in Chambana. Not too shabby for a midsize downstate town.

Sad Day

2006-07-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

The News-Gazette.com: Two found dead in Champaign home

I knew the victims of this ghastly event. Years ago when I was banker, they were two of my favorite customers. Sue would bring me homemade egg rolls from time to time. She and Jeremiah were two of the nicest people I had the pleasure of dealing with in that job. I am greatly saddened to hear this news.

Edit: Apparently, it was even worse than I had originally read. I certainly hope they manage to find the killer(s) and bring them to justice.

Buffet's buffet for the needy

2006-06-26T15:34:00.000-05:00

So you've all probably heard about Warren Buffet's huge gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The amount of money in play here is staggering. $44 billion is a lot of money from any point of view. Hell, if memory serves it's more than annual GDP of Venezuela. The Gates Foundation uses that money to provide health services and computer technology for the residents of countries whose governments can't be bothered to do so themselves.

I was thinking today that with that extra money the foundation could not only provide basic immunizations, but also help to procure sources of fresh water and other public infrastructure improvements in impoverished nations. What a boon to the poorest of the poor in those areas.

Thinking further, if the B&MGF supplies your immunizations, water and improves your roads aren't they effectively your government? Granted, the foundation doesn't have police power, but most failed states don't provide police anyway, they just have semi-autonomous militias that make life hard for the "normal" people.

It's just an interesting idea. I'm sure someone, somewhere has already written a science fiction book which takes this idea and runs with it. It seems to be fertile ground for that sort of thing.

...and we're back.

2006-06-26T08:08:00.000-05:00

We have returned, alive and happily married. I was lucky enough not to be tossed overboard and actually won money in the casino.

The wedding was wonderful, a real credit to my lovely wife and her parents (and all of the people whose help they enlisted). The reception was grand, a real credit to all of the help my family (and my wife's) provided in getting it ready. The food was great, the band was a joy, and the guests were a pleasure!

The honeymoon went very smoothly. My family surprised us with wonderful decorations, champagne and cookies in our cabin. The weather cooperated, and the on board entertainment was, well, entertaining.

Thanks to my lovely wife, both of our families and all of our friends for making our special day a treasured memory. Your love and support mean the world to us.

When I post again, I'll be married

2006-06-15T13:39:00.000-05:00

This will be my last post as a single guy. Getting married Saturday!

I'd like to say that I've been busting my behind helping get ready for the wedding, but I haven't been. The lovely fiancee has been extraordinarily organized and productive. If the day goes well, (which I'm sure it will) it'll be her doing.

After the wedding comes the honeymoon, so don't look for a ton of additional content here during that time. I'm going to try hard to finish Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (see below) while I'm gone. It's quite a book, so hopefully I'll be able to digest it enough to have some interesting things to say here.

At any rate, think happy thoughts for the lovely fiancee and I saturday!

Fly me to the moon...

2006-06-14T08:11:00.000-05:00

Stephen Hawking says we need to spread out, off the earth.

I'd like to point out that I made this point back in March. I suppose that makes me quicker than Hawking. Or maybe not. Anyway, it's an idea whose time has come, I suppose. I hope to be able to see humanity's first steps into the greater cosmos in my lifetime.

Legislation by conference call?

2006-06-08T12:58:00.000-05:00

There's a great debate going on in a post over at IlliniPundit about the pros and cons of allowing councilmembers (or legislators) "phone-in" their presence at meetings. I've taken a couple stabs at my feelings in the comments, but there are good arguments on both sides.

It's interesting reading.

IlliniPundit.com » Blog Archive » Urbana City Council - Just Phone It In

File under miscellaneous

2006-06-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

BigBlogPost #3 is late. I'm a bad person.

In it's place, here's a random fact about me. I once proctored a practice LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) exam, as part of a job at a test prep center. It was an actual test from a prior year. Having nothing better to do while proctoring, I took the test along with the class. I passed it easily despite having only rudimentary first aid training as a boy scout 8 years earlier .

This says something. I don't know if it says something about my test skills or the minimum qualifications for an LPN, however.

Licensure

2006-05-30T12:23:00.000-05:00

I now have a license to ~~kill~~ marry. Or get married, as it were. The whole thing was kind of anti-climatic. The most interesting part was where the deputy of the County Clerk asked me to verify that I was actually a male. For a second I wasn't sure I heard him right. Then I didn't know if I needed to produce my junk or not. I settled for a simple "Yes, I'm a guy". The lovely fiancee had to attest to the fact that she was really female. They didn't ask for my opinion on the matter. Also interesting, no blood test required.

Test Complete!

2006-05-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

Edit: I passed it!

It's not April Fools Day is it?

2006-05-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

TaxProf Blog has posted that the 3% excise tax on long distance has come to an end! This tax was enacted as a temporary measure to fund the Spanish-American War (1898).

Glad that's taken care of!

Lease the lottery? It's for the children!

2006-05-24T09:41:00.000-05:00

Blagojevich announces a plan to lease or sell the State Lottery to fund education. (via Chicago Sun Times)

My take? Bad idea. Despite the fact that I'd love for the educational system in Illinois to become less beholden to Property Taxes.

My reasons:

1) Illinois has proven completely unable to stick to channeled revenue plans. This failure crosses party lines. Remember when the lottery fund was supposed to go to our schools? That didn't last particularly long.

2) Isn't this more than a little like selling the dairy cow for slaughter and giving up all the future milk sales? (If we sell the lottery anyway.)

3) If we lease the lottery, wouldn't the state receive less money than if it ran the lottery in house? I mean, whoever leases it will need to turn a profit, so they'll have to push the margin. The way I read the article, the appeal of a lease is that the state basically gets "accelerated money" in a couple big chunks early in the lease, and less down the road. Again, see dairy cow example above.

4) Always, always be wary of anything done for the children. This seems suspiciously like a campaign stunt. Get money to do stuff "now" and let future administrations worry about the effects. I don't like the state using the same crappy tricks the federal government pulls.

BBP Part 2: What's a dollar worth, anyway?

2006-05-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

Last time we covered some very "quick and dirty" money theory and currency history. Before we get to the "meat" of this project, I feel I should discuss the impact of currency shifts on individuals and families. This isn't nearly as abstract and boring as it sounds. Shifts in the dollar day-to-day have a very real impact on our wallets. Let's look at what I mean...

Standard disclaimer: I am NOT a financial advisor, and nothing in the following should be construed to be financial advice. I will not be liable (or even sympathetic) if someone reads my words and takes action without consulting an accountant/Financial Planner/whatever first. I believe the following to be true and factual at the time of posting, however the world remains in motion and things change. Consider this an intellectual exercise only.

Next time you go shopping, take a look at the labels detailing the country of origin on some random products. I'd bet that you typically won't find even 10% made in the U.S. (with the possible exception of the grocery store...but even that is dicey). Does this mean the U.S. doesn't make anything anymore? No. We manufacture lots of stuff. But the world manufactures more. It's simple math. The U.S. is only a fraction of the population of the world. It stands to reason that we'd not be the only producer of goods right?

So why has the percentage of U.S. made goods available at your local retailer shrunk dramatically over the last 20 years? The short answer is that the world is smaller today. Barriers to international commerce have fallen dramatically. Easy, cheap global communication has reduced "order risk" and greased the wheels for the flow of capital from country to country. It's far easier today to pay someone in Vietnam for a product than it was even 20 years ago. It's also far easier to get the goods from "over there" to here. Faster, cheaper, more reliable international shipping has greatly decreased the cost of moving products (and people) around the world, in some cases to pennies per unit.

All of those are answers, but I don't think they're the "root" answer. They are all symptoms/results of one fundamental cause. Over the last 30 years, a dollar would purchase more value abroad (excluding a few parts of the globe) than it would here. All of the stuff in the preceding paragraph occurred because of the pent-up demand of people holding dollars to get the maximum value out of them. This is the "invisible hand" of the market at work.

So, we've established that a high value dollar (relative to other currencies) creates demand for imports, which creates efficient importation mechanisms. In less abstract terms, that means that as long as the dollar has a high relative value, it is cheaper to pay someone in Indonesia to make me a hammer and ship it over here than it is to pay the guy working at the metal shop the next state over.

What happens if the dollar loses some relative value? You probably already know the answer. The first thing that happens is that imports get more expensive. On an individual level, the price of a gallon gas goes up in tandem with loss of dollar value. The same thing will happen with anything produced elsewhere, although at longer intervals between re-pricings (unlike gas). If the dollar loses enough relative value, it becomes profitable to sell domestically made items again. If you want a homework exercise, go look up the last 2 years of the U.S. manufacturing index and you'll find that increases in the index tend to track the opposite of the relative value of the dollar. Feel free to report in the comments on your findings.

To summarize, Relative value of the dollar goes up: cheaper/more imports, less exports. Relative value of the dollar goes down: costlier/less imports, more exports.

I'll give a prize to the first commenter who accurately answers the following question:

There are two general types of non-governmental jobs in this country, service jobs and manufacturing jobs. When the dollar increases in value, which type of jobs suffer, and when the dollar decreases in value which type of jobs suffer?

Housekeeping.

2006-05-18T08:14:00.000-05:00

I removed some spam comments from old posts. If you happen to see a message where a comment has been removed by the administrator, it was me removing them. I will not delete a legitimate comment, but I do reserve the right to delete abusive or vulgar comments. Any time I delete a non-spam comment (never so far), I'll leave an additional comment explaining what I've done.

Smoke free?

2006-05-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

The Champaign City council voted to go smoke-free for resturants and bars last night, conditional on Urbana doing the same.

I have mixed feelings on the matter. On the one hand, I like the idea of going out to a bar and not coming home smelling like an ashtray. On the other, I don't really like the nanny-state tendancy of regulations like this.

But, I'm more likely to stop and grab a beer somewhere on whim if this passes. I'm a mess of contradictions, no?

Closer to utopia every day...

2006-05-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

I came home from running errands this evening, and my Lovely Fiancee suggested we go to KFC this weekend. Normally, I'd just give an emphatic "YES" and that would be the end of it, but this time I asked why. She told me they have this new menu item: a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy topped with corn, chicken and cheese. I told her she was dreaming. There was no way that such a combination could exist in this world without creating some kind of Panglossian best-of-all-possible-worlds situation. No responsible company could possibly package this much goodness in one product. It's madness!

It's also happening.

Someone save us all!

BBP Part 1: Reserves and Currency, an explanation

2006-05-15T14:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome to part one of the oft-hinted at BigBlogProject. Today, I'm going to talk about Reserves, Currency and the relation of the two. This is going to be a primer post, hopefully giving us all the background we'll need to go forward into the rest of the this posting series. I'm going to begin each of these posts with a standard disclaimer:

I am NOT a financial advisor, and nothing in the following should be construed to be financial advice. I will not be liable (or even sympathetic) if someone reads my words and takes action without consulting an accountant/Financial Planner/whatever first. I believe the following to be true and factual at the time of posting, however the world remains in motion and things change. Consider this an intellectual exercise only.

Ok, with that out the way let's talk about money.

Money, at it's core is pretty simple. It has 3 primary functions: 1) Store of Value (it's worth something), 2) It is a medium of exchange (you can give it to someone in exchange for something else) and 3) It is a unit of account (you can value things in terms of it). Money doesn't have to be printed paper or stamped coins. Gold, silver even shells and beads have been used as money at some point in human history. All that's required is that a group of people agree to use it in place of bartering or trading everything.

Not all that long ago, most currency (manufactured money, generally by governments) was guaranteed by some form of precious metal. That is, in order to print extra dollars the government had to go out and buy some gold to back them. This served as a check on the abilities of governments to print money willy-nilly and destroy the value of the currency through hyper-inflation. Having currencies backed by gold created and built global market for a particular country's currency since paper is cheaper to ship than gold bars.

The U.S. became the world's defacto bank following WWII. The Bretton Woods Agreement (1944) laid the groundwork for the eventual shift from Central (government) banks holding gold to holding dollars in the place of gold. (Since dollars were redeemable for gold in principal, the central banks could hold them to meet their gold reserve requirements.) For 30 years the free economies of the world largely operated with dollars as their central reserve currency.

In 1973 the Nixon administration "closed the gold window", literally stopping redemptions of dollars for gold. The only way to turn dollars into gold after this was to buy gold with dollars in the open market, exactly how you or I would do it today. The dollar became a true "floating currency", defined in it's value simply by what someone else was willing to trade for it. A floating currency's value is guaranteed only by the economic and governmental stability of the country issuing it.

Central banks across the world hold a wide variety of currency and metal reserves. The diversification helps to guard against a sudden surprise drop in the value of any one reserve component. The banks hold reserves to support their own currency and ability to borrow funds in the international market, enabling foreign trade.

That's it for today. I've tried to cover a lot of ground, and I may have tripped a few times. If something seems wrong, unclear or just screwed up please let me know. If you've got a question about something, let me know. My goal here is develop something I find interesting, but if I confuse you early, we're not going to get where I'd like to go. Thanks for reading.

This is what happens when I wait too long...

2006-05-12T15:17:00.000-05:00

Here is a hint at the topic of my BigBlogProject.

I've taken too long to publish part one, and look what happens: the Financial Times helps me out. I apologize for continuing to push the series back, but I haven't had the free time I thought I would this week.

I'm still around.

2006-05-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything in last few days. Work and life are quite busy at the moment. However, I hope to something at least marginally interesting to say by the end of the week.

As always, if you've got something you'd like talk about comment here or drop me a line at the email in my blogger profile. I gladly take requests.

Serendipity

2006-05-05T12:44:00.000-05:00

We've already established that I'm a big nerd, right? Good. With that in mind, I have absolutely no reason not to show you something I find absolutely enthralling.

I was hitting Wikipedia for some basic research for the BigBlogProject I mentioned yesterday when I discovered something terrific. For those of you who aren't intimately familiar with Wikipedia, it is an "online encyclopedia" written entirely by it's users. You, your neighbor or even I can submit articles to it, or change ones which are written. It's a remarkable experiment, made even more remarkable by the amazing quality of information it provides.

Anyway, as part of my research I came across an offhand mention of "fungible". This word was made famous as part of a Dilbert Strip (link goes to flickr. Dilbert.com's archive is anything but an archive.) where Dogbert explains the word's meaning. Being easily distracted, I abandoned my research effort to see how wikipedia users are defining "fungible". The definition page provides a workable definition, but also lets you know that the issue is not settled. Further research takes you to the user discussion page, where people are working together to forge a more precise and understandable definition.

This "Talk" page (as wikipedia refers to the discussion) is fascinating stuff. To me, it's enthralling to read the thought process people are using to reach their conclusions, their arguments, consensus building and supporting evidence. And on another level -a more meta level- this is a perfect example of the collaborative power of the internet at work. Here a bunch of people, who have in all likelihood never passed each other on the street, are working toward a common goal for the good of the rest of the readers.

I'm always fascinated when the internet allows a disparate group of people to focus their varying knowledge and abilities like a laser on a problem. A different example of this is the largely unknown world of ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) (More info here) where people band together to solve puzzles and problems in the real world inspired by a fiction transmitted via the internet. Another is Child's Play, a charity run by a couple of webcomic authors who use the internet to marshall donations of games to children's hospitals.

Do you have any favorite examples the meta phenomenon I'm describing? And, I'm desperately searching for a label for this. Any help would be appreciated.

Life In Solitary

2006-05-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

Zacharias Moussaoui got the sentance I hoped for.

Enjoy your solitary confinement, Zach. I hope the guards piss in your cheerios every morning.

An overly ambitious blog project

2006-05-04T08:52:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about getting in over my head on something here.

I've outlined a blogging project that will take multiple days/posts to complete. I'm going to attempt to flesh out the outline the rest of this week, and hopefully I'll be able to post part 1 on monday or tuesday. The only reason I'm posting this notice is to force myself to work on it, since I've made it public.

As always, I reserve the right to drop this at any point. Unless someone wants to pay me to finish it, of course. ;)

I am not well.

2006-05-03T14:10:00.000-05:00

I'm hurting today. A combination of allergies and some sort of sinus/ear type thing is conspiring to keep me stupid today. Haven't been able to concentrate at all.

Rather than spit something out here that will make minimal sense at best, I'll take this opportunity to ask you all if there's anything you'd like to talk about, or anything you'd like to see me talk about in near future.

Knock yourselves out!

Immigrant Rally Day

2006-05-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

~~Workers of the world unite!~~ Whoops, wrong decade. May Day has changed quite a bit during my lifetime. What was traditionally a day for the "labor movement" to strut their stuff, has declined to today when the biggest rally is from a population who wants desperately to remain here to take advantage of our booming economy while more 'socially modeled' economies have trouble getting any traction.

How do I feel about the immigration rallies today? For the rallies themselves, I worry that they might evoke some sort of fearful nationalist backlash. I worry about the porous border that allows not only workers, but Central American drug runners and possible jihidists to sneak in our backdoor. I have distaste for the Mexican government which uses the weak border as a pressure valve, instead of buckling down and fixing the problems in their country.

For the individuals here illegally, I have empathy. I can only hope I'd have the courage to break a border to seek a brighter future for my family. It's a tremendous act of both desperation and bravery to do a border run. I respect the fortitude of those men and women who have risked their lives to make a better life for themselves.

How do you feel? Conflicted like me? Or do you have a more solid opinion?

Everything should be searchable...

2006-04-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

Found via: Jeff Jarvis.

The BBC has been working diligently to turn itself into a leader 21st century style media. They announced a program a while ago (which I haven't followed closely enough) aimed a making their enormous back catalog of video programs avalible online. Today, I found out they're making an internal information system avalible to the public. It includes "Details of 946,614 BBC radio & TV programmes, dating back 75 years", according to it's front page.

The BBC is really doing the world a favor as it opens up it's vast archive of opinion, knowledge and information. Granted, you can't get the actual items referenced online yet, but I'd tend to believe that's not incredibly far into the future.

ubiquisearch

Super Simple Light Tent

2006-04-24T15:06:00.000-05:00

From Make, I present something quite a bit lighter than my last entry. Pun intended

Here are some instructions on how to make a Super Simple Light Tent. I can think of a few people with digital cameras who might read this post and be able to use one of these.

Enjoy!

Let the bastard rot.

2006-04-24T13:14:00.002-05:00

Having been found guilty, Zacharias Moussaoui is now before a jury tasked with deciding if he is to live or die. The defense strategy seems to be that jail is worse than death, so give him jail.

I wholeheartedly agree with them. Let the bastard live out the rest of his days in one of our prisons. If I had my way, it would be in solitary confinement as well. No need to let him spread the murderous venom of his twisted variant of Islam to the general population inmates.

In general, I don't really have a problem with the death penalty. Today, as a culture, we've pretty much given up on rehabiliting prisoners as a matter of policy. If you're in a jail for death penalty eligible offense, the chance your time to turn you into a properly socialized man or woman is low enough to be ignored. Further, (as I believe Patton said) "Some people just need killing.".

However, death is Moussaoui's best outcome here. He believes if he dies, he becomes a martyr, annointed in the eyes of Allah. He will lay down on the gurney with joy in his heart, and he'll be dead before he can realize how wrong he was. That's why I agree with the life in prison option. Let's lock him up forever and break him. Deny him the paradise he feels he's earned, as he would deny it to each of us.

2006-04-19T15:07:00.000-05:00

Image via flickr
I've been compared to the Ackbar, so I suppose I should probably post something worth while. For the record, however, Ackbar routinely goes 25-plus days without updating. I'm hardly approaching that level of inactivity.

With that out of the way, I'd like to talk a bit about the weather.

No, I'm not going to go on and on about how nice it is.

I saw on the local news the other night that Illinois has had 5 times more tornados this year so far than the same period last year. As a guy living in a 100 year old house, this disturbs me a little bit. The LF (lovely fiancee) and I have talked quite a bit about the next place we'll live. I'm having a hard time imagining it won't be made of those Insulated Concrete Forms that are all the rage these days. I want to feel relatively protected.

Beyond the relatively limited scope of my personal survival and surrounds, what do these tornados tell us? Besides the obvious, "Fear me, Bitches!" which I attribute to most natural disasters? For one, pretty much everybody agrees that the earth is generally getting warmer. There are a wide variety of opinions on why, mostly falling on a continuum which runs from "All Fault is Human" to "The Earth's natural Warming and Cooling Cycles". Pick any point on a line between them and you're likely to find an educated person making a supporting argument. It's certainly not as black and white as you'd hear from the TV. I tend to fall somewhere near the middle of the pack here. My history background included a discussion of the "Hot Flash" of the Middle Ages (if you can call 400 years a flash) and the following "little ice age". However, I'm also relatively certain you can't just throw greenhouse gases into the atmosphere willy-nilly and expect no effects.

So I'm left to try to figure out what percentage of blame to assign each possible cause. Of course, I'm sadly undereducated to make even a semi-intelligent guess, so I tend to chalk it up to "unknowable" and "uncontrollable". In my eyes, the only course left is to just Deal-With-It and move on. Adaptability is one of the traits that has served us humans well so far and I have faith we'll figure out a way to live somehow regardless of what the climate chooses to do over the foreseeable future. That issue is left of people with bigger action horizons than myself to worry about. Isn't that convenient?