This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
|
HP is releasing a new updated high end calculator. Now, I have absolutley no need for something like this any more. I still prefer using RPN for basic caluclations, but as to all the high end features… I haven’t really needed or used any of those sorts of things, except maybe a handful of times, since I graduated with my Physics BS in 1993. But it still looks sweet… I have fond memories of my HP48SX, which I still have, and which back in college ran my life, as I used it not just as a calculator, but a PDA, and many other things. I had all sorts of wonderful things on it. I still have it now, but due to a tragic drop onto the floor in 1994 without a recent backup available, none of my old fun stuff is still there. But the memories are still there! :-)
New HP49G+ Calculator
(via Slashdot)
I was the ref for this set of games a couple of weeks ago. Publishing beat the Print Buyers three games in a row. Oops. Since I was ref, I couldn’t take pictures during the actual games, but here are plenty as people practiced between games and hung around for a bit.
Publishing vs Print Buyers Volleyball!
Apperantly Powell has indicated he is done at the end of this term.
State Dept. Changes Seen if Bush Reelected (washingtonpost.com)
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration’s national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.
(via Calpundit)
But I don’t think this is actually a big deal. Well, the fact that he is signalling it this early perhaps shows another insight into the obvious tension between Powell and the neocons on many issues and Powell’s frustration with that. But as I posted as a comment at Calpundit, it is standard operating procedure for presidents to reshuffle their entire cabinets between terms. The whole cabinet submits their resignations, and the president reappoints who they want where they want, which is usually significantly different than the first term.
Just added a little new random trip info to the Idaho trip page.
2003 Q3 Random Trip
Well, who is coming and when we are going is now set. On this random trip I will be accompanied by Chad, Marilyn and my cousin Seth. The dates that turned out to be best for everybody were around Labor Day, so people could save on vacation days. We’ll be going from August 30th to September 7th.  Which means we will miss the great Mackay BBQ festival. But that is OK, there will be plenty of other things to do.
This looks very cool. This article is pretty vague and handwaving. I’d like to see something more detailed or the actual paper sometime. It looks like a very interesting approach. And is exactly the kind of turn it on its side “duh why couldn’t I think of that” sort of thing that challenges basic assumptions and leads to new cool stuff. Or it could be a bunch of nothing. But interesting anyway.
Ground-breaking work in understanding of time
In the paper, “Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity”, Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
(via Slashdot)
I send the email to people about the new house and the address and everything and then leave for a few hours, and when I get back there are several things about the Tivo in my email, and posted in the comments here on the blog…
So lets go in reverse order, last to the party first…
23:07 UTC – Erica
Hello Sam! Can I please have your tivo? I’ll love you always, even after the 6 months are up. I grew to love Tivo while staying with Rebecca and Chris and the past 6 months have been bitter television hell without it. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to watch commercials and miss Judge Judy.Â
Â
Ass kissingly yours,
Erica
But, Erica was not in the lists of qualifying people I mentioned, she has sent me almost no email in the last year. Actually, I think this was indeed the first email I’d gotten from Erica in the last 12 months. Perhaps in several years actually. She was sucking up well though… But this was of no import, because someone got in before her…
22:51 UTC – Al
Did I have to specifically mention your unknown Blog?
And before that Al posted a comment here:
22:49 UTC – Al
Am I too late?
Both of which were follow ups to his first email…
22:46 UTC – Al
Did I miss out on the free TiVO?
But alas, Al, you did miss out on the free TiVo, because you were not first. One person beat you.
22:23 UTC – Reb
Dear Sam,
Does my poor starving college student little sister qualify for the free Tivo offer? She loves our Tivo but she can’t afford it right now. She can’t even afford food. Maybe if she had Tivo, she would forget about how hungry she is always.
Reb
p.s. I’m digging your new site design.
Now, Rebecca herself does not qualify under my rules. Because she already has a Tivo. But she threw in a twist. She was not asking for herself, but was asking for her poor Tivo deprived sister Erica… Rebecca herself wanted to spread the joy of Tivo. Rebecca who once thought Tivo was a huge waste of money. And maybe still does, but her heart still goes out to poor Erica, with no Tivo! :-)
And, Rebecca complimented the blog, and became the first person to notice it and comment on it! Well… not quite actually. Lynn and Randy and Erikas and Brandy were first… but close I guess. She was fifth! And she said she was “digging” it.
Rebecca was the first one to respond to the free Tivo offer. And while she already has a Tivo, she offered it up to someone who did not. And then Erica herself added her own appeal on behalf of herself a few minutes later (although after Al).
So…
The Tivo goes to Erica!!! (via Reb)
Congratulations Erica!
I’ll be back down in the DC area in mid September. Probably the weekend between the 16th (my birthday) and the 22nd (my dad’s birthday). I can bring it down then. But that is a long time away. I can box it up later this week probably while I’m packing other stuff to move and mail it down if you would like. Or you could join your sister when she comes to visit my new place at some undefined point in the future. You just let me know.
I’m actually assuming mailing it is the way to go. Email me and let me know where I should send it. Oh, also let me know if you have a cable box it will need to control. If so, there might be an extra bit I left at my dad’s that you’ll need (the IR controllers). Otherwise I have all the bits you need.
Anyway, congratualtions Erica! Enjoy the next six months of Tivo! :-)
[Six months after it actually gets to you of course.]
Yes, if you are the first to respond to me about this post, then I will let you use my old Tivo in your house for six months. (Its in great shape despite being a couple years old.) Monthly charges fully paid by me. With an option to buy it and keep it at the end if you want. But, some conditions…
First of all, anybody finding this coming from a search engine or whatnot, sorry… this is a personal offer just to people I actually already know in real life. So if you don’t know me, have never met me or exchanged personal emails or phone calls with me, forget it. :-) In fact, I’ll go further than that. The only people eligible are the people behind the email addresses sending me the most email in the last 12 months worth of my email contest (including people who didn’t actually make the top ten) and as an added bonus to local people, the top 20 email addresses amoungst people living or working within 40 miles of me , even if they didn’t make the global top twenty. Although MAYBE if someone I know personally who didn’t make those two lists asks and makes a really good case, I might consider it.
Anyway, here is the deal. As of earlier today, I finished upgrading my Dad’s house to a couple of DirecTivo systems, replacing the Series 1 Standalone Tivo that they (mostly my little sister) had been using, and I had been paying the monthly fee on. Since they would no longer be using it, I took it back. But I also have a DirecTivo system, and don’t need a stand alone. (At least I hope I don’t, if I can’t get the DirecTV to work at my new place I’ll be pretty upset… anyway…) I have an extra Series 1 Stand Alone Tivo. 30 hours at the lowest quality setting, less on higher settings. (I never expanded the storage on this Tivo.)
In the interest of promoting Tivo (I love Tivo) I will *lend* this Tivo to someone for six months, during which I will continue to pay the monthly fees. Thus one of my friends or family who does not currently know the joys of Tivo can experience them. At the end of those six months, the person in question can either give me back the Tivo (presumably to buy a new one of their own), or take over paying the monthly fees and pay me 80% of the going rate on ebay for that model (used), and become the proud owner of that Tivo.
Only other condition besides making the email lists mentioned above is that the person can’t ALREADY HAVE a Tivo. And they must email me asking for the Tivo, referencing this post on my blog. Cause I’m not going to mention this directly in email to anybody, you need to find it on my website and ask about it. I am about to (within an hour) send out an email to the people on the email lists I mentioned above about me moving and my new address and such, which will have a link to the pictures of my new house which is on this site, so maybe someone will stumble onto this that way. :-) [Closing in less than 10 days now! Woo!]
If you’re local (within 40 miles of me), I’ll bring the Tivo over and help get it set up. If not, I’ll get it to you some other way, then help you go through setup over the phone if you need help.
Anyway, who will notice this and ask for the Tivo first? We shall see!!
Oh yeah, if you actually don’t know what a Tivo is, look here.
I almost forgot to submit anything today. It has been very busy. Some work stuff, but mostly getting ready for closing on the new house and related things. About 24 hours ago I got the call from Brandy that the final Mortgage Commitment (no longer contingent on anything) had come through. That was the last real obsticle. Absent something completely and totally unexpected, I should be closing on the new place a week from Monday.
Today I finished paying off my current bills so I would know exactly how much I had left and would know how much more of my savings I would have to liquidate for closing. I finished all that over lunch. I determined what I needed to sell. I sold almost all the rest of one mutual fund I had been putting $100 a month into for the last several years, just leaving a little bit there. And I went ahead and did a “cashless sale” on 338 of 438 stock options in my company, leaving 100 for some other day. All these transactions should clear by next Wednesday, after which I need to transfer all the cash to my checking account for Thursday, and get myself a nice fat cashier’s check for Friday to be ready for closing.
I’ll have the check and amount in my checking for a decent bit more than what I expect to actually need at closing. First as a “just in case” something unexpected comes up at closing, the rest for things I know I will need to buy for the house right after I move. Closing on the 11th. Moving furniture on the 12th. Moving most of the rest of my stuff slowy over the next week (maybe two) after that. Out of my apartment by the 30th when I leave for the Idaho vacation.
Wow! It is coming up fast!
In the mean time though, I am in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike as I type. I am heading down to DC to install the second DirecTV receiver for my dad and get that all set up, and grab the new dish to take home and set up. I’ve been without new TV for over four days! (Although this has allowed me to catch up somewhat on things the Tivo already had.)
Anyway, I think I’m going to run in and get a softdrink, then get back on the road. I need to get to DC before my dad goes to bed, and then finish up what I need to do and head back in time to still get an hour or two of sleep before my morning meetings back in New Jersey for work.
So that’s it for now…
This is a nice recap of the search for Bin Laden over the last few years (going back to the Clinton years). A reminder that despite the recent obsession over Iraq, this is still around.
The Search for Osama by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker
“He’s sending tapes and messages to his followers all the time, with instructions that could not have come from anyone else,” Yossef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told me recently. “They’re things like condolences to families of Islamic luminaries who have died,” he said. “People from the Philippines to Indonesia to South America ask bin Laden questions, and they get answers from him.” Bodansky was struck by the meditative tone of the letters. “They are written with a tremendous amount of peace of mind. There are no mistakes. He is not a guy on the run.”
(found via CounterSpin)
There isn’t too much brand new here that we have not heard before, but it is a good compilation. Sooner or later, our distraction with Iraq is going to cause us more problems.
Giving Up on Enterprise-Wide Integration by Erika Morphy of newsfactor.com via Yahoo News
“Point-to-point integration is an excuse many companies use for their broader IT strategies,” he added. “Companies need to wake up and smell the EAI coffee; all those hand-built connectors cannot ever scale, over time, the way an application layer can.”
That from Lois Columbus at AMR research.
I used to be a big fan of fully thought out integrated solutions. They make “more sense” from a logical point of view, they are more scalable. They are more flexible. All those sorts of wonderful things. But after spending seven years at a company in the top 50 largest in the contry, more than ever I am convinced this is a counterproductive approach except in unusual situations.
The thing about integrated approaches is that to pay off you need time and money to do them right, and then they need time to grow and take root and start to bear fruit. This almost never happens.
By the time an integrated approach can be planned and implemented, the needs and priorities of the organization often have morphed unrecognizably. In the process of being built the integrated solution will have been compromized in order to meet time and budget goals. It will not be flexible enough to change to the new environment. Not to mention the fact that technology will have moved forward, already making the solution obsolete.
Now, perhaps some of this perception is specific to where I work and to my specific experiences over the past few years. Probably. Many people would probably tell me I am dead wrong and their experiences are completely opposite. OK. But I suspect that many of the underlying factors are widespread. There are certainly cases where large scale enterprise wide technical solutions are needed, and there is no other choice. In many more cases I’m convinced that need is just a phantom need. It sells software for the big vendors of integrated systems. Nothing more.
Yes, the spaghetti-like nature of just patching together systems as needed and making short term tactical projects to meet the immediate need done does not usually scale well, or provide a long lasting foundation that you can build on for decades.
But guess what? In most cases, it DOES NOT NEED TO. You solve the specific problem at hand, and move on. Yes, some of these “temporary” solutions end up living forever, but if they work, who cares? In most cases, the whole system will end up being revamped in favor of new technologies within a few years anyway, and/or the business needs for even the existance of the project at all will evaoporate.
So while the “Enterprise” quality solution would still be poking along trying to be planned and built, with ruggedness to survive for longer than it will ever be useful, the “quick and dirty” solution could already be operational and providing results now.
So yes… if you have a very stable organization, working on very stable systems and processes, and have a very long time horizon, and expect what is being built to last a very long time, and won’t mind operating on obsolete technology five years on, and have lots of time and money to burn… go ahead with the big fully integrated solutions.
But if, like most of us, you need to get results quickly, and live in a world where business needs and priorities change at least once a year, if not more frequently, then beware of the big solutions. They will suck time and money and effort and most likely result in less than what you wanted. If you can get a quick and dirty that isn’t TOO dirty, then go for it. You’ll get the results you need faster.
And yes, EXPECT to replace it every couple of years with something new and EXPECT to spend some time troubleshooting and figuring out the spaghetti later. But guess what, you’ll probably still end up spending less than the fully integrated mega-solutions.
The area where I’ve seen this the most is in content management, which has been my area for the last seven years or so. Perhaps I’ll have some thoughts specific to that area later.
|
|