Travel in India...

Here's a picture my buddy took while traveling through India. There's not much explanation needed beyond that.

Music Video History: Joy Division Atmosphere

It’s a funeral of mourning and slapstick. Children or midgets dressed in Druid robes conduct the ceremony on a beach, and waddle around carrying a church steeple and iconic photographs of St. Ian Curtis.

The first impression is that director Anton Corbjin made a tasteless tribute to Joy Division’s late singer and drifter of Britain’s post-industrial wasteland. Yet, the band’s brooding, hymnal melodies and tribal, danse macabre rhythms still takes hold of the viewer, and the visuals soon make sense.



Corbjin lets the music flow with the gritty, decayed black and white cinematography, and he only displays the band and Curtis in still photographs, as if Joy Division is just a fading memory. Corbijn beautifully captures the moment when you lose a loved one, and you walk outside to see everything around you in stinging detail. Unforgettable.

A Personal Check-up...

Okay here is a personal question for you...

Have you ever had so much going on in your life that you are not sure where to start to get caught up or take a breath? It is not a feeling of helplessness at all, it is more a feeling of empowerment that you have so much control over where you are headed.

I think that is where I am and I look at all the stuff that needs to be done (from daily tasks, to follow-up, to large sales deals, to even long term life planning) and the areas where we need to focus and I realize there is so much that it just is a non-stop effort to chip away at everything in my life. Maybe when you turn 37 that is what happens, you start to realize you are chipping away at life.

I wonder if this is a function of being older and now having a broader view of everything around me, or if it is actually the fact that I do have literally 500 things that I need to do, including simple things that are in my daily life.

It is such a great time in our lives for me and my family. The kids are at the best times of their lives, Jennifer is doing great at work, and I love my job more than ever. I really enjoy the creativity and the energy of the company and people I work with.

I wonder if I were to just take everything off my ‘to do’ list and start over if I would be in better shape? I don’t think that is reasonable, though it is an interesting idea. I guess as long as I don’t lose focus on what is really important all is good.

I always remember to kiss my family and give them hugs. That is about all that is priority 1AAA for me, everything else is below that!

Playboy's January 1965 Interview With Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Measures must be taken at the federal level to curb the reign of terror in the South. It's getting so anybody can kill a Negro and get away with it, as long as they go through the motions of a trial."

Playboy Magazine - January 1965 | MARTIN LUTHER KING
a candid conversation with the nobel prize-winning leader of the civil rights movement
By Alex Haley

On December 5, 1955, to the amused annoyance of the white citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, an obscure young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., called a city-wide Negro boycott of its segregated bus system. To their consternation, however, it was almost 100 percent successful; it lasted for 381 days and nearly bankrupted the bus line. When King's home was bombed during the siege, thousands of enraged Negroes were ready to riot, but the soft-spoken clergyman prevailed on them to channel their anger into nonviolent protest -- and became world-renowned as a champion of Gandhi's philosophy of passive resistance. Within a year the Supreme Court had ruled Jim Crow seating unlawful on Montgomery's buses, and King found himself, at 27, on the front lines of a nonviolent Negro revolution against racial injustice.

Moving to Atlanta, he formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an alliance of church-affiliated civil rights organizations which joined such activist groups as CORE and SNCC in a widening campaign of sit-in demonstrations and freedom rides throughout the South. Dissatisfied with the slow pace of the protest movement, King decided to create a crisis in 1963 that would "dramatize the Negro plight and galvanize the national conscience." He was abundantly successful, for his mass nonviolent demonstration in arch-segregationist Birmingham resulted in the arrest of more than 3300 Negroes, including King himself; and millions were outraged by front-page pictures of Negro demonstrators being brutalized by the billy sticks, police dogs and fire hoses of police chief Bull Connor.

In the months that followed, mass sit-ins and demonstrations erupted in 800 Southern cities; President Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Bill aimed at the enforcement of voting rights, equal employment opportunities, and the desegregation of public facilities; and the now-famous march on Washington, 200,000 strong, was eloquently addressed by King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By the end of that "long hot summer," America's Negroes had won more tangible gains than in any year since 1865 -- and Martin Luther King had become their acknowledged leader and most respected spokesman.

He earned it the hard way: In the course of his civil rights work he has been jailed 14 times and stabbed once in the chest; his home has been bombed three times; and his daily mail brings a steady flow of death threats and obscenities. Undeterred, he works 20 hours a day, travels 325,000 miles and makes 450 speeches a year throughout the country on behalf of the Negro cause. Inundated by calls, callers and correspondence at his S.C.L.C. office in Atlanta, he also finds time somehow to preach, visit the sick and help the poor among his congregation at the city's Ebenezer Baptist Church, of which he and his father are the pastors.

So heavy, in fact, were his commitments when we called him last summer for an interview, that two months elapsed before he was able to accept our request for an appointment. We kept it -- only to spend a week in Atlanta waiting vainly for him to find a moment for more than an apology and a hurried handshake. A bit less pressed when we returned for a second visit, King was finally able to sandwich in a series of hour and half-hour conversations with us among the other demands of a grueling week. The resultant interview is the longest he has ever granted to any publication.

Though he spoke with heartfelt and often eloquent sincerity, his tone was one of businesslike detachment. And his mood, except for one or two flickering smiles of irony, was gravely serious -- never more so than the moment, during a rare evening with his family on our first night in town, when his four children chided him affectionately for "not being home enough." After dinner, we began the interview on this personal note.

PLAYBOY: Dr. King, are your children old enough to be aware of the issues at stake in the civil rights movement, and of your role in it?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, they are -- especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia, jail, and she asked me, "Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?" I told her that I was involved in a struggle to make conditions better for the colored people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are as they are, someone has to take a stand, that it is necessary for someone to go to jail, because many Southern officials seek to maintain the barriers that have historically been erected to exclude the colored people. I tried to make her understand that someone had to do this to make the world better--for all children. She was only six at that time, but she was already aware of segregation because of an experience that we had had.

PLAYBOY: Would you mind telling us about it?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Not at all. The family often used to ride with me to the Atlanta airport, and on our way, we always passed Funtown, a sort of miniature Disneyland with mechanical rides and that sort of thing. Yolanda would inevitably say, "I want to go to Funtown," and I would always evade a direct reply. I really didn't know how to explain to her why she couldn't go. Then one day at home, she ran downstairs exclaiming that a TV commercial was urging people to come to Funtown. Then my wife and I had to sit down with her between us and try to explain it. I have won some applause as a speaker, but my tongue twisted and my speech stammered seeking to explain to my six-year-old daughter why the public invitation on television didn't include her, and others like her. One of the most painful experiences I have ever faced was to see her tears when I told her that Funtown was closed to colored children, for I realized that at that moment the first dark cloud of inferiority had floated into her little mental sky, that at that moment her personality had begun to warp with that first unconscious bitterness toward white people. It was the first time that prejudice based upon skin color had been explained to her. But it was of paramount importance to me that she not grow up bitter. So I told her that although many white people were against her going to Funtown, there were many others who did want colored children to go. It helped somewhat. Pleasantly, word came to me later that Funtown had quietly desegregated, so I took Yolanda. A number of white persons there asked, "Aren't you Dr. King, and isn't this your daughter?" I said we were, and she heard them say how glad they were to see us there.

PLAYBOY: As one who grew up in the economically comfortable, socially insulated environment of a middle-income home in Atlanta, can you recall when it was that you yourself first became painfully and personally aware of racial prejudice?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Very clearly. When I was 14, I had traveled from Atlanta to Dublin, Georgia, with a dear teacher of mine, Mrs. Bradley; she's dead now. I had participated there in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks. It turned out to be a memorable day, for I had succeeded in winning the contest. My subject, I recall, ironically enough, was "The Negro and the Constitution." Anyway, that night, Mrs. Bradley and I were on a bus returning to Atlanta, and at a small town along the way, some white passengers boarded the bus, and the white driver ordered us to get up and give the whites our seats. We didn't move quickly enough to suit him, so he began cursing us, calling us "black sons of bitches." I intended to stay right in that seat, but Mrs. Bradley finally urged me up, saying we had to obey the law. And so we stood up in the aisle for the 90 miles to Atlanta. That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.

PLAYBOY: Wasn't it another such incident on a bus, years later, that thrust you into your present role as a civil rights leader?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, it was -- in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. E.D. Nixon, a Pullman porter long identified with the NAACP, telephoned me late one night to tell me that Mrs. Rosa Parks had been arrested around seven-thirty that evening when a bus driver demanded that she give up her seat, and she refused -- because her feet hurt. Nixon had already bonded Mrs. Parks out of prison. He said, "It's time this stops; we ought to boycott the buses." I agreed and said, "Now." The next night we called a meeting of Negro community leaders to discuss it, and on Saturday and Sunday we appealed to the Negro community, with leaflets and from the pulpits, to boycott the buses on Monday. We had in mind a one-day boycott, and we were banking on 60-percent success. But the boycott saw instantaneous 99-percent success. We were so pleasantly surprised and impressed that we continued, and for the next 381 days the boycott of Montgomery's buses by Negroes was 99 9/10 successful.

Read the rest of the interview on Playboy Magazine Website

No Mail Today, Maybe Tomorrow...

What an amazing photo. I can smell the wet grass, hear the birds and crickets in the woods, and feel in my stomach the excitement about my new package coming from Amazon!

Photo of the Week Hong Kong Downtown

Now that is what I call Green Living...

I see at least 6 hair salons and a barber shop. Is this the beauty district of Hong Kong?

In case you are playing find the shop, here is what is included:

1 bank

3 stores selling eye glasses

1 currency exchange

8 salons

2 spa/health clubs

3 clothing stores

1 7/11

1 store selling chinese medcine

2 insurance company offices

1 jewerly store

1 scuba diving club

1 store selling stuff from Japan

1 store seling stuff from Milan

1 gas station

and many more small shops. Can you find Waldo?

Customer Attrition Stats

I ran across this interesting article on Customer Attrition and I thought I would pass it along. As I think about customers, this was a jarring bit of information, hope it might be of interest.

Why Customers Leave Their suppliers in Business Relationships

1% of the time they die.

3% of the time they move away.

5% of the time they are simply lured into new relationships with competitive suppliers for no other reason than the persistence and persuasiveness of their sales reps.

9% of the time, they leave for better pricing or terms.

14% of the time, they leave due to product dissatisfaction.

68% of the time, they leave because they sense indifference from their suppliers.

Source, UPSIDE DOWN MARKETING by George Walther.

Great Infographic Video

Finally someone takes a simple view of what happened last fall in the credit crisis and who is really to blame. I think this is the best explanation of what transpired and what we all lived through.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

A really great video explanation!

Drill Drill Drill!!!

Another sad view of McCain's plan to solve for all the problems in the world. You could make this same graph for the economy and the foreign relations.

The worst part of the drill drill drill strategy is it doesn't solve much at all. Obama suggested a solution to reduce the overall consuption by doing simple things like inflating tires and better energy management, and of course the McCain machine mocked his ideas.

Souce of the graphic is ecoGreek blog (check it out!)

The best comment on the original posting.... Despite the harsh reality of the problems we face in the future and the direness of our current situation all I can think of right now is "that would make an awesome t-shirt design". The internet has corrupted me. - written by Karl , September 15, 2008

A Blog To Read...

You gotta check out this new blog that is being authored by a friend of ours that lives in Chicago. His name is Phil Handler and is a really great guy. I used to love going out and getting some drinks with him as he is the type of guy that is always happy and in a great mood.

The guy has a charmed life; he worked for the Chicago Bears for many years, practiced law with a degree from UofI, and has been having a great time being ‘Phil’. The downside is he was born with Type One Diabetes and has been struggling with this disease for his whole life. All the shots and drugs and special diets, all have become a part of Phil’s lifestyle.

There is one really scary part of being afflicted with Type One; it all has to do with the fact that you have to actively manage your blood sugars. It isn’t as simple as just testing every 12 hours and drinking some juice. People afflicted with Diabetes Type One are in a constant state of management and as they get older, are walking on a ledge.

Phil tells an amazing story about how one day his blood sugars got so low that he blacked out and ended up on a corner in San Francisco, without any remembrance of the past 45 minutes or so.
To combat the sudden and unexpected onset of an attack, there are some great organizations out there that will provide you with a dog. The dog is specially trained to identify the early onset of an attack. The dog can smell/sense when the blood sugars are getting to a point of risk and when action needs to be taken.

Phil has qualified to purchase one of these dogs. He is in the camp now and will leave with a new best friend, which will not only be a great pet, but a lifesaver one day.

Phil is writing about his experience on his newly established blog, known as ‘The Handler.’ It is a great read and a great tale of this journey he is undertaking. I strongly recommend the blog if you want to keep track of an interesting story in someone’s life.

The Annual Card Project

I was setting up for our Holiday Card project of the year, and had finally decided on a card (see the rejected few here). We always sign the card with our names, and then the family name at the end. The problem I ran into is how do I actually sign the card and ensure it is gramatically correct? I checked online and there were many different examples that all conflicted with each other. So I did some research and found a great write up from the Grammar Guide Blog.

How do you sign your family name on a Christmas card, sympathy card, birthday card, etc.? Should it simply be "The Browns" or "The Brown's"? Should it be "The Stocks" or "The Stocks'"? And what about signs or plaques you might want to place in your yard or on your house to identify your family name? Would this work the same way as signing a card?

This problem is actually pretty simple to overcome if you'll think it through. First, try to remember some of the things we've already discussed in this blog, and one of them is the apostrophe. Since apostrophes are a part of today's topic, perhaps a quick review of them would be helpful. The APOSTROPHE can be used two ways:

(1) to show the omission of a letter or letters: cannot-can't, will not- won't, does not-doesn't, and many, many more.

Now, you can certainly see that using an apostrophe in "The Brown's" would make no sense in this context (on a card or sign). No words have been left out, and that's a clear indication that an apostrophe should not be used.

Another way APOSTROPHES are used is (2) to show possession:

the trunk's size, Justin's camera, Shannon's art, Grace's dignity, and lots of others.

Here, by placing the apostrophe after the name and then before the "item" or "thing" being "possessed", you are indicating that this "item" or "thing" belongs to the person or thing. It is THIS part of the apostrophe rule that we'll need today.

Okay and now to today's topic. If you have a sign or plaque outside of your home that you want to use to identify your family, the correct thing to do is to have it printed the following way IF THE NAME DOES NOT SHOW POSSESSION (or a noun does not follow the family name on the sign ):

If your family name DOES NOT end in an S, simply add an S: The Smiths, The Bowers, The Wards, The Grays, The Crutchfields...(well, you get the idea). This is all you need. After all, you're probably indicating that more than one Smith lives in the home, so the name must be made plural by adding an S to the end. NO APOSTROPHES NEEDED! (If only one person lives in the home, however, the S would be a matter of personal choice as to whether the name should be singular or plural. For example, if a widow or widower lived alone in a home once occupied by his/her spouse and children, he or she might still prefer to maintain that a family of three, four, etc. once lived there. Perfectly okay!)

Now, if there is another noun AFTER the name on the sign, then using the S and THEN the apostrophe is correct. For example:

Welcome to the Turners' Home, ...the Powells' Cottage,...the Scotts' Home..., etc. Remember that apostrophes in this use show possession--and that's exactly what you're saying. The Turners "possess" this home, etc.

Sometimes folks are confused about names that end in S. Again, if you're planning to have a sign or plaque outside your home and your name ends in S, just go right ahead and spell your name as you normally do. Then place an "es" after the s. The sign would simply say

The Stockses, The Hookses, The Markses, The Dickenses...and so on. Looks a little strange, but that's the rule. If you don't like this, you could just put Stocks, Hooks, Marks, and Dickens and leave off "The". Your choice.


If, however, you will be using the possessive form--such as placing a noun after the name ending with an S on a sign, then you'll have to do it differently. In this case, you would need to determine if the name has one or more syllables. If the name has only one syllable, then you would place an apostrophe and an S after the name. The name would look like this:

Welcome to the Stocks's Cottage..the Hooks's Home...the Marks's...etc.

If the name ending in S has two or more syllables, then you still place an apostrophe after the name, but omit the S. For example:

Welcome to the Dickenses' Home...the Lewises' Home...the Hankinses' Home...etc.

And, finally, what about signing those cards? It's close to the info. above. Just sign your name and make it plural by adding an S (if it doesn't already have an S on the end), such as The Princes, The Whites, the Halls, the Highs, etc. NO APOSTROPHES NEEDED!

If your name does end in an S, just place "es" on the end of the name. The number of syllables don't matter in this instance. For example, The Joneses, The Soleses, The Morrisses, etc. If you think your name sounds too strange written this way and, it's true--some sure do, just opt out to signing the card "The Walter Edmonds Family". Nothing's wrong with this way!

I am good to go now!

Cashing Checks...

I was cashing a check this weekend and realized the amount of time it was taking the teller to count and recount the cash was primarily the reason for the long lines at the bank. How can you blame them, they are dealing in cash and if they lose count or miss one number it could end their career.

The gal behind the teller booth counted out all the twenties and then stacked them up and recounted them again. She even used the automated bill counter to check the numbers one last time. On average the teller would take about 20 seconds or so to count about $1,000 in cash. This would then be doubled when she counted it again (though the second time took a fraction of the time, usually another 7-10 seconds at best).

I started to think about the big checks the government uses to operate the day to day. What if you had to cash one of these checks? For example, the photo below is an actual check that was sent to Morgan Stanley when the banks were failing to help them from going under. This is a check for nine-billion dollars.

According to Andrew Ross Sorkin's website - 'Morgan Stanley received a $9 billion investment from Mitsubishi UFJ in the fall of 2008 that kept the firm from collapsing. The payment was supposed to be wired electronically, but because it needed to be made on an emergency basis on a holiday, Mitsubishi cut a physical check, perhaps the largest ever written.'

If Morgan Stanley decided to cash this big ass check, the teller would still be counting. How much time would it take? Assuming the teller worked every day the bank was open, and would work on average an 8-hour day (with only one break and a lunch), the counting would go another 4 years.

To count and check $10K would on average take about 4-5 minutes, with checking and re-checking. Now check out the teller that is cashing the $9,000,000,000.00 check... This would be:

• Start with: $9,000,000,000.00 total check
• Spend 4-5 minutes per $10,000.00 in cash
• Estimate about 75,000 hours to count the $9,000,000,000 cash

Then you have a teller working about 22 days per month (with weekends and holidays), working on average 8-hours per day, they are going to be able to count about $20MM per month, which means the full 9,000,000,000.00 would take about 38 years.

The teller counting and cashing this check would be finished with cashing the check by November 20th, 2046, though the teller would probably be around 65 or older, assuming he/she was about 30 years old at the time the guy cashing the check showed up.

Now imagine how long it would take to cash the check on the two stimulus checks, which I think is somewhere around 40,000 years to cash out.

This Isn't Going To End Well...

Cool Photos You Wont See on TV...

These are some really cool photos of the largest Re-enlistment Ceremony in the history of the United States. This happened in Iraq on July 4th 2008, there were thousands of soldiers that are over in Iraq that re-upped to still serve their country.


This was the largest re-enlistment ceremony ever held in military history.The ceremony was held on the 4th of July, 2008 at Al Faw Palace, Baghdad, Iraq . General David Petraeus officiated. This amazing story was ignored by the 'mainstream' media.

For those who have been in the Al Faw Palace, you'll have a better appreciation of the number of people crammed around the rotunda supporting the re-enlisting soldiers.


American men and women volunteering to stay longer in Iraq, so that when we leave, the new democracy will have a chance of surviving, is the exact opposite of what the media wants you to think about Iraq. If only a bomb had killed 5 civilians in a marketplace - now that's the kind of news the media is eager to tell you about.


A pizzeria in Chicago donated 2000 pizzas that were made and shipped toBaghdad , and were delivered on the 4th.

The media did report that 2000 pizzas were sent to Iraq on J uly 4th... The only part they left out of the report was the event for which the pizzas were sent.


It is really amazing there are so many people willing to give up so much for their country.

Character Is Who You Are When No One Is Looking...

This is a story from the Norwegian newspaper VG, the biggest newspaper in the country, from today's edition. A blogger translated the story and posted on his blog... I have reposted here because I thought this story was really cool. I 100% believe it for many reasons, but the most important is Norwegians seem like the kind of people who really wouldn't bullshit.

Not that these things matter in today's dog-eat-dog world, but I found it quite touching, and I want to share. I think that this is a story that some may be interested in hearing. If you're not interested, cork it. I've translated the story into English and am posting it here. The original, in Norwegian, is here.

Mary lacked money to fly home to Norway – he saved her love

ÅSGÅRDSTRAND (VG): Mary was a newlywed and ready to move to Norway, but was stopped at the airport because she didn’t have enough money for the trip. Then a stranger turned up and paid for her.

Mary Menth Andersen was 31 years old at the time and had just married Norwegian Dag Andersen. She was looking forward to starting a new life in Åsgårdstrand in Vestfold with him. But first she had to get all of her belongings across to Norway. The date was November 2nd, 1988. At the airport in Miami things were hectic as usual, with long lines at the check-in counters. When it was finally Mary’s turn and she had placed her luggage on the baggage line, she got the message that would crush her bubbling feeling of happiness.

-You’ll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway, the man behind the counter said. Mary had no money. Her new husband had travelled ahead of her to Norway, and she had no one else to call.
-I was completely desperate and tried to think which of my things I could manage without. But I had already made such a careful selection of my most prized possessions, says Mary.

Although she explained the situation to the man behind the counter, he showed no signs of mercy.
-I started to cry, tears were pouring down my face and I had no idea what to do. Then I heard a gentle and friendly voice behind me saying, That’s OK, I’ll pay for her. Mary turned around to see a tall man whom she had never seen before.
-He had a gentle and kind voice that was still firm and decisive. The first thing I thought was, Who is this man?
Although this happened 20 years ago, Mary still remembers the authority that radiated from the man.
-He was nicely dressed, fashionably dressed with brown leather shoes, a cotton shirt open at the throat and khaki pants, says Mary. She was thrilled to be able to bring both her suitcases to Norway and assured the stranger that he would get his money back. The man wrote his name and address on a piece of paper that he gave to Mary. She thanked him repeatedly. When she finally walked off towards the security checkpoint, he waved goodbye to her.

The piece of paper said ‘Barack Obama’ and his address in Kansas, which is the state where his mother comes from. Mary carried the slip of paper around in her wallet for years, before it was thrown out.
-He was my knight in shining armor, says Mary, smiling. She paid the 103 dollars back to Obama the day after she arrived in Norway. At that time he had just finished his job as a poorly paid community worker in Chicago, and had started his law studies at prestigious Harvard university.

In the spring of 2006 Mary’s parents had heard that Obama was considering a run for president, but that he had still not decided. They chose to write a letter in which they told him that he would receive their votes. At the same time, they thanked Obama for helping their daughter 18 years earlier.

In a letter to Mary’s parents dated May 4th, 2006 and stamped ‘United States Senate, Washington DC’, Barack Obama writes: ‘I want to thank you for the lovely things you wrote about me and for reminding me of what happened at Miami airport. I’m happy I could help back then, and I’m delighted to hear that your daughter is happy in Norway. Please send her my best wishes. Sincerely, Barack Obama, United States Senator’. The parents sent the letter on to Mary.

This week VG met her and her husband in the café that she runs with her friend Lisbeth Tollefsrud in Åsgårdstrand.
-It’s amazing to think that the man who helped me 20 years ago may now become the next US president, says Mary delightedly. She has already voted for Obama. She recently donated 100 dollars to his campaign.
She often tells the story from Miami airport, both when race issues are raised and when the conversation turns to the presidential elections.
-I sincerely hope the Americans will see reason and understand that Obama means change, says Mary.

And here she is with her husband and the letter.

This is not a big or important story. But it is a nice story and if one is voting for a person, and not just for a political platform, it might be interesting to hear it. Somehow I don't see this story being covered in American media much, so let's count this as one blogger's contribution to the news coverage of the 2008 election. :-)

You Gotta Love Advertising...

These old school ads are classic. I love the family that is so happy because they eat lard!

Mapping the 2008 Olympics...

The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events).

Which 2008 sport is the most awesome? A guy with too much time on his hands created this chart...

A Tech View of YouTube's Life

This is a really interesting video I came across on Google Video. It is a presentation that was given at Google Tech Talks in June of 2007.

The talk was given by Cuong Do Guong, who was one of the first YouTube employees and is currently an engineering manager at YouTube/Google. He was part of the engineering team that scaled the YouTube software and hardware infrastructure from its infancy to its current scale. Prior to YouTube/Google, he held various software development and management positions at PayPal and Inktomi

He dives into a discussion around some of the scalability challenges that have arisen during YouTube's short but extraordinary history. YouTube has grown incredibly rapidly despite having had only a handful of people responsible for scaling the site. Topics of discussion include hardware scalability, software scalability, and database scalability.



He is actually a pretty good speaker, even though the topic is dry, he has a very interesting perspective because of his experience in a rocketship to the moon.

“One of the key phrases we had in the early days was ‘These are good problems to have,’” Do said. “And after a while we’re like, ‘I’m going to kill the next person who says that.’”

Verizon FIOS in Alexandria...

I am pretty sure Verizon doesn’t think there is much demand in Alexandria for FIOS. Why do I think this? Well, if you go to their site, which I have done a few times to check on the status of FIOS in my neighborhood, you will see what I mean.

The site is set-up to get you excited about the opportunity to drop whatever other option you might have, which in my case is an internet technology that works well, but only during the 50% of time it is up. I have had the cable company out to my house at least 25 times in the past few years, and they have yet to figure out why my cable internet works intermittently.

Anyway, that is not my point. If you go on the Verizon high-speed internet website and check to see if FIOS is available in your area, if you live in Alexandria, you will find Zippo. Why is this, well it has to do with digging, and a bunch of other reasons, some of which I think are social economically based. But if Verizon is using the sign-up for FIOS and the ‘Alert me when it gets to my area’ link as a way to find out demand, well they are in for a shock.

When you go to sign-up on the site to be alerted when FIOS is available, not that I wouldn’t see them digging up my front yard, the sign-up doesn’t work. You fill out all your information and click ‘yes’ to sign-up and it just hangs. It does this on FireFox about 50% of the time, and at least one version of IE. It doesn’t do anything, just sits there. But, here is the kicker, if you select ‘No’ it says ‘Thank you’ and goes to the next page.

Most likely someone at the HQ of Verizon is looking at reports and saying ‘look I told you Alexandria didn’t want FIOS, there are barely any people on the waiting list.’

This is frustrating, because I am sure this is being used by the management to defend their case on where they dig and where they build out. It is also frustrating because I have been waiting for FIOS for over 4 years, and we are nowhere close to getting access to this technology.

This is the one time I wish I lived in Europe, as their internet is so much faster over there!

Now For the History...

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England,and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time y ou are handed a Specification/ Procedure/ Process and wonder "What horse's ass came up with it?" you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else