Last Day of Lockdown

I took this week to lock down - no meetings, no projects other than the big, honkin', major video delivery portal I've been up to my eyeballs in. I started with a punchlist long as your arm that has since grown even as some things got removed from it. But it was nice to be able to focus on nothing but this project.

Oh, and the latest storm of the millenium that honked things up for two days. Mucho shoveling, and yes I'm sick of winter.

That said, I had my laptop and one of my portable hard drives, so I was all set to work from home. Thanks to a boss who thought it was a great idea. The children were not as compliant - more interruptions than I really wanted.

Still, progress is being made and I have a half a hope that we'll be in reasonable shape by our departmental deadline of March 1. This is going to dramatically change how we deliver online media, especially online education, and I'm hoping to make some important people fall out of their chairs when they see this thing in action.

Of course, next week I have to go back to talking to people.

PS Had to go through the haloscan switchover. Not sure how much I like the new commenting system, but I also backed up my comments in case somebody figures out how I can import them into blogger. Whaddaya think?

Project Management

I'm posting this everywhere. Courtesy of Rick Brookhiser over at National Review:

The Six Stages of a Project

1. Enthusiasm

2. Disillusionment

3. Panic

4. The Search for the Guilty

5. The Punishment of the Innocent

6. Praise and Honor to Non-Participants

This describes so many, many of the projects I have been involved with. I'm thinking I should add it to the planning documents of every project I am part of.

In other news

I saw this headline on ESPN.com

Top two females are sole Horse of Year finalists

and couldn't help thinking it was about time Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker got the recognition they deserve.

Interesting discussion

over at Volokh's place:

Entrenchment Provisions in the Health Care Bill

Heard the guest host on Dr. Bennett's morning radio mention that there are provisions in the Soak the Rest of Us Healthcare bill stating that it could never be repealed. Made me wonder if that's actually true.

Leaving aside whether the author of the piece is correct, the comments section has some interesting - if a little esoteric to me - discussions about the rights & rules of legislators and their legislation.

Not that it's going to stop this train wreck, but...

I sense

a forthcoming protected group:

Study Reveals the Angriest Americans

Al Sharpton will soon begin protesting on behalf of Angry-Americans. It's only right they get their own minority group.

A Faint Ghost of Thursdays Past

That echo of halcyon bygone days must be the Thursday Three, reasonably to be expected to return for the first time in more than two years. El Possumo Grande has not-blogged a not-Thursday Baker's three:

1. What one person are you most thankful for this year?

Other than, of course, my wonderfully perfect and well behaved family, I'm probably most thankful for the new VP around here, whose complete and utter disregard for "how we do things around here" got me out of a bad work situation into a much, much better situation.

2. What one thing are you most thankful for this year?

This is going to be very work-centric, but probably the new media management system we're installing. It's given me a tool to learn, and an opportunity to demonstrate both expertise and leadership on an initiative that I think will dramatically change this organization. It's totally change my attitude towards my job - I'm interested in it again.

3. What one event are you most thankful for this year?

To round it out, I'll stick with work. The social media conference I went to in July was directly responsible for my shift to my new job.

BONUS: 4. So, how’s it going? How’ve you been lately?
Still trying to shake the various ailments - lingering cough, etc. Busy as can be, but mentally a lot closer to stable since the change.

Remember when

George Bush got all that grief for calling himself "the decider"? I'll take that any day over our current "agonizer":

Obama Won't Take Any Current War Options, Official Says

I'm sorry - you get elected president in order to make decisions. That's why it's called the chief executive - you execute things (not generally people - that's usually for governors).

I understand that Democrats and liberals are focused on domestic issues rather than foreign policy, which is why he can decide to ram a poorly conceived healthcare plan down the throats of an electorate that doesn't really want it.

But c'mon, man, just make up your mind on Afghanistan for cryin' out loud! The president is refusing to make a call because he doesn't want to take responsibility, and unfortunately for him and the rest of us, that's what the job is all about. Go ahead - refuse to provide more troops if that's what you want. Or send the troops your commanders have asked for. Just quit screwing around and make up your mind, willya?

Gimme the decider over the Agonizer in Chief any day.

This is wrong

on so, so many levels:

Santa Dreidel

I understand there are many intermarried people, but the whole point of the Chanukah story was the defeat of another faith (OK, pagans, but you get the point) by the Jews who refused to surrender their God.

I guess hip kitsch offends me when they start messing with my faith.

Something occurred to me

while reading this post:

Columbia University Graduate School of The Internet

Now, the post itself I think is very much on target about the need to train journalists properly for the brave new world of the internets. And while I suspect I know Mr. Rosenblum's political leanings, I don't know them for certain and they're tangential to my issue.

He says:

The school was founded by a rogue businessman, Joseph Pulitzer. He was the Rupert Murdoch of his day. He tried to expurgate his many sins by building the school. Instead, he compounded them. He succeeded in creating a factory for ‘good employees’, but he infantalized an entire industry.

The graduates of the school long to be good employees - to work for The New York Times or The Washington Post or NBC News or CNN...

The report on the Future of American Journalism was written by two lifetime employees. Leonard Downie Jr., spent a lifetime at The Washington Post, as an employee. He rose to be Executive Editor but he still got that weekly paycheck. Michael Schudson is a lifetime academic. He also has spent his life getting that printed paycheck every week.

Nice guys though they are, they are hardly the right people to ask to figure out the future of journalism. What they have been bred to do for a lifetime is to figure out where the next paycheck is going to come from. And that is what they came up with in their report. Pretty much devoid of any other ideas, they came up with ‘ask the goverment or some foundations to write more checks’.

I don't have an argument with his primary point, but I am wondering about this disdain for people collecting paychecks. This is not the first time I'm seeing this around - there was an episode of Miami Ink a while back with a young woman (flat out gorgeous, by the way) getting a tattoo of a robot to symbolize her father's "enslavement to corporate America". She was determined to avoid ever working a "real job." There are other examples.

What's bothering me is this idea that there's something wrong with going to a "regular job" and collecting a paycheck. Perhaps the world does need Joseph Pulitzers and Bill Paleys, but we can't all be at that level. None of the big time movers would ever have gotten anywhere without the paycheck collecting shmoes working for them. That's not exactly what journalism (or any field, except maybe Hollywood) needs - everybody's a CEO, nobody does the grunt work?

This bothers me more coming from liberals (as I suspect Mr. Rosenblum is) only because they pride themselves on their support for the working people of this nation. But sneering at people who collect paychecks is not terribly supportive. Would I like to be a chief instead of an Indian (scusi - Native American non-leadership voluntary tribal participant)? Sure, but I don't have the ideas and I don't really want to work that hard. I've chosen to prioritize family and personal life over the commitment to work that being a chief requires.

This is not just liberals, by the way, though I think it's more common there. It's a curse of the elite and the hyper-driven to think there's failure in the ordinary. Not necessarily a bad thing - great advances in every aspect of life require the kinds of people who won't settle for the ordinary. But it's awfully arrogant to sit back and write off the paycheck takers as failures. A lot of us do things that allow the hyper types to do what they do in comfort, safety, and freedom.

New math

Overloaded day + lack of sleep + overstuffed sinuses + no weekends (Thanks Hebrew Calendar!) = 1 extremely spaced-out Dan.

I need several naps.

It's Just Not Fair!

Reason #24576 why I can do without Obama, his administration, and their hangers-on:

Steven Chu: Americans Are Like ‘Teenage Kids’ When It Comes to Energy

Let's leave aside the correctness of the whole "the earth is being destroyed every second by fat Americans who won't give up their high standard of living" mantra of the First Church of the Green Mother (A. Gore, Pontifex Maximus). I concede freely there are things we can do to reduce waste.

What's bugging me is the sheer unveiled contempt the Nobel winning hack has for us, the great unwashed. It's the nanny mentality these people have to the ordinary folks that escapes out of them when they speak freely. The "elites" of this nation - the policy wonks and the politicians and the think tankers and the rest - are utterly convinced that we're too dumb, too unschooled, to inept to decide for ourselves what to do.

Don't get me wrong - there's plenty of this on all sides of the aisle, and frankly it's sickening. Most of these losers and nerds have never had a real job - it's been academia and "community-based service" for their entire lives. They've never had to meet a payroll, they've never had to work overtime, they've never had to budget a damned thing. And yet we're the ones who "have to understand how important this issue is."

It's a waste of breath, but here's a news flash for Dr. Chu. I'm not a moron. I happen to disagree with you. You haven't made a case to me that says you're right. I'm not a recalcitrant 15 year old - I'm waiting for an argument from you that holds even a drop of water. You mistake my refusal to sell all I own and live in a yurt for simple-minded ignorance; it's in fact a refusal to surrender the gains made by generations before me so I could live comfortably and provide for my family in the way I see fit.

If there's hope for limited government, it's when ordinary people stand up and let these egotistical wastrels understand that we're a lot smarter than they give us credit for. The proof will be if we actually vote these knuckleheads out of office.

A headline question

Here, from the AP (via Yahoo), a note about the controversy surrounding the President's comments about Kanye West:

President's opinion of Kanye West sparks debate

So standards of journalism are at issue - reporting something that should have been off the record. A fair enough discussion, I guess.

But to my question - how come none of these people give a damn that journalistic standards are already in the toilet? Objectivity, straight reporting, and nonpartisanship have disappeared from the field for all I can tell. We're left with opinion masquerading as news and people in the tank for one side of the political divide pretending to be objective.

Out of curiosity, why is none of that as important as the President referring off mike to someone as a jackass? Particularly when that person in fact behaved like a jackass?

Just asking.

In one ear, not out the other

As I posted to facebook yesterday, I can't hear with my right ear and I'm not listening with the left one.

The trip was fun, especially the unofficial family reunion along the Wenatchee River in Washington. Unfortunately, germs were part of the reunion and the whole lot of us East Coasters got sick. In my case that was a bad head cold that suddenly turned into an ear infection last week.

I got on antibiotics the next day, but for the last week my ear has been totally clogged and it's getting irritating to say the least. It's like an itch I can't reach and I feel half cut off from the world. So a trip to my wonderful ear doc (and I mean that - he's very good and a great guy to boot) is on tap for tomorrow.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some caring person from the government to provide me with free service? It's a pity nobody's talking about health care these days.

Somewhat live

and mostly awake, I blog from the left coast. Sunny sort of downtown Bellingham, WA, home of Western Washington U. and Mrs. Skinny's parents. Part of the year. On no apparent snowbird-type schedule.

Either way, we are here, a bit unslept but mostly sound. We have a trip to Victoria, BC planned for tomorrow & thursday, and a trip out to the wilds of central WA for the weekend and a not really official family reunion with the cousins spread across this great state.

Other than the usual complications of kosher food - we stocked up in Seattle and will have to make do with it for the rest of the trip - it's nice to be here, be with family, and not going to work.

Road to hell

is paved with "clunkers"

More Cash for Clunkers III

I'm overwhelmed sometimes by the unintended consequences of most liberal policies. The intended consequences are usually bad enough, but then comes the collateral damage. Let's briefly examine a f'rinstance:

• Bob is unemployed
  
• Bob has no car
  
• Bob gets a job interview for a decent but not high-paying job
  
• Bob get a ride to the interview
• Bob aces the interview
• Bob is offered the job
• Bob cannot take the job, because he can't afford any of the cars that remain available for sale
• Bob remains unemployed

See, in this universe where we remove something like 1% of the cars on the road, for little noticeable effect on either environment or gas prices, we are removing 99% of the cars that the poor can afford. Meaning they remain poor.

Look, sue me, it's a straw man. But as most people recognize, there's a lot more to an economy than meets the eye. It's not a set of rules to be imposed from on high (see Stalin-era 5-year plans, etc.), but a series of very small localized transactions. You can't just decree this stuff, you have to let it happen naturally or it won't happen at all. And when it doesn't happen, strange ripples begin to occur.

Gadgets!

So me & Mrs. Skinny decided we were due new cellphones. It being several years since the last upgrade, and us finding out they've replaced the old rotary kind with these push-button jobbies.

A word about me & technology, specifically mobile technology - I'm not so into it. In fact I resisted getting cellphone for a few years, on the theory there was no one I wanted to talk to that badly. I gave in eventually, and it has proved to be a lifesaver for that vital human function - grocery shopping. List or no list, I can now call Mrs. Skinny twelve times in 6 minutes to ask what I forgot.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a wannabe geek with a great interest in technology & putting it to good use. I just don't see the value to watching Lord of the Rings extended version on a 2 inch screen, with or without director's commentary. Even if it means I can have my hobbits anytime, anywhere. Texting is another mystery to me - why the heck would I want to communicate in eight word, poorly spelled bursts?

So the plan for new phones was simple. Mrs. wanted something she could text on as she dips her toe into the sore thumb universe, and I wanted a nothing phone. Let me make a phone call and I'm pretty happy. We check out the offerings at what passes for Ma Bell these days, and I find a nothing phone. For free, as they often do. OK, I'm good, what about Mrs?

She goes to the store, checks it out, and identifies something a little higher rent with a slide out keyboard. We finally get to the website, plunk mine in the cart, and we're poking around a bit more before pulling the trigger. So it turns out the one Mrs. wanted was no longer available. By the time we sort it all out, the higher-end version of the one she wanted is now free. And the cheapo I was looking at - is now $30? How does that happen in less than five minutes?

Needless to say, cheap wins out over simple every time. So we are both the proud owners of the Pantech Matrix Pro with its accompanying doodads. I can't find half the stuff on it, much less use it. But I must admit - I just synced it up with my work calendar, and it was a breeze. Which I think is very cool, and I will now know my schedule wherever else I am.

I'm still not texting - you can't make me.

There's an old line

about not knowing what art is. I'm fairly certain this is not it:

iBum chair automatically photocopies your butt

I'm with the author - it's not much fun if they schedule it, and the artist needs a life.

So I think

though I couldn't swear to it, that things have taken a dramatic turn for the positive around here. I may have been moved to another department (something we've been working on for a bit) and free from the stupidity of where I've been (see Tuesday, July 2nd for more.)

Yet it's sort of hard to tell. No one's said anything directly to me about answering elsewhere (though the big boss announced it while I was in Ohio), I had a ridiculously complicated project dumped in my lap from the old department with 4 days to do it, and there's been no discussion of transition.

So, I can't entirely tell if life has changed since it doesn't really feel like it, but at least on someone's paper things are different. You'd think after nearly 9 years I'd have this place figured out, but there's always a curveball you've never seen before.

A Shocker

French tourists seen as world's worst: survey

But, but, how? Are not the French the preeminent example of all that is right with the world? Are they not more cultured than the rest of us plebes? What happened to the Ugly American being the big problem?

I like the Expedia guy's explanation:

"The French don't go abroad very much. We're lucky enough to have a country which is magnificent in terms of its landscape and culture," he said, adding that 90 per cent of French people did their traveling at home.

Anotherwords, why would we want to visit you silly English Kannnigits when we have such a beautiful country here to sneer at?

A message

to my asinine "supervisor":

Read your goddam emails. Pay attention when I talk to you. Get off my back. I know more than you do, I do more than you do, and you're being a colossal pain in the ass.

Rant over, and apologies for the language.