Closing Price: $3.90

Holdings Value: $3,900.00

Loss: 71.13%

I’m down $9,610.00. Painful.

Painful painful. I’m glad this is imaginary money.

To be honest, I thought it was pretty cool. But it’s obviously both a commercial by Nike as well as a trick of the camera. Use of perspective can easily fool anyone. Kobe is jumping behind or in front of the car as it races by. It looks like he jumps high enough to do it in reality, but the car is on his left or right. He’s not jumping “over” it meaning, he’s not jumping in front of the grill.

Here’s my stills from the video to support this:

Note the perspective here. The shadows on the ground are probably put in (i.e. post-effect) to make the perspective seem legit, but I think they help show how he isn’t over the top of it. Look at Kobe in relationship to the “light post” shadow. It looks like Kobe is closer to the camera than the middle of the car in this one.

Note length of Kobe’s shadow and car’s shadow and perspective. Still looks like he’s closer to the camera to me.

This one he just looks closer too. But the car actually does drive over the shadow of the light pole - a nifty illusion.

It’s also highly likely that Kobe and the car weren’t even in the same state at the time of the “stunt”.

Anyway, do you think the Lakers would let him do such a crazy thing? Not a chance.

And yes, I had too much time on my hands today.

Since I’m working with digital audio most of the time, I need a reliable drive to either work off of or move files to once I’ve finished. Drive space has gotten remarkably cheap over the years, and if this was for my desktop box I’d probably just slap another hard drive in the case. Since my laptop is my main “axe”, and I’m less comfortable fiddling with the innards of a laptop (and much less comfortable paying Apple to do it for me), I figured an external drive is the way to go.

My Criteria

• Fast drive–7200RPM or better
• At least 500 gigs of space
• Firewire 800 connection (or better)
• Reliable company with a good reputation
• QUIET. This device must be quiet and must not throw off all sorts of errant RF signals or have a loud fan

Initially I thought firewire 800 might be the best I can do for data transfer speeds. In digging around I found out there’s something called eSATA; this basically will allow you to connect your external drive at speeds that are supposed to rival that of an internal drive. That’s pretty hot.

The Contenders

Western Digital and Seagate had good reputations for reliable hard disks when I used to poke around with desktop hard ware, so I thought they might be a good choice.  The Western Digital My Book Studio appeared to be a decent choice. I’ve read some reviews (which for the life of me I can’t find links to for now–ugh) that have said the drive is prone to failure, and the unit can run loud. Yeesh. Since silence is one of my critical issues, it’s on to the next drive.

LaCie seemed to be the darling of the Mac community for a while–the design studio hard drive of choice. These devices seem to get good reviews, and the LaCie d2 Quadra in particular looks like it might serve well. But my one real-life experience with a LaCie drive was not good; it made the most horrible high-pitched whining sound. Whether this was an issue with that particular drive or with all LaCie drives, I’m not sure. But I’m hesitant to mess around with a pricier brand that might raise such a racket.

Finally, one of the guys at the Mac Store pointed me to the G-Tech G-Drive Quad. I’d never heard of G-Tech, but it’s fanless design (and the guy’s rave review) caused me to take a closer look. It has all the connectivity choices I wanted, and reviews seem to be good. The only downsides I see are 1) they are quite a bit pricier than other brands and 2) they apparently are hard to come by.

The Decision

I plan on purchasing a G-Tech G-Drive. If the extra $$ translates to a reliable, quiet drive then it’s well worth it I think.

Does anyone have experience with these or any other drives they care to share? Let me know.

Maybe—just maybe—Hillary can win. This article suggests her advisers are giving her a 5% chance. But if not, what is she doing for the party?

Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans.

I kept up with election news daily for a while, but this has been a long campaign. By this point I’ve done my research and made up my mind. The occasional shock piece has emerged, but mostly it has been pundits speculating and repetition repetition repetition.
McCain has had the luxury of changing his stride and focus on his general election messages while the Democrats continue to wallow in turmoil.

What a crazy year this has been for American politics.

It’s interesting reading the perspective of someone in the system characterize Hillary as being too power hungry for our good. It makes a lot of sense: this is a mighty close race, and in the event that Obama gets the nomination, where does that leave the Dems? McCain and his crew will tear apart whoever is nominated—that you can be sure of. And the Democratic nominee will go after McCain. That’s how it works.

But to have these types of attacks within a party—especially when Obama is narrowly leading the delegate count—is dirty boxing. It’s worse than that. As Hart says, it’s an all-or-nothing tactic, and if Hillary doesn’t win the nomination guess who gets the “nothing”.

Hillary aired an ad that questioned Obama’s ability to govern, invoking fear that When Bad Things Happen It Better Be Her Answering The Phone. Obama’s response to the ad is elegant and well said (as usual). His argument is rooted in the fact that he spoke against the Iraq invasion—something that’s turned out to be the type of call Hillary is proposing will happen at 3am.

You can see the ad and Obama’s response below.

Hillary’s “Red Phone” Ad

Obama’s Response

I haven’t been a regular windows user in 5 years or so, but from a developer perspective this is very interesting. We went from cursing Netscape back in the day to loathing Internet Explorer and loving Firefox. IE made a nice leap with 7, offering tabs and other contemporary features it sorely lacked. It also seemed to play nice(r) with CSS compared to previous iterations.

But how many people will upgrade? Will there be a healthy roll-out via Windows Updates? The last thing I want to do is add yet another browser to my Must Test list. I guess looking at the logs and analytics will be the truest test.

Of course, there’s no version for the Mac. That doesn’t bother me so much—I think I’ll stick with Firefox for the time being.

What are other people doing to insure browser compliance these days?

It was worth it. That thing is awesome! I now have a nice outdoor kitchen-ish thing going with the grill and a little sink. I use it probably once or twice a week where I’ll cook anything from fish to corn on the cob to steaks and burgers. You name it. Keeps the heat out of the house in the summer and food tastes better grilled…

Anyway, about 3-4 months after I bought it, I noticed the Teflon coated grills were flaking. And the flaking got worse the more I used it. I followed the directions on how to keep the grills clean pretty much from day one - only using hot water to rinse them or even just popping them in the dishwasher. So the fact that the Teflon was coming up really was perplexing and a bit disappointing. On the grill itself is an 800 number for customer service - so I called it up and told them of my issue. The customer service rep took my information such as name address, as well as the serial number of the unit, where I bought it from etc. Once complete she said “We’ll send you new grills as a replacement at no charge to you.” And the call was done. It took all of 10 minutes and they were standing by their customer and sending me replacements. I didn’t have to do a thing but call!

Now about 2 weeks ago, I noticed the exact same thing happening on the replacements! More flaking. And let me tell you, I babied the replacement grills. Like you couldn’t even look at them with a metal tong in your hand. They were cleaned by angels blowing on them. Ok they were rinsed in hot water… but gently. As you know, grills can get dirty, and keeping them dirty in an outdoor kitchen is ugly and embarrassing. It’s not an option to let them stay dirty and anyway, they are supposed to be dishwasher safe. So now I thought, well geeze, it must be a manufacturing defect.

This time, I went to their website, clicked on “Customer Care” and then “Contact Us” to see what options I had in letting them know about my recent issue. On that page was a link to their live chat. I’ve used live chat before with some success so I figured why not here too? After filling in their prelim form, I was in the chat room and waited only a few moments to be connected to a customer service agent. I explained again the issue with the Teflon, told them the replacements need replacing and asked if there was something wrong with this model’s grill grates. The agent wanted my serial number, which I didn’t have at work but suggested to her that I was already a registered customer, could she look me up by name. In moments, I was found in the system, the problem was noted and was told to hold on while she asked another department if there were any records of a defect for my model. Again, just moments later I was told that no, the problem seems to be just me and that they would again send me out replacements free of charge.

Now, while I still think there might be an issue with these grills just because of my experience with them, Jenn-Air will continue to get my business and be a recommended company to friends who look for these unique items. Their customer service was tight and impeccable. Any other company should use their example as one to strive for.

• I was given multiple avenues to discuss my problem. Both avenues I used, someone responded quickly as well, there was little hold time. Also, the hours that the agents were available were convenient to me. People have jobs and grills are a weekend thing. Having someone available when your product is being used most was great.
• My records were retrieved in seconds on the second contact point (the chat) based on a minimum of information given from me (the customer)
• Internal conversations with managers or other departments took only a minute
• Responses were concise, professional and friendly - regardless of the medium contacted. The person who typed the chats spelled everything correctly and had good grammar
• I was believed and was given warrenty service with no hassles in a very short time

In an age where customer service seems to be lost art, it’s good to see a company step-up. Clearly Jenn-Air has thought out their customer service process thoroughly, invested in high quality systems so that agents can do their quickly and efficiently and hired good people to face customers.

For me, price isn’t always the driving factor in a purchase. I’ll pay a buck more to be treated well and I think more and more people are doing the same. At least for certain purchases, maybe not a gallon of milk. But even there, if the line at the checkout is 12 deep while 20 lanes are unmanned, it’s not worth the dime to wait and be frustrated. A customer only needs one bad experience to never return. And given the internet, it only takes one angry blog post to keep people away from your store or product. I wish more people blogged about their positive experiences too…

This article has mostly to do with how job titles are changing in the IT world but they are doing so to reflect the changing way IT is used in other large-scale businesses. This is not a “dot com” thing. This is a real world industry change being done by multi-billion dollar companies - results of which can easily be seen at dice.com and monster.com.

Key quotes:
“Key factors driving the evolution of IT job titles and roles include the commoditization of technology, plus an ever-growing base of new workers who are technologically savvy and quite accustomed to having technology play a background role in just about everything they do.” -Jonathan Thatcher, director of business integration for the Chicago-based Computing Technology Industry Association

“IT is no longer a subset specialty. IT is integrated into whatever work you’re trying to get done,” -Patti Dodgen, vice president at Mosaica Partners LLC

“The IT department is being disintermediated, but in a good way. It is being pushed farther up the food chain,” says Kamud Kalia, CIO at Toronto-based Direct Energy, an $8 billion integrated energy services company. “A lot of stuff IT would have done, they no longer need to do. The problems have been fixed or the technology has been commoditized.”

“At Direct Energy, job titles — especially titles in the 350-person IT organization — are purposely kept vague. “We keep the titles generic, and people can apply descriptive labels to what they do,” says Kalia. “I want them to think of themselves as people who work for this company, not people who work for this company’s IT department,”

“IT will focus more on analysis and be more involved in the early life-cycle tasks [of developing products and services] and less on technology delivery. IT will focus more on simulation, content and information architecture,” The bottom line: “Moving away from technology management doesn’t take IT out of the picture. It changes what IT does.” -Anthony Hill, CIO at Golden Gate University

The biggest take away I had from this article is the fact that finally businesses are seeing past the “IT as order taker” role of the past. I once sat down here with an end-user to do some field work on her business processes and how they could be optimized. When she found out I was in the IT department, she wanted me to replace her mouse as aparently it wasn’t working well. This type of huge gulf in understanding what an IT department is all about is all too common in many businesses and it can be really tiring. I’ve found it to be a constant uphill struggle, one where I repeat over and over what value an IT department who is a partner can bring to a company. And frankly, it sometimes has limited success. I’ve used the analogy of “It’s like trying to explain the wiring of a 747 when the person I’m explaining it to has yet to see fire.” It makes me wonder if companies or groups who are so far behind the curve will ever be able to catch up?

But man, NASCAR is boring.

About 2 years ago I moved down south for work and family. At the office, guys talked NASCAR all the time. This driver and that, this kind of car and that, alot of talk about restrictor plates and the Car of Tomorrow. Most of which went over my head. I probably know slightly more about cars than Mikhail Baryshnikov. I’m not trying to make a statement about the knowledge of Russian ballet dancers, but…ok yes I am. Anyway, I don’t know much about cars. I can change my own oil and can flush the radiator if I care to. (I did both a few times, but it was a pain to dispose of the old fluids so I just go to Jiffy Lube or whatever now.) Windshield wipers and all the other fluids aren’t confusing. I even once changed the thing that charges the battery when the car is running…er…the name of which escapes me as I write this. It has belts and what not. The converter? No that’s not it. Bah. See? Regardless, I’m no gear head by any stretch.

Hilariously, I joined a Fantasy NASCAR group last year. And won. Seriously! I won the group and was paid $60 bucks for first. Everyone was pissed because I kept chiding them about how I knew nothing, never watched and still was winning. My strategy consisted of putting in drivers every “expert” said to. Who the hell is Boris Said? I didn’t care. He was picked on “road courses” and in to the line up he went. An interesting side note, one of the road courses for NASCAR is Watkins Glen, which hosted one of the largest rock concerts ever with one of my favorite bands, the Grateful Dead. (BTW, do yourself a favor and listen to the soundcheck jam - choice 10. Even if you don’t like improvisational music, this one is inspired.) 

Ok ok…on topic…

I tried this year to watch the whole Daytona 500race and found it so freaking tedious that I had to give up and go edge the yard. (For those of you in cold climates, the yard never stops growing in the South.) They go around and around for hours and get gas and tires occassionally. Sure the cars are fast and sometimes they bump and even crash. I joked with my dad on the phone that I think people watch to see if someone will turn right at some point. See, they go one way on an oval track…always turning left…if they turned right, they’d crash. It was funny if you were there.

The drivers are likely very skilled at what they do although I would hesitate to call them athletes. I’m sure someone will bristle at drivers not being athletes but someone always does. Those same people probably would’ve liked to have seen poker in the Olympics. OK perhaps they are athletic and it seems pretty draining to sit for 4 hours in a 120 degree (or more) car in full body asbestos underwear, even though they now have said underwear cooled the whole time. And you probably have to concentrate pretty damn hard for the entire time. That said, NASCAR drivers are no Michael Jordan, Bruce Jenner or even Brian Bosworth. I will however concede that they are more athletic than John Daly or Fernando Valenzuela.

All that aside, I tried to watch for the nuances. Although the hillbilly announcing the race was no help, I guess there were some…drafting and bumping or some such. Yes changing the tires fast seems to get people back into the race ahead of the guy who was slower. Also, some pit crews mastered the art of the calculator as someone was able to judge if their guy needed to get gas when others didn’t. I’m not sure why they couldn’t just put in a guage of some kind in the car saying how many miles they have left… Apparently it’s a risky thing staying out on the track without getting new tires and more gas. I get it that new tires grip better. Again though, will this keep me awake?

One thing I do know. NASCAR looks GREAT in hi-def.

Why do all the boring sports like golf and NASCAR look so good on TV?

I really enjoy this song for it’s story-like lyrics and catchy tune. My friend in London said Kate Nash sounds like a “chav” but not being from London and instead being an unsavvy American, I like the accent. It adds to the story telling aspect to me.