Rant

I felt great when I rolled into Greenwater, the point geographically farthest from the start of Saturday’s 200k brevet. I got my card stamped inside the store, reloaded my water bottles with the unnatural blue sports drink, and chomped away on a slab of vanilla ice cream surrounded by two, chewy chocolate chip cookies. I reckoned the remaining forty, mostly downhill miles would be easily doable within the five hours of time remaining. All the steady winter riding had finally paid off. I’d complete my first ever brevet. ...

Last week, I read a story about 143 million pounds of beef products from California-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company being retroactively recalled to February 1, 2006. Questions that came to mind: Does beef keep for two years? I’d always worked from the conventional cooking wisdom that meat could be stored for up to two months in the freezer. The charts 2,7 suggests this is true for ground beef. Steaks and roasts can be kept for 6 – 12 months. Still, that’s a year shy of the retroactive recall date. Only canned beef products have a 2-5 year shelf-life7. Conclusion: most of the beef has already been consumed. Perhaps this is done for shock effect or litigation purposes? ...

The high-level observations for today: “Invited” speakers tend to be better than those that are… not invited. I do not have enough data on quality of uninvited talks, but I see an opportunity for a great practical joke. If the invited speaker isn’t working, you can either wait it out or go to the alternate bloc of presentations. (You do have one, don’t you?) Or, tour the Poster Hall. Nearly half of today’s presenters were confounded in some way by the remote control. It seems people think “right click” means “forward one slide,” not “select some stupid menu that I’ll need help exiting.“ I woke up from a weird dream that involved being approached by a panhandler of the worst kind: ...

Costco called last night to let me know the tires I ordered were in — not that I expected to wait long for a set of all-weather radials compatible a 2002 Subaru, especially in this neck of the woods. I drove today, anticipating I’d be able to escape work early and have them mounted. On the way in, I saw a cyclist, his blinkie was barely visible. Issaquah-Pine Lake is a terrible stretch of road to drive on. Biking is even worse because of the disappearing shoulder. I made a deliberate effort to give him sufficient berth. As I eased back into the normal lane position, I saw the cars in front of me were making sudden stops. I did my Fred Flinstone, feeling the pulse of the anti-lock system working its magic. Even with well-worn tires, the car held steady, and I stopped in time. ...

I’m coining a new term, fomplicated, to describe a product that requires deliberate intervention and expertise from a customer beyond what any sane human being would consider reasonable. The word is a contraction of a well-known English expletive rhyming with firetrucking and the word “complicated.” Although it’s applicable to a variety of things, I’ve been seeing it a lot related to my computer. For example, this morning I had a minor fomplication. While poring through some mailing-list email, I saw that KMTT 103.7FM has an online stream. The Mountain Music Lounge is great stuff, but I don’t get good reception indoors. I had an unsatisfactory experience with a pay-for service that claimed to have the station, but really only played a pre-selected “best of” 20 songs. (Cancelling that service was unnecessarily fomplicated, too.) KMTT’s option would not only serve it live, but would also be free. And it claimed to run on my Linux and Windows machines. Score! ...

Last December I was lamenting the industry analyst forecasts were all over the map. One particular analyst, Analyst Bravo, had unbelievabily optimistic numbers. Here’s a better chart depicting the market predictions of four analysts for hard-boiled eggs (HBE), soft-boiled eggs (SBE) and Jewel-encrusted eggs. Everyone acknowledges the hard- and soft-boiled eggs market is declining while deluxe, jewel-encrusted eggs are the future: You don’t have to be an analyst to see that Analyst Bravo thinks the hard- and soft-boiled egg market is going to remain strong. Last month Analyst Alpha, who only reports on total boiled eggs, adjusted their 2004 and future “forecast” down about 20% from where they were last year. Their estimates are similar to Analysts Charlie and Delta. I’ve also manually corroborated the estimates with the third quarter financial reports. Much like the dry Pancake Mix market, four major players serve 90% of the market. In the next two weeks, I’ll have another set of annual reports to pore through and I don’t expect a miraculous upswing in the market: after trying jewel-encrusted eggs, no one goes back to mere boiled. Switching among boiled egg suppliers is very easy as there’s little practical differentiation. (Sure, some paint letters on the eggs or dye the shells or even use paper cartons. Customers see these features as gravy.) ...

One motivation for the exercise last week in reviewing 10-Q/Ks was to come up with some forecasts on the marketplace. We also use an array of industry analysts who are ostensibly better connected and do this stuff all day, but the numbers I’ve seen are all over the place. Consider the following chart: Dozens of Hard-Boiled Eggs Consumed per Year (I know this is busy, but I had to take out the PII because I don’t like talking about specifics of my employment. If it helps, assume that I’m just a simple data farmer.) ...

I had a weird dream last night. In the dream, I made a gazillion dollars because I wrote a program that automatically generated wholly truthful and accurate status reports. (This is especially funny if you ponder the irony of designing software pointing out software ironies.) It was based on MadLibs, rendered in a template like this: This project is adjective ( doomed; not dead yet, but coughing up blood; dead). Important Person (VP, CIO, customer) verb phrase (is still withholding information, has been meddling/changing requirements again, won’t make up their mind), marketing verb phrase (hasn’t finished the specification, is too busy playing golf/doing field research, doesn’t have any use cases, gives us specifications relying on 23rd-century Star Trek technology), the developers are excuse (pulling dates from their imaginations, playing Doom III, still trying to work out the answer to the moving Mt. Fuji interview question), ...

In June, a New York Times article said there were fewer complaints about cubicles from job seekers. It seems people are now less likely to worry about whether their workspace is equipped with walls, doors and Herman Miller chairs. Well, Duh. As the market pendulum has swung from seekers to employers, it’s not a stretch to say people are so thankful to even have a job, they’re less concerned with petty luxuries. Today, I’m going to reflect upon the “then” (when George Bush was in office) and “now” (with George Bush in office). ...

What is the game of “Chicken?” In the movies, two hooligans with something to prove settle their differences by racing their cars towards each other. The first one to turn away, averting certain collision, is the “chicken” and loses face among his cohorts. The other player, referred to as the “winner,” gets bragging rights and the fickle heroine. If no one turns — which is a theoretical possibility, but in practice, never happens in the movies (dramatic license and all that) — the game is officially a draw. A rematch is unlikely, but both participants are automatically entered as co-nominees for the Darwin Awards. ...