BillSaysThis Weblog

Headline from the (near) Future: Homeless Army Leaders Detained by FBI

2008-10-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

(San Diego, CA, 16 June 2009) Six leaders of the self-style Homeless Army of Americans were arrested by a combined FBI, state and local police task force this morning minutes before the HAA organizers were to take the podium at a group rally at which attendance was estimated to be well over 100,000 people.

Those arrested include Sam Stross, 42, Peter Humphries, 43, Gerry Torres, 31, all residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, Gemma Lam, 33, of San Diego, Diego Stevens, 38, of Santa Fe, NM, and Bankos Hamesh of New York City. Their attorney, Jorge Chen, told this reporter that more than four hours after the six were taken into custody he had yet to be allowed any communication with his clients.

"Today's action by the McCain Administration violates both the First Amendment as well as constitutional protections and other legal protections but are in no way a surprise to any supporter of the Homeless Army," Chen said during a phone conversation. "In the five months since John McCain took office over nine million Americans have lost their homes and he has done nothing except staff up local and federal police forces and begin construction on what can only be enormous holding camps, with today's illegal arrests only the first of many."

Before news of the HAA 6 arrests became public, thousands of police officers from San Diego and surrounding areas, California State troopers and California units of the Army National Guard were deployed to the streets and the rally participants were herded down prepared paths to be dispersed out of the downtown area.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation would not provide a spokesperson to answer media questions but instead released a statement on the FBI press release website, which begins:

"No American's rights were illegally impeded in San Diego today and any physical force used by law enforcement officers was in response to explicit physical attacks by this unauthorized gathering. The six individuals arrested prior to their participation in this unauthorized gathering were detained on charges of conspiracy to incite terroristic violence, threats of violence against the elected leadership of the United States and conspiracy to commit fraud.

"[The arrested individuals] are charged under the recent revisions to the Patriot Act and as such have been detained without access to counsel until the investigating officers determine that all participants in this complex conspiracy have been identified and, to the extent possible, arrested to stand trial with their comrades. Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice nor local or state police commands will have further comment on these individuals until further notice."

Stross, Humphries, Torres, Lam, Stevens and Hamesh have been very public faces of a movement that grew out of the debacle which last fall's $700 billion bailout was supposed to prevent. The bill, according to the Bush Administration, was the only way to avoid a horrific economic crash; since the measure did nothing to assist borrowers, though, the huge number of so-called toxic mortgages remained untenable for homeowners to repay and banks began foreclosing in massive numbers days before the new administration was inaugurated in January.

The Homeless Army has drawn support across the country and today's rally was expected to be the first big showing by the group ahead of a political campaign to pressure Congress and the Administration to find a solution that would return homes to the millions of families forced out by armed squads of temporarily deputized private security company employees.

HAA.org attempted to post prepared remarks by Mr. Humphries, who is the group's primary public spokesperson, but the site was unreachable due to denial of service attacks. He has previously issued calls for the impeachment of President McCain and Vice President Palin for executive orders that authorized financial instutions and other mortgage owners to obtain foreclosure and eviction orders despite state laws that would otherwise protect homeowners for at least some period of time.

Miss Lam has written articles for the Huffington Post website laying out a case for the prosecution of leaders of the previous Administration for what she termed "the most outrageous fraudulent, illegal transfer of wealth in modern economic history" when almost all of the bailout money went to wealthy individuals and the balance sheets of the handful of large banks that remain in the aftermath of last September and October's string of failures and near-failures.

Senator Joseph Leiberman, R-CT, spoke to the issue on the floor of the US Senate late in the day: "The so-called HAA6 are not honorable people attempting to redress some great wrong but thugs leading a mob unwilling to accept the consequences of their own greedy decisions and ready to bring the great American nation down around them unless the majority of law-abiding capitulate to threats of violence and disorder. We will not be intimidated and this Administration and our brave president will not allow such threats to stand."

Senator Joe Biden, D-DE, responded to Leiberman: "Barack Obama and I would have blocked the massive expulsion of many hard-working homeowning citizens had we not been tragically prevented from taking office. Our Administration would never have approved the trampling of the Constitution and the Homess Army of Americans would never been needed. These people should be released immediately and President McCain should see this as a wakeup call from the reality he strives so hard to avoid."

White House Press Secretary Gail Gitcho told reporters that the President had nothing to add to the FBI statement and would not be answering questions from the media, unsurprising as he has not met directly with reporters since three weeks after taking office and addressing the nation only sporadically and briefly in that time.

After the first $100k, I think your answer was clear

2008-09-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

Brazilian speeder gets $1.9M fine after racking up nearly 1,000 separate violations. Driving a car worth about $6,500.

Somehow the police officers writing the tickets didn't catch on the last, say, 990 times?

Headline from the (near) Future: Pelosi Sworn in as 44th President

2008-09-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

(Washington, D.C., 21 Jan 09) Nancy Pelosi (D, California) was sworn in as this nation's first female President by Chief Justice John G. Roberts on the steps of the US Capital building this morning after neither the House nor Senate were able to resolve last November's Electoral College tie between Barack Obama and John McCain.

"The people of America must be able to rely on their elected representatives to fulfill the responsibilities set out in the Constitution of the United States. I will serve as President until such time as Congress settles this great question, guided by the results of the popular vote, the advice of my Cabinet nominees and in consultation with the two candidates. As already announced my Cabinet will by drawn from the ranks of qualified women and men of both parties.

"However, unless informed otherwise by relevant legal authorities, I intend to retain my vote in role calls and the Presidental resolution as a member of the California delegation in the House of Representatives and to return to the Speaker's office once the House finds a majority will."

Under the Constitution, a new President must be inaugurated by January 20 and as Speaker of the House of Representatives Pelosi was next in line for the top job. This unprecedented event came after both candidates won 269 Electoral College votes in the Nov. 4 balloting, throwing the race into the hands of Congress. Senator Obama won the popular vote by a nearly 2,000,000 vote margin.

The House is required to elect the new President but with conservative Democrats throwing support to McCain neither party could muster the 26 state block votes to win the post. The Senate was caught up by parliamentary procedures that enabled several senators to block Democratic VP Joseph Biden despite his party's nearly 10 seat majority.

While both houses are expected to eventually make permanent selections, statements in recent days from Roberts clearly made today's dramatic interim outcome necessary. Obama and McCain separately told reporters they accepted Pelosi's elevation as important for an orderly transition from the Bush Administration but expect her's to be among the shortest of Presidential tenures.

"America must have a Commander-in-Chief sitting in the Oval Office and through the wisdom of our Founding Fathers the answer to this crisis is simple," said Senator McCain at the National Press Club this afternoon. "I thank President Pelosi for her prompt agreement to step in and expect the Congress to immediately put aside party politics and elect a new President and Vice President as their duty and the people of this great country require."

Legislators have only had two weeks to decide this issue since the new Congress was sworn in just after the new year. The House of Representatives appear closer to breaking the deadlock, with rumors and unattributed news reports claiming that either Nevada or Rhode Island will switch from the Republican to Democratic columns within days.

"America's Constitution has once again demonstrated its greatness and the foresight of its authors by providing for the difficult situation in which we find ourselves," Senator Obama said on CNN this afternoon. "President Pelosi has my full support and confidence and I will work with her to ensure the nation moves forward without respite to deal with the huge economic and security problems left to us by President Bush."

The Senate needs at least several days to perhaps a week to clear away several procedural matters presented by Republican senators from Wyoming, Alabama and Texas but once done Senator Biden should become Vice President with at least 53 votes. If this happens before the House completes work, he would immediately become acting President.

Should neither house be able to get a majority result, President Pelosi will remain in office until the 2012 elections. She can stand for the office in that race but under the 22nd Amendment having served more than two years in the current term would not be eligible to run again 2016.

Liverpool 2-1 Manchester United: Woo ha!

2008-09-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

Because of the Setanta crap this game wasn't available to the vast majority of American fans but I was quite happy to read this headline on BBC Sports just now:

Ferguson lambasts Man Utd display

Lovely words for any Reds fan, eh? Especially with Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres starting on the bench from injury, our captain only coming on at the 68th minute, and the Red Devils' five years of league dominance continuing with a smart early goal by Tevez off a brilliant pass by newly bought Dimitar Berbetov, one would hardly have expected the result.

10 points off our first four Premier League matches has us at the top of the table (pending Chelsea's outcome in a couple of hours) and Man Utd only four off three matches. We have an interesting run of five games, probably mostly winnable: at Marseilles for the opening Champions League game midweek, new boys Stoke City--who are beating Newcastle 0-2 after 70 minutes today--next Saturday, a Carling up tie with League One side Crewe, the 'away' derby with Everton and finally yet another CL clash with Dutch power PSV Eindhoven.

Is this the year the title drought ends? Sir Alex and his teams have taken 10 league title in that time to climb within one of Liverpool's all-time record but one can only hope today's hard working result foretells just that ending!

New TV series Do Not Disturb: All you need to know

2008-09-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Niecy Nash and Jerry O'Connell star in this Fox sitcom--O'Connell sure has gone downhill since leaving Sliders before it was over, rarely a good career move. According to TV Barn's Aaron Barnhart:

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune summed it up pretty well when she texted me that "it made my soul vomit."

World Cup 2010 Qualifying, Day 1: USA look terrible

2008-09-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

Even taking account of the downpour in Havana and very poor officiating--though nowhere as bad as that in the Hungary-Denmark match--USA played down to the level of competition and were lucky to get a 1-0 win over a team that has exactly zero players on club rosters outside their island nation.

Bob Bradley went with a five man midfield but despite the extra man were not able to get Brian Ching a single good opportunity. The one goal we had, from Clint Dempsey in the 40th, was down to a lucky bounce after the Cuban defenders beat Dempsey on the initial cross and Ching was able to touch it back to Clint.

The top goat, besides the coach, was Maurice Edu. Fresh off a decent performance at the Olympics and a $5 million transfer to Rangers, he was horrible all night with his passing. Either short, too soft, to the wrong place, wherever, if the US had given up a goal it would most likely come off a bad Edu pass.

Landon Donovan is next on my list. While I can't point to the same kind of specific miscues as with his fellow midfielder, Landon was never the attacking engine he should have been. After all, of his American all time team record of 35 goals, six came in two previous matches against Cuba. Tonight the closest he came was a couple of shots well high from distance and, in general, he played too deeply to be the connection between balls out of the back and Ching.

Somehow Heath Pearce started at left back for the seventh consecutive game. I cannot believe that we don't have a better option. Where are Jonathon Bornstein, Jonathon Spector or even Eddie Lewis? Heck, if Bradley wanted a five man midfield he could have gone with Onyewu, Bocanegra and Frankie Hejduk in a 3-5-2, pushing Dempsey up top with Ching and inserting Sacha Kljestan into the XI. We probably would have won by three or four goals!

Next up for the US is a much tougher match Wednesday against Trinidad & Tobago, who managed a 1-1 draw at Guatemala today. We'll have Steve Cherundolo back (from a ridiculous two yellows in a game suspension), maybe see Kljestan, Marvell Wynne or Ricardo Clarke in the starting lineup and the game is in Chicago, so for once we may have more supporters than the visiting squad.

Elsewhere French soccer fans must be wondering the hell has happened to a team that won the World Cup/Euro double back in 1998/2000. They lost to an Austrian team 3-1 by giving up essentially two own goals and a penalty kick! How Domenech will keep his job if the lose the game against a very tough Serbian side==remember, he didn't win a game in the Euros in June and the team went out at the first round--I do not know. Teflon coach or not.

Italy needed a last gasp score to beat Cyprus 2-1, England (missing the injured Steven Gerrard) could only manage two against micro-minnows Andorra and Spain (missing Fernando Torres) snuck past Bosnia-Herzegovina just 1-0.

Israel apparently has a decent shot of making it to the Finals and an injury time goal gave them a precious point against a very difficult Swiss side after going behind 2-0. Liverpool's Yossi Benayoun got the first and Chelsea's Ben Sahar the equalizer. The Sabras travel to Moldova midweek, so hopefully the full three points from that.

What's the timde difference from the West Coast to Johannesburg?

Aptana swallows a Python

2008-08-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

Work is going really well here, we are making big strides towards our goal of getting production releases across much of our product line during the second half of September (Studio 1.2, PHP plugin 1.0, Jaxer 1.0 and Clouds 1.0). Keeping us busy but we've had help in the form of some very strong new hires too.

This morning we also announced the acquisition of Pydev, the premier Eclipse plugin for Python. Fabio Zadronzy has developed a strong functionality base and a large enthusiastic set of users--the Big G themselves are global licensees of the product--and he'll continue to drive the product forward as well as help us adapt features across our family of supported languages.

As part of the push to release several of our remote staff have flown in for a week or two, or in one case, permanently, giving me a chance to put a face to their voices.

Keep your eyes peeled, there is much more good stuff coming from Aptana soon!

Update: Don't just take my word for it, check out the effusive blog post from Brit Gardner.

A Mixwit just to try it out

2008-08-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

Job hunting: Asking for help on your lists

2008-08-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately a friend asked last night about posting to a community mailing list we're on as he got caught up in a restructuring at his company and was laid off. I encourage him to post and gave this (unsolicited) advice about how to get the best results.

Take care in phrasing your message, along these lines:

Short: Be brutal in filtering yourself.
Positive: Make it all about the special value add you bring to the table.
Concrete: Make everything as quantified as possible even if your precision is greater than the data; words like great, better and excellent are very nice but have very low actionable content quotients.
Concrete #2: Ask for assistance that is within the ability of the recipient and that will truly help you.
Do not be subtle: Be very explicit in stating what you want from the reader.

My best guess is that your message should not be any longer than mine (up to this line).

The last point is perhaps the most difficult one because most adults are uncomfortable about needing help on such an important part of life and exposing what they perceive as a weakness.

Most of us, after the age of 35 or 40 at least, simply don't allow ourselves to believe that we might have difficulty finding work. Accordingly we're reluctant to ask for help in a direct fashion that comes right out and exposes our status.

This is not a problem for me, of course, due to my recent work history but it used to be one. Participating in ProMatch let me see my own situation through the prism of the other members and exposed some emotional fallacies that hindered my efforts.

Additional suggestions I gave him:

Post your resume on a real webpage, like I have at http://billlazar.com. Relying on Monster or HotJobs is useless these days though a blog at Blogger or WordPress.com, where the only post is your resume is a simple, free, good solution.
Update your LinkedIn profile and use your network there aggressively to find people at target companies.

New season, same old goalscorer

2008-08-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Fernando! 33 goals last season and, though the game looked to end another 0-0 dreadful to pair with their midweek Champions League result, Mr. El Nino Torres unleashed his deadly boot in the 82nd minute and put the ball where it needed to be in the back of the Sunderland net for a 1-0 opening day win. Sweet, sweet, sweet!

Rafa put out an interesting lineup. Ryan Babel, Lucas Leiva and Javier Mascherano would have been in the XI except for being in Beijing for the Olympic quarterfinals so we had Damien Plessis paired with Captain Stevie in central midfield and Yossi Benayoun at left wing and the boss gave starts to new signing Andrea Dossena at right back and the longest tenured Red, Sami Hyypia, alongside Jamie Carragher.

Hyypia made the opening 10 minutes more exciting for Pepe Reina than they might have been but the backline tightened up after that and our goal was rarely challenged. On the attacking end we had quite a few chances that finished prematurely from good saves by Black Cats keeper Craig Gordon and centerback Nyron Nosworthy or shots just wide.

In the end we took all three points home, in stark contrast to last season's opening day 0-0 draw. Next weekend we host Middlesboro. Gareth Southgate's men took a surprising 2-1 win over visiting big spenders Tottenham so getting another victory will not be a walk in the park, though we may have at least one of our Olympians back in the squad and perhaps even see Gareth Barry's debut (if Hicks and Gillette finally cough up the cash).

It is on: Seven Days to the EPL

2008-08-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

Spain stunned plenty of soccer fans with their 1-0 win over Germany at the Euro 2008 in Vienna but that was six weeks ago and now the European clubs are getting into gear for the regular season. I posted a brief, opinionated view of the major transfers and manager situations for the EPL at the reborn SportsFilter but in this post I'll focus on my team of choice, Liverpool FC.

Fernando Torres showed us he was worth every pence of his �21 million transfer fee, delivering 33 goals, second only to to Joan Laporta's heart's desire CRonaldo. Torres was arguably the second best player at the Euros as well and one can only hope that his goal tally was limited by the so-called adjustment that players new to the English style must go through.

Last Season's Key Additions

Centerback Martin Skrtel, though if Daniel Agger is healthy again the two are likely to battle all season for minutes,
Alvaro Arbeloa and Fabio Aurelio at fullback pushed Steve Finnan and my boy John Arne Riise to the bench and then Riise last month all the way to AS Roma, but Rafa Benitez still wasn't satisfied as he brought in two new men, Andrea Dossena and Phillip Degen, to strengthen the back line. Aurelio also added heft at left midfield on occasion in the late months.
Yossi Benayoun made his mark mostly in Champions League and coming off the bench, the Israeli's speed and style when defenders tire resulting in 11 goals.
Ryan Babel had 10 goals including my favorite score of the year when the Dutch youngster used his buttocks to tap one into the Besiktas net during an 8-0 Champions League drubbing.
Lucas Leiva is an aspiring midfield playmaker, currently on the Brazil Olympic squad, who could be the biggest loser if our owners finally come up with the dosh to buy Gareth Barry.
Andriy Voronin is likely to find himself scraping for playing time again, despite the departure of Peter Crouch, because the team did not spend �20 million to sit Robbie Keane on the bench.

This Summer's Changes

Here's the BBC Sports in and out list for the Reds this summer, minus youngster loan outs:

Ins: David Ngog (Paris St Germain, undisclosed), Emmanuel Mendy (Murcia Deportivo, free), Diego Cavalieri (Palmeiras, undisclosed), Andrea Dossena (Udinese, undisclosed), Philipp Degen (Borussia Dortmund, free), Robbie Keane (Tottenham, �20.3m).

Outs: Scott Carson (West Brom, �3.25m), Peter Crouch (Portsmouth, �11m), Harry Kewell (Galatasaray, free), Anthony le Tallec (Le Mans, undisclosed), John Arne Riise (Roma, �4m), Danny Guthrie (Newcastle, undisclosed). Argentinean youngster Sebastian Leto had to be loaned out to Olympiakos, losing his work permit when his Italian passport was voided.

The significant departures are Crouch, Riise and Leto. I really felt that Rafa undervalued Crouch and Riise, neither getting enough minutes to be fully effective. Riise, to be fair, also seemed to have misplaced his booming left foot, his free kicks and shots from distance going wide or high all year. But the beanpole striker did the business when given an opportunity, unmatched on the squad in his ability to bring the ball down off long passes and keep it until a mate was in range, totalling 42 goals in 142 appearances for the Reds over three years. The only surprising aspect of Scott Carson's deparure was the low price; early gossip had him going for nearly three times as much!

Who are the New Boys?

Robbie Keane is the known quantity, scoring 15 times for Tottenham last season, but surplus to Juande Ramos needs in the Spaniard's first transfer window in charge. (More on Tottenham). Everyone seems to be drooling over the pairing of Torres and the Republic of Ireland captain and all-time goal scorer because Keane can create for his striking partner as well as he puts it in the net.

Degen and Dossena (Swiss and Italian internationals) as mentioned will replace Riise and Finnan in the primary fullback rotation. Finnan is still on the squad but he's been mentioned as make-weight in more than one transfer deal or going out on his own in the �2-3 million range.

David Ngog is a hot young striker from France, only 19, but likely to be more bad news for Andriy Voronin's playing time if he can get up to speed quickly. For sure he means that Babel and Dirk Kuyt will be mainly deployed on the wings and not their preferred place in the middle.

Cavalieri comes as veteran goalkeeper backup for Pepe Reina as apparently Charles Itandje did not suffice in the limited role allowed by Reina's playing every minute of every EPL and FA Cup match plus most of the Champions League games.

Mendy is a young Spanish right back and hasn't even been assigned a shirt number, meaning he'll be playing for the reserve team at least this season. Benitez tends to sign a lot of these youngsters and so far not too many have pushed their way into the senior squad.

I'll post some thoughts on what these changes may do for us in the upcoming season soon.

Some Thoughts on Tottenham

As I wrote on SpoFi, Tottenham has made the boldest money moves and the Spaniard will surely be under pressure to do better than last season's water treading. He cleaned house, may still get a rumored $70M+ for Dimitar Berbetov from Sir Alex Ferguson and ultra-hot Russian playmaker Andrei Arshavin, and bought a lot of quality: Keeper Heurelho Gomes is a big upgrade from Paul Robinson, Luka Modric is coming into his own as a midfield commander, Giovani dos Santos showed flashes of greatness when he could get onto the field at star-studded Barcelona and David Bentley was the hottest winger available inside the EPL.

A man, his dog and death: the folly of religion

2008-08-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Big Guy passed along a joke yesterday that was funny, though his email was more about why some people pass along jokes. Smart funny, not laugh out loud funny. I'll post it first, then explain why it points out the folly of religion; a bit lengthy but bear with me.

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate and, as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, 'Excuse me, could you tell me where we are?'

'This is Heaven, sir,' the man answered.

'Wow! Would you happen to have some water?' the man asked.

'Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up.'

The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

'Can my friend,' gesturing toward his dog, 'come in, too?' the traveler asked.

'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets.'

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

'Excuse me!' he called to the man. 'Do you have any water?'

'Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in.'

'How about my friend here?' the traveller gestured to the dog.

'There should be a bowl by the pump.'

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveller filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.

When they were satisfied, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

'What do you call this place?' the traveler asked..

'This is Heaven,' he answered.

'Well, that's confusing,' the traveller said. 'The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.'

'Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell.'

'Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?'

'No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.'
[end of joke]

After chuckling my first reaction was somewhere near astonishment. Someone lives their whole life good enough (in a biblical sense) to qualify for eternal bliss in Heaven but immediately after realizing you're dead you have to pass a trick test?

Sure this is a joke and not a new addition to the New Testament but to my (non-believer's) eyes it is completely consistent with the promulgated scriptures. Every day on Earth everyone one of is presented with temptations and opportunities to fail the Big Test. As the Devil said to Arnold Schwarzennegger in End of Days, and I paraphrase, if God was such a great guy why does he allow life to be so difficult? No, he said, God isn't that great, he just had a better press agent than me.

Of course we know Arnold is God's warrior and the Devil will be banished by the end of Act 3, and he is. But that's the movies, where we expect Hollywood to wrap up the evil and make everything nice in the end.

Here on Earth we have to choose every day whether to take the first shiny offer that comes along or stay with our dog and keep walking. Heck, now with the wonders of the internet we get to make that choice many times a day just by turning on email or surfing the web.

In End of Days more than one priest insists that the only way to defeat the Devil in his hour of possible triumph is faith. God will protect us if we only believe He will. Have you seen that movie? Plenty of faithful folks, and even innocent (or rather, uninvolved, just walking down the street or praying in church) folks get slaughter as collateral damage (to bring up another ultra-violent Arnold movie).

Movie or not, isn't that what life is like? In yesterday's paper I saw that nine California firefighters died when the helicopter they were riding in crashed on route to one of the big fires we get every summer. Hurricane Katrina killed how many reasonably good people? And we can't even count how many civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the crossfire.

So, circling back to the original point, we may enjoy an eternal life of bliss after the pains, joys and monotony of this brief span. But only if, in a last moment of thirst and confusion, we make one last correct choice. Amen.

Your Road Tax Dollars at Work

2008-08-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

The academic division at BillSaysThis has done further study of traffic condition in the Mountain View/Palo Alto area in consultation with a local expert and the results obtained are not pretty. Despite spending $123 million to rebuild this interchange our researchers have found liitle improvement, particularly just north of the massive project in Palo Alto.

The situation could be worse, see the many problem reports concerning the the Sunol Grade section of 880, but our conclusion is that the new interchange design was poor and did not acount for sufficient factors in surrounding areas. This is, of course, all too common with government spending.

The researchers did have one bright note: The commute in the opposite direction is far worse.

from my 3g iPhone

2008-08-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

Just a test post now that1Password for iPhone made it easy to get here.

Enter Aptana: A Cool Place to Work

2008-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

This place has been quiet over the last month plus for two reasons: working through all the issues with the new house and a change in my work situation. Fortunately, I'm happy to report, both are now in good shape.

When I last wrote about the new home (June 17) I thought that passing the city building inspections meant the end was near. Relatively speaking, the actual end was July 2. Except for two plumbing issues that are not dire and a huge landscaping project, which we put aside for the moment to give ourselves a break and some time to reload the cash card. Overall we spent more than 3x the projected amount, which still boils me because from all appearances we have no recourse. But, calm down Bill, relax, we do have lovely home to live in for a long time to come.

Aptana, which provides tools and services for web application development and deployment, is where I landed after disagreeing with the bosses at Marketo about Sales being the right team for my position and I'm quite satisfied with the change.

My title is Manager, Customer Success, with the main responsibilities centering on documentation, support and community. Everyone at Aptana from Paul Colton, the CEO, down is a developer (except for the very capable in-house recruiter and office manager) and is focused on delivering tools and services that address major pain points for web app developers.

Further, Paul makes decisions from the understanding that getting obstacles and frictions out of the staff's path is the best means to our delivering quality results. For instance, at Marketo I had to wait three months to get a Mac and at that could only have permission to buy the low end MacBook. When I showed up for the first day of work at Aptana my desk had a MacBook Pro hooked up to a massive Apple Cinema Display, the basic software installed and updated.

Plus he gave me a ride to the first company lunch after I joined in his sweet Basalt Black Porsche Carrera GT. This is not a 911 variant but a limited run (1270 made, only 600 sold in the US, from Jan. 2004 to May 2006), a monster burner with a 5.7 liter V10 engine capable of going 0-60 in 3.5 seconds. Which I believe he tried to demonstrate to me that day!

Sound good? Got way above average development skills? We're hiring.

Family Visiting Us (for a change)

2008-07-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

My great aunt Edith is 100 years old this year and so a big Lazar family celebration was organized for this weekend, with cousins and spouses traveling here from all over the US (Edith lives in San Francisco). My father, sister and nephew came from back east and our new house was ready just in time for them to stay with us.

This afternoon we all met up at my uncle Martin and aunt Wendy's place in San Jose; this is the first time I've been with so many relatives since, oh, maybe my first wedding back in '87, maybe longer. The core group was my great uncle Nate, my dad and his six first cousins: Norm, who was great to me when I lived near him in college; Norm's older brother Irv; Andrea, who lives just down Middlefield from us; Eleanor; Arthur, son of the birthday lady; and our host Martin. Plus a bunch of the cousin's kids came from near and far. Martin's two daughters both have babies, who spent most of the afternoon sleeping or looking cute.

There were several pro (Eleanor's husband Tom) and semi-pro photographers, so I'm sure I'll get pics to post soon. Meanwhile, here are two I snapped with the phone:

Tomorrow Edith will come down for the party at Andrea's house and Sunday the inner circle are having lunch with her in San Francisco. What a great holiday, eh?

Euro 2008: And it's over

2008-06-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

Liverpool's Fernando Torres finally broke a hard luck duck and scored the only goal of the final to lead Spain to their first major tournament trophy in 44 years after going close moments before, denied by the post. Germany rarely solved the core of Senna and Xabi in the center of midfield and when they did Carlos Puyol ended the threat so even with the end of game surge Iker Casillas had to make only one true save.

Michael Ballack was on the losing side for a third major championship in the last six weeks, getting a runner's up medal here to go with the two from Chelsea's losing to Manchester Uniter in the Champions League final and Premier League. Ballack, I will admit, has never been on my favorite player list, stemming from his play-acting in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals when Germany beat USA 1-0 on questionable refereeing.

Speaking of which: Andy Gray, ESPN's color man, said early in the second half "[Rossetti]'s the ref. He has the qualifications." There were far too man questionable decisions, such as the yellow to Casillas for dissent and lack of foul calls against the German centerbacks, but fortunately the outcome wasn't affected. Where's Pierluigi Collina when we really need him?

At Sun Open Source Business Intelligence Summit

2008-06-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

Though it isn't something with which I've been directly involved, BI is a very interesting field and when I saw that Sun was hosting a free one day event attending seemed a no-brainer. First time I've been back on the Sun Quentin campus in Menlo Park in several, maybe four, years but the place looks pretty much the same.

The morning presentations were okay but not great, about 60-70 people in the seats including Steve Gillmor and Nic Cubrilovic of newly-launched TechCrunchIT (more details about this event in their post). The keynote was from Mark Madsen of Third Nature; he looked at open source generally, not BI specifically, mainly from an economic and historical perspective. Other than mentioning a few FOSS companies new to me I didn't see a whole lot of meat in his presentation.

Ian Murdock, Sun's Vice President of Developer and Community Marketing, did an hour on Sun's open source strategy and roadmap. Plenty of the former and about none of the latter, mostly vague generalities, except for a mention of Zembly. That's a new Sun project, still in private beta, that enables anyone to "create, host, and deploy Facebook apps, OpenSocial apps, meebo apps, iPhone apps, widgets, Google Gadgets, and other social applications, in minutes, all using just your browser and your creativity."

Zack Urlocker is the afternoon speaker and is definitely interesting and on topic. I first ran into Zack about 15 years ago when he was running the Borland Delphi 1.0 product launch and he's always doing something creative and useful. He came into Sun the other month when the MySQL acquisition closed and is now VP Products, Database Group.

His talk opened with a view of how MySQL used open source as part of their strategy to successfully disrupt the database market, moved on to specific customer case studies and their partner ecosystem and then a look at the MySQL technical strategy.

Key Lessons from Zack:

Referenceable customer case studies are a huge sales tool
New use cases make for easier sales than rip and replace migrations
Partners, partners, partners (probably due in large part to the makeup of this audience)

Much better!

Euro2008: I was, er, wrong

2008-06-23T21:24:00.001-07:00

The quarters are over and boy am I surprised! Three of the four group winners lost, with Spain surviving on a (thick) thread. Germany over Portugal was easy to understand as soon as the sides lined up for the pregame anthems, the Germans towering over Cristiano Ronaldo and crew. Turkey pulled another ridiculous comeback out of their asses, scoring on literally the last kick of the match.

Most annoying, the Dutch left their exciting, winning style in the dressing room and Russia did the business to move on. In all three group stage games the Orange were fast, aggressive and made their opponents look like B squads; Saturday Marco van Basten changed tactics and his players never really gelled with it. Russia could have been taken, particularly in the first half, but Sneijder, van der Vaart, Kuyt and van Nistlerooy just didn't have it.

Dang! I feel like using all seven of those words!

2008-06-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

George Carlin, RIP. The man put on some of the funniest shows, consistently, for over 40 years and now he goes, heart failure on a Sunday afternoon. What a bad start for any week!

Carlin and Cheech and Chong were the first two comic acts that I connected with as a teenager, with Richard Pryor not far behind. Routines like the seven words you can't say on TV and Dave's not here warped my mind in ways from which I've never recovered. And by hosting the first episode of Saturday Night Live Carlin gave that show instant credibility, giving that initial cast an opening they drove through like a Mack truck.

George kept giving us the good stuff over all these years, more through juicy supporting roles in movies (especially Kevin Smith flicks) but also with the occasional HBO special. A funny man, his death is a big withdrawal from the cosmic humor bank account.

Testing iWidgets

2008-06-20T10:54:00.001-07:00

A friend from those long-ago NetDynamics days has a new company that just came into public beta called iWidgets that provides a fairly simple to use, JavaScript-based tool to build a wide variety of widgets which you can then deploy on Social Networks like Facebook and Hi5, widget portals like iGoogle and embed on your blog.

As a test I made a simple widget that should show the most recent five headlines from the movie review blog and here it is:

Seems blank so far, but this is an early beta ;)

Later: Peter Yared emailed to tell me his engineers have identified the issue and a correction should push on Monday if it holds up under testing. Very good!

Let's see if this works

2008-06-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

The Google Mac Blog had a post today linking to the videos from the recent Google I/O event. Being too expensive for me to attend, this seemed like a good thing. However, clicking the link in the post that should have taken me to the videos instead sent me to the Google Sites login page (which makes sense, they probably use Sites for these kind of pages).

Google official blogs do not have comments so I can't post this request to fix the the problem directly but the blogs do have a posts that link here feature. So let's see...

Home owning: Phew! Inspections complete

2008-06-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

To say we had a little trouble with the Mountain View Building Department would be an understatement. Most knowledgeable folks I spoke with couldn't understand why we needed to take out any permits, much less two. (Late in the game we had to get a third, for the new furnace, though that does seem justified).

Fortunately we had good people working for us and so when the inspector came out this morning he signed off on all three.

The disconnect stems from the fact that all the work we did was to repair or correct existing things, all of which should have been inspected two or three years ago when the previous owner expanded and remodeled. Much of the work simply wasn't up to code, like unvented bathroom fixtures, hot water heater and furnace--we bought the new furnace because venting the old one would have required major structural work.

Anyway, with the approvals we're in the home stretch. All the walls and ceilings can be closed up and painted, the fixtures put back and we can finally unpack and figure out where everything will go.

So it's like a home now, eh? Give me a beer, dammit.

Hosers Return!

2008-06-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, it sure has been a long time eh? The CBC and Fox are partnering to bring back Bob and Doug Mackenzie in animated form 25 years after their movie Strange Brew bombed. Good thing since neither Dave Thomas nor Rick Moranis are young enough to do the brothers justice.

One surely hopes the two comics can still bring the heat, er, ice cold Molson.

Home owning: Friday the 13th strikes

2008-06-13T11:21:00.001-07:00

What a surprise! Our lovely new appliances arrived nice and early this morning and the wonderful, simply wonderful, past construction here raised yet another unbelievable annoyance: the cabinets next to where the refrigerator goes are not installed correctly so the fridge doesn't fit.

I'm talking to a Home Depot associate right now to see what can be done. A swap for the next size smaller? We'll see.

Later: These guys treated me right. Though they apparently had no obligation to help me since the manufacturer refused to take the return (admittedly, per standard policy), the store manager agreed to do so. Plus he's letting us keep the first fridge until the new one comes Wednesday so we have a place to keep food cold. (It's sitting in the garage, fortunately for us located on the other side of the wall from the kitchen.)