Fun on the Field

Well the Seahawks won after some initial challenges with their defense. Being down on the field was amazing - really gives you an impression of what it's like to play in front of 68,000 screaming fans. One word: loud.

Seahawks Opening Game

Seahawks vs Buccaneers on Sunday, good. Sky box ticket, better. Pre-game field access, awesome! Watch out for me close to the end zone on the southwest side of Quest field on Sunday.

Maps for the Children

In response to the recent call to action by Miss Teen South Carolina, Maps For Us started a blog of important maps: Mapsforus.org

Please contribute. It's for the children. Please.

Steampunk Tree House

...imagine another sort of tree. Maybe there aren’t natural trees anymore. Maybe there are a few left in special National Maximum Security Parks. Maybe the memory of a tree is so far gone from living memories that people try to recreate what they imagine they’ve lost using another sort of romantic imaginary, one of machinery, scavenged gears, gathered belts, hunted steam pipes, gleaned gauges, rusty metal and gobs and gobs of steam. In short, though our natural world may change, the human drive to connect with it and one another remains, it is second nature. Enter the Steampunk Tree House!

Romania this week...

First full day in Romania today. I'm always wary of hotels that are named after organic compounds. My current abode, Hotel UniREA is no exception. About on par with a Cozy-8 it does have the benefit of being close to the office. The A/C emits pitiful breaths of tepid air rather like an asthmatic water buffalo about to expire. Watching Seinfeld dubbed into Romanian is the most entertainment I expect to get tonight. Still, at least I'm not back in the USSR. Pictures when I download them from my camera. Sleep time...

Dumb-as-a-Stump Award of the Week

Easily winning the Dumb-as-a-Stump award this week, and of little surprise to anyone, Network Solutions handily demonstrate why they are universally disliked. Not only are their registration fees the highest in the industry, their customer service is diabolically bad. Take for instance the e-mail I received from them today, August 14, 2007: "Act Now. Don't let your service expire" it blared. Gosh - I'd better renew in case I forget, I mused. Then I noticed the expiration date **June 26 2008**. Wow - nothing like getting advanced renewal notices. Doofi.

Slusho, water, zoom, happy, power, fish, donkey, frog

Slusho, water, zoom, happy, power, fish, donkey, frog

What would Jesus do?

From a Slashdot post today: "American Red Cross Sued for using a Red Cross". Quite a mundane story: "licensing rights.....blah blah.....exclusivity.....blah blah...". However there was at least one highly entertaining comment. Click on the image above to see.

Amazon Fresh

I must report being very satisfied with the selection from Amazon Fresh and the quality and timeliness of their deliveries. I was a big fan of Webvan in the day (and by fan I mean I enjoyed their selection and efficiency of delivery. I was not a fan of their business model - but I did reap benefit from it (I have two Webvan totes sitting in my garage - collector's items??)).

I'm picking up from Amazon PacMed (looking forward to when the new pick up building is opened so I don't need to trudge down to the sports court). Other delivery options are available. A great innovation is the Pre-Dawn Delivery for when you absolutely must have fresh pop tarts delivered overnight. I'm outside the current delivery zone, but when it expands to cover my apartment it'll be kippers and Cap'n Crunch for breakfast everyday!

William Gibson Visits Amazon.com

A good day today. Upon logging into my e-mail account this morning I discovered that William Gibson (for one of his characters this blog is named) was to be speaking at the Amazon.com Fishbowl at lunch time. I promptly cleared my calendar and mentally began to prepare my questions. Mr. Gibson read chapter 2 of Spook Country after telling us that this was originally written as Chapter 1. After the reading he answered questions. I asked him if he consciously was moving his stories back in time (Spook Country is set in 2006). He explained that he writes by pulling the strangeness he finds in everyday life into his stories and no, this was not a conscious decision. He was asked about product placement in his stories (ref. the "Sony TV" in Chapter 2 of Spook Country). Mr. Gibson explained that he intended to "[allow people of the future] to access the texture of our daily lives". That "it's not product placement ... it's memetic coloration". He signed a copy of Spook Country. I shook his hand. Today was a good day.

Amazon Flexible Payment Service Launches

Hot on the heels of the Amazon Fresh beta launch, the Amazon Flexible Payment Service has just launched. It provides easy access to the millions of existing Amazon customers who have their payment preferences registered with Amazon. Amazon has established a very high level of trust regarding payment services (much better than, say, Paypal where if you have a problem you are SOL. Problems with Amazon payments are dealt with by Amazon customer service who's service quality is legendary). The service has a number of interesting capabilities including:

• Developers can create payment instructions that are as simple or complex as they desire. For example, creating a relatively complex business model around micro-payments is easy to do with Amazon FPS. The aggregation feature lets you track and aggregate micro-payments into a single payment transaction, saving on transaction processing costs and avoiding having to build complex ledger functionality into your own applications. Without this capability micro-payments would be difficult or cost-prohibitive.

• Amazon FPS exposes a different fee structure for each of the underlying payment methods enabled: credit cards, bank account debits, and Amazon Payments balance transfers. Amazon's cost to process a payment through a bank account debit is less than Amazon's cost via credit card. Amazon's cost for processing an Amazon Payments balance transfer is less still. By exposing different fees for each of these three methods, Amazon can pass on savings from bank account debits and balance transfers, allowing developers to save money. In each case, Amazon takes on the complexity of managing security and fraud protection.

• Amazon customers can pay using the same login credentials and payment information they already have on file. This helps Amazon customers keep their payment information secure and removes the friction 3rd party developers would face if they needed to get customers to enter their payment information before they could make a purchase.

The folks at FreshBooks have been testing out Amazon FPS. Their story and feedback makes interesting reading.

Redbox = BlueScreen (of Death that is)

Spotted in the wilds of Utah at some generic fast-food joint, this redbox automated DVD rental / vending machine. The Bluescreen of death had been showing for as long as anyone working at the store could remember (however given the general knuckle-dragging appearance of said-staff that may not have been very long). No matter, as Amazon Unbox continues to grow the act of physically renting a DVD will soon go the way of the dinosaur. Redbox = dead company walking.

Business Week: Amazon #1

Not much more to say really. Suck it Microsoft and Google (9 and 19 respectively).
Full details at Business Week.

Backyard Things That Are Fun To Build

Just submitted review for "Backyard things that are fun to build" by Ray Wallace:

With nothing much to do last weekend I picked up a copy of this book with great expectations. I must admit that gathering some of the supplies that were defined in the book was a little troublesome (hint: large quantities of wristwatches with luminous hands come in very handy), however with such problems overcome I was able to construct a rough, although fully functional, nuclear reactor, boil up some water and have a spiffing cup of tea! Wonderful! I never would have thought that such things were possible. May I recommend the chapters on whale hunting for fun and profit, 101-ways to wok a dog, and the ever favorite do-it-yourself embalming.

Quote of the Week

Seth Jayson of the Motley Fool writing today about Patrick Byrne, CEO of overstock.com:

"This week's news is just another confirmation that his directors are beginning to believe, as I have long suggested, that Byrne is nuttier than my Aunt Betty's fudge-ums."

Byrne is well know for his conspiracy theories including naked-shorts trying to destroy his company and widespread payoffs to financial journalists to criticize his company. My Byrne needs to come to terms with the reality that he's running a crappy business and needs to focus on fundamentals rather than finger pointing. Indeed, nuttier than a pile of squirrel poop.

What Has Brown Screwed Up For You Today?

I believe I am the first to announce that UPS has begun the beta testing of their matter-transportation system. As you can see from the screen shot, above, a package en route to me arrived at the Menlo Park depot at 3:30am on 5/17/2007. Just nine minutes later it was scanned at the UPS facility in Sacramento over 115 miles away. Amazing!

1985...

The three fine gentlemen you see in this picture are, from left to right, Steve Tom, me, Charly Anderson. The picture was taken in 1985 at CCI's offices in Irvine (right by El Toro airforce base). We were working on-site developing a complier-backend for the CCI Power 6 comptuer. The Power 6 had a custom processor and used the VAX instruction set. Initially it ran a custom port of BSD. Later 4.3BSD was ported to it. Steve and I lived in Irvine (actually in Mission Viejo) for several months during the summer of 1985. When the project was completed we returned to Palo Alto in the San Fransisco Bay Area. (Charly now works for Actix.)

Spook Country

I'm expecting my review copy of the upcoming William Gibson book "Spook Country" to arrive in the next few days. It's due for publication in August 2007. I, of course, can't wait until then. As soon as I have it and have ripped my way through it I'll post my review. What I know thus far:

Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.

Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to.

Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms.

Bobby Chombo is a "producer," and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him.

Pre-order yours at Amazon.com.

Evan The Martini Idiot

May I present for your enjoyment and edification, a original masterpiece comprising animation and pen and ink entitled "Evan the Martini Idiot" (If you want to know why it's called that, ask Evan). You can see the completed picture on Flickr.



Want your own Monster by Mail? Visit www.monsterbymail.com. An original hand drawn monster sketch delivered to your doorstep for $20.

Music is "You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You" by Dean Martin.

LOST: The "Smoke Monster"

For those of you that enjoy the TV show Lost, what follows will make sense. For those of you that do not partake of Lost please move along, nothing to see here.

Being a fan of Michael Crichton the "smoke monster" that has appeared throughout the series is clearly a swarm of NanoBots - I can imagine no other reasonable explanation (Occam's razor applied). As the series has progressed it has been revealed that no matter how fantastic the appearance of plot devices, they have all had reasonable explanations. Supposedly Damon Lindelof, one of the creators/writers has discredited this theory. Time will tell.