A fellow parent at hockey practice asks me, “Does your son lace up his own skates?” Read more →
December 2004
A USC Man Looks at UCLA Football
A crazy thing happened after this year’s USC-UCLA football game . . . because the Bruins were able to keep the score close for the first time in years, UCLA coach Karl Dorrell was rewarded with a two-year contract extension. Read more →
Tsunamis: Another Reason I Just Stay Home
From Reuters: PHUKET, Thailand — William Robins vowed Monday to change his life forever after the professional golfer from California and his new bride, Amanda, narrowly escaped death in the grip of a tsunami. The newlyweds were honeymooning on Phi Phi island — made famous by the film “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio — when a giant tsunami wave slammed into it Sunday. Read more →
A Pretty Good One-Sentence Analysis of Blogs
True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. — Randell Beck Read more →
My Dog Reviews How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
The Grinch is very mean to his dog, Max, not because he doesn’t like dogs, but he is very mean to everyone. You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch! Read more →
Mister Lucky
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. — Matthew 19:24 Is money a guarantee of happiness? Read more →
Use the Database
It seems like a shame to have to even talk about this, but I really have found myself having way too many discussions over the years about how to avoid the use of relational databases. Today we were talking about replacing database reads and writes in a system design with file system access, XML, just floating the data around in memory, or some combination of the above. “What time of day will this system be running?” the DBA asked. “During business hours.” That’s right! We’re actually planning to do a database write in the middle of the workday! Why the thought of doing this freaks people out to the degree that it does is something I’ve never been able to figure out, but there’s an idea that persists among the less educated that read-only production access during the business day will max out an RDBMS. Look . . . a… Read more →
Learned Helplessness
Psychologists have found that if you put a dog in a cage and repeatedly zap him with an electrical shock, the dog will soon stop trying to avoid the shock because he realizes he’s got nowhere to go. This is called “learned helplessness.” I mention this for educational purposes, not because it sounds like life in a nutshell . . . Read more →
Christmas at the Office
I’m in receipt of the following “Secret Santa” email: Please come by my desk to pick a name. Then go buy (and wrap) a new toy that represents that person. Humor is the key here! Get creative and have fun! We’ll open the toys, have a laugh with each recipient, and then donate the toys to charity. Translation: Buy something that confirms the recipient’s worst suspicions about what people really think of him (or her), and then we’ll all go home and hang ourselves. Read more →
Clarence Thomas, Judicial Nincompoop
Clarence Thomas is back in the news . . . During a recent Meet the Press appearance, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, questioned Thomas’ competence as a Supreme Court justice and was subsequently accused of racism, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen if you say anything critical of a black man, woman or child. Read more →
I Don’t Feel Good
James Brown has prostate cancer — CNN.com Read more →
Something I Learned Today
There’s a good Chinese restaurant in Orange called Yen Ching. The last four digits of the phone number are 3300. If you make a mistake and dial 3000, you’ll get Children’s Hospital, also in Orange, but they won’t take a dinner reservation. Read more →
Today’s Text
‘There are forces, Lucius, infinitely more powerful than reason and science.’ ‘Which?’ ‘Ignorance and madness.’ — Anatole France, Thaïs Read more →
Things NOT to Do in North Korea
Ask why Kim Jong Il is the only fat man in the country Read more →
Pilot Season
Ignore the rumors. L.A. does have four seasons: earthquake season, fire season, riot season, and the most ravaging — pilot season. Network TV keeps groping to win over an America it despises — a viewing public it sees as a blurry, fat, brainless blob of uninsured, Hemi-powered, God-fearing Wal-Mart clerks. — Peter Mehlman Read more →
Two Simple Rules
More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined. — Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month As a corollary to this, I’d say that lack of calendar time very often forces us to admit that our projects have gone awry. Denial is a viable strategy when delivery dates are far in the future, but when the deadline is staring you right in the teeth, the time for sunny optimism is over and the time for the Day of Reckoning (DoR) meeting is at hand. I attended one such DoR meeting yesterday afternoon . . . This particular meeting broke down into a battle between the Designers and the Implementers. The Designers — who happen to be the more senior members of the team — felt that they had written the specs in such excruciating detail that the system should pretty much have coded… Read more →
Great Moments in Parenting
Here’s a father-son moment I hope to avoid — telling a jury what a good boy he was during the penalty phase of his murder trial. Read more →
A Joke I Learned in Traffic School
A guy is driving to work one morning. He turns on the radio and the announcer says, “Be careful out there. Somebody’s on the freeway driving the wrong way.” “Somebody!?” the guy says. “They’re all driving the wrong way.” Read more →
The Potential for Fidelity
My wife is apparently a prime candidate for an extramarital affair, according to this article. She denies it, of course: “I have time for an affair?! I don’t even have time for lunch!“ Actually, I wasn’t reading the article to assess her potential for fidelity, which I already suspected was very low. I was looking for tips on how to hook up with some desperate housewives when she finally runs off with another man . . . Read more →