ANAHEIM — Authorities say a woman apparently jumped off an Anaheim freeway overpass Thursday and died. The Orange County Register reports that 50-year-old Sally Brown plunged to her death just after 11 a.m. from the East La Palma Avenue overpass onto the westbound 91 Freeway. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
EppsNet’s Greatest Love Songs: I Can’t Explain
Why it’s great: Love makes you hot, cold, dizzy, happy, mad . . . I can’t explain it . . . Got a feeling inside (Can’t explain) It’s a certain kind (Can’t explain) I feel hot and cold (Can’t explain) Yeah, down in my soul, yeah (Can’t explain) I said … (Can’t explain) I’m feeling good now, yeah, but (Can’t explain) Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling blue The things you’ve said, well, maybe they’re true I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again I know what it means, but … Can’t explain I think it’s love Try to say it to you When I feel blue But I can’t explain (Can’t explain) Yeah, hear what I’m saying, girl (Can’t explain) Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling bad The things you’ve said have got me real mad I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again I know what it means… Read more →
Lightning on the Balcony
Remembrance of Things Past
Here’s an email that went out to everyone in the office this morning: Good Morning Everyone! There was a clip on earring turned in to the receptionists desk this morning. Please come and claim it if it is yours! :o) Happy Friday…. A clip-on earring!!! I thought those went out with hula hoops and pay phones. Who will claim it, I wonder? Is Marion Davies in the building? Gloria Swanson? Read more →
Rick Neuheisel
UCLA has hired Rick Neuheisel as its new football coach, replacing Karl Dorrell. UCLA people love this guy. They’ve been blowing Neuheisel’s meat whistle ever since the announcement. As a USC man, I say this: Great hire! Neuheisel will fail for all of the reasons listed here. Excerpt: “Neuheisel’s one great genius turns out to be his ability to make people think he’s a genius.” FIGHT ON! Read more →
Rose Bowl 2008: USC 49, Illinois 17
The conventional wisdom in recent years has been that USC has trouble defending spread offenses and mobile quarterbacks, like Illinois’ Juice Williams. I’m not sure that’s true. They’ve had trouble defending some mobile quarterbacks — Vince Young, Dennis Dixon — but so has every other team in the country. We took it to a real personal nature because we wanted to figure the spread-thing out, defend it really well and take the mystery out of it. We practiced so beautifully that it had to work out well. That’s a big deal. A really big deal. — Pete Carroll A total systematic beatdown. FIGHT ON! Read more →
CFNM
I like to think I’m up to speed on my acronyms, abbreviations and fetishes, but CFNM is a new one on me. No, I’m not going to hyperlink it — this is a family-oriented website — but go ahead and Google it if you want to . . . Read more →
Rose Parade 2008
A few years ago, my son went to the Rose Parade as a spectator. This year, he worked as a volunteer float decorator with a community service group from his high school. They worked on the City of St. Louis float, which won the President’s Trophy for most effective floral use and presentation. Yeah, I know pretty much every float wins some kind of trophy, but the President’s Trophy is one of the good trophies. To give you the flavor of the thing, here’s the list of “suggestions” given to volunteers by the float-building company: PLEASE DO NOT BRING RADIOS, WALKMENS, CAMERAS, HANDBAGS OR JEWELRY. BRING YOUR I.D. AND MONEY ONLY. FANNY PACKS WORK GREAT. WEAR OLD BUT WARM CLOTHING AND STURDY SHOES WITH CLOSED TOE AND HEEL. TIE BACK LONG HAIR. FIRE LANE MUST BE KEPT OPEN AT ALL TIMES AND THE AREA AROUND THE FLOAT SHOULD BE KEPT… Read more →
Playing the Expert Game
If . . . you are able to get important things done you are seen learning things on your own you are seen trying to do things even if you aren’t sure how you share freely the things that you know you don’t hide your ignorance, but also don’t rest on it you honor what other people know you know more often than not how to find out what you don’t know you know how to ask for help you offer to help people on their own terms Then . . . no one will care whether you succeed by learning or succeed by already knowing no one will care if you mess up occasionally because they assume you learn from it no one will mind if you forget (or don’t know) any given fact or method at any given time you will be treated as if you’re smart and… Read more →
Happy New Year 2008
We toasted the new year with a $42 bottle of Moet et Chandon — marked down to $25 at Albertson’s! Lightning enjoyed gnawing on the cork . . . in fact, when anyone turned their attention away from their champagne glass, he’d stick his snout in and lap up some bubbly . . . Read more →
Torvalds on Specs
A “spec” is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It’s _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality. So there’s two MAJOR reasons to avoid specs: – they’re dangerously wrong. Reality is different, and anybody who thinks specs matter over reality should get out of kernel programming NOW. When reality and specs clash, the spec has zero meaning. Zilch. Nada. None. It’s like real science: if you have a theory that doesn’t match experiments, it doesn’t matter _how_ much you like that theory. It’s wrong. You can use it as an approximation, but you MUST keep in mind that it’s an approximation. – specs have an inevitably tendency to… Read more →
Another Difference Between Dogs and Cats
PULLMAN, Wash. — A 6-year-old border collie died in a house fire after waking up his owner out of a deep sleep to warn her of the blaze. Marilyn Harvey and her son, Brent, rushed out the basement door, but Sandler turned back. Marilyn’s husband, John Harvey, who was in Seattle at the time of the fire, thinks it was because Sandler wanted to save the family’s 17-year-old Australian shepherd, who was still inside the house. Both dogs died in last Friday’s fire, along with a bird named Kellogg. A cat named Raja escaped unharmed. — Associated Press Read more →
Pug and Chihuahua
Originally uploaded by Studio 950. Read more →
Lightning on the Balcony
Blame Roger Goodell
My son’s explanation to his mom on why he can’t turn off Madden 2008 like she asked him to: I can’t stop in the middle of a game. Roger Goodell has not sent me a notice that we can do that. Unless there’s a weather delay or fans throwing things on the field, which there isn’t, so that can’t happen. Read more →
Schedule Crunching
Many wise people have said that what you put your attention on is what you will create around you. This is true in project management. If you concentrate on meeting the plan and slipping when big problems arise, you will, at best, ship on time, and more likely, you will ship late. . . . To change your results by changing the way you look at how your team uses time, you must put your attention on how to make tasks take the least time possible. Replace “sticking to the plan” with “looking for ways to decrease the time spent.” — Michele McCarthy Read more →
A Christmas Story
One of the cable stations had a 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon. I’ve never understood the mania some people have about this movie. I mean, it’s a nice movie, but 12 consecutive showings?! Anyway, my son turned on the 10 p.m. showing last night and we all watched it. My wife fell asleep as she often does watching movies, but the boy enjoyed it. Merry Christmas to everyone who’s taken the time to read this site over the past year. Read more →
Informed Consent
I work in the IT department of a health care organization. I’ve noticed before that health care professionals are much better than IT professionals when it comes to setting the expectations of customers. Last week, I found a handbook around the office called Risk Prevention Skills: Communication and Record Keeping in Clinical Practice. Substitute “customers” for “patients” and “software development” for “medical care” and you can apply the same advice to IT: Some patients are unreasonable in their expectations of medical care. . . . If a complication does occur, the patient or family with unreasonable expectations will usually conclude that someone must have done something wrong and should be blamed. The only way to correct unreasonable expectations is to accurately explain to the patient, before care is provided, what problems may be encountered. An accurate description of the range and likelihood of possible outcomes, and the reasons why an… Read more →
50 Years Ago Today
According to the Los Angeles Times: Red Sanders decided to stay on as football coach at UCLA instead of pursuing the football coach/athletic director job at Texas A&M, a job recently vacated by Paul (Bear) Bryant. (Sanders would have a heart attack and die before the start of the 1958 football season anyway.) A father of three killed himself in front of his wife after losing his job on Christmas Eve. Silent-screen star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas. The Times gave her age as 60; according to IMDB, she was actually 62. Read more →
Why There’s No UCLA Store
My son and I stopped by the USC Store at South Coast Plaza today. As you might expect, it was packed with people buying Christmas gifts, Rose Bowl gear and other branded merchandise. I wonder what a UCLA Store would look like, if there were a UCLA Store. A handful of angry, miserable people milling about, checking out the Las Vegas Bowl runner-up merchandise. FIGHT ON! Read more →