Owlgarden

Head to Owlgarden.net

2007-12-14T12:53:00.000-05:00

My other blog is http://owlgarden.net/wp/. you'll find me musing on things like music, the iphone, the XO, apple, and anything else that i feel is blog-worthy whatever THAT means. -ben owl(at)owlgarden(dot)net

2005-12-11T18:33:00.000-05:00

ganesh

Theo Epstein

2005-11-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

Theo Epstein's 1st Press Conference

Sports talk these days in Boston center around Red Sox General Manager Theo

Epstein's Press Conference. The resignation comes as a surprise and still is

baffling Red Sox fans and critics, but with a little investigative work, you'll

find that Theo has done this kind of thing before. Here's the abbreviated Transcript of his

earlier Press conference from 1990.

Nov 1, 1990 Brookline, Massachusetts

McDonalds

Statement:

“First, I want to thank Ray Kroc and Ronald McDonald for the opportunity to serve as Lead Fry Cook for the last three semesters. Their support and friendship mean a lot to me, and I wish them all well. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Servers, the dishwashers,the pickup window staff, the prep chef, and the Big Mac, shake and fries lovers for making my McDonalds experience so meaningful.

“Growing up in the shadow of the Golden Arches, I never dreamed of having the chance to work for a local fast food franchise during such an historic period.

“My decision not to return as Fry Cook of the Brookline McDonalds is an extremely difficult one. I will always cherish the relationships I developed here and am proud to have worked side-by-side with so many great people, in and out of uniform, as together we brought great burgers to Boston.

“In my time as Fry Cook, I gave my entire heart and soul to the organization. During the process leading up to today’s decision, I came to the conclusion that I can no longer do so. In the end, my choice is the right one not only for me but for my complexion as well.

“My affection for the hamburgers did not begin three semesters ago when I started working here, and it does not end today. I will remain on the job changing saturated oils for several days as we finalize preparation for next week’s kitchen staff meetings. Thereafter, I will make myself available to the new fry cook to ensure a smooth and stable transition.

“My passion for and dedication to Fries, Vanilla Shakes and Big Macs with Cheese remain strong. Although I have no immediate plans, I will embrace this change in my life and look forward with excitement to the future.”

_____________

Press Conference

Q: Theo when you came here three semesters ago, obviously with a clean complexion, …basically I think everybody would like to know from your standpoint what happened here and why are you no longer the Lead Fry Cook of the Brookline McDonalds Franchise?

Well what happened, to answer your question broadly, is I think we had a lot of success as a burger joint together over the last three semesters and we cooked a lot of great meals together....that doesn’t disappear at all with me leaving.

McDonalds remain a very, very strong franchise, with very sound leadership, and we’ll be serving billions more going forward. As I said in the statement, in the end, this is a job you have to give your whole meat and potatoes to, you have to devote yourself to fries completely. You have to believe in every aspect of fried food . And in the end, after a long period of reflection about myself and my complexion, and the time, I decided I could no longer put my whole heart and soul into it.

Q: Was there anything that could have been done at all to you to stay?

In the end, no. We had many talks about schedules and tasks, who would man the fry stations, who flips the burgers and pours the shakes.

Q: When you met with us after the season, it seemed like your heart and soul was in it. What happened (since then)?

There was a pimple, and when I turned the microscope on the pimple and on my complexion,, we all felt that to do this, you had to pop the pimple. You had to really pop it. And that process was very difficult. I think a lot of good came from that process. There were a lot more of blackheads that probably should have been Oxycleaned a long time ago, but in the end, you asked what changed, the pimple revealed that I could not put my whole heart and soul into the fryolator at this time.

Q: Do you have a good relationship with Ronald (McDonald)?

Yeah. My relationship with Ronald is one that spanned about 14 years. I started eating burgers at age 2. We’ve had a very successful Happy Meal relationship. I think Ronald and I like each other. As with any long relationship, there are complexities, there are zits and abscesses, there are occasionally times where you have yearnings for Burritos and Chinese Food. But in the end, I want what’s best for Ronald. I wish him well in the future. When I look back, he’s done a lot for me. In the end, 30 years from now when I look back on my relationship with Ronald McDonald, I’m gonna see it as a positive influence in my life.

Q: Theo it almost sounds like you have a little burn out, does this mean you’ll step away from fast food…?

No, I am not burned out. As I said in the statement, I have tremendous passion for the burgers. I have a tremendous dedication to fries and shakes. I work hard, but I enjoy it and I’m not at all burned out.

Q: Do you see yourself returning in five to 10 years in (a similar) position?

With Mcdonald's? Well again, the decision right now is that it’s the right thing and obviously it’s not a decision I take lightly. Hopefully I will graduate from High School and I wouldn’t rule anything out, but for right now the difficult decision is to walk away.

Q: Theo (you said) there were no chain of command issues… was there some component of your relationship with Ronald McDonald that caused you to decide that continuing was untenable…?

It’s not fair to attribute my decision to any one french fry or burger or any one person. There were many all beef patties that went into this decision and it’s not something I ate lightly. It was not a snap reaction, it was not… indeed it was not a single order of fries.

I’m not concerned with my legacy at all. I’m concerned with frying the right potato when I work as a fryer, in the capacity of Lead Fry Cook, I’m in charge of building a a french fry, maintaining that crispiness and handing out as many ketchup packets as possible every year, as many double orders as possible.

--end transcript---

Re: Intel?-MacTel

2005-06-07T00:31:00.000-04:00

So folks, by now you know that Apple and Intel are all lovey dovey and will likely bring us dual 3-4 ghz machines by this time next year. then Leopards will be pouncing on 'em- I predict in Dec. 2006 we'll be seeing spots. The WWDC Keynote is up on Apple's site and though there's a treacly hesitation about this transition but if you're using a G5 (like me) and Tiger (like me) you'll know that it probably won't make a lick of difference to the person at the keyboard. Tiger is wonderful on a fast machine and pretty excellent on the G4's as well. It's slick and elegant. So who cares about the chip except folks who hate Intel (there's always a curmudgeon for every announcement) , I have no doubt that this transition will help build new machines faster and lighter...And just remember code for Intel will run on AMD chips if Intel starts to suck. Freescale and IBM currently compete for Apple innards and though they haven't delivered cooler faster processors as predicted-they are great ( A G5 chip is almost a parallel processor in itself). With new Technology the next best thing is just around the corner. (esp. with Apple- with MS it's down the street -around the block-make a left-stop at the light-go right -down the alley-there it is!) The big surprise is that you can order a developer Intel box (oop I almost wrote G5) today and get one in two weeks (with caveats- you are kinda borrowing the machine).

So the transition, despite what you may read on eWeek or Cnet etc. will be what it is -for the record the best thing ever to come out of Apple (Hardware/Software and IDE) was the Newton. And that chip (the ARM) came from Intel .....

On Jun 6, 2005, at 10:44 AM, benjamin lowengard wrote:

> big buzz all weekend, i speculated somewhere that Apple was building > an Intel based 2 button mouse thus combining 2 rumors in 1...we'll > know in a couple hours... > here's my hirsute (as opposed to astute) speculation: > > 1) intel starts ppc fabrication? > 2) apple has new intel based i/o box- for HDvideo?? for Audio > 3) Apple switching to Intel x86 could be intense (transition wise) but > I'm not sure how that would sit with developers. > 4) Apple Announces 8 cpu 64 bit AMD processor add on card for g5. > (just kidding) > > Just remember- BeOS vs NeXT purchase (surprise) at macworld '96 - > > verrrry interesting..... > > On Jun 6, 2005, at 10:12 AM, Alex Lowengard wrote: > > >> Ben, >> >> What have you heard about Jobs thinking of going to Intel? >> >> Sasha >> >> > >

Fwd: "Regarding Case Number SRX050520601098-1"

2005-05-29T17:38:00.000-04:00

Hi A******,

Satisfied is not quite the word I'd use. Close the case but read the stuff below.

For the record I'm an Apple/Linux/Windows consultant...and this machine

(a client's laptop) was riddled with problems despite a previous Tech(from Microcenter)

working on it for a month. Only took me three days...btw Microsoft's DSO exploit

fix, fixed nothing..I fixed everything after booting it on a linux disk and deleting a LOT of strange

files in the IE folders. Problems with WIndows updaters seemed to

exasperate the issue....

best

benj

details pre-blog post below...

I've been battling a a virus ridden/exploit compromised laptop

running windows 2000 for a couple days. Seriously, I wanted to( and should have )

backed it up and wiped it out, but i had cleaned out the viruses with a bunch of PC tools

(spy-bot with dso exploit update and MS spy beta and a linux boot disk with antivirus tools),

then as a precaution I ran win2000 upgrade over the machine, to insure a nice

orderly OS which got everything back to normal....almost.

Seems that the one thing I had problems with was I.E.6 which would work fine until I updated it

with MS security updates. After the restart from MS's update site I found IE wouldn't connect

-infact it would peg the CPU to 100%. Killing iexplore.exe would stop the burgeoning process

and let me get back to work on it. I checked for exploits again, but the machine

was clean. Everything else seemed to behave normally. I downloaded Firefox to see if some Internet/Web/OS problem was going on. Firefox worked immediately..but of course MS updates only work from IE.

Hmmm, I found an I.E. removal tool, and then (from the MS forums) a pointer to download

the "complete" I.E. 6.1 update into a folder eliminating the need to update it from System Updates. (all of this fits on a 128 mb USB harddrive- amazing!)

So I deleted IE and reinstalled it. Success! I went to finish the updates at Microsoft.

Reboot.

Same problem.

, there's a phone number to call MS if you have problems with system updates...

I thought I would give them a call. So I did, and after two forwarding customer service departments

I finally got a a guy on the phone. I explained the situation and said i didn't want to wipe

it out and reinstall since I had spent so much time on this- and that the failures came after

the security updates were applied. I had fervently checking the insidious DSO exploit which is

a nasty nasty hole in IE. Satisfied that this was gone, I just wanted to fix what seemed like some minor

bug in IE. I figured Microsoft did have a scripted technique which addressed this problem.

I did tell the guy that if I had to reinstall everything, alright, but

I was implicitly NOT trying to do that.

He reassured me I would NOT have to do this.

After about an hour and a half of troubleshooting (I had to hold the guy off some of the routine stuff

I had already done to expedite the repair) he had me boot from the 2000 cd, and go into the repair

routine. Great, I thought, I'm going to find a quick trick to fix this from the repair menu.

Nope, He had me click into a reinstall routine which essentially made me reinstall all the system

files back into the machine for a second time. Actually- this was worse, since it pretty much

killed the work I had put into it from the first upgrade I did.

reloading, it comes back up (45 minutes later) and he directs me to open I.E. and down load the SP4 update.

IE opens and he directs me to Microsoft's downloads page and I click on the sp4 download.

A window opens but it doesn't trigger a download it just sits there- blank. I try it again- nothing.

and then he says: Close I.E. and Use Firefox to download the update.

Whereupon I said: "What? Why don't you get your supervisor on the phone with us and repeat that

you want me to load MS SP4 update with Firefox."

The phone went dead for a couple of minutes and a supervisor got on the line. I told him I was

out of time for now and to have someone call me back to finish this repair. SP4 is like 134 mb

and I had an appointment I needed to make. so I set up a second call for 4:30pm in the afternoon.

Meanwhile SP4 had downloaded, and I left it installing so I could reboot the machine when I got back.

I asked them to forward me the trouble ticket via email.

When I returned home and I did get a call from Microsoft (albeit 45 minutes after the appointed call back time but not before I replied to the ticket mail asking about the 4:30 call)

The Tech on the phone said he was going to help me fix this right away. I explained much of this

story to him and since I had installed SP4 I ran the System update while we were talking ( I was encouraged that it was working). So I reboot after 40 System updates (and that wasn't ALL of them)

Go back to get the rest of the updates and guess what.

IE doesn't work. FireFox still does...but I have to force quit I.E.

Same problem in Safe mode as well.Since it was already another hour and half wasted, I had to get off the phone and frankly, my patience, at this point, was contained by only a micron of restraint. Another phone appointment is set up for Monday.

But I'm not going to wait, I'm gonna fix this even if I have to back it up and wipe everything.

Still, If the Techsupport folks at MS said that I could only fix it with backup wipe and restore- I would have said "OK", and done just that. But each one said - "no, you won't have to do that"

There's no moral here yet....I'm dumping a bunch of cache files from IE right now and I'll see if that helps

(I doubt it) .

Begin forwarded message:

From: Compass Rule Manager <******@microsoft.com>
Date: May 29, 2005 3:36:22 PM EDT
To: lowengard@mac.com
Subject: "Regarding Case Number SRX********-1"

FR: ******@MICROSOFT.COM

******* The following is an email for a support case from Microsoft Corp.
******* DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE--your email will not be added to
******* the case if you do. Instead, FORWARD your response to the
******* email address ******@MICROSOFT.COM and place your text after
******* the keyword 'MESSAGE:'. Also, delete all other text above
******* and below the keywords 'CASE_ID_NUM: SRnnn' and 'MESSAGE:'
******* to ensure proper delivery of your email. Thank you.

CASE_ID_NUM: SRX**********-1
MESSAGE:
********************** The message for you follows ************************
Hi Ben,

I have been trying to contact you regarding your recent technical support incident with Microsoft Windows. I am sorry I was unable to contact you.

I trust you were satisfied with the technical support you received. Please don't hesitate to call us if you have any concerns about your case.1-800-936-5700.

Thank you for choosing Microsoft.

Sincerely,

A**** ****
Team Manager
Microsoft Windows 2000

Benjamin Lowengard

Skinny on the Mini

2005-01-17T09:48:00.002-05:00

Here I am again, responding after MacWorld05-now that the Apple pundit/evangelist/rumor sites have had their say. here's mine: I suggest you go to Apples' website and take a look at the keynote. Not very exciting but you can at least scroll through the boring parts and take a look at the demos. Obviously Steve is selling Apple in his usual way-black turtleneck, paced very carefully, i was hoping for as "under the seat" surprise like the wireless toilet-seat iBooks I saw in NY MacWorld one year. No such luck but some nice things did show. SOFTWARE iWork (Keynote 2 & Pages) (word processing app) Hooray! Keynote is great and the one thing it is lacking is useful text editing. The "Appleworks" folks can stay with Appleworks if they need a spreadsheet, I don't need one. Integration with the iLife apps looks promising. Output Keynote to Flash...? this means Pages will be your simple html editor. Since I'm a fan of Create and Composer (and NVu) I welcome the competition for simplifying this stuff. iLife 05 (iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iMovie HD, iTunes 4.7) The iLife suite is a great and cool suite of Applications. Like the iPod it introduces people to Apple software, which if needed scales to Pro Apps very well : iDVD to IDVD Studio, Garageband to Logic, IMovie to Final Cut, iTunes 4.7 to ??(iTivo?)??. Ok, you have to ditch your sub 1.25ghz iMacs to really use these applications (see below) and a DVD drive is useful. But since this is included with new Macs-everyone has the tools for rudimentary file editing- be they pdf,txt,jpg,html, etc... Final Cut Express HD -A nice upgrade and includes Soundtrack-precurser to Garageband, but a little more powerful. iPod shuffle $99 dollars for an iPod? cool. Mac mini $499 for an Apple CPU with iLife05? Awesome...be sure to get more memory, bluetooth, airport card, the combo drive- the faster cpu--uh oh- better look at that iMac G5 again. Really, I'm hoping Apple treats this as the loss leader it can be. Sure you can build your own *nux box inside a Shuttle case but this is so well constructed, technology folks will just salivate. --- So I wait for more stuff to come along: Griffin Technologies released an awesome number of peripherals this week, and NAMM is coming up -that may be interesting as well. I just ordered an Alesis Micron- from what I hear this is the coolest keyboard anywhere. more on this later... O

Solutions and Problems

2005-01-10T07:45:00.000-05:00

Owlgarden People who know me well also know that I am no friend to Corporate greed and short-sightedness toward Energy policy, Employee responsibility (formerly known as loyalty), and the exploitation of third world industry in order to better the bottom line of an accounting sheet presented here in America. There are lots of problems with America, especially perceived if you're a liberal who has compassion toward all the hungry and impoverished people here and elsewhere around the globe. Industries like Automotive, Tobacco, and Petroleum corporations are failing the American people with their lack of motivation to address these issues and , by way of their international sales, this also fails the rest of the world . Our republican administration seems to want it this way by supporting corporations as if they were wealthy individuals- not as an infrastructure to our economy, letting these corporations perform terrible acts of irresponsibility toward the environment, and forgetting that generations following us will be left with a deathly planet of poison and disease. Rather than complain endlessly about this arrogant attitude (which I do elsewhere on this blog) I propose doing a bunch of stuff to help forward the cause of building a New World Order, not THAT New World Order based on terror politics in the Middle East and Asia, but replacing the conservative policies of our government with that of a peaceful initiative, future forward looking policies, and the rebuilding the attitudes of Energy, Health, Education, Transportation, and Media Industries toward a more social corporate responsibility. First off, you cannot blame American people for smoking. The key problem here is the tobacco industry and the failure of FDA to ban nicotine as a problematic ingredient. It is obvious to me, as a smoker, that I would smoke way less without the addictive qualities of nicotine, and probably not smoke tobacco at all if other substances of less addicting qualities were legalized. I find it weird that as a smoker who would like to quit, the government is not taking responsibility in this. I mean, the government should be telling the tobacco companies to shape up or pick up the tab. All instances of litigation of the 90's -billions of dollars - were mishandled and abused-dumped into lame-ass programs hardly benefitting anyone but the lawyers. The government has to step up and strike the industry where it hurts- and that's in the addictive fuel of nicotine. How do you do this? 1) Declare nicotine a controlled substance on the level of Cocaine and heroine. 2) Create a policy of 0% Nicotine in non prescribed products. 3) Let the tobacco companies continue the business but give them a time line to eliminate the nicotine in their products. 4) Encourage Big tobacco to grow Big cannabis instead. Why cannabis? Because it is economically sound to grow and has far more useful purpose in producing cloth, paper, and oils than tobacco has. Legalize it, don't criticize it. Secondly, There should be NO tolerance for lowering gasoline and industrial emissions standards at all. SUVs burning less than 25 miles per gallon should taken OFF THE ROAD. Trucks should be forced to comply with equivalent standards as well, and conversion to alternate energy propulsion systems must start today. . There are dark days ahead if this is not done now. We have the technology to build personal and industrial technologies that don't pollute and Americans will have to learn to move a little slower for the sake of the world. If America does this so will the rest of the world. This I know. Third, We have to change what we are teaching children. The Republicans and the Democrats seem to think that Arts, Music and Sports aren't that important compared to math scores and reading comprehension tests. By requiring schools to meet some politicized standard for learning isn't learning- it is Pavlovian training. Creativity through multiple means of expression, coordinating resources among communities rather than forcing them to compete for funds (children being the victim in this case) is not right. We have to turn this around and make Arts, Music and Sports the conduit for Math and Reading and social learning. We are in a society that is short on long term achievement and long on short term attention span. And we reward this. Growth, in a child, is combined process of society, parenting, learning by doing, and experiencing positive behaviors in peers and adults. Fourth and lastly, We are predisposed to some ancient Judeo/Christian ethic that does not reflect our society as a whole. Indeed, where our founders established freedom of religion as long as it was their religion to practice freely. People need their religion in order to cope with their own personal issues but in America we should not tolerate the demands of any particular religious morality- which by itself often is defined by a political infrastructure. All Americans have a right to believe what they choose to believe in, regardless of the Government. This includes Buddhists, Atheists, Polytheists, Satanists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sun worshippers, what have you... The government cannot discern between these cultures, nor should it referred to on our money, in our courts, or in government institutions anywhere. Time to take your religion home and to your preferred temple. Don't try to proselytize me, I have my own relationship with my own peculiar Godhead and I won't try to convert you either. I have more to say on how we should change our America -Today I see a decadent society starting to tumble into calamity and our nationalistic attitudes reek of fascism and exploitation with our own population and in the world at large. Time to change this now. Revolution starts at home. -Owlgarden

America 2004

2005-01-08T07:27:00.000-05:00

this was a response to a friend about impressions of 2004 events: war, baseball, elections, etc.... it is unfinished and also (obviously) encouraged by Alan Ginsberg, may he rest in peace, (thanks to rocktripper (www.rocktripper.com) for the Jelly Roll Beat stuff, them cats is cool) america I'm breathing and there is phlegm in my lungs america I've decided that my tomorrow isn't any more important than your yesterday - so here we are right now america i'm inundated with market strategy, branding, targeted sales, personalized credit cards and classical hits advertising a gas guzzling monster truck and a 50 inch tv america I block out the noise with my ipod, don't mug me for it america I am fundamentally christian in a fundamentally christian nation, raging christian values against other religious fundamentalists america, the reality is bleak but it's in high definition as long as you don't show any tits america my boys and girls are dieing on foreign soil we are defending a nation that doesn't exist - where they have a reason to hate me america I'm promiscuous, fucking the small potatoes into french fries, serving them up with an obese and greasy breakfast combination america I got my bikini waxed and i've been liposucked into the somebody i wanted to be america see my blog for more information, google my picture, steal my identity but don't ask for my social security number america i am a right click to make it my desktop and you're forensically searching my files, america would you verify this information with me before you send me a gmail invation america I wonder about nuclear bombs and how are they doing, how do they feel so unused and alone america I voted for the guy who didn't get elected, i should move to Ohio america you sold me heroin for cheap, and i can shoot-up a twenty-four hour hard-on with it and a little extra cialis america i want to be a patriot, a designated hitter, i liked being a red sox fan when they were underdogs, now i like the iraqi america i have the whole 1993 season on four dvds and the extra bits and bloopers are great america i get all my news from a late night talk show host, i stepped up to the window and you served me and thanks for the toy, i think i'll collect them all america the aids quilt isn't big enough to cover africa america i murdered my child, my wife, i had a boat that should have taken me to china or at least let me sail away from a setting sun america i am your terrorist, in your waking dream, your cold sweat on the pillow, behind your locked doors, living your catholic pornography, I'm your jew nigger fairy putting a jaw with teeth under your pillow america i am freely speaking america i am in your classroom, sitting in the back, waving my hand trying to get your attention, and you call on me and then march me down to the principals office america i'm downloaded, america i'm standing on a beautiful shore, on a beautiful morning, and wave of sadness rises up out of the ocean america excuse me i have to blow my nose

Unpredictable Apple

2005-01-07T19:21:00.000-05:00

Here's my blog post for today on Apple.... If you're a rumor junkie like I am- trying to detect just what old Steve Jobs will announce next weekis a great game. This week has been amazing - today Apple stock jumped 4+ to just shy under 70. Yesterday Servers were publicly released with 2.3 gig g5s and a faster buss (and top off at 1.2 gig sata internally), Xsan boxes are shipping. Imagine connecting your 5 G5 FCProHD Edit suites to an Xsan sitting on top a 36 terabyte disk array (not just Apple's array either-Sun boxes/IBM/etc can be added to the array..um just plug them in.. 10.3.7 was released last week and they dropped the price by 200$ on all the Displays. Rumors are motorboating along and its propellor is Apple suing the rumor mills. HAH! what does this mean? Apple did this last year and I remember Macworld 2004 being a bit underwhelming. Lots of rumors (Apple pda mainly) This year there will probably be lots of whelm. rumor count: 1) Apple Phone with itunes (motorola alludes to this), 2) a G4 rectangle headless box (rumor lawsuit material) 3) Flash Pods (2 gig solidstate? or 5 gig mini or 80 gig pods? Beatle ipod (that's my own rumor)(lawsuit) ? 4) a new 17" monitor? (for the switchers) 5) A fw i/o box for garageband users? I hope so... 6) Appleworks and Keynote and ??? as iWork suite (where goeth MS Office?) Office for the rest of us... 7) Plus there will be talk about X.4 Tiger (uh, NDA alarm on) Maybe a date set... some great stuff is in Tiger: widgets, Core DATA, Automator (you gotta see this )Spotlight, Safari all in 64 bit(? maybe..I'm sure the kernel will be 64 bit)- Finally data to saturate the bus. 8) Steve Jobs CEO at Disney? 9) Aqueducts discovered on Mars? and I think Wednesday's Apple financials will be amusing as well... And though Microsoft is still King, it's a one eyed King, and Apple seems to have 2 or 3 eyes. if this isn't amusing enough Folks, read the transcripts for the CES keynote with Conan O'Brian and Bill Gates. (demo gods were not kind to Bill again) http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/conferences/keynotes.asp Conan Rules! please note I bcc'd a bunch of folks on this message be kind! happy nu b

What Happens Now in America

2004-11-04T21:04:00.000-05:00

An amazing week we've had. The Red Sox surprisingly pounded the Cardinals for their first World Series win in 86 years. George Bush gets re-elected and the Republicans gained seats in Congress. - Almost overnight my whole world has changed-and I'm trying to rethink how to react to the problems I think the US has in the realm of Global Americanization- the export of Jobs, the rising national Debt, the war against Terrorism especially in Iraq, Just Like Saddam said it would be it would be fought there in the desert. What's going on with Osama these days. Osama is still out there, George, you better capture him- (please don't kill him, try him in international court, strip him of his power and reveal that he is an insane inciter of wrongful religious interpretation.) We need to stop pissing off Muslims, and promoting fear of other nationalities in the name of democracy. We also need Global support and integration of our policies to align better with our allies and the UN -mend repugnant stadoffish behavior of our First World America. This means enacting a higher sense of world responsibility rather than a them or us attitude. I want to go to other countries and not have to fear I will be a target. We need stricter gun control and looser restrictions on freedom of speech. Repeal the Patriot Act. Give the troops protection. The US needs to set an example of environmentalism and not be the largest consumer of expendable non-renewable resources. Shit, I am thinking too far to the left to be considered a mainstream American. Arghh, I have questions about what Bush is up to. 1) What about this huge debt load the US has taken on-how can this be reversed? 2) How can we secure our US jobs and borders if you offer incentives to export Jobs away from the US, and offer deals to companies that use sweatshop labor for pennies on the (Aamerican) dollar? 3) How can all Americans have access to education and health insurance no matter what their income level is? There should be no homeless in America. 4) How about making Washington DC the safest city in America? 5) How about NOT ignoring the AIDs crisis around the world, and support programs which espouse protection on a physical level and NOT a religious one? I could go on but my head and my heart hurts from thinking about this stuff. Liberal activism will still go on. Michael Moore will still bug the crap out of the conservatives. And Massachusetts will still be profoundly liberal, and inspirational to those disenfranchised by this election. In the awesome book,"In the Shadow of No Towers" by Art Spiegelman there's a reference to the other shoe that will drop. I'm waiting too. Hopefully, George, that shoe won't drop on you. Here's to hope -benj

Baseball Writing

2004-10-22T09:28:00.000-04:00

Baseball, as an American Sport, is the subject of much love and loss, angst and excitement, pleasure and pain. Baseball, the game itself, is as enjoyable to watch as it is to play, it is unlike any other popular sport, where a team responds to the actions between two players-one throwing- the other batting- and separate team support for these two in their moment relies on the awareness of this play. An extremely democratic game, where the confrontation between two opposing factions is face to face-and the Teams must compete to support this confrontation, much like a candidate and their party support. The game ends when one side wins - there's no real time limit on a game- an inning may be minutes or hours, the pace can be rapid or leisurely- patience may be tried, opportunities missed, a stolen base here, a passed ball there, a clean up hitter left to start the next inning. It is truly a wonderful pastime. Baseball also gave rise to delicious sports reporting of such emotional content that it rises above any other American journalistic endeavor and influences other topical items with allusions to the game in the coverage of American Politics, War, and Culture. Our conversations are peppered with comments like "missed the ball", "struck out", "home run", "on deck", and "in the bullpen". We root for our teams like they are our family. Ecstatic wins and depressing losses, instances which defy logic, canonization of a player's achievement or demonizing failures make great matter for opinion which may be interpreted as a stunning defeat or a miraculous win -depending who's root root rooting for the home team. These are the facets of the diamond which have made Sports journalism a lively read, and provides a full spectrum of interpretation from logistical to the incredible, skill and chance make for an unpredictable game whatever the statistics might suggest, a good team can fail, a bad team can succeed in a game and that game can be all of itself or part of season, it all makes for great subject matter filled with human drama outside our personal dramas. So as these Red Sox try to break the curse (it's not achieved yet), be certain it will matter not if they win or lose but how they play the game. For if they win, they will be perceived to do the same next year, and if they lose, they will be perceived to try again. And that is what Baseball is all about and someone will write about it one way or another.

EMC and Dantz

2004-10-13T07:58:00.000-04:00

The gigantic data corporation EMC has purchased Dantz and its software titles like Retrospect. I find this amusing because for YEARS I've wondered why EMC supported just about every Windows and Unix platform except Apple's. To me, this has been a glaring omission with EMC's products. I find it a welcome addition for I once toured the Hopkinton EMC campus where you could see every EMC product and thousands of servers and disk storage units and computers from every major and a lot of minor companies-including laptops-except Apple. I mean, jeez, they claimed there was more storage in this one building than the whole country of Italy. A search on supported systems on the EMC technical page had no mention of Apple at all. So now the big question is: How long will Dantz still support Macs? I don't know the answer to this question. We all know that there are rabid Apple haters out there. I project a conspiracy theory here: EMC is a major Republican supporter, Al Gore is on the board of Apple. It would conceivably be possible that EMC would want Apple products to go away. Another realm of possibility is that the Small to Medium Business Server market is moving toward Apple's Xserve, which is an excellent product for a fantastic price point WAY less than any other major manufacturer's offering (Anyone considering a new server for their group should consider this option- a stand alone G5 XServe with a 1000 user licenses costs 4000$ or less). And EMC is struggling in this market, not really sure how to deal with smaller companies. Personally, I think it's the sales folk at EMC who can't grasp why the smaller markets would go to some other vendor. It's a culture thing- In the computing world there are two types of "Professional" sales folk. One is the Grey Suited Sales drone with briefcases and Dell laptops who only regard you if you have considerable cash $$$ to spend on. The other is the Lacrosse shirt and blue-jeans folk who will sit down and whittle away their product to your budget. EMC tends to be the former. I suspect it's their Banking and Insurance clients that have insinuated this type into the Sales culture. Apple could get by without Dantz (I have for years), but they would need their own backup product or partner with someone (Like Mike Bombich of Carbon Copy Cloner) to make an Apple enterprise Backup Program meaningful (and I don't mean .Mac Backup). How about Veritas? After some needling of tech support a couple years ago, they did put up OS X support (since they already had bsd support), and now I suspect OSX is fully qualified at this point. (I've not researched this...) There are others in the market, mostly small potatoes and Unix front ends to ditto and psync. Meanwhile, what happens next remains to be seen. Is this a gentle move into a smaller market for EMC or a Microsoft-like gobble, chew, expel type move to diminish competition?

What Happens

2004-08-17T10:06:00.000-04:00

If I add a picture to my email?

Dumb Downers

2004-08-11T09:11:00.000-04:00

Hey blog readers, Here's a complaint about the excessive use of technology in the world. 1) Your computer sucks! Microsoft, Apple and a TON of these open source code monkeys are needlessly crowding your pc with with CRAP. And they make you pay for it whether you realize it or not. Where is the persistant data? Where is the Common user interface? Why do the GEEKS out there promote speed over functionality? 2) Cell Phones Suck! I hate it when I get called by someone "on the road" and the phone clicks off in an underpass. Or when a lone cell phone rings (in some obnoxious pop tune or a horrendeous synthesized classical piece) and you have to guess which button to push. Where is the voice interface on these things? And what's with the cameras? Convergence devices without a decent interface (and that means very little button pushing) are DOOMED. Don't buy one until it complies with known standards. Even worse is video phones. Is it me or do communications companies have too many marketing idiots promoting dispeptic products. A phone/palm/camera/MP3 player is absolutely too much stuff to put into a handheld device. They are complicated, transitional items which upon purchase are immediately outddated. Beside all the interface crap you need to go through to deliver your own info to yourself. WTF? 3) SUV's Suck. Why are we wasting gas driving SUV's? Holy mutha load, If we didn't depend on FOREIGN OIL we wouldn't be wasting Tax Dollars blowing up Iraq. The auto industry should be ASHAMED at their gross negligence for the environment, and should be building super economical transport. Those waste Billions could have actually rebuilt the public school infra-structure, provide food for starving Americans, provide Jobs for the unemployed, Why the US allows corporate entities to build up a bottom line while outsourcing to foreign workers on the cheap, enjoying tax freedoms, and basically trading your future for their their personal enjoyment. 4) Break Up the HUGE MONOPOLIES. Ok, I thought my phone rates would go down when the industry got deregulated. Nope. Hey I thought my cable bill would go down when they deregulated the cable industry. Nope. How about air transport, is it any cheaper, is it more secure, is it efficient? nope. While I'm on this subject you note that you have FEWER choices in all these things now than you did 10 years ago. This is progress? 5) The industry of American Democracy has to change. The USA needs to adopt a 30 hour work week, a higher minimum wage, longer vacation allowances, national health insurance, gender free marriage rights, the right to food (no hungry families), the right to shelter (no Homeless), the right to mental health supervision. We have to change our prison system as well- and develop a US Conservation service -like a peacetime army- to preserve our land and the intrinsic economic power it holds to benefit ourselves. Our reliance on cheap trade (again, for the bottom line) serves only to weaken what should be a self-sufficient economy. 6) Stop paying politicians. From the President on down, there should be no such thing as a Career Politician. -ok enough for today -O

Site feed ME

2004-08-06T07:57:00.000-04:00

http://www.macupdate.com/mommy/macsurferx.xml

to the one on my left

2004-07-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

you beg me for food you stare you moan ......food you come up to me and peer into my occupied place i am busy you are hungry i will not let you starve your back is toward me you are taunting me you check to see if i am looking then you try to chew on something that is not food it is plastic or rubber you want food i will not let you starve

Another blog post

2004-07-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

Ode to blog

email my blog

2004-07-23T17:36:00.000-04:00

I want to know if this works.. if it does Hooray!