Rude Epiphany!

So since I’ve been out of town for two weeks (yay employment), I missed a “signature required” package that FedEx Ground tried to deliver. I got a nice little card in the mail stating that I can call in to schedule a pick-up at the local shipping station.

All the steps executed, I ended up at the huge facility by Texas Stadium with a big security shack, trucks of all sizes rumbling in’n'out of the front gate, etc.

They have two security guards manning the shack. The entire time I’m there, employees are coming’n'going in a slow trickle (about one every 5min). All departing employees have to go through security much like airport security checkpoints — metal objects in dishes, all bags searched, a quick trip through the metal detector. The guards aren’t your run-of-the-mill TSA-esque trolls, these two (one male, one female) weren’t bodyguard material but they were fairly aware of their jobs, protocols, and what was happening around them.

So the routine for me to pick up my package goes as follows:
1) Security guard pages “QA, call [extension]”
2) when white phone in front of me rings, I get to pick it up and give the caller my tracking number
3) someone shows up in a golf cart with my package(s)
4) proper ID is given, paperwork is signed, and off I go with package(s)

It takes about 10min between phone conversation and someone shows up with my package. Just as the “QA” person appears, another non-employee walks in with a small slip of paper in-hand. Security looks at him and The New Guy says that he’s there to pick up a package. Security points at the QA guy, who’s filling out my paperwork, and declare that “he’s the man to talk to, he’ll take care of you. No point in calling since he’s here.”

The QA guy overhears this, looks up, and says, “just a second.”

I sign the paperwork. As I grab my package, the other non-employee hands Mr. QA the “door card.” He looks at it, looks up and says, “Xbox.”

The two security folks stop what they’re doing, look at Mr. QA and then look at Mr. Non-employee. He nods and smiles an affirmation, at which the security guy turns to Mr. QA and asks, “how did you know?”

“You see these tracking numbers, when they start with ‘769283′, they’re from Mexico or Taiwan or whatever, but they’re always Xboxes.”

I wasn’t paying much attention to this discussion, and at this point I hit the door and was heading to my car. The thing that idly popped into my head was “yeah, if you see enough of these, you’re bound to know the oddest details.”

About ten minutes later, as I’m driving down the road, I thought to myself, “he could identify the contents!?!”

(For those of you that do not know, I travel a little bit for work, usually about one week a month I’m not home.)

Baggage Claim Lottery (BCL) is a game you play with co-travelers at the luggage claim carousel. It is based on the relative arrival times of luggage compared to other participants. The game requires minimal preparation, which only involves agreeing on the rules and rewards/penalties. BCL can be initiated with any person at any time, until the first bag appears at the luggage claim.

Participants are categorized into two groups: Multiple-baggage players (MBPs) and Single-baggage players (SBPs). Score is tallied by counting the number of items that come out of baggage claim system ahead of all of the participants items.

MBPs are scored based on their worst score (when their last item was collected).

A score of 0 goes to the SBP who’s item was the first one out, also considered a “perfect hit.” By nature of the scoring system, MBPs can never receive a “perfect hit.”

If an item arrived on an earlier flight and is in the “baggage pen”, this item is not considered for scoring. If said item belongs to a SBP, this player neither receives a reward nor suffers a penalty.

A “crap-out” is when an item does not arrive and the player must speak to a human (employee of the airline) before leaving the airport.

If only one MBP draws a “crap-out”, this player is immediately the loser (regardless of SBP crap-outs). This is called the “mea culpa” rule.

If multiple MBPs draw a “crap-out”, these players share the “loser” penalty (again, regardless of SBP crap-outs).

If multiple SBPs draw a “crap-out” and no MBPs draw a “crap-out”, the scoring is reversed and the “winner” (with lowest score) becomes the “loser.” This is called the “poor saps” rule.

Prizes are flexible and should be determined in advance. We strongly recommend good sportsmanship — a loser due to a “crap-out” will not be in the mood to buy the first round of drinks once you reach a pub (for example). A recommended prize would be buying the “winner” the first round (cost distributed across other players).

Neurotics have problems, psychotics have solutions.

link: Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder
link: 20/20 (abcnews) write-up

I worked with this guy back in ‘95-96 at Synopsys.com during the 13mo I was there. He was the “PC Systems Integrator” (evaluating new technology) and I was the “PC Systems Support” (Network, servers, desktops) by title — in reality I did both jobs because his mind was perpetually “elsewhere.” In short, we didn’t get along much at all.

I wouldn’t call him a “prodigy” as 20/20 did, but I will certainly give him credit for “extreme project focus.” He was fairly intelligent, which made our e-mail sparring interesting at times.

Online, I hear a bunch of comments like “he’s freaky looking, fry him!” Ironically, I bet they were the same folks that said “Scott Peterson looks handsome, fry him!” On the other side of the coin, a lot of Linux fanboys are wailing and lashing their own backs.

Let’s talk about the possibility… If he did it; there’s no body, no weapon, no (identified) crime scene, no witnesses, and no crying confession. Prosecution’s case is apparently based upon the following:

1. His car is missing the passenger car seat.
2. They found a trace of her blood on his car.
3. Their divorce was heated — it wasn’t looking good for him to keep the kids.
4. He acted strange once when they trailed him.
5. He’s intelligent.
6. He bought some books on murder investigations (receipt was dated after he found out she was deemed missing).
7. Her best friend said he obviously did it.

Erm, that’s it? WTF.

If we fired up the “wayback machine”, someone could quote me saying ill things about Hans and his health due to our differences at Synopsys. Let’s chalk that up to youth and impatience, as nowadays I’d rather not see a man beat to death over something that they (apparently) won’t be able to prove.

Here’s to you Hans, good luck.

Good lord, when will people ever learn?

I was poking around looking at motorcycle helmets. The one I currently have is a high-priced 2006 model from Arai. Since it’s fairly new, I’m not really shopping around but more “just browsing.”

What I have in mind is.. for my next helmet, buy a white model and then have a local airbrush artist apply my vision to it. This may seem a bit pricey, but consider that the price delta between “solid color” and “replica” helmets run up to $200. If I fork $200 to a local artist, he’s happy (money in his pocket) and I’m happy (I get my own design). Honestly, to get a unique helmet, I’d happily pay more. Lots more.

Just don’t tell the local artists, hehe.

Anyway, back on topic.. so since my helmet is an Arai Corsair, I entered “arai corsair” into google. First two hits are ebay.com, no surprise there. Next hit is motoliberty.com, a local (to DFW) retailer — I’ve purchased boots there before and a friend of mine works there. In my first page of google results, there is no mention of the manufacturer’s site. This is odd. I manually try http://www.arai.com, but it times out. Things are not looking up for Arai.

So let’s simplify the search — I entered “arai helmets” and that worked. The top result is http://www.araiamericas.com/ Upon clicking the google link, I am introduced to a page that is purely flash.

No text, just flash.

First off, my browser is configured to block flash a-la “flashblock” (best firefox plug-in, evah!). That returns a blank page with a simple “>” icon in the middle (click the icon to “accept” the flash activity). Ok, that’s me-specific (and.. “yay me!”) .

The real point of this rant is that a lot of companies with big-dollars floating around inside them can’t spend the 4-5-digits required to actually figure out that google (and other search engines) can’t crawl Macromedia (er.. I mean Adobe) Flash. They can crawl lots of other interesting formats.. PDF, MS Word, Sun “pkg” format, but not Flash.

Sheesh. If you’re gonna be on the Internet, learn how to Play The Game.

If they were a local company, I know someone who’s well-versed in the arts of ranking well in search engines. Ah well. Their loss.

A good friend of mine, let’s call him “skeek”, had an awesome idea some time ago. Here’s how it goes:

Picture a giant arena filled with combatants, every one of which is equipped with a chain saw. To make it exciting, all the chain saws are out of gas at the beginning, but there are thousands and thousands of thimbles, filled with gas, scattered around..

That may seem a bit morbid because, well, it is. Push the personal aspect back a level and picture it as a theme for one of today’s high-tech computer games. (There are much worse out there, you know.)

From a programming perspective, it is perfect. You have a goal, “environmental” constraints, and a fair number of non-obvious solutions. The solution you choose may not be the best at first, but can be reworked and experience will be critical in your end-goal success.

Happy chainsawing!

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source ne·far·i·ous /nɪˈfɛəriəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ni-fair-ee-uhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –adjective extremely wicked or villainous; iniquitous: a nefarious plot.

I’ll give you an example: your wife of 10 years decides to learn to swim to participate in a triathlon, in Germany, with some bloke she met online.  Oh, and the husband isn’t invited.

Well, this is my first blog.

I hate blogs, already.