The Underground Man

Bluetooth + 802.11g in one card

I so totally want this. Doesn't seem to be a reality yet but I gather it's really close.

I'm very happy with my Titanium Powerbook but it only offers 802.11b (not upgradeable internally to G or N spec) and it doesn't have Bluetooth. Given that I only have one PCMCIA ("People who Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms") slot, I thought I would like for a combo PC card that would allow me to add both capabilities.

No joy yet but I'm still looking..

The drums are beating..

When I see things like this article, which claims that these sniper rifles came from Iran, I wonder who planted the article. Yes, the Iraqi resistance is getting sophisticated weaponry like good sniper rifles and EFPs, but they are well-funded and this stuff is easily obtainable.

It is quite possible these sniper rifles did come from Iran but we really need more hard facts before claiming that they did. Like the serial numbers. Everything sold to the Iranians was recorded and the numbers are easily obtainable by American authorities. So why hasn't someone done the basic research and said, "This one, this one and this one were all purchased by the Iranian government last year and were found in the hands of resistance fighters in Iraq?" Not hard, really.

Until one realizes that the patent on this design expired long ago, they are available on the open market to anyone who has the dosh, and that would just require some real journalistic research.

PSP

I'm so tempted to get a PSP lately. It appears that the latest version has been hacked to allow one to play games off a memory stick (or presumably watch one's own video content).

I've worked on my Palm T3 quite a bit to re-encode movies for playback on it. I've gotten quite good video quality and with the screen rotation I can watch two full-length movies I've hand-encoded (so to speak) when I fly long distances. Sometimes, I just don't want to have to pull out the laptop on a long flight - in fact, most times unless I'm flying first-class or business it's a pain in ass to bring it out - so the little T3 works very well.

With the battery sled attached, I can watch two full-length movies before needing a recharge - which is just enough to get me to Europe or to the West Coast without having to watch Talladega Nights on the plane's LCD panels.

Leaving Baltimore..

I'm not sure where I'm going yet (Amsterdam, NYC, Seattle, Austin, or San Francisco). I seem to have opportunities in all of these places. To my mind, it will come down to 1) how good a fit with my colleagues I think it is, and 2) what sort of challenges face me in the job.

When you get to a point where you are fairly senior in a role, the challenges tend to be systemic and not easily given to a quick remedy. Generally, they are process related, often with staffing issues thrown in.

A typical position that I might consider will require coming in to a new department, or one reorganizing and having to hire some new good talent or put a new process in place to make a group/company profitable. In my experience, it takes between six months and a year to do a turnaround. It can easily take longer, but one should see results in that initial timeframe.

I'm trying a lot of Baltimore's better restaurants with friends before I leave. Packing starts this week, and I have to be done by 20-21 March because I'm off to Kauai for a couple of weeks at the end of March.

At least I'm getting to spend some really good time with friends before I leave and now that my work schedule has slacked off I can actually live a decent lifestyle for a short while. I know it's only temporary because the next job will require all my energies so I had best enjoy the time I've got.

On the plus side, I'm not missing any Liverpool games anymore.

Grand Central Station, NYC

I walked through Grand Central Station after my interviews in NYC last week. Both my uncle and the HR director of the agency I was interviewing with had recommended it. Pretty darn nice train station, I must say. The roof paintings were especially cool. I could see that it might make a very interesting topic for some photography thought the low light conditions will likely make a lengthy exposure necessary. I saw quite a few tourists photographing the place with digitals. Much luck to them.

Even saw one chap with a TLR and I wanted to stop to talk to him. But I refrained, thinking this is "New York" and I best not get too friendly with strangers.

Just trying to get into the mood.

Illy

So my best friend in France is Italian. Go figure. Probably because we're both huge soccer fans and so watched most of the 2002 World Cup together in bars, arguing throughout the day about what tactics our teams should use.

In any event, he introduced me to Illy coffee. He was of the firm opinion that one should use nothing else in espresso machines. When my grandmother was ill a couple of years ago she gave me a very nice little Krups espresso machine, which was likely a purchase by my uncle. It sat in my closet for the last couple of years until I dug it out last spring and brought it into the office. We have decent coffee here but it's still quite weak and when I saw that Whole Foods was selling Illy (unground) I had to buy some.

Best decision I've made in months. Every afternoon, folks from work and I gather around the little machine and make espressos. They have just the perfect "crema" on top and are never bitter.

I now have no urge whatsoever to experiment. It works, it's consistent, and it's very flavorful.

Thank you Krups. Thank you Illy. Thank you Luigi (my best friend in France).

Ronaldo on the comeback trail..

I've always loved Ronaldo. Who couldn't? The man is a wizard with the ball, seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and has been seriously put upon by the media in most of the countries he has played in.

My word, he has been World Player of the Year THREE times and they still doubt him. Personally, I think he is pretty sensitive and that the commentary gets to him. As with any striker, there has to be an element of confidence about his game for him to thrive.

Real Madrid didn't appreciate him (obviously) but he seems to have gotten a new lease on life at AC Milan. I can only hope so as it was far to soon for us to have gotten use to football without him.

The Wire

I had a free weekend and just caught up on the fourth season of The Wire (HBO). I've got to say that this last season has been one of the best. In part, because after a year in Baltimore I'm getting to know the city a bit better and they really have captured it well.

Woven through the third and fourth season is the struggle of a white city councilman to become mayor of a predominantly black city. All the way, fighting the corruption and inefficiency of city bureaucracy - trying to make a concrete difference. The fourth season follows a number of "corner kids" trying to eke out a living selling heroin and crack on contested turf.

This city has one of the highest murder counts in the country and has two out of the last five years won the unenviable title of "Murder Capital, USA". Add in an astonishingly high percentage of the city are addicts (some say the figure approaches 20%) and one would think the city is a cesspool. I think the series goes a long way to showing that there are decent people in the system, unwilling to let it continue to slide.

It follows local politics very well, and the figures of the mayor and city council president are very recognizable as being drawn from real life. It is, frankly, a flattering portrait of the mayor - and the new governor of our state. One can only hope that it's true.

I highly recommend the series to anyone who likes serious drama. It's full of violence, and bad language, but it's also great script writing and re-sets my standards for TV drama.

Really, it puts shows like the Sopranos (which I very much enjoyed) in the shade.

another video site

Just discovered this site. The commercial in question appears to be a Toyota commercial from Malaysia.

Why is it that everywhere but in the US humour is king in advertising?

the Warming button

Why, you might ask, would I be filing this entry under Project Management. After all, it's about the new "warming button" to be found on Starbucks' cash registers.

To give a little background, I went into my corner Starbucks this morning (200 ft from my front door) and ordered a chocolate croissant. Becka, the manager, looked over the cashier's shoulder and said "hit the warming button" and then asked me if I would like my pastry warmed up. Of course, says I, since Starbucks pastries are rarely memorable.

In it goes to the oven and out it comes piping hot one minute later. Great idea.

But again, why is this in a discussion of project management? Because it's all about utilization! One of the key aspects in managing a team, after one has all the processes in place and has it running smoothly, is to manage utilization.

In an enterprise where one is tracking "real" dollars - as opposed to corporate dollars which are pretty far from real - utilization is absolutely key to profitability. Or shall I say increasing profitability.

This was one of my key tasks for the coming year. How do I track what percentage of time my staff is utilized on billable tasks and how do I improve that figure.

I've brought this practice into a couple of agencies I've worked with in the past. To my knowledge it's much more common in private consultancies and engineering firms than it is in advertising or marketing agencies.

To get to this point, one needs a number of things:

• Trust of your staff. So they number real numbers.


• A proper timekeeping system. So the staff have a recording and reporting mechanism.


• A pipeline of work. So that you have something to optimize.

It is key to communicate to staff that if they are under-utilized, it is management's responsibility to fix the issue and that blame will not fall on them should they not be fully utilized.

Once you have a baseline of how busy you're keeping your staff, you can set reasonable targets and gradually inch them up as the year progresses. I don't have any hard or fast rules but I would be very surprised if my team averaged less than 85% utilized right now. Of course, as one moves up the management ladder, it's harder and harder to get billable time. That is offset by charging out at higher rates - in a perfect world.

Raising two boys

It's funny raising two cats at the same time, much less two boys. I haven't really noticed too much difference between boys and girls in the cat world except that the boys do appear stronger (even after neutering) and seem to have bigger claws. Of course, this could be a by-product of their being Siamese as well.

These little fellows (not so little now, they must be closing in on 8lbs each) are now about eight months old each and they follow me about the house when I move from room to room, happy to find a spot to hang out in if I'm in the same room. There are frequent visits to the lap to check out what I'm doing - they are TV-generation cats and so fascinated by both my big screen TV and the cursor on my monitor.

No real jealousy as far as I can tell but if one is in my lap the other must shortly wedge themselves in beside their brother. This, of course, means the cessation of almost all activity on my part as I now have two 8lb cats sitting on my lap (or chest if I'm reclining).

Fortunately, they are very active - chasing each other about the place or playing on their kitty condo (traded a homemade pecan pie for it - best deal I ever made). I've recently moved them to a 90% meat diet since learning that they are "obligate carnivores" and Science Diet really ain't so good for them. (Do you believe that some people feed their cats a Vegan diet?)

Boy, let me tell you it's hard to find cat food that doesn't have "by-products" or "liver" in it as one of the main ingredients. Lots of crud out there that we are asked to pay high prices for that really negatively impacts our pets health.

I'm quite worried about the impact of my forthcoming move on them. I can stand (and have withstood) any amount of stress but I feel protective of them and the logistics of packing and moving and selecting a new place to live are non-trivial. The question of where I go is as yet undecided as I seem to have some very different options. But I've always got to factor in the boyz (which I think rules out England because of the rabies quarantine).

Well, what must be must be. I made this commitment to keep them when I adopted them.

UX and IA

It's been a crazy few days. Last week or two I've been managing the RFP/response process for a very large Web site that my firm is doing for the State of Maryland. I broke off the front end design/UX for my agency to do and we are subbing out the backend database integration/cleanup to a second firm.

So I had to put together, with the help of the State's people, an RFP, select vendors, hold a pre-proposal conference, evaluate the responses, and help the State make a decision as to what vendor to pick.

The job is nearly done, thank goodness. I, personally, have responded to more RFPs than I can count. However I've only been on the issuing side twice (this being the second time). I can conclusively say that the process of putting together a good RFP is just as difficult, if not more difficult, than responding to one.

It's also interesting in seeing what factors influence the decision to go with one particular vendor over another (more on that after the contract has been awarded). Suffice it to say that there is a wide variance in the quality and presentation of responses and its amazing how the smallest thing can sway opinion negatively.

My time the rest of this week is tied up doing some use cases for a new project. They've been sitting, maturing in my head for a few days and it is now time to get them down in 'Graffle. Fortunately, the latest version of Graffle has a stencil for Jesse James Garrett's IA objects. Very useful.

googlebombing W.

More than you ever wanted to know about the googlebomb. And how W. used to come up first when you Googled the term miserable failure.

Intelligence is to..

From a fascinating op-ed piece in the NY Times by Edward Luttwak (a brilliant historian) comes this quote:

"Intelligence is to counterinsurgency what firepower is to conventional warfare, and we just do not have it or the capacity to gather information on our own. Thus the sacrifices of our troops on the ground are mostly futile."

I don't think I've ever heard a more damning indictment of our situation in Iraq.
Certainly not one more cogently put.

How about a planeload of cash?

Yes, Virginia, such things do exist!

Apparently at the "hand-over" (and I use that term very loosely) of sovereignty to Iraq, the Federal Reserve shipped over 363 TONS of hard cash to Iraq's leaders. Some 8.8 billion (that's billion with a "B") has been handed to Iraqi ministries and is unaccounted for (as of 2005).

I suppose this could be called the largest bribe in history but I would imagine that the gifting of Eastern Europe to Stalin will probably be viewed as bigger.

Of course, who knows what happened to those planeloads? We certainly don't. Neither do we care, it seems.

Ouch..

Well, I love my car (an Infiniti Q45). Today, to the tune of about $900.

My mechanic, who is that rarest of commodities - an honest man, just called to tell me that I have a bad fuel injector and some bad hoses under my plenum that need to be replaced.

Unfortunately, as brilliant as Infiniti (Nissan) was in building the engine, they made some questionable design decisions.

To wit: one has to remove the intake plenum (about a two hour job) just to get to the fuel injectors (and the hoses that support them). So a job that on a plain old Nissan I could do myself in a parking lot in 15 minutes, is going to take about four hours of labor in the shop and cost about $900.

Fortunately, I haven't needed this done for about 50 or 60 thousand miles. I should think I'll sell the car before I need it again.

Boxster - I'm thinking of you.

SXSW 2007

I'm trying to decide whether to go to SXSW again this year. Last year was a bit disappointing in that the panels were very little different from the year before and we (collectively) didn't seem to have progressed much.

A very dear friend has moved out of the area but I still have cousins with whom I can stay and whose company I enjoy greatly. And the weather has always been great in Austin at that time of year.

I have to make my decision in the next couple of days in order to get airplane tickets, pay conference fees, and rent a car. All in, I'm looking at $1000. Not too bad for four days of really engaging my mind and meeting some very interesting people.

But will this be as good as 2005 or as poor as 2006?

I had resolved to assemble a panel for this year - on the theory that one shouldn't bitch if one isn't willing to address the problem oneself - but the pressures of work (55-60hr weeks) kept the idea in the back of my head, not the forefront.

Still, Austin should be very nice in March.

Sherman tank engine in a Mustang

You've got to love this guy's imagination.

Boy that just sucked

I guess we've been spoiled the last couple of years. It's time to hearken back to when the Championship games were better than the Stuporbowl. That was quite possibly the worst Superbowl I've ever seen.

Even a well-played low-scoring affair would have been more interesting.

I was a neutral for this, not caring about either team, just hoping to see a good game. For the first time in years, I was thinking the commercials were the highlight of the evening, and not the game.

Very sad.

The Boyz relaxing..

Now that I have my new IKEA foot stool together the boyz have quite taken to it. This is a nice lazy, Sunday afternoon photo.

"shout hacking"

Oh, puh-leese. This is just over the top. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a Microsoft apologist but this "security hole" is just so absurd that it's has to seriously call into question the common sense quotient in the media.

Of course, they've been looking for reports of security holes in Vista since the launch. It seems that everyone wants Microsoft to fail in creating a more secure OS - which is a bit sad. Just as they have been slammed for creating the pastiche of security holes that is XP, they should be lauded for spending the time on making Vista more secure.

Yes, it probably has holes one could drive a truck through. Yes, they should have designed an OS that was secure from the ground up years ago. But they are trying, and it would appear largely succeeding. Security is all of our concern and it is a "good thing" that Vista is so much better than XP.

Me, I use OS X, so I sleep well at night. But it doesn't mean that I don't wish MS well in their efforts. I still have a lot of good friends there and I know that they think about security all the time.

It's like that line from Spooks (paraphrased): "You may question their methods, but never question their motives."

France bans smoking

Well.. not entirely. But as this article points out, this is a huge step in a country where fully 26% percent of people are still smokers.

I cannot quite believe it. The power of the EU I suppose. I certainly have no objection as when I lived there I ended up eating out in the very early evening (6-7pm) in order to avoid spoiling my dinner when my fellow diners fired up the Gauloises.

Now, perhaps, I can enjoy that morning coffee and croissants at Cafe Flore without smoke as an accompaniment.

Marveilleux!