List of company name etymologies – I knew what SCO stood for, but had no idea that SEGA was “Service Games of Japan” and was originally founded to import pinball games for use on American military bases in Japan. Or that Yahoo! came from “Yet Another Heirarchical Officious Oracle.”
Centralized intelligence won’t help us – Look at how companies recovered after the WTC fell for inspiration in the war on terror. And Duncan Watts needs to read up on social networks.
If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this:
Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle greese, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activiated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer’s ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.
Now that’s some exciting sauce!
NRC will no longer release nuclear safety reports – Because security through obscurity works so well. I mean, geez, look at Microsoft. No one ever exploits holes in their…oh wait.
Ross Gelbspan’s Boiling Point says we need to come together to fight a bigger problem then terrorism – Yeah, global warming is still unproven. Right…
Give people enough free condoms, and they’ll find something interesting to do with them… – And its certainly not what you think.
A DC Weekend
I got to discover the Providence airport (hint: it’s not in Providence!) as part of my short journey down to Washington, D.C. to see Adam and Yanna in their temporary summer digs. The weather was hot and balmy and occasionally water chose to pour from the sky, but that didn’t dampen the fun and good times were had by all, especially after a visit to the Apple Store. But more on that in just a minute.
What can you get with $3 million and a few miles of cabling? Why the incredibly cool parking system at BWI, of course. A big board gives total parking available at the entrance, boards on each floor give spaces available there, at each row is an indicator of spaces available in that row, and at each space is a sensor with red LEDs to show the space is occupied and green to show it is empty. Everything is updated in real time, of course, and it makes finding a free space incredibly easy, saving thousands of hours of driving, and the assorted gas and pollution, per year. I was suitably impressed with this feat of engineering. Sometimes its the most straightforward things that most elude us. The BWI parking structure is an example of really good usability design at work. I can’t wait to see it enter the mainstream.
While Adam and Yanna live in Arlington, Virginia, the District is just a short walk away. A few miles in the other direction is Maryland. In fact, Yanna has to walk across state lines to go to work!
We went around the Georgetown area and had drinks at a bar on Friday. On Saturday we planned on going to the monuments, but it was hot and we ended up going to the Air and Space Museum instead. Stopped at the Botanical Gardens first to look around and use the restrooms. Its nice to have things around that don’t cost money, even if you do have to go through metal detectors everywhere you go.
The IMAX show at the Air and Space Museum was a little creepy in its NASA worship, but I tried to ignore that and look at the cool pictures of the International Space Station. The stupid 3D glasses didn’t help in the least…the polarized lenses required that you keep your head in one exact position to avoid seeing double, and even then there was highly annoying ghosting. Since most of the film wasn’t really in 3D at all, I kinda wonder why they subjected us to the glasses at all.
I was introduced to Slurpees, which I didn’t like, and the George Washington University gameroom, which I did. The Hippodrome is a huge gameroom, pool hall, bowling alley, and lounge with food, a dance floor, and lots of couches. I got some good ideas for the gameroom at Brandeis and thought about what ours could be like if there was enough administrative will (and money) behind it. Sigh.
On Sunday we were all set for a trip out into…well, somewhere, but the pouring rain caused us to detour, and we ended up at the local Apple Store, after hatching a brilliant plan to do some serious wallet damage. Basically, I funded Adam’s new iBook, which he has wanted forever but has never been willing to take the plunge for, and in exchange for the no-interest loan, I got to take advantage of the Apple education rebates to swing a free printer and a reduced-price new iPod. Adam got a nice new iBook, my (only slightly old) 30GB iPod for $100, and an AppleCare, I got a shiny new 40GB iPd for only $69, the aforementioned free HP inkjet printer, and the AppleCare I’ve been meaning to buy for my PowerBook. Not wanting to feel left out, Yanna got the shoulder strap for her iPod mini. 🙂 This was followed, of course, by lots of time at home setting up and playing with various items. We also had to decide on names. Following my lead, with my AgBook and AgPod, there is now an yPod and a HermPod, with matching ‘Books. It’s one big happy Mac family! And another notch on my “people I’ve converted to Macs” list, which is growing quite large.
A trip would not be complete without a few hours of weather related delays for the plane flight home. I finally arrived back in Waltham, safe, sound, and tired at about 1:00am. Thanks Adam and Yanna for a great weekend!
MaryAnn liked The Manchurian Candidate about as much as I did – The original was so much better.
iTunes on Linux – My dreams come true!
Computer software scores the essay component of the GMAT and may soon do the same for the GRE – I can totally see test prep companies teaching students how to defeat this by writing simple, well-structured sentences and throwing in a few big words, with no regard for saying anything coherent.
TiVo’s broadcast flag woes – The NFL and the MPAA are stopping innovation. No surprises, just keep moving folks. [I]f a programmer or an engineer with a bright idea has to go to Washington, hat in hand and lawyers in tow, to request permission to sell a better product — and is then told “just wait awhile” — we are on our way to suffocating innovation in this country.
Flash memory can survive coffee, skateboards, soda – Chances of recover are a bit lower if card is hit by a sledgehammer. I really need to stop doing that!
Is there anything aspirin can’t do? – Now it cuts breast cancer risk as well.