Archive for November, 2009

« Older Entries

Weis whacked.

Monday, November 30th, 2009

The firing is now official.

St. Edward’s and Notre Dame are both under the Congregation of Holy Cross, so I have some sympathy for Notre Dame. This firing doesn’t give me any pleasure.

I think Notre Dame’s biggest problem is a need to adjust to the realities of the new world. As TMQ points out, Notre Dame graduates 94 percent of their football players; they’re basically playing an amateur game among professionals. The school needs to decide what’s important; building character and graduating players, or steamrolling cupcakes and getting a share of that sweet sweet bowl money.

Posted in Firings, Loser | 1 Comment »

Some thoughts on failure.

Monday, November 30th, 2009

The list of the 50 most interesting Wikipedia articles (and 50 more) has been blogged elsewhere. But while I was reading the second list, I stumbled across one of the coolest things I’ve seen on the Web in a while.

You may have noticed that a recurring theme of this blog is failure, mostly sports failures. That’s because failure is a sort of academic interest of mine. I gloat over the Detroit Lions going 0-16, but there’s more to it than that.

I want to know what allowed the network security breech. I want to know why the plane crashed. I want to understand what led up to the refinery explosion. I want to understand these things, because I want to know where the mistakes were made, and how to avoid repeating them. When I see the same patterns that led to the reactor meltdown repeating in my work environment, I want to be the person who steps up and says “Stop.” I want to learn from other people’s failures, so I don’t have to learn from my own.

I’m not the only person who feels that way. Books like Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design and Perrow’s Normal Accidents have been major influences on my thinking.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to discover, while reading the Wikipedia entry about the SL-1 incident, that NASA has something called the Process Based Mission Assurance Knowledge Management System.  As best as I can put it, this is where NASA manages their knowledge of failure, and tries to learn from it.

One of the things you can find there is System Failure Case Studies. These are short PDF documents (about 4 pages) discussing various failures, and what lessons can be learned from them. (These documents include discussion questions, such as “Do you feel that the chronic pressure of aggressive schedules is adequately balanced with attention to safety and quality in your organization?”) Some examples:

There’s also another series of documents, VITS, which appear to be PDF files of PowerPoint presentations. Some of the SFCS documents have VITS presentations that go along with them; other VITS presentations, such as this one on Hurricane Katrina, stand alone.

TJIC might argue with me (he’d probably suggest that private insurance companies have a strong motivation to do the same thing, and he’d have a pretty good point), but at some level, this is one of the things I want my government to do.

(Edited to add: And the Nets are now 0-17.)

Posted in Geek, Loser | 1 Comment »

Notes towards a loser update.

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

The New Jersey Nets (who, by the way, are 0-16, and two games away from setting an NBA record for most consecutive losses to start a season; and they play the Lakers tonight) fired coach Lawrence Frank. Who says Bruce Ratner cares more about his real estate ventures than the Nets?

(By the way, that is not the firing I was expecting today. I was also not expecting Al Groh to be fired at Virginia quite yet, but when you go 3-9, and can’t beat your arch rival, your days are numbered. Groh apparently has pro experience with the Jets; could he go to the Bills? Or could he possibly be considered for the Notre Dame job?)

I see that the Texans once again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

This doesn’t really qualify as a “loser” update per se, but last night I was able to have a very nice dinner at my sister’s place and watch the Baylor – Texas Tech game. I’m glad Tech pulled the game out, but it sure seems to me that there were a lot of missed and dropped passes. This victory strikes me as being one for the defense; and, as we all know, you can’t rely on defense to win games.

And the more Avatar commercials I see, the more I root for the movie to be an enormous flop.

Posted in Firings, Loser, Movies, NFL | Comments Closed

Holiday season administrative reminder.

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

Because:

  1. I want to avoid possible trouble with the FTC.
  2. For the benefit of my family members.
  3. Because Insty did it, so why not follow in his footsteps?

This is a general administrative reminder that purchases made through Amazon links on Whipped Cream Difficulties, such as this one, result in a small kickback to me. This makes it easier for me to keep providing the high quality content you’ve become used to. Think of it as like a PBS or NPR pledge drive, but without all the annoying program interruptions, and not so much Three Tenors or Wayne Dyer.

Posted in Admin, Books | 2 Comments »

Random notes: November 25, 2009.

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Novice urban hunters are forming classes and clubs to learn skills that a few generations ago were often passed down from parent to child.

Shocked, shocked I am to learn that The Biggest Loser may indulge in questionable practices. I am equally shocked to learn that a charity collecting money for the homeless may be a scam.

I am delighted to find out that the CIA Family Advisory Board has published a second cookbook, More Spies, Black Ties, and Mango Pies. I own a copy of the original 1997 cookbook, so I’ll be looking for this one. (Oddly, Amazon doesn’t seem to have the sequel.)

I did not know Julie “Julie and Julia” Powell had a new book out. After reading Addie Broyles’ discussion of it in the Statesman, I wish I still didn’t know she had a new book out.

Edited to add: On the “Art, damn it, art!” front: “Train” in vain.

(Since I got the song stuck in your head, here’s a live Clash video. And here’s a live Annie Lennox version. And here’s a not bad Manic Street Preachers cover.)

Posted in Art, Books, Clippings, Food, Guns, Media, Music, TV | Comments Closed

News of the world.

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The Texas Department of Public Safety encourages you to get drunk and drive like a complete maniac this holiday weekend, as they’ve pulled all the state troopers off the road and will not be enforcing traffic regulations.  You should plan on driving at at least 150% of the posted speed limit, unless it is wet and/or visibilty is obstructed; in that case, you should plan on driving at double the posted limit.

In other news: world ends. Women, minorites hardest hit. (Hattip.)

In other other news, our local outlet malls have announced that they expect to be completely deserted on Black Friday, and are frantically begging for customers to show up.

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

A brief loser update: week 11.

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

The New Jersey Nets are now 0-13.

What the heck, Cleveland?

Ditto Pittsburgh.

Lawrence has a good post up about tonight’s Texans – Oilers Titans game.

Posted in Media, NFL | Comments Closed

I heartily endorse this event or product. (#3 in a series)

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Dereu and Sons Manufacturing Company (aka Spy-Coins.com).

Back many thousands of years ago, my elementary school library was full of books like F. B. I. The “G-Men’s” Weapons and Tactics for Combatting Crime and other non-fiction children’s books about the heroic exploits of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Remember, these were elementary school libraries, and this was before Hoover’s death; they didn’t have books like The FBI Nobody Knows. And I wasn’t reading Rex Stout at that time, so I didn’t enough to be able to seek it out elsewhere.)

Anyway, one of my favorite stories was the one about Rudolph Abel and the newsboy. Not because I had any real investment in catching Russian spies, but because I thought a hollow nickel was incredibly cool, and I wanted one badly.

Flash-foward mumble mumble years to DEFCON 17. What do I find at one of the vendor tables? Yes! Hollow nickels!

Since I was older and more mature, though, a few thoughts came to me. One was that I didn’t have a whole lot of cash on me at the time, and using an ATM at DEFCON…might as well go ahead and pull on the Bad Idea Jeans. Another thought was that a hollow nickel might be cool, but what are the chances I wouldn’t end up spending it by accident?

So I took some notes, surfed the web, waited until I got home and someone had a birthday, and then placed an order…

(more…)

Posted in Coins, DEFCON 17, Endorsements, Geek | Comments Closed

Food and the decline of newspapers.

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

The Statesman has an article about grocery price wars in Austin. Our city is currently dominated by H.E.B. and Randalls (owned by Safeway) with some additional competition from Whole Foods, Wal-Mart, and the warehouse stores.

And if she thinks that something is too high at Randalls, she’ll go elsewhere.

“If it’s something I’m not willing to pay for, I’ll check and see if H-E-B’s got it cheaper,” Scott said.

Brilliant strategy there, ma’am.

Signs of the new Randalls initiative were all over the 35th Street store recently.

A case of 24 bottles of Ozarka water was selling for $3.99, down from $5.49. Boneless chicken breasts were $1.99 per pound (with a Randalls Remarkable Card), down from $3.99. Bottles of Gatorade were 10 for $10 (also with the loyalty card), down from $1.69 each.

You know, a real newspaper would have provided size information, and compared those prices head-to-head against H.E.B. A newspaper that wanted to be worth what the Statesman charges might even do something daring. For example, they could put together a standard grocery cart (or even several of them in a rotation), send interns out once a week to do actual comparison shopping at H.E.B., Randalls, Wal-Mart, and even Whole Foods, and then publish the results. (They could even donate the purchased groceries to the local food bank.)

But this is the Statesman.

The case of 24 .5 liter bottles of Ozarka water I found at my local H.E.B. was $3.94. (The H.E.B. only had one case on the shelf, and that case was a “bonus pack” with 28 bottles instead of 24. All the other Ozarka water was in packages of less than 24 bottles.)

H.E.B. boneless chicken breasts were $6.99/pound for “all natural, no preservatives or antibiotics” etc. breasts, $3.99/pound for Sanderson Farms breasts, and $2.99/pound for the Hill Country Fair (house brand) breasts which were also promoted as “natural”/preservative/additive free.

Gatorade was $6 for an eight-pack of 20 ounce bottles, $9.82 for a 15-pack in the same size, and 2 for $2 in the 32 ounce size.

H.E.B. does not have a “loyalty card”.

Edited to add: As long as I’m talking about the Statesman, let me point out their latest series of bizarre TV commercials. The one with food writers Addie Broyles and Mike Sutter is just misguided and dumb. But I don’t know what to make of the John Kelso commerical.

Edited to add 2: And hattip to the Scalz for inspiring my grocery blogging.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Media | Comments Closed

Project e, part 4: quick note on Karmicing.

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

John Wells, the guy who wrote the handy guide to installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on the 1005HA and 1008HA (previously blogged here) has a new post up detailing how to upgrade to 9.10 (Karmic).

May his name be written in the Book of Life, and may flights of angels sing him to sleep every night.

Posted in asus_eee, Geek, linux, project_e, Thanks | Comments Closed

Cahiers du cinéma.

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

In their infinite wisdom (and for once I do not mean that in a snarky way) the National Film Board of Canada has put the classic documentary Project Grizzly online. For free.

For those of you who don’t know about Troy James Hurtubise or the Ursus Mark I through VII, you have a real treat in store. Just remind yourself from time to time that, yes, this is a documentary.

(It looks like the DVD is out of print, but readily available used from Amazon.)

(Hattip: Jason Kottke.)

Posted in Geek, Movies | Comments Closed

High weirdness by radio.

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Austin has a decent radio station, KGSR, with a strong concentration on local and Texas music. That station has been at 107.1 FM roughly since Jesus was a second lieutenant.

At least, until today. According to the Statesman, KGSR is moving to 93.3 FM effective this coming Friday, replacing the hip-hop station that was on that frequency. The old 107.1 frequency is going to become yet another Spanish-language, “Regional Mexican” station.

The new station, whose name and line-up will be announced at 5pm on Monday, November 30th, will include personalities already familiar to Austin’s Spanish-speaking community, as well as dynamic, new talents. Advertisers will be able to reach the active Hispanic market of Central Texas beginning Wednesday, December 2nd via 107.1 FM.

As Lawrence put it, “Why not just go ahead and print the press release verbatim, you farking ho?”

The Statesman‘s questionable journalism aside, there are some interesting things going on here.

  1. Is it really worth changing your long-time frequency and risking the loss of existing listeners in order to gain an estimated “100,000 more” prospective listeners? I will be interested in seeing how the ratings change after the switch.
  2. The parent company of KGSR, Emmis Communication, has an interesting history with the Hispanic community over the past few months.  Back in July, two hosts of a talk show on one of the AM stations were suspended for two weeks, and the show cancelled, after one of them repeatedly used the term “wetback” on the air. Oddly enough, Emmis announced on Tuesday that they were bringing back the show and both hosts after everyone goes through diversity training. As the linked article notes, another pair of hosts on one of the FM stations were also suspended for one week after using the term “wet vacs” “in suggestive and insulting ways“.

I’m not a radio expert, but all of this seems odd.

Posted in Media, Music | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries