Jorg's Blog

iPad gets a rest, but was it in time?

2011-04-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

(( Kids are watching Shrek 4. I think they need to watch a new MythBusters episode. ))

Me: "OK, time for iPad to rest."

Arielle: [[leaps to grab the iPad so I can't stop the movie]]

Me: "Arielle, I need to put this away."

Arielle: "But why do you need it?"

Me: "I need it to make sure my children get smart and their brains don't turn to mush, watching movie after movie"

Arielle, emphatically: "Well it's TOO LATE!"

Annika won't say where the found the doll...

2010-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

[Scene: at home. Annika walks into the living room from some other part of the house.]

Annika: Look, mommy! A barbie doll!

Mommy: Where did you get the barbie doll?

Annika: Toys For Us!

<pause, and then laughter>

<for my friends overseas: We have a large toy store chain in the U.S. named Toys'R'Us>

The importance of being on top...

2010-08-11T03:05:00.000-07:00

Actual argument among my 2 kids:

Background: The shower is over, not because they're both clean, but as usual, because they've run out of hot water. Fortunately it's not too cold to rinse them before they get out, so we do that first, and then...

Kid 1: I want the top towel!
Kid 2: I want the top towel!

Background: we have a double-towel rack where one towel sits an inch behind, and inch above, the other towel. The towels for the kids are 2 of the exact same towel. EXACT SAME.

Daddy: OK, today is Annika's turn. Here, Annika, you get the top towel.
Annika: Yay!
Arielle: [pouty face]

Daddy: [moves bottom towel to the top towel holder]
Daddy: OK Arielle, you get the top towel too!
Daddy: [hands the new top towel to Arielle]
Arielle: [takes the towel, throws it to floor.]
Daddy: [visible look of distress]
Arielle: I wanted the top towel!
Daddy: But they're the same exact towel! You can't tell the difference, except for where they hang!
Arielle: [starts crying]
Daddy: Arielle, I gave you the top towel!
Arielle: But you moved it!
[large pause while I try to think of some possible way out]
Daddy: Arielle, can I tell you a secret?
Arielle: [moves closer] OK.
Daddy: While you two were in the shower?
Arielle: Yeah?
Daddy: Not looking?
Arielle: Yeah?
Daddy: I switched the towels.
Arielle: [visible look of relief]
Arielle: Yay!
Daddy: [visible look of relief]
[drying]
[more drying]
[pause]
Arielle: [in a whisper] Can you do that every day?
Daddy: [trying very hard not to lol] Sure
Arielle: Yay! (Hugs me)

Speed walking, aka race walking

2010-05-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes someone says something controversial, and you see just how much of an idiot they are. Other times, someone says something controversial, and you think, man, that's definitely not PC, I'm surprised he said that. But he's soooo right.

I was watching this clip on you tube and it reminded me of Bob Costas, on Conan O'Brien many years ago:

Bob Costas: They showed a clip and I had to make a comment, so I said "having a race to see who can walk the fastest is like having a contest to see who can whisper the loudest."

Conan O'Brien: And the Race-Walkers weren't happy?

Bob Costas: ...they wanted me dead, Conan

Conan O'Brien: Well, at least they would be easy to get away from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3GGzq1PIqs

The Dedication of Google SecOps

2010-01-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

It's been said over and over here, and everyone agrees: we're all proud and profoundly thankful for the dedicated security team, who've been working for weeks - without vacation and straight through the Christmas holiday season - to determine the nature of attacks on the Google internal network.

For me, what impresses me most is that while other companies I've worked for might have been able to stop the attack, Google SecOps (Security Operations) was able to analyze it, determine what it was trying to do, determine where it came from, and determine who else it was trying to attack.

For others, what impresses them is the dedication - the fact that they have been working day and night through holidays - the fact that some have cancelled their vacation plans... at a recent company meeting, someone in the crowd suggested a Hawaiian vacation for them, and Sergey's response was "that's not enough".

Me, though, I can't help but ask, "Is it really so bad?" My co-worker responds, "Jorg, they had to cancel their Christmas plans!"

So I think about my Christmas. The time spent with my in-laws. The 50 minutes in line waiting among crying children so we could talk with, and get pictures with, an elderly gentleman pretending to be Santa Claus. The 7-hour drive to see my mom in L.A. I ponder, would I really want to give that up... to spend day and night among some of the smartest people in the world, defending the world's #1 brand against attacks by a communist nation, and preserve the privacy of Chinese dissidents? That would be....

Best... Christmas... Ever.

The F-Word, revisited

2010-01-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

So today, I'm taking Arielle to school, and, out of the blue, she mentions that one of the boys at her school thought that the F-Word was "fire truck". And she laughed.

After a pause, curiosity got to me: "Do you know what the real F-Word is?"

"Yeah. Fucker."

"How do you know?"

"I heard the boys using it."

An awkward silence followed. Well, awkward to me; I doubt she understands what an awkward silence is... But once again curiosity got the best of me.

"Do you know what it means?"

"Well, it's a fucker plane. They keep saying 'Fucker plane'. "

My mind raced, but to no end. I couldn't imagine that the boys in her class would really be talking about the "mile-high club"... So I pressed further.

"Well, that's how they use it, but do you know what it *means*?"

"Yeah. It's an airplane with 3 wings on it."

Which resulted in an unexpected teachable moment, where I explained what triplanes were, and the correct pronunciation of Anthony Fokker's last name.

Everyone is OK but the news van exploded

2009-11-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

9:30AM email: "Just got notification that our Atlanta datacenter is on generator power. Local facilities is trying to figure out what the problem is at this point and I do not have an ETA for utility power at this time."

11:00AM email: "We are back on utility power. Georgia Power is having an issue with the second feed of the two feeders to our building. They transferred all power to the first and we came back up on utility power. More updates as they happen."

12:45PM email: "It was WSB-TV in Atlanta. Everyone is OK but the news van exploded."

From http://www.cbsatlanta.com/news/21653742/detail.html :

WSB Live Truck Drives Into Power Lines

Georgia Power Engineer: Crew Was 'Damn Lucky'

ATLANTA -- A reporter and photographer for WSB-TV miraculously escaped serious injury after driving their live truck into power lines Wednesday.

In the words of Georgia Power engineer Jeff Wilson, the WSB news crew that was in this satellite truck is “damn lucky.” Wilson said 115,000 volts of electricity surged through the truck and into the ground when the truck's mast hit these power lines.
“This is a transmission line, which means it transmits high voltage electricity from a substation out to the smaller distribution lines,” Wilson said.

At about 12:30 p.m., reporter Tom Jones and photographer Leonard Raglin had just finished covering a story at the Fulton County jail. The crew packed up their equipment, but they accidentally left their live truck’s transmission mast all the way up. The mast is basically a large antenna that sends television video and audio signals back to the station for reporters' live shots.

The truck drove out of the parking lot towards Marietta Street. Several Fulton County deputies saw what was happening and tried to stop the crew.

“I was about try to get in my vehicle and come advise the truck that the mast was still up. And just prior to me getting into the vehicle, I noticed an explosion,” said Deputy Reginald Turner.

When the mast hit the power line, part of the mast blew off. The surge blew a hole into the asphalt, rupturing a water line. There was an explosion and the truck caught fire, witnesses said. Miraculously, Jones and Raglin stumbled out of the truck with only minor injuries. They were listed in good condition at Grady Hospital.
They could have been killed.

"I've never anything like this before. I've never seen a seen this magnitude of an explosion," Turner said.

My new favorite quote about programming

2009-11-11T23:29:00.000-08:00

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place."

"Therefore, if you write your code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

-- Brian W. Kernighan

Backyard deer experiences

2009-05-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

We had just come back from shopping on Saturday, and as we did, I saw a deer in our backyard. I immediately told my wife, and then ran upstairs to grab my camera. I couldn't find it, so I grabbed my videocamera instead - and I'm glad I did. Barely two minutes later I had footage of one deer escaping via the high road - leaping a 2-meter fence to get out - while another took the low road - diving under a bench.

Forget Wolfram, try True Knowledge.

2009-05-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have been making a fuss about the new Wolfram Alpha search engine. Frankly, I'm underwhelmed. It does some things very well, but it does most things horribly. For general questions, you're much better off with www.trueknowledge.com.

Consider the question "When did Bob Hope turn 100?"

Wolfram says:

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Related inputs to try:

People: bob hope Units: turn

True Knowledge says:

Sorry, I don't know the answer to that question.

Your question

I think that Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG (May 29, 1903 - July 27, 2003), the British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies is or was the age 100 years. When did this become true?

The downside of trueknowledge is that you have to sign up for an account and give them an email address to do so. But the answers are just sooooo much better.

Deeply conflicted

2009-01-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

I saw this paragraph on a politics discussion list, and had to share. The context is, Israel just bombed the UN's "Relief and Works Agency" building in Gaza. No, seriously. Their claim is that Hamas shot rockets at Israel and then ran into the building. Many questioned this claim, and the response was, just look at Israel's IDF channel on youtube.

A response to that started with "we are watching Israel follow through on a decision to destroy Hamas as a military organization, for real, no matter what, and Hamas has finally figured that out. Hamas assumed, as usual, that the Western moral code that they and their fellow jihadists laughingly abandoned decades ago would constrain Israel from really fighting. They are now learning otherwise." - which seemed to be the typical hawkish right-wing Jewish defending-our-military's-killing-of-civilians answer, until he followed up with this, which I feel like framing:

Personally, as a middle-aged American Jew with deep family roots in Israel and thus a decades-old burning contempt bordering on the pathological for Islamic terrorists but an almost-as-instinctive liberal secular-humanist sympathy for the clearly repressed, unfree, devastatingly impoverished Palestinians, whose small children quite obviously deserve freedom and safety and education as much as my own small daughter but will almost certainly never enjoy them, I am so beyond conflicted that I cannot state a personal opinion that isn't instantly contradicted by another personal opinion waiting to explode out of my mind. I am honestly rejoicing that Hamas is being destroyed, yet I honestly believe that by any reasonable standard Israel is guilty of war crimes (just as I believe that of America in Iraq). I honestly believe that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are a moral atrocity that should all be removed at gunpoint by the IDF and the settlers arrested if they resist and shot if they wield weapons. But I also believe that no two-state solution will ever be possible until a Palestinian leader arises who is capable of envisioning, selling and enforcing such a peaceful accommodation.

Arielle misunderstanding about Cars

2008-12-13T09:10:00.001-08:00

While reading Disney's Cars in book form...

After the book is over, Arielle asks "did he get the Diet Coke?"

We ask, "what Diet Coke?"

She says, "whoever wins the race, gets Diet Coke all to themselves!"

<<long pause>>

Julie: "Dinoco! Whoever wins gets Dinoco all to themselves!!"

Anatomy of a NEDRA record

2008-11-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

It was 7 years ago when I attended my first drag race; it was for electric cars, and held in Sacramento, held by an organization named NEDRA - the National Electric Drag Racing Association.

Given the large number of categories for records, it seemed to be fairly easy to set a world record. I didn't see any inherent reason why battery voltage of 24V should be any slower than 48V, Given DC-DC upconversion, but more importantly, there just seemed to be certain records that were within easy reach. So, long story short, I bought an electric bicycle, found a great mechanic who was into electric vehicles, found someone who only weighed 140 pounds, and a year later I was back at the track - and we got the record. "Class Sixty-Four" was the slot they found for it, after some controversy over whether an electric bicycle could qualify in the motorcycle class. The record still stands.

I'll skip a lot of history and flash forward to the present: In 2005 I put in an order for the Tango. In 2006 I was present for the unveiling of the Tesla Roadster, and after getting a ride in one, I put down my money for that, too. Both were promised for 2007. After 2 years of trading delivery delay excuses, my Tango was delivered in March 28, 2008, in time for a great April Fools' joke, and my Tesla (technically, my wife's Tesla) was delivered on October 9.

Ever since then, I've wanted to race them against each other. After all, they both claim 0-60 in "about 4 seconds", but how well do they do when normal people attempt that? But there's the issue of logistics. See, the Tango is a lead-acid car, so its range is limited - 50 miles best case, and realistically about 35 miles when you factor in highway speeds and stop-and-go. But the nearest drag racing track is 70 miles away. Most electric drag racers trailer their cars to the track for this reason, but I was hoping to do better.

The Tango is built for a work-around: it has a trailer hitch, which is designed to be able to tow a range-extending trailer, and unlike the Tesla, its batteries can re-charge even as it is traveling. After some research, I picked up two Honda EU2000i generators, which can be parallelized to provide 26A @110V, and went back to my favorite EV-knowledgeable mechanic, Mike Mercado of Mechanically Speaking in Burlingame. After talking about various designs, I spent a long Tuesday night at his shop, watching him weld, and occasionally providing a helping hand, and came out with a working trailer design. Since the generators together only weigh 100 pounds, it's easier to avoid wheels and just stick the whole thing into the hitch itself. Works great.

The next problem is that 70 miles is still a long way. So I talked to the other Tango owner in my area, Nat Simons, and he agreed to let me borrow his Tango in return for his name being on the NEDRA record. He lives only 35 miles away from the track, so the logistics, while not perfect, work well. The final problem was that I've got kids, and, long story short, my wife couldn't simultaneously race and watch them, so I needed the help of a co-worker, preferably someone lighter than I am. This was my friend Chandler Carruth.

7:30AM: Chandler meets me at my house, and immediately there is an issue: he is wearing shorts. (Yes, it's California, we do that in November). Fortunately I was his size several years ago, and I have a pair of long pants. Not because it's cold, mind you: the drag race track doesn't allow people to race unless they have long pants on.

7:50AM: we leave for Berkeley, me in the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Chandler in the Tesla. The Tesla is getting great efficiency because in addition to only going 50mph, he is drafting me.

8:55AM: we get to Nat's house. We immediately start re-charging the Tesla so it can have high charge for the race, and then discover to our horror that Nat has removed the rear seat. This is an issue because we're looking for the "SP" Street Production record. That is, the car must not be modified in any way! So in addition to attaching the generator trailer to Nat's Tango, we have to put the rear seat back! Here's a pic of Nat and the hybridized Tango; behind him is my Tesla; behind that is his Tesla. "What", you say, "he *also* has a Tango and a Tesla?!?" Yes indeed. Tango owner #1 was George Clooney, who also has a Tesla. Tango owner #2 is me; Tango owner #3 is Nat. Of the next 8 people in line for a Tango, half or more also have Teslas on order!

10:55AM: we finally leave on our journey to Infineon. This journey is even slower, since we're trying to conserve every last bit of charge on both vehicles. It also gave passers-by the rarest of views: not just a Tango, of which only 3 have ever been sold, not just a Tango with two generators strapped to its trailer hitch, but a Tango with two generators stuck into its trailer hitch followed by a Tesla. About 20 cars take our picture during this trip, typically with cel phone cameras; roughly one every 2 minutes.

11:45AM: We get to Infineon. Brian Hall of NEDRA has graciously offered his help to guide me through the process of bracket racing, which I have never done before. Our only prior experience is with an official NEDRA event, where there was no competition, per se: just run the track and collect your time. After some initial pleasantries, and disconnecting the generator trailer, we get into the line for tech inspecton. And wait and wait and wait. It turns out that the guy doing inspections thought he was done, and went for lunch, since although we made it through the gates before noon, we weren't in the inspection line by then. This means we lose precious time where the Tango could have still been charging from the generators.

12:30PM: Tech inspection. This is abbreviated, because lots of things don't apply. We haven't removed our muffler, neither car has a clutch, the batteries are tied down well enough because they account for around 1/3rd of the weight of either vehicle, etc etc. The only brief hiccup is when he looks at the Tesla and says, "uh, isn't this car too fast? We need a rollbar." And this is the single point where Tesla has helped us out the most. See, only a few weeks prior, Tesla took one of its new prototypes to this exact track, and they were kicked off. See, there's a lot of safety rules that surround any racing activity, and for drag racing, they don't allow convertibles that run faster than 14.000 unless they have roll bars. The Tesla has a roll bar, but it's so well integrated into the car that it doesn't look like it does. Tesla posted this experience on their "touch" blog - http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/ - so we knew to expect this. Fortunately, I've got one of the earliest Teslas - #9 of the Signature 100 - and it came with Tesla's original 2-speed drivetrain, but stuck in second gear. The car comes with a free upgrade to the new "1.5" drivetrain, which is noticeably faster with much better low-end torque, but I haven't been upgraded. So I can't run faster than 14.000. And I can't be disqualified for lack of a roll bar that I actually have.

1:00PM: they slot us in the middle of the first round of competition, for dial-in. The Tesla gets a 14.647, a time which will eventually be the world-record time; the time-slip says:

Reaction Time: 0.992
60': 2.618
330': 6.739
660': 9.813
MPH: 80.86
1000': 12.428
1/4: 14.647
MPH: 101.09MPH

1:01PM: The Tango is inexplicably held up until the Tesla is most of the way down the track, and gets a respectable but far-slower-than-expected time:

Reaction Time: 0.534
60': 2.241
330': 6.215
660': 9.508
MPH: 74.13
1000': 12.400
1/4: 14.895
MPH: 89.67MPH

When I see the time slip, I immediately scowl under my breath, I *knew* we should have found a way to keep the generators running while we were waiting to run! We've essentially done a run with the batteries less than half full, and with lead-acid batteries, that makes a big difference. Fortunately it's going to be a long time before we get a proper run in, so we head off to get the Tango charging.

1:10PM: we meet some friends of Brian's, and review his entrant of the day, "Ice Breaker", which turns out to be the third vehicle to break a NEDRA record that day. In particular, we meet our videographer-to-be, who goes by "KO".

2:00PM or so: While we're off shedding bodily fluids, Brian Hall meets the Infineon folks who want to know what we want our racing handicaps to be set at for bracket racing. See, in order for it to be fun to race against other cars, every racer is trying to come as close as possible to how fast their car can possibly be. Then, for a race, if one car is slower than the other, the give the slower car a head start. The winner is the one who crosses the finish line first. Of course, this also means that you can get as much of a head start as you want, just by claiming your car is slower than it really is, so there's an additional rule: if your car turns out to run faster than your claim, then you were sandbagging, and you're disqualified. Your claim is called the "dial", and Brian sets it about 2/10s of a second faster than our initial run. Specifically, the Tango's dial is set to 14.7 seconds, and the Tesla's is set to 14.5.

In addition to getting your car down the track as close as possible to the theoretical fastest-possible time, there's another element of skill: reaction time. This is the time difference between when the light goes green, and when your tires actually leave the start line. I'll be blunt here: Chandler and I both suck at this, because it's our first time.

2:15PM or so: with the first round of "trophy" class racing almost complete, we're told we need to hurry ourselves into the line for the first real race.

2:30PM: We take off. The first ever head-to-head Tango-vs-Tesla race, and this time, the Tango's batteries are more like 3/4 charged.

And the time slips?

Car:  Tango   Tesla
Dial: 14.7    14.5
R/T:   0.603   0.607
60':   2.174   2.649
330':  6.053   6.770
660':  9.243   9.839
MPH:  76.40   81.02
1000: 12.054  12.450
1/4:  14.480  14.666
MPH:  92.15  101.23

But remember what I said about the handicap time, aka the "dial"? The Tango's is set to 14.7, so it's disqualified. But that doesn't really matter. The important thing is, both cars made it down the track twice, and we have the time slips to prove it. By NEDRA rules, the Tesla gets the record at 14.647, the better of its two times, since they are within 1% of each other. The Tango on the other hand gets the worst of its two times, 14.895, because they're so far from each other.

This may seem unfair, but the Tesla falls victim to this exact issue later...

3:30PM One more time, I run the Tesla down the track, this time for a 14.713 time. For the first time, it's drag racing the way it was meant to be, and I win on my merits as a drag racer: my reaction time is 0.367 seconds, as opposed to the guy in the next lane who has a reaction time of 0.511 seconds. I get a time of 14.713 seconds, which is .213 seconds slower than my "dial", while the guy in the next lane gets a 15.634 time, which is .184 seconds slower than his "dial". So I win based on my faster reaction time. Unfortunately, I'm not caring very much, because I've already accomplished what I came to do, and I know that the Tesla is only going to get slightly slower from here on out. And I have a wife and two kids who've been here for two hours just to see me race 14 seconds at a time. So I offer Chandler the opportunity to race the Tesla. Now, I'm not even sure if it's allowed to switch drivers, but if we're disqualified for that, that's fine by us.

3:50PM: Chandler takes the wheel, and loses both for his reaction time and for his dial violation. Here's the video, the Tesla loses to a damn good drag racer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af1MF9OZSg0 And here's the time slip:

Car:  Tesla   Car 46
Dial: 14.5    10.47
R/T:   0.705   0.050
60':   2.555   1.494
330':  6.632   4.323
660':  9.682   6.718
MPH:  81.38  102.41
1000: 12.284   8.793
1/4:  14.498  10.568
MPH: 101.40  125.39

Holy crap - a 0.05 second reaction time! And he went down the track at within a tenth of a second as fast as his car would go!

For all his skill though, he didn't need to even try, because the Tesla blew its dial time. By 2 thousands of a second!!! Talk about your narrow margins!

At this point we parked the Tesla, said our goodbyes, and went over to the on-track gas station so the Tango could fill up:

Now, the generators hold a gallon of gas each, but they're not empty. We fill up our hybridized Tango at a grand total price (I think you can see it in the picture) of $3.70, not bad for the fuel costs of a drag-race vehicle, and head home.

And we're feeling great, because we haven't just blown away the existing NEDRA records for production electric vehicles (the previous record-holder, the GM EV-1, had a 1/4-mile time of 16.5 seconds!), we have done it in vehicles that we *drove* to the track, *without* having them be towed in!!

And we're looking forward to going back next year. By then, Tesla will have upgraded my Tesla to the new drivetrain, which should pull the 1/4 mile time down to the 12s somewhere. Next time, I'm hoping my wife will drive; she weighs far less than either Chandler or me. Next time, the Tango will, at the least, be fully charged, and at best, be upgraded to Li-Ion batteries.

I can't wait.

Aerosmith on world politics

2008-07-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

I was astounded to find no transcript of Aerosmith's appearance on the Wayne's World set of Saturday Night Live. Therefore:

from SNL on hulu.com

Wayne: With the recent developments in eastern Europe, do you think that communism is on the decline, or is this just a temporary setback?

Steven Tyler: Wow man, that's a hard question. But I would have to respond with a qualified yes.
Although it seems that socialism is in repose, until you remove the Stalinist-era party Aparatchiks, there will be no real change in the Soviet Union.

Tom Hamilton:
I disagree, man. There has never been a blueprint for the dictatorship of the proletariat, so there's bound to be mistakes.

However, if you study history, you'll see that since the rise of the nation-state, socialism has been an historical inevitability. Dude.

A funny conversation with Arielle

2006-11-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

First funny conversation, when Arielle was just turning 2:

(Context: on the way to daycare)

Me: Arielle, do you see a tree?
Arielle: Yes, I *do* see a tree!

Arielle: Do you see a car?
Me: Yes, I *do* see a car!

Me: Do you see a mailbox?
Arielle: Yes, I *do* see a mailbox!

(By now, I think you can get the idea of this game: develop vocabulary and observation skills)
(Or so I thought)

Arielle: Do you see a fire truck?
(pause, as I slow down and look everywhere for the fire truck. My God, I thought, her observation is really keen if she spotted a truck somewhere! Maybe it was a toy truck? Where could it be?)
Me: No, I don't see it.
Arielle: Me neither

Rick Woodbury calls...

2006-09-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Rick Woodbury (www.commutercars.com) called today to ask a favor: he wants to show off two of his Tango's at Google's Zeitgeist event on October 3rd/4th. But he only has one car carrier. So, he can drive the red Tango down from Washington State, but needs somewhere to put it while he drives down to L.A. and borrows Clooney's Tango, and drives it back up to Mountain View. In return I could drive it back and forth to work for a few days.

I don't think, in my life, I've ever been so happy to do someone a "favor". Strangely enough, this will be the first time I've actually driven the Tango, even though I placed an order nearly a year ago. Maybe this means it's time to drive over to Wrightspeed and ask for a test drive? Or at least, a view of the Wrightspeed as it accelerates, given that the Tango can nearly keep up with it? Certainly, it's a chance to mount a camera in the Tango and get a video of my drive to work, showing the advantages of lane-splitting?

Tesla ships swag

2006-08-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Interesting.

FedEx dropped off a package today from Tesla; I opened it and it's a sweet rectangular chunk of glass, shipped in a very nice black case. Inside the glass is what I can only describe as a frosted white Tesla; it's an effect I'd previously seen only at Disneyland, where you can take a 3-D picture of your child's face, put it in the glass, and have a visual reminder of your children growing up, and the changes they went through along the way.

I'll try to upload a picture soon...

Two children on their last day on earth...

2006-07-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

A picture that cries out for a caption...

2005-02-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

In the wake of recent reports that the white house hired a male prostitute because he was good at lobbing softball questions to the president, I dug out an old photo of Bush; I believe this was taken while Bush was in England.

The Google Blogging Policy

2005-02-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

An internal memo cleared up Google's policy today, and concluded with some good and bad examples of what to write in a blog:

OK: My team played volleyball at lunch today, we beat some people from another group.
BAD: My team is way ahead of the weather-machine and germ-warfare divisions.

OK: Pets are welcome on the Google Campus.
BAD: People at Google like to sit in their chairs and pet their cats while plotting.

OK: Google has several offices in Europe.
BAD: We look forward to renaming Europe 'Euro-Google-Land'

OK: We are constantly looking for the best engineers to work on exciting projects.
BAD: We're building a robot army at our secret desert office and need more engineers.

OK: There are some great recreation facilities on campus.
BAD: Employees who underperform are sent to the dungeon.
WORSE: Underperforming employees are sometimes sent back to Microsoft.

OK: Google is always looking to make its services available outside of North America.
BAD: Within 4 turns, we will control all of Asia.

OK: Over 3,000 highly qualified employees work at Google.
BAD: Google hires only the best evil geniuses.

OK: The company motto is 'Don't be Evil'
BAD: The secret company motto is 'One Webservice to Rule Them All'

OK: Googlers are exercising their mechanical-engineering skills.
BAD: Googlers are creating an evil robot.
WORSE: An evil robot is creating Googlers.

OK: We don't comment on how many computers Google operates.
BAD: Google only has a single super-computer, we call it SkyNet; it calls the shots here.

The thing about getting fired...

2005-02-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, there've been a few people who have been concerned. Because they they hear that some guy went from Microsoft to Google, and then got fired. And I also went from Microsoft to Google. Was I writing under the pen name of "Mark Jen"?

Uh, no.

But similarities don't stop at "bloggers who work at Google who used to work at Microsoft."

You see, I too was fired. In January. From a well-known up-and-coming tech company who had recently gone public. For what I said on a public forum.

It's just that it was 1990, not 2005.

Here's the scoop. Late in 1989, Symantec was working on a new version of their product, Think Pascal. They had gotten far enough along that they had sent letters to all their registered users, and in turn many of those users had sent checks.

But the trouble was, the product was delayed. Now, a common problem then was "vaporware". On one extreme, young software companies would advertise a product to see if there was demand for it, and then if demand materialized, they would go and hire people to go and write it. On the other extreme, companies like Symantec would be nearly finished with a product, and then start selling it in advance of when it was done so that when it was done, they could start shipping it right away. Of course, if a product was badly delayed, you couldn't tell the difference between the two extremes.

Vaporware is not illegal, unless you start accepting money for a product you don't have, and giving false promises about the delivery date. So it was on this basis that I asked our division manager, "are we cashing the checks from users who have ordered the Think Pascal upgrade"? And she said, "No." Then she added, "but it shouldn't be your concern anyway." Which angered me... but it was the "No" that was the important thing to me.

A few weeks later, impatient users started asking, on our Symantec bulletin board (which was hosted on CompuServe), when will Think Pascal actually ship? And one user said, "hey, you cashed my check!" At nearly the same time, on a different forum, Henry Norr (the editor of MacWEEK magazine) had a similar problem: people who had actually paid for a MacWEEK subscription would not actually be added to the subscription rolls for weeks, even months! He had a suggestion for them: call up the distribution department and tell them "you cashed my check and I haven't received anything even after 30 days. But you collected my money through the U.S. mail. Therefore you are committing mail fraud, and if my subscription doesn't start immediately I will notify USPS pronto!"

Well, perhaps you've guessed the next step: I stole the idea. I told this user, whose check we had supposedly cashed, that if the check had truly been cashed, and 30 days had passed, then Symantec committed mail fraud and he should call to complain about that. Worse, the whole conversation took place on the official Symantec bulletin board, which at that time was located on CompuServe.

But it turns out Symantec had recently acquired a company called Living Videotext, makers of an outliner named ThinkTank. And its founder, Dave Winer, was now on the Symantec board of directors. And it turns out Dave liked to read CompuServe, too. He saw my message - the one where I had made reference to my employer committing mail fraud - and passed it to Gordon Eubanks, who was the president of Symantec. Gordon passed it down the chain of command, and a few days later I was on probation. But it was clear that the only reason I hadn't been fired outright was bureaucracy. The firing came a few months later.

Now, obviously, I have to be careful about talking about any specifics of Mark's case. But here's my point: If you crash your car, you are probably going to be a lot better driver the next day. Your insurance rates won't reflect it, but you will be. If you lose your girlfriend, you're probably not going to make exactly the same mistakes with the next one. The day after I got fired, there was no one in the world who was more careful about public posts on message boards than I was. Getting fired is absolutely the most powerful, poignant way to learn any lesson.

I guess what gets to me is all these people talking about "Nobody's going to hire Mark Jen again, ever. He's screwed!" Having been in his shoes, I know better. If you've ever been fired, and you're looking at hiring someone who just got fired, there's only one thing on your mind: did they learn the lesson? The only people you want to stay away from is those in denial. (Well, and those people who aren't qualified in the first place. But given that Mark landed interviews and jobs at both Microsoft and Google, I doubt that's an issue.)

Disclaimer: I have never worked with or even met Mark Jen. The above is only my personal speculation based on distant observations of Mark's blog and the striking similarities between my own experience of 15 years ago, and Mark's experience last month. Nothing I say should be taken as a recommendation or lack thereof. As always, the opinions above are only that (opinions) and do not necessarily represent those of my employer, family, or country.

A very short bio

2005-02-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

Who the hell am I?

Born 1968. Germany. (Of course back then it was "West Germany".)
Moved 1971. To Iowa.
Started taking college classes in Colorado 1981.
Graduated, CSU, BSEE, 1986.
Now Software 1990-1993. Wrote Now Startup Manager, Now Menus, was tech lead for Now Utilities from 1.0.3 through 4.0.1.
Connectix Corp 1993-1998. Wrote RAM Doubler. Tech lead for Speed Doubler. Hired Eric Traut.
webtv (aka Microsoft) 1998-2004. Worked on WebTV cost-reduction unit, UltimateTV, and Microsoft Entourage (of Microsoft Office for Mac)
Married Julie Lee, 2002.
First Daughter born, 2003, "Arielle".
Google 2004-current. Working on gmail.
Second Daughter born, 2005, "Annika".

Best known web page that I authored: Jorg Brown on Mac OS X

I'll be updating this entry but just wanted to get it out of the way.

Burn this, baby

2005-01-01T01:28:00.000-08:00

Name the artist:

> he literally walked off the bandstand and moved to Mexico. The New York
> Times expressed admiration for "the Shakespearean sweep of his exodus"
> and the "beautiful incautious burning of all his bridges behind him."

Interestingly, a Google search for beautiful incautious burning returns the history of burning man as its #7 find, while a search of beautiful-incautious-burning returns nothing at all. As of this writing, a Google News search does find the answer.