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June 30, 2003

Meagan's new pet - for all the single guys out there

If there's anything I would have liked to do more than help Meagan move on Saturday, I can't think of it now. Here she is with her new bearded dragon, Oz

I can't say reptiles do much for me but she seems to like it.

Oz and Meagan Meagan and Oz

Posted by sam at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2003

It is way too

It is way too hot to be working. Currently 82 degrees and climbing in Palo Alto.

Posted by sam at 01:12 PM

June 25, 2003

In-progress list of things I need to get rid of before moving

Everything except the car and the monitors is free for the taking. Contact me to make arrangements. Photos of the rest of these items will be up soon.

Posted by sam at 03:57 PM

Now this is innovation

I want one of these. Be sure to watch the TV add.

Posted by sam at 12:58 PM

Back to school

After UCSD I never, ever expected to go to graduate school. Especially in business.

Here I am, 3 1/2 years later, about to start at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. The call came in Monday and I expect to send in the offer letter some time next week.

Lots of questions right now:

Posted by sam at 12:27 PM

June 23, 2003

Keith Olbermann?

Cornell University is a private school located in Ithaca, New York. It was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White and now has seven undergraduate and six graduate and professional units. It is one of eight schools in the Ivy League.

Famous graduates include Joyce Brothers, Adolph Coors, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Maher, Toni Morrison, Keith Olbermann, Janet Reno and E. B. White.

And just for Meagan, Cornell awarded the nation's first university degree in veterinary medicine.

Posted by sam at 09:09 PM

Yet Another Consultant Joke

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd...
"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully-grazing flock and calmly answered, "Sure." The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM Thinkpad and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas.
He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 130 page report on his miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says....... "You have exactly 1586 sheep."
"That is correct; take one of the sheep." said the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car.
Then the shepherd says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?"
"OK, why not." answered the young man.
"Clearly, you are a consultant." said the shepherd. "That's correct." says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answers the shepherd. "You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't know crap about my business.... Now give me back my dog."

Posted by sam at 04:52 PM

BART opens at SFO. When

BART opens at SFO. When will it reach the Peninsula?

Posted by sam at 12:14 AM

June 21, 2003

I want to believe, believe me

President's tumble off a Segway seems a tiny bit suspicious Did Bush fall to discredit this automobile competitor?

I doubt it. What's so great about the Segway? The top speed is 12 mph, there's no storage space, and they cost $5k. I don't think the oil industry has anything to worry about.

Posted by sam at 03:28 PM

This is my only food-related complaint about the city

I'm not going to claim that you can't find a good burrito in New York, even Brooklyn. Maybe not a Taqueria Vallarta quality burrito, but a decent, Baja Fresh quality burrito is definitely available here.

What they have not yet learned is how to package it. A burrito should be wrapped in foil, both for onsite and offsite consumption. Without this packaging you're stuck either eating with a knife and fork or scarfing with two hands.

The knife and fork approach is, I'm sorry, just wrong for a burrito. The scarfing approach is messy and leaves a ton of waste for fork clean-up.

This innovation has spread throughout California but unfortunately seems not to have made it this far east.

Posted by sam at 02:04 PM

Harry Potter 'is fastest-selling book

Harry Potter 'is fastest-selling book ever'

Savant for a Day [from /.]: "people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people."

Posted by sam at 11:52 AM

June 19, 2003

Miami DJs Claim Phone Prank

Miami DJs Claim Phone Prank on Castro Where can I download the mp3?

Posted by sam at 02:46 PM

June 18, 2003

Vacation rules

Right now I'm on 8th Ave. and 9th St. in Park Slope, Brooklyn using a free wireless network named 'Wireless'. It's right around the corner from Breean's apartment. Thanks to whoever runs the network.

I flew out last night for an interview at NYU tomorrow. Breean was a sweetheart and bought tickets to the Yankees tonight. They're playing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays but it should be fun anyway.

Posted by sam at 02:51 PM

June 17, 2003

I don't know about the Violet model

The George Foreman Grill is only $9.99 at Amazon.com right now. Breean has one and I love it. Highly recommended. [from More Stuff 4 Less]

Posted by sam at 07:47 PM

United Airlines to offer two-way

United Airlines to offer two-way email on all domestic flights. Cost is "$15.98 per flight, plus 10 cents per kilobyte for every data packet that's more than 2 kilobytes." Huh?

"Passengers will need to use POP3, Microsoft Outlook, or Lotus Notes e-mail clients on their laptops." What about the web? Sounds like this will be about as sucessful as the $3/minute phones nobody ever uses.

Posted by sam at 03:02 PM

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday to me! It's hard to admit, but yeah, I turned 26 yesterday. Thanks everybody for the cards and gifts. They're very much appreciated.

Yesterday was actually day three of a three-day celebration. On day one Breean and I were in Eureka and her mom made a delicious fruit pie. Day two we had a very nice dinner with my mom & dad at Zibibbo. Yesterday wasn't as exciting... Raging Waters was in the afternoon plan but after seeing the traffic on 101 S, fuggedaboutit. So there was lots of napping and eating yestday but not much else.

And thanks Cookie for lunch at XYZ on Wednesday. That was definitely my JavaOne highlight.

Posted by sam at 02:17 PM

Joel on Software: 'the sure

Joel on Software: 'the sure sign that things are about to change is when the conventional wisdom becomes, "things will never change.'" referring to Fortune.com on the white-color job market.

Posted by sam at 01:46 PM

June 16, 2003

Perhaps b-school is not the place to be right now

Spam recently received:

Dear Sam,

I would like to introduce you to a truly exceptional candidate for a CFO or Senior Financial Management position. He has a proven track record in raising capital, mergers and acquisitions, IPO's, corporate turnaround, operational and financial management for both established and startup companies. His experience in all aspects of financial management include treasury, accounting, reporting, planning/budgeting and corporate development in the rapidly changing technology arena.

He holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania PA and an MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Columbia University.

Posted by sam at 01:49 PM

June 09, 2003

More fun with squirrels

Would you think squirrels drink Coke™? [from Dave Barry]

Posted by sam at 07:14 PM

June 08, 2003

You know you're back in

You know you're back in Silicon Valley when the airport shuttle driver tells you about his independent web design business. And goes into excruciating detail about the html he's learning.

Posted by sam at 07:35 PM

June 07, 2003

I have some serious complaints

I have some serious complaints about international roaming with Cingular Wireless. I'm in Frankfurt right now and my phone obviously has a signal. It says E-Plus is the carrier. But call my number and you'll get an error that "your call cannot be completed as dialed." This is unacceptable. It's obviously so much worse than just putting the call into my voice mail. But anyway voice mail never works when I'm outside the country. If I miss or reject the call... nothing.

When I first arrived in Germany this time I could make outgoing calls within Europe but not to the U.S. When I called customer disservice said there was a lock on my account for this particular feature but could not give a reason. I've done just this many times in the past without problems and nothing has changed with my account. Do they have little elves mischievously hacking customer accounts for fun?

I wonder if T-Mobile would be any better.

Posted by sam at 12:46 PM

I have to say,

Sofia International Airport I have to say, Sofia International is the only airport I've been to in which they play techno at checkin. I'm not comlaining, of course, just commenting.

Posted by sam at 10:53 AM

Read the first two three comments

Whatever happened to... Dennis Rodman

Offshore Outsourcing Threatens Offshore Outsourcing: "Concerned that outsourcing might be outsourced from India in the near future, a Bangalore call center owner said 'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country where people will work for free?'"

Posted by sam at 10:45 AM

June 06, 2003

Here's Sofia from the

Sofia, Bulgaria from the SAP office Here's Sofia from the fifth floor of the SAP office near downtown. In the distance you can the apartments and hotels downtown. More photos to come when I have some time. I fly back to Frankfurt tomorrow and then home to San Francisco on Sunday. JavaOne in SF next week.

Posted by sam at 03:33 AM

Kerala: A Case Study [thanks

Kerala: A Case Study [thanks dad]:

It (Kerala) undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a countercase, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.

Posted by sam at 02:19 AM

My parents are the experts on this one

They tell me this is the only place in the world in which yogurt is all natural. They say that the bacteria Lactobacillus bulgaricus grows in the wild only in Bulgaria. To make yogurt anywhere else in the world requires an 'artificial' source of this bacteria. I don't know how true this is but I can say that the yogurt here is very good.

Posted by sam at 01:30 AM

June 05, 2003

All this baseball stuff - I must miss the U.S.

Because We Could [from Doc Searls]:

he failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.
Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

Probing the Power of Corked Bats. Never mind the physics, Sammy Sosa was caught with a corked bat! He said he accidentally picked up a bat meant for batting practice. Right. Why would a batting practice bat be corked?

Buying by cellphone at ballparks Order a hot dog and soda without leaving your seat.

Posted by sam at 05:53 AM

I've been in Sofia, Bulgaria

I've been in Sofia, Bulgaria since Tuesday evening, working at the SAP office during the day and doing all I can to avoid second-hand smoke at night. I'm staying at the Hotel Downtown which is right next to both a casino and a 'vodka doctor'. I have suspicions that they're owned by the same person but I have no way to verify that.

Yesterday I talked to a friend working here who just graduated from the Sofia university. He was working at SAP full time for the last six months of school, even travelling to headquarters in Walldorf for weeks at a time. He actually paid somebody to attend class discussions in his place. And unlike many of his colleagues here he graduated on time.

With ingenuity like that I have no doubt that Bulgaria will soon be an economic power in Eastern Europe. I'm so impressed with the people I've met here that I think it's a perfect time to start a Bulgarian venture capital fund. You'd have to take a longer timeline, maybe ten years or more, but you could make a ton of money investing in infrastructure. The only problem seems to be the corrupt government.

Posted by sam at 02:03 AM

June 04, 2003

Who's going to Mississippi with me?

'Lost Ark,' Resurrected: 'Three kids on a seven-year shoot produce one heck of an homage'. [from /.]

Posted by sam at 07:07 AM

FCC Rolls Over. Something is

FCC Rolls Over. Something is very wrong with the FCC. Even Ted Turner and the former FCC chair are in agreement. Are people writing the FCC to say "yes, we need more media consolidation and less independent media"? I don't think so. The media giants bought this vote with campaign money.

Posted by sam at 04:14 AM

Free advice and etc.

First the free advice: don't ever drive from Berlin to Munich the day after a big soccer game. I drove from Heidelberg to Berlin and back last weekend with a colleague and it took eleven hours to return. It's only 600 km. With hungover soccer hoodlums driving 200+ km/hr there will be accidents. But the German freeways never have service lanes so it takes forever to clear an accident up.

When will the rest of the world catch up with California (and NYC - thanks Bloomberg!) and ban smoking indoors? What would it take for human rights organizations to adopt this issue? Do we really have to wait for all the smokers to die off quit?

Now I too know someone from the Bay Area software industry with a Russian bride. I even met her. And I still don't get it.

Posted by sam at 04:03 AM