While running on the treadmill this morning, I was flipping through the channels as I couldn’t manage to run while watching Billy Madison. Morning TV is such crap, but I’m in Cincinatti and the roads are covered with ice so I’m treadmill bound.
I never stay on CNN or CNBC because watching news while running is possibly the most tedious thing I could imagine, but the CNN headline caught my eye. I can’t remember it exactly now, but the essence was “Ethanol Demand Up, Corn Supply Depleted.” I stopped and listened to the story which was a long and winding discussion where the main points were:
Um – yeah – high school macroeconomics. I love the broad “the market will take care of this” discussion. Er, um, government subsidiaries anyone?
I love books. I love cool things. I love when cool things and books collide. Some folks at Google have started a fantastically neat project. They are “mapping books” – think of the intersection of Google Maps, a book, the locations in the book, and some of the content at the various locations in the book. Here is an awesome example – The 9/11 Commission Report.
Whenever an article has the quote “it was a clusterfuck” in it, you know it’s worth reading. While Wired’s article titled “How Yahoo Blew It” by Fred Vogelstein is very critical, he’s got a few new nuggets in the article that I hadn’t heard before. Yahoo has a response which ends with “We know that Yahoo! had its challenges this year and we know that we’re going to continue to take bruises publicly until Panama begins to bear fruit, but we’re here for the long haul, and we’re focused to win.” In addition to the “build” of Panama, there continue to be big, interesting strategic moves (and challenges) for Yahoo – a few of which are highlighted by Vogelstein. Once again, Yahoo has the chance to try to change the game – as does Microsoft – and I’d think they would each take a shot this time at being bold (rather than just follow “slow and steady execution”) if they really want to assault Google this time around.
I’ve been enjoying my experience with Vista on my Lenovo X60 over the holidays. It’s stable, fast, and mostly behaves as expected. I’ve only had two required reboots in 10 days, which I view as a major victory.
But – Vista has more than it’s share of stupid little oversights. For example, the Calculator app. Microsoft has included a Calculator in every version of Windows that I can remember. I extremely good at doing simple math in my head so I don’t keep a calculator on my desk, but I occasionally need a mildly advanced calculator to figure things out. While I could run Excel, that seems stupid (ok – it is stupid) for the type of math problems I need a calculator for.
I figured the Vista Calculator would be a nifty little upgrade. Wrong. It’s still the extremely lame Calculator that shipped with the last few versions of Windows – going back I think to Windows 3.1. Yeah – it has a scientific calculator – but I still find myself going to Google to do simple math transformations (what’s up with that?)
I poked around a little and found that there is actually a Microsoft Calculator Plus (yes – that’s its actual name) available for a free download. After fighting through the Windows Genuine Advantage thing (first time on this machine – in Firefox – erg) I downloaded Microsoft Calculator Plus. Copyright 2004! Exactly the same, except for the additional Conversion menu which is extensive and nice. It created a new directory for it, didn’t replace my old Calculator, and created a new menu item. Yuck.
Why oh why would Microsoft ship Calculator with Vista instead of Calculator Plus? And – why not put one person on it to spruce it up a little. One of my mottos for 2007 is “guys – it’s the little things.”
In the “if you can’t beat them, join them” category, following is a hilariously ironic story by Mark A. Stein from the 11/19/06 New York Times Openers section.
“Tyson Foods, the world’s largest chicken producer and meat processing company, blamed high corn prices last week for its third consecutive quarterly loss. It said that the recent excitement over corn-based ethanol fuel sent the price of that grain soaring, raising feed costs and compounding the effect of a meat glut that depressed prices. “This is either corn for feed for corn for fuel,” Rich L. Bond, president and chief executive, lamented in a statement.
Well, if fuels are where the money is, Tyson will be there too. As Mr. Bond was releasing the disappointing results, Jeff Webster of the corporate strategy department was announcing a brand new venture: Tyson Renewable Energy. Its first task? Turning some of what the company described as its “vast supply of animal fat” – 2.3 billion pounds a year, Mr. Webster reckons – into a diesel-like biofuel.”
I wonder how – as a vegetarian – I’d reconcile pouring “chicken diesel” into my car? We know we are really in trouble when a single corn on the cob costs as much as a pound of nova scotia lox.
I spent the weekend in Louisville, Kentucky thinking about analogies (and how new things are like old things.) Amy and I took four friends to the Breeders Cup (also known as the Super Bowl of Horse Racing.) I’m not a horse person (I’m actually afraid of them), but I like to humor my wife whenever I can. We had a great time and – as I looked around the very expansive race track (that I’d been at once before for the Kentucky Derby) – I realized that horse racing is “NASCAR for Snooty People.” I was down $40 for the day (I quit betting after I lost my second race in a row – I still can’t figure out how to bet a trifecta.)
As we read the newspaper on Sunday, we ran into plenty of “heads up your ass” type of stuff. My friend Warren (who is from Boston) pointed me to the delightful Christy Mihos for Governor ads – including “Heads Up” – his commercial about The Big Dig.
We were part of the $26.4m spent on the opening weekend of Borat. Watching it in a full theater in Louisville, KY was kind of bizarre. All three of us that saw it were incredibly subdued as we walked out of the theater and waited for a cab back to the hotel. Pascal states things clearly – it’s fundamentally a depressing movie about the state of intolerance and bigotry in America.
Finally – MySpace does a joint venture in Japan (MySpace Japan) with Softbank and Charles River Ventures announced a seed program last week to tons of buzz in the blogosphere. What’s old is new again.
I’m sitting in first class on an evening flight from Denver to New York. I’m in row 6 and just got up to go to the bathroom. As I stood up I had a nice view of the 20 people in front of me. Eight of them (nine including me) are on their computers. They are a mix of Dell and IBM laptops. Every single person is working in a Microsoft Office app – about half are in Outlook, a few in Word, and one in Powerpoint. No Macs. No “online thingys” (we’re on an airplane – that online thingy doesn’t really work so good without connectivity.) Fascinating. And – yes – it’s United and the bathroom – even in first class – is filthy.
Education in Colorado is a well known “issue” for anyone that lives here. While our current (and soon to be previous) political leadership (e.g. the governor’s office) hasn’t done much, a number of incredibly hard working and dedicated people – such as my good friend Jared Polis – have thrown themselves deeply into the challenge of trying to improve the education system in Colorado.
Lisa Reeves of SAP – who happens to live in Boulder – send me two great things last week. The first is a remarkable blog called The Fischbowl which is spearheaded by Karl Fisch – the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School. It’s an awesome example of how blogging can be used to in a high school. In addition to Karl’s blog, Lisa send me a superb presentation that everyone should click through and ponder. My favorite slide segment is “Name this Country:
The answer is – England – in 1900. Sound familiar all you American’s out there? The presentation ends delightfully with “shift happens” which – of course – is where we started.
Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002 and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written an essay called After Pat’s Birthday that everyone should read regardless of their political ideology – and reflect on what Kevin has to say. Thanks Dick for pointing it out.