Kick Me

I knew what was coming, and I had known it for nine months, but when the doctor came out holding a tiny creature that I had been responsible for bringing into existence, it still felt like a donkey kicked me in the head. Then there was the name and the realization that my son's identity would be forever determined by that moment we decided yes, "Kevin" would be it.

I opened a business checking account today. Signing a check with the name that has been rolling around in my head for twelve years brought a sudden feeling of giddiness. Similar emotions, though certainly not on the same level of intensity. Closer to a hamster's kick.

Tale of Two Teeth

I've been careful not to chew on the right side because of my (replace with medical name for tooth). I don't have one. It neglected to show up, so for 30 years it corresponding baby tooth has sat there waiting. Waiting in vain. About a year ago the baby tooth got tired of waiting and began preparations for leaving. Wiggle wiggle enough is enough.

It looked like chocolate. Bit down and broke the (replace with medical name for the lower left molar). I guess I am too tired, so let's try again tomorrow.

Minimal Sustainability

Portable apps are programs that do not require installation and do not use the registry or store files any place on the PC except in the directory from which the application was run. This allows you to put the program on a USB drive that can then be plugged into a publicly available computer (library, coffee shop, work) so as to access the software and personal as you would your own PC. When finished, you simply unplug the device and take your software and personal information to the next machine.

I was thinking of portable apps as I worked with my son on a school site using Joomla. We were definitely not using best practices when designing the code etc...

Low Margin Milk

There is simply too much emphasis on preserving high gross margin accounts to the detriment of identifying low margin sites with high potential. High GMS customers are locked into our services, their switching costs are much higher than that for a younger company with lower revenues. For some sites it would not take much effort to nurse into higher levels of revenue. Plus smaller sites are often more engaged with social media. More resources on nursing the lower end would yield greater returns, decrease churn, improve brand reputation.

Awakening the Nation of Hiberia

Does a blog that has sat on the couch for six months lack the resilience necessary to follow American Idol. I believe it does and expect that this year these burps will wallow in the depths of search engine indifference.

Forget Me Not

Our barista forgot my order again. I hate to be forgotten and wanted to be mad. But then I had to remember that the coffee was free. So I poured my own drip coffee and stormed out of the lunch room. I didn't want all that sweet foamy gunk anyway.

iPhone Yahoos

People connecting their iPhones with Yahoo! Business email accounts found they could no longer send email as of Thursday. Yahoo seems to be trying out new imap servers exclusively for iPhone and while free accounts continued to work okay, business accounts required manually changing settings to pop and smtp port 25, password authentication. Unless you just want to listen, then sit still with imap.

HR of Darkness

If blogs are the new resumes, why are headhunters not filling my answering machine with urgent inquiries?

Darker Than The Coal Mines

I have less than 15 hours before the darkness resumes. If only the anticipation of those black hours did not extend the pain. Hope is what allows most of us to survive our jobs, but I can't see the future anymore. And that's what makes this work so black.

Biggs Breakfast

Driving the Columbia Gorge, there is approximately an hour that I am out of contact of any civilized radio stations. Today this gave me a chance to regain an appreciation of the Japanese band Number Girl. McDonald's coffee is suppose to be better but it was just as burned as always. Burned coffee to wash down discordant Japanese screams.

Dialectical Egoism

I've been waiting for articles like The Rise of American Incompetence to start arriving. But Daniel Gross infers that international contempt towards American management is a recent phenomenon. Nonsense. The level of respect from both inside and outside the U.S. was much lower in the 80s and early 90s. American business climbed out of that morass thanks to Harvard professors who mapped new lexicons on top of Japanese management practices then peddled the ideas as their own.

Our economy is in for some pretty tough times but it is not a collapse of the tech bubble, stock market bubble, housing, subprime, or asset bubbles from which we need to recover. It is a bubble of hubris of which Daniel Gross's Slate article is just an early indicator of an impending and long overdue implosion.

IT Interview

I've heard this story many times, the dispirited American tech trainer tries in vain to engage a roomful of stoic Japanese engineers then watches in bewilderment when, as soon as class disengages, those same engineers become animated with the kind of bluster you find in any IT room in the world. An important purpose of this banter is to signal and scrutinize each other's level of expertise like dial-up modems attempting to arrive at a mutually compatible speed with which to communicate. A component of discovery, i.e. evaluating each other's expertise level, exists to some extent within the communication of every domain, but it comprises a larger share and thus is more overt in the information technology field. Unfortunately, there seems to be no universal protocol recognized worldwide for this important component of technical conversations, no IEEE standard for geek BS. Japanese engineers use a synchronous discourse comprised of carefully crafted questions designed to trap the poser in a corner. Americans, on the other hand, converse asynchronously, unremittingly broadcasting their bravado. Stereotypes such as the belligerent arrogance of the French, the servile arrogance of Indians, the incessant banalities of Americans, are all manifestations of our incompatible local protocols, and the primary reason for mutual incredulity between engineers from disparate cultures.

Ramiele, Where Art Thou?

Check it out dawg. When Ryan announced Ramiele Malubay would be singing "In My Life" my heart skipped a beat. This is one of my favorite Beatles' songs, one whose lyrics and simple melody is so beautiful that Simon singing it could move me. As soon as Ramiele opened her mouth my imagination speed ahead in anticipation of how she was going to approach the rest of the tune: straightforward skating to get the audience grooving to their memories before wowing the crowd with a series of spectacular triple and quad jumps. But it sounded as though she chickened out at the last minute and finished with a few single salchows. The judges berated her for "playing it safe", which I don't think was disappointment with the performance but with delivering below her potential. Surely Brooke White's rendition of "Let It Be" (upon which the judges heaped excessive praise) was not much better or original, it's just that no one can imagine Brooke doing better. Fortunately, Ramiele made it through to the next round (thank you Manila and Dick's Cabaret) and has the chance to redeem herself next week.

3 a.m. Response

Larry David has a suggestion for the Obama campaign on how to respond to what seems to be becoming the defining ad of this Presidential race - Hillary's 3 a.m. call. Though Clinton's commercial may have been effective in last week's primaries, given the large number of spoofs I doubt if it will be a positive in the long run. And as Larry David's column suggests, it could come back to bite her if she makes it to the general election.

Mice In Me Car

I started noticing a pizza like odor car inside my Honda Civic. As the smell got stronger and less pleasing, I blamed the kids for leaving garbage somewhere in the back. Then the odor turned to something reminiscent of vomit and diarrhea. The next day the heater/air conditioner stopped working. When I took the car to the dealer, the mechanic said there were signs of mice who seemed to have been gnawing on a heater/air conditioner related capacitor. Obviously it was high school mice who thought they had found a place to hide out and have wild pizza parties. The whole thing cost me $289, which if I find the mice responsible, I will be making their parents pay.

Patawad Po Talaga

Brooke White is your next American Idol. Of course she's gorgeous, but until the last two weeks she seemed like just another fluffy pop singer. If she is really involved with the selection and arrangements of her songs then she deserves to win. But could it all be a manufactured conspiracy crafting the anointed one's image, making the ordinary sound original to stand out from the rest of the field? Ramiele was certainly not up to snuff last week, it jerked her out of the sure thing cafe like Obama losing Texas and Ohio. This week was so much better, yet she keeps appearing in less than flattering outfits. The AI wardrobe department must be in on the conspiracy.

Trading Fairly Inefficiently

I certainly recognize the tremendous good that has been delivered by the FairTrade brand. Thousands of small scale farmers would not be growing coffee or tea today if not for the price support they received through the FairTrade system. Moreover, cooperatives established under the FairTrade banner have provided security for small farmers who otherwise would be left at the mercy of local exporters. Nevertheless, a dire need exists to improve efficiency of the certification process, decrease administrative costs, and increase transparency. Unfortunately, the tendency for ideology to trump practical strategy has inhibited the FairTrade movement from attaining more of its objectives.

Counting Me Out

The statcounter.com webtracking gizmo seems pretty good in comparison to other free hit counters out there. My sister tried some of the others but none of them had the reliability or credible features that is in the statcounter offering. Looking through their FAQs, I found how to exclude specific PCs from the count, which I did the other day. So now I know that "you" and "we" no longer refers exclusively to "me". You couldn't call my growing readership a following (nor should you call it growing and readership kind of infers that people intentionally come here) but I am getting a couple of strangers per day looking at these words. Probably not these words, most of the views are for an entry that mentions the Filipina American Idol singer Ramiele Malubay. And most of the viewers are coming from - surprise, surprise - the Philippines. It seems a link to this blog turned up on a fansite devoted to the singing wunderkind Charice Pempengco. I didn't know who Charice was either, but after a couple seconds of googling I discovered a page of youtube videos showing performances by an itty bitty teeny tiny 6 year old infant belting out Whitney Houston songs. If you are aroused by any of these videos you should be ashamed of yourself.

Charice Pempengco


Hindi ko alam kung papaano ko po kayo mapapasalamatan sa inyong kabutihan.

Oscar Balls

I am not allowed to watch movies that do not appeal to my sons. Which means I have not seen any of the films up for this year's Oscars. So the only reason to watch the award show would be to see Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren, who I believe are the same person. I missed the presentation for best supporting actress, which was okay because Cate lost out to David Bowie. I did get to witness Helen Mirren flow down the stage, however, and proceed to bust the entire male audience with her confidence.

2008 American Idol Is...

The promotions for this season's American Idol have Simon proclaiming "the talent is the strongest it has ever been". After watching youtube videos of the top 24 performances, it is obvious the purpose of such statements is to recover from last year's Sanjaya scare rather than any attempt to portray reality. On the men's side, I see no Chris Daughtry-like standouts; they sound exactly alike with only slightly varying levels of proficiency. The same is mostly true for the women, with the exception of Ramiele Malubay. She reminds me of Melinda Doolittle in that she knows how to craft a song and has the confidence to restrain her big voice until the tune calls for it. She is not on the same level as Melinda (Ms. Doolittle had several years experience as a backup singer compared to Ramiele's experience in Philippine karaoke boxes) but Ramiele has the advantage of being so darn cute. She will win not only because she is the most talented, but also because each Filipino in the world will be voting for her several thousand times a week.

Your Next American Idol