MPG


It's a bit hard to read, but my trip odometer is telling me that it's 37.5 miles from Coscto in Folsom. (i.e., my commute is about 36 miles one-way) and that for the past 37.5 miles I've averaged 51.8 miles per gallon.

We do stuff.

We do stuff.:
"huh? is an enclave of new-age e-movers. We use catchy names for our job titles, like Vision Guidance Leader instead of Consultant. Cool names make us sound smarter and more clever.

Our CEO is rarely in his office, and all female team members are expected to sleep with him, or at least pretend like they want to.
Our designers ride Razor scooters around the office, while wearing mail-bag style backpacks to hold their iPods"

Thanks Zeldman.

What if Gladys Kravitz was in charge of homeland security

From Boing Boing:
An airline passenger's MP3 player and three vials harmless herbal remedies led to an emergency landing at O'Hare International Airport, the evacuation of 74 passengers and crew and a search of the plane Tuesday by the Chicago Police bomb squad.
The United Airlines flight was headed from New York to San Francisco when a passenger told a flight attendant he saw another passenger with suspicious materials, United spokesman Jeff Green said.

For the youngsters in the group, Gladys Kravitz was the busybody neighbor in Bewitched. She's not the best metaphor for this post, because she was in fact seeing things that were a bit odd. But I like the imagry of a nosy neighbor. Let me know if you can propose a better metaphor....

It was 30 years ago this week.

This week is the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, ending American involvement in the war du jour of my generation.

Don't you just love history.
Vietnam Yesterday & Today: Chronology of U.S. Vietnam Relations, Timeline: "1945: An OSS (Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA) team parachutes into Ho Chi Minh's jungle camp in northern Vietnam and saves Ho Chi Minh who is ill with malaria and other tropical diseases. " Hey, glad we could help.

For the record, I registered for the draft at a time when young men were still being assigned a number. According to this site, people weren't actually drafted after 1973. I came of age in 1974.

The way the draft worked in those days was that every day of the year was randomly selected concurrent with a random number between 1-365/366. So, pick a date, pick a number. Then, the selective service would draw upon those in the top X rank, depending on their needs. If they were calling the top 50, i.e. your birthdate was picked with the numbers 1-50, you'd get called up. If your birthdate was 51 or above, you were safe.

My number was 365. One of the few times the lottery has paid off for me. :-)

Update: My memory of the process was wrong. The process is correctly described (I assume) here.

All Mac All The Time

I was reading a blog wherein a fellow was lamenting the death of his Windows laptop and was thinking about a Mac and he asked for feedback. Nobody (out of 29 comments) tried to dissuade him from getting a Mac. The last comment is the best.
comments: "Two and half years ago I switched to a Powerbook G4 15' machine after >20 years as a DOS/Windows guy. I know these testimonials always sound like Jonestown transcripts, but I'll tell you this: I've never been more productive or creative in my life, and I think the hardware and software have played a significant role in that assessment.

Don't hesitate; just do it. Which Powerbook you choose is less important than discovering the liberation of OS X and all it enables.
Tom Guarriello - 4/21/05; 9:56:59 PM #"