Running as Root

The movie Batman and Robin is on the television right now. What a crappy movie. However, what just struck me as ludicrous is that Alfred the butler has password protected the computer that contains all of the secrets of Batman with a password that is the name of his old girlfriend–Peg. A three letter password that happens to be written on the picture right next to the computer. Not only that, but the character "cracking" the password (who is later Batgirl) fails numerous times at guessing the password without being locked out. Not only that, but the computer plain text echoes the attempted passwords back to the screen. My guess is that the implementation of the system was outsourced to India, which explains the quality. Thank you, and good night.

I was watching television last night when a Burger King commercial comes on for their new BK Chicken Fries. The commercial is a music video from a fictional (I assume) band named Coq Roq for a song named "Bob Your Head." If you go to the site, you can see the video and hear the song by clicking the "Music" link on the front page. I'm not sure exactly why, but the whole thing cracked me up. I watched it several times in a row until I finally noticed the URL at the end of the commercial. Another link of interest on that page is the "Gallery" link. I think it's a very nice UI design.

When you look at things like Subservient Chicken and even Pimp My Burger, I think it's clear that Burger King gets the whole viral marketing thing. All of the sites are unique, innovative, and well designed. I do find it somewhat odd that a fast food chain displays a better understanding than so many other established businesses at how marketing and advertising need to change in this day and age.

I won't embarrass both of us by trying to write eloquently on the subject when so many others have done it much better than I ever could. I just wrote this entry because Coq Roq kicks ass!!!

If you like marketing and product stuff, I highly recommend reading the Hughtrain and the related blog Gaping Void.

As I've mentioned previously, I'm really liking the agile methodologies when it comes to building software. We're currently doing two week iterations with a planning meeting on the front, daily short standup status meetings, and a demo on the end. I'm not a big fan of recurring meetings (I want to meet because we need to discuss something, not because it's Wednesday at 3pm), but I can accept the need and the minimal imposition of the our daily status meeting.

The current problem I'm having (because I've always got a problem with something) is the demo meeting. The problem is not just with my current place of employment, it's everywhere I've ever been. During any kind of demo/prototyping meeting, some moron always has to assume that you're an idiot and have taken nothing into account and/or the version you're showing will be the complete polished version of a shipping commercial product.

Developer: Ok. So here are some screenshots of what we're planning…
Sales Person: I have a comment. I think it would be nice to be able to click the buttons rather than just having a screenshot.
Developer: Yes, we've thought of that. This will eventually be a running application.
Manager: I have a question. Are these screenshots going to be localized in the final product?
Developer: Again, the final product will not just be screenshot, but yes–as we've discussed in the actual planning meetings, this is a demo remember, we will be localizing the screens.
Developer from another team: So will this screenshot framework provide an area in your screenshot for me to insert screenshots of my product into?

…And so on. I just want to know, why can't people hold their questions until the end of the demo and, for the love of god, assume other people are intelligent until proven otherwise. "Oh, you've thought about this feature for a minute and a half and have some suggestions? Ok. My team has only been batting this around for six months, but I'm sure you've probably got something we've missed. I won't waste your time suggesting you check all of the product specs and planned features in upcoming iterations. You're much too important for that. Just give me a stream of consciousness of all the stuff you think we should be doing. I'll wait."

Lisa was in Walmart recently and saw that they have some sort of Disney related candy for sale. Being a Disney-phile and an avid photographer of edibles, she decided to snap off a few pics:

Some Walmart manager told her she couldn't take pictures of the products because they're copyrighted. I have no idea if this is true or not (because Lisa's a fucking liar–just kidding). The very notion seems pretty absurd to me though. Certainly, for personal use, I am able to take a photo of pretty much anything, no? I realize once you start talking about commercial stuff, you have to get the advice of a lawyer, who can give you a 60% chance of not getting sued successfully.

Anyhow, I'm in the process of listening to Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture on the ol' iPod and he cites a couple of equally absurd examples where common sense prevailed. If you listened to his podcast, you're already familiar with his example of the Supreme Court rightly preventing planes from having to get the permission of every property owner whose property they flew over. Another example he gives in the book was the brief dispute that occurred when photography first became easy enough for the common man to snap pictures. The issue was whether or not you needed to get the permission of someone in order to take their picture. With the exception of selling your photos for profit and some gray areas about celebrities, I understand you can take a picture of whoever you like (perhaps I'm wrong on this).

Regardless, it seems pretty obvious that all of this copyright shit needs to be turned on its ass soon or I won't be able to crap in a toilet for fear of being sued for creating an unauthorized derivative work.

Here's my mental diarrhea for the month:

At work I've been discussing various options about supporting different customer configurations. Like all good code monkeys, we're trying to get the highest percentage of requirements coverage for the least amount of effort. If we can cover 80% (or some other acceptable percentage) of the configurations used by our existing and potential customers then we can spend additional time and energy elsewhere in the application. The problem is in figuring out what that 80% needs.

After some internal meetings (and a proposal at interviews with the big customers) someone suggested we get more data points by searching Google. In this particular case the information may or may not have been available online (I sure couldn't find it). The thing that struck me as funny is that the internet contains so much information that people often forget that there is still an enormous amount of stuff that simply isn't available online. It's information dark matter. It's there, we know it's there, but you can't get to it. It reminded me of my dad expressing mock surprise that I couldn't tell him what he had for breakfast that morning. "I thought you knew how to find everything on the internet."

The whole thing also reminded me of Attack of the Clones when Obi Wan was confused that the planet Kamino (where they made the clones) wasn't in the archive at the Jedi temple. The notion that the model (star charts) could be wrong or out of synch with reality was incomprehensible. It was so unfathomable that he'd never even evaluated it as a possibility. The model had become so good, so reliable in many other ways, that his belief in it had stunted his thought process.

Another example is the next time you get a random ache or pain (or oozing pustule) search around on the internet for people with a similar condition. You'll find the most gruesome horror stories you can imagine. By all accounts you're dying and the only hope is if they amputate your head. The truth would seem to be that most people don't write web pages (although it's less true now with blogs) about everything being fine. They only write them when there's something to report. So, that's my useless random thought: Beware of internet dark matter, or it'll getcha!!!

I had all four of my (erupted) wisdom teeth pulled out on Friday. The most painful part of the whole procedure was getting an I.V. stuck in my arm. After that, it was just like drifting off to sleep after being up too long. I had a few moments of semi-consciousness while the doctor was yanking on the first tooth, but thankfully, I drifted off pretty quickly after that.

When I awoke, my wife and doctor were discussing my post-pull care. I felt like the dumbest person in the room as nothing they were saying was making too much sense. I heard my wife mention that she had some frozen peas to pack onto my jaw, to reduce the swelling. I thought it was a good time to blurt out, "I hate peas." I think it may have made me look smart.

I wobbled to the car and the wife drove me home. Once I got home, I proceeded to bleed quite a bit. The doctor mentioned that I bled a lot in the office and that it should subside shortly. Well, about twelve hours later it seemed to quit. After that, everything has been mostly easy going. The first day, my jaw would ache quite a bit after moving it around and I'd feel sick to my stomach after taking the pain medication. But, other than that, it's been smooth sailing. I should be back in the office on Monday.

At lunch today two people I think were students at UT walked in completely decked out in burnt orange UT gear. That's when my wheels start spinning. A lot of college students and alumni are some of the most rabid supporters I have ever seen. They buy clothes with their school stuff on it, get tattoos of school mascots / emblems, etc. I think this goes beyond just sports, too. Hell, even people that didn't graduate from the college they attended are still ardent supporters of their school.

I realize that some corporations try calling their offices "campuses" and generally foster a school-like atmosphere. I know this is an attempt to get a student-like army of rabid slave labor. Unfortunately, I think it falls short. The majority of people I have worked with never seem to "drink the Koolaid." Some of them still fall into the category of college supporters, so it's not that they're incapable of making such a strong commitment to an organization. It's just that somehow the organization has failed to encite excitement in them.

The place I used to work for was a entrepreneurial company that got bought by a large corporation. The former owner (now president of the unit or BU or whatever) was a total corporate tool. Why shouldn't he be? I'm sure he got a huge amount of money for his company and has plenty of financial motivation. The thing that he never understood was his $8/hour phone jockeys didn't seem to share his love of all things corporate. I believe that his desire to help the company at every turn was directly tied to his financial incentives.

What if someone was able to instill the same feeling of association between an employee and company as many (though not all) college students feel for their university? I'm not sure how to go about this (maybe by giving company logo tattoo incentives, having a semi-pro football team that competes with other corporate teams, or putting problem employees on double secret probation). However, whoever cracks this is going to be a trillionaire. Ooooh. Maybe a quadrillionaire.

In December 2003 I went to a couple of recruiters to try and get a job suited to my talents. Unfortunately, the circus had just left town so I was out of luck *rimshot*. But seriously folks… After a couple of weeks, one of the recruiters managed to get me an interview with a company that was hiring–probably through no fault of her own. I did the whole interview thing and was offered the job, which I gladly accepted. Eventually the contract turned into an opportunity for full time employment. I much prefer being a full time employee. In particular, I like the increased job security that comes (sometimes) with being one of the full-timers.

I still hear from the recruiters I contacted (now over a year ago) on a periodic basis. They like to call me up and see how things are going, pump me for information, and see if I'll roll over on any of my friends in the same industry. Once a recruiter gets your scent, you can shake them.

I got one of those "touching base" calls today. This was one of those "let me ask you a favor" type of calls. She was checking up on an applicant that worked at the same company I used to work for (different office though). When I made it clear that there was nothing to be had there, she moved on to the "have any friends that want to sell their souls?" line of questioning. Not much from me on that front either. She then fires up the "I am really good friends with someone over there whose name I can't remember–help me out…" This is where I'm supposed to work my way down the org chart of my previous company while she furiously scribbles down names.

All of the recruiters seem to play this game, she's just worse at it than others. Regardless, I'm not sure what makes these people think they're slick or that I'm that naive. At least there were some benefits to the tech bubble bursting–it is now much more rare for me to be accosted by a tech industry pimp than it used to be.

Cote' had been mentioning Flickr for quite some time. I finally got around to looking at it, and I like it very much. The wife and I have a shitload of pics from every vacation, holiday, etc. After messing with it for a day or so, I upgraded to the pay account. After the wife played with it for a bit, she went absolutely crazy going through old photos and uploading everything. This works out well for me, since I get all of the benefit of getting my choice pics online without actually having to do any work. You can drink from the Robert & Lisa photo firehose courtesy of my Flickr account.

Although you could find this on the ebaumsworld link I posted previously, I'm willing to bet a bunch of people are too lazy to hunt through all of those hilarious videos. So I'm posting one that I particularly like. This guy rocks.

I could put links in here all day long, but I won't. Just one more: skydiving granny. You really do owe it to yourself to check out that site, though.