Scott Adcox

Tesla – Gettin’ Better.

The only thing that could make this better was if you replaced every cigarette in the video with a Coors Light tall boy. That’s a program I could get with.

Via Instapundit: NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota

Not only are they missing software engineers in general, they may be in need of engineers with some very special knowledge. There are potentially two different software components involved in auto electronics. First, obviously, there’s the actual firmware that runs the electronic controllers.

But another possible point of failure exists in the software that tests the electronics. To make things simple, imagine a specialized computer that interfaces with an electronic controller and simulates the inputs coming to the controller from the  vehicle. This computer also measures the responses of the electronics based on these different states. These tests are developed based on a very comprehensive, rigorous, and strict set of requirements and specifications. If the setup for the tests and measurements are documented incorrectly, or if these tests were performed incorrectly or (eek) not at all, there could be a problem.

Now, let’s just say this…

In a former life, I was employed by a company that may or may not have been involved in manufacturing automotive electronics. And I may or may not have worked as one of the software engineers who programmed the testing computers. These test programs may or may not have been written in a programming language that was developed internally by the supplier and not used in any other company or industry. So it would take either specific knowledge to do an audit of this software, or at least a bit of time invested in learning how that language works.

Oh yeah…this company may or may not have been a major electronics supplier to Toyota.

I’m glad there haven’t been any issues with the model years I may or may not have been involved in testing.

Also excellent for break dancing at your 7th grade talent show. You nose it’s true.

Don’t know if I like this song better at the start of the run or at the end, but it’s on the playlist.

Ok…I give up trying to take home video of these things that’s good enough to put on the web and be worth anyone’s time to watch. But it was really cool…like the sun rising. Glad I got to see a night launch!!!

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but…

I attended a USA Rugby coaching clinic this weekend that was phenomenal. It could not have been more different than the USA Rugby “education” sessions I’ve attended in the past. Admittedly, I had very low expectations coming in, but this was time well spent.

A big part of it focused on coaching in general, not just coaching rugby, and it could have applied to any sport–any subject for that matter. Another benefit was that it actually reminded me of one of my weaknesses of being more of a big picture person. I tend to focus more on the “why” and “how” than on “exactly how”. I’m more likely to think about strategy first, then spend the bulk of my time on the various tactics I can use to implement that strategy. Technique seems to get lost in the shuffle a lot of the time.

If you’ve ever seen me do anything other than type on a computer, you know technique is not my strong point.

So, where would you guess my weakness is as a coach? Duh. Teaching technique. I need to remember that going forward and make an effort to focus more on technique and fight my urge to always move on to the next tactic.

Another option–try to align myself with people who excel at coaching technique. I like that option better. Then I wouldn’t have to work on my coaching technique so much.

Well, clouds were low, so we couldn’t see every second, but it was nice weather to be out at the beach to watch the Atlantis launch for STS-129. And it was so windy that we never actually heard the launch. Here’s a better video from closer up of the July 4, 2006 launch.

There’s a throwback high school baseball game coming to Knoxville. In April 2010, Farragut and Karns will play a game to benefit Parkinson’s research. I got the heads up from my one of my rugby buddies, Pat Dorwin. Pat played on the 1982 Farragut State Championship team and later was a fixture for the Knoxville Possums. One word to describe Pat–”wheels”.

Both Pat and his younger brother have both been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and this is a great effort to not only recognize their accomplishments as athletes, but to use it as a platform to raise money for research.

I’ll be posting more on this as the date nears, but it’s cool that they’ve been able to put this game together.

For more information on Parkinson’s disease visit The National Parkinson Foundation.

At least this is where I hope we’re headed. The coming announcement of a partnership with Google, iLike, MySpace, and LaLa gives me hope this could be happening sooner rather than later. Currently, nothing really syncs up to move music from a computer to the Android phones for music the way iTunes syncs up with the iPhone. But maybe it’s that paradigm that’s wrong to begin with. What if it worked like this…

• Use the LaLa app to examine my library and allow me to build that library in the cloud. No need to upload any music to the cloud unless it doesn’t already exist there. We’re there already, but…
• Integrate LaLa into the Android Music app so that I can stream my music from the cloud to my device. Sort of like what you do with Pandora, but it’s YOUR music and YOUR exact playlists.
• But make it social–show me what kind of playlists other people are making from songs in my library. Throw in a song or two every now and then (if I so choose) as suggestions.
• In fact, let me check out playlists other people have created with x% of my songs that suggests other songs I might like. And if I buy some music from someone else’s playlist, how about kicking some change into the account of the person who created the playlist as a commission to encourage them to buy some new music too?

I’m sure there’s even more that could be done that I haven’t even considered, but manually moving files over to an Android device seems very 2001. And if you’re like me and have hundreds of gigabytes of music, there’s no way to get it all over there anyway. I want it to always be available. All of it.

Feel free to implement this business idea. I only work in the abstract.

Ever notice how you always want Chick-fil-A on Sundays? I mean you crave it on Sundays, right? You do anything for a Chick-fil-A to be open on a Sunday, right?

The concept of Chick Delay is simple:

• Every Saturday night, put in a catering order for a bunch of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. Keep it simple–just order the basic sandwich.
• People will be desperate for these sandwiches on Sundays, so there’s really no need to invest in processes like flash freezing or warmers, just throw them into a box, pile them up on your sofa, whatever.
• Set up your stand sometime around 10 or 11 am on Sunday morning and start selling the stale sandwiches at a 20% markup. Don’t get greedy with the price–people are going to have unrealistic quality expectations if they are paying too much.
• You may even want to look into using the Chick-Fil-A parking lot since they aren’t using it. See how many sandwiches you can sell before the police shut you down.

You’re welcomed.

I picked up the HTC Hero for my Sprint account yesterday. So far, I love it. Of course, my last phone was the free one I got five years ago and hasn’t worked for a couple of weeks, so just about anything would have been an upgrade. You can read real a real review of the ins and outs at Gizmodo.

Me, I’ve installed Pandora and a compass app. Once I get my Exchange account to sync I will be complete. I do like the fact that you can run multiple apps at once and can expand the memory with a standard card. Other phones *cough*iPhone*cough* don’t do that.

I play rugby because it’s the greatest game in the world.

I play rugby because somebody has to.

I play rugby because I want to be a participant, not a spectator.

I play rugby because it makes me feel alive.

I play rugby because it makes me smile.

I play rugby because so many people built and maintain clubs to give me the opportunity.

I play rugby because refereeing rugby is way too hard.

I play rugby to learn life lessons about hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, and loyalty.

I play rugby for my teammates–past, present, and future.

I play rugby for the funny stories from road trips.

I play rugby because it makes beer taste better.

I play rugby because it’s too late to turn back now.

I play rugby because it’s given me so many great memories and friendships.

I play rugby to spite the bodies that govern the game.

I’m not really too keen on paying for a gym membership every month, and at this point I’m not really interested in building new muscle or bulking up either. I really just want to do some core workouts and focus on toning and endurance to supplement triathlon training. So I was looking around the web and found some stuff on the Bulgarian training bag–pricey. I also found Matt Wichlinski, who has a great video on making your own, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

The only thing I did different was to use a kid’s inflatable ring pool toy instead of a tire inner tube. I needed it to be lighter because The Missus wants to use it too. It seems to be working pretty well (I’m sore).The bag I made weighs 16.5 pounds. It cost me $2 for the ring, about $4 in duct tape, and the sand was free at the beach. I’m going to make a bigger one, hopefully around 35 lbs for some other exercises.

While I was at it, I bought a basketball from Walmart for $4, cut a small hole in it and filled it with sand too. I used Gorilla Glue to seal the opening, duct taped it shut, wrapped the whole ball in a garbage bag, and duct taped it more. I ended up with a 23lb medicine ball! Here’s a photo of the finished ball.

Yesterday I wrote a post about the Yammer Outlook plugin that didn’t work as expected for copying and linking. I said I’d post an update when they got it fixed.

Today I downloaded an update that, tada, works perfectly!!!

Thanks Yammer!

I meant to write this post a couple of days ago, but lost track of time when I got distracted trying to find a way to visit links posted in Yammer through their new Outlook plugin. </sarcasm>

Right off the bat, let me say I’m pretty fond of Yammer so far. It’s a very convenient communication tool for work, and the more people use it the more powerful it becomes. So I was pretty excited when they announced a plugin for Outlook (which I’m not a huge fan of). My initial thinking was that the plugin would remind people who were about to send an email that they could just as easily send out a Yam, increasing the use of Yammer and making it more powerful in our organizataion.

The problem is we use Yammer for sharing links a lot at work, both internally and externally. With the Outlook plugin, you can’t click (or even copy) links. MAJOR FAIL!

Hopefully they’ll get this issue resolved in the next release. It seems like a pretty important feature to me.