Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Category: Thinking (Page 12 of 14)

What If The Federal Government CAN Make You Buy A Product?

March 30, 2010 / / 3 Comments

I’m glad the AGs of various states are challenging the federal mandate that compels us to purchase health care coverage from the (“evil”) insurance companies. My worry is that they will lose. And once that precedent is set, what else could we be forced to purchase by law?

Will we be required to have bank accounts, purchased from evil banks? After all, if you have money, you must be participating in commerce, so that can be regulated.

What about funeral insurance? We’re all going to die (I’m working on this one) and there’s a cost associated with that, for now. Or maybe someone will come to the realization that since all of us will need our remains disposed of at some point, this service is a right. And since it’s a right, no one will be allowed to make money on it, making it “free”.

Proof by iteration is a concept that should be taught at around age 10.

Prenatal Care the TSA Way

March 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I went through security at ATL this afternoon. Believe it or not, the story gets even worse…

As I was collecting all my carry on items after they were checked, one of the TSA sheriffs calls out to another over his shoulder, “Hey George! She says she knows you! But just for one night!”

I looked over and noticed the lady behind me was pregnant. She didn’t look very amused at all, but she didn’t raise a stink about it. That’ may be the most unfortunate part of the incident.

As for the TSA agent who made the comment, I guess it would have been too unprofessional for him to say, “Hey George! Check out this tramp you knocked up one night a few months ago and never spoke to again.”

What kind of culture exists within an agency that would make anyone think they had a license to say something like that? What would happen in your business if you spoke about a customer that way, especially right in front of them? Get ready for HealthCare.gov. I expect jackasses like this guy will be among the first to put in for a position admitting soon to be moms into the hospital. He probably is working on a bunch of fat jokes as we speak.

Three Winning Tips From a Hide and Seek Professional

March 18, 2010 / / 4 Comments

hide and seek

I’ve been playing a lot of Hide and Seek lately with players of varying skill level–mostly friendly games, but there’ve been a few high stakes sessions too. I’ve been taking detailed notes, and am really working to refine my game. I’m not giving away all of my secrets, but here are three tips you can use to keep most opponents confounded. Just keep in mind that every game (and every round) of Hide and Seek is different, and your opponent isn’t just “It”, but the other hiders as well.

1. If you’re “It”, count as slowly as possible.
This flies in the face of hide and seek conventional wisdom. You’d intuitively think that counting faster would allow your opponents less time to hide, and, as a result, increase your chances of discovering them while they are still in an unprepared state. However, this strategy rarely works in practice. Counting slowly, on the other hand, gives the enemy lots of time to find a hiding spot, and lots of time to get restless and impatient in that spot. If given enough time, your opponents are sure to be faced with the need to scratch or cough. This small slip up will give you the upper hand.

2. Pick a hiding spot as close to Base as possible and 180 degrees away from the direction a fleet footed “It” is likely to begin their search.
This is somewhat of a high risk tactic, especially for less experienced players. But if “It” begins their search in a direction somewhere around 180 degrees away from your hiding spot, you will have an opportunity to sprint to Base early in the round, not only ensuring you won’t have to be “It” for the next round, but also giving you plenty of time to watch the current round unfold from a safe place while you plot your next hiding spot. Just make sure you find a spot that’s close–you are unlikely to outrun a speedy “It” in a distance greater than 40 yards.

3. Choose a hiding place with several intermediate hiding spots nearby.
This is easier in the later rounds of the game, when you’ve had the chance to scout out some of the other players hiding spots you may not have found on your own. Use the intermediate spots to work your way back to Base, but still remain hidden. This is an especially effective tactic if “It” has already checked these spots and cleared them.

Gov’ment Needs Some Very Special Engineers

February 24, 2010 / / 2 Comments

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.

Why Buzz Could Succeed in the Enterprise

February 9, 2010 / / 0 Comments

…and why Wave may not.

When I was watching the presentation for Google Buzz, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the functionality was duplicated in Wave. So why could Buzz catch on where Wave hasn’t?

Because it’s not something “new”. It’s just something in addition to the email everyone is used to working with.

In large organizations, services like Yammer (which I love) are too much of a shift in mindset for too many people at once. But if something is introduced as simply an extended feature of a tool you’re already using, the game changes.

The enterprise LOVES its email. It’s smart to build a service on top of that instead of trying to establish a new service altogether, which is what Wave tried to do.

What I really love is that both of these products are coming out of the same company and look to be competing with one another on some level. The end user will be the ultimate winner as these two groups within Google try to make their product the standard.

As Sharepoint…either way, it was (sorta) nice knowing you.

Google Buzz. Want. Now!

February 9, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Google Buzz

  • Better group management than Facebook
  • Share photos and videos inline from Picasa and Flickr
  • Reduction of noise of posts you don’t care about (interested to see this one in action)
  • Comments at your inbox instead of going to a site.
  • Suggestions, suggestions, suggestions.
  • Oh, and instant indexing of your Buzz’s–VERY important for bloggers.
  • Unbelievable location based features

And still, I think the most potential is in the enterprise.

If it would only write to Twitter. Lot’s of people have a lot of equity built up over there and aren’t going to want to throw that away.

Tormented by the Wall Street Journal

February 4, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’ve read two articles in the WSJ this week about the housing market, and now I’m less certain than ever about what’s going to happen in the next year.

Is 2010 the Year of the Short Sale?

If 2009 was the year of the foreclosure (and loan modification), then 2010 may be shaping up as the year of the short sale.

I’d say 2011 is more realistic, unless they are predicting a slew of short sales starting in Q1. Our experience with trying to purchase short sales is that they take a long time. How long? We’re not really sure, because we haven’t made it to the end of the process yet. But five months seems to be a reasonable expectation for a minimum, and that’s just for the bank to get back to you with a yes or no.

I’m interested to see what is going to happen when, by the time the bank responds to an offer with a “yes”, the house is no longer worth the amount that was originally offered. Because, some people think we’re still in a housing bubble:

Rental apartment vacancies are reaching record highs. Many segments of the housing market are still oversupplied. And the core demographic in the country—the baby boomers—are reaching the age where they’re more likely to downsize, buying less house in the years to come.

Throw in the tax credits, artificially low mortgage rates, and the fact that the fed is still buying mortgage backed securities, and it’s hard to make the case that the housing market is not still artificially high.

It seems like the easiest way back to a true(r) market would be for banks to sell off their bad assets as quickly and efficiently as possible through the short sale process. Quick and efficient doesn’t seem to be the order of the day, however.

My Twitter “Follow Back” Rules

December 29, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I have a gmail filter set up so that notifications of new Twitter followers don’t get sent to my inbox. I go through them a couple of times of weeks, and I’ve picked up on a few patterns in my follow-back decision making…

  1. If you are following more people than I am and have only produced 1% of the tweets I have go back! You are not getting followed.
  2. If you are following 10x more people than are following you, go back! You are not getting followed.
  3. If you are following a number of people approximately equal to or smaller than the number of people that are following you and your number of tweets is at least 10% of the number of people you follow, I’m going to check you out and probably follow back.
  4. If I know you in real life, I’m going to follow you. Even if you’ve never tweeted. But expect me to prod you into participating.
  5. If you mention David Lee Roth or Falls City beer in your profile, I will follow you.

Expect this list to grow and evolve.

10 Things From 10 Years Ago I’ll Never Get Back

December 28, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Are we any better off now than we were 10 years ago? Ok, just had to ask that because it seems like the thing to do. I know that for a lot of people the answer is a definite “no”. As for me, I’m infinitely better off than I was then. The last decade has been one of tremendous technological advancement, but there’s plenty to lament. Here’s my list of 10 things I had 10 years ago that I’ll probably never have access to again.

  1. The ability to remember phone numbers. I still remember both of my grandmothers’ phone numbers from when I was a kid, but thanks to these fancy schmancy mobile devices, I can only remember a handful now. And if I met you in the last 10 years, you’re lucky if I can even guess your area code.
  2. Mix tapes. Yeah, we could burn CDs for some of the 90s, but what the hell were you supposed to listen to in the car? Because chances are you were driving a car made in the early 90s at the latest, and it didn’t have a CD player in it.
  3. My knees. This one is obvious. There’s nothing worse than tackling a young guy, hearing the breath leave his lungs as his back slams into the pitch, then watching from the ground as he trots away on his springy legs. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that he’s going to get old too and probably won’t fare as well as I have.
  4. Bill Clinton as President. As much as it pains me to type it, I’d prefer any Clinton (Bill, Hillary, Chelsey, George, any of them) to what we have now. Sure, it’s not the optimal situation, but beggars can’t be choosers.
  5. My Thursday afternoon job bottling beer. One of the best jobs I ever had was helping the guys at New Knoxville Brewing Company bottle beer on Thursdays. There was no money involved, but I was promised I’d achieve total inebriation on my death bed. So I got that going for me, which is good. Fortunately, that’s yet to come to fruition, but we were allowed to carry out a couple of cases of “shorties” (bottles that weren’t completely filled and weren’t worth a label) every day. Good times.
  6. Waylon Mothergrabbin’ Jennings
  7. Tables. Back in the 90s, you could load a website down with embedded table after embedded table, then fill those tables with sliced images that the browser magically placed back together and no one thought a thing about it. Put just one table into a site now and you are getting beat with a USB cable.
  8. When a girl could still cook, and still would. I had to throw that in there for Merle Haggard, but actually, this one happens to be the opposite for me. I don’t think I knew a girl in the 90s who could really cook. Not so now. I’m very well fed, and I look the part. But my girl couldn’t cook back in the 90s–this is a newly acquired skill. So if I could go back to the 90s version of her (the one that was over 18), I’d probably be much thinner. That’s logical, right?
  9. New episodes of Seinfeld. I have some of the seasons on DVD. It’s not the same. Scott is gettin’ angry.
  10. Free international travel. During the 90s I got to go to Europe and Asia to work on projects for weeks, which meant weekends on vacation in Europe and Asia. Even better–the companies I was working for footed the bill and provided per diems for expenses. Damn you Webex and remote login. Damn you straight to hell. Just kidding…except for the travel thing, Webex and remote login have made my life better in more ways than I can count.

[image credit]

I Got Your Augmented Reality

December 14, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Augmented reality sounds like a really cool thing. And I guess it is. Or am I just obligated to say that?

Being truthful, when I watch videos like this one, there’s a part of me that would gladly pay $20 for a whole seat, even though I’ll only need the edge, to watch monster trucks (real ones, that waste tremendous amounts of fossil fuels) roll over neatly stacked bricks of smart phones.

Disclaimer: I’m astronomically ignorant, so I really like to use the Google Sky app to find constellations and to see what the sky looks like on the other side of the earth by pointing it at my feet.

How The Music App Should Work On Android Devices

October 22, 2009 / / 0 Comments

htc-heroAt 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.

The Gov’ment Should Do Something (Part CMXXII)

October 13, 2009 / / 0 Comments

wrong_way

Healthcare: Time to Start Over

After all, isnt it better to get it done right than to just get it done?

If I thought it would do any good, I’d link to this article and suggest you read it. I’m worried we are collectively going on several faulty assumptions:

  1. Getting health insurance for people is the primary objective
  2. It’s the role of government to achieve this
  3. It must be done immediately. When I say “immediately” I mean “before the next election.”

I’m On a Mission And I’m Wishin’…

October 8, 2009 / / 2 Comments

I’m wishin’ someone could explain this to me. It’s been bugging me for about 20 years now. Watch, then read…

If your best friend Harry has a brother Larry who is going to marry, isn’t it weird that Larry would ask you to be the best man at the wedding? Doesn’t it seem like he’d be more likely to ask Harry? I guess it’s plausible that you could be Larry’s best friend and Larry not be your best friend. But it seems like this is a best friend triangle you’d rather just not be a part of, especially considering that Larry and Harry are brothers.

I guess it’s possible that Harry is the one getting married and Young MC just mentioned off the cuff that Harry has a brother Larry…dunno.

Like I said, that’s been bugging me for 20 years. This, on the other hand, has been bugging me for 2 solid days:

Yammer Outlook Plugin – Don’t Tease

September 22, 2009 / / 2 Comments

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.

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