What? What are you saying? Stop it.

Please don't talk to me like a pirate. I swear to god.

For Pastafarians, today is DON'T talk like a pirate day. Did you know that?

FAR more cool and collective:
The Mp3 Experiment

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

According to the Abilene Reporter News, it's time to don your finest and stuff yourself with desserts!

During this 10-day celebratory time, you're not supposed to look at the moon. The moon laughed at Ganesh, when he fell off his rat (among other reasons), so don't give it the satisfaction of your gaze.

One of the gajillion versions of his story (the first one I heard) tells that Ganesh was born to Parvati, wife of Shiva, who was off fighting in a war. When he returned to find his wife cavorting with a young, handsome man, he drew his trident and beheaded him. When dad realized his mistake, he cried to Parvati that he would go into the forest and replace his son's head with the first animal he could find.

Buddha was a Hindu, and the Bhuddists call him Vinaayaka. Vignesha means "Lord of Obstacles" (vighna is sanskrit for obstacles). As in, the one who sets them up and brings them down.

Once in Kathmandu I watched some kids my age giving puja to a Ganesh statue. I asked my friend (who spoke more fluent Nepali) what they were doing - he said they were preparing to take their exams.

Chris Oglesby's Lubbock All-Star Reunion

This was intense. More on this later. I can still barely see straight.

Virgin Lubbock Visit

Off to Hub City tomorrow, and Oges' one-year anniversary of Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air. I found this vid by searching "Lubbock" on YouTube. Imagine my surprise at the end, where it gives photo credits to "C. Oglesby."
Chris wrangled a tour at the only brewery in town, which (HAIL, yes) is right across the street from the gallery. Ray Wylie Hubbard had to cancel his show Friday night because everyone was going to the book signing instead.

I am extraordinarily psyched about this trip.

I Miss the 1/2 Hour News Hour

From middling TV actor and Republican Presidential Candidate, Fred Thompson:

“Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. … NASA says the Martian South Pole’s ‘ice cap’ has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, nonsignatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.”


That's so funny, I forgot to vote for you.

My Company's Craaaazy Internal Blogosphere

Looking for a corporate .ppt template, I stumbled into a blogging-for-employees feature on our intranet. I almost got excited - then I read one.
Bookmarks>highlight name>right click>Delete.

SUBJECT: Just amazing what we are doing...

Hi everybody it's quite hard these days to keep posting some blog entries as I am a bit lost in /buried by work due to the fact that I do work intensively for the GSS IT Competence Center Desktop in addition to my AIP job. But still some news that were astonishing enough to sit down and write another post: We (competence center desktop) were enjoying a presentation by Johann Lindmeyr about WAN Traffic Impact compensation within Shared Services IT.

What is that about? Well, during the transformation of IT Services into their future mode of operation we will (hopefully) see a certain degree of consolidation - which e.g. refers to the fact that systems, services, servers are moved into just a few central facilities. Data traffic (Wide Area Network, WAN) between these central facilities and customer locations will increase therefore. WAN costs stay with the customer - which causes potentially higher WAN costs on the customer side just by the fact the the IT Service Provider consolidates systems . This has been widely regarded as an issue....

Now, Johann has shown us what both sides GSS and SIS have jointly developed and agreed: A comprehensive set of methodology and measurement services that gives fully transparency on WAN traffic before and after transformation. Drilled down into each different service (e.g. email, SAP, filespace etc.) and per customer location. Any change and cost impact can easily be made transparent. Absolutely amazing!! And nobody knows yet just because we are not the best marketeers...

The WAN traffic topic is now a non issue. Yeah!

Have a good day & see you soon,
Boris

Tags: Traffic, WAN
Boris S.

We All Get Pinched. But You Did it Right. You Told 'em Nothing And They Got Nothing.

"Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”
- Senate majority leader Harry Reid

Oges shot me this:

Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by The Rocky Mountain News

from "Gonzales & Son: The Legacy of An Honest Day’s Work" by Paul Campos

"…Abject loyalty is a fine thing in a dog, but Gonzales’ unlimited devotion to his master became, after a time, a rather stomach-churning sight. Thus I found it particularly offensive that, in announcing his resignation, Gonzales noted that he had “lived the American dream,” because “even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father’s best days.”

Pablo Gonzales, who died 25 years ago, was a construction worker with an elementary school education who, with his wife Maria, raised Alberto as one of their eight children.

I know nothing more about the man that that, but it seems he did an honest day’s work for a day’s pay, and that he found a way to put food on the table and clothes on the backs of eight children despite his elementary school education. And we know he never lied to Congress, or helped make it possible for his country’s government to torture people, or made a mockery of the rule of law.

I imagine he had a lot of good days."

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

Jon Stewart Explains US/Middle East Foreign Policy

Biggest "I Didn't Do It" ever.

Paula Scher Diagrams the Blog

This was an NYT Op-Art, but I got it from Personism.

Change the World in a Tiny Way

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C
and so on

If the series of Zs should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away

That point is in the Mandelbrot Set.

Jenny Cool wrote and said she also likes Coulton's Mandelbrot Set, which I do to, so there you go.

Jenny and I started going out in my senior year at AES. Always wicked smart and true to her last name, she was the one who convinced me to run for school president, which I did, and won. 23 years later, she now has a mind and drive capable of altering the movement of planets. Don't take my word for it: Check her schmidt out.

-- Jenny Cool
anthropologist, filmmaker, intelligent savage
"Count the Moon." "One." "Whoa...."

I Don't Code, So I Don't Get It.

Jonathan Coulton's Code Monkey

(Meeeet Me In Monnnntauk...)

This editor's choice of song ("Breathe Me," by the very left-of-center SIA) was eerily intuitive. It's also the soundtrack to Frank Warren's Post Secret mini-movie.

As compelling as it all tends to be, it's hard to be a Charlie Kaufman completist when people like Laila S. keep cranking out this shite.

Happy Indiapendence Day

\
August 15, 1947, midnight. The British ceded power to two vast semi-unified nations, India and Pakistan. The latter was separated and divided into two states, crowded in the middle by India (East Pakistan, refusing to "scooch over," became Bangladesh in 1971, two years before we moved there).

Lisa Lemon Gloria pointed to this excellent article today:

Exit Wounds
The legacy of Indian partition.
by Pankaj Mishra

And here's my short list of essential India books:
- Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
- City of Joy, by Dominique Lapierre
- Freedom at Midnight, by Larry Collins (and Lapierre)
- Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore

Ever wonder what that wheel thing is, in the flag of India?

When Indians were forced to buy their own cloth re-imported from England, Gandhi got everyone to make thread and loom clothes out of raw Indian cotton. MLK heard about this and thought, "Back of the bus? Why don't we just just walk?"

Reporter: "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

I Found These Pics of Francesca

Shot on 35mm film, in Wimberley, about 4 years ago.


May Tumse Pyara Karta Hoon



Two daughters down, one to go (Toots loved staring at fans)



Ladies day out



Hey! Very funny! It's raining! Let me in!



Making sure Scout knows about Sponge Bob

Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended

June 2, 2007 | Issue 43•22
MORRISTOWN, NJ—In an innovative, tradition-defying rethinking of one of the greatest comedies in the English language, Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles announced Monday his bold intention to set his theater's production of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in 16th-century Venice.

"I know when most people hear The Merchant Of Venice, they think 1960s Las Vegas, a high-powered Manhattan stock brokerage, or an 18th-century Georgia slave plantation, but I think it's high time to shake things up a bit," Hiles said. "The great thing about Shakespeare is that the themes in his plays are so universal that they can be adapted to just about any time and place." More >>