More Science Research

This NYT article is replete with information from the front lines of genetic therapy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27canc.html?8hpib

Stress and Mindlessness

It's tough to rate your stress level on any given day. People ask me how I'm doing, and I don't know what to say. Is today worse or better than yesterday? In the moment, how can anyone tell? Well, I've got two new "objective" rating systems that I wanted to share. The first deals with booze, the second toilets.

1. DTGE (Drinks To Get Even) describes how many drinks you require, say after work, to return to a normal human. 1 means it was a low stress day. 4 means you should be looking for a new job (or, like me, are). Jeremy and I have used this efficient communication method for a while. I thought I'd share it with the rest of you to streamline our conversations.

2. OFS (Open Fly Syndrome) occurs when you are so consumed with big life questions, even at the toilet, that you finish up your business and forget to zip. Normal people score way less than 1.0 occurrances per day. My OFS score is currently at 3.2. It has become a regular (inside) joke that I now wear sweaters to work b/c, untucked, they hang below the zipper, obscuring the horse that's waiting to get out of the barn.

Licking Kurzweil's Balls

Many of you have heard me yammer on about Ray Kurzweil and his new book The Singularity Is Near. I'm coming late to the game on this AI shit, I realize. Some of you were raised on Arthur C. Clarke and have had contemplated the coming changes for awhile. What can I say? Now I'm very interested and have all the symptoms of a new convert. Ray's doing lots of interviews, some available as podcasts. I thought I'd make it easy for those of you interested.

1hr podcast: http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=1851
40 min stream: http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Dec/hour2_122305.html
38 min podcast: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail755.html

They are all different, but not by a great amount. You might learn about some specific advances (like the lab rats cured of diabetes through nanobots controlling insulin levels) but the idea is the same.

Loads o' papers and such at http://www.kurzweilai.net/

More Pop Vids

I continue to be frustrated by the lack of a centralized, intelligent video content aggregator. My contact with high schoolers is pretty low and it's hard to keep up with what's cool. I found these shows while listening to a decent podcast on the future of search (panel of GYM experts). They have audiences in 100k-500k range! Pretty impressive. Not as funny as the Yatch Rock series below, but worth watching.

http://homestarrunner.com
http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/archive/

To those of you who were already aware of these: how did you find them?

My Dotcom Predictions for 2006 ; )

I got a little help predicting the future from this fella. Hilarious. Give it a try and email me your output.

Last year I made several predictions that now seem ridiculously hasty. But a few ideas were pretty close. I've got a feeling that 2006 will be a big year, and here are some of the reasons why:
A Palo Alto startup is going to open our eyes to some new ways that telephony can influence culture. New York Times will pick up on this and run several cover stories on the founders.
Larry Page will be in the spotlight for his decision to support RSS. This will upset John Battelle, and the blogosphere will react Quickly. The noise will quiet before the end of the year and it will all be forgotten soon after the shock.
amazon.com will see their stock skyrocket after their vertical consumer goods business starts taking off. We've seen it coming for a while now, but 2006 will be the year it really kicks into gear.
Either google or yahoo will seek to expand their search-based advertising platform business by acquiring writely. metaweb will be overlooked in the process, and they will see a management shakeout later in the year.
One of the big leaders in the publishing industry will wake up to the opportunity in the Internet and the Web 2.0 trends. After months of speculation, they will make a key merger that will shake up the landscape for years to come.

Protecting Smooth Music
Todd described this as "my current reason why I think the internet is the best invention of all time." After viewing it, I agree.

http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=152.

Thanks, Todd.

Whew! Now I Know What to Get the Wife for X-Mas

http://www.sideonedummy.com/the_dan_band_rock_you_hard.php

On Being a Consultant, Part 1: The Unspoken Rule about Keeping Busy

There are two different types of consulting--project work, where you are charged to build something for a client for a fixed price and then go home, and staff augmentation where you are a whore, pimped to the client for months or years--you are an employee of some body shop (and it hardly matters which one b/c you'll never see the office or speak to your pimp after getting assigned) and effectively are managed by the client but are not part of the family.

Although I've been in consulting for a decade, this is the first time in my life that I'm in the latter category. I'm learning a lot about big company life and thought I'd take a minute to share a couple of the more helpful lessons for those of you new to the world of turning tricks.

And here is the first lesson, it's not really turning tricks, it is more like being a kept woman. See you get paid for showing up, not for completing a task. Turning tricks is more like project consulting. As a kept woman, you are expected to service the client when necessary, but your livlihood doesn't depend on new Johns. If the client hires you to be an employee, that's akin to getting married. But I digress...

Like many of you, have this compulsive need to succeed. I'm probably masking some psychological deficiency, but I'm not happy unless I get things done every day. On top of that, I have this protestant work ethic thing that makes work moral. I feel bad to draw a paycheck when I know I haven't done a lot of work to deserve it. Stick me in a big, slow-moving bureaucratic organization, and I can finish a day's work in two hours. Sometimes one. Can you see where this is going? I have this moral thing about earning my money plus lots of extra time on my hands. What to do? Well, I'll tell you what not to do: Don't ask for work. Don't tell the boss that you don't have anything to do. Now, I can imagine what you're thinking, "But won't that impress the boss? You're showing that you want to work hard, that you're good at your job, that you are efficient." Nope. Nope. Nope.

Here's why: If there were work to do, the boss would have already given it to you. When you tell the boss that you are not busy--especially as a consultant--the boss feels a moral obligation to find something, anything, for you to do. For God's sake! If his boss comes around and finds you, a $100/hr resource, loafing online there will be hell to pay. So he'll make you fill out a TPS report, or research company policy, or clean your desk--grunt work that will rot your soul. You might argue that you are morally bound to work hard for each hour you bill. Fine. I won't argue with you. You'll probably have a great reputation as a hard worker. But (1) you might find it hard to live that way if you have any intellectual curiosity; (2) you won't grow much on the job and will only re-learn the "hard work" skills you got in high school working in fast food; and (3) you'll subtly communicate to your boss that he doesn't have enough work for you and should let you go. "I mean Sheesh! Why am I paying this guy $4k/wk to swab the deck?"

If you want to make everyone happy, obey the unspoken rule about big company life and never go asking for work.

Is this for Real?

As many of you know, I have no problem making the argument that, as a consultant, it is important for me to stay abreast of new technology and to investigate ideas, even ideas that don't directly impinge on my current project, on the client's dime. After all, I'm not a plumber and the client doesn't rent me by the hour--they rent me by the day, and if I have extra time, I'm not going to let my brain rot. No, sir. I can make myself more valuable to them down the road by learning about new tech even though it doesn't relate to my current role. (You might argue that's the right of an employee, but I won't listen to you. I'm thick-headed and would go crazy if I didn't adopt this perspective.)

So in that spirit, I've been investigating Google video, in the interest of science mind you. This feed is 3 minutes of some of the best nature footage I've ever seen. Watch it. Let me know if you discover it is a hoax.

Is it just me or . . .

does it look like this woman is having an intimate moment at work?
I found this while looking for an ergo pen mouse. Maybe my mind is in the gutter, but when I give it a quick glance. . . .

"Q, What Do You Have for Me This Time?"

Well, this little baby seems like a big advance in the human-machine interface and solves a form-factor question that many of you have discussed with me (viz, How can you easily input data into a personal mobile device? And no, I don't think scratching a screen w/ a stylus is easy or fast).

http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/pcpen.asp

This qualifies as sweet (see the projection TV application), but my question is, "How long until we can get good speech recognition so I don't have to type anymore?" Can't be too far off, can it? If any of you know, send me an email.

Attention Earthlings! We Can Now Read Your Minds...and we're not impressed

Spend a few minutes looking at Google's annual zeitgeist report (http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2005.html). I won't opine on the contents (they speak for themselves), but the form (a chart of ideas as a function of time) gives us a rough shape of the mind of the planet for the year.

Who needs a Crackberry?

If you haven't tried http://www.google.com/glm/gmail you are missing out. I have a shitty, low-end, candybar Sanyo running on Sprint's network. I'm used to disappointment with m-apps. Hell, the interface on my phone must have been designed by monkeys, no wait, worse--the designers of the Chevy Suburban interior, but that's for another day. After several attempts, I am sorry to say that I cannot figure out how to use their web browser. And until this point, I've not had much motivation. Sprint has a hard coded "home" and, still thinking that it is 1999, owns all that real estate, forcing me to use their content partners. So the conundrum: how can I use this mobile mail if I can't get to it?

Praise Google! Even though I can't find a way to enter a URL, the benevolent web deity allows me to enter my phone number so that they can text me the URL (which I can click). Now, if I can only figure out how to create bookmarks. . . damn, where did I put that manual?

It's Like Student Council, Except We Wear Suits

Many of you have asked what it's like to work at a large mid-western insurance company--after all, I've only done small companies and start-ups for 10 years. I've worked hard trying to figure out a universal analogy, since many of you are not in the tech field.

First off, I have to say it's not bad. The pay is fine and the workload is light. Sounds like paradise. Why do I feel like a fish out of water? The people are nice, I get praised for my work and have a lot of opportunity to grow (at least by title). But I want to leave. Soon. Why?

Some of it is obvious: I'm a start-up guy and can't change my DNA. And the product? Who gives a shit about insurance? You have to have it, but you resent it. It's like government.

But there's something else, the people--they are too "nice." I've always enjoyed an edgy crowd, and still feel uncomfortable in a room of doe-eyed rule followers. When I'm in a big meeting I ask myself, 'Where are the creative people?" Not in insurance, that's for sure.

And I can't imagine really chumming around with any of them. No travel adventures, no late-night dinner parties, and no drunken conversations about how fucked up this planet is.

Don't get me wrong: I have great working relationships. The boss, the boss' boss. It's all good, don't worry. I try not to flavor my conversations with four-letter words, show up at all the meetings, and get very little done. All the while faking that I believe our work makes a difference. Kinda like . . .

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

George Bernard Shaw

This just in: 4 of 10 participants in you con-call today were totally zoned out, dreaming of working for Google

There's such a buzz about working for Larry and Sergey that (as of 11/05) they get 1,000 resumes a week. They only hire about 25 lucky souls (a rejection rate higher than Harvard Business School) which leaves a lot suitors on the doorstep. Hell, there are people creating web sites just to get noticed.

I'm not immune. Any engineer worth his salt wants to work in a place that gets things done. One commentator recently said, "If I were 35, I'd be begging Google to hire me. They are the Bell Labs of this generation." I salivate. I want that esprit de corps, that sense of belonging, and changing the world.

So Google is turning into a utopian dream for engineers, a city shining on a hill. But maybe this is a bad way to think about a company and a bad way to manage one's career. It is, after all, a publicly held company, committed to making money with significant opposition. They will make mistakes, suck the life out of some, and fire others. As they get big, they might lose their edge, become more bureaucratic.

Maybe I'm just making myself feel better.

Yep.

Oh well, time to read the Xooglers blog and maybe buy some shares of GOOG.

About This Site

I send my friends lots of email. "Hey read about this great new browser that you probably don't need and likely will never use" kinds of email. Sometimes they are more interesting. At the "To" line of every email, I start with good intentions--"don't send this to everyone again"--but then I reason, "If Jer would like it, so would Knuck," and so it goes. I've become a time bandit, a spammer dressed in friend's clothing. I've apologized to many, but they usually say, "Keep 'em coming." Maybe they're just being nice. So, I've put this blog up for my buddies--an attention aggregator of the Thirsty Scholar flavor. Boys, read it when you have time.

Teeth tell a story about one's life. A story that you might not want told. Gladwell wrote an interesting article about national health care using dental as metaphore. My thoughts are more pedantic--pearly whites are dreamy but to keep your teeth gleaming you have to live a puritan's life. I'm an athletic guy and enjoy great health, but I smoke, drink, and have a serious love for espresso. All my life I have been able to wake early, go to bed late, eat & drink as I please. I am "teflon man," except for the teeth. I took this "before" picture to see if the Crest White Stripes were worth the money. Turns out, they are a pain in the ass to use, so I quit after two applications.