3 day weekend

Over the weekend I got to visit with my Dad, Grandma, nephews, and brother/sister in law. Mostly I was entertainment for my nephew Jay though (about 5yr old).

We
- played with legos, building spaceships and spaceports.
- played baseball.
- watered Dad's flowers
- played in the sand / made a bunch of mud
- "painted" (Jay calls it painting when we put the barbecue sauce on the hamburgers.
- raced, but as slow as we could if that makes any sense.
- watched Indy and NASCAR (his favorite driver Jeff Gordon finished 4th)

Restaurant name

I was thinking that a good name for Mexi-talian restaurant should be called "Que Pasta"

Google Doodle

I thought these variations on the Google logo designed by school students were pretty cool. Check them out.

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

I came across this video on YouTube and had to post. I first saw it a long while ago, but it's still a fun watch. It's one of the more creative music videos I've seen.

I've gotta make a music video at some point before I go.

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

Measurement

We had a departmental review at work, and one of the things we got burned on was measurement. Now I'm a numbers guy and have as many metrics as the next guy, but it seems to me there's alot about what I do at work that isn't necessarily measurable, at least given metrics I can get at.

The issue to me is that if I reduce my work to things that I can measure, I think it leaves out a lot of worthwhile activities. Specific activities are measurable, like a lot of lead generation, delivery, and sell-through - I can track results from that. But how do you measure/place a value on less well defined activities? What's the value of all these agent meetings and consultations we've been having? How do you track the value of a 4 hour meeting without it being overwhelmed by all the other things that happen in the business over the course of a year? It seems worthwhile, and attendees say we have some of the better meetings they've been to - but can I measure the value of all the work? I'm not sure.

China Earthquake

I was reading a NYTimes article about the recent major earthquake in China. The article mentioned significant threat of flooding due to landslides and blocked waterways.

I looked online for more information and came across this before/after river photo. We're not talking about a small clog in a waterway - the river is flat-out gone.

And look at these wedding photos from right before/after the quake - very lucky they weren't in the church.

Here are some photos of the devestation and rescue efforts. Some buildings were literally reduced to gravel.

Interesting view of India by a traveller

As many are aware, I'm invested in a couple IT stocks with their core operations in India Cognizant Tech and Infosys), however I don't know much about the country other than what I occasionally read in newspaper articles or the random book. Much of what I read indicates observers sees India as considerably more limited in economic potential than China due to government controls and issues with infrastructure.

This blog by Derek Sivers gives a different view that I found particularly interesting - and different from many observations I've heard. India is making do, but in a different way.

2 players, 1 guitar

I'd never seen two people play the same guitar and thought this was pretty cool

Solar Eclipse

See this astronomy pic of the day from a few days ago. It's a solar eclipse in Antartica.

Aerial Planting

I hadn't heard of this. Planting the rice fields by plane.

During planting season, usually from late April to mid-May, many pilots work 15-hour days, seven days a week, strafing hundreds of flooded acres per day. A busy rice flier might make as many as 100 takeoffs and landings a day along narrow dirt airstrips cut between paddies.

Auctions at storage units

Mortgage strains lead to folks loosing their stuff when they can't pay the storage bills.

An interesting observation in the story:

Mr. Grossman cut locks on 87 units in March but, as many people paid at the last minute, ended up auctioning only 21 of them in April. Both numbers were down from a year ago, he said, suggesting “the worst is behind us.”

Why is intelligence as rare as it is?

In the lab, intelligence is shown to often cause a decrease in survivability. See this article from the NYTimes: "Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter isn't always better."

Forming neuron connections may cause harmful side effects. It is also possible that genes that allow learning to develop faster and last longer may cause other changes.

US Manufacturing output -surprise to me.

It's always enlightening when an unchallenged assumption I hold about the world is found to be wrong. It creates one of those moments when you go "hmmmm".

In this case I was reading this op-ed in the New York Times by David Brooks titled "The Cognitive Revolution" when I came across this quote:

the U.S.’s share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980.

I read that and I paused... That can't possibly be right. Everybody just "knows" US manufacturing is dying.

So of course I started googling around and found this link reporting that real value added manufacturing in the US is at 22.4% of the world output - slightly higher than it was a decade ago. Interesting. The same paper points out however that while manufacturing output has continued to increase, manufacturing employment has continued to fall due in part to efficiency gains and technology. It takes less people to produce more stuff.

The article is really worth a read. At least I found it helpful.

Tater Tots

I was at work the other day and got to wondering how Tater Tots were made. (They ordered Pizza Hut pizza delivered for the department, and it came with some Cheesy Tater Tots as a side.)

Anyhow, I got to thinking that I probably couldn't make a Tater Tot myself. I figured if I diced up a bunch of potatoes, pressed them together, and tried to fry them that I'd just end up with a mess of a bunch of little potato flakes that wouldn't hold form.

So I got to looking and here's how they recommend making Tater Tots. It sounds like to make them you've got to boil the potatoes a bit in advance, shred them, mix in a little flour, and then pack them into shape before dropping in the cooking oil.

And while you're at it, check out Darth Tater