Nathan's Occasional Blog

I’m sitting here watching the third round of the PGA Championship on CBS in high definition (HD).  First off, it’s about time CBS put their HD programming feed for golf in widescreen format (they usually show golf in 4:3 even on the HD channel).

Another thing of note is that when I turned on the TV (after Kaitlyn went down for a nap) there was one of Microsoft’s “PeopleReady” adds on TV.  This is the first TV ad I’ve seen in HD that’s actually using widescreen.  Most of the ads on HD broadcast TV (CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, ESPN, etc.) are still in 4:3 format, leaving big black borders on the left/right of the screen.  OR the ad will be widescreen, but widescreen in a 4:3 format so they’ve added a black border on the top and bottom to go with the crappy borders on the sides.

WHY WHY WHY do advertisers think that’s a good idea?  You’re shrinking your products on the screen and wasting 15-20% of the screen real estate you’ve already paid for!

As I write this I just saw a Sprint ad that was full screen 16:9 widescreen too – good job Sprint!

Of course you have to be wary when you ask for.  One of the easiest way to fast forward through a recorded HDTV program’s ads is to watch the borders to see when the ads are over.  🙂

Most accidents reported in the media involving motorcycles make it sound like the motorcycle driver was at fault … at least in the headline.  It’s quite concerning to see them take the same tack with the accident the other evening on Hwy 18 where a 17 year old girl was going 100 mph on the wrong side of the highway at 2a.  She was killed when her vehicle slammed into a big rig.

I feel sorry for her and her family.  Another account I read indicated she had taken off after an argument with her parents.

But the headline in the PI says “17-year-old dies after her car is hit by semitrailer”.  Really?  Because in my mind when you’re roughly doubling the speed limit in the middle of the night and end up running into another vehicle that pretty much seems like you hit them.

So why did the PI write the headline as such?  Same reason we see “sensational” news on TV … ratings.  Everyone’s scared of these huge trucks on the road so let’s play on that fear.  “Look – a trucker killed a 17 year old girl” the PI seems to say.

A 17-year-old Spanaway teen died early Friday after a semitrailer hit her car, which was westbound in an eastbound lane on state Route 18, authorities said.
Source: 17-year-old dies after her car is hit by semitrailer

Screw that PI.  The statistics show that truckers are actually the safest drivers on the roads … long-haul truckers even more so.  It’s the folks who go out partying, or want to show off to their friends how fast/cool they can drive, or gab on cell phones while driving down the road who are dangers to society.

Seattle PI RSS feeds: UNSUBSCRIBED.  Hopefully the Seattle Times is better.

By the way, if I see another idiot driving 50 mph in a 60 mph zone while holding a cell phone to their head and driving a $70k vehicle I’m going to …. I don’t know – I’ll think of something.  You can spend $1000/month on a car and insurance but you can’t scrape together $15 for the hands free earbud for your phone?  Hell, most phones ship with the earbud.  GEESH!

UPDATE: I just browsed through the rest of my unread RSS items from the PI and found the same story with the headline “Teen killed after driving wrong way on state Route 18“.  This story was posted just after noon yesterday, with the article that pissed me off published at 10:30p last night.  I wonder which headline made it in the paper?

Now that it’s out in the open at work, I can comment that I’m leaving my current position to hop back into the consulting world.  The main driver is that I evaluated my current role and where I was headed and realized that I’m not pointing in the right direction.

Right now I’m a member of a small team for an organization the likes to outsource the tough stuff to vendors.  This is not a bad model, but it means that I’m becoming more of a project manager and “firefighter” than a technologist.  I’m not comfortable with that.

So I started looking around at what’s open and two very cool opportunities came my way.  BUT – they (and most everyone else) are looking for seasoned Cisco platform veterans and experience managing 100’s and 1000’s of servers.  We use Foundry Networks gear at my current gig, with the Cisco VoIP stuff outsourced.  Plus we’re in the 10’s of servers, with no signs that will ever really change (nor should it have to).

I finally accepted a position as an infrastructure consultant with a Northwest consulting group (will remain nameless for now) that I’m familiar with.  Familiar?  Hell, probably half the staff in the Bellevue office are folks I worked with (and more importantly enjoyed working with) in my last gig.  I’ll get a chance to not only work on internal infrastructure needs, but will be working on client hosting projects with multiple servers and multiple datacenters, etc.  This is the right direction for me career wise.

It took Alicea and I weeks – literally – to agonize over whether to make the switch or not, but we finally said yes and I notified my current boss a couple days ago.

Since then he’s been working on my job description so he can find & hire my clone.  🙂  He just passed it my way and it’s a solid 3 pages long.

Ho.  Lee.  Crap.  I can’t believe how much I do and have done in my current role, and how much experience and knowledge I really have.

Job postings intimidate me because I feel so meek compared to what they’re looking for.

I’m intimidated by my own job description.  😉

If I only had Mike’s “sticktoittiveness” with the M’s.  I gave up 2 years ago.  Alicea and I used to watch every game on TV.  Believe me, July sucked when it was M’s games vs. Tour de France.  Now?  I can’t even put on FSN during a game just to have background noise while I search for something else in the channel guide!

Anyway, you’ve got to read Mike’s chronology of this season.  I love his mood tracker. 

Ahh, the Seattle Mariners. I went into this year without a lot of hope (witness — no optimistic 2006 predictions like the crazy 2005 ones). But… this team is unlike any other I have been a fan of. They have managed to get me excited and crush me not once, or twice, but seven times. Today I gave up on them for good. Or at least, I hope so.

Source: ikeepitreal: Give it Up, Turn it Loose; Or, Why Barry Zito Can Take His Laid-Back Attitude and Surfer Style Elsewhere

“The officers had no way of knowing the suspect was deaf and mute and the suspect apparently was unable to communicate that to the officers,” one supervisor wrote in a review. “The suspect could have avoided this confrontation by remaining calm and still.”

So the police expect disabled people to start wearing shirts that say “don’t shoot – I’m deaf” or “…I’ve got a learning disability” or …. 

Way to go Seattle PD, this was obviously the fault of the individual.  Can you imagine being in a silent world, one you already have trouble coping with, waiting to go to work, and when you turn around there’s an angry woman pointing a gun at you?  Yeah he shouldn’t have run – but I can understand why he did.

At least they had the decency not to press charges. 

Source: Taser use on deaf man defended

Let me guess … now they’re going to ban shoes on airplanes?

The government’s new order that all airline passengers put their shoes through X-ray machines won’t help screeners find a liquid or gel that can be used as a bomb.

The machines are unable to detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security report on aviation screening recently obtained by The Associated Press.

Source: X-rays won’t detect liquid or gel bombs – Yahoo! News

Belkin looks to be coming out with some new surge protector designs that let you plug in big bricks and lots of other things easily.  But what’s catching my eye is the “concealed’ model that looks to have the outlets on the inside of the unit.  Very cool for those who are trying to protect youngin’s!

Link to Belkin releases Compact, Concealed, and Clamp-On Surge Protectors – Engadget

I’ll have to go get some of these for Kaitlyn.  You know, to keep her important Lego creation designs and pictures of animal crackers.  🙂

Link to Kingston launches Mini Fun flash drives – Engadget

I just came across a new interface for testing your online bandwidth that lets you store previous results … COOL!  Check out www.speedtest.net.  It’s in “beta” (aren’t we all?).  Found via CNet.

I guess Dell is tired of the bad press around all of their exploding batteries.  Good call guys, good call.  Of course, one could argue that you shouldn’t have waited for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make you do it…

Link to Dell to recall 4.1M laptop batteries – Yahoo! News