Nathan's Occasional Blog

I’m on the phone with my folks now and I’ve just learned that my dad has prostate cancer. Not sure how I feel right now … just kind of putting on a clinical face. I hate having this skill (becoming clinical), but it’s a coping mechanism. Anyway, I am sure I’ll process this in the days and weeks to come, but for now … hmmmm. Sayin’ a prayer.

Update [90 minutes later] – I’ve found another outlet. Drinking 18 year old single malt scotch. Hey, it works. Thanks to my beautiful bride Alicea for the refill she just dropped off. Sure I have to be at church tomorrow morning at 6:30a to set up, rehearse, and play a service … but this helps now. Gee, aren’t I the healthy one?

How to cause corporate financial loss
This article was previously posted under Q20051102 [Scott’s Place]

Applies to: Google (GOOG)

SUMMARY
This article outlines how to hypothetically cause corporate financial losses during the most recent financial quarter for Google using license plate borders available from the Google store.
Note: Past financial performance is no guarantee of future performance.  “Your mileage may vary.”

MORE INFORMATION
Please see the original article for further details.

Keywords: kbhowto kbgoogle kbplates KB123456

Ni!  [sorry for the Monty Python Holy Grail reference]

Check out Chris Pirillo’s posting from today about being sick.  As I mentioned in his comments, he’s almost exactly describing my 7 month old daughter!  🙂

I really hate the taste of coffee … I get a hot chocolate.  Guest that’s not an option here.  The description is spot on though!  🙂

You Are a Frappacino

At your best, you are: fun loving, sweet, and modern At your worst, you are: childish and over indulgent You drink coffee when: you’re craving something sweet Your caffeine addiction level: low

Yes, that’s right kids – the brains behind Dilbert (Scott Adams) is now blogging his personal life experiences in Dilbert.Blog.  It’s priceless, and one you MUST subscribe to in your favorite RSS reader.

“The best part of the story is the face he made when it became clear I wasn’t going to change my mind. It looked like someone had taken his dog and shoved it up his grandmother’s ass, put them both on his driveway, borrowed his SUV and used his gas to run over them repeatedly in front of the kids.”

Okay, so I took a semester of Finance in college and had a great professor – heck he literally wrote the book, which we got for free and got to keep (we got the “release candidate” for an updated edition).  Anyway, we spent a lot of time on how stocks are priced.  Pretty fascinating stuff, but it’s pretty simple in theory.  I don’t remember the numbers but it’s essentially the value of the company’s assets plus future earnings divided amongst all the shares.

So it’s interesting to see Thomas Hawk’s analysis of Apple’s announcement about selling 1 million videos on their new service, with the stock going up $3.05/share as a result.  Here are some key figures in his math:

• Let’s assume that of the $1.99 that Apple charges per download that they get to keep half.
• Roughly 1,578,947 downloads per month.
• Each month has a 2% increase in videos sold.
• By the end of 12 months under this analysis, Apple would have … cleared $20 million in earnings on their downloads.

So Apple’s stock is up $2.5 BILLION dollars in market cap on what potentially could be $20 million in earnings. This is on top of the fact that the stock today is already at a new 52 week high and trades at almost 40 times earnings with no other major news out on the company today.

It’s all about the HYPE baby!  Personally I can’t wait to see Jobs completely screw the compny again.  I saw another article (wish I remembered what RSS feed it was from) that lammented Apple’s product design, especially around the iPod line.  To paraphrase, they make a plain white box with no real interesting design features and one of the worst UI’s I’ve seen since DOS 5.1.  PLUS you get locked in to a propreitary device connection in iTunes (yes I know you can hack in with other tools, but that’s not what Mr. Consumer knows about).  When to short … when to short…..  I’ll leave you with a nice little picture from Yahoo’s stock tracker page.

Update: In response to the annonymous poster (why not post your name and let’s have an honest discussion?) I DO NOT own any MSFT stock.  Neither do I own Apple … or anybody else (outside my 401(K)).  I make no representation that I’m an expert stock picker.  I just question THE MARKET’s sanity.  Why value a stock at a huge bonus because of a relatively small increase in revenue?  Now, I also disagree with a lot of Stevie J’s business decisions (proprietary hardware for their computers has doomed the Mac OS to a few percentage points of market share), but he’s got a flare for reaching out to consumers (marketing) and Jobs isn’t really the focus of what I’m talking about.  The market is pricing APPL based on marketing flare, just like it did with the rest of the tech industry in 1999 and 2000 (note the chart above).  Pricing like this is going to burst the bubble hard down the line, and it’s going to hurt.

As for the Cubbies?  Well, the Red Sox won last year, and the White Sox just won this year.  I’d say the Cubs are in line for 2006.  🙂

Yikes! This is a cautionary tale on datacenter planning and proactive foresight. I can’t imagine the challenges they’re facing … 3TB of data a day!?! That being said, I’d absolutely LOVE to be part of that team.

This criminal really needs to find a new job…

Autoblog —

Carjackers are lame. Carjackers who can’t figure out how to drive a manual are even more lame. An employee of a Kansas software company was approached by someone with a shotgun who was looking to borrow the victim’s Chevy Camaro. Our would-be carjacker fled the scene after finding that his new ride had a third pedal. This marauder strikes me as someone who’s poorly trained for his chosen profession, so hopefully he finds a career change in the future. I figure there’s probably a position available in a prison laundry somewhere.

Read

You have GOT to be kidding me.  This is rediculous!

Blogging Baby —

Babies have such tough lives. After all, those disrespectful adults think that babies should just be adored, stared at, and cooed over. There’s no dignity. It’s – really – a violation of their human rights. Umm… what?

This isn’t a politically-motivated science fiction scenario – it’s an actual campaign by Calderdale Royal Hospital in West Yorkshire, U.K. The hospital administration has banned cooing over babies, and dolls in the obstetric wards hold signs saying, “What makes you think I want to be looked at?” Says one hospital staffer, in explanation, “We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen.”

I think everyone knows that the babies cannot be shopped for, like freshly-picked produce. But – do babies really have the right not to be looked at? Isn’t it biologically necessary that adults should adore babies? I agree withLabour MP Linda Riordan – this is “bureaucracy gone mad.”

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Okay, so I know you’ve missed me. That’s right, the three of you who actually read this thing – I know you’ve missed my witty remarks on current events. Where have I been? Working 90 hour weeks where I don’t feel like I’m getting anything done. Sounds great, huh?

I had this great idea a year or so ago that it would be absolutely fabulous to dump our old Nortel Meridian Option 11C PBX at the office in favor of a Voice over IP (VoIP) solution from Cisco. They call their platform the Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data, or AVVID. I’m sure you can tell by what I’ve said already that I know way more about business phone systems than I would have told you I was interested in 6 years ago when I was a senior MIS major in college.

[DAMN! I graduated almost 6 years ago? Crap I’m getting old fast now. We’re off to my 10 year high school reunion next week. But I digress]

So anyway, I was intrigued by Cisco AVVID’s benefits. Things like unified messaging that integrates your voicemail into your Exchange/Outlook inbox and the ability to set up rules that will route people calling you based on criteria you set up really got me excited. I mean imagine this – a certain special someone who you never want to talk to calls and the system routes them to voicemail without even ringing your phone. Too cool! Plus a VoIP phone system leverages your existing data network so there’s no more phone wiring to mess with when you need to move a phone. Just move it.

So somehow the powers that be actually agree with me that this looks like a great idea, and I get tasked with making it happen. Shit. Now let me start off by saying that I’ve been in the consulting world as a systems engineer for the last 4+ years and I’m used to operating in that mode: you see a need on a project and you step in and fill it. Being a client is totally different.

We engaged a prominent phone company headquarterd in Denver to be our “solution partner” on this project. Essentially we wanted, and they offered, a turnkey solution. They sit down with us and figure out what we want and how we want it built, then go off and build it, deliver it, install it, test it, deploy it, and support it. Unfortunately that’s not how it turned out.

I should get going to bed as I have an early start tomorrow (today – heck I need to get up in 6 hours), but let me just say this as a word of warning to you all: a project manager can make or break a project. A great PM can overcome crappy engineers. Conversely, you can have great engineers and a great client who’s willing to shoulder more than their fair share, but if you have a project manager who doesn’t actually manage the project, you’re screwed.

Unfortunately that’s what happened to us. We didn’t get a project manager. We go an admin assistant (essentially) who thought managing a project was scheduling conference calls and sending out a project plan a couple times via email – no need to discuss that, right?

Long story short, the phone project that was supposed to go live by the end of June 2005 now looks like it will go live around the middle of November. Now to be fair, we missed June because I was out for 3 months when Alicea was sick and Kaitlyn came 9 weeks early. But once I was back the launch was pegged for 9/17. Now it’s slipped to 11/14. Nice, huh.

PROJECT MANAGERS people, find a good one and give em all the love you can.

Project Managers [Author unknown]
If you get in my way, I’ll kill you!
– ideal project manager

If you get in my way, you’ll kill me!
– somewhat less than ideal project manager

If I get in my way, I’ll kill you!
– somewhat misguided project manager

If I get in your way, I’ll kill you!
– A tough m. f. project manager(eats glass, live cats, etc.)

If get kill in will way I you.
-dyslexic, functionally illiterate project manager

I am the way! Kill me if you can!
-messianic project manager

Get away, I’ll kill us all!
-suicidal project manager

If you kill me, I’ll get in your way.
-thoughtful but ineffective project manager

If I kill you I’ll get in your way.
-project manager who has trouble dealing with the obvious

If a you getta ina my way, I gonna breaka you arm.
-project manager from New York

I am quite confident that there is nothing in the way, so no one will get killed.
-project manager who is about to get in big trouble

If you kill me, so what? If you get in my way, who cares?
-weak, uninspired, lackluster project manager

If I kill me, you’ll get your way.
-pragmatic project manager

Kill me, it’s the only way.
-every project manager to date.

If we get in each others’ way, who will get killed?
– An utterly confused manager