My Life Blog

Speaking purely hypothetically, of course.

An employee is gifted an item from his / her company.  The item is received with no guidelines, advisements, or paperwork; it is mentioned that it is for personal use.  The item also happens to be a coveted new product produced by that same company.  As such, the item has some temporary heightened value.

The employee decides to sell the item versus keeping it as he / she does not attach the same value to the device as others.  The item is placed online for sale.

Days later, the company discovers the item is for sale online.  They do so because items are apparently stolen and sold often enough to warrant this kind of sleuthing.  In this case, there is no theft.

The employee’s manager calls the employee into an office for a private chat.  The item’s online sale representation is displayed.  The manager without saying so, in so many words would like the item taken off sale. 

Again, there were no advisements prior to the change in possession.  Should the employee take the item off sale?  If the employee does not, what repercussions could there possibly be outside of the off-the-record score that managers keep?

Hypothetically, of course.  This could never happen in real life…

I just stumbled across an interesting post detailing some of the calls that went for Dwyane Wade in Game 6.  Its interesting to watch these a few days removed from the event.  You can see them here.

Seeing them again and in aggregate frustrates me all over again.  My frustration is not that these bad calls might have contributed to a Mavs series loss, but rather that the NBA really does have a problem.  Wade is very talented and can score well on his own.  As a scorer, teams are going to try to defend him closely.  But its not fair to the defense if the guy is going to draw phantom calls.  The NBA must restore some fairness in these types of situations.

To be fair, Dirk gets a lot of calls as well.  I’m not a big fan of his clumsy drives to the lane or his flops.  He’s talented enough to score well without any of those elements in his game.  You can even argue the Mavs benefited significantly from a close call at the end of Game 7 in regulation against San Antonio.  But when compared to some of Wade’s fouls it was definitely legitimate.

I feel like I haven’t made my point very well.  I guess the bottom line for me is: let’s quit giving the superstars the calls.  They’ll score well enough on their own.  Let’s even up the playing field and see who legitimately wins games.

I’ve been working more with Ruby and the Ruby on Rails framework lately, but one thing I’ve missed is a nice integrated environment.  Coming from Java where I use Intellij, well, I guess I’m used to having a nice development environment with loads of features.

The Rails core development team prefers Textmate for some reason.  I have a registered version of Textmate, but I’ve never really liked it.  It seems too minimal to me.  But of course, those 37Signals guys seem to think the appeal of minimal persists in every facet of life.  Here’s hoping their women are not disappointed in them, if you know what I mean. 

But seriously, its nice when you can have more than color syntax highlighting in your environment.  Now to be honest, I haven’t fully explored all the edges of Textmate, so it may well be capable of many things that I wish for.  However, I can say that I haven’t fully explored Intellij’s edges and yet its features and capabilities are somehow more evident.

So when I revisited RadRails recently, I was pleasantly surprised to feel as if I was in a cozy, yet more featured environment.  Maybe the two packages can do the same things, but RadRails makes its features more evident to me. 

Its funny how the smallest features are important.  In Textmate, the command (if there is one) to indent and unindent a block of text was not as I expected.  In RadRails, I was able to select a block of text and push it around as one with TAB and SHIFT-TAB.  Of course, that’s just like Intellij, so it felt familiar.  In Textmate, the same command destroyed my block. 

I guess I’m not in that minimalist camp…at least not with IDEs.  Like many things in life, size matters.  I like a "bloated" IDE full of features, so give me RadRails over Textmate.  Damn, I’m so uncool.

Last night I posted a listing on eBay for the Nokia N90 phone which I do not wish to keep.  Since the posting last night at 10:30pm or so, I’ve now received four questions all seeking to purchase the phone.  However, in all cases, they are from out of the country and do not wish to go through the auction process.

Now of course, I smell a scam.  Here’s an example "question":

Hello Seller,am peter carew and i
would like to buy your phone for my dad who has just been posted to the
United Nation Headquarters in Nigeria.i’m willing to pay for $650.00
including shipping cost.let me have your paypal info so that i ca make
the payment straight away.reply expected.

In every case, they want my full name and PayPal information.  Of course, I won’t give them either, but what are they likely to do with this information?  While I can sense the scam, I cannot figure it out.  Anyone have any ideas?

UPDATE:  I have done subsequent research on this and found this blog entry which spelled it out for me.  Its doubtful that I would have fallen for these, but its all good to know.  I have posted an addendum to my listing advising would-be scammers to move on.  We’ll see if that helps.  Between the time I originally posted this and this update, I have received another such message.  I had no idea how rampant this was!

Since I defended against the San Antonio conspiracy theory, I cannot play the conspiracy card for the Mavericks as an explanation for their loss tonight.  But I can certainly question several of the foul calls.  At the very least, the NBA has a ways to go on their refereeing. 

Watching Dwyane Wade initiate contact and get the foul makes me crazy.  He did so with Devin Harris and it was blatant.  There was another case where he was untouched and drew the foul.  And then there was the foul where he pushed off on Dirk and drew the foul.  Its certainly true that the league’s stars get the calls, but let’s at least keep it reasonable.  Geez.

And though it wouldn’t have helped the cause, did anyone notice the shirt-grab on Jason Terry on the last shot?!  How do you have a fist full of jersey and not draw a foul? 

Oh well.  The Mavericks had a winnable game and their refusal to go to the rack doomed them.  They settled for outside shots and though they had early success, they soon went cold.  The chill prevailed throughout the evening.  In my opinion, when you go cold from the outside, you have to find another way.  Drive the rack, boys! 

Player of the game for the Mavs:  Daniels.  Wow.  And I wanted to see less of him.  I got my wish for Van Horn who ended his year with a DNP. 

The worst part of this is that Antoine Walker gets a ring.  He’s the most selfish player in the league and somehow gets rewarded.  It makes me question my religion.

And finally, now we all know that you don’t plan the parade after your 2nd win.  The Basketball Gods are so unforgiving of such egregious sins. 

And so it ends for the Mavs; a much better playoff run than the Stars who have been golfing for two months now. 

Next up, Aggie football where I do not expect to be blogging about a championship game. 

Yesterday a meeting was called and a select few of my team members were invited.  The meeting was billed as a refocusing meeting.  In that meeting our deadline was extended one week.  So now they want to go live on the weekend prior to July 4th.

But something else happened.  They gave all in attendance a Nokia N90 phone.  These are some of Nokia’s best phones and they appear to be coveted in the United States. 

It would be a nice gesture except that they left out several members of the team.  One in particular was more deserving than one in attendance.  But in my opinion, no one should be left out.  So now I have to reconcile my feelings about being one of the chosen ones.   I don’t feel good about it and neither did a buddy of mine who tried to give his back.  His attempt was denied.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why our management would want to create a situation where some of our team will feel left out.  I think the reward stands to do as much damage as good.  So in my opinion, even in trying to do something good, our management still screwed it up. 

On my part, the phone means nothing to me.  Its nice, but more than what I need.  And honestly, I’m not really moved by this gesture.  What I really want is more meaningful work, a chance to succeed, and a little bit of fun.  That would be a reward far beyond any material possession.

What a storied series this has become!  And unfortunately, the lead story tonight is only partially what happens on the floor.  I must say that I’m disappointed in the organization as it misbehaves in front of all to see.  Both Cuban and Johnson should know better.

But here we are and the Mavs still have homecourt advantage.  What do I predict?  A Mavs win, of course.  If this team is not sufficiently enraged by Stackhouse’s suspension and all the bad calls from Game 5 then they are a team that cannot be motivated by anything.

Some quick hits:

Dwyane Wade is not Michael Jordan.  He may have superior Finals stats, but just looking at the highlights, I’m reminded at how special Jordan was.

Dirk Nowitzki is the best Maverick player, but he must take it to the rack and he must hit his shots.  He’s been unable to pull it together in this series.  He has two games to restore the lustre on his playoff career.

Jason Terry will probably be the key player.

Stackhouse should go off after the bitterness of the suspension.  I’d like to see him also take it to the rack with avengance.  And when he gets there, let’s get the dunk to fall down.

Devin Harris better make the layups.

Please, very little Marquis Daniels and even less of Keith Van Horne.

And if the Mavs do lose, let’s all be good sports.  And if the Mavs win, let’s all be good sports too.

In the weeks prior to my vacation, I worked on average 55 hours per week.  In the week before I left, I worked 72 hours.  I don’t mind working, but I must believe in the cause and I must feel like I can be successful.

But this silly project fails on both counts.  The root cause is really that our management allowed our business partners to engage us without being responsible for providing us requirements.  Think of it as if you were given a picture of a location, but no map.  There’s a lot of wandering that can go on in a case like that.  And so it is, we wander, and we have no contract with our business partner.

And yet despite having no requirements and no project plan, we do have a due date.  And despite obvious scope increases (we think, anyway) the due date doesn’t change.  I’ve already eclipsed 40 hours this week.  And these are hard, stressful, filled-with-panic-and-chaos hours.  We have been doing this for months.

So as our due date looms and many of us have given it all we’ve had, our management is trying to go to the whip, but in the strangest way.  Today, we received an email which incents us with money to close out defects.  There are stipulations about the idea of close-out, but suffice it to say that the money is not bad.

But I’m sickened and offended by this.  I do quality work and I have worked the long hours.  I can interpret this new incentive program to mean that we aren’t working hard enough or conscientiously enough.  After all, they have to resort to money now since our professionalism isn’t enough.  I have never heard of such a thing and am embarrassed that my company would condone such a program.

So I have already let my management know that I will not be accepting any money that comes as a result of this program.  I suggested that we should have invested the time and money into improving our process.  All this will get me is the reputation of a non-team player.  But alas, my check-in rate ranks second on our team, so I know I’m carrying my weight.  That may not be the definition of team player, but I’m contributing heavily.

So the result of this program will have the opposite affect on me.  I will not be working any additional hours as we are being encouraged to do.  If you can’t thank me in any way but a last minute lame incentive program, then I don’t need your thanks period.

For now, work is my day job that pays the bills.  My off time will have to provide the interesting projects where I can manage myself.  Now if I can just make it pay so that I can remove the day job from my life. 

Needless to say, it took two and a half weeks for my vacation buzz to dissipate completely.  Is it too soon to book tickets for Kauai again?

99-85 and it wasn’t even that close.  Garbage time began in the 3rd period after the Mavs rolled out to a 28 point lead.  They attacked in waves.

The referee conspirators meanwhile called 27 fouls on the Mavericks and only 23 on the Heat.  And the Mavericks had 18 fouls called on their starters compared to 12 from the Heat.  Of course, the Heat starters sat most of the second half, so I guess its hard to conspire against a team when they lay an egg.

Shaq was held to 5 points on 5 shots after scoring 2 points on the very first play.  There is no conspiracy here, the Mavericks just are a deep team that plays team defense.  And oh by the way, the offense isn’t too bad either.

If the Mavericks go on to win, will we have to asterisk the championship in order to appease those who still cling to the conspiracy theory?  I personally don’t think so.  If they win the championship, it looks like it will be earned to me.

Cliffs from Honopu Ridge
Originally uploaded by bill_eisenhauer.

Today we are taking two of our favorite pictures from our recent Kauai trip to get 5×7s of them. We have a series of these types of pictures and are adding to the collection.

This picture is taken from our Honopu Ridge hike. Its just really hard to convey how spectacular scenes like this really are. The size of what you are seeing is also elusive in just a picture. In this case, just imagine that a helicopter would a small spec. And unfortunately, helicopters do clutter this view on occasion given that’s its a Kauai highlight.