My Yahoo email account was compromised 9/17 at 10:34 PM. Yahoo’s security systems refused to send about 90% of the emails the SPAMers attempted to send, but it looks like about 340 addresses in my address book were sent SPAM emails from my account.
My apologies to anyone who got SPAM from my email address. I have regained control of my email account and am using a stronger password.
I have a new job at Rafter, Inc. in San Mateo as Sr. Manager of Revenue Optimization. It is a hybrid Product Management and Analytics role. My energy will be focused on supporting the BookRenter.com site that rents textbooks to college students. It should be a fascinating gig.
One interesting thing, they issued me a Mac laptop as my day to day machine. I haven’t used a Mac daily for a few years, so I have some learning to do. Right now Mountain Lion seems like a step backwards from Windows 7, but I suspect I’ll discover what Mac fans love about it in time.
The Rafter offices are just a few blocks from where I grew up. I have been commuting via CalTrain plus my bicycle. It is cool in 2013 to be biking on streets I first biked on as a boy. I am pretty sure some of the storm drains and potholes haven’t changed in all that time.
I suggest that the revitalization of the Lincoln Motor Company, should include the practice of using historic names instead of the MK- 3 letter combinations they use now. Even Lincoln spokespeople mess up the MK-gibberish names.
Lincoln has a rich history, and plenty of names to cover their current and projected lineup. Here are my suggestions:
Sedans
SUVs & Crossovers
Still Available
Wouldn’t you be more excited about a Lincoln Zephyr than an MKZ? I know I would.
Interesting post in the NY Times Opinion Pages by Ross Douthat on the impact of people getting marrieds later in life.
One of the useful things about the “Knot Yet” report, though, is how much it tries to tell us about the impact of delayed marriage on the lives of adult men and women. The simplest way to interpret this impact is suggested by the write-up the study received from the Atlantic: Great for college-educated women, pretty good for the rest of the female population, bad for men and particularly bad for working class men. Upper-class women reap a large wage premium from delaying marriage — a college-educated woman who marries in her 30s earns over $15,000 more annually than a woman who marries in her early 20s, and when you look at household income, the premium for marrying later rises to more than $20,000. Women without 4-year degrees also enjoy a wage premium when they delay marriage, albeit a smaller one (and a very small one when you look at household income). Men, meanwhile, reap a wage premium from marrying earlier, so late marriage tends to hurt their economic prospects: For men without a 4-year degree, the earlier the marriage, the higher their income, and even college-educated men earn more if they marry in their 20s than in their 30s. (This is not the only way that the burdens of the new marital landscape seem to fall heaviest on males.)
While people may not overtly think in these terms, the impact of marriage on potential income and ability to raise children has at least a strong subconscious impact on decisions about marriage These finding are just another reason to get a good education, it reduces the impact of getting married.
March 21 is the Anniversary of my Dad’s death. He did in a plane crash when I was 13.
Sometimes in my mind I can see Dad’s smile while diving his boat or his concentration while using a power tool, and it is like Dad was here yesterday. Sometimes I strain to remember the sound of his voice and it is like Dad has been gone forever. 40 years is an objective number. But not everything stays in my memory with equal power.
Some cherished memories (each occurred more than once):
Too many more memories to mention here.
Just to say, Dad helped make me who I am today, and 40 years on I still miss him every day.
City of Heroes was not my first MMO, I played WOW first. But COH was my MMO of choice, and I had great fun playing it alone, in pick up games, with friends. COH was surprisingly solo friendly for an MMO, which suited my style. I will miss it when it closes later this year.
After having kids, I haven’t had much time to play recently, but I kept paying for COH every quarter so that I could play when time allowed.
I worked for Paragon’s predecessor studio, Cryptic, for a couple of months, before they split up and I got pulled into Yahoo! by an offer I could not refuse. I met a lot of very nice, very smart, people who ended up at Paragon. I hope everyone I knew there, and everyone I have met online there, lands on their feet. They did a lot of very cool work that they can be proud of.
I’m going to set aside all the futurist crap about on demand manufacturing reducing friction and creating markets of one. Set aside the cynical crap about piano music and smiling little girls being used to sell a technology by tugging at the heart strings. And set aside the political crap about if free markets or single payer is better at developing medical innovation. I’m just going to watch the video again, and think that Science Is Cool, and that we need more solutions like this.
2001 A Space Odyssey is the antithesis of the modern summer blockbuster. I was a huge space nerd as a kid and I still fell asleep somewhere near the 2 hour mark when I saw it in the theater. But the trailer brought back lots of good memories of the story, more from the Arthur C. Clarke novelization than from the Stanley Kubrick movie. No matter which you have fond memories of, enjoy the new trailer.
I read the first Harry Potter book, and saw several of the movies. I was vaguely disappointed in how they progressed. When I read the first book, I saw that the 4 houses, and the students in them, were transparent clichés: jocks (Gryffindor), brains (Ravenclaw), bad boys/girls (Slytherin), and losers (Hufflepuff).
I was hoping that J.K. Rowling would defy those clichés; have a situation where a Slytherin student would save the day by making a tough but decisive choice only someone from their house would make, for example, where some innocent people would be hurt but the group as a whole would be much better off. Or have a Hufflepuff student save the day by being loyal beyond reason, or stopping a war by being the only fair broker between two competing groups (they are “friend to all”). But the Harry Potter books reveled in the clichés rather than busting them.
I suppose that is why I enjoyed Not Literally’s Hufflepuff “house pride” fan video “Sorted This Way”. Funded with a $600 Kickstarter, the video leverages Lady Gaga’s hit song “Born This Way”. It is a cliché buster in its own right.
I figure that in reality, Hufflepuff’s keep society going. As the song says, they are, “dedicated and fair, hardworking, patient, and a friend to all.” Meanwhile, Ravenclaws invent synthetic derivatives and cause the financial crises, Gryffindor become neo-cons and decide to remake other people’s societies in their own image, and Slytherin subvert the institutions of society for their own gain.
In my heart, I figure the sorting hat would probably put me, and most everyone I know, into Hufflepuff. Watch the video, and celebrate badger pride!
Jetsam Not Flotsam 