Where's the Copy Editor?
The FBI interrogated a beheaded man? That is what this actual headline reads over at Fox News:

FBI grilled beheaded man in 2002 as part of Moussaoui probe


Actually, it reads like they had a BBQ.

Update: I get results? The headline now reads: Berg's Final Days Still a Mystery;
FBI grilled him about Moussaoui link

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:09 AM (Permalink)
|

 
Navel Gazing for Career Advancement
I am sure there are some helpful hints here, but my jaded, sardonic view of the world found it bordering on self-parody.

Improving Me - Your Site to Self Improvement!

May I suggest the articles on "Let Go of the Clutter" and "Choose to be Happy"?

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:03 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Jobs Data Lost in the News or Purposely Not Reported?
Did anyone notice the jobs numbers that came out last week?




The Director of the Senate Joint Action Committee sent this email out to the blogosphere (Note: I got this forwarded to me on a BFL mailing list and the group assumes, but has not yet verified, that the email is real. The economic data above is definitely real):

Subject: Question for Bloggers

Greetings, Bloggers! I'm interested in getting some honest feedback from you all if you have time. One thing that we've been pondering here at the JEC is the degree to which the good economic news of late has being drowned out by concerns about Iraq and other external events.

...

What are your thoughts? And what do you believe are the best ways to get any given message through or even around important event-driven news like that about Iraq? Is it even possible or do you think that news about "primary" events has to subside before news of the "secondary" events gets out? Am I wrong in thinking that good economic news has been obscured by news from Iraq?

My opinion? There was definitely some drowning out with the various events over the past week in Iraq, but I think part of it is the reluctance by the mainstream press to push economic news that is favorable to Bush and negative to Kerry. After all, even Kerry's misery index got more press play than the jobs data above.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 5:08 PM (Permalink)
|

 
I Made an Accurate Prediction?
I predicted (or wished) that Yahoo would increase mail storage as a response to Gmail.

They're doing it.

Hat Tip: Techdirt

posted by Director_Mitch @ 4:34 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Why We Can't Trust the Country to the Angry Left
Islamic terrorists kill his son, and the avowed anti-war activist blames...Bush of course.

(Reuters) - The father of Nick Berg, the American beheaded in Iraq, directly blamed President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday for his son's death.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM..."They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."

Yes, a group of people who's only mission in life is to kill anyone not Muslim would have been friends with your Jewish son, if only they weren't made to kill him by Bush and team.

Even allowing some off-the-cuff speaking due to grief, this sort of thinking just ignores the reality of the situation. He and others on the Left really think that there aren't people in the world who would kill them if given half a chance. And changing foreign policy or using the UN won't change their desire to kill Americans because it isn't America's politics that is creating their hate - it's the fact we aren't Muslim. And unless America changes to their special brand of Islam, they will still want to kill us, no matter what we do.

The inability to recognize the situation and pretend that "being nice" will make Muslim fanatics suddenly love us is dangerous and naive, and a reason why Kerry should be kept as far away from the White House as possible.


posted by Director_Mitch @ 3:26 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Dueling Databases Within Organizations
I received my BS at Rice University. I also received my MBA from Rice University. So imagine my surprise to get the following email:

Dear Rice Graduate:

The Rice MBA for Executives is pleased to announce that we have reserved space for Rice alumni in our class that begins this July. As a Rice graduate (Mitch: a DOUBLE Rice graduate, thank-you very much), you have proven you can meet our high academic standards, and you have gained significant work experience since graduation. I am writing to invite you to apply to the MBA for Executives Class of 2006, using a streamlined admissions process created especially for Rice alumni.

Obviously this was sent to me since I was in the undergraduate database, but there was no effort to do a cross-check with the biz school database.

While I find this amusing, if something analogous were to happen in an organization that deals with customers, it could make customers doubt the company's efficiency and destroy good will. Basically this seems like a problem that could have been easily avoided.


posted by Director_Mitch @ 12:39 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Rummy-O-Meter Blue and Falling
This is the first political laugh I have had since the Abu Ghraib story broke:




Hat Tip: The Smoking Room

posted by Director_Mitch @ 1:49 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Another Movie and Director I Have to Boycott?
What a shame. This was one of the few summer movies I was planning to see:

The world premiere of the Hollywood big-budget epic "Troy" in Berlin Sunday saw German-born director Wolfgang Petersen draw parallels between the Trojan war and the US-led war in Iraq.

Petersen...said he has been taken aback by the way the conservative rightwing has taken over the White House with a militaristic agenda

But then again, the Germans think Roosevelt was militaristic. I suppose he doesn't want any hard-earned money from a militaristic fellow like me anyway.

After the mediocre reviews of Van Helsing, I now hope Toby Mcguire can keep his mouth shut by the time Spidy II opens so I can see at least one movie this summer.

I'm a prime candidate for I Robot since I am a fan of the books, but I haven't heard any buzz about it yet (check out the web site - it's set up like it's a real site for a robot company) and I am a little dubious about the casting of Will Smith.

Hat Tip: USS Clueless

posted by Director_Mitch @ 10:13 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Google Taking the MS Route on Blogger
I take a lot of flack for using Blogger, but there is just a certain amount of inertia after being on this service for over half a year. Besides, for just about anything Blogger lacks in functionality, there always seems to be an outside company/vendor/person willing to take up the slack. For example, my comments are provided by Haloscan, my RSS feed is provided by Feedburner, and so on.

Blogger upgraded its service this weekend and besides a different look for the editing screens, comments are now provided (I'll decide later whether to convert over or not). I bet over time more and more of the outside services provided to Blogger users will eventually be pulled into the service itself (exception: RSS feed since Google has put their bets on Atom).

This is similar to what Microsoft did with its operating system. All sorts of little pilot fish fed off the morsels left behind by MS, but over time the MS shark ate the pilot fish, absorbing more and more of the third party functionality into its OS.

I am not making a judgment call since it is a perfectly viable business plan to provide "one stop shopping" to customers. It is just interesting to watch, especially as Google nears it IPO.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:55 PM (Permalink)
|

 
If Memory Serves Me Right...
...I first saw Iron Chef at a New Years Eve party, of all places. It was on in the background and after catching my eye, I had someone explain what was going on. I was immediately hooked, partly from my interest and experience with Japanese culture. My first thought upon seeing the show was "That is soooooooo Japanese."

Shamelessly copying the Iron Chef format, there is now Iron Blogger. Like the cooking show, the blog has four bloggers representing the four types of "cuisine": Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian and Green.

I just wish Chairman Kaga were MC'ing it

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:39 PM (Permalink)
|

 
Ghosts of Businesses Past
In 1999 a small group of us left a large semiconductor company, raised venture capital, and started a small semiconductor company, which was easy to do in the late 90s. We were motivated, excited, and were going to change the world. We raised $15 million in two rounds and grew from about half a dozen people crammed into a small, non-descript office to 39 people in a "Taj Mahal" location, plus three other people in two overseas sales offices.

Our Taj Mahal was located in a "science and technology center" near the University of California, Irvine. It housed two other start-ups, which were springing up everywhere in the late 90s. The front door of the building was literally 50 feet from a Starbucks, which became an official meeting room for the company (actual email: Marcomm Meeting, 3pm, Starbucks).

In May 2002, after trying to sell us, the venture capitalists unceremoniously pulled the plug on the company. The shut-down became ugly, with various factions breaking out, lawsuits flying, and friendships frayed. To this day there are colleagues who won't talk to one another. The liquidators emptied our suite of everything not nailed down, and in the following 12 months the two other start-ups in the building felt the pang of the bursting technology bubble, leaving an empty building next door to the Starbucks (we all joked about taking a job at the Starbucks since they always seemed to be hiring).

During the ensuing two years I have gone to that same Starbucks several times a week since it is the closest one to my child's nanny, where I drop off my daughter every morning. I never really thought about the subtle irony of going to my old office building nearly every day for the past two years since I try not to dwell on what might have been.

This month is the two year anniversary of the shut-down, so last Friday I decided to dwell on the past. After getting my coffee, I walked the 50 feet from the Starbucks to the empty building and to my surprise found both the building and the former suite unlocked.

Since no other tenet had moved in during the last two years, the place was the same, minus the furniture. The offices, including my own, were smaller than I remembered. The liquidators, in their haste to clean out the office, left a few whiteboards on the walls, so imagine my surprise to see my own two-year old handwriting in the marketing conference room, listing strategies to save the company. On the VP Operation's whiteboard was scrawled Mitch B&W BWD, a two-year old action item that still hasn't been and never will be executed.

As I went by each office I tried to remember who sat there and what they are doing today. To my surprise, after only two years I had trouble remembering some of the layout ("Who sat here? Wait, that was the copy room."). Everyone I know is working, but there are a few people I am not in contact with as a part of the fallout.

While this was a little weird, with thousands of start-ups that bit the dust during the tech burst, I am sure that my experience is not unique, especially in silicon valley which had far more start-ups and still has lots of empty office space that hasn't been refilled.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 12:48 PM (Permalink)
|