hmc and i were watching the winter x games this evening, and my favorite snowboarder, shaun white, was doing some crazy ass shit. the announcers were talking about how great it would be if he won the event, since he’s coming back from knee surgery, busting an acl or something a year ago.
hmc then told me how someone at work last year tore an acl, and for the reconstructive surgery, they made her pick: did she want a tendon from a cadaver or a pig?
and of course, it’s immediately a personality test:
cadaver or pig?
on one hand, now you’ve got part pig in you. hell, you are part pig. do you suddenly feel back about eating pork? eating bacon?
on the other hand, now you’ve got part dead person in you. is that creepy? isn’t that how a lot of horror movies start out? why not just cut off murderer’s hands and graft them on to your arms to replace your hooks, while you’re at it?
i think i’m going to have to go pig.
because who doesn’t love bacon?
Name Ed
Company xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx
Title 1Z0-007 Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL
Started 1/29/2005 4:32:45 AM (GMT+0:00)
Ended 1/29/2005 6:18:24 AM (GMT+0:00)
Passing Score 70%
Your Score Pass - 80.77% (42 earned out of 52 possible)
blogs connect people! they reunite long lost friends!
my recent post about finding out that javi wrote for lost resulted in him finding my site, and allowing us to get in contact for the first time in over ten years. when i asked him if he had found it during his daily self-google, he replied, “but of course!”
joking aside, this put into my head: how googleable are you?
taking precious time away from my fruitless studying, i performed and impromptu little science experiment, googling several of my friends.
xz: easy. first link leads to his blog.
danger: easy. pictures of the fishlab crew, waiting for fish.
rlv: easy. lots of links, including her .mac homepage with ro pix.
roo: nothing, although lots of links to an unrelated ebay fabric store.
cf: not much, but there’s a link to where she was quoted on a anti-wal-mart book.
w: lots of dance performance related hits, and some work and alumni related hits. the interesting thing is that there are only two pages, and pretty much all of the listings are actually her.
hmc: all false positives, except for the imdb listing.
what have we found? while it definitely helps to have an online presence, it seems that it’s more important to have unique uncommon names. you’re going to find more about yourself if your name is, say, javier grillo-marxuach than if your name is david smith. again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. it keeps you from getting found, but it also keeps you from getting fired.
the other question, of course, is: how googleable do you want to be? i take great care in making sure that it’s almost impossible to get any results for me. i’ve removed my last name, my company, and enough information that searching those items on google produces absolutely nothing. it does help that my last name is pretty common for a taiwanese name, and my first name is a handy abbreviation for ‘editor’. the one legitimate hit is my amazon wishlist. it’s probably the only place where i publicly use my real full name, and it’s only for relatives on hmc’s side of the family to look and buy stuff. which i don’t know if they’ve actually ever done.
once i did get a gift out of the blue from it, but it was actually because someone was trying to send a present to someone else who also had my name. go figure.
all in all, if you want more publicity, consider changing your name to flaubert winterbottom-smythe.
the other day when i was at the office, i got mistaken for someone else.
twice.
in the span of two minutes.
oh, this is funny, right? ho ho ho, what a coincidence. maybe you think so, unless you’re a minority and you get mistaken for someone else because you’re a minority. in that case, how is that funny? oh, ho, that’s funny! it’s just racism again. we all look alike! or it’s just insensitivity! ha ha, we love that too!
i don’t know what was worse: the first one time where he realized it right away and corrected himself and apologized, and but then brought up the infamous time where i was mistaken for someone else in the same way at a huge regional meeting, where i left the room because of it.
or the second time where the other guy mistook me for the same person, but i just ignored it. instead of stopping, and saying, “excuse me? did you call me brian? i’m not brian.”
maybe i’m just extra irritated at this because i let it pass. i’m not sure why i’m more likely to do ths in a work situation. i guess you don’t want to rock the boat or be seen as a troublemaker, but isn’t that playing into the fucking stereotype? is it too hard to ask to be recognized as yourself and not someone who has the same vague genetic makeup but looks nothing like you? someone who doesn’t even do the same job as you? someone who wasn’t SE of the year two years ago? are you kidding me?
motherfucker.
for the record, my name is not brian. i don’t look anything like brian. and if this is the year to fuck shit up, i’m not going to just shrug this shit off anymore.
unless you’re my yoga teacher, that is.
what a useless and wasted day.
what was supposed to be an intensive day studying (cramming) for my oracle test, turned into a mostly unproductive day barely studying at all.
problems:
the last two wouldn’t even really be annoying if they weren’t just a way of highlighting the fact that i’m such a pathological procrastinator. and yet, if everything does work out and i pass my test, then i get money. like mr. krabs says, “money money money! mmmm money!” computers are good. computers are bad. computers annoy us. and then they give us money.
of course, later come the tubes in our neck and mouth as we power the computers as human fuel cells. that’s called grid computing, my friends, and larry ellison says that it’s the future!
(side tech note: the new rss v2 feed works much better than the v1 feed. it’s fancy and lists comments, too! i recommend it to all my friend who use feeds, and their friends who use feeds, and so on and so on and so on…)
a new service to allow you to call your pet, any time, any where:
The patent pending PetsMobility™ PetsCell TM will be compatible with existing cellular and satellite GPS technology. The PetsCell™ will allow pet owners to talk to their pets as well as allowing owners to request assistance should they become incapacitated and require help. In addition, and perhaps more valuable, pet owners will have a piece of mind that if their pet is lost and someone finds their pet wandering the streets, with a simple press of a button on the PetsCell™, the auto dial function will dial the owners home alerting the owner to retrieve their pet.
While on vacation, at work, or on the road, pets can be contacted by that friendly recognizable voice of their owners.
The PetsCell™, 2-way communication device will also be available with an optional GPS tracking chip and a fibre optic camera for search and rescue applications.
“lassie! there’s trouble at the old mill! and pick up some milk on the way home!”
i asked my parents for the star wars dvd boxed set for xmas, and the other day i got around to watching them. unfortunately, watching star wars for the first time in over five years, i was really disappointed. granted, i wasn’t exactly sober when i watched it, but still, i don’t think i ever noticed these things before:
from the los angeles times: Airline Drinking Water Flunks EPA Tests
The drinking water on about 1 out of every 6 airplanes flunked a random bacteria test administered in November and December at airports across the nation, including Los Angeles International Airport.
The results surprised the EPA, which ran the tests to make sure that a sampling in August and September was valid. But the new round indicated a wider problem than the first tests, which found bacteria in the water of 1 out of every 8 planes sampled.
…
In its new round of testing, the EPA sampled water from galley taps as well as bathroom faucets in 169 domestic and international flights, finding total coliform bacteria — an indicator of potential disease-causing organisms — in 29 planes.
…
ATA spokesman Doug Wills said the EPA’s failure to find E. coli, a bacteria that can cause severe gastrointestinal problems, showed that drinking water on airlines was safer than ever.
great! they didn’t find anthrax or smallpox either, so good job! well done.
and from the new york times: conservatives suspect spongebob’s secret gay agenda!
“Does anybody here know SpongeBob?” Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked the guests Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies to celebrate the election results.
SpongeBob needed no introduction. In addition to his popularity among children, who watch his cartoon show, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show “The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.”
Now, Dr. Dobson said, SpongeBob’s creators had enlisted him in a “pro-homosexual video,” in which he appeared alongside children’s television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a “tolerance pledge” that includes tolerance for differences of “sexual identity.”
The video’s creator, Nile Rodgers, who wrote the disco hit “We Are Family,” said Mr. Dobson’s objection stemmed from a misunderstanding. Mr. Rodgers said he founded the We Are Family Foundation after the Sept. 11 attacks to create a music video to teach children about multiculturalism. The video has appeared on television networks, and nothing in it or its accompanying materials refers to sexual identity. The pledge, borrowed from the Southern Poverty Law Center, is not mentioned on the video and is available only on the group’s Web site.
Mr. Rodgers suggested that Dr. Dobson and the American Family Association, the conservative Christian group that first sounded the alarm, might have been confused because of an unrelated Web site belonging to another group called “We Are Family,” which supports gay youth.
…
On Wednesday however, Paul Batura, assistant to Mr. Dobson at Focus on the Family, said the group stood by its accusation.
“We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids,” he said. “It is a classic bait and switch.”
yesterday i was sitting in my little closet office (as opposed to office closet, which since i live in san francisco, would actually be classified as a second bedroom), and i looked up to the one large framed item i have in there, which is a poster for the movie the killer, signed by director john woo.
this is something i used to have in my office when i worked at sony, but haven’t put up at xxxxxx, for the simple reason that it’s really hard to hang large framed items on cubicle walls. and let’s not even talk about how the cubicles are literally shrinking. the funny thing is, seeing this poster yesterday didn’t remind me of john woo or chow yun-fat, or even anyone at sony.
instead, it reminded me of javier grillo-marxuach.
back in high school, i fell in with a rough and tumble group of iconoclasts, both feared and shunned by the rest of the school. yes, i’m talking about huron players, the school drama department. i don’t even recall quite how that happened, but it was really fun, and it did result in my first girlfriend, so who’s complaining? i managed to go through a couple of years without actually learning anything, but i recall doing tech, running lights and sound for some productions, and basically learning to kill time without actual education taking place.
while i never acted in the formal plays, i did have little bit parts in a weekly lunchtime theatre that we put on, most of which was written by our most talented (only) playwright, one javier grillo-marxuach. yes, this crazy kid with the big glasses and bushy eyebrows penned play after play for us, most of them silly and nonsensical but a big hit with the kids. i forget where he went to college, but i heard through the grapevine that after college he moved out to lost angels, trying to write screenplays and break into the biz. although i was living in venice at the time, we never hooked up, and i lost track of him, probably due to the fact that i’ve lost track of basically everyone i know before college. (hell, if i’ve known you for more than four years and i still talk to you, count yourself lucky. if i’ve known you for four years already: be warned!)
much to my disappointment, i realized later that many of the more hilarious skits that we performed for lunchtime theatre were actually edited monty python bits. however, there was one really outrageous story idea he pitched to me once that involved a crazy action plot which was just an excuse for the brilliant line for the poster: “…and ten thousand bullets.”
alas, if you look at the tagline on my poster of the killer, it reads, “one bad hitman. one tough cop. and ten thousand bullets.”
thus, seeing this again, i was reminded of javi, and i wondered if he ever made it in the biz, or if he just wasn’t really that talented at all.
and yet tonight, while catching up on my six week backlog of lost, the most brilliant tv show of the season, what do i see in the opening credits?
supervising producer - javier grillo marxuach.
from today’s pistons-magic basketball game:
boingboing notes that not only can you buy rolls of toilet paper and huge-ass amounts of butter and meat at costco, but you can also apparently buy an original authentic crayon drawing by pablo picasso:
This is an original crayon on paper drawing by Pablo Picasso. The front of the work is signed and dated (November 29, 1970) by Pablo Picasso. The authentication is a hand written and signed declaration by Picasso’s daughter, Maya on a photograph of the actual drawing. She is the world’s utmost authority. Hand-made in Italy, the solid wood frame is hand-gilted with 22K gold leaf to complement the work. The work of art is then surrounded by hand-stretched linen.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is widely considered to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. This versatile, Spanish born artist was an expert painter, printer and sculptor. He mastered various mediums, and is most renowned for pioneering the Blue and Pink Period and the Cubism movement. Today, six of the top ten most expensive and coveted paintings are by Pablo Picasso.
Important, historical and collectible, the art presented here is museum quality fine art created by the greatest masters of the past century. Each piece is handsomely framed in acid-free, archival materials to preserve their beauty and lasting value.
there i was last friday, despondent that all my plans to go to tahoe had fallen apart. 18+ feet of fresh snow, and i was going to be sitting at home in san francisco, with the only white covering in sight being a sleepy cat on my lap. where were all my former snowbunnies? either felled due to sickness (joy), nesting (kmf), or lameness (dr.mike), leaving me without resort.
but i guess when without other options, just ask your community and they shall provide! luckily i hooked up with amy and jeff from the RS, and they let me tag along for the weekend. they’re nice, they appreciated that i allowed them to use the carpool lane, and they’re pro-stripper.
i got to hit sugar bowl one day and northstar the next. the snow was great and the resorts were a little crowded, but i got some good boarding in and that made it all worthwhile. i also got to try out my giro tuneups, which are earpads that snap right into my helmet that have speakers built in! that allowed me to plug my ipod into my helmet and listen to beautiful jazz while sliding down the slopes. that’s a pretty great experience, let me tell you.
alas, when i went to northstar, due to some reconfiguration due to circumstances, i somehow managed to lose my phone. that is, i put my phone in my breast pocket with my wallet, and then sometime in the afternoon when i went to check it for messages in case the people from the cabin i rode with that day were trying to contact me, i noticed that a) my pocket was open and b) while my wallet was still in there, my phone was not.
however, it turned out all right, as by the time i got back home to the city, there was a message on my voicemail from northstar, saying that they had found my phone. i called them this morning, managed to identify my phone, and they’re going to send it back to me.
moral of the story: always have an entry called “home” in your phone address book.
being without a phone is kind of unsettling, however. all of a sudden not only can people not really reach me (ok, not that bad), but working from home is more difficult, going on sales calls and coordinating with people is harder, and i can’t even do things like participate on con-calls while driving, or check traffic conditions. i feel so… amish.
also, i’m very happy today because they finally fixed my laptop, which had undergone a relapse lobotomy, where it only thought it had half as much memory as it actually did. man, getting by with 256MB of memory is incredibly painful, let me tell you. try only being able to open one application at a time. try waiting five minutes for an app to open or close. or try waiting for half an hour for one app to switch to another, while your hard drive grinds away furiously, swapping memory to disk.
256MB? are you kidding? i’ve got usb memory sticks with more storage than that. i’m better off hiring monkeys to write things down for me with blunt sticks!
they finally replaced the motherboard (again), so i’m back to full (512MB) strength. and i just had them order an upgrade to 1GB of memory, so i can put all of these horrible times behind me.
ok, i guess i can’t really be amish if i’ve still got a working laptop. oh, and there’s that blackberry, right. what’s the amish equivalent? yelling?
don’t ask me how i stumbled upon this, from avn last july:
CHATSWORTH, Calif.- At every Von’s supermarket, there is, apparently, a list of words that bakery employees aren’t allowed to write on birthday cakes. Hottie director Francesca Le found this out a couple of Saturdays ago. To celebrate Gia Paloma’s 20th birthday, which coincidentally was the same day she had hired Paloma to blow five guys for her outré and pervy Cum Swallowing Whores series, Le wanted to express her sincere birthday wishes with a Von’s chocolate layer cake with “Cum Swallowing Whore” written on it.
They wouldn’t do it.
They would write “Cum Swallowing Gia,” and they almost did, except they spelled “swallowing” as “swalling,” so the cake read “Cum Swalling Gia” in pretty icing.
It’s the thought that counts, and Paloma couldn’t believe they had an issue writing anything on the cake. “This is Chatsworth. It shouldn’t be a deal,” she said.
before she left for lost angels (again), hmc threw this last postulation about why xz and danger didn’t like the life aquatic:
as for danger, she probably didn’t like it because it showed that people who are marine scientist types are jerks.
hey man, i’m just the messenger.
people keep asking me, “what’s it like having hmc back?”
uhhhh. maybe i’d know if she’d stick around for more than two weeks at a time. no, but seriously, besides the episodes of lost and full metal alchemist piling up on my tivo and the rigorous feeding schedule (what? i have to eat? every meal of the day?), there is a real, practical, tangible effect of having her back in town.
keys.
or more specifically, too many keys.
i’ve already got plenty of my own. i’ve got three house keys, a garage and mailbox key, and some other key that might be to the ellsworth apartment (or maybe to my parents’ house in diamond bar). then there’s the key to my car with the alarm fob, plus the land cruiser key as well. and a swiss army knife and a mini light.
what really pushes everything over the top is they key hmc’s jeep. not only is it huge, but it also has a huge fob as well for remote locking and trunk release, etc.
the problem is that i’m a guy, so being a guy, the keys go in my pocket. however, now with the jeep keys, i’ve now crossed the critical mass of too many keys and my pocket’s damn well full of hard and pointy keys. which is not something you really want to sit uncomfortably in that area.
if were a girl, then i could just throw them in my purse or something, like hmc does. you should see the mess of keys she has in there, all on an rock climbing-grade carabiner. i don’t know what she’s got on there: keys to old apartments, keys to friends’ houses, a key to al capone’s vault. and yes, the key to my heart.
i guess i shouldn’t complain so much. i wanted her back, and if that’s what it costs, then that’s what it costs.
is that a jeep key in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
a nice thing came in the mail for us yesterday.
no, not the premiere issue of supermodel phone numbers monthly (still waiting, still waiting!), but instead, something equally as unexpected and far fetched.
when we were in the last throes of our honeymoon last year in new zealand, there was a stretch where we were changing our hotel every day for three days in a row. that’s what happens when you don’t plan ahead. sure, “live by the moment,” they say. “it’s wonderful! you’re unburdened! you get freedom! choices!”
while this is all true, you also get the freedom to choose what hotel you want to try to find vacancy in because the room you’re where staying has been booked for the next evening.
somewhere in one of these swaps from one hotel to another, hmc lost her hat. not “blew her top” or lost her temper, but her actual hat. and not just any hat, but a nice straw black and white hat that she had in fact just bought earlier on our trip, i think at some fashionista store in sydney chinatown.
unfortunately, amidst all the moving and packing and unpacking and “unseasonable” torrential freezing rain, we didn’t realize this until two days later. hmc thought she knew exactly where she left it (on the tv in hotel #2), but we didn’t have time to go back or call them before we fled the country.
we called them from home and asked to see if they could find it, and they said that they would check, but at that point we basically wrote the fantastic hat off.
but what showed up in the mail yesterday? it was the lost hat! the nice people at the hotel not only found it, but they mailed it to us for free, refusing our offers to pay for postage in the first place when we inquired about it.
hooray for them! to that end, if you’re ever visiting christchurch, new zealand, you should definitely stay at warner’s historic hotel, right on cathedral square. not only in a great location, but the rooms were nice and the staff was great. and now we know the staff is extra great! (plus you can get cheap online rates!)
not that i’m telling you to go to new zealand in the first place.
taiwan (currently) not only has the world’s tallest building, but also the world’s fastest elevators (from roland piquepaille’s technology trends):
Of course, these elevators, which exceeded the previous speed record by an impressive 33%, are filled with new technology.
* The world’s first pressure control system, which adjusts the atmospheric pressure inside a car by using suction and discharge blowers, preventing those riding inside the car experiencing ‘ear popping’.
* An active control system which cancels vibrations by moving the counter mass in the opposite direction based on the vibration data from a sensor installed in the car.
* Optimization in the configuration of the streamlined car to reduce the whistling noise produced by a car running at a high speed inside a narrow hoist-way.
ok, the engagement tag team plus roo has me thinking about this:
why is bill (zissou) loveable? or at least ultimately loveable?
spoilers follow.
steve zissou is a jerk. he’s just going through the motions, living on past glories, and leading his shell/sham of a “team zissou” on ridiculous uninteresting quests.
but i think there’s a clear sense of his realization of this at the end. he does talk about giving up the mission and just going home, but it doesn’t just seem to be the fact that he’s got no other options or that they’re out of money. when talking to cate and reviewing the article, he says something to the effect of, “it makes me come off as arrogant and a little bit of a prick, but i’m ok with that.”
i don’t take this to mean that he’s fine with being a prick, but more that he’s now come to accept who he is instead of who he was or who his image wants him to be. this allows him to start being a person again and thus in turn dealing with everyone else as a person and not just a cog on the team.
for me, i did think it was the sub scene where it all came together. despite the silly cgi fish (rant about gratuitous and superfluous cgi use rampant in numerous recent movies later), it’s where he’s not only vindicated in his quest and validated as an explorer, but it’s also where he’s finally able to realize and deal with his grief over losing esteban, who’s a brother or maybe even a father figure to him. (is there also a realization that he’s lost not only a father figure but the chance to finally be a good father figure to ned? maybe not.) everyone reaching out to him and comforting him in the sub seems to me that they also recognize this and that they still love him, and so should we.
this acceptance is echoed in the credits, where the whole team is back, including angelica houston as well as the injured intern.
as for the other films, how is bill (zissou) any worse than bill (blume) from rushmore? i couldn’t stand him. granted, it’s been a while since i saw the film, but i remember hating that character immensely. although maybe that was the point, since you’re supposed to root for max, but i found max pretty annoying as well. argh.
and as for tenenbaum gene: what? all i remember is gwyneth. and some homing pigeons. certainly no sense of perfection. hell, i’d rather watch go again.
i don’t know why i’m arguing this so much. like i said, i’m not even a wes anderson film.
talk to me after i go see team america: world police at the red vic on thursday!
after finally finding xz’s new blog (thus experiencing the same phenomenon that bpress did of only relying on rss readers and thus not knowing where the new one was), i saw that he reported on the movie that we saw the other day, wes anderson’s new film, the life aquatic with steve zissou. his assessment was that it was essentially “craptastic”, and that wes should be put out to pasture (maybe i’m paraphrasing a little).
i, however, ultimately liked it. in fact, i went so far to say that i liked it best out of all wes anderson’s films. and given that this is “fuck shit up in 2005”, i’m obliged to say so. but i guess the corollary to that is that i need to explain it to, not just make random reckless proclamations. (that, however, may be the theme for 2006: “talk random smack in 2006!”)
so honestly, i’ve never been that big a wes anderson fan. ok, i guess that blows my whole argument right there, as i don’t know what i’m talking about, right? i mean, if someone said to me, “i’m not a kurosawa fan, but i didn’t like the seven samurai,” i’d write them off right then and there. however, it’s not just that i haven’t been a fan, but it’s that i feel like i should be a fan, but somehow he’s never quite clicked for me. i get the sense that i’m the perfect demographic: strange quirky humor, odd performances, sometimes senseless plot twists, yet fairly deadpan delivery all should result in a movie that i’d just out and out love. and yet i don’t. every time it just leaves me feeling like that it didn’t quite hit the mark. like it should have been hilarious and not just kind of humorous and odd. or that i should have thought that it was brilliant, but instead i found it a little clever and no more. rushmore, tenenbaums, bottle rocket, all pretty much left me with the same feeling. in fact the only thing that i really loved were those shorts he did for the mtv movie awards with the max fischer players.
if that’s the case, why did i like life aquatic? honestly, i don’t know. i was watching the movie, and having that same feeling during it as i did during the other ones, thinking that it was humorous but not hilarious, some really nice little bits in there, but not really coming together as a whole. and then at the end, it did come together as a whole. i don’t know, maybe where they all reach out and touch steve in the sub. maybe the fact that steve comes to accept who he is and can be himself again. or maybe it’s all those david bowie songs sung in portuguese.
it was a little like lynch’s wild at heart for me: i wasn’t really sure about it until the very last scene, and then it somehow won me over.
so there. i liked it. it’s no malkovich, but at least i enjoyed it. can’t we still be friends?
as for the rest of the year 2004 in film, was it as craptastic as xz says? well, i certainly liked eternal sunshine. and the incredibles was great. and so was super size me. does hero count if it finally came out here in 2004? if so it might be the best film of the year. certainly better than flying daggers. oh, and if by that standard, then also last life in the universe was pretty wonderful. i guess then shaolin soccer counts too.
so that’s three movies, maybe six on technicalities. that’s not a bad year in my book, and i haven’t even got around to seeing almodovar’s bad education yet.
how great is this: elephants pitch in to clear tsunami debris:
The massive waves, which killed 5,000 and left nearly 4,000 missing in Thailand, dumped debris more than a mile from the popular beaches of Phuket island and Phang Nga province a week ago. While heavy machinery works on the tangled wreckage that used to be posh seafront resorts, some areas are too muddy or hilly for anything other than 4 foot drive.
So the Wang Chang elephant farm in the 17th-century Thai capital of Ayuddhaya offered to send in its best pachyderms. They arrived by truck Sunday in Phang Nga and got to work immediately — after a quick shower to cool off in the tropical heat.
…
“They will be assigned to work in towing heavy objects and pulling out debris,” said Siriphong Leeprasit, a district official in Phang Nga. “Elephants could work better in pulling out the remains of collapsed buildings and houses, especially in areas flooded with mud or hilly areas.”
In Indonesia, another 11 elephants — native to badly hit Sumatra island — have been pressed into similar duty because there were few trucks and other heavy equipment to do the job there. A TV report showed them pulling a sport utility vehicle from a collapsed building.
Cranes and backhoes have been used to open routes to areas cut off in Thailand, but many local residents have complained that assistance has been slow to arrive and some areas have still not been accessed, particularly near Khao Lak beach, another hard-hit tourist zone about 50 miles north of Phuket.
So two of the elephants headed into a rough forested road that was blocked by uprooted palm trees, cement utility poles, cars, motorbikes and TV sets. A gray police patrol boat had washed up on a hill, more than a mile from the beach. The receding waters left behind two murky saltwater lakes.
…
The animals made quick work of huge muddy clumps of plant material and didn’t need much more time to handle the heavy utility pylons. Then, after a little lunch, they were ready to start the next task.
from nytimes: interesting thing from the lenovo buyout of ibm’s pc business: they’re outsourcing management of the new company to senior ibm execs:
American multinational companies outsource manufacturing to China. Why can’t a Chinese company outsource management to the United States?
Executives at Lenovo - which gets about 98 percent of its $3 billion in revenue from China - are, in effect, acknowledging that they do not have the necessary global experience to run the new company.
…
Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seem disappointed by the move. In fact, many seem pleased to be buying into a blue-chip American corporation.
…
Many analysts were surprised by Lenovo’s decision to outsource its management to New York.
“I admire what Lenovo is doing,” said Joe Zhang, a UBS analyst who follows Lenovo. “Many Lenovo executives have decided to do this at the expense of their careers. They’re putting personal ego behind for the greater good of the company.”
People involved in the negotiations with I.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw no other choice. They recognized that Lenovo could not simply take over a much bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run it from Beijing.
i don’t know if this is a early trend or unsettling omen, but 2005 seems to have started very combatative for me.
not in any live confrontation, but more in tone and in thought. i’ve already gotten into a couple of email scuffles around the new year, one not really serious at all, but another one potentially quite vicious. granted, it’s about something as trivial as fantasy football, but more it’s about tired being of hassled and people complaining about shit as trivial as, uh, fantasy football.
it’s a little worrying, though, as i feel that i’m just more ready to engage than normal. you want to get into it? bring it on. watch out, bacon! here comes sizzlean!
i don’t know if it’s a return to my earlier years where i used to be a lot more angry and agressive, but i hope not as that’s not really who i want to be anymore. a lot of that anger was rooted in possible unhappiness, so if i’m angry again, does that mean i’m unhappy again? great.
or maybe it is the new year. last year was so full of hope, the possibility of doing good, regime change and getting the crooks out of office, and it all went to shit. they won, they played their tricks and came out ahead again. and the rest of the country really wanted that anyway. so if that’s the case, why be a sucker? take no prisoners, do it for yourself, and screw everyone else. isn’t that what we’ve learned?
ah, alas, the buddhists say that this is the most important time to hold the teachings in mind!
Student: What should we do if people take advantage of our kindheartedness and use it against us? Most people feel that they can only give so much, but they also need to receive. We feel we can’t give and give and give to people who just take and take and take.
Chogyam Trungpa: Give your goodness back to them. Let them glow. You have that much power. You can do it. You don’t need to rely on anybody else’s goodness. You have a resource already, which is your own goodness. You are already good, and you can actually transmit that goodness to others. In Buddhism, we call it tathagatagarbha, or buddha nature. (thanks, cheryl!)
but still: grrrrr!