Month: December 2004

Time Magazine How Safe Are Our Troops? Why the Pentagon ended up with a shortage of armored vehicles for U.S. soldiers in Iraq:

The Army originally thought it needed 235 armored humvees to help bring peace to Iraq. But shortly after Bush declared major combat over in May 2003, the need for armored humvees took off like a rocket. Five months later, commanders in Iraq wanted 3,100. By early this year, the requirement was 4,000. Last month the total quietly doubled to 8,105. The Army, in other words, needs 35 times as many of these vital vehicles as its war plan predicted. [emphasis mine]

I don’t know about you, but if I missed my project plans at work by a factor of 35, I would be fired. Yeah, boss, this project will take 6 months … oops, I mean 17.5 years.

Seriously, they thought you could get by with 235 humvees for an entire country the size of California (attn Easterners: CA is huge, trust me)

I am tempted to quote the entire thing since it is so right on. Michael Kinsley:

My contention: Social Security privatization is not just unlikely to succeed, for various reasons that are subject to discussion. It is mathematically certain to fail. Discussion is pointless. [read the rest on tpm] 

Since you are interested, and I know you are. Paul Krugman took time out from his NYTimes sabbatical to write these two editorials on the subject. Very good intro to the subject.

12/6: Contrary to what the privatizers are saying, we don’t have to destroy Social Security in order to fix it.

12/9: The Bush administration’s Social Security proposal will rely on borrowing trillions, putting the money in the stock market and hoping.

If I was going to be in town I would totally go to this.

TINKLE PRE- NEW YEAR’S EVE SHOW 2004

THURSDAY, DEC 30
8PM

HOSTED BY
DAVID CROSS
TODD BARRY
JON BENJAMIN

GUESTS
PAUL F. TOMPKINS
FRED ARMISEN

MORE ACTS TBA.
@ Pianos, NYC Lower East Side

I’ll be in Vermont, Mt. Snow, again this year for those that care.

Here’s a weird trait o’ mine: (I wonder if I am the only one)

I do a lot of product recommendations for people. Computers, home electronics, phones, pdas, gadgets, whatever.

Now these things eventually get old and fail to perform to current standards. Sometimes I get follow-up calls from people like “yeah, you know that computer you recommended for me four years ago? Well, it isn’t working real good now and I need another one.” And what happens? I feel tremendous guilt/sadness for having made the suggestion and that person being out real money for something that I said to buy that isn’t worth anything anymore. Like I had stolen from them. Now I realize that this isn’t rational, but it happens to me constantly. I suppose it is the difference between someone who recommends, say, fine art — which gains value over time — and electronics which always lose it.

Just the other day Hollie showed me her MP3–CD player that I suggested a few years ago and how it paled when faced with my elegant iPod 4g; I wanted to cry.

Now playing: DJ Shadow – Giving Up The Ghost

[via Cynthia Rockwell]

Announcing my friend Rob’s new blog.

http://chienandalou.blogspot.com/

I encouraged Rob to start the blog. I know he’ll be excellent at it.

He’s still working on the /. aspects of it (as he says). [brb] Okay, I just bought a new copy of Blogjet for him. That’ll help.

And here’s the XML feed for subscribing:

F1 News – Sauber unveil new ‘supercomputer.’

Sauber has continued its offensive in the field of aerodynamics, as only nine months after the launch of its ultra-modern wind tunnel, the Swiss team has now unveiled a new supercomputer for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) at its headquarters in Hinwil.

‘Albert’, as the machine has been christened, is one of the most powerful in Formula One as well as the automotive industry as a whole and is some 30 times more powerful than any one used in the past by the team. The supercomputer was built by the Swiss company DALCO and has a total of 530 AMD Opteron processors installed in High-Density Cooling Enclosures supplied by American Power Conversion (APC).

Let it be said also that Sauber finished sixth out of ten teams and is one of the few privateer teams left in the sport. It is amazing that a mid-level team would be willing to spend God knows how much money on a 530 Opteron processor system to do work on aerodynamics. Good for them. Go Sauber.

Okay, now everyone was impressed by the original google search.

Gmail has got everyone’s attention. (I have invites available btw)

Here’s the newest absolutely killer addition to search from Google:

 (image linked)

[via BetaNews]

Proof that I completed the November Beard Club Challenge. Notes: A) I took this picture first thing in the morning right before I shaved it off — that’s why I look so tired/high B) Clever snoops will notice in the EXIF data that the picture was taken on 11/25. I had my ten year high school reunion a couple days later and I didn’t want to show up with my beard and have to explain the whole November Beard Club thing and be remembered for the next ten years as “Corey: oh yeah, the guy with the beard.”

Our office is having one of those Office-Space decorate your cube area deals (akin to Hawaiian shirt day). The “fitting carolers area” which is people I work with, but do not sit next to, decided to add me as an honorary member of their zone. You can’t see it so well in the small picture, but those are bobble-head style face pictures mounted on little springs. While I was in a meeting the other day they added me (on the right) as a little elf guy. So as I’m coming out of my long meeting a guy in the office points at me and goes “hey – little elf, nice.” Well right before I punch him in the face I think to myself maybe there is a better explanation for his comment and hold back. You would think I might be upset with the little purple elf, but it is so well executed I just can’t help but love it.

That’s my desktop thermometer. 84 degrees. Sweat shop temps. I took this picture to send to the facilities people. Prima donna reputation be dammed.

Somebody named Honeybchickie posted a comment to an old post of mine regarding Megatouch and EPH (Erotic Photo Hunt).

Hey! What was the highest you ever got at Photo Hunt??? I am on the same mission in my town and am trying to find somewhere online where everyone can compare there scores across the US. Help! 😉 Thanks!

So I am taking matters into my own hands. I created an EPH high score Wiki here on Coreyh.com. Feel free to edit the page as needed and mess with the formatting.

Link to EPH High Score Wiki

What is a Wiki?