Category: General

Almost without noticing it, I’ve found myself surrounded by and using Samsung devices. I hadn’t really thought about this at all until yesterday’s news of Samsung developing new flash memory technology that could allow the creation of flash memory drives as large as 32 GB. I already have Samsung memory chips in my computers. The color printer in my office is a Samsung, and so is my increasingly beloved cell phone. All of these devices not only function well, but were mostly bought to replace devices that were subpar (cough cough Motorola cough!). And in the case of my phone, it functions better than I even thought possible, that alone is worth a few blown kisses in Samsung’s direction! <3

Maybe it’s the heat, but someone over at CNN has got the idea the it’s cool to be uncool now. The article claims that dork pride is on the rise. Well without getting into the differences between geeks, nerds, and dorks, I would only agree that it is more acceptable these days to be a member of such groups. And indeed there has been a rise in the sales of geek wear, I guess. But being a skeptic and having suffered for my own geekiness, I would hardly believe that being a geek, nerd, or dork has become mainstream. But like being excited to see black people on tv growing up (a rarity then), and now Asians, at least they are talking about us! And nowhere in the article is the suggestion that they need medication!

I was just watching Battlestar Galactica on NBC or all things (an interesting surprise) when one of the creepiest Burger King ads I’ve ever seen came on. In the ad, a guy is driving his alone car late at night when he looks up in the mirror and seems that creepy plastic king’s face in the back seat! The creepy plastic king then gives him a whopper and all is cool…Yeah riiiiiight! Man, I absolutely detest those BK ads! The plastic king totally creeps me out, and I think the ads featuring the mean-spirited office workers are truly vile and evil. I don’t know who is doing Burger King’s ads these days, but they need to be fired because the ads are turning me off of their product. I’m just one guy, but I would guess that the ads are turning off others as well.

My little staple head is doing just fine today. No one would ever know all of the drama that my youngest son caused yesterday after banging his head on a radiator and precipitating yet another largely uncoordinated dash to the ER involving seemingly far more blood than was necessary. But he’s okay now and playing happily, now with a few staples in the back of his head to close the inch long (2.54cm) gash.

It’s really amazing to see how indestructable and unstoppable the little guy is. I think he’d make a great racer!

Whoa, talk about adding insult to injury! India is demanding that the H1-B visa cap be raised to 195K. Now I can understand jobs going overseas because of cheaper labor there, even if I don’t like it personally. But for another nation to demand that we allow more of their workers to come here and take jobs that there are plenty of Americans willing and able to do is just insulting. India is doing pretty well in the current outsourcing climate, IBM is about to add 14K jobs in India (while cutting 13K in Europe and the US), so to demand more is really to overplay their hand and invite a backlash. Maybe they aren’t getting enough online poker spam to understand how to play the game.

There’s yet another story at CNet about the declining representation of women and non-Asian minorities in tech jobs in the U.S.. Well duh, tech jobs have been flying overseas for the last several years. When the massive bloodletting of outsourcing began, it was very likely women, minorities, and older tech workers who lost their jobs first. In an interesting twist, in Illinois at least, the age discrimination laws essentially require that a mix of employees be laid off along with older workers in order to avoid trouble. So as long as the workers with less seniority (and in jobs more likely to be outsourced, like coding) were getting the axe anyway, they decided to unload the higher salaried older tech workers as well.

The thing I continue to find interesting about stories like this, is their failure to state the obvious question. Why should women and minorities pursue career fields that at present appear to have little future? The big corporations are really not interested in developing talent here at home when they can get something that is at least good enough overseas for far less money. Being an American is a liability these days in tech because it means you cost more than most companies want to pay. Even if you took no salary, paying for  benefits still makes you more costly than a worker in India or China. I won’t be telling black kids to go into jobs that won’t be there once they finish school. I’ll be telling them to use their talents to start their own companies rather than work for companies that are ultimately not interested in the well being of their workers or their country.

I just got back to my office after my lunch time walk. The weather is great and the streets are full of tourists and office workers. The streets are also full of pretty good looking people of a variety of shapes and sizes. Observation has convinced me that the vast majority of people are attractive given the right presentation. So don’t believe what Hollywood says! Everyone does not have to look like hot actor A or sexy actress B to be all they can be! Most of the time looking nice just means paying attention to the colors and fashions that are most suitable for one’s body type.

The other thing that occured to me walking about was the large proportion of women out there with, well…really large boobs! Geez, is this the land of livin large or what? Now I understand why my Asian brothers got so nuts over the women they met in college. I’m not a large breast fan myself, but I was a bit shocked at how much was just "out there" on the street today.

Yay! School is out for summer, no more homework to check and no more yelling encouraging the kids to do well in school! After a rough year, the kids pulled out the bottom of the ninth, full count, bases loaded come from behind victory that is the stuff of American legends. Jessica made the honor roll, won an award for excellence in Japanese, and had good standardized test scores. Jacob got 4 A’s and scored very high on his tests (high 90s, a frickin genius!), only missing the honor roll because he talks too much in class… And Vanessa ended a completely stellar K-year with great praise from all of her teachers. Best of all, the lovely WillowBrow, who doesn’t at all buy into the come from behind victory, was a  very very happy mommy. She did a lot of work with Jessica to make it all happen.

The kids did great, all winning prizes in the household Scholar’s Cup for their excellent school performances. Now I don’t have to feel guilty if I allow them to have some fun! Now we can all get down to some serious gaming!

Another sign of summer in Chicago is the arrival of downtown street performers. Silver Man has been around for years, just imagine a man with a short afro, formal jacket, sunglasses, and top hat all painted silver. He stands on a silver box motionless like a statue. If you want him to move, just put some money in the jar. You can usually find Silver Man near the Water Tower park south of the Michigan Avenue Borders.

This year Silver Man has some competition! Today I saw Robot Boy standing outside of the Michigan Avenue Apple Store. He’s very much like Silver Man, but he looks like a version of those boxy robots in the sci-fi serials from the 50s. And I had the impression that he/she is a little younger than Silver Man.

Yes, summer is here in Chicago, just in time for the last day of school! Yay! No more checking homework! 🙂

When I heard that Michael Jackson was found not guilty on all charges, I was genuinely surprised. Given that Jackson has got to be one of the most despised public persona’s in the U.S. these days, I was sure the jury would find it easy to convict him based on distaste. But I guess the system has proven that it works, as long as you are rich that is! Even though the evidence was circumstancial and testimony contradictory, I don’t believe that the average Joe would have escaped conviction without a team of expensive high powered lawyers. And maybe Michael Jackson’s fame helped him as well.

So Jackson is free to await the inevitable civil trial… If I were him, I would spend a bit of time doing some low impact touring outside of the U.S. and a little relaxing. He has a lot of issues to work out (as does his accuser) and now would be as good a time as any. But lay off the "Jesus Juice" a bit and don’t start hangin out with O.J.!

Here’s something I got a few days ago from the BDPA mailing list. It’s one of those articles that doesn’t contain any real surprises, but still makes your jaw drop when you realize what has happened. I’m one of the relatively few African Americans who has a PhD in physics, and I didn’t know this stuff. On the one hand, it saddens me that more black kids aren’t going into science and technology because I enjoy it so much. But on the other hand, career prospects in science and technology aren’t as good as they are in the professions. So who can blame bright kids for preferring to become physicians, lawyers, and business people?

=========

Black Women in Science & Technology

U.S. Rep. Eddie B. Johnson Pushes Resolution To Support Black Women InScience & TechnologySource: Jet Publication date: 2005-05-23Arrival time: 2005-05-25

Dropping the name of "Katherine Johnson" in a speech on the House ofRepresentatives floor, Texas Rep. Eddie B. Johnson was not surprisedthat few of the lawmakers had ever heard of the Black scientist. Eddie B. Johnson

This was the reason Rep. Johnson introduced a resolution there torecognize the achievements of minorities and women in science andtechnology and encourage a new generation of young women to continue in their legacies.

A physicist, space scientist and mathematician, Katherine Johnson gained a minute in the national glare in 1970 when she was instrumental in formulating calculations that helped the crippled Apollo 13 return home safely. A fuel tank explosion and computer system failure that almost derailed the ship was detailed in Tom Hanks' film, Apollo 13.

"Unfortunately, many young African Americans are unfamiliar with thesefacts, " Rep. Johnson continued in her speech. "Very little literaturedocumerits African-American women and their place in science.

"To increase the numbers of AfricanAmerican youth pursuing science,especially young women, it is critical that we provide them strongscience role models to admire and emulate," she insisted.

She noted African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans as a groupconstitutes 24 percent of the U. S. population but only 7 percent of the total science and technology workforce.

Currently, less than 1 percent employed science engineering doctorateholders are African American, she added.

Identifying the female minority pioneers in this field, the lawmakerdescribed Dr. Ella Moore, the first AfricanAmerican woman to receive adoctorate in natural science in 1933. She received the degree inbacteriology and served as the head of the department at Howard Medical School from 1947 to 1958.

In the field of space exploration, Dr. Mae Jemison, a medical doctor and first Black woman in space, now directs a TV show to promote science among students.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, according to the lawmaker, was not only thefirst African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but was also the first Black woman to receive a doctorate in any field from that school.

=========

I find it hard to believe that in this era of overseas outsourcing of IT jobs, companies like IBM now have the nerve to complain that there aren’t enough smart students majoring in computer science in college and grad school in the U.S.. This Herald Sun article describes just that, without even mentioning the reason this is happening! That many of the smartest students already know that career prospects in IT are pretty bad in the U.S.. How can they compete with the far cheaper labor pool in India or China? And many companies won’t think twice about shipping IT jobs overseas showing little loyalty to their employees or their country. IBM should not expect smart people to behave foolishly for their benefit.

File this under wild speculation, but following the money can lead to interesting conclusions. Yesterday, news came out that Dell founder Michael Dell had invested $100 Million of his own money in Red Hat. Today Cnet reports that executives from Microsoft and Red Hat are having a nice chat together. Well, $100M is not small potatoes, and if Microsoft were to make a bid for Red Hat, Mr. Dell would make a pretty handy profit. At the very least, that investment gives Mr. Dell a seat to view the game.

So, I’m not saying that this means anything at all. But Microsoft buying Red Hat would certainly affect the Linux landscape with tsunami-like force. Would it be the end of the open software movement? No, of course not! But it would instantly make MS a big player on the Linux scene and would allow them to play both sides of the street if they chose to do so. Regardless of what their true motives are, it certainly makes one wonder.

At last we have gotten a decent spring day in Chicago! As a result I really enjoyed my lunch time walk and all of the sites to take in along the way, heh! But besides the weather, much of the brightness came from some great successes at work. There are few things more thrilling to me than making a plan, following the plan, and having it all work out!

And my lovely wife is going to be in Working Mother magazine! They’re publishing a letter she wrote and contacted her for a photograph and some other information. I shot a group of photos for them this morning. The photos are okay, but I really wish I had more time to work on them to make them even better because there are little things that most people will probably miss, but stick out to me like sore thumbs. She still looks great though! Who knows, maybe she’ll make the cover someday.:)

This one is under the heading of upgrade blues. I usually don’t upgrade until there is something I need and in this case, I’m hoping to improve the screening of comment and trackback spam, so I decided to upgrade. Here is what I found out.

====

After a lot of trial and error I discovered that
in order to run Nucleus CMS on Yahoo! Webhosting, you must replace the
variable $MYSQL_HOST with something else like $MYSQL_HOST_LOCAL. On
Yahoo! Webhosting (and probably some others), the variable $MYSQL_HOST
is already set and cannot be overidden if you want a working
installation because the system value is different from the value that
users must use to connect to the MySQL database.

Once I replaced $MYSQL_HOST with $MYSQL_HOST_LOCAL in

config.php

$MYSQL_HOST_LOCAL = ‘mysql’; //The host must be mysql on Yahoo! Webhosting

and

nucleus/libs/globalfunctions.php

My newly upgraded Nucleus 3.2 installation started working. Before
I made the change I kept getting the ‘Sorry and error has occurred’
message. This message is generated by checkVars in globalfunctions.php.

The replacement may be needed in other places, such as plugin files, but I haven’t checked that out yet.

I also posted this on the Nucleus Support Forum

http://forum.nucleuscms.org/viewtopic.php?t=6938