Quotes "Headhunters" | Christie Brinkley

I picked up some Jo Nexbø paperbacks at a garage sale on the morning of the computer science final two weeks ago. "Headhunters" has yielded two quotes in the first 50 pages:

"The lease had been signed, the extensive decoration work was under way and our financial ruin secured." (p 34)

"An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I'm afraid to say this, has been understood." (p 41)

Asasellobulgakov made this comment on 5/27/2012 to a YouTube video of Andres Segovia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efHwnFAkuA) "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

I like it!

WWJD = "Who Wants Jelly Donuts/Jack Daniels"

Zombies hate fast food.

A comment on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReW9uUYm-DA, John Fahey - Poor Boys Long Way From Home:

"I'll give you a little tip about the blues, folks: it's not enough to know which notes to play. You need to know why they need to be played" - George Carlin

cicerone - a person who conducts and informs sightseers (C18: from Italian: antiquarian scholar, guide, after Cicero, alluding to the eloquence and erudition of these men)

Newsday, the Long Island paper carried a story about a contest over child support payments between Christie Brinkley and her former husband, Peter Cook.

At one point in the hallway, Brinkley responded to a remark made by Cook's new wife, Suzanne, by putting her hand on her shoulder and telling her, "When you find out he's been cheating on you, I'll be here for you. 

"You need to get a new line," Suzanne Cook told Brinkley."

I've imagined hypothetical catty exchanges between a hypothetical former significant and current other who refuses to rise to the bait:

Former: "By the time we broke up he wasn't much in bed."
Current: "Maybe he's taken lessons."

Former: "After we broke up I learned how good lovemaking could be."

Current: "I must have lower standards."

A comment on Ana Popovic's performance at the 2010 Montreal Jazz Festival icarusdescending881 wrote

"When Ana can roll over Crossroads, I'll sell my house, go find her, and follow her everywhere... Oh, wait, they arrest guys for that now."

"Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated." - virang21 (http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=4316769#xx4316769xx)

The words of the Prophet used to be written on the subway walls.  Now they're on T-shirts (snorgtees.com/t-shirts):

• There's a fine line between Numberator and Denominator.
• If it weren't for law enforcement and physics I'd be unstoppable.
• The name Pavlov rings a bell.
• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. ... And spiders.
• I survived the Rapture.
• If you can't be a good example be a warning.

And from an interview with Leonard Lopate on WNYC, Daniel Okrent, creator, and two cast members from "Old Jews Telling Jokes":

Wife: What are you going to do today?
Husband: Nothing.
Wife:  Nothing?  That's what you did yesterday.
Husband: I didn't finish.

Just Kids Playing With Dynamite

Henry Blodget's article on Yahoo Finance was direct and to the point: "JPMORGAN PROVES IT: Wall Street Is Just Kids Playing With Dynamite".

The story was a reaction to the announcement of a $2 billion trading loss from JP Morgan-Chase. It is well worth a read/listen. (For a Reuters review see, "London Whale took big bets below the surface".)

The part of Blogett's story that will twist people's knickers is the statement that people who do damage do so without endangering their own compensation. The expectation that someone with a multi-million dollar compensation who screws up will lose their job and then get a position at a hedge fund with better compensation.

  The term "London Whale" has been attached to this announcement because Bruno Iksil, the trader at the center of the furor, acquired that nickname because of the size of his trading positions. It would be reasonable to expect that working for a bank the size of JPMorgan-Chase that their trades would be larger than average. Iksil had 3 years of success prior to this. I haven't seen a story to determine whether JPMorgan actually came out ahead even with the $2 billion loss. The big deal apparently is that the money which was used for the trading was money which was not supposed to be used for hedging. Ooops. Of course the weasel factor looms large as to whether the money in question was for insurance or a hedge. The former would have been OK. The later a no-no.

Maybe time to check the facts.

Poor Writing: Sherlock, Series II - The Hounds of Baskerville

So disappointing.

Masterpiece Mystery's revised updated Hound of the Baskervilles is to be avoided

That may be old thinking.  In this day and age, with easy access to video editing tools someone is sure to put all the good bits together (Sherlock elucidating his prodigious powers of reasoning) to reduce the wretched hour and a half to a thoroughly enjoyable couple of minutes.

There was a wealth of confusing, blurry camera work in the manner of Blair Witch Project.  (I'm guessing actually.  I never saw the film.)  Whereas car chases could be relied upon to fill out a TV show's time slot, this episode used blurry sequences.

Perhaps I was bothered by the ease with witch Sherlock and Watson cold so blithely waltz into a super secret super secure facility with Mycroft's security card.  (Mycroft is Sherlock's smarter brother.)

Now folks, in the age of cell phones please explain how Sherlock, using his brother's All Access swipe card would not have a picture.  A brief glance at the face on the card would certainly arouse some suspicion.  I should have switched channels, but I decided to give it a chance.   Wrong decision.

Do you think the card Sherlock swiped "some time ago" would still be valid?  One would think that after Philby, Burgess and MacLean (and that scum, Anthony Blunt ) the Brits would have stepped up their security.  At the very least the cards would expire periodically.

Yes I know one shouldn't take these things seriously, but I'm offended by such stupidity.

Startups - Where are they now?

I came across the December 31, 2007 issue of NetworkWorld with an article "Start-Ups That Should Matter".  I took a look and this is what I found:.

3Leaf Systems	RIP
Apatar	It lives
Atune Systems	URL available for $1,195 from hugedomains.com
mValent	Server wasn't responding
NewStep	Owner is listed as a post office box in Vancouver, WA, but the server was not responding
Palo Alto Networks	Looks like a success. Their website displays Gartner's analysis of the company as a leader and visionaries who could execute.
Scalent	Acquired by Dell in 2010
http://Sipera	It lives!
http://Tango Networks	It lives!
http://http://Xangati/	It lives!

Not too shoddy a track record.  I'd count Scalent as a success.

Corey Booker Races Through Flames

Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ rushed into a burning building to rescue a neighbor's daughter.  Fire officials cautioned that such heroics can often end badly.  Here's a link to a CBS News story.  (The story contains a typo, "here" instead of "her":

The WNYC news story quoted Corey Booker as saying, "I was chiseled, now I just jiggle."  ("When chiseled turns to jiggles" might make good copy in a come-on for a health club.  It might be in use already, but a quick search with Google didn't uncover it. )

I would have liked to quote directly from the WNYC site, but it was down for maintenance:

Google Cartoon

I went looking for a picture of the 450' x 4' vinyl cartoon mural attached to the scaffolding around Google's New York headquarters at 111 Eighth Avenue. The cartoon went up today.  WNYC had some pictures, but I was unable to find an image of the whole thing.
 Instead I found this:

It seemed just the thing for people I know who feel that the government is watching them.  In their mind, the surveillance is not specific, just business as usual for the government.  I quickly fired off a link for our amusement.

Stephanie Plum

I was gathering paper to recycle when I came across the name "Stephanie Plum" written on a sheet of paper.  The paper was originally a note from the department secretary about a student, but had been annotated with notes about MARIE assembler, a few phone numbers I didn't recognize, but seemed to be local, and some calculations related to computer memory addressing.
A web search quickly found Janet Evanovich's web site and then Katherine Hegl's film, "One for the Money".  The film was not released for critical review.  Uh oh!  A very bad sign.

Setting that aside, Stephanie Plum is the heroine of novels written by Janet Evanovich and I'm sure I got the name from an NPR interview, either for her latest book, Explosive Eighteen or "Stephanie Plum: Trenton's Scrappy Bounty Hunter".

Now with that out of the way I can recycle the paper.

I'm So Behind the Times: Social Vending Machines

Stumbling through the May 16, 2011 hard copy edition of InformationWeek I found "Pepsi Takes Vending Machines Social".  Who knew?  Certainly not me.  It's amazing what I miss by not watching TV or listening to commercial media.  I seems that you can buy drinks as gifts for other people in the form of redeemable codes delivered via text messages.  It doesn't work in bars. 

Might this work in countries where corruption steals from the destitute?  the public-private key encryption probably figures into the authentication of the request.  If I can think of it, others must be working on it.

(I couldn't find the article on line, but this is similar: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/retail/229402472?cid=nl_IW_daily_2011-04-30_html.)

"I'm quite the guru"

While rooting through some papers I found some notes from a staff meeting.  A former director had said, "I'm quite the FileMaker guru."  She said this shortly after indicating some confusion between a database and a database table. My notation after the quote was "Perhaps she was tired."  In truth it's closer to the classic "a legend in her own mind."

Dreamweaver - PHP: I'm loving it!

I feel like a giddy fan boy.

I resisted using Dreamweaver for some reason.  The only help I really need is an editor which will color code some components of the language.  Make the comments chartreuse, key words blue, character strings purple, etc. and I'm satisfied.

It only took a brief exposure to Dreamweaver whining that I hadn't closed an open quote - Hey!  I'm not finished typing - that I realized the real power of the application.

Just that nagging is enough to get me to do what I usually do, but more consistently.  In my configuration Dreamweaver puts a red bar in the margin when there it detects an error on a line.  This means that if I start to type a quoted string, I will see the red bar within a few seconds of typing a quoted string unless I have already typed the closing string.  Good practice is to start writing the quoted string by typing the opening quote, then the closing quote, and then filling in the actual text.

Is is so affirming to not see the red bar that I've found myself coding more carefully.  And of course the predictive features where potential variables are listed in a popup makes it even easier.

And PHP?  Ask and the documentation returns clear explanations and easily understood examples.  What's not to love?

Contrast that with Python's documentation.  Language boosters hurl invectives at any perceived slight of their one true language.  I do not want to do anything like that here.  If I spent the time to study Python I'm sure it would take less than a week for me to speak rapturously of Python's glories, but I would still whine about the official documentation.

For years I've told students how much better their technology is than the stuff we learned on.  Unfortunately it now means that instructors can demand more from their students  (Students rarely win.  Just recently I saw a student turning in a hand drawn graph.  When I asked him why he didn't - I didn't get a chance to finished the sentence before the student answered that that the instructor wanted it hand drawn.  I can understand that.  Hand plotting gave me a feel for data.  But after doing several, why not give the kids a break?)

I on the other hand am just enjoying writing in PHP because the documentation has clear examples and, because I haven't yet run up against the limitations of the language, loving it.

Coding is fun once again.

Passives, Pandas, and Dangling Modifiers

This is about a post, "Passives, Pandas, and Dangling Modifiers", to the The Chronicle of Higher Education Lingua Franca blog discussing a mistake about the passive voice and dangling modifiers.  The post contains a joke told by presenter Sandi Toksvig, presenter of a Radio 4 comedy news program:

“Though overweight, uninterested in sex, and notorious for their very poor diet,” she said, pausing for exactly the right fraction of a second while we took this in, “they were still very glad to see the pandas arrive.”

I originally thought the "they" would be the Scottish Conservative party, but it was actually the Scots themselves.

Kuduro

Kuduro is a type of African music I first saw mentioned in an interview with a tailor originally from South Africa.  Figuring that youtube would be be the best place to look I came across a video which featured a number of stunning dance/acrobatic moves.  (As I write this I suspect that the "stunning dance/acrobatic move" may be just ho-hum ordinary for those in the know about the culture, but just new to me.)

About 1:23 seconds into "Buraka Som Sistema - Sound of Kudur"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkXhtw7UNk a young man takes a step, seems to kick one leg out from under him with the other leg and taking a silent screen worth prat fall twirling his legs as his body spins in mid air so that he lands face forward.  (Looking at the sequence over and over the timing varies from 1:23-1:28 minutes into the video.)

While one part of my mind is marveling at their physical ability another part is wondering about monetizing their skill.  After watching the sequence over and over a more accurate description is that he seems to be executing a weird low level pole vault where he walked past the bar, and then threw himself backwards over it.

The price of spending an eternity as a moth

Starting from "'It' Girls Work Both Sides of the Camera" in the Thursday Styles section of the February 16^th 2012 NY Times about fashion models taking up the camera I learned about web sites/blogs streetfaces (part of Flickr), Face Hunter, Sartorialist (actually TheSartorialist) and took to the web to see for myself.

One of the first pieces of advice a novice photographer gets is to determine the point of interest.  With people, that generally means getting in close.  Looking at these fashion sites, I was struck by the fact that most of the photos are full length shots and the photos do not have the "Instamatic look" of amateur photos. 

Duh, well the photographers know what they're doing. Perhaps it's just that the subjects aren't full face facing the camera with their hands rigidly by their site, a corpse propped upright.

 For some reason this image (http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/on-the-street-most-chic-paris/) caught my eye.  I didn't find the person or the style particularly appealing, but the comments drew my attention, especially this response to a previous comment:

Do I detect a twist of envy in some of these comments? From a Buddhist perspective, I would gladly pay the price of spending an eternity as a moth for the pleasure of being reincarnated as her boyfriend, even if just for a day. ~ j. crisp October 22, 2007 at 12:11 pm

While most comments related to the fashion I was surprised that one photo (I can no longer locate) of a young woman on a bicycle in London drew considerable criticism because she was riding without a helmet.

Worried the Kardashians are giving trash a bad rep?

Thrillists subject line was "Kickflip These Onto Your Face", but their lead, quoted above, was clever I thought: the email promoted JackThreads's salvaged wood frame eye glasses.

Recyclers should appropriate the phrase for their own use: "Giving trash a good name".

The Queens SK8 with "vintage ebonised arms" and special hinges for a "highly satisfying skull grab" is shown below.

I remember a snippet of a Sanford and Son episode where Red Foxx, playing the older Sanford dismisses the stuff in the back of his son's truck with, "This stuff gives garbage a bad name."  (Maybe it was trash getting a bad name, but you get the idea.)

Body Double for Video

I stumbled over Roger Penwill, a cartoonist who has some CAD and computer related cartoons www.penwill.com/ and (http://www.cadcartoons.com/cadcartoons_cartoons.html).  I'm not sure If I'm violating the terms of service by linking to an image on his site.

This cartoon displays raises the level of deception far above removing zips from images posted to a dating site.

More Quotes, Turns of Phrase, and Jokes

" I knew that the actual objectives of war were always camouflaged by well-designed lies that exploit collective fear and perpetuate national myths." -  by SINAN ANTOON "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-anniversary-.html

"... Canonical is still committed to pushing envelopes others are only now learning to lick and fold." From http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-things-the-linux-desktop-can-be-proud-of/3093.

She: I want to get drunk and do something stupid.
He: I'm something stupid.  Do me.

Paraphrased and stolen from Prairie Home Companion:

• What he took for a gleam in her eye was only her special contacts.
• Marriage is like bridge: you start with a heart and a diamond and end with a club and a spade.
• If the going gets tough look for the nearest exit.
• Multi-tasking means reading on the toilet.
• The difference between death an marriage is that when you're dead you don't wish you were married.
• A paranoid schizophrenic though he was following someone
• Did you hear about the paranoid schizophrenic? He always thought he was following someone.
  

From Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me:  Rick Santorum has nothing to boast about.  Caligula's horse was also a senator.

From http://www.jokesplace.com/joke/mentalhealth.html:

• If you suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call. 
• If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, press 1 repeatedly.  
• If you are hearing voices, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
• If you are dyslexic, press 96969696969696.

From Car Talk: The difference between death and marriage: When you're dead ...

"the only consolation I can receive"

Vatican secret archive opened in EMC-sponsored exhibition

From yesterday's ComputerWorld:

EMC said its sponsorship was part of its Information Heritage initiative, in which it has been digitizing historic documents and making them publicly available.

The letter by Marie Antoinette is thought to have been addressed to Louis XVI's brother Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, who in 1824 became Charles X, King of France.
The letter, which is only 10 lines in length, reads, "The sentiments of those who share my pain, my dear brother-in-law, are the only consolation I can receive in this sad circumstance." The letter is then signed, "Your loving Sister-in-Law and Cousin Marie Antoinette.

Sentiments being the only consolation is universal. What can others do about our sorrow? (If this were the 60's drugs would be answer proffered for any situation.)

A Cold Call

A few days ago I received a call at the office. A female voice asked me if I remembered our previous conversation. "No.", I said. "I have no recollection of ever talking to a female stock broker."

It's true. She went on to relate the date she called, her recommendation, and some personal information intended to convince me of her veracity, probably the first car I drove. (In her sales training they probably use the word "truth" instead of "veracity", but that's the way I speak.  Also, I usually lie about the car,  claiming to drive a much cooler car than I ever drove and because that information is frequently used online to establish identity. )  Would it be possible to pass along contact information from one broker to another?

"Go ahead." I said,  "Do your stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Your sales pitch."

She didn't get all huffy, but, like the pro she was, she asked, "Are you familiar with ARM Holdings, ARMH?"

I said I didn't, but just as soon as she started to explain why she thought I would make a killing because Apple was rumored to want to buy the company I interrupted. (A bad personal habit, but beating someone to the punch line to jokes is a blood sport around here.)

"Oh the ARM processor?  Yeah it's in cell phones, netbooks, and ..." I went on a bit and then asked her if she knew what percentage of Apple's income came from cell phones.

She didn't know.  (I've got a small 3-ring binder with sales calls scripts.  Scenarios where the mark has fun with the caller isn't covered.)

Only a few days before I remember seeing a pie chart of Apple's income sources (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-apple-and-google-where-does-the-money-come-from/4469).  I spent a few minutes giving her the benefit of my minimal analysis of Apple's finances and the limitations of the ARM processor.

 

Anyway she wanted to establish a relationship right there and then.  I suggested that she trust in the Postal Service.  (I was once advised to have those things sent via the Postal Service instead of FedEx because sending fraudulent material through the Postal Service is a federal offense.)

I'm waiting.

Andrew Breitbart Dies at 43

My first thought when I saw the headline yesterday was "How nice."  Reading that he had a wife and 4 children only made me wonder if he'd bought enough life insurance.

Charles Krautheimer said, "And you know when people die, you say they are irreplaceable as a cliche. But I think in this case, it's true."  (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/01/krauthammer_breitbart_is_irreplaceable.html)  Let's hope he's correct.

There was an obituary some years ago about a guy who'd worked on Wall Street, been convicted of some financial malfeasance, and then spent the rest of his life after prison working with the poor, people with AIDS, and the homeless.  The obit had a quote from former New York City mayor Ed Koch saying that the guy had nothing to apologize for.  The same could not be said about Breitbart.

Contrary to those who would comfort me with expectation of Breitbart's retribution in the afterlife, he went too quickly for the pain he caused.

Captain Travis Patriquin

I'd jotted a note to myself on an envelope: "Travis Patrick Quinn".   "XYZ Affair" was also written on the envelope.

A quick web search brought up:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/a-tribute-to-captain-travis-patriquin.  The Leonard Lopate interview with William Doyle, author of "A Soldier's Dream: Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq"   came flooding back along with Patriquin's famous stick figure PowerPoint presentation: "How to Win in Al Anbar.

 

The "XYZ Affair" was a 1798 incident in the administration of John Adams in which French representatives made unreasonable demands of the United States representatives.  War was narrowly averted, although there were two years in which the nascent American navy captured a number of French privateer vessels.