Want to go 300mpH at 70.5mpg?

Do you? Then you will need an Acabion. Apparently, what matters is weight and profile, the opposite of SUVs.

Debugging skills -- It's not Rocket Science!

Every programmer knows all too well that there will be times when (non-trivial) code does odd things. Yes, I am talking about bugs. Often times they are simple because they easily reproducible and the faulty behavior can be seen in a simplified environment. But what if the bug is not easily reproducible. That's where good debugging skills come to play.

Sometimes debugging feels like detective work but in almost all cases it really isn't much more than breaking a big problem into many smaller problems. Yes, simply breaking an input down to smaller pieces until a problem disappears is often a good way of making one's life a lot easier. Besides having a good grasp of eliminating possibilities, a decent knowledge of debugging techniques and tools is certainly helpful. On my last project, more than once I was asked to help fix some bugs by other developers. When I asked them what they have tried so far or found out they usually said nothing. They just needed help. My first thought was that it was laziness. ASking someone else to fix a problem is certainly easier than fixing it yourself. But after interacting with them it dawned on me that they often had no idea of how to get a handle on the problem. Just asking questions about how and when the problem presents itself are often not asked. Well, bugs never come with a manual on how to fix them so you better ask questions if you want to fix them.

Another helpful aspect for debugging is to know the code itself. A lot of times I have found that developers didn't even know how to debug their own code. Having a good knowledge of the structure of the code helps to eliminate potential sources of errors. I can't claim for myself that I am the world's best debugger nor do I want to do that. But I was surprised how few people actually can debug and provide useful information when helping to find fix a bug. Makes you wonder if the CS curriculum should be extended by a mandatory class: "Introduction to Debugging"

It's not rocket science -- like so many other things applying common sense and using the good ol' divide and conquer technique helps a good deal.

Ridiculous ...

As I was reading the newspaper today I saw an ad to lease a Bentley Continental. The down payment seemed normal and for only $2299/month for 42 month you could drive around in a Bentley. My mortgage payment is less than that ... I guess one would need a lot of disposable income.

The most popular sport in the world ... ? Definitely not American Football.

I am a big sports fan and I like to watch sports, especially team sports that involve a ball. I have never been a big fan of American Football but I do like to watch the highlights. However, there is a few things that simply rub me the wrong way about American Football. First of all, things can't get more artificial than in the NFL. Reviewable, non-reviewable play, eligible and ineligible receivers, two minute warning, taking a knee. All bullshit. But what always bothered me the most actually has nothing to do with the rules or any team and it's really not any team's fault. It's the NFL's fault. They call the Super Bowl winner the "World champs". But hey they are not alone, the NBA champion often refes to itself as the World champ and so does the "World Series" winner in baseball. I know, I know, many Americans believe the world revolves around their three big sports and there probably isn't a better American Football team in the entire world than those that play in NFL. But that's certainly not true anymore for the NBA and baseball. Or do I need to remind everyone of how the basketball dream team came up short repeatedly in the last few years. My problem with this is, that you should only call yourself the world champ if you even gave the rest of the world a chance to participate. Either by qualifying or by inviting teams from abroad to play. And I mean to qualify by playing the sport not by buying yourself into the league through means of an expansion team.
Anyway, as I was reading some sports news today, I came across a quote from the San Diedo Chargers coach, Marty Schottenheimer: ""It took me back to the old AFL days where you just try to find a way to have one more point than they do," Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer said. "It was the kind of game that makes the NFL the most popular sport in the world. If you couldn't enjoy this -- other than coach Lewis and his crowd -- then you might not enjoy football."
He said this after a remarkable comeback of his team which in itself was probably very exciting and one of the better moments in the NFL. But it truly shows how the three big American sports (NFL, MLB and NBA) have a self-perception problem. Yes, they are not the center of the world and there is many people in the rest of the world that don't even care about any of them. But one thing for sure, American Football is far from being the most popular sport. If you search around a little on the web you will find many top 10 of most popular sports and I have yet to find a list on which you can find American Football. The so-called big three should watch the NHL a bit. They are playing for the Stanley Cup and the winner is the Stanley CUp champ. Nothing more and nothing less. The NFL, MLB and the NBA should do the same.

So Marty, the Super Bowl may be one of the most watched sporting events in the world but to me it's not clear whether it's for the actual game or the halftime show. But football is definitely not the most popular sport in the world. Just count the number of people on a given weekend that participate in a soccer game versus an American football game.

pirates

pirates
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

Ever heard of "Seagull Management" ?

A coworker and I were chatting about our current project at Yahoo! which we are about to release to the public. As we talked about who was really helpful, not so helpful, entirely useless or simply a pain in the butt, he brought up the term seagull management. Wonder what that is? It's managers, that fly in from time to time, aren't really well-informed, flap their wings and make a lot of noise and leave a bunch of crap behind for those people that actually do the work.

Anyway, on one or two occasions we had this happen on our project but overall it's looking good. Stay tuned for more on this? I am pretty excited about getting some of my work out to a large number of people. Never really had that IBM. I mean, we did cool stuff but unfortunately we never made anything available to the public because either IBM did not want to, could not decide in time or wanted to turn it into a secret ...
Let's see how things go. More later.

Two bad ideas ... or whatever happened to common sense.

On my way to work this morning I listened to NPR (National Public Radio) and they were talking about Jail for Judges. It's a measure that wants to do away with judicial immunity. What it seems to come down to is that, if the measure passes, judges can be sued if a grand jury decides that the sentence given out by the judge was a bit harsh. On top of that, the supporters of this measure want to apply this to anyone in public office. Does this country really need more opportunities for people to sue other parties? I don't think so. It already goes way to far. Remember the fat woman who bought coffee at McDonalds, put it between her legs and then burned herself by spilling it. She then sued McDonalds and was awarded an absurd amount of money for being just dumber than a brick. Now, we have warning labels on everything. Something like "Do not operate vehicle with this in place" on a sunscreen for car windshields. It even goes as far that a lot of companies and institutions cut services or ban certain things. For example, there iare several schools across the country that have banned contact sports like playing tag football or chasing games during recess time. Why? Out of fear for being held liable that a child gets hurt playing. What comes next, that kids have to wear seatbelts on their classroom charis because they could fall over. Or make them wear a helmet inside the classroom? In essence I am all for holding people responsible when they screw up but opening up more posibilities for people to sue the shit out of everything and everyone is wrong.

The "Bus" ...

Sonja and I have been debating for a while now to buy a bigger car. We owned a Volkswagen Jetta Wagon which did a fine job but was getting too small for us, the two boys and our dog. If we put the stroller in the trunk, our dog had to squeeze in behind a seat. Anyway, we have looked around and after a while it turned out that a minivan is the only logical choice. Why, you may ask? Well, we had a limited budget, so a nice Mercedes Benz wagon was out of the question. Additionally, while slightly bigger than our Jetta they would not have solved our space problem because having kids, a third row is noce to have. Then, there was the world of SUVs. The ones that are big enough suck in terms of gas mileage (some of the American brands) and the ones that are nice enough (like Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Audi) are too expensive and still suck in terms of gas mileage. We even tried the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which has ok gas mileage compared to the regular model but nothing near where you would say this is phenomenal. On top of that, the third row seats it had would be uncomfortable for even our 4-year old and its price tag was ridiculous for the base model that had next to no options in it. So here we are, looking around and the only car category that would basically fulfill all our needs was the minivan category. So, knowing they are not the sexiest automobiles, we went ahead and test drove some of them. We really liked the Honda Odyssey and ended up buying one:

I have to say, it is one of the nicest cars, if not the nicest, that we have ever owned. Do I have a problem with driving a minivan? Not at all, the car is nice, my kids love it and we can haul all kinds of stuff around. And the car has a shitload of options that make it nice. Not to mention that it has twice the horsepower of our old Jetta and a gas mileage rating that beats any big SUV by a wide margin. A lot of people will make fun of us now but I don't care. Anyway, since the car is a lot bigger than our old one we have already nicknamed it. We simply call it "the bus" ... and we like it.

I like birthdays ...

Especially my own. People are nice to me on at least one day a year and I get to see a lot of my friends all at once. This year we met at Trader Vic's, a cocktail bar/restaurant. We slurped quite a few of their concoctions and I have to admit I had a pretty bad hangover the next day. It was fun nonetheless. And the band in that place even sang a song for me. They called me "Jorge" but if you have read this blog from the beginning you know that I am used to that.

We even shared some crazy cocktails with straws that were at least 2 feet long. Thansk everyone for coming and thanks to Sonja for setting this up. I had a blast.

Cool electric car ...

Came across the Tesla Motors site. They make a fully electric sports car that actually looks cool. No info on price though and I doubt it is affordable. But I think it's pretty cool that companies try to buck the trend of making ever bigger vehicles that suck up more and more gas. One would hope that politicians would actually support the development of fuel-efficient cars more than they have in the past. But it appears that they are even against it. So, watch out, owners of Tesla Motors or you will ask yourself Who killed the electric car?.

Playing in the sand ...

Our son Jonas (18 months old) and I were playing in the sandbox and we had great fun launching all kinds of vehicles in the sand. I thought this looked kind of cool.

He is not a puppy ...

This is my dog and his name is "Peanut". Yes, I know it is a silly name but he had already been given that name when we "freed" him from the pound. Well, we didn't exactly free him and it wasn't an adventure at all but it sounds much better than "when we bought him". Anyway, we got Peanut through the South Bay Purebred Rescue Service. Oddly enough, Peanut is a mutt, most likely the mix between a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever. The latter is probably the reasosn why he appears to be a Golden puppy even though Peanut is already 6 years old. Which brings me to my actual story. Whenever we go places, people ask us about how old our puppy is. Usually, we very dryly remark that our "puppy is 6 years old, approaching 7 fast". What happens then is similar to what happens to me in emails when people seem to believe that I can't spell my name "Joerg" but must have meant "Jorge". Some people won't believe us. Same thing with the question about his breed. We usually answer "coker-retriever mix, most likely" which sometimes is met with great skepticism by these freaks that, just because they have a dog on themselves, believe they must be dog experts. To those people we then say: "Well, we weren't there but if you have seen his parents do it let us know". Anyway, Peanut's great, he loves to play ball, chase cats and squirrels and he is great with our two boys. An he will always be our puppy... ;-)

Hiring great people is hard ...

Back in those days when I worked at IBM I did a lot of interviewing candidates for jobs we had available there. What I noticed back then is that pretty much all candidates sound reasonable on paper but very few were actually as good as the paper made me believe. It even appeared as if only mediocre people would apply for the jobs we posted. What's the problem there? Well, Joel's blog provides some good explanations for this and I encourage anyone who is hiring or interviewing people to read his post on finding great developers. I completely agree with him on the one point that truly great people never really send resumes out to job postings, heck, they never even enter the job market. Why? For one thing, good people carry a reputation and will go to new places through friends, former co-workers that now work for someone else. Or they get approached approached by the same circle of people. So who is left on the job market? Probably those who were rejected before or those who just start out. I for one think that is almost always better to take someone who is fairly junior with good basic skills over a medicore candidate who may have some (worthless) experience already. We are currently looking for someone in my group and I am interviewing again. Let's see how that goes and hopefully we will find someone great. But what makes someone great? Well, for one thing it is hard to find that out in 30-45 minutes. And anyone who is not a complete idiot and has worked on a topic will sound like an expert in that particular field. Unless the interviewer works in the same field it is somtimes hard to determine whether the candidate is phony or not. What matters to me? Well, when interview I look at how people approach problems. I don't expect anyone to know all the answers to my questions in the area of programming or algorithms. But I expect them to come up with a reasonable/feasible way of attacking the problem. Should someone be able to write the source code for QuickSort in an interview? I don't think so because I couldn't do that either and it does not really prove anything. What is more important to me that someone could tell me about its properties or where he would go to find out about it.

Yahoo Night @ the Park

Last night I invited a few of my friends to see the San Jose Giants against the Stockton Ports (courtesy of Yahoo). To be honest, the quality of baseball was not spectacular but hey, it is single-A baseball after all. We had a good time though. Beer and food were affordable (5 bucks for a Bud or Bud light is still too much but it beats the 7.50 at a major league ballpark or at a Sharks game) and not bad and they do a bunch of stuff for kids for entertainment. And the fireworks afterwards were nice too.

I think Yahoo! does this once a year. So see you again next year...

Another remodeling project complete

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Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

Sooooo, what started out as a simple job of replacing the linoleum floors in our master bedroom bathroom, turned into a complete remodel. I ripped out everything. There were a few setbacks, a trip to the energency room after I hurt my arm and a few tricky problems to solve. Not to mention the inhalation of (what can only be described as) toxic fumes form paint, cleaners and sealers. Oh and the obligatory 400+ trips to home depot and other home improvement stores (Thank god I live close to home depot). But hey, in the end I got it done. Here is a picture of the new sink setup. I built the pedestal myself. we still need to find a new lamp, mirror and a shelf but other than that it's complete and fully functional. Thanks to my neighbours who provided tools that I did not have or could not find.

Things to know about Management

Over the years at IBM, Yahoo and in other jobs I had my share of managers. With them came different management styles. Some of them were good managers, some of them were medicore and some of them plain sucked. I had very old guys as my manager and I had managers that were my peers and my age and then "moved on" to have their manager bit flipped. When I read Joels series of posts on management styles it reminded me of some of my previous managers and the way they interacted with me and my peers. There were the guys who felt they had to make a decision simply because they were the manager, ignoring the fact that they had no background or in-depth knowledge to even make such a decision. Then there were those that were afraid to make a decision. Or maybe not afraid to make a decision but rather afraid or scared to stick up for it. I admit it's probably not easy managing programmers because a lot of them have a self perception problem and think they are better than they really are. But what happened to "common sense"? I think if some managers would start thinking how they would like to be treated as a managee they would do things differently. So along those lines, here are some things a manager of a programmer should avoid:

1. Don't make decisions based on traditions. Hearing "This is how we used to do things" drives me nuts. Listen to your people what they have to say.
   
2. Don't treat everyone the same. Some people like to be told directly what's going on and others can't handle the truth. I don't suggest that lying should be part of a managers repertoire but it always drove me nuts hearing managers beating around the bushes and saying the most brutal things in such flowery words that it was almost impossible to figure out what they wanted to say. Let's face it, work is no kindergarten and if someone can't stand being told how things are they should find a different lien of work.
3. Becoming a manager for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't become a manager because it is the natural advancement on the career ladder. If you are kick-ass programmer, researcher that doesn't mean that one will be a great manager. I for one hate to deal with all the personal BS and I can't see myself becoming one soon. However, if one becomes a manager they often stop to think like a programmer because they have to fit into the management chain.
4. Not givning people some freedom. Micromanagement sucks. Constantly breathing down someone's neck sucks too. There are times when things like that are justified but again, these tools shouldn't be used in general but rather based on the individual managee. Some of them need the daily dose of manager interaction, others can go a week without it.
5. Not sticking up for your people. I once had a manager who seemed threatened by me and the work I was doing. Don't know why but we never hit it off. When evaluations rolled around he wrote a one sentence evaluation like this: "Joerg did outstanding work!" What's wrong with that you may ask? Well, sounds pretty good but it was just an attempt to hide the fact that he did not want to push upper management for also giving me the best rating which really mattered in terms of recognition (by upper management and through compensation). So I talked to him and it turned out that he never even tried, had no idea what my contributions were. So I told him he sucked, went to his manager and told him what I had said. Now, don't try this at home. You should be very certain to do such a thing. I probably owuld have done it anyway even without being in very good standing. But it does raise the point why some people become managers when they truly suck and how they remain in that position for so long.
   

There is certainly more and I do want to add that I did have some good managers. The ones that I considered good were usually very direct, straightforward and demanded a lot. But they were also giving back a lot. So, whoever is a manager or becomes a manager, remember the times you were fed up with your manager and try to avoid exactly those things. That's the best way of becoming a great manager.

What a weekend ...

Man, last weekend was rough. Like many others, too many if you ask me, we lost power on Saturday evening and didn't get it back until Monday morning when PG&E temporarily fixed it. They permanently fixed it last night when we were again without power for another 4 hours. Now, of course, compared to some people in Almaden Valley, San Jose or some folks in St. Louis this is a short amount of time. But not when it is this hot and when you have small children. On Sunday afternoon, it was 97 degrees inside the house. We don't have A/C so we use regular fans in the evening to cool down our house and that generally is enough. However, when you lose power you can't even do that. And the weirdest part was that it was only one block of 23 houses in my neighborhood. As soon as you crossed a street, everyone had power. An old transfomer blew up. So what did we do? Well, friends of ours were kind enough to host Sonja and the boys for the day (Thanks Anke and John, and to your A/C unit). My friend and neighbor Brett across the street was (and still is) hosting our small freezer. And while Sonja and the boys were chilling, I tried to figure out how to cool the house somewhat so that we can at least spend the night. If it would not have been for our children, Sonja and I would have just pitched a tent and slept outside but our two boys need their sleep. So I bought a backup generator and another neighbor (Thanks Rich) helped me hook up the generator to the breaker panel so that we could use things in the house. We turned off everything but the fans and the fridge and that helped a lot. And I admit, at some point we turned on the dsl modem ... ;-)

Now all in all, it wasn't a major desaster but rather a big inconvenience. However, it felt great how our friends and neighbors helped and offered shelter, cold beverages and whatever else we could have needed. Thanks to everyone. If one of you ever needs a backup power generator in the future, just call me.

Changes ...

FW:
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

This is a picture of a very good friend of mine. She is also the godmother of my two boys and pregnant herself. When we IM with each other we always call each other things like "hottie" and some other things. We sort of always flirt in joking way. We are both married but not to each other. Anyway, now that she is pregnant, obviously her body is undergoing somewhat drastic changes. We tell each other a lot of things and she was telling me about some pregnancy related changes. I told here to send me a picture of it, so she used her camera phone and did just that. A couple of hours later she was complaining that I had not put this on my blog. Well, not wanting to be rude, here it is. As you can tell from the picture, you can probably guess which body part we were talking about. Very impressive, from 34B to 36C in just 15 weeks. We have a bet going on how large they will become but I won't share the details on that one .. Anyway, May when you are reading this, you wanted it here but I wish you all the luck in the world and keep my finger crossed that you will have a healthy and beautiful little baby come January.

Almost didn't make it ...

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Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

... to work this morning. What's that in the picture you ask? That's what's left of the rubber on my rear road bike tire. I was minding my own business in the bike lane when that tiny asian lady in her boring Toyota Camry decided to turn into the entrance of a parking lot and completely cut me off ... After she had sat in the turning lane for an eternity and I figured she had seen me, so I kept going. Turns out I was wrong and she started to cut me off. I grabbed the brakes as hard as I could, got out of my clipless pedals and started sliding towards her passenger side. Fortunately she saw and stopped so that I could hop onto the sidewalk and jump off my bike. Got lucky, this time. What did the lady do? Rolls down the window, flips up her full facial visor (you know, the black ones you always see on tiny asian women in minivans) and asks me whether I was alright. First I thought I should yell at her and tell her to never drive a car again but would it have mattered? Most likely not. So I picked up my bike and noticed a wobble in the rear wheel. Caused by the missing rubber. I was going abotu 20mph when this happened and it would have hurt. At least that's what I think. My heart rate after that was about 180 for a while. What's the moral of the story? Watch out for those people wearing full facial visors. They may not see you because they have that thing in front of their faces. And further watch out for that certain demographic. They simply can't drive or are just too clueless. I am glad my brakes worked and that I made it to work in one piece. At least I get to go to a bike store again and drool over those ridiculously expensive bikes.

A Thing of Beauty ...

Porsche announced a new version of the 911, the Targa. The glass roof top slides in front of the rear window. Check it out on Porsche's web site. Skydriving, a thing of beauty.

Math for dummies ...

Check out math for dummies (from Amr's blog). I wonder what math teachers/professors think when they read/grade stuff like that.

Made the deadline ...

The past few nights I spent more time on my computer after work, trying to finish a paper about some cool indexing stuff with some of my former friends/coworkers from IBM. We made the deadline of July 12, 11:55pm PST. For a while we were debating what this means for our situation since we current have daylight savings (PDT) but we figured it out and submitted on time. It was kind of nice to work on some of the stuff again that I worked on for over 5 years at IBM. Hopefully, the paper gets in to the conference (ICDE 2007), held next year in Istanbul, Turkey. The only thing that sucks about writing a paper in your spare time is that it meant to work until midnight for a few nights in a row and I think I am getting too old for this. Man, I am tired. Especially, since my kids still get up around 6am and demand breakfast ... ;-)
But it was fun nonetheless. Thanks to Dan, Linda and Jeff, and our friends at Corona and Spaten breweries, as well as the Taste of China.

World Cup 2006 - Bottom 10

Ok, let's move on to the not so pleasant things about the past World Cup. And let's not confuse this with anything else, these are my bottom 10, feel free to disagree. ;-)

1. Italy winning it all. Well, what can I say. I am German and was hoping for Germany to capture their fourth titel.
2. Diving. Too much diving, play the game and only fall down if someone makes you. The worst teams: Italy, Portugal, Argentina. The worst individual offender: Christiano Ronaldo from Portugal.
3. Brazil has to be the biggest disappointment of the tournament. No team chemistry, lackluster performances. I didn't mind at all seeing them leave the tournament early. Most overrated team.
   
4. Overrated and overhyped players: David Beckham, Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney. None of them showed that the hype about them was justified. Beckham had one goal, so what? Seemed out of shape to me. Wayne Rooney should have stayed home.
   
5. England sucked (Most overrated team after Brazil). Not one of the games they played left you with an impression that they are one of the stronger teams. Thank god the English fans behaved.
   
6. Zinedine Zidane's red card. I love Zidane as a player and what he can do with the ball and I always liked that he wasn't a diver. But his behavior in the final was wrong, regardless of what the Italian player (Materazzi) said to him.
7. Materazzi, the Italian defender who provoked Zidane. First he claimed he didn't do anything and then he admits he provoked him. What they really said to each other we probably will never find out. But when Materazzi's soccer carreer is over, he will make a fine actor, as most Italian and Argentinian players will.
8. The scenes after the PK shootout between Germany and Argentina. I am sure some German players weren't innocent in this but Argentina came across as poor losers.
   
9. FIFA suspensions. What are they thinking and what footage were they watching? The Italian defender De Rossi gets 4 games after elbowing the American McBride who required stitches in this face. He could play again in the final. The Argentinian third goal keeper kicks a German player into the midsection after Argentina's loss to Germany and gets 3 or 4 games. They suspend the German player Frings after reviewing fishy footage. In that same incidence, teh Argentinian Maxi Rodrigues leaps in teh air to punch a German player from behind gets the two games. Wayne Rooney gets a two game suspension as well. They apprently don't compare and go by the book. De Rossi should have been suspended for the rest of the tournament.
10. Players demanding yellow or red cards for their opponent. I say, any player who does that should be given a yellow card. Play the game, stop complaining and try to score honest goals not by diving and whining. Overall, it was amazing to see how many players returned from the dead in too many games after being barely fouled.
    

World Cup 2006 - Top 10

Damn, the soccer world cup is over, what am I going to do during lunch breaks now for the next 4 years? Good thing that the Euro 2008 is only 2 years away. Time to reflect, here are my personal top 10:

1. The fans and the atmosphere. Being from Germany and seeing the enthusiasm and excitement in Germany. Made me wish I could be there. It was also great to see how Germans finally waved their flag without having to feel bad about what happened in the past. At times there were more than a million people watching and celebrating on the fan mile in Berlin.
   
2. Germany's performance. There weren't a lot of people in Germany or elsewhere that believed in the team and Juergen Klinsmann. But the young group played well and made it far. Too bad we fell 2 minutes short in the semifinals.
3. Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian team captain. Superb defender and clean player. Only likeable guy on an Italian team full of actors.
4. Miroslav Klose, the German forward. Scored 5 goals himself and assisted on another one. Won the Golden Show award for best goal scorer in the tournament.
5. Germany winning on PKs against Argentina. Jens Lehman, the German goalie was awesome.
6. Ricardo, the Portuguese goalie, saving 3 PKs against England. Admittedly, the English PKs were weak but Riccardo didn't just jump into a corner hoping he would get lucky.
7. The Italian defense. Say whatever you want, it's often not pretty but very effective. And even though I hated to seem win it all they played the most consistent soccer through the entire tournament and they were always dangerous up front.
   
8. Maxi Rodriguez game-winning goal against Mexico in overtime. Clearly a lucky shot but nonetheless spectacular. Goal of the tournament.
9. Zinedine Zidane's ball handling. Fun to watch. His action that led to a red card in the final was not but rather makes it onto the bottom 10 of this world cup (see next post).
10. Phillip Lahm, the young German defender who lit up the left side with his runs and dangerous crosses. Scored the first goal of the tournament which was a beauty. Got Germany rolling, which was very important.

Yeah, I know, the list is a little biased towards German achievements but hey, it's ok to take a side here. I am German after all. Now let's move on to the bottom 10 of the World Cup, watch this blog for a post on that.

Fireworks are ...

... dumb, stupid, loud, annoying ... Do I need to continue? I never much liked fireworks and while I could live with the fireworks that are shot into the sky and light it up, I absolutely hate the firecrackers that just explode and make too much noise. My friend Dan put it nicely by saying that being at a party on 4th of July "resembled the Battle of Somme" more than a celebration of Independence Day. Why do I hate it so much? Well, for one thing, they scare my dog, they litter the neighborhood and they just make noise, so what's the point?
Apparently, a lot of people see a point in lighting up a firecracker and see it explode in front of them. I admit, when I was a teenager I did it too in Germany. Over there we don't celebrate Independence Day but use fireworks on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year. We did a lot of stupid things with it and I am not proud of it today. But pretty much, by the time I hit the age of 17 I stopped buying them because I think it's one of the dumbest ways to spend money. What is even more concerning is that some of these fireworks are put together for thousands and thousands of dollars. Where does the money come from? I sure hope that it is mostly corporate sponsor money and not tax dollars but even then, the money could be spent much better. I found a few articles online that in 2003 the estimated spending for fireworks was around 500 million dollars. Yup, that's right, that's a half billion dollars. How about donating it to schools? Or to feed the poor? There is places in the world, in which a few dollars a week can feed an entire family for a week or so and yet people choose to take their money and blow it up. Makes no sense to me.
At some point my little boys probably want to to blow up some firecrackers too and I am not quite sure what I will tell them why we don't want to do it. But they are young so I have a lot of time to come up with something. And if I am lucky (and all the dogs and cats that are scare senseless by the noise), firecrackers will be illegal or gone or at so heavily taxed that people won't buy them anymore.

The Dream is over ...

Watching the Soccer world cup throughout the last three and a half weeks was really cool. And it was fun and exciting to watch my home country go all the way to the semifinals. They have been better than expected and they put an entire nation into a World Cup frenzy. Even over here, more than 6500 miles away we were thrilled to watch the German national team win and, what's even better, play attractive soccer. Starting with group play, the expectations grew and the dream of winning it all became more real. Unfortunately, it ended today with a 2-0 loss to Italy, which weren't necessarily the better team but they were efficient. Germany has a very young team, and hopefully, 4 years from now, they will back to try for that elusive fourth World Championship. See you in 4 years in South Africa ... I am hoping now that France will go all the way. Not that I am very fond of the French, but I like Zinedine Zidane. In my opinion he is one of the best players of the last decade and it would be great to see him win a World Cup before he retires. I guess it's now Go Germany to win third place on Saturday and Go France to win it all.

Romantic Dinner

Sonja and I had an anniversary of some sort last week and we went to a restaurant that was recommended to us, the Mt. Hamilton Grandview Restaurant. The picture was taken with my little cell phone while we were dining. The sunset was very nice, and it was very cool to see darkness overtake the valley and bring out all the lights. That's where the romance ended. Don't get me wrong, Sonja and I still had a good time and we were fine and enjoyed each other.

Image014.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

The restaurant itself didn't really ooze romance, unless you are into 60's or 70's style dark brown wood paneling on the wall, flowery carpets and a somewhat dull interior decoration. The food was average, edible, not bad but not so good that I definitely want to come back. The views (especially around sunset) make up for a lot of shortcomings, just don't go there and expect romance to greet you at the door.

Soccer Fever

Whoever reads this probably knows that the greatest sports tournament in the world is currently under way. Yeah baby, I am talking about Soccer World Cup, or Fußballweltmeisterschaft as we say in German. I overheard somehwere that an estimated 1.2 billion people watched the opening game of this World Cup between Germany and Costa Rica. For the final game an estimated 1.5 billion people will watch this event. It is truly the World's sport. Don't get me wrong, I like all kinds of sports but having played soccer my entire childhood in Germany and a few years after that, it truly is Germanys pastime. I have been watching games at home and at work (thanks to Yahoo for the nice big screens in the cafeteria) or been following them online. Yeah, my productivity suffers a little but once every 4 years you get to see the world's best soccer players in one tournament and it's just terrific. I wish I could be in Germany right now, my friends tell me that all of Germany is going uts and with every win of our national team, people will get more insane. I am hoping for a rematch of the last World Cup finals, between Germany and Brazil. This time though, Germany will be on top. And for someone like me who loves soccer to see your home team win is really, really cool. Germany has won 1954, 1974 and 1990. I wasn't born back in '54 and I was only 3 years old in '74 but I still remember watching the finals in Italy when Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in 1990. It wasn't a good game but winning the title pushed all of Germany into delirium for one night. Anyone who has ever played in a championship game on any level knows that it's a special feeling when you come out as the winner. I am hoping for something like it again. Let's see what happens. In the meantime I will keep wearing my red Germany jersey when they are playing. So far they are undefeated when I am wearing it and I have been saving it for almost a year for this world cup ... If that isn't helping I don't know what can.

Why comments in code are useful ...

Everyone who is a programmer knows that good coding isn't just writing code that has very few problems, is efficient, does what it's supposed to, requires little maintenance and is easily extensible. This means that it is not just about using correct syntax and the latest and greatest algorithms and implementing them correctly. It is about telling oneself and others why something was implemented a certain way. Yeah, you may already guess it and you are right. I am talking about comments in code. I know, I know, you may say: "I bet Joerg has sometimes delivered less than perfectly commented code". And you are right, but I try to always do it when appropriate. Hell, I don't need someone to tell me something like this:

void incrFunc( int& i ){
  i++;  // adding one to i
}

That's dumb, don't state the obvious. But when you chose a certain algorithm or use something that is non-standard, write a line or two about it and add documentation so that people that will have to pick up your code know what the hell you were thinking. Why am I writing about this? Well, I am currently working on a project that is about integrating something cool and new into an older codebase. And this includes using code others have written. It's amazing when you trying to code towards certain APIs what kind of surprises you sometimes see. And you don't see them by reading the code, you learn through painful and time-consuming debugging. Here is an example. Consider the case where you have larger buffer and you have to mark certain regions in the buffer to identify subsections. One way to do this would be through a struct like this:

struct section {
  int start;
  int end;
};

Now, for me, the intuitive thing would be to assume that start denotes the byte offset of the first byte of the section and end would denote the offset of last byte of the section. Well, I came across some code where end pointed to the first byte after the section. Why? Well, no comment or anything in the code. Thankfully, the programmer was still there and I could ask. And even though he had a reason for doing so (he wanted to be able to express section of length zero [don't ask me why], and ...well...laziness), a comment would have avoided a bunch of confusion. Even better, don't name it end but length and there is no ambiguity at all. What's even worse is that when I asked the programmer about it he did not know/remember why he did that. And this is where useful comments come in again. They are not just good for others, they help you as well. And believe it or not, the code that you write will be seen by more people than you might think. So use smart comments but don't litter the code, nobody wants to read source code files that are 4000 lines or longer. This is another one of these things that people shouldn't do but I will leave that to another post.

Commuting ... Take Two

I have already written about the things you may or may not encounter on the road when commuting. Reading all the things that there are to find on a car are a whole other story. There is stickers of course, customized license plate numbers and the oh so useful license plate frames. Personally, I hate the personalized license plate numbers. Some people go to a lot of extremes making something out of nothing. Sometimes, it's pretty easy to figure out and sometimes it makes no sense whatsoever. I wish people would stop this all together. Why do you have to have "MY BMW" on the license plate of a BMW? Isn't it obvious? And who cares whether the driver or the bank owns it?

An even dumber thing is what you can find written on license plate frames. Here is a prime example of stupidity: "My other car is an airplane" (Found on an Acura SUV)

Let's start with the obvious. An airplane isn't a car. I made sure to check on Wikipedia and I am certain that any other online encyclopedia would tell the same. Next problem with it is: "Who the hell cares?" I think it's perfectly fine to put stickers on your car or even have something that's funny. Whatever it is, just make sure it makes sense. So whoever you are, airplane dummy, if you read this, take off the license plate frames or fly your darn airplane so we don't have to see your stupid license plate frames. On the other hand you would probably drive your airplane. Whatever it is, just stay off the road because whoever puts stupid stuff like that on his car will probably do more harm.

My commute ... Now, I have seen it all.

I am commuting to work by car. That's really no surprise when you live in the Bay area which (aside from when you live to close to Bart or within San Francisco) does not have a good public transportation system. That's beside the point in this post as this time I am writing about the interesting, not so interesting, scary and sometimes even disgusting things you see when you spend a fair amount of time in traffic and at stoplights. In the morning there is the numerous women who put on make-up while driving their big SUV swerving left and right. I wonder how many eye injuries there are per year caused by putting on make-up in the car. Some guys are not that much better, shaving while driving, half looking at the traffic in front of them, half looking in the mirror to check whether they've missed a spot. Thankfully, I have yet to see someone who does not use an electric shaver. I have even seen a guy brush his teeth in the car and spit the foam out the window.
Then there is the people picking their nose. I know, it's not nice but I think everyone at one point has picked his/her nose. What seems wrong to me though is that some people just don't seem to be bothered when you actually see them doing it. Even worse, they have no problem inspecting their finds. Where do they end up? I leave that to your imagination. Seriously, I could do with out these people.
When commuting in stop-and-go traffic you also can't help but looking at the people in the cars beside you or just look at the cars themselves. My favorites are the Japanese sports cars with these insane rear spoilers. You really need them badly when you are going down San Tomas Expressway in San Jose with approximately 12.5mph.
My favorite so far has been the old guy reading porn while stopped at traffic lights. One day I ended up driving right along side this old guy in his old Honda Civic. After we have come to a stop at an intersection, he pulls out a magazine puts it on his steering wheel and turns out it was a Playboy magazine. Very nice! Two stoplights later I am right next to him again and same procedure. A few pages further into it or so it seemed but he did not even bother putting it on the passenger seat. He simply did not care or was he just being very good and wanting to share his magazine. Who knows, haven't seen him again which is said because I as curious about the next playboy issue.
What's the moral of all this? No moral here but keep your eyes open when commuting, there is definitely interesting and weird stuff going on. Or simply close them to get spared the nose picking and other disgusting habits ... But wait, you are in traffic, better keep those eyes open...

PhD struggle

So here I am, done with all classes with one thing left to do. Write my PhD thesis. But first things first. I sort of have to know what I want to write about. And that's where the struggle starts. There is a lot interesting thiings to work on in the area of Search and Indexing, and there is a lot of things that are of interest to me. The only problem is that when working full-time, it is very hard to do something that lies completely outside your line of work. It is always better to be able to combine what you are doing at work with your thesis topic. And that's the challenge. Additionally, there is the challenge of keeping the thesis work in the foreground. The way it goes right now for me, that work is always the first thing to be pushed back and that I need to change. There is ways though to buy myself more time ... ;-). Check out the image below which is hosted at www.phdcomics.com:
"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

Less than 1 month from now ...

... the greatest sports tournament in the World will kick off with the opening match between Germany and Costa Rica. Of course, I am talking about Soccer World Cup 2006, held in Germany from June 9th until July 9th. If you have never watched a soccer world cup, do it this year. And don't get discouraged by a few low scoring games in the preliminary rounds where there are groups of four teams playing each other once. The best two team of each group advance to the next round, which is knock-out playoff style. That's where the fun begins. Give it a try. I am excited and can't wait for it to start.

Go Sharks, Baby!!!

Image001.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

It's hockey playoff time. Today, my buddy Chris and I went to see the first game of the Western Conference Semifinals between the San Jose Sharks and the Edmonton Oilers. The Sharks won 2:1 on a goal by Patrick Marleau and the game winner (a rocket of a shot) by Christian Ehrhoff. Playoff games are so much fun, let's hope the Sharks make it to the next round ... We had a really good time, and beers were only $7.50 for the good stuff ...

A night at the ballpark

Image006.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

My buddy Dan and I went to the ballpark in San Francisco last night. Giants 10, Arizona 2. Was a good game, a local guy from Los Gatos, Kevin Frandsen, had three hits in his first Major league game ever. Pretty cool. Only downer of the night were the beer prices. $8 for one beer is simply ridiculous. But we had "the best kosher hot dog", according to the vendor. I'd say it was at most average ... ;-)

Who would have thought ...

... that Linux is evil. If you read this you may be tempted to believe this. Of course it isn't and part of me wants to believe that the person who wrote that was just trying to make fun of the whole thing but more likely, the author meant every word. What's even more tragic is that he/she also believed that crap and that there is a even more people out there that will do the same. This is utter garbage, half facts, wrong facts and of course the bible and God are mentioned. Scary ... Read it and let me know what you think. Sometimes you wish the internet was less open ... so that not everyone could post their crap but I guess we will have to live with it.

Patent Stuff

While I was at IBM, part of the job of any research employee was to create intellectual property. Over the course of the 7+ years I was there I submitted roughly 10 or so patent applications. When I returned from my last vacation, my buddy Jan gave me a frame from IBM commemorating my first issued patent, 3 and a half years after it was filed with the US patent office. This is pretty cool. The patent itslef was a collaboration of a few people related to my old project, WebFountain. Pretty cool.

flood waters

flood waters
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

flood waters
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

The two pictures show the water levels of the river "Elbe" in my parent's hometown. It was at 8 meters and 30 centimeters, already down 40cm from the highest level this season. Normal water levels are around 5 meters. For the Americans among you, this is a difference of almost 10 feet. So far the levees have held steady.

nice rainbow

nice rainbow
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

We took this picture while in Germany, watching the river Elbe flow by. Teh water levels were pretty high. It was raining and the sun was shining and we caught this nice rainbow. In case you are wondering where this is in Germany. The city in the background is Lauenburg which is roughly 30 miles upstream from Hamburg. The side of the river we were standing on is the small village of Hohnstorf, where I grew up.

Digital SLR ...

After hearing Sonja complain about the response time of our digital camera (canon powershot) for too many times I decided to treat her for her birthday and get her a better camera. I opted for the Canon EOS Rebel XT Digital SLR. Since we had a Canon SLR before and two lenses, all we had to get was a body. And man, it is nice. it has 8 MegaPixels and it behaves like any SLR camera. We really liked out own traditional SLR camera but in the times of digital photography who has the time to get their films developed. Really annoying. So I went and ordered one and Sonja really likes it. Me too ;-)

Our vacation so far ...

So here we are in Germany, ready for a relaxed time and it turns out that relaxing will be the last thing we will do for quite some time. Now, we weren't quite hoping for spectacular weather so we were fine with the rain but we weren't quite prepared for the nasty stomach virus that hit us after three days. To recap, instead of hanging out and enjoying my Mom's good food, we spent our time in bathrooms, doctor's offices, sleeping, vegetating and feeling miserable. On top of that we got my brother, his wife and their little son Frode (15 months) sick as well. Our little guy Jonas (13 months) took the worst hit, he had to spend two nights in the hospital due to dehydration. the whole things was not a pretty sight. Slowly though, we are getting back on our feet and the kids are starting to smile again. On top of that, my vacation will be over in two days when I have to head back to the U.S., Sonja and the boys will stay a little while longer. I just hope that the remainder of their vacation will feel like one. Big thanks to my parents who have been nurturing all of us through these very sucky last seven days. Although it wasn't quite the vacation one had hoped for, it was still great to see the family. I just need to figure out where to find the time to recover from this vacation ... ;-)

where we are staying

where we are staying
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

The house in the picture is the place where we are staying most of the time in Germany. My brother Axel and our parents built this house about 3years ago. The interesting part about this house is that it is partially built with a wood frame recovered from a farm building built in 1879, which was still in very good condition and gives the new house an antique look and feel. Inside it is state of the art construction though. Very cool. Flight to Germany was ok, with its ups and downs that travelling with small children brings. At least our kids weren't the noisiest and most annoying on the plane. ;-)
Weather has been great today. Warm (by northern German standards) and sunny. First day and a half were kind of shitty, same as in California, or so I hear. More later.

Visiting Family

It's time again, we are going to pack up some stuff, grab the boys by their ears (not really, but it sounds good) and hop on a plane to Germany. Visit the parents/grandparents and not cook, clean or do anything remotely strenuous for a few weeks. Well, except for the flight that is. Sitting for 13 hours in a confined space with a three year old (Ben) and a one year old (Jonas) will be no walk in the park. Sonja and I are trying to be as prepared as possible to keep the boys happy and entertained. Wish us luck and may the temper tantrums be rare. Germany is going to be great, there is floods everywhere, the bird flu has struck already and the weather forecast doesn't look to exciting either. But hey, neither it is here in CA right now. Why are we going then? Because it's family and living 6000 miles away from your parents makes you want to go, regardless of weather. We are excited. Alright then, off to packing.

Drive-Through Ordering over the internet ... Simply ridiculous

Now, even McDonalds is outsourcing ... According to this article McDonalds is experimenting with a system that frees individual McDonalds restaurants from having a person take the orders locally. Instead an order outside the restaurant will be routed over the internet to a call center. I can't imagine a job in a call center anyway let alone taking orders for super-dollar menus and chicken mcnuggets or whatever they are called over the phone. Makes you wonder though what's next, that you will actually call someone in India when you are using a drive through ? Or that FedEx or UPS will actually deliver the burger from the restaurant to your car? This is crazy.

Firefox market share ...

I just looked at a web page that reports web browser market share. Assuming those numbers resemble reality, Only Firefox and Safari are gaining market share while Internet Explorer is losing market share. How long 'until Firefox will catch IE. Well, pretty simple. Over the last 12 months, IE has been losing roughly .27% market share. Assuming this trend continues and that all of IE's losses will go mostly to Firefox, it will only take approximately 136 months (that's 11 years and 4 months) for Firefox to get equal market share ... Something to look forward to. Why am I worried about browsers? Well, I am working on some frontend stuff (PHP, JavaScript, DHTML) and it's still a pain in the butt to make things look equally great in all kinds of browsers.

Smoking laws ...

Heard a piece on the radio this morning on my way to work. It was about laws that prevent people from smoking and whether the regulators/law makers are going too far by banning smoking outside (e.g., in parks or on beaches). This was then followed by the usual slew of phone calls for and against. While I am generally against anymore laws (I think there are enough laws already), I think it is always a good idea to protect people's health and the environment. I welcome the smoke free indoors in California, because I am a non-smoker, and I have no problem with people smoking outside in front of the buildings. If the smoke bothers me too much I can go around them. What is wrong though is the way many (not all, but many) smokers deal with the remains of the cigarette when they are done smoking. They simply toss the cigarette butt to the floor and step on it to make sure the concrete does not catch on fire ... and there we go. The next rain washes that waste into all the places you don't want it. (I encourage everyone to read this piece on toxicity and environmental impact of cigarette butts litter). It always amazes me how many people just toss their cigarette butts out of their car while driving. Which makes me wonder whether all these cars don't come with an ashtray. I bet they all have one but many smokers seem to think: "It's only a tiny cigarette butt". They are wrong and they should be prevented from tossing their crap into the street. Whenever I see something like it it makes me want to take my trash and dump it into their car or house. I bet you a million bucks that not a single one of these smokers would appreciate it. So if you smoke, be responsible and clean up after yourself. You are already ruining your health, don't ruin the environment more than necessary.

A380 passed test ...

Earlier, I posted about the worlds largest aircraft (Airbus A380), which is still in development and to be put in service at the end of this year. They had to perform an evacuation test and they passed it with flying colors. They squeezed 873 people out of 8 exits in under 90 seconds. And only one person was injured (broken leg). pretty impressive, considering that they were only aiming for 650 people.

A quote I like ...

Found this quote today (from the TV show Babylon 5) reading some commentary in a blog:

"If the primates that we came from had known that some day politicians would come out of the gene pool they'd have stayed up in the trees and written evolution off as a bad idea."

Have never watched the show but I like this quote.

Fascinating aircraft...

Over the last few months I have been following the development and testing of Airbus' newest aircraft, the Airbus A380. Once in operation, it will be the biggest aircraft in service. It is designed to hold up to 853 people ... Now, that's a lot of people. They are currently doing evacuation tests to get certified by the FAA and its european counterpart. Read an article today (in german) that stated that in order to get certified for up to 850 passengers they need to squeeze 110 people out the aircraft in 90 seconds. Per exit door that is. Their goal is apparently 650 people which would still put it far ahead in terms of passenger capacity compared to a Boeing 747. Can't wait to fly with that thing.

Dodged a bullet ...

This morning, on my way to work I dodged a bullet, big time. Was going a slightly different way to work, didn't pay attention and did not see the 25mph sign. Neither did I see the cop aiming his laser gun at me. Sure enough, I was too fast. I slowed down looked on my speedometer and was still going 40mph. This can't be good I thought to myself. I guess the cops thought the same thing and sent a car after me. I got pulled over for speeding. As it turns out I was going twice the allowed speed ... But then miracle happened. The guy just wrote me warning. Don't know why exactly but I don't care. Maybe it had something to do with that I had nothing on my DMV record, that I am driving a stock Volkswagen Golf Diesel and that I am white. Who knows ... All that matters is that I didn't hurt anyone and that I did not get a ticket. But having a cop pull you over and sitting on the side of the road in your car while the cop is writing you up is just way too embarrassing. And I couldn't help thinking that the other people that saw me there were just thinking: "Thank goodness it isn't me ..." So the theme for today should be: Slow down, the 5 seconds you make up by speeding you will lose again at the next light. I should never own a Porsche ...

Running Marathons

I miss running. Which is sort of weird because I wasn't into running that much when I was a kid. I was into soccer way more. Now, a big part of soccer is running around and chasing the ball and people around but it's not that you are just running. Well, later in life though, after I had moved to the U.S. I stopped playing soccer and needed to do something to stay in shape. One New Year's even party I talked to Jeff's sister and her then-boyfriend who had just run a marathon. I decided that night, that I want to do one too. And I did, 4 to be precise. It's not easy, it's even painful at times during training and the race itself and you are questioning your sanity but once you cross the finish-line you forget about that. What I liked the most about the whole process is that I was in such good condition that I could easily run a 10 miler at any time of the day and feel great afterwards. The 4 marathons I did were:

1. 1999, Silicon Valley Marathon, San Jose, CA; 4 hours 13 minutes (boring course, it's better these days, very hot, bonked super hard)
   


2. 2000, Rock'n Roll Marathon, San Diego, CA; 4 hours 18 minutes (very hot, bonked even harder)
   


3. 2001, Big Sur Marathon, Carmel, CA (my favorite, can't beat the views); 3 hours, 54 minutes
   


4. 2002, SF Chronicle Marathon, San Francisco, CA; 3 hours, 51 minutes
   

The first two were painful and I did not reach my goal to stay under 4 hours. The next two, I ran all the way through without walking. And even though the course profiles for those two are much harder, I managed to get under 4 hours. Not great times, but I am 6'1" and 200 lbs, so not too bad for a clydesdale ... And then, after those 4 I didn't do any more. Why? Well, my wife Sonja and I started having children, we bought a house and work took over a little more than it should have. Whenever I now see an ad for a marathon I get this urge to sign up and train again but I am not quite sure where to find the time without neglecting my wife, the kids and the dog ... I guess I miss running. I am going to have to settle for something less than a marathon. But I should really go running again. If I were to run one again, I would want to break 3 hours 30 minutes.

It's been 3 months now ...

... that I have left IBM and started working for Yahoo! And thankfully, I haven't regretted that move at all. Let's be realists, it's still a job and I have yet to solve world hunger and acieve world peace. But it is fun for the most part. The biggest differences are that I am working on something completely different now than at IBM. It's pretty interesting for now (Javascript, PHP, AJAX), eventually, I think I want to go back to more backend type stuff. Remember, I still have a PhD to finish. There is tons of stuff in that area to do as well at Yahoo!, but it's nice to learn on how to write stuff that can show of cool backend functionality. The other big difference is culture. Even though the Almaden Research Center was a pretty relaxed place for IBM standards, things feel less serious at Yahoo!. And just by the nature of the work, I feel more connected to what people actually do with the stuff that Yahoo does. Heck, I use Yahoo products every day but who of the ordinary people uses a Bluegene? Don't get me wrong it was always interesting work at IBM and technically challenging but I never could escape the feeling that what I am doing is useful to only a handful of people. Overall, it's a nice change for now.
Things I don't like about Yahoo!? Well, I'd have to say the stock price ... needs to go up ... a lot! Other than that, things are good.

A true Masterwerk ...

Check out the Porsche Masterwerk (you need Flash). It is about this:

I so want one of these ... Who knows maybe I will be rich at some point and then I will have one of these ... Time will tell.

Yahoo! Social Media Tool ...

For those of you that have been here before, you will notice that my blog now has a set of buttons at the end of each post. Those are provided by the Yahoo! and provide little shortcuts that let you share my stuff with others while you read my posts. I hope you find this useful. You can add this to your page as well, go to the Yahoo! Publisher Social Media Tool page to learn how to do it.

Jonas is 1 year old ...

Happy Birthday, your Dad!!!

Jonas is 1 year old ...
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

It had to come down to this ...

Just read on CNN's page that "South Dakota law bans nearly all abortions". According to the article, it will become a crime to do an abortion and the only exception is on when the woman's health in danger. Anything else (e.g., rape, incest) will be ok. The article quotes the South Dakota governor Rounds as follows: "In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them".

Now, whether one agrees with that assessment or not, a law like this (which will take years in court to be decided) once in effect, will drive women and doctors into illegality and across state borders. Laws like this take away a woman's right to choose and put control over their bodies into the hands of some politicians. How women can vote for people like Gov. Rounds is beyond me but I can't help but think that this is another example of where state, politics and religion are not separated enough. If you believe abortion is wrong, don't do it. If one wants an abortion (for whatever reason) provide help not threats. Instead of wasting millions of tax and donor millions now on a lawsuit, the state of South Dakota should rather provide women with appropriate aids. But something tells me they won't. Welcome back in the medieval ages, where women soon will have to go some dark cave to have an abortion done, because what this thing won't do is to cut the number of abortions, it will just make it harder for women and I don't think that is what most of those women need.

All in all, this is the first step of the ultra-conservative people that hope to benefit from Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court. Anyway, I know this post is somewhat unusual for my blog, but things like this bug the hell out of me. And the irony of all of this is that once the child is born, the protection from the government pretty much ends. Just take a look at the state of public schools and education in general. I know it's a naive hope, but I wish the states and all these people would direct their effort into more fruitful endeavors like protecting the environment and bettering education. Imagine what you can do with the millions of dollars you could save by avoiding the lawsuits over abortion, given that the highest court in the nation has already ruled on this.

snow

snow
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

MacBook Pro Comparison ... I almost want one ...

Just read a review of the new Apple MacBook Pro at Ars Technica. Seems like it's kicking ass for native apps, not so much for apps that also run on the G4 versions. I currently have a 15" G4 powerbook but I doubt that after only two month Yahoo! will replace my laptop ... ;-)

Boing Boing blocked -- Or what's wrong with Nudity ...

A few minutes ago I read a few articles about the blocking of Boing Boing on various blogs. A software called SmartFilter puts Boing Boing into the same category as most porn sites. Now, people in some countries and employees of government agencies and companies can't view the Boing Boing content anymore. Interstingly though, very few posts (less than 0.5% according to Boing Boing) could vaguely be identified as nudity. I don't get this whole thing, what is so wrong about nudity? Does anyone remember Ashcroft getting all bent out of shape because he was supposed to give a speech in front of a half naked greek statue and wanted it covered? What is so wrong about seeing a bare ass or a set of female breasts on TV? Why is parental guidance necessary if there is a naked person to be seen? Don't we all watch naked people in the mirror? Aren't we all born naked (except for Ashcroft maybe)?
Granted I grew up in Europe and nudity is fairly common on public television so seeing the fuss here with all the warnings just seems ridiculous to me. Especially in light of all other problems that there are. Let's look at it this way, I am all for finding those sick bastards who are into or producing child pornography. But the governments can't just go and say, now you can't show naked people anymore. And who does it hurt? Who ever came up with the notion that it is wrong to show two people doing it? Granted, there is probably more tasteless stuff out there than one will ever want to know (I worked on a project for a while where we looked at the performance and effectiveness of a porn detector) and the afternoon kids timeslot is not the best forum for this. Whether some people see it that way or not, porn is some form of expressing certain things, for some it's erotica, others may find it disgusting. But it should be everyone's choice whether they want to watch this or not. And if someone sees something illegal they should report it. But in all fairness, I don't think anyone has ever died of watching a little nudity or even porn, and (in most cases) there is nothing violent about this. Yet, America is outraged if Janet Jackson's nipple is seen for two microseconds. Noone, however, cares about the fact that during any hour fo primetime TV, a kid can see numerous bloody corpses, guns, beatings, etc. For some reason that isn't worse than naked people. Priorities are very skewed, showing how to kill people, reporting live from a war, all that is fine. But seeing Janet Jackson's nipple traumatizes the nation ... I simply don't get it.

Yahoo YUI goes open source

Yahoo announced today that they are releasing the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and the new Yahoo! User Interface Library. For anyone trying to do dynamic web stuff (Ajax, DHTML) this is worth a look. Makes developing cross browser apps very easy.

Bob Costas Sucks ...

So here we are, the Olymic winter games in Turin are underway and we have to watch Bob Costas again. Who really cares for that short moron? While TV coverage of live events seems to be slightly better this year that in previous year, the overall theme of almost showing more background info that the actual live events is still there and it still sucks. And Bob Costas doesn't add anything of value. If you saw his interview of the kid with the red hair (Shawn White) that won the men's half pipe event, you would agree. Even the kid (they call him tomato because of his red hair) was making fun of Bob Costas for being an idiot. Anyway, back to how the NBC network covers things. I have always loved to watch the Olympics because it is that one time in 4 years during which you get to see sports you usually don't see and you get to see athletes you don't see too often. And the upsets and drama are always very compelling. And every winner deserves to be shown, that includes the medal ceremonies. By the way, it wouldn't hurt some people to listen to some other national anthems. The Olympics is about sports and athletes, and not just figure skating (what is the U.S.'s deal with figure skating?). Show the fucking events and not hours and hours of background about an athlete and the hardships he/she had to overcome. All people go through hard times, athletes are people too, so some of them will naturally encounter difficulties along the way. But during the Olympics I care about the competition not that some athlete had to overcome numerous deaths in his family or that her hamster died. Show the fucking events, all of them. It's ok to focus some more on the events in which the Americans are favored but all events should be shown. And regardless of what NBS choses to show afterall, they need to get rid of Bob Costas. If you don't know who Bob Costas is or why he sucks, just follow this link: Bob Costas Sucks

Bill Maher

Sonja (my wife) and I managed to go out on Saturday and night (Thanks to Anke for babysitting) and saw Bill Maher at the Flint Center in Cupertino. I always enjoyed watching him on TV but he is really good in person. Cynical, very liberal and critical. Yeah some of his stuff is over the top but I like it. People who really like the current president of the United States and his administration should stay clear of a Bill Maher show. Although, on second thought, may be they should go to see the many ways in which they are wrong. Ooops, I think I got political here ... eh, whatever, one ion a while that's ok. But the fact theat I really like Bill Maher is probably sign enough what I think of the current presidency... Let's leave it at that. ;-)

Coffee @ Yahoo!

Haven't been around here in a while so I thought, I'd write a little again. I also haven't been to Starbucks or Peet's in a while so no more name stories. Sorry ... I guess. The reason for that is pretty simple, I am enjoying the free coffee at work. We have a staffed espresso bar and organic beans and it's actually pretty good, much better than Starbucks. And if you like coffee like me it's pretty cool. Maybe I am drinking too much coffee now, but hey, I am fired up no matter what ... Only took about 2 weeks until the barista Jose knew exactly what I wanted and now I don't even need to order anymore. Sometimes, my drink is ready by the time I reach the counter. That's how it should be.
When I am not busy drinking a shitload of coffee I learn about dynamic html, javascript and all that good stuff. There is a really good web site from a guy named Doug Crockford about javascript. I am sort of getting into it, it is somewhat addictive. On the other hand, I have to say, that looking at other people's javascript is not the most beautiful sight. If you are a newbie to this whole area, looking at code is sometimes not the easiest. for one thing, you will be hardpressed to find comments. But who needs comments anyway ...
Anyway, I so far I am enjoying myself...