Results of the 2008 presidential race leaked!

I love ONN.

Jerks

My fellow countrymen (note those are two separate links).

What wonderful ambassadors of my homeland. Oh yes, makes one proud.

Jerks.

A note to the wary: that accent is easily recognizable. If the person with that accent is doing anything in a field that is not high in IP (intellectual property) - like these folks, or moving, or cars - stay away. I would, and I come from there.

Now that's funny (in a clever sort of way)

I've read about a half-dozen entries thus far, and all I can say is... it's fun. Especially if you are white.

A Thought About Company Boards

And here it is: they need me.

OK, alright, I'm an egotistical, self-absorbed maniac. But consider this: IT and security have over the past two decades been elevated to a business-critical role in most companies.

Problem: most boards have little to no understanding of technology at a business operations, or indeed, any level.
Why this matters: there are an awful lot of bad CIO's out there.

IT takes a major chunk of operating budgets everywhere. A good executive IT leader can drive fantastic improvements in the bottom-line by utilizing those budgets effectively. Hands up now, how many of you believe you have one in your organization?

And some of these investments are, like my son likes to say, Ghigormous. Yet when that same leader speaks to the board, normally their presentation cannot be properly evaluated or challenged.

And doing so requires more than technology OR industry expertise. It requires those, of course, and at a pretty deep level. But it also requires a true understanding about IT in business operations. In other words, how and why and in what context does any particular initiative make sense from a business perspective, NOT a technology perspective. Of course, the presentations include these elements. But technology is a specialized field, security is even more so, and thus it is extremely easy to bury a number of favorable hidden assumptions in any board-level IT presentation so as to drive a favorable decision. That is, if that's your CIO is up to.

Guess what? I'm really-good(tm) at this process. Shoot, I've helped some of these folks successfully make their pitches. So I can provide good value to a board. Private equity has this figured out; they have certain folks doing that for their turnaround targets. Why not the rest?

(and no, it's not just about me, but hey, if it gets attention...)

Sensor finally died

So its been what, 16 days? 17? I'm rather impressed.

Third full cycle - new sensor life record

So tonight I got to start my third full (7-day) cycle with my current sensor. It shows no sign of letting go. Just like my last arm placement, the sensor seems both more reliable and longer-lasting, and this time it isn't getting torn out by mistake because the glue has worn off.

I'm amazed at how much better the arm placements are. Try it yourself, I want to hear from others. And if you agree spread the word. I told my doctor about this, too.

Speaking of which, I went for my regular visit last friday and get this - the only other patient in the waiting room at the time ALSO had a Dex Seven! it was so neat to meet another human with the system. I encouraged him to join the Yahoo group since he also had his stuff fully covered by insurance and I thought it would be neat to hear his story.

AT&T

A quick followup to my last post about them...

Get this: the contract indeed got "reset"; I just confirmed that both our lines are out of contract.

But the line which was taken out of contract is not getting the equipment discounts.

Like, huh?!

I mean, that's the worst possible situation for AT&T. The only reason they wanted to do this was to get us into this "double-sized" monthly agreement with new expensive phones for BOTH our lines. The only reason they needed to extend this courtesy was that I insisted I would not upgrade only one line, so it was a "double or nothing" deal from their perspective.

I am truly scratching my head in puzzlement over this.

A good AT&T CS story

Say what?!

Well, I had a somewhat unusual request for the folks at AT&T Wireless. We've been customers since 2002, always had relatively high usage (we're currently using a 2100 minute national roaming plan), paid on time, and have only taken advantage of one upgrade offer in our history as clients (thus essentially leaving money on the table, money that goes directly to their bottom line).

Still, I approached my call with trepidation. I knew - just knew - it was going to be a nasty conversation, and I will be told time and again they can't do anything for me. In fact, my experience with calling CS has trained me to literally cringe when I need to call them. And now I was going to ask for a favor - I was going to ask them to break my contract - the one upgrade offer I ever took, which had me ending up with a terrible phone - so I can get a new upgrade offer a year ahead of time. I had a number of really good reasons, but that doesn't normally matter with wireless providers.

So I made the call. I got a Branden, who was polite enough, but just as frustrating as I expected him to be; reading company policy repeatedly, even after I started the conversation by stating I am asking to break it. Eventually we got to the "please transfer me to a manager" line, where I expected to repeat the whole story and get nowhere.

Then my daughter wanted out of the bath. I had to drop the call and get her. Then I got my son in the bath, went back down to my office, and called again.

I got Adel.

Oh my gosh. I got Adel.

If there is any way that I can ever always speak to Adel, I swear, I am willing to pay AT&T another $10 a month. Just for the pleasure of having Adel answer and handle my (very rare) calls. Her last name sounds like "Letty". If you ever get her, consider yourself lucky.

Not only was she patient and polite, she listened. Then she thought about it. Then she checked some things, while at the same time asking me more questions so she can get a better handle on my admittedly out of the box request. She went ahead and documented stuff, and tried this, and tried that, and explained to me what the downsides of what she was doing were, and even asked me to document what happened on my side so I have my own record. I mean, she was good.

I was already ready to receive a rejection from Adel. I would even have felt good about it, because she so obviously gave it a good college try. But then she found a way to get he result I wanted. I mean, she let me OUT of the 2-year contract so I can go sign a new one. She let me OUT of the contract!

She didn't even need a manager to do this. She considered all of what I had to offer the company as a client; she saw I've been loyal even when we were out of contract for years. She considered that I was asking this so I can go and re-sign a 2-year contract for services that will more than double our monthly charge. She even said towards the end that it would be a big loss to lose me now considering customer acquisition costs and that I become more profitable over time. Have YOU ever encountered a CSR who even THOUGHT about these things?

I will repeat this again: AT&T just allowed me OUT of a 2-year contract on nothing more than my PROMISE to go and sign a new one for more stuff. Yes, of course I will. I actually sort of like them, to a degree (talk about a rousing endorsement). But I don't actually have to. And yet it happened.

You know what this is? It shows that they are looking at me as just a tiny bit more than a money-milking machine. It shows trust. Trust in me, as a consumer of their service. Let me remind you again - this is a US wireless service provider. Trust is NOT a word in their vocabulary.

Thank you, Adel. I hope you get promoted.

My Regular Meals in the Bay Area

A couple of people recently remarked that I have a tendency to always order the exact same thing in certain restaurants. Thinking about this, they were right; I eat out a lot because of my line of work, and when I find a meal I like, I tend to stick with it any time I come back to the same place. What was interesting about the discussion was that the folks who made the comment had admitted to be following my footsteps; they claimed that when I "lock in" to a particular dish or combination, it does tend to be one of the best in the restaurant.

So, other than being flattered, I figured why not share my apparently somewhat admired taste with the world. Thus, for what its worth, here are my "regular everyday" meals in the San Francisco bay area. I've eaten each of these specific dishes at least a dozen times. Note that I am NOT including places I visit often but where I have not "locked in" to a particular dish. If I forgot a few, which is very likely, I'll come in and add them later. These are set up more or less geographically, going north to south. Why? because.

Petaluma, Mary's Pizza Shack, He & She (with a side Caesar)

Walnut Creek, Silk Road, Mousaka, followed up by a piece or two of chocolate at Leonidas down the street

Berkeley, Lanote, Ratatouille avec Merguez (usually with something else on the side which does change)

Emeryville, Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, Half Caesar, a side of (amazing!) fries, and a Shaking Jessy

San Francisco, Popolo (on Bush & Kearney), Chicken Risotto and Tiramisu

Burlingame, Max's, Large Matzohball Soup (usually with a side of Buffalo Wings)

Mountain View, Pezzella's, Lasagna and Chocolate Mousse (this is one of my favorite meals in the bay area period, I try to go here and get this every time I happen to be in the south bay for lunch)

There you have it. I must have forgotten a few, but if you do visit one of these places, this is one menu option I think is safe to try.

Trendmicro Boycott

Yes, I will join the call.

Bubbles

I have to agree that although it is nowhere near being the same scale of a decade ago, the valley certainly has the smell of a bubble right now, at least in certain segments (social+mobile networking anyone?).

The funny thing for me is that I have never been able to really believe in them even when they were happening right around me. From the time I said no to a position in a small startup that would have landed me close to $6M in cash 9 months later, through the several times I gave up joining certain technology giants in 96 and 97 with large option packages, the time I said "no" to $6M in funding for a technology concept I came up with just a bit later because I could not understand how on earth I was supposed to actually execute and I hated - and still do hate - taking someone else's money without being confident of being able to pay it back... funny thing is, that particular idea is now a big field called "localized marketing" on mobile devices. Great idea, 10 years too early. In a way, I'm glad I didn't take the funding cause it would have failed miserably for lack of experience (on my part) and infrastructure (on the world's part), and I would never have been able to gain the experience I have since then.

Anyway, that's besides the point.

The point is... if there's a bubble, how does one capitalize on it without having the ability to disconnect one's sense of incredulity about the underpinnings of said bubble? in other words, if I can never bring myself to believe that, say, a company like Facebook is worth or ever will be worth 15 billion dollars, how can I ever seriously consider selling my soul to work there before the exit? because make no mistake about it, working in this industry means selling your soul.

I am cursed with rationality.

I guess it's a good thing in a way; it has certainly played a role in the growth of my own company - profitable, with highly positive cashflow, low fixed costs, high margins, and solid growth - you know, a real business. But that's the thing. Real businesses get judged by real metrics, because, well, there are real numbers to look at. So our nice little cash cow of a consulting business can get maybe a 2.5x revenue valuation, whereas a company that has so little revenue as to amount to a statistical error can get a 1000x or higher valuation.

I keep scratching my head in puzzlement. Something here doesn't feel right to me. What am I missing?

Arm experiment - first sensor is done

Not really the sensor's fault, it was still working just fine.

However, the glue that was holding it together evaporated due to the additional pressure put on an arm site by shirt sleeves constantly pulling at it. I had athlete's tape over the top part for the past few days, but sometime during the night the bottom part came free too and, well, that's where the sensor actually is. So it pulled out.

It lasted almost two weeks again, and I am certain it would have lasted quite a few days more had it not met an untimely death. It had provided better results all around, more accurate and with less delay on trends. Thus my new one is up on my other arm.

It was an interesting experience trying to put one on all by myself; I had to keep reminding myself that the side/back of the upper arm is a favorite injection spot for insulin, so nothing unusual about this. I've never used it for that purpose and it was still weird, but I managed to do it all by myself. I'm rather pleased with that.

The other thing worthy of note is that the pokey hole normally left behind is a lot noticeable on the arm than it was on my abdomen. I have a sense that it will heal faster.

Youtube brilliance

Dunno who this lady is, but... she's good.

Worth a read

Poetic

The junk that people put on their PC's

So my wife has been complaining about slow performance on her laptop. I gave it a look a couple nights ago and tweaked some settings, but it didn't seem that bad; then she let me know the problem was specifically with her browser.

I woke up early this morning so I decided I'd give it a look. She was right; it was terrible. Firefox would take literally minutes to open a new page. What on earth was going on?

I fired it up in safe mode and looked at the extensions. Cooliris, check. Download manager, check. LinkedIn extension, check. Firebug... wait a second, Firebug?! had my wife taken on some web development projects recently? is she editing CSS style sheets in her spare time?

I took it out, and of course, everything now works smoothly. But now I'm curious - what would lead to the installation of Firebug, a highly specialized extension, for anyone who is not specifically in the field of web development? talk about a head-scratcher.