What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
General news and thinking about living in the Alderete-McCune household.
When is a $3.50 ATM surcharge not very much?
An observation from a friend while in Las Vegas this weekend. He’s getting more cash at an ATM in the casino, where the surcharge is $3.50, and he’s pissed for being gouged.
Then he realized that the $300 he was withdrawing was for the blackjack tables.
At least he got a couple of free drinks while losing it…
A colleague asked me if Microsoft’s initiative to replace their aging file system with database technology was anything like what Be did in BeOS. The answer is no, and the reason is because it’s not a very good idea.
A recent article at CNet, about Microsoft’s futuristic concept of replacing the traditional file system with something more like a database, prompted a co-worker to ask me if this was along the same lines as what Be had done (in BFS, the advanced file system that was part of BeOS).
My answer was no. BeOS provided the 20% of the functionality that gave you 80% of what real people actually want to do.
The file system was fairly Unix-like (i.e., no resource forks or anything like that), with the ability to attach arbitrary attributes to files. Some attributes were system-maintained, others could be maintained by the application software that used the files. The attributes could be simple, like numbers or dates or strings, or complex binary data. There was no practical limit on the size or number of attributes, just as there was no practical limit on the size or number of files (64-bit file system).
Simple data attributes could be indexed, and searched upon by a basic but complete query language. The operating system provided a search panel that let you do some interesting things, like search for all e-mail you received in the “last week” or “today”, or all graphics files of any type that were edited on a particular day, etc. Applications could make use of the query engine, and provide their own customized functionality for, say, searching through your collection of contacts or appointments.
Be experimented for a while with “going all the way” and actually using a real database for the file system. And in our experiments we found that there was tremendous value to the traditional file system, that it does a lot of things very, very well. People discount the value because they take it for granted, and the database thing sure sounds sexier.
And one day we will store stuff in some giant, fully indexed and searchable system, and it’ll look like a database in some ways, and give lots of new power. But it’s so complex to do that right, and well, and completely that it’ll take years of pretty sucky solutions before it’s actually useful in real life. So I hope Microsoft commits to this, because it’ll make Longhorn (the next version of Windows) ship that much later than planned.
Here’s another way to think about it. Take the Internet today and consider it a traditional file system (because in a lot of ways it’s very like a traditional file system). There’s this notion of the Semantic Web being developed right now, which will be a lot like what Microsoft envisions for their new data storage technology.
But today Google works pretty fuckin’ well, using the traditional approach. It doesn’t depend on a lot of central management of the data, where the Semantic Web will require that a whole lot of web pages will have to change. By “a whole lot” I actually mean just about all of them, i.e., billions.
The Semantic Web sounds like a great place to be in 10 years, but it’ll require a lot of ditch digging. And I don’t want to have to do the digging myself, nor do I envy the people who do end up doing it.
On the other hand, those Microsofties probably deserve it.
Rochelle has started in on the kitchen. I wonder if I should take the credit cards away from her.
With all my BeBoxes blocking her route to completion on the cleanup of our parlor, Rochelle has started in on the kitchen. Which needs it, but it’s not a small project.
I strongly suspect that I should take the credit cards away from her.
This is the best time of year to be a sports fan — March Madness! And I am headed to Vegas for the tournament opening!
Every year since we’ve been together, Rochelle is baffled by my sudden disinterest in virtually everything except watching basketball on TV. She’s weaned me almost entirely off football, and just can’t figure out what it will take to do the same for college basketball.
There’s no cure for March Madness, baby!
In the run-up to Championship Week I’m watching games a couple days a week (including one during lunch this last week where I told my co-workers to leave without me, I’ll walk back when the game is over), and then during the actual conference tournaments I’m watching games just about every day.
But the capper is the actual NCAA tournament. Most years I take vacation days so I can watch the first two rounds of the tournament. I usually just watch at home, except when an important game (to my bracket) isn’t being aired on CBS, then I have to go to a sports bar to catch that one.
This year I’m headed to the ultimate sports bar — Las Vegas — to watch the first two rounds of the tournament. I’m meeting up with a bunch of folks from my last job. Should be a blast.
Oops, gotta run, the ACC Tournament Final game is about to start!
We’ve tried a lot of others, and Neuhaus chocolates are the world’s best.
One of the great tragedies of my business trip to Europe was that I was in and out of Brussels so fast that I didn’t have time to buy chocolate. Rochelle and I have tried a lot of really good chocolates, and the best — by far — have been Neuhaus. Brought direct from Belgium.
Our tenant introduced us to them, when he brought them back from visiting his parents over Xmas one year. He picked us up a $5 box of chocolates in the airport as a gift. Sort of like Sees candy in SFO, except way, way better.
We tried buying some here in the US, but you can’t get the fresh cream chocolates that way, only if you buy them in Belgium. So we thought that I’d pick up about a dozen boxes while Euro-hopping, except I never got the chance.
Fortunately for me (Rochelle made me open my suitcases at the airport to see what I’d brought her, and decide whether I got a ride home or not), I managed to pick up a kilo of Neuhaus at Harrod’s in London, right before getting on the plane to come home. But they were 3 times as expensive there, so only one box for us, which is nearly exhausted now.
We’ve put up a few more photos of food from our regular visits to fine dining establishments in San Francisco. This time, Gary Danko and breakfast at Bloo.
I’ve put up a few more photos of the food we’ve eaten in San Francisco. It was a long time ago that Rochelle and I ate at Gary Danko, so the descriptions are curt. But the photos should make it clear we were eating well while there.
And in our photos from dinner at Bloo we promised a return visit, for breakfast. Well, we’ve gone twice for breakfast, ordering the same things both times. It’s quite delicious, and there’s no waiting, unlike at the popular Kate’s Kitchen just down the block (which is not as good, IMHO).
Someday someone I work for will read this. Hopefully they’ll like it, because I’m not stopping.
More of my noodling around, I found a great weblog by a very honest man, who’s boss wanted him to stop writing his weblog.
Since someday someone I work for will surely run across this weblog, hopefully they’ll like it, or if not maybe they’ll read Mark’s article, and not ask me to stop writing. This weblog isn’t as interesting, as honest as Mark’s, but I’m working on it. And plan to keep doing so.
Billie has the soul of a killer. Mouser that is. And proves it again while we’re in bed reading the Sunday paper.
Rochelle and I were enjoying a wonderful lazy Sunday when Billie made Rochelle scream. Rochelle was coming around the corner of the bed to pet Billie, who was innocently grooming herself.
Then Rochelle screamed and ran out of the room.
She scared the daylights out of me when she did it, since I was still in bed reading the paper. From how it happened, I knew something was on the floor, so I rolled over and looked.
Sure enough, Billie has racked up another kill. This time the mouse wasn’t quite dead, or as they say in The Princess Bride, mostly dead. But clearly on its way out, so we’ll give her the points.
Rochelle and I are starting to get famous, via our web site covering the food we eat, and obsessively document.
Rochelle and I like to go out to nice meals, take pictures of the food we eat, and then post them on our web site with commentary. We do it more to amuse our tiny minds than anything else, but apparently some people do visit the site and read our sort-of reviews.
At least that was the news we got from our server at Bloo this morning for brunch. He asked “Aren’t you the people with the web site?” When we admitted it he said that some customers had mentioned it recently when they came in for dinner: “Who are those people? Are they trying to sell me something?”
Even Proctor & Gamble and McDonalds had to start somewhere.
My jury “duty” lasted less than 2 hours, and was mostly sitting around in a room with other bored people.
On Wednesday afternoon at 1:30pm I had to report to San Francisco Superior Court to serve the terms of my jury summons. It turned out there was only one case which needed jurors, but they anticipated a difficult selection, and had requested a large pool of potential jurors.
There must have been 200 of us in the room when they started explaining how it would work. They were going to take a first “batch” and keep the rest on reserve, in case they ran through the first group without selecting enough people for the jury.
The first group was called out, my name not among them. At first I thought this was going to be horrible. At least the folks in the first group would have something entertaining to do, i.e., watch the jury selection process. And if you were in the first pool there was the potential to be rejected, and sent home quickly.
The rest of us would have to wait until the first batch was all gone, or the full jury selected, before we could be dismissed. Or so I speculated to Rochelle on my mobile phone around 2:45pm, as we made plans to give the hamburger at Hotel Utah a try for dinner.
Then, not 10 minutes later, another person came over the loudspeaker and explained that the court had notified them that the first batch would be more than enough to keep them occupied for the rest of the day. Since SF has a “one day, one trial” policy for service, we were dismissed, and had fulfilled our duty.
The part I loved was how he put it: “We’re going to have to let you go.” I genuinely got the impression he would much rather have had us sitting around doing nothing all afternoon!
I have to report for jury duty today. It was kind of a surprise.
Over the weekend I finally got around to opening all the mail that accumulated for me while I was in Europe. Among them was a jury summons. Starting the next day.
Oops.
Fortunately, I wasn’t required to report in on Monday, just phone in. And then the same for Tuesday. But my number came due last night, and I have to report in this afternoon.
I’m actually interested in serving on a jury. It’s a civic duty, and beyond that, if a “jury of peers” is to have any meaning, all citizens need to participate, not just those with nothing better to do.
God knows I have “better” things to do, with a product launch in two weeks. If only I had read my mail sooner, I could have requested a deferral…until the next horrible time to have jury duty.
I think it’s like a bandaid, you need to just do it, suffer a bit, and then get on track again.
A new mattress and box spring from McRoskey, and we’re spending more time than ever in bed.
While in Europe, someone on the trip explained his strategy for coping with jet lag. Get back early, run errands all day, then go to bed at the right local time, exhausted, and be in sync by the next day. He had three events to go to the day of his return.
I had exactly the opposite waiting for me when I got back: a brand new bed.
We’d needed a new mattress for a while, because the ditch in the middle of our existing mattress was driving us nuts (never, ever, ever buy a pillowtop mattress). McRoskey Airflex is a local mattress factory that’s one of the last independents, with a great reputation, and happens to be only a few blocks from our house. We’d been meaning to check them out for nearly two years, and seeing them featured on Martha Stewart was the final straw. We went, we laid down, we bought.
Rochelle took delivery of our brand new mattress and box spring literally the day before I got back. Fortunately we stayed away from the new bed until late in the evening, because sleeping on a McRoskey is like sleeping on a buttered cloud (the only thing better than laying on a cloud is laying on a buttered cloud — everything’s better with butter). We’re having real difficulty doing anything in bed except passing out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get your minds out of the gutter!