New 527 Organization

After seeing The Daily Show's report on starting a 527 organization earlier this week, Phil and I have decided that we are going to start our own 527. These organizations are supposedly not supposed to tell you to vote for any candidate, but we are going to push the limit by promoting not voting. Also, the name of our group will be No One, so that at the end of our ads it will say, "No One is responsible for the content of this ad."

What kind of 527 would you start?

Journey to Red Sox Nation

Sunday through Tuesday I took a trip to Boston to interview with the Lotus division of IBM Software Group . The flight to Boston (via Detroit) was uneventful. Upon arrival, I headed to Hertz to pick up my rental car. The girl behind the counter was about my age, and I started talking to her about the Red Sox (down 0-3 to the Yankees at this point). She called for my car, and I ended up getting an orange Ford Mustang convertible . That's probably the car I was scheduled for all along, but I like to think that I got it because she dug me.

I drove to my hotel in Westford, about 45 minutes from Boston, where Lotus is actually located. I was hungry, but I figured that something would be open in Westford, so I didn't stop to eat on the way. Well, it turns out that Westford actually isn't very big, and nothing was open at midnight except for the gas station. I got a hot dog and some chips at the gas station, and was treated to an adept display of profanity by the guy checking out in front of me, as he explained the plight of the Red Sox. (Something about f'ing Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui). Back at the hotel, I ate my food and saw the Red Sox win game 4.

Monday morning I had my interview at Lotus 's offices, which were only a couple of miles from the hotel. Spent about an hour interviewing with 2 developers, had lunch with a bunch of people on the team, and then talked with the hiring manager for about an hour. The building I was in was interesting; not your standard IBM cube farm. That's because it was formerly the home of Iris . However, the manager informed me that I would be working in the building next door should I receive and accept and offer, so asked for a tour of it. Unfortunately, it was a standard IBM cube farm. Sigh...

After the visit ended, I headed back to my hotel. I wanted to visit downtown Boston, and was hoping to meet up with Sean , one of my teammates from Extreme Blue this summer. I wanted to look up some things online, so I broke down and paid the hotel's $10 charge for 24 hours of broadband. Sean was on Skype , so I hit him up, and he said he'd give me a tour of MIT, and then we could go somewhere for dinner.

I drove into Boston and picked up the T (subway). After meeting Sean at the Kendall/MIT stop on the Red Line, he showed me the MIT Media Lab , the brand new Stata Center (home of CSAIL ), and Simmons Hall (a dorm with unusual architecture), as well as some of the bigger lecture halls and the main building (home of the dome ), with its " infinite corridor ". (See this for a brief account of some of the stuff I saw in the Stata Center.)

After the tour, we went to eat at Legal Seafoods in the Prudential Tower. Game 5 of the Red Sox vs. Yankees was on, and periodically the people near the bar (where there were some TVs) would erupt with cheers, and the wait staff would have to find out what happened and report back to the rest of the customers. The food was good, and Sean and I had a good conversation.

We headed back to Sean's fraternity house, which is only about a mile from Fenway Park. We watched the conclusion of the game on their HD projection TV. When the Red Sox won, the whole city erupted and people ran out into the streets to cheer. The frat house has a deck on the roof, so we went up there and watched everyone act like fools. We could hear the roar coming from Fenway Park. I headed back to the subway, crammed myself into a crowded car, and made it back to Westford.

I didn't have a whole lot of time on Tuesday before my flight, so I decided to head to Lowell, MA, which is the largest town near Westford, and was mentioned by IBMers as a possible place to live. It seemed like a pretty nice town. I drove through and around it, then I parked downtown and walked around for a bit. I ducked into a deli to grab lunch, and had the best corned beef sandwich ever. After that, I hopped back into my car and booked it to Logan . Upon the conclusion of my role in the security theatre at the airport, I flew back to Cleveland.

MovableType Upgrade

After wasting too much time de-spamming my blog, I've upgraded to MovableType 3.11 . This allows me to use MT-Blacklist 2.0 , which is much more powerful than older versions. Hopefully that will keep this blog spam free. If not, then I will have to require TypeKey registration for comments, but I'm hoping to avoid that.

Photos Feed Updated

Seems that Flickr changed the URL for my photostream's RSS feed without telling me. The link in the sidebar has been updated. The new RSS feed is here .

Upcoming Events

Tonight, Extreme Blue is having an information session in Thwing Meeting Room A. I'll be there to answer questions (and mooch some food).

Tomorrow morning I have an important phone call, then I'm going out for lunch with Extreme Blue alumni and IBMers.

Sunday through Tuesday I will be in Boston. I really need to get a haircut before I leave.

Debating for Ratings

This is an awesome Flash-based lampoon of election media coverage. We can spend 30 minutes talking about whether sitting down favors Cheney or Edwards, but no air time can be spared for even a brief summary of the platforms of Badnarik, Cobb, and Nader.

Wingwoman

Wow, maybe I'd be more successful with women if I paid $50/hour for a professional wingwoman to accompany me around town. I find the concept amusing, but I have no doubt that it's effective.

New JibJab Animation

It's good to be in DC!

Badnarik to Debate or be Arrested

Michael Badnarik has announced that he will debate George Bush and John Kerry this evening... or he'll be arrested. More at Blognarik .

UPDATE: Michael Badnarik has been arrested. Latest updates are here . Nice use of audio blogging by the Badnarik campaign.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Review

Phil and I saw Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence this afternoon. While it's definitely not as good as the genre-defining original, it is still a very solid and enjoyable film. The animation quality was excellent, the only problem being a few 3D shots that seemed stylistically out of place. The story was also interesting, if overly philosophical on occasion.

If you're an anime fan, go see it.

Recent ITConversations

This week I listened to three excellent ITConversations . (One of the nice things about having a 30 minute walk to campus is that it gives me a chance to listen to books and interviews.)

The first was Capturing the Upside with Clayton Christensen. He talks about his Law of Conservation of Modularity, which is about integration and where value lies. His comments on the upmarket disruptions, such as the demise of DEC are fascinating. His distinction between growth markets and growth business made a lot of sense to me. (Steel mini-mills are growth businesses, wireless communication is a growth market.)

Doug Kaye's interview with Joel Spolsky was interesting, especially since I've been reading Joel on Software for a couple of years. The interview is a whirlwind, but Joel's comments about listening to customers made me think. He pointed out that often customers don't really know what they want, and that very rarely will a customer suggest a breakthrough feature. I agree with Joel. It's important to treat customers with respect and to respond to their feedback, but you have to realize that not every feature request will really make sense. Sometimes when customers have a feature request, they are trying to fix a symptom, not a problem. There's no substitute for the overriding vision of an individual or small team.

Finally, I enjoyed Robert Lefkowitz's talk, The Semasiology of Open Source . Oddly enough, I was walking to my accounting class while he was saying that the open source community needs to focus on accounting just as much as it focuses on law. His talk is extremely well developed, and he raises interesting points about what really constitutes source. I won't spoil the ending.

News and Distraction

Philip Greenspun continues to write excellent blog entries. His latest is "Reading the news considered harmful" , in which he discusses the distraction of constantly reading the news. He's got a point. Do I really gain anything by reading the latest headlines multiple times per day, or would I get just as much benefit if I read the news once a week, or once a month? Reading the news as it happens doesn't usually inspire reflective thought or analysis of trends. It's easy to lose the forest for the trees. Furthermore, it distracts me from coding or doing homework.

I think I sometimes read the news as a cop out. I'll be working on a task on my computer, and hit a problem that requires some thought. It's at that point that I'm most tempted to think, "Let me check my feeds. I'll come back to this in a second." I think correcting this requires self-discipline and an awareness of habits. Next time it happens, I'm going to try to close my eyes and think, rather than reflexively clicking on NetNewsWire.