davidgagne.net

Daily David

dvg — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:59:20 +0000

I’d like to see these foods do battle in some sort of Clogged Arteries Marathon: Deep Fried Butter and Krispy Kreme Cheeseburgers vs. KFC’s new Bacon and Cheese Wrapped in Fried Chicken Breasts sandwich
Did you think the Super Bowl ads were too sexist? The Google Search was my favorite, but it’s tough to not love the Letterman/Oprah/Leno one, too. (The story behind it is great.)
I happen to think it’s pretty sweet that the highest-paid employee in the city of Madison, Wisconsin is a bus driver.
Seeing a space shuttle launch in the night sky is truly epic. It’s much more awesome — and I mean that with the full force of the word — than a daytime launch. If you never got the chance, you probably won’t.
Curious men could count soon count their sperm from home. Good times!

Friday Five: Favorite Magazines

dvg — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:05:27 +0000

Sports Illustrated
Men’s Health
Popular Mechanics
Esquire
Vanity Fair

Daily David

dvg — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:13:44 +0000

Check out Slaughterhouse 90210, where erudite literary quotes meet TV screencaps!
“Read carefully you kayaking school teacher from Deland, because what I’m going to tell you in this post will serve you for the rest of your life. The only reason he dated you at all was because his male friends prefer him to date overweight women …”
“There are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe.” — from a fascinating article by Garry Kasparov on the topic of playing chess with computers
If you’re addicted to Twitter, there are a bunch of tools you can use to monitor trends and (your own) statistics.
Terri Carlson is 45 and was born with a genetic immune disorder C-4 complement deficiency. She’s currently on Cobra health insurance but it runs out in a year, so she says she will marry you for your health insurance.
Probably Bad News is just like the Jay Leno “Headlines” bit. I saw a good one today: Homicide victims rarely talk to police.
Psssst! You can buy ten ampersands for $9.99 if you’re into that sort of thing.

Password Schmassword

dvg — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:30:19 +0000

Are you using the same password for everything? You probably are, aren’t you? “That’s okay,” you’re thinking, “It’s a really, really hard password. Nobody will ever get it.”

Not so fast, fish-breath.

A recent post on the Twitter Status blog details a new way that some crafty crackers are stealing passwords. It basically works like this: You join a perfectly legitimate online community, a website that lets you share your favorite YouTube piano-playing-cat videos, for example, or a forum to discuss new ways of getting fourth-graders to study American history. A few months pass and you are happily sharing videos of Mittens hammering Beethoven or explaining to new friends why 8-year olds should learn about Crispus Attucks. Little did you know that the community you joined — the one that’s hosted in San Francisco and run by an innocent-sounding little Internet start-up — is actually owned by a couple of Russian teenagers who built the thing overnight for $32.

Now these kids have a database of all 8,319 other feline-loving and / or elementary school teachers that are using their site. And they have your username. And your email address. And your password.

It’s the same password you use at Amazon and PayPal, isn’t it?

And it’s the same password you use at Amazon and PayPal, isn’t it? It’s the same password you used when you created your GMail account and your Twitter account, too, isn’t it? And I’m guessing you used the same email address and password for iTunes, right? Now, my friend, you are screwed.

There’s really only one way to avoid this, of course:
Don’t use the same password for everything!

Continue reading Password Schmassword ...

Daily David

dvg — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:37:38 +0000

Only XKCD could produce such an emotionally-charged comic strip about the Mars rover Spirit. (How can you not feel badly about that poor little robot?)
Where do all my taxes go? The New York Times has a great infographic that displays the recently-proposed 2011 US budget.
You’ll find bunches of (mostly technical) fascinating links if you subscribe to my delicious feed; but in case you don’t and it’s the sort of thing that interests you, check out:
Why the iPad will fail and help Windows 7 to succeed is required reading for anyone that is just blindingly stupid. It’s perfect for brilliant minds who also think the government is secretly poisoning us with fluoride and there’s really no hard evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer.

Living Under a Rock

dvg — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:00:28 +0000

With the possible exceptions of my father and (maybe-not-so-strangely-coincidentally) my father-in-law, I don’t know anyone who is as voracious a reader as I am. I also seem to consume an outlandish amount of television and there is rarely a moment in my life in which there isn’t music playing. Oh, and I love movies.

Yet, as Anil so graciously remarks, nobody’s read everything. There are a surprising number of pop culture experiences completely missing from my life. Anil mentions how he is frequently met with shock and dismay any time he reveals that he’s never listened to a Beatles album from start to finish. (I was shocked and dismayed to read that on his site, actually.) I get the same reaction when I tell people I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz.

Continue reading Living Under a Rock ...

Friday Five: Favorite Places in Maui

dvg — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:57:34 +0000

Black Rock, Ka’anapali
Front Street, Lahaina
Whaler’s Village, Ka’anapali
Valley Isle Resort, Kahana
Paia

Adventures with Microsoft Support

dvg — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:30:29 +0000

My XBox 360 broke near the end of December. I was playing EA Sports NCAA Football 10 at around 3 o’clock in the morning — with the Gators leading 45 – 10 against an unbeaten #2 TCU late in the 3rd quarter of the 2014 BCS Championship Game — when the screen suddenly went black. Poof! Out of nowhere and seemingly unrelated to anything I had done, the game just died. I was pretty miffed. “Stupid Microsoft,” I thought, “what the hell is the matter now?”

I tried restarting the game, but nothing. I unplugged it and let it sit for a minute, but nothing. It was dead as a doornail (even though I’ve never understood why doornails have come to symbolize the pinnacle of lifelessness). The console wasn’t hot and it’s not in a place where it should have been overheating or anything. Even the power brick gets plenty of airflow; it’s off the floor in a nice breezy position behind the TV. I always stay on top of software updates and everything had been fine for as long as I’d had it.

And then … a clue!

Continue reading Adventures with Microsoft Support ...

You Could NOT Care Less

dvg — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:51:13 +0000

I can’t stand when people say, “I could care less.”

“I could care less,” is one of those little things that drives me absolutely batshit crazy. If you could care less, it means you care. That’s not what you mean when you say that, is it? What you mean is that you don’t care. Someone posted this handy little graphic in a discussion forum and it really helps. (Click it to see!) Do you get it now?

Spenser: For Hire

dvg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:26:22 +0000

“Sometimes I get distracted by food; but mostly all I think about is women and baseball.” – Robert B. Parker’s Spenser

My favorite author died on Monday, January 18, and he took with him my favorite fictional character.

I was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. My dad, though — who lives in Rhode Island now and has for more than twenty years — is from Boston. (Somerville, actually; two stops after Harvard Square on the Red Line.) Boston has always been a sort of mythic place for me because of this. My mom and sister and I moved to Florida after my parents got divorced in ‘79; and all through elementary school and most of high school I’d spend a few weeks every summer (and the occasional Christmas) with my dad and his half of the family in New England. Boston — home of Harvard and BC and BU — was the birthplace of America and of my father.

And at some point in there it became the setting for what I thought was the most awesome TV show evah, Spenser: For Hire.

Continue reading Spenser: For Hire ...

Goodnight, Coco

dvg — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:04:54 +0000

“All I ask of you is one thing: Please, do not be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” — Conan O’Brien

Friday Five: Natural Causes

dvg — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:45:35 +0000

Five atypical ways to die of “natural” causes:

crushed by a falling tree
shark attack
hit by an asteroid
fall from a cliff
bee stings

Hunter S. Thompson Quote

dvg — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:34:54 +0000

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There’s also a negative side.”

Twice in the last week I’ve heard references to this Hunter S. Thompson quote on the radio. (Both times an ESPNRadio host was using it to explain the current state of college football coaching.) “What a terrific quote,” I thought, “But what are the chances that a sports talk-jock got it right?” Slim, I assumed. I wanted to find the exact quote to send to my father-in-law, who works in the music industry.

It only took about thirty seconds of Google-searching to find that, sadly, Gonzo never actually said or wrote this. His statement — from Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s — was actually about the television industry. And he didn’t ever add that wonderful punchline about the negative side, either. Here’s the original quote:

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

It’s still a great quote, to be sure, but it’s not about the music industry at all. I’m glad that I was able to learn what he actually said even if it means that now there’s no reason to send it to my father-in-law. I’ll have to add that book to my already ridiculously long Amazon wishlist.

Friday Five: Favorite Things Containing Tomatoes

dvg — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:08:12 +0000

my wife’s artichoke, mushroom, asparagus, tomato medley
Penne Arrabbiata
pizza
turkey sandwich
California Pizza Kitchen Broccolini and Sun-dried Tomato Fusilli

Dangerous Mistakes

dvg — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:00:18 +0000

I was blessed — or cursed, I suppose, depending on your point of view — to have my first “real” programming job in the medical field. I wrote software which managed the processing of human tissue (knees, fascia lata, femurs, etc.) for implantation into human patients. I was very young and very stupid at the time — thank God — so I only barely understood the importance of what I was doing.

Thirteen years later I have a much greater respect for human life and its frailty and value … much, much more than I could possibly have had then. All I really knew at the time was that mistakes could not be tolerated, because human lives were at stake. (No pressure for a kid just out of college that spent most of his off hours drunk and playing MTV Snowboarding on a Playstation.) It’s a damn good thing I didn’t know then what I know now or I never would have been able to handle the crushing responsibility.

There was no room for error.

If you lived in the United States and received a new anterior cruciate ligament, or a femur, or any piece of human tissue, really, between about the years 1996 and 2000, there is a very, very good chance that my software played a role in your surgery. (Yes, as a matter of fact, that does include Stephen King. When his jaw was shattered by a collision with a van in Maine, surgeons used human tissue from my company in Florida to rebuild his face.) On more than one occasion the software I developed was reviewed in Atlanta by FDA officials. Every time I wrote a new function, or changed the color of a button, or re-sorted a column in a report, I had to have the revision analyzed and debated and get fourteen signatures before I could move the change into production. Every time I renamed a column in a database table, someone’s life was at stake.

So I tend to write pretty good software.

There was no room for error. There was no such thing as “a mistake”. If a ten-year old girl is sitting on an operating table having a new tibia implanted because cancer has ravaged hers, it would have seriously sucked to get a call from a nurse saying that the surgery had to be canceled because a measurement was off by two-tenths of a millimeter because I allowed someone to enter the wrong value in the screen of one of my programs, or because my software had a mathematical error. Perfection was not a goal; it was the only option.

These days the programs I design and manage are far less dangerous. Mainly I produce video games and websites for little kids who want to kill each other or call each other “douchebag” on the Internet. Or, more often than not, who want to get a date. The long-term impact of these things is non-existent. Most of them will be forgotten before the next episode of “House” airs on FOX.

But I still loathe errors. I cringe when I see a typo or when a dinosaur is ten pixels taller than he should be. I get insanely upset if a form allows a user to enter a credit card expiration date which has already passed. I don’t understand what allows programmers to release software which they know has a bug … or even if they simply suspect that it might have a bug. And it bothers me when other people don’t care as much as I do.

There are two little holes in the plastic lid that they put on your cup at Starbucks. One of the holes is an air-release aperture which lets you sip without glugging. The other, larger hole is the one you put against your lips to drink your coffee. Every Starbucks paper cup has a seam running vertically along the side. If the big hole is within a centimeter or two of that seam, then — more often than not — when you sip, it will produce a drip. That drip will invariably land on your shirt or your pants. This is a bug in the cup, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a design flaw which shouldn’t exist.

It can be avoided, though. All you have to do is make sure that the big hole is not aligned with the seam. It’s incredibly simple to check that the hole is not over the seam, and every barista should be aware of this every time they serve a cup of coffee. But most of them don’t. Most of them have no idea that this design flaw exists.

So I tell them. Every time. Every single time I get a cup of coffee from Starbucks, if the big hole is over the seam I make a point to say, “Excuse me,” while removing the lid and replacing it so it won’t drip on my shirt. “Just so you know, you can’t put the hole over the seam. Otherwise it will drip sometimes and get coffee on your shirt.” I say this as sweetly and non-confrontationally as possible. I’m not trying to be rude or be a jerk or be a problem customer. I’m trying to make sure that the next customer — or the fortieth customer in line — doesn’t spend a day in the office with a coffee stain on his shirt.

Most of the baristas say, “Oh, I didn’t know that,” which I think is a tragedy. (This should be something they teach on Day One of Starbucks Barista Training!) Most of the baristas are happy to learn something new which will make them better at their job. But every now and then a barista will just look at me blankly, as if I’ve just told them that the square root of two is an irrational number. They will not thank me or even acknowledge me, just move to the next customer.

That’s fine.

Sometimes, however, they will argue with me.

“They don’t teach us that,” they’ll say. Or, worse, “That’s not part of my job.” They say these things as if either of those responses absolves them completely of any responsibility to care.

The worst response I ever received, though, was, “Yes, I usually do it that way.” That one left me speechless.

I have never claimed to be perfect. I screw up constantly. But never, ever, never do I not do my best.

Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while. You don’t do things right once in a while. You do them right all the time. Winning is a habit.”

That’s how I try to live.

© David Vincent Gagne, 2010. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: philosophy, Programming, rants, Software, Starbucks, work

Snow Sharks

dvg — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:00:51 +0000

Calvin and Hobbes wasn’t in the Sunday funnies when I was young enough to be reading the Sunday funnies, so I sort of missed that whole boat. Every now and then I’d see a strip, though, and I always thought it was a great comic. (The “snow sharks” one was my favorite.) Someone gave me one of those compilation books when I was in college and I loved it. But it just … I don’t know … it just wasn’t in my world.

It’s early January, most of the country is in the clutches of mind-numbing winter cold, and the low in Los Angeles is a not-exactly-bone-chilling 65. So it was with tremendous joy that I stumbled upon a website featuring photographs of Calvin and Hobbes snowman scenes recreated in real life. Brilliant!

Friday Five: Favorite Southern Cities

dvg — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:46:29 +0000

Gainesville, Florida
Ormond Beach, Florida
Charleston, South Carolina
Savannah, Georgia
New Orleans, Louisiana

BCS Citi National Championship Game Preview

dvg — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:51:05 +0000

Two great snippets from the EDSBS preview of tonight’s game:

Weather: Perfect and Valhalla-ish, because it is California, the place that would be perfect if everyone else hadn’t already figured out the same thing and moved there before you did. 68 degrees and clear at the kick as the sun sinks in pink-red glory behind the lip of the Rose Bowl. The grass will be the color of emeralds. You’ll hate not being there.

The Other Crew: The Perrier-Jouet crew of Herbstreit and Musburger. You will look live. You will be “WOO!’”d by Herbstreit and his beautiful highlights and telegenic blue eyes. You will actually see this game, because shit all you may on ESPN for other things, they do know how to do this sport beautifully and competently. (Unlike those eye-rapists at Fox.)

The Best Damn Kudu He Can Be

dvg — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:01:38 +0000

“My favorite animal at the Zoo is the lesser kudu. You have to admire an animal with a name like that, laboring as he must in the shadow of the greater kudu. It must be like having an older brother who excelled at sports and academics in school, to whom you have always been compared and found lacking. A few months ago, I was visiting the Zoo at lunch with a friend and discovered the area where the lesser kudu is ordinarily found was empty.

I hope he made a break for it. I hope he made his way out into the world, free of expectations, shedding labels, determined only to be the best damn kudu he could be.”

R.I.P. Brad Graham.
1968 – 2010

Favorite Photos from ‘09

dvg — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:47:53 +0000


January	February	March

April	May	June

July	August	September

October	November	December

2010 Sugar Bowl Notes

dvg — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:04:38 +0000

Most Total Yards – BCS Bowl Games
Tim Tebow	533	2010 Sugar Bowl
Vince Young	467	2006 Rose Bowl
Mark Sanchez	429	2009 Rose Bowl
Rohan Davey	427	2002 Sugar Bowl

No. 5 Florida humiliated No. 4 Cincinnati 51-24 in a fitting end to the unparalleled career of these Florida seniors. Total domination would be an understatement. Cincinnati was not in Florida’s league; we proved that tonight.
Tim Tebow capped a brilliant career with his best passing performance ever and he sent his coach Urban Meyer into his leave of absence with a 51-24 triumph in the 76th Allstate Sugar Bowl.
Tebow went out in style in his final college game, as the Florida quarterback passed for a career high 482 yards, completed 31 of his 35 passes and accounted for four touchdowns. Tebow’s 88.6 completion percentage set a BCS bowl game record and his four total touchdowns tied a Sugar Bowl mark.
Ironically, Tim Tebow’s final successful moment as a Florida Gator came on the same stage as the final successful Gator moment of his hero, Danny Wuerffel.
Tim Tebow is the greatest college football player of all time, and he illustrated why in his final game.
“One of the most efficient quarterbacks to ever play the game, a part of two national championships, he’s a winner and unless the job description changes at some other level of football, he’s a winner and he’ll win at the next level, too,” Meyer said.
“They couldn’t stop Superman,” said Gators guard Carl Johnson. “They needed some kryptonite.” Tebow broke Vince Young’s BCS bowl record for total offense and did it before three quarters were up.
Florida became the first school in the Football Bowl Subdivision to win 13 games in consecutive seasons.
The last five years have produced 57 wins, two national titles and some of the most memorable games in Gator history. That’s the legacy.
The Gators steamrolled through the Cincinnati defense and Tebow could have won another Heisman Trophy the way he played.
The Florida Gators shed all of their distractions and dispatched the Cincinnati Bearcats in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. The Bearcats had given up just 11 sacks during the regular season but Florida’s defense notched four sacks on the night.
“I wanted to go out on top and do the best I could and that’s what I did,” Riley Cooper said. “I’ll have no regrets for the rest of my life.”
Senior wide receiver David Nelson was the last member of the team to come off the field, and long after most of the team exited for the bus and the rest got dressed, he was still sitting at his locker dressed in his uniform.
How tough is Maurkice Pouncey? After spending five hours in Tulane Hospital passing kidney stones, the center was cleared to play and started the game. He came out in the second half only because he began passing another kidney stone.
Funny: Cincinnati’s Gilyard set the Sugar Bowl record for kickoff return yards, but only because he had so many returns.
To get an idea of Tebow’s impact on the world, check out the top Google searches for New Year’s Day. The “Tebow Cam” was a FOX camera focused on him all night during the Sugar Bowl. “EPH 2:8-10″ was the Bible verse inscribed on his eye-black.
UF’s 51 points were the second-most in the game’s history, just one shy of the 52 the Gators put up in a 52-20 victory over Florida State in 1997. UF also set a Sugar Bowl record with 646 total yards.
Although Tebow has put up cartoonish statistics and established off-the-charts intangibles in college, experts say that his professional future is blurry.
The last time the Gators lost six games in a season? 1987. FSU lost that many this season. Miami lost at least six in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Michigan hasn’t gone bowling in two seasons. Alabama has lost at least six in four of the last seven years. Even USC lost six as recent as 2001. Florida? 1987.
Get your 2010 Gator Sugar Bowl Champions gear from the good folks at Football Fanatics.

Tebow Tribute

© David Vincent Gagne, 2010. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college football, Gators, sports, Tebow, University of Florida

Friday Five: John Lennon Quotes

dvg — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:35:46 +0000

“When I was about 12 I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody’s noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one. And if there isn’t, I don’t really care.”
“I like the idea of saying everything in three minutes.”
“Love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard, or just think it’s gonna get on with itself. You gotta keep watering it.”
“Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that’s just barely possible.”
“It makes me furious to be dumb because I don’t like dumb people.”

© David Vincent Gagne, 2010. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beatles, fridayfive, John Lennon, lists, quotations

The David Gagne 2009 U.S. Tour

dvg — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:50:59 +0000

With a hat tip to Jason, here is a list of the cities I visited in 2009:

New York City, NY (Jan 30 – Feb 2)
Old Greenwich, CT (Feb 2 – Feb 4)
Reno, NV (Feb 20 – Feb 22)
Palm Springs, CA (Feb 27 – Mar 1)
Santa Catalina, CA (Apr 18, 19)
Gainesville, GA (May 3 – May 6)
Maui, HI (May 13 – May 17)
Portland, OR (May 18 – May 20)
Maui, HI (Jun 25 – Jul 5)
Ojai, CA (Aug 28 – Aug 30)
Santa Barbara, CA (Oct 9 – Oct 11)
Ormond Beach, South Daytona Beach, and Port Orange, FL (Dec 23 – Dec 29)

One Awesome Year

dvg — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:28:03 +0000

When I was a kid I thought that no year would ever be able to beat 1983 for movies. In addition to Return of the Jedi, Vacation, and WarGames — three of my all-time favorites — that year also saw the release of Scarface, The Right Stuff, Risky Business, Octopussy, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and the instant classic Trading Places. We’re talking about serious cinematic superlatives here. I’ve probably seen each of those movies more than a hundred times.

And then along came 1999.

Continue reading One Awesome Year ...

Friday Five: Favorite Christmas Songs

dvg — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:39:57 +0000

Linus and Lucy – Vince Guaraldi Trio
It Happened in Sun Valley – Glenn Miller
Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Petula Clark
Happy X-mas (War Is Over) – John Lennon
Blue Christmas – Elvis Presley