There have been several stories in the news about companies “listening in” on the Twitter feed for people struggling with their products, and providing personal support.
A reactive Squeaky Wheel policy that can preempt possible public bad mouthing before it happens. (Or truncate it soon after it begins.)
Since those examples, I’ve made a point of mentioning the products and services i’ve had issues with. On Wednesday I got a hit.
In the morning I whined about a Web 2.0 word that annoys me:
“webinar” - i wish I knew who coined that term, so I could make them my arch enemy, and dedicate my existence to their desctruction *pow* 10 am
About an hour later I mentioned the Internet broadcast lecture I was about to start watching.
attending a webinar by MyEclipse on Maven - i.e. i’m sitting at my desk 11 am
In the afternoon, just after 2pm, I received notice that myeclipseide had begun to follow me, in apparent response to my explicit “MyEclipse” reference.
The notice was shunted to my not-so-important folder, and I didn’t see it until later that evening. In the mean time, I had complained about one issue, without mentioning MyEclipse explicitly though.
does the Eclipse java debugger have a data watch/breakpoint? or are you going to make me revert to 1970s techniques to find this bug? 3pm
There was no response from the twitter account (which would of course only confirm the limitation of the debugger).
As an explanation to the unaware who have made it this far, Eclipse is an open source IDE that is practically infinitely extensible. MyEclipse is a configured, supported version of the IDE provided for sale by a company. (IDE is an acronym for Integrated Development Environment)
Another thing of interest is that the MyEclipseIDE account is only two weeks old, with 8 of their 9 posts coming in the last 3 days. Currently they have 15 followers and 36 followees.
The Maven presentation was informative, but I suspect they don’t have the development moxie to be modifying the java debugger to support data watch points. Thus the non-response, if they even noticed it.
In January 2006, Allen Hill, Andrea Greer, and I battled it out for a Houston scavenger hunt and came in second.
In January 2007, we organized the scavenger hunt, and inflicted it upon twelve teams. Some of the outcome is memorialized (a few items Questionably SFW). Go to the “Entries” section and click on any particular team to see most of their photographic entries.
There is also an excel file with the list of items that the teams were tasked with photographing. (There were also photos of 10 items they could duplicate - if they knew what they were and where they were.)
January 2008 came and went. No scavenger hunt.
I’ve bumped into a few people off and on … “when’s the scavenger hunt?” Well, now I have an answer for you: November 8.
So, you can put in on your calender, and shudder in anticipation. You can study up on your Houston architecture and history. You can line-up your team.
A note to the novice: make sure your team mates have the same goal as you. Do you want to spend a leisurely afternoon with friends? Do you want to experience a different side of Houston? Do you want a randomly directed good time? Or, do you want to crush the other teams like the bugs they are?!
I obtained a book a few years back from Crazy Mike’s Crazy Emporium, that was once located at what is now Sig’s Lagoon.
This 1959 book was written by Philip Heafford, Department of Education, University of Oxford: The Math Entertainer. His goal, from his introduction seems extremely optimistic. To entertain enjoyers of mathematics, but also to interest those who think they don’t like math.
(As a side note, this book was a gift to someone from Aunt Thelma and Uncle Nolen in 1974.)
The book contains 50 quizzes. And here, throwing copyright to the wind (that discussion for another day - and if the author would like me to remove this post, he need only ask), is the first quiz.
How many can you get? (feel free to post a reply) I got maybe half of them, maybe less.
Quiz No. 1: Quickies
Do these numbers ring a bell? For instance, the number 365 would mean only one thing to me, and that is the number of days a year. Ask someone to test you with this quiz. Six seconds for each question. How many can you get right in the time limit of two minutes for all the questions?
1,760
2,000
4,840
640
1.732
2.54
3.1416 . . .
366
.3010
1492
.4771
.4971
1.6
1.414
1,728
3-4-5
6,080
62½
90
88
The answers, who got them, and my thoughts will follow (at some point).
I never would have thought I would hear “running for office” and “XKCD” in the same sentence, toss in “Kansas” and I’d be sure I’d never hear it.
I’d be wrong…
My name is Sean Tevis [photo]. I’m an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I’m going to win. This is my story (XKCD homage style) so far…
Neil Patrick Harris - Doogie, Kumar, Your Mother, et al.
Nathan Fillion - Firefly
Felecia Day - The Guild (and a math degree from UT!)
Josh Whedon - the creator
The short answer is they are the cute salable mascots for the 2008 Summer Beijing Olympic Games.
The longer answer is they represent The Olympic Flame, The Giant Panda, The Tibetan Antelope, The Shayan Kite, and The Chinese Sturgeon.
The most recent answer is that they are The Bearer of Incendiary Strife, The Lord of Angry Earth, The Creature of Righteous Unrest, The Bearer of Unfortunate Wind, and The Bringer of Torrent and Flood.
Those are much more fun, don’t you think!
It seems the more superstitious of the Chinese suspect that these mascots are the causes of recent strife in China, respectively, the most problematic and protested olympic torch relay in history, the Sichuan earthquake, Tibetan protests, a train crash, and widespread flooding.
I am sympathetic, to these natural and man-influenced disasters, but I am quite humored that these cute, neo-corporate, marketing tools may be at the root cause of it all.
Somehow life is easier to bear for humans when there is some supernatural power causing all the problems.
So I'll put it bluntly. Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me — to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind servives, then we were good tools.
– Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, p 35
