Just some random stuff for tesing out iPad blogging.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
30 days hath December
My folks are trying to book tickets for their visit in December through January. They'll be here 30 days and with them they are bringing Sabrina. Travel is inconstant between New Zealand and the US. Invariably things go awry and because of these I haven't seen her in more than 2 years.
30 days seems like such a short time now. I did the math and if each of those days were mapped to a year then each day would be equal to 12 days. My heart flutters at the sensation of time rushing by so fast. Each day like 12! A month every 2 and half days. Time is so precious. That is just my thought for the day.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Got Milk?
Ah those crazy little ads from the American Dairy Association. I'm not sure what they are running today, but I do recall the milk industry doing a little marketing to keep us all consumers. America is the number 2 milk producer in the world with you know 300 million people and all. But did you know that New Zealand is the 9th largest dairy producer? Ninth... 3.5 million people. That's a lotta milk per person.
Dairy is king here like corn is king in Nebraska. New Zealand is still a very agricultural nation where milk export prices are tracked as closely as petrol. Kiwis give their dairy a fair go too. The standard cheese increment is the 1 kg block. That's right, a normal Kiwi is picking up 2.2 pounds of cheese at a time and usually in a couple of flavours. That's a lotta cheese. We have a whole isle devoted to milk. Each brand has different categories which I can only break down by cap colour. They have names, but different brands use different names. However, they all use the same cap colours. You got your standard blue cap for whole milk. Then you have green for light or what we would call 2%. Then yellow for "enriched" milk in some way--like vitamin D or calcium added. Then light blue which I think really skim milk. We also have cream, but curiously no half and half. Now what I have recently just discovered may explain this hole in the milk market. It is "silver" cap milk and it is somewhat difficult to find. It goes back to some "old school" days when milk was still delivered to your house. Not so long ago in New Zealand. I can't really define silver cap, but it is damn close to half and half. It sorta looks like milk that may have only been homogenized and not separated. But I couldn't really tell ya. It has a thick coating of cream on the inside you have to shake up. I worry it will turn to butter.
Dairy is entirely different here. And great milk makes some pretty fine ice cream. Just saying.
Dairy is king here like corn is king in Nebraska. New Zealand is still a very agricultural nation where milk export prices are tracked as closely as petrol. Kiwis give their dairy a fair go too. The standard cheese increment is the 1 kg block. That's right, a normal Kiwi is picking up 2.2 pounds of cheese at a time and usually in a couple of flavours. That's a lotta cheese. We have a whole isle devoted to milk. Each brand has different categories which I can only break down by cap colour. They have names, but different brands use different names. However, they all use the same cap colours. You got your standard blue cap for whole milk. Then you have green for light or what we would call 2%. Then yellow for "enriched" milk in some way--like vitamin D or calcium added. Then light blue which I think really skim milk. We also have cream, but curiously no half and half. Now what I have recently just discovered may explain this hole in the milk market. It is "silver" cap milk and it is somewhat difficult to find. It goes back to some "old school" days when milk was still delivered to your house. Not so long ago in New Zealand. I can't really define silver cap, but it is damn close to half and half. It sorta looks like milk that may have only been homogenized and not separated. But I couldn't really tell ya. It has a thick coating of cream on the inside you have to shake up. I worry it will turn to butter.
Dairy is entirely different here. And great milk makes some pretty fine ice cream. Just saying.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Harry Potter
After watching the final Harry Potter, I felt like I should go back and watch the first again. It has been years since I have seen it. I remember seeing it with my kids when they were probably far too young to remember it. We've had the DVD forever and the kids have watched it many times in the first couple of years we had it. But during all that time, I never really watched it with them. It was just on in the background while I puttered around cleaning or something. I'll guess that we picked up the DVD when the kids were 3, 4, and 5.
I was surprised that watching the original would make me think so much of my own kids and how they've grown. It felt very much like Harry, Hermione, and Ron were old childhood playmates of our own kids and we had a 2 hour film of them in our collection. I thought a bit about parents of the actors and how these films will be like the best family vacation films ever. I can imagine how much I would love a two hour film of my own children as they grew up... one a year for 8 years. Even if they were playing characters totally unlike themselves. There is just something about seeing the look in my children's eyes when they are happy and playing. Oh they were all so young.
They grow up too fast. Time slips by too fast. There will always be new stories to tell. But I do feel a real sense of mourning for the stories that end. All too soon my own children who are now 11, 12, and 13 will race through their final years of school. Hopefully there will be less danger in the world than poor Harry and friends had to face! But the story my children write will be more precious to me. I am afraid to start it. I don't want it to end.
I was surprised that watching the original would make me think so much of my own kids and how they've grown. It felt very much like Harry, Hermione, and Ron were old childhood playmates of our own kids and we had a 2 hour film of them in our collection. I thought a bit about parents of the actors and how these films will be like the best family vacation films ever. I can imagine how much I would love a two hour film of my own children as they grew up... one a year for 8 years. Even if they were playing characters totally unlike themselves. There is just something about seeing the look in my children's eyes when they are happy and playing. Oh they were all so young.
They grow up too fast. Time slips by too fast. There will always be new stories to tell. But I do feel a real sense of mourning for the stories that end. All too soon my own children who are now 11, 12, and 13 will race through their final years of school. Hopefully there will be less danger in the world than poor Harry and friends had to face! But the story my children write will be more precious to me. I am afraid to start it. I don't want it to end.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Corp America(tm)
This is a bit of satire that I wrote last night, but like all good satire it has a degree of truth… But for the record I have no means to establish Corp America and it is not a real entity.
I am tired of dancing around the issue. The current system of smoke and mirrors controlling our politics is inefficient and a bit childish. So I’m going to call a spade a spade and design a better system. I’m going to establish Corp America™*.
Corp America is going to have one purpose; to absolutely control American politics and policy. I’m not going to flinch from that fact at all. Corp America is out to buy votes, make laws, and secure our interests. Buying stock in Corp America will allow every share holder to exercise more voting power than they have ever had at the ballot box. Working for Corp America will put you on the front line of political influence and impact to our society. Our agenda will be clear, published, and voted in by the share holders.
Our capital will be used in strategic investments to make profits and foster our agenda. Our intent will be to make the USA better for Americans, a more respectful member of the global community, and an earnest proponent of profits for the middle-class. We will have a legal department, HR, accountants, consultants, assistants, executives, project managers, and a healthy benefit package. We will strive to be the America we want the US to become. Our physical projects will focus on improving America’s infrastructure (transport, utilities, and resources). Our soft products will focus on improving education and access to education. As an employee, it will be your job to get smarter. Corp America projects would emphasize green energy sources, technologies to reduce emissions, secondary education facilities, and projects to develop public transportation. Corp America will participate in the stock market, investments, and a company credit union.
Our headquarters will be located as close to Congress, the Whitehouse, and Supreme Court as is financially possible. Bonus pay will be given based on traceable influence to policy makers. We will never be covert. All of our salaries will be public knowledge. We will stand out. We will be visible, vocal, and determined. All of our profits will be spent on gaining control of the US government—including placing our employees in to the government. Our employees in government will continue to earn Corp America paychecks as long as they voluntarily continue to participate in Corp America policies set by the shareholders.
Corp America will not discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, orientation, race, shirt size, pet preference, or favorite color. We will not seek to influence these areas of society other than to insure there is no discrimination in America for anyone.
We are neither Republican nor Democrat. We seek to be neither Conservative nor Liberal. We speak for all Americans with focus on restoring the middle-class and working to move more from poverty up and more from ultra rich down. Equality of economics is not the goal, just a smoothing of the curve. There will always be rich and there will always be poor. We will endeavour to do all we can to limit the extremes.
All employees will be required to participate in all elections. Individuals must vote to their conscience, but we would hope that conscience aligns with Corp America™ shareholder policy. Voting is a minimal condition to receiving any bonus pay. To be clear you can earn your bonus for any vote on any issue—you simply must vote. Each member of your household must vote if they are legally allowed to do so. Our corporate training will focus on getting the best information and education around our agenda issues to our employees. We will maintain a website detailing how our corporation wishes to vote on all issues on the ballot in every district where we operate. Again, you always vote the way you wish, but we will document what we feel is the best vote and back it up with unbiased reasoning and analysis freely available to Corp America employees and publicly posted on our web presence.
The workers of Corp America will automatically be unionized as a free benefit for the first year of employment. After the first year, the employee will be responsible for dues to be set by the Corp America Union. Corp America will establish a pay ratio between the highest paid and lowest paid employee regardless of where that employee sits in the organization.
Should you gain elected office as a Corp America employee, your immediate duties will cease and you will assume your new role as a public official. You will uphold all legal and ethical obligations to your post. Your job at Corp America will become being an effective leader in your role. You will gain access to our political advisors and educational resources. Corp America will determine what actions to take should you violate the law or ethical policies—this may include termination and notification of proper legal authorities. Corp America will not attempt to hide any of your actions and will actively seek to bring all such actions to public view.
Buy American. Shed the illusion of democracy and embrace the real democracy of our times. Invest in Corp America. Recruiting today!
*A real trademark will be selected later; suggestions welcome.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Mid 2011 in NZ
Folks always arrange the stones in the tidal flats to say different things. So far all of them have been pretty good messages.
Including short holiday with the boys to Abel Tasman / Nelson
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Counting Bytes
Let me start by saying I never thought per byte billing was a good idea. But it is what the industry is largely stuck with. Why? Because we're too dumb to understand other methods. Nevermind that we're too dumb to really understand bytes, but it is a concept we think we understand. We don't. Here's a a brief attempt to explain.
It seems simple to say you get charged a fixed rate for a chunk of downloads. Say 10 cents for 1 gig of data. Use 10 gig and pay $1. Totally cake, right? Well... did you mean gigaBITS or gigaBYTES? A byte is 8 bits... so if you bought 10 gigabits you got 8 times less than 10 gigabytes. Now... does gig mean 1,000,000,000 to you? or 1,024,000,000 to you? You see a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes... not a 1000. Back in the day this difference was tiny and easily ignored. Today we see the error maginified as kB moved to MB and then to GB and someday to Terrabytes.
So immediately we find potential confusion in byte counting without even getting in to the technology. Let's look under the hood... Let's focus on download bytes as that is what most of us care about and pay for. We go to YouTube and download 1 gigabyte of video for 10 cents. So our usage should be 1 Gigabyte, right? Wrong... While it will be pretty close to 1 gig, we run in to problems with overhead. You see the video you watched was "user data" or "payload". It was packaged up by YouTube's servers and then sent to other network devices that added their own information in order to send it. There are some control messages also be sent back and forth to verify all the data was received. This extra chunk of data is considered "overhead" to you and I, but we couldn't get the funny kitten videos if we didn't have overhead. So who pays for overhead? Me or the Provider? Well usually consumers do. So if I was just counting video size, I'll be a little low of the actual bytes sent. How low? Well that's a really hard question since it depends on dozens of factors. How many clips did I download? One big download will have less overhead than many small downloads. How busy was the line between me and YouTube? If the line was busy, there is a chance a chunk of data got mangled or dropped and had to be re-sent (more overhead). These factors go on and on making exactly how much overhead experienced impossible to predict. So again, without looking very hard we've found confusing areas in byte counting.
Now consider malice. As in, malicious software. You may be running the cleanest PC on earth completely free of viruses and spyware, but thousands of other users are not. Their PC's are frequently scanning zombies sending out megs of probes to random address ranges looking for other unprotected hosts. This background noise on the Internet is constant and unstoppable. The best we can do is filter out the worst and tell consumers to use various protection techniques. But a Provider can not fully stop all the background noise. These unsolicited bytes are sent to you and the Provider counts them against your bill. The full amount of these will also vary widely on conditions.
Lastly, we have plain ol' boneheaded ignorance. We don't know how much we're downloading. We don't realize that CNN's homepage is a few hundred megabytes. We don't know how big the pop-up ads are. We don't know how big that video stream really was. We don't know how big Window's Update really was. There are million things communicating on consumer PCs these days (and Playstations and networked game consoles). We are woefully unaware of these transactions.
Byte counting is terrible. It is always going to be open to very wide interpretation. Your Provider is always going to seem a bit high and what you're really downloading is (for now) always going to be largely a mystery unless you're a network monitoring professional with a packet analyzer connected on your outgoing link... which is a challenge even for hardcore geeks to get good analysis on DSL or Cable modem lines.
So far this has all been pretty simple concepts. From here it gets much more complex, but no less confusing and significant. There are a million valid ways your Provider could be counting bytes. It will barely make sense to them let alone the customer. The only thing they have going for them is that whatever system they use will likely be consistent across all consumers. That is if it 10% wrong, it will be 10% wrong all the time. As consumers we have to live with it. Don't ask your Provider to tell you how they do it. It is unlikely you'll get a coherent answer. Even if you were an expert in billing systems it would likely take you weeks of research to plot exactly how the byte counting is done from one Provider to the next.
Counting bytes is what we're stuck with for the short term. But don't get too hung up about accuracy. The question is too subjective. I think the only thing we can tell our service providers is "we want it to cost less". We don't care how. Just make it cost less... OR be more valuable to us. But please... lose the byte counting. It has become meaningless.
It seems simple to say you get charged a fixed rate for a chunk of downloads. Say 10 cents for 1 gig of data. Use 10 gig and pay $1. Totally cake, right? Well... did you mean gigaBITS or gigaBYTES? A byte is 8 bits... so if you bought 10 gigabits you got 8 times less than 10 gigabytes. Now... does gig mean 1,000,000,000 to you? or 1,024,000,000 to you? You see a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes... not a 1000. Back in the day this difference was tiny and easily ignored. Today we see the error maginified as kB moved to MB and then to GB and someday to Terrabytes.
So immediately we find potential confusion in byte counting without even getting in to the technology. Let's look under the hood... Let's focus on download bytes as that is what most of us care about and pay for. We go to YouTube and download 1 gigabyte of video for 10 cents. So our usage should be 1 Gigabyte, right? Wrong... While it will be pretty close to 1 gig, we run in to problems with overhead. You see the video you watched was "user data" or "payload". It was packaged up by YouTube's servers and then sent to other network devices that added their own information in order to send it. There are some control messages also be sent back and forth to verify all the data was received. This extra chunk of data is considered "overhead" to you and I, but we couldn't get the funny kitten videos if we didn't have overhead. So who pays for overhead? Me or the Provider? Well usually consumers do. So if I was just counting video size, I'll be a little low of the actual bytes sent. How low? Well that's a really hard question since it depends on dozens of factors. How many clips did I download? One big download will have less overhead than many small downloads. How busy was the line between me and YouTube? If the line was busy, there is a chance a chunk of data got mangled or dropped and had to be re-sent (more overhead). These factors go on and on making exactly how much overhead experienced impossible to predict. So again, without looking very hard we've found confusing areas in byte counting.
Now consider malice. As in, malicious software. You may be running the cleanest PC on earth completely free of viruses and spyware, but thousands of other users are not. Their PC's are frequently scanning zombies sending out megs of probes to random address ranges looking for other unprotected hosts. This background noise on the Internet is constant and unstoppable. The best we can do is filter out the worst and tell consumers to use various protection techniques. But a Provider can not fully stop all the background noise. These unsolicited bytes are sent to you and the Provider counts them against your bill. The full amount of these will also vary widely on conditions.
Lastly, we have plain ol' boneheaded ignorance. We don't know how much we're downloading. We don't realize that CNN's homepage is a few hundred megabytes. We don't know how big the pop-up ads are. We don't know how big that video stream really was. We don't know how big Window's Update really was. There are million things communicating on consumer PCs these days (and Playstations and networked game consoles). We are woefully unaware of these transactions.
Byte counting is terrible. It is always going to be open to very wide interpretation. Your Provider is always going to seem a bit high and what you're really downloading is (for now) always going to be largely a mystery unless you're a network monitoring professional with a packet analyzer connected on your outgoing link... which is a challenge even for hardcore geeks to get good analysis on DSL or Cable modem lines.
So far this has all been pretty simple concepts. From here it gets much more complex, but no less confusing and significant. There are a million valid ways your Provider could be counting bytes. It will barely make sense to them let alone the customer. The only thing they have going for them is that whatever system they use will likely be consistent across all consumers. That is if it 10% wrong, it will be 10% wrong all the time. As consumers we have to live with it. Don't ask your Provider to tell you how they do it. It is unlikely you'll get a coherent answer. Even if you were an expert in billing systems it would likely take you weeks of research to plot exactly how the byte counting is done from one Provider to the next.
Counting bytes is what we're stuck with for the short term. But don't get too hung up about accuracy. The question is too subjective. I think the only thing we can tell our service providers is "we want it to cost less". We don't care how. Just make it cost less... OR be more valuable to us. But please... lose the byte counting. It has become meaningless.
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