September 2007 Archives

#433869 - Etch: New Zealand change to daylight time transition

See: Coppola plea after computer theft

Film director Francis Ford Coppola has appealed for the return of his computer backup device following a robbery at his house in Argentina on Wednesday.

I feel for Mr. Coppola, he was smart enough and took the time to create and maintain backups of his computer on an external device. Unfortunately Mr. Coppola like so many other people/organizations forget the #2 and #3 rules of computer backups.

1. Make frequent backups of everything important.
2. Test your backup by restoring the data often.
3. Keep copies of your backups in a different location from what you are backing up.

A proper backup strategy should be devised around how critical your data is, and how often it changes. An off-site rotation procedure might be appropriate on a monthly or weekly schedule depending on what the size of your daily delta is and how disruptive it will be for your business to recover from the loss.

This reminds me that I need to write a whitepaper / presentation on backups and business continuity.

In almost every office building that I have worked in it's been standard operating policy to lock all of the Women's bathrooms. I'm sure this all started at one point over fear of liability that there would be a sexual attack and the building / property managers would be sued and held accountable. We live in a litigation heavy society so I don't fault anyone for protecting themselves by locking the Women's room. But I wonder

Max's Law: The speed of the computer is inversly porportionate to the importance of the task at hand.

I've been talking about the upcoming storm in the housing market for a while now. Here is another article in the LA Times going talking about it. There are some amazing figures and quotes in here like this one:

"Prices are falling everywhere," said Christopher Thornberg, a former UCLA business professor who is now a principal at Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics.

In recent years, the housing market had been propped up by the widespread use of home loans with low introductory teaser rates -- allowing prices to outpace income growth, he said. But with those easy-credit loans all but gone, values are coming back into balance.

"People just don't have the income to support these prices except with crazy mortgages -- and now the mortgage money is going away, and people are walking away from their homes," Thornberg said.

See Worst August for home sales in 15 years for the whole story.

This really isn't anything new but interesting none the less: The Hidden "F" In Your Web Pages

A team of scientists engaged in military research recently came to the conclusion that when it comes to reading web pages,most readers read in "F" shaped pattern taking into consideration the eye movements of 232 readers,it was found that a reader generally reads in a horizontal movement first.This is followed by their eyes moving downwards a bit and then,ensues reading across in a second horizontal movement covering a shorter area than what it was previously.

A good part of this just natural with English written from left to right. The other part I would imagine as conditioning, with the majority of web sites on the Internet conforming to a few relatively standard layout options viewers just get accustomed to what they are supposed to do.

Christina and I went to New York this weekend. Neither of us had been there is over 10 years and I must say I had a blast. Christina thinks I'm crazy but I've always enjoyed big cities. There is something about the lifestyle and atmosphere that just clicks with me. We did a little bit of the tourist thing (took the Gray Line double decker bus around town) but mostly we just hung out and strolled around. We are definitely going to make sure we go back more often - speaking of which we are way overdue for another trip to San Francisco.

Word of warning... JFK is a disaster. There have been plenty of horror stories in the news lately about planes being stranded on the taxiway for hours. It's been so bad that there has even been legislation proposed. Luckily for us we were only delayed an hour and a half (and I am even more grateful that Christina took a side trip to DC for work) but even still it is a little crazy for a plane to push back from the jetway when there is that much traffic ahead of us with no one taking off. Virgin America has TVs and games in the seats so I kept myself entertained - moral of the story: only fly on planes with TVs.

A story here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22360651-1702,00.html

It seems that men still seek out the most attractive women and women are drawn to the men that make the best providers - leveraging their looks to snag the best mate they can.

Is this honestly a surprise to anyone? Hasn't this exact research been done dozens of times in the past now? Does anyone actually think this is a bad thing?

So some generalizations... Men are attracted to pretty women, and Women are attracted to Men with wealth and power. Why? It's just carnal instinct. Males look for a mate that is genetically superior for carry a pregnancy to term and reproduce. Females look for a mate that can support and sustain their offspring. Just because "we" are self aware and are civilized doesn't mean the basic rules don't apply anymore.