Google's hot entry to the smartphone market was released today (huzzah!). But Ars Technica notes that it wasn't the phone that was important: it was how the phone gets to a network.

The phone from Google is available for purchase unlocked: pick a phone...*then* pick a network and provider.

By offering a lineup of phones that is essentially carrier-independent (with the radio compatibility caveat), Google has separated the two previously interlocked parts of the phone/plan-buying experience—phone selection and carrier selection—and has done so in a way that threatens one of the most important enablers of carrier lock-in.

In short, what Google announced today wasn't just the Nexus One, but the world's first carrier-independent smartphone store...

I went over to Worthington to take the census taker employment test. Whee.

The two ladies were surprised I drove 60 miles to take the test. They were surprised that there was no test in Fairmont. They went through the routine of how to take the test and what the job would involve, and then gave me the test.

They were surprised when I was done in 19 of the allotted 30 minutes, but I'd already checked my answers over, and they were all good, so I didn't see any point in waiting. They got another surprise. The test is one of those where you color in a circle to select your answer, and they use a punched-hole sheet answer key. The lady who first looked at it did a double take, made sure it was lined up right, then showed it to the other lady. I'd gotten all 28 questions right. They told me that mine was the first test they'd graded that had no wrong answers.

So now I'm back to waiting. They tell me that they'll call me if I'm selected. I'm pretty much expecting to be, since they select in order of test score (modified by veteran's preference), as long as language and work schedule needs are met. Since I told them I'd be available 7 days a week, that's not an issue.The job is temporary, and can end at any time due to lack of work, but it's still a paycheck.

The test itself wasn't hard, but it was extremely exacting. My advice for those looking to take it is to read the question and answers very carefully and pay close attention to the tiniest details.

Can you find the cat in this picture?



Apparently, the Presumptuous Cat approves of the new addition to our nest. In other news, the Fearless Kitten met his first snow:



and the depredations of the smouse continue:



Now that's hubris. He also made a raid on my walnuts, the little bastard. Our cats are lazy layabout goldbricks.

I, on the other paw, am made of virtue. Today I went to the gym and the bakery, adhered to The Discipline, spent the entire remainder of the day working on a critique for stillsostrange (Why yes, I do have the draft of The Bone Palace, and why yes, it is made of awesome.), and then took the garbage out and came upstairs and made my bed and cleaned my bedroom. With my girly new pink-and-purple wool blanket.

The downstairs is a pile, the office is a pit, the Christmas tree needs to come down, the bathroom is all but invisible under the mildew, and the kitchen is an indistinguishable heap of winter coats and surface clutter... but my bedroom is clean!

And now I am going to finish reading Amanda's manuscript. I was going to watch Mythbusters and Hustle tonight, but this is better.

While on the United flight between Portland and Denver yesterday, I tuned away from the ATC chatter for a while to watch "The Great Salmon Run,", a nature documentary about the annual salmon run in Western North America. Among the interesting bits that made me think of Kuma Bear were shots of bears on station at a waterfall catching salmon in their mouths -- it actually looks like the fish are jumping into the bears' mouths. Also, I learned that while bears don't mind swimming, they apparently don't like getting their ears wet.

Some of you will recall the saga of the Wayward SMOFCon Shipment that took nearly two weeks instead of two days to travel from the Bay Area to Austin. This afternoon I received an e-mail from a co-worker at my office in San Mateo advising me that the box finally made it back home yesterday, January 4. From the day I mailed it on December 1 until the day it arrived back in San Mateo on January 4, the only time it stood idle outside of the USPS was between its arrival in Austin December 12 and its redeposit in the mail on December 14. I'm sure glad there was nothing vital in it.

Mind you, I am partially to blame for not having insisted that Priority Mail labels be placed prominently on the package, so it got stuck in the ordinary parcel post system during the worst time of the year, but I'm still a bit miffed over spending the money for nothing.

Welp, I made it home. I'll talk about my break later, when I have more energy; for now, let's just say that I needed it, I enjoyed it, I'm glad to be back with Buster and Gracie (and they with me), and I'm ready to get back to work.

Oh, and I think I have a cold.

Sigh.

A few years ago - well, actually, quite a number of years ago now - the middle school I attended was decommissioned and its fixtures sold off. My mother, knowing my fondness for both timepieces and relics, bought one of the wall clocks. It's been sitting quietly in storage, packed away in a shipping carton, since then. I noticed it in the corner when I was down at Dad's hunting through the storage shed a while back; he dug it out the other day and brought it to me this lunchtime.

( Photo behind the cut. )

I had planned to put it up in the living room, but upon examining it, I've noticed a problem.

Obviously, when it was used in my old school, this clock was slaved to a master clock in the school office. I knew it had a regular power connector on it, and had always assumed that there'd be some kind of manual backup for setting the time without the aid of the master clock... but there isn't. It's a sealed unit, the only thing coming out of it is the electrical cord. There isn't even another wire for the control signals - it's apparently got a radio receiver in it, based on the label on the back. And... vacuum tubes?!

This afternoon I called the manufacturer, hoping they'd have some technical information about it kicking around. I knew this was a long shot, since it's quite an old clock (note the handwritten date on the label - April 14, 1977 - I'm assuming that's when it was made), but I figured, these things are often in place for long periods of time, so maybe they'd still have some docs. But, alas, no. I spoke to a very helpful fellow in their Westminster, MA office, who told me that I hadn't got hold of tech support but he'd do what he could. We worked out that the "804-004" in the upper right corner of the label is in the right format for a Simplex part number, but he didn't have any information in his intranet database about it.

I'm not completely out of options - I have the number for SimplexGrinnell's office in Maine, from where they presumably still service the clocks in the town's remaining schools, and I might give them a try tomorrow. The fellow at the Westminster office told me that if I can find out what model master clock they used at the old middle school (which is unlikely, but there may be some old staffers around who know), he might be able to dig up info on the compatible wall clock models from that.

(I suppose, if all else fails, I could hang it up, but wait to plug it in until 1:01...)

Here's an even longer shot: Anybody got an old Simplex master clock you want to get rid of cheap? :)

Barack Obama has chosen Amanda Simpson as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce, marking the first transgender appointment in an American presidential administration.

Simpson has more than 30 years of experience in the aerospace and defense industry, most recently serving as Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. While working at Raytheon, she transitioned from male-to-female over a six-year period, and successfully lobbied to add gender identity to Raytheon’s Equal Employment Opportunity Policy.

As skeptical as I am that President Obama had much to do with the appointment, I do think it's cool to see one more wall come down in the gender and sexuality arena. Of course, I'm looking forward to the day when this isn't news, but until then, congratulations to Miss Simpson on breaking through another barrier so the next generation can follow her into the halls of influence and power.

( Read the whole article... )

It is that point after a convention weekend. It is time for a Magfest report. It was a long weekend, but a fun weekend all in all.  Here are the highlights and lowlights of the weekend (instead of a more thorough report):

Highlights

-Lots of great games to play over the weekend.  Played games I hadn't seen at any event in years (such as the X-MEN: Children of the Atom Arcade game).
-Things seemed to run well most of the well programming wise. I think there was only one thing that was majorly messed up (that I attended), butI left to work the T-MODE table.
-Concerts were a blast. WIth working the table, I didn't get to see much of the concerts (especially Saturday). 
-Had alot of great conversations with people including a lengthy dinner with the Vice Chair (really Chair) of T-MODE.
-For how unorganized of a Poker Tournament it was, I had a blast playing Poker. I wish more events that have traditional gaming would have Poker Tournaments (without Buy In for Legal reasons).
-There are unorganized events all around the event (such as the guy running the Blackjack Games every evening of the convention). 
-Angry Video Game Nerd is a very popular guest. I think more cons should take notice.  
-Rocking the New Year with Jon St John was an epic fannish moment.
-Video Rooms have a great variety of fun things shown in them.
-The people are great. 

Lowlights

-Need to have schedule printed by Night 0 (night of Pre-Reg pickup). It is not good for people who want to see things having to wait until Saturday for schedules to be available. You did some things to fix that (such as the Signs and video information terminals), but there weren't enough and large enough to be read. 
-Providing alternatives in Programming during the concerts. Not everyone will be interested in the concerts (or only an act or two of it).
-Fully program all of your programming rooms. There was two filled programing tracks, but the third was more like an overflow room.
-You need an information desk (where people answer questions and have MIS running) on the lower level. People were asking Katuscon and T-MODE where things were.  We became the defacto information booth.
-Must need to learn calm in stressful situations (that one is personal).

It was a fun weekend all in all. I have some more personal thoughts coming up that will be friends locked for obvious reasons. Comments are opened to everyone on this post. I hope to come back in 2011. If you are responding from a non-LJ account and are Magfest staff, please put IRC title or real name and title in your response.  

Life is magical... but full of pain.

The Jets are in the playoffs. Who woulda thunk it, a couple of weeks ago? The game against the Bengals was certainly impressive. Can they do it again, though? We'll see.

The Giants didn't play. I don't know who those guys in their unis were, but they sure were inept.

Goodbye, Bill Sheridan. A good guy, by all reports, but a horrendous defensive coordinator.

I meant to post yesterday on the weekend's games, but got busy writing instead, and finished a Tyrion chapter that I've been struggling with for six months. Nibbling away at that knot. We'll see if the finished chapter holds up to reread and polish today.

Maxine Udall has an interesting piece entitled The Price of Casino-Like Finance Is Higher Than We Think, in which she touches on many of the reasons why America is in so much trouble. Her thought processes are of a piece with Noam Schrieber's piece in The New Republic, Upper Mismanagement, and they dovetail nicely into my favorite boogeyman, the ongoing pressure by the Religious Right to destroy childhood incentives to go into the sciences.

Schrieber starts out by stating that for the past twenty years, the best minds in management have all been driven by business school ideals: not "make better stuff," but "make more money with the stuff we have." Converging with other threads of thought I've had over the decade, Schrieber points out that most upper managers come from business schools and know how to play the market game. No longer to CEOs (and even CTOs) come up through the engineering ranks, familiar with what the engineering departments are capable of producing; instead, they come from outside the business, full of knowledge about financial management, and are expected to figure out how to "leverage" what they can learn about engineering's "role" into financial success.

Udall goes deeper, and points out that engineering is probably full of mediocre minds who couldn't or wouldn't put their talents on the line for the hard-core stuff:

It will be from two powerful, long-standing price distortions that have distorted the composition of our labor force and the mix of human capital within it. The first distortion is the past diversion of some our best technical and mathematical minds away from physics, engineering, biology, chemistry, and, yes, even economics, to financial modeling, risk analysis, and all the other marvelous tools of speculation and gaming.

Maxine is thinking of all those bright, young, energetic people who came out of some of our best universities and opted to go to work for investment banks, not in technical jobs, but as traders, ratings specialists, analysts, again to support the conversion of trillions of dollars into chaff. Many of them might have gone on to graduate degrees in chemistry, biochemistry, physics, engineering, biology or medicine. Graduate work in psychology, sociology, English, history, political science, public health would have added more value than destroying wealth across the globe. Instead of a workforce that gained diverse skills that might one day transform the world in positive and substantive ways, we have a surfeit of MBAs with concentrations in finance and empty houses on overgrown lots.

It's not just that management came out of business school and has no clue what engineering does, but that the talent management has to work with has been skewed downward by the immense seduction of money pulling talented engineers and scientists into studying financial alchemy rather than biochemistry or architectural engineering.

I'd like to add that ever since 1972, when the last Apollo mission returned to Earth, we have looked inward, looked downward. Hell, even the Space Shuttle rotates to face downward, toward the Earth, navel-gazing. Meanwhile, too much of America is scared that what science reveals makes the universe a scary place, a place without God or divine providence, and that the conclusions of biology are so unsettling its best that children not hear them. From an early age now, science curricula in pre-college classrooms has been dumbed down-- from the right, by fear of "naturalism," from the left, by fear that excellence by some will mean disappointment for others. We have relentlessly dumbed-down our curricula to the point where kids are entering college with no pre-calculus skills, no capacity to write a meaningful cover letter, no capacity to discern bias in a newspaper editorial.

Only the mathematics of finances is dually blessed: mathematical abstractions are sufficiently abstract that they seem free from having any impact on the "real world," and so are an acceptable pursuit to the religious. And it's about making money, which in some sense is divorced from the ethic of making good stuff. That might seem unChristian, but if it does, you're not hip to The Prosperity Gospel, which states that God provides material prosperity for those he favors.

All of these forces merge to create a situation where we've made "making money without getting your hands dirty" seem the only rational alternative. Nobody would go into the sciences in America: science is boring, hard, icky, unholy, and disruptive. And who wants that?

Frankly, I do.

I've decided to remove myself from the Monday 12:00 panel on "Fannish Music: An Overview." One of the other panelists thinks there should be no discussion of filk at the panel, and I don't want to deal with a potentially confrontational situation when I'm really tired on Monday. I've discussed this with Kate, who agrees with my decision.

I'll still be on all my other scheduled program items. Come to the silent movie!

This year I'll be Guest of Honor to three conventions. Because of time and money and conflict of schedules, they will be the only three conventions I'll most likely be making.

Marcon
May 28-30, 2010
Hyatt Regency Hotel
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.marcon.org

Confluence 2010, July 23-25, 2010
Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh Airport
Pittsburgh, PA
http://www.parsec-sff.org

Con*Stellation 2010, September 17-19, 2010
Huntsville, AL
http://www.con-stellation.org

I have a vague idea that I have posted on this topic in the past, but I can't find it and I admit that I am working today on a serious Squeaker-induced sleep deficit, so just go with it.

Twice today I have referenced popular culture in conversations with mabfan, and it reminded me just how much of my daily conversation is either taken directly from or in the style of dialogue writers that I admire. Today it was Joss Whedon (mabfan: Did I fall asleep? gnomi-in-Topher-voice: For a little while. mabfan: Shall I go now?) and Aaron Sorkin ("Turns out, I have a rose garden" in reference to a resource I hadn't realized I had at work). But sometimes it's William Goldman ("As you wish," "Who are those guys?") or Marta Kauffman/David Crane ("Could it be any colder?") or some other writer I'm not thinking of right now.

I know mabfan and I aren't the only ones who do this. So... who writes your dialogue?

In case you missed it, I’ve posted a new story in the Bastet series: Bath Night, which brings us to the most recent decade and a riff on something I read during the Iraq war.

If you’re a fan of the Singularity, here are two stories told from opposite sides of the fence: Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler is an early, and hopeful, depiction of the Singularity.  It starts as a riff on the seminal trans-Singularity movie Brainstorm, and moves on from there, reflecting on the character of a woman who we normally wouldn’t have thought of one of us– and it is her quality as someone not interested in the rapture of the nerds that makes her so pivotal to our success. The other is by Peter Watts, so expect nastiness, and Watts delivers: The Things is John Carpenter’s The Thing as told from the point of view of the monster. Watts manages to make us sympathetic to the creature, even when leading to an even more horrific conclusion than what Carpenter delivered.

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's writing journal, Pendorwright.com. Feel free to comment on either LiveJournal or Pendorwright.

Happy birthday, cadhla and cassildra!

autopope: sits in windowless bathroom with laptop reading Grauniad reports on the weather in Englandshire, and the weather forecast, and sees Doom. Suggests putting off errands due to imminent Snow.

feorag: briefly checks weather forecast and looks outside. Concludes if there is to be any snow, it will be some time.

antipope_cats: Weather? What's that? My this radiator's toasty. Will it affect the supply of GUSH11 FUDZ???!111?!!

fluffcthulhu: will adjust the weather to His desires should He need to arouse from His slumbers.

On 5 January 1948, Mary Scott Lord Dimmick Harrison died four months before her 90th birthday. Mary's aunt, Caroline Harrison, was 23rd President Benjamin Harrison's first wife. Caroline died about a week before Benjamin lost his bid for re-election, in 1892. Mary (a 37-year-old widow) and Benjamin (the 62-year-old former President) married in April 1896. Benjamin and Mary had one daughter, Elizabeth, in 1897, four years before his death. Following her death, Mary was buried with her President-husband (and his first wife) at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Elizabeth Harrison graduated from New York University's School of Law in 1919, and in 1921, married James Blaine Walker, a grandnephew of her father's Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. Elizabeth Harrison died in December 1955.

On 5 January 1933, 30th President Calvin Coolidge died at the age of 60, less than four years after retiring from the Presidency. He was elected the 29th Vice President in 1920, on Warren Harding's ticket, and then succeeded to the Presidency upon Harding's death in 1923.

The SS President Coolidge, built as a luxury cruise ship, was launched in late 1931. Pressed into service as a troop transport during World War II, she sank on 26 October 1942 when, approaching the US base on Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific, she ran into a US minefield laid to protect the island from Japanese submarines.

On 5 January 1928, Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota. He represented Minnesota in the Senate from 1964 to 1976, when he was elected the 42nd Vice President under Jimmy Carter. They served one term, losing to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980. Mondale was the Democratic nominee for President in 1984, but lost in a massive landslide to Reagan's re-election. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Mondale the 24th US Ambassador to Japan (he served in that post from September 1993 to December 1996). In 2002, eleven days before election day, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. Mondale replaced him on the ballot, but he lost a fairly close election to Norm Coleman.

On 5 January 1917, Sarah Jane Mayfield was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. As an actress, she took the name Jane Wyman. In 1938, she met Ronald Reagan while the two were acting in Brother Rat. They married in 1940, and had three children (Maureen, who was born in 1941; Michael, who was born in 1945 and adopted by the Reagans; and Christine, who was born and died in June 1947). The Reagans divorced in 1948, making her the only woman to divorce a future President of the United States. Jane Wyman died 10 September 2007, three years after her President-husband (who had been the third of her five husbands).

You know what sucks? Falling over two years behind in manga buying. A local Borders Express is closing and I've twice already gone and dumped a pile of almost exclusively Beat manga on there and they are like "for you?" And that's just ONE IMPRINT from ONE PUBLISHER! And that's stuff that's in print! OOP stuff is already being the death of me.

ARGGHHHH!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present The Monty Python. In a highball glass, over ice:

• 1½ shots Elderberry Syrup
• 1½ shots Laird's 80-proof Applejack
• 6 ozs. soda water

Dangerously delicious.