Some things happened this week worth noting... The AFL-CIO disintegrated. A tenth planet was found.

The Little League is in turmoil because one Domingo Infante apparently communicated to his team in Spanish, and the umpire couldn't figure out if he was telling his team members to cheat. So the umpire outlawed the use of Spanish. Why am I telling you this? Everybody who ever played or watched baseball has had a grudge against an umpire for an unfair decision, but there's nothing that can be done about it. The umpire's word is final. In this case, it's causing an international uproar. The Little League is claiming nothing can be done, but this is the kind of injustice that demands a scapegoat. This umpire is going to get fired.

Happy Birthday Mom!

It didn't take long. A woman has filed suit over the aforementioned adult content in the video game 'Grand Theft Auto'. Claims it wasn't suitable for her fourteen year old. Hmmm. It was originally rated 'M' which is for seventeen and older according to the rating system. Why is she giving it to a fourteen year old in the first place? Wasn't suitable? Innapropriate? Look again at the box. GRAND THEFT AUTO. The object is to steal cars and hit on prostitutes fercrysakes. She's buying this for an impressionable teen? I wonder if she has internet access, where adult content is always one or two clicks away and you don't even need to know any secret codes to unlock it. Which brings us back to the real reason for the lawsuit - she's jumping on an opportunity to perhaps make some easy money by acting horrified. Now that is obscene.

The space shuttle is grounded again. There's a push to abolish the program completely. Uhm, knock knock? Anybody home? If our space future needs to take another course entirely, and we aren't sure if the Russians can commit to it either; let's try and get these folks down in one piece and empty the space station before we make that decision. OK?

Though now I'm thinking of job prospects for displaced or converted terrorists. Wanna' strap yourself onto a bomb? That's what turns you on? How about a job in our space program? Do something useful with your life. You just have to accept the fact that spaceships blow up from time to time.

A Kenyan gentleman presumably offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for Chelsea's hand in marriage. He's still waiting for an answer several years later. Bill, consider a second look at this offer. I consider it doubtful you're gonna' come up with anything better... Especially when you look at what Safeway is getting for a pound of beef and a slab of goat cheese these days...

Google announces 'CodeJam III' - their competition for software engineers. The winner can take home a $10,000 prize and have the opportunity to work for Google Research in exciting places like Brazil or India. Gee, think I should try out? Nope. The winners are in a race. The main object is to find people who write code quickly. This is the main reason I left the software business. Anybody can write functions. Some can type 1000 lines of code in a day and solve seemingly intractable logic in four lines of code. Sorry, but these aren't the people I would want working on my software. A function does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a system. It has connections to and from that system and an environment in which it lives. This environment is affected by the function as much as the function is affected by its environment. And the environment is always changing. The correct algorithm for a particular environment will look completely different than the correct algorithm to solve the problem.

The only way to completely understand the system and therefore solve the logic problem - is to become totally immersed in it. This takes time. Often you will find that the system itself needs to be modified to solve the logic problem correctly, and modifying the system will have an adverse effect on other components which live in the environment you wish to change. The correct answer may indeed involve only four lines of code, but it can sometimes take days to know that.

The other aspect of rapidly designed software which makes it a poor business choice is that one must anticipate that the person who created the code will not be the same person who ends up maintaining it. If that person doesn't have sufficient information about why certain design choices were made (and how the function fits into its environment), the function - or even the entire system - will someday need to be scrapped. Over 90% of the software code ever written has eventually been scrapped.

Murphy strikes. During one of the hottest weeks in history, the air conditioner at the store decides that it can't take it anymore. The few shoppers who have ventured out in the heat and think they'll get a refreshing breeze inside have been in for a shock. It's hotter in here than it is on the street. All the repairmen are booked for the next two weeks. Time for some fans and wet towels...

The local radio station is asking if you would know what to do if there's a terrorist incident on BART. We'll ignore the fact that BART doesn't run in my neighborhood. The correct answer - stay calm and listen. Some interviewees found the printed safety instructions confusing. Don't worry about that, we're told - the drivers have been trained what to do and will take care of you. Now I'm worried. I've been on BART before. The drivers aren't known for communication skills and/or leadership. They don't seem to understand English or even sign language for that matter. They took the job because their cousin didn't want 'em working at his seven-eleven. Push the green button, the train goes. Push the red button, the train stops. Refer all questions to the station manager.

Some idiot is proposing changing time again. To be specific, change the date that daylight savings starts and ends by a week or two. Claims it'll save a few barrels of oil. It's a lousy idea for everybody but software designers. For them it means jobs. Lots of jobs. Every major software product has its own daylight savings library that somebody wrote years ago, and they fired that person in 2001. Nobody else understands the code. First you need somebody to figure out how to change it, and then three or four people to test it. You'll use two of those testers just on Australia. It's a boon for the industry as well. You'll need a new operating system. You'll need upgrades for most of your apps.

What is going on in China? Suddenly and without warning, they start using less global oil. It's only one percent less, but that's a lot of oil. That'll save them a ton of money. Then - also without warning, they decide to free up the Yaun and not artifically value it any longer by buying up US dollars with all their excess cash. Hmmm. You don't care? Oh, but you will... long-term interest rates - going up. Price of real estate - going down. Cost of imported merchandise - going up. Value of dollar, wages, etc. - going down. Price of oil - one word - 'volatile'. By now you know that 'volatile' oil prices basically means that at the gas pump they'll keep going up indefinitely.

So you've probably heard that the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" contains graphic sex content. The company which produced it is shocked. There's a criminal investigation. It's what they call an 'easter egg' in the software business. Programmers like to put extra stuff in, with a secret key to unlock it. Yes, I think it's quite shocking. This game needs to be pulled from the market. In the meantime, here are the cheat keys...

Enable all girlfriends:
Notes: If the Heart icons do not appear simply swing
by their homes to mark them.
(1) Denise is behind CJ's House
(2) Michelle around the Driving School in SF
(3) Helena can be found at Flint Range
(4) Katie is in the Paradise district of SF
(5) Millie is in the Prickle Pine district of LV
WUPB-B7F4-XPX09
1GZE-V47D-4GXBH

Date & Girlfriend Codes:
D1U0-7U5R-BJ2ZC

Date Modifier:
39VZ-NARK-06RVU
8UQH-1851-EZQPC

Always Driving Date:
8JKP-4XPM-Y2W6U
12UF-9DF5-0P0RG
7ZPF-J4VG-C20FY
vAUN4-Y662-7NFV0
7ZPF-J4VG-C20FY

Always Dancing Date:
9YZR-17TF-MWZU4
5JC3-M4E8-VQ4CX
6BHH-ZW1G-YH2TU
AUN4-Y662-7NFV0
6BHH-ZW1G-YH2TU

Always Dinner Date:
HRHT-J8VC-2P05M
5JC3-M4E8-VQ4CX
NG2H-VX0E-Z0G2T
12UF-9DF5-0P0RG
NG2H-VX0E-Z0G2T

Quick Fun Increase (Driving Dates):
HC35-44B7-1B0QY
DVN8-B67P-H075B

Hot Coffee (After Successful Date):
WARNING: Uncensored Hot Coffee code UNLOCKS ADULT 
CONTENT DISABLED BY ROCKSTAR GAMES AND IS A 
VIOLATION OF YOUR LICENSE AGREEMENT
7UZJ-9YW8-0T45Z
8UQH-1851-EZQPC

Censored Hot Coffee:
Note: Use this code if you wish to save game with 
Uncensored Hot Coffee disabled
1NQR-NVFE-NXV1Q
20MW-A62G-9MQ30

Uncensored Hot Coffee:
Note: DO NOT SAVE WITH THIS CODE ACTIVE This cheat 
will save and MAY corrupt your save. USE AT YOUR 
OWN RISK. You will be stuck in an invisible box 
after adult scene. Press R1 R2 L1 L2 buttons at
the same time to escape.
JD3N-EV68-AGRW0
4PMG-6VNA-PBZQ7
BKR1-JF84-6Q23C
U7Q0-6H91-6JATX
5540-HY63-181MY
7FB5-3052-PWB8N
03AH-5PBC-9K2T7

My daughter calls. Daddy, can I have another kitty? Three already. Two puppies. I should put my foot down, nesspa? Instead - I go for the heart of the matter. Did mommy say it was ok? She said it was ok with her if it was ok with you. Right. Two against one. I don't stand a chance...

Supreme Court nominee. There's only one thing that anybody is talking about. Where does he stand on abortion? Like that's the only thing that matters. Meanwhile we've got a heat wave of epic proportions across the northern hemisphere and locusts have invaded France.

A recent report about the continuing effort to restore Hetch-Hetchy contains an interesting statistic. It claims there are 2.5 million dams in the US. I scratch my head. Somewhere around 300 million people in the US. So we've built roughly one dam for every hundred or so people. Dam! That's a lot of dams.

Personally I don't care if they tear down O'Shaughnessy Dam. Just as long as they don't force me to drink Sacramento River water. The San Francisco Water Board was on to something a hundred years ago. Rather than drink Sacramento River silt, they ran a pipeline a hundred miles or so to get fresh mountain spring water. When Los Angeles played hardball in the water wars, we pretty much gave 'em the Sacramento. Sure we complained bitterly about stealing our water and destroying the ecology of our mud. But if it's a choice of giving up our pristine water or our silt, take the silt. Please. Somewhere around Tracy the California aqueduct (carrying Sacramento water south to L.A.) crosses directly beneath the Hetch-Hetchy pipeline, carrying pretty good water to San Francisco.

I've started demolishing the old pegboard guitar wall down at the shoppe. It's now past the point of no return. Turns out that there's a huge wallpaper mural of a creek with trees hidden behind the guitars. It's not hidden anymore... But it's pretty ugly and splotches of paint all over it from subsequent remodels. So it's gotta' go. The tricky part is doing all this heavy construction whilst serving customers. I've gotta' go at it one chunk at a time. Then move guitars over and start the next chunk. It looks like hell right now. And it will be at least a few months before it looks good. That won't be good for business. But - like changing the store name a year ago... if there's something that has to be done, you just have to do it.

Was looking on the web for some pictures of trashy women for a website project. Turns out that most of those that the search engines could locate were heavily copyrighted artworks. Isn't there anywhere on the web where trashy looking women actually show off for free and post their pictures more or less in the public domain? I scanned the memory banks. Then I found what I was looking for. Yes, I've been to such a site before. Hotornot.com!

If you've never been to hotornot - here's how it works. They show you a picture. You rate it. One to ten. They show you another. In an endless loop. I was a bit underwhelmed on my prior visits a few years ago because I always rated based on my personal preference. i.e. if it was somebody thought was particularly attractive, they got a ten. But my personal preferences aren't the majority. Those that I liked usually ended up a '6.5' overall. The ones I thought were disgusting ended up with 9.9. But this time I wasn't into personal favorites. I was collecting floozy pictures. So I rated based purely on trash value. Know what I found? My votes matched the global rating pretty much everytime. That's some interesting knowledge. American males overwhelmingly prefer trashy sluts to beautiful women.

Happy Birthday Isabella!

Greenspan is harping on Social Security again. It needs to be fixed, he says. I'm beginning to have a bit more radical opinion. This is based on the fact that Social Security as an American institution came about in 1935. People talk about it as if it has been the staple of retirement systems since the beginning of time. If you start with the historical retirement age of 65, only for the last five years has anybody paid into it for their lifetime. For the last ten years we've been talking about it being broken. It's broken all right. It's a pyramid scheme, and pyramid schemes are illegal because they are fatally flawed over time. Social Security hasn't worked for even one generation. And let's look at the cost and the huge (though not enough) amount of money they've collected. Close it. The government shouldn't be in the pension business. Give all the money back. They can't, they will claim. Unscrupulous people have been spending it. A lot of money is simply gone. Precisely why the government shouldn't be in this business. They're crooks. Would you give your retirement account to the mafia? Same thing. But that's OK. Let bygones be bygones. Count up what you've got. Count out what you owe us. Subtract. Find out the loss percentage. We'll let you slide for the difference, just give us our money back.

Just think about what effect you might see from roughly 1.5 trillion dollars being injected back into the economy... Some would squander it, some would invest it. Either way, it would trigger the largest economic expansion of any society in history.

London calling. Subway explosions. Seems to be roughly timed around the G8 conference. Time for another round of fear to begin. Fear is how people are controlled. - I've grown a bit weary of being controlled...

But this is an opportunity, since the current bombings aren't in our front yard. We get to see Blair at work. Observe how he uses the fear to his political advantage. Compare and contrast his performance with that of Bush.

I listed my blog software on hotscripts.com and have been deluged with page hits. I suppose that's good. But I'm no novice to software publishing. If you get more people using a software product, that means you're going to have more people filing bugs and feature requests. Multi-user capability. Trackbacks. Built-in HTML editor. Templates. Soon your lean mean machine will become a bloated pig. That's the way it always works.

Within 48 hours the software also found its way onto a Spanish hacker site. I've been busy all day erasing entries from folks who can't seem to read the blogs posting useless comments. Since they don't seem to have anything intelligent to write, they just cut and paste the message I wrote. Over and over again. I might have to disable guest comments until the demo traffic dies down.

It's highly likely that Natalee Holloway (the teen missing in Aruba) is deceased. It's a bit difficult to remain in hiding on an island that's 19 miles wide by 5 miles long and has 89000 residents (about 1200 per square mile). That's also why I'm thinking that the searchers aren't likely to come up with a body. They haven't found anything yet. The island isn't that big. But the guy who pilots a party boat turns out to have made some conflicting stories. Curious. Aruba is 19 miles from Venezuela. That's close enough that you can see it on the horizon on a clear day. If you were trying to hide a body on a 75 square mile island, the logical thing to do would be to take it elsewhere. It would take a bit longer to search South America. Even longer to search the Carribean Sea.

A new FDA warning label is being issued. Something like - "Warning: This drug has been linked to increases in suicidal behaviour and suicide attempts. If you feel like killing yourself after taking this medication, please discontinue use immediately and notify a health care professional." The product? Several classes of antidepressants, which are generally prescribed to people who try to commit suicide.

Kari Smith of Salt Lake City is getting ten grand from her eBay auction. An internet gambling site is giving that to her to have "goldenpalace.com" tattooed into her forehead.

Spoke to one of my suppliers today. Wanted to know if I'd like to get in on a second batch of limited edition guitars. The first batch of 100 was snagged up by collectors almost as soon as it hit the streets. Not a single one left in the entire country. Not so, I told him. I've got one sitting in the display window. Serial number 25. Been there for six months. Not a single person has picked it up or even given it a second glance (except for me). Nobody has inquired about the price. And as for the flame guitar, bought it a year ago. One person picked it up besides myself. A year ago. That was one of my guitar instructors. My supplier was aghast. They've sold thousands of the things. It's one of the fastest movers at Ed Roman's in Las Vegas (arguably the largest guitar store in the world). I'm in a different world, I told him. My customers will haggle me for a $40 guitar. They demand a free $50 case on a $60 guitar. Everybody else sells hard cases for at least $100. I sell 'em at cost because otherwise they'd be more than the guitar. My customers won't pick up a guitar with more than 2 leading digits on the price tag, unless they're kids. (The kids will pick up anything, because they're not buying anything). Man, your customers really suck, he said. It's refreshing to hear it from somebody else...

Then another supplier stops in to say hi. He sells $200-$300 guitars. I used to buy some of them. Want to buy some more?, he asks. Well, gee. I sold one of those last month. I've still got four or five. Bought them oh, about two years ago. I see you've got our vintage model and one of the grand concerts. Those are really great guitars. And they're cheap. Not cheap enough for my customers, I inform him. Got any guitars for under fifty bucks that sound like cardboard? I might be able to sell one or two. Otherwise, no thanks. Man, your customers really suck, he says.

Then a patron informs me that he overheard a couple of folks talking about my shop over at Gryphon Strings the other day. One was inquiring about whether or not I was a total price-gouger for offering a 1907 Gibson mandolin for $1200. The salesman told him that it was in fact a very reasonable price. I would hope so. I bought that mandolin from Gryphon for $1300 five years ago, before vintage instrument prices skyrocketed. It's still hanging on the wall, just like it has for the last 3.5 years. It'll probably be hanging there when it turns 100 and everybody else is selling them for $4000.

The next customer had to have a Martin guitar. Nothing else. Price doesn't matter. Apologies but Martin is anti-competitive and won't sell instruments to me. Could I interest you in some really nice guitars that sound just as good (or maybe better) and don't cost as much? Nope. I send her to (you guessed it) Gryphon. Couldn't even get her to take a listen.

Total take for the day - a set of strings and 3 picks. Five dollars and seventy five cents. Sometimes it makes me want to scream.