Axis & Allies Revised Edition
Revised Edition, released 2004 by Hasbro / Avalon Hill
Axis & Allies
Original Edition, released 1987 by Milton Bradley Gamemaster Series

I've been playing Axis & Allies, original edition, since approximately 1993. This year for Christmas I received a copy of Axis & Allies, revised edition. Until recently I had only read about the map and rule changes. My brother and I managed to squeeze in a game Christmas day (and well into the night). To cut to the chase, I'm a fan of the changes to the game itself and not a big fan how light the cardboard on some of the new pieces is. I'm not going to endeavor a full on detailed explanation of the game and detailed review. If you're looking looking for that Tom Vasel has a detailed write up that gives you lots of detail.

In my estimation my brother and I are pretty experienced and sophisticated players of A& A both having about 10 years of play behind us and most of the time against on another. In the original version it was more or less a fore gone conclusion that the longer the game went on the higher the chance that the Allies would win as long as Russia made life difficult for Germany and the US keeps a modest amount of pressure on Japan to keep them blowing IPC's on a navy. The new version balances that out in several ways. First, the re-jiggering of Eastern Europe, splitting the Caucus into two spaces (Caucus and Belorussia) and putting a factory in Caucus.

This makes it possible for the Germans to do some real strategic damage to the Russians and gives them a possible land passage to North Africa. This doesn't change the standard Russian strategy of infantry, infantry, infantry but it provides Germany with an effective flanking maneuver and spreads out the Russian infantry into more spaces making it a more even fight. Also, the increase in defensive capability of the tank makes the German Blitzkreig strategy work. The addition of the Sahara Desert to North Africa makes the German hold on Africa more reasonable and kills the cheap shot Germany used to have of running it's tank all over Africa.

In the Pacific the US Navy is significantly weaker and the Japanese is significantly stronger with a second carrier group. The smaller Islands have shed their IPC value making the US Island hopping strategy be just a strategy for getting within range of Aisia and Japan. I played the Axis against my brother's Allies. Japan was pretty devastating by building a factory on Kwangtung and churning out tanks that allowed it to push the US out of China, take India from the British and capture the Russian East all the way to Russia. He did make one small mistake with the US fleet that set his Pacific efforts back two turns making the Japanese in Asia strategy have an couple extra turns to build momentum.

All in All I'm pleased to have the new version. There are definitely more subtle changes including the addition of a couple new units that I've glossed over. The bottom line is, if you've played the game and moved on, it's time to revisit. If you've never played, you're in for a treat - it's gotten even better. If you're still playing RISK - get a life and trade up.

You know what I'm doing the day after Christmas.

We actually only hit A (Northwestern Christian Thrift - closes at 6PM weekdays) & B (Value Village closes at 9 PM M-Sa). Had a good time. My Brother got a killer outfit for an 80's party he's attending - for New Years I think.

I actually managed to hit the third store on Sprague. Scored some really great stuff. Spokane thrift stores - just keep on giving.

Merry Christmas everyone. Need to make sure my last post before Christmas isn't vitriol. I am at my sisters house in Spokane Washington after quite a traveling ordeal (I'll post about that later). We'll see about getting some photos of my white Christmas (only snow on the ground, does that still count?).

The NY Times (love those guys) have a great slide show about one Jeremy Honey who works as Santa Claus at the Palisades Mall in New Jersey. It's a great slide show and it seems Mr. Honey is a great guy who takes his work as Santa pretty seriously.

At any rate, Merry Christmas to both my readers - you know who you are. :)

In case you're looking for some Christmas tunes - here is what we're listening to courtesy of Pandora.com (love those guys even more.)

This is a follow up post to my other about Hoover and the mass arrests he had planned for 1950

In 1999 (November 30th) during the WTO "riots" in Seattle, I worked in downtown Seattle at 2nd Avenue and Pine street (the Newmark Building) and my office was on second floor on the north side of the building looking down onto Pike between 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue. The Pike Place Market was visible to the west and you could see up Pike a block or two to the east.

The WTO meeting was long known to be coming to town and it was widely known that labor groups, etc would be protesting. The first day into the meeting there were loud protests on the street but nothing felt unsafe. I went out for lunch and walked among the thousands of people choking off traffic from the downtown streets. As it turns out I witnessed some of the activity that kicked off all the property destruction and chaos. The anarchists (black block ) who were busy pushing a dumpster into the intersection of Pike and 3rd Avenue to light it on fire and then watched them slink away down a side street. It wasn't really scary to be in the crowds, but it was getting there.

As I walked around more I found more and more police perimeters, SPD in full riot gear in a shoulder to shoulder line with shields and batons blocking off streets. Actually, I have to give credit where it's due. The Seattle Police department riot gear was masterfully designed to be intimidating. Great gladiatorial stuff with pads to look like huge muscles and wide shoulders, knee high boots with massive black leg guards.

By then 3pm the situation on the ground was enough that the office closed and people left in groups to get to their buses and transportation, but it really wasn't overly unsafe unless you were in one of the regions where the police or the protesters were moving in. The estimates I've seen put 40,000 people on the streets of Seattle. When I tried to go home the buses going to the north weren't actually stopping in downtown, you had to walk several blocks north to Denny. I got home all right.

That evening a "no protest" zone was declared in downtown Seattle containing, more or less, everything from Denny to Columbia and from Elliot Bay to I-5. The next morning (December 1st) when I went to work the buses weren't going into downtown, which had been thrashed by the protesters the day before. I got off the bus at Denny and was going to walk to the office. I carried a backpack with my book and a magazine that I read on the bus and in order to get into the "no protest" zone I had to let police officers peek inside my bag to see that I wasn't carrying I-don't-know-what. That really rubbed me the wrong way, but I acquiesced because I didn't really see the value of getting denied access to work, or worse, arrested for standing up for my rights (unreasonable search and seizure for those of you who don't remember civics).

That afternoon the moonscape of downtown Seattle was punctuated by maneuvers by the police and the protesters. It was all very 17th century warfare - armies lined up across a field. Apparently at some point late in the day the police pushed the protester into Pike Place and the market bearing the same name. This meant they were within sight of my office window. By this time it seems to me that the protester were more or less beaten down by pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. So when a skirmish appeared below the (sealed) window of my office we were able to watch as the police engaged the protesters. The two images below were not taken by me, but they are pretty dead on with what I saw:

Well for the sake of finishing the story and getting back to something resembling a point, That evening when I left work, downtown Seattle was on lock-down. Downtown was not nearly as crowded, it was more deserted with small pockets of protesters and lines of police in their great but scary looking riot gear. I walked up to Capital Hill and had a snack at B&O Espresso, and then walked up to Broadway to catch the No7 bus to the U-District where I could catch the 35 up to Wedgwood. Apparently because all of the disruption the 7 wasn't running on Capital Hill so I walked toward the north end of Broadway. I made it all the way to a pub near East 10th and Roanake (you know if you keep walking North on Broadway). I had yet to find the No 7 bus, whose route I was walking, and needed a break. I stopped in, got a pint and looked up at the television to see live footage of protesters moving up onto Capitol Hill being clubbed by police. It wasn't quite bedlam, but it definitely wasn't comforting to see that the exact area I had just walked out of was the scene of all that. I called a one my roomates to come pick me up from the pub, according to the local news the action was moving North on Broadway.

It was all very surreal. I remember at the end of it all feeling like the people who came to town for the protest had a lot of nerve showing up and smashing up my city. But that's not really compelling. At the end of it all - some 600 arrests later - I am disappointed in myself that I didn't put up more of a fuss when that darn police man asked to see my bag. And thereby I guess I hold myself complicit to what the courts ended up deciding was a violation of the 4th Amendment.

On January 16, 2004, the city settled with 157 individuals arrested outside of the no-protest zone during the WTO events, agreeing to pay them a total of $250,000.
On January 30, 2007, a federal jury found that the City of Seattle had violated protesters' Fourth Amendment constitutional rights by arresting them without probable cause or hard evidence.

from wikipedia "WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 Protest Activity"

Over the years I've given it some thought, and while I was ticked that a bunch of people had messed up my city, a peek inside my backpack pisses me off more. So, I guess that's why the whole Hoover wanting to go after 12,000 people in 1950 post has that "echo... echo... echo..." portion on the end. This makes me think we're in some sort of civil rights echo chamber. I'm pretty sickened by extraordinary rendition, by gitmo and by wiretapping. I guess instead of Echo echo echo it should read... Manzanar, Hoover's Plan, domestic wire tapping. Haven't we learned yet?

To knee cap a counter argument - Sure sure sure, post 9/11 world... My answer is post Pearl Harbor world... Post China enters Korean War world. Don't worry, I'm not going to rail against the random searches by police of bags and packages entering the subway - they just won't be checking my bag. And apparently I've started blogging about civil liberties

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges. In September 2006, Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

This one comes from the "holy-shit batman" department. Is it just me or is the rule of law run a muck at the hands of narrow minded politicians with tyrannical tendencies more frightening than terrorists?

I feel like I've seen something like this in a Sci-Fi movie, but I can't remember which one. At any rate, this sounds great. My building is plainly to small for a virtual doorman and as a consequence I have packages sent to me at work and have to lug them home. I guess the security considerations are not really my primary concern.

Virtual-doorman systems can range from very basic services with a few cameras and an Internet connection that allow the operators to watch a front door and accept packages, to space-age operations with biometric readers that scan fingerprints for entry or electronic tags that don’t even have to be taken out of a pocket to open a door — an E-ZPass, of sorts, for humans. Depending on the level of sophistication and the number of cameras, the services cost $10,000 to $70,000 for installation and $6,000 to $30,000 in annual maintenance.

But Matthew Nerzig, a spokesman for the doormen’s union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, argued that “while cyberdoormen offer building managers a way to cut costs, they obviously can’t compete with actual doorman when it comes to providing professional service and security to tenants.”

Toby A. Ten Eyck, a sociologist at Michigan State University, said the growing acceptance of virtual-doorman services says something about urban living. “We’re always in crowds in the city,” he said, “so people are always watching us at a certain level. Now technology allows us to have cameras everywhere watching what we do, and what’s interesting is we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t care that we’re being watched. We actually like it.”

Which is why residents can find it reassuring when a virtual doorman they have never met calls them by name and opens the door for them, he said. “It’s the ‘Cheers’ mentality of being somewhere where everybody knows your name,” he said, referring to the television show about a Boston bar and its regular customers. “Especially in a city where you’re pretty much an anonymous figure, you just feel good when people know who you are.”

Still, I think this is pretty cool and is a great way to increase quality of life for the people in the building at a fraction of the cost of a person on site. I'm reasonably certain the folks who have a doorman now aren't going to run out and replace them with an "eye-in-the-sky", but this definitely will bring "doormen" to more buildings.

Wow, had no idea this even existed. This strikes me as one of those trickle out things where you can't even begin to predict what the ultimate consequences are. Mr. Tipping Point where are you?

India Overturns Law Banning Women Bartenders

In overturning a 1914 law that prohibited women from tending bar here in the capital, the Supreme Court of India this month not only raised a glass to changing social mores in this country, but also gave Indian women access to one of the most lucrative jobs in the new economy.

A bartender, Ms. Soni has pointed out to her elders, can easily rake in more than $1,000 a month, which is more than triple the salary of a call center worker, for instance, or that of a waitress at a high-end restaurant.

In Mumbai, for instance, India’s entertainment capital, women are prohibited from working in bars past 8:30 p.m., a law so rarely enforced that Shatbhi Basu, a celebrity bartender who is the host of a drinking show on television and teaches a bartending course, was not quite sure when women were supposed to clock out. Many employers ignore the 8:30 p.m. law, she said, but afford their employees safety precautions, like sending them home in a company car.

Nor do the city police seem to enforce another charmingly antiquated regulation that requires drinkers to present a doctor-certified permit that declares them medically in need of drink.

We had a team lunch at Smorgas Chef at the suggestion of our Swedish ex-pat veep. It was fantastic. I had the Baked Cod fish in a Lemongrass sauce with Lingonberries ( $26 ) and some of my colleagues had the Smorgas Pepper Steak ( $28 ) and were raving as well.

We went for lunch on a Friday so I have no idea how difficult it is to get a reservation during prime time. But I will definitely be heading back. In fact we have a (different) team lunch tomorrow, I might suggest Smorgas Chef.

I had a nice surprise this morning when I arrived at my desk. A yet to be identified reader turn contributor to my blog left a copy of the Wall Street Journal Technology Section on my desk folded to an article entitled Glitches Bug Google's Android Software. The salient few lines for me are:

"Functionality is not there, is poorly documented or just doesn't work. It's clearly not ready for prime time," said Mr. [Adam] MacBeth, who earlier this year helped found mobile software start-up [omitted on purpose]

Looks to me like Mr. MacBeth got himself some free publicity by giving them the quote that they wanted. That being said, I have yet to really dive into the development portion of my Android efforts - still in concept stages. So I don't know how buggy or not it is.

At any rate, Anyone who's been around the block once or twice in software knows that the bleeding edge stuff is always fraught with pitfalls. There is a reason version 2 exists. Dare I tie this in to Agile Software development thinking around deliver something and improve as you go? If you gold plate everything you bloat and you'll never make it out the door. note to self - tell them about the software side project you've been working on for 5+ years because you've been compulsive about doing it all the right way. It's a bit embarrassing.

Thankfully, the WSJ decided to be even handed and get another voice:

Rick Genter a professional software engineer who is writing an Android application in his free time, said that while Google's mobile software is buggy, it isn't necessarily any worse than any other software at such an early stage.

Thank you also to my reader/contributor for bringing this in. I have purposely not linked to WSJ because frankly, they don't seem to want to let me have access to their content so I won't be giving them my "network effect" love. And I'm not really sure that a story about a new platform being buggy is news.

Anyway, just released in Europe of all places, comes iPhoneFingers, which are made of latex (there goes that imagination again…) and fit over your thumb and index finger, saving you from future cleaning of the iPhone’s screen.

IntoMobile.com has a tidbit about an Android Device prototype reportedly by HTC in the wild. It's not pretty, but prototypes aren't about pretty...looks like they actually got their information from gizmodo.com : Google Android Prototype In the Wild

Our source, a Giz reader, had some feedback to add to the prototype, which he used for a day: Even in early form, it's light and fast, much faster than the desktop emulator at times. And as a longtime programmer, he thinks it's a lot more put together than Window Mobile 5 on the back side of things.

props to Dave for putting this on his Reader share and bringing it to my attention

Wired has a tidbit about the winners of their Saddest-Cubicle Contests.. Damn I have it good.

The 'Winners' of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest

We used to have a small Ikea desk we would make the intern sit at. We called it The Bannana Stand and even contemplated having it putting in the company directory as a conference room.

Conf-NYC "Banana Stand" 4x (East 34th Street)

We opted not to because at the time conference room space was so scare we were certain people would turn up having scheduled it sight un-seen. Instead we placed a sign on it that said, "El Soporte de Plátano" with a lovely picture of banana's on it. We did make him sit there for several months.

The fact that it was yellow was a classic Ikea mistake on my part. My co-worker and I had identified that we needed a small table as a shared workspace and had identified the MUDDUS as a good option. I went to Ikea, picked one up off the racks, got it home, got it to work (via and then, some weeks later from the original purchase, went to set it up. I had intended to get a white one... oops! it's yellow. The idea of trying to return it was just out of the question... so we gave it a good name and put it into use.

gigaom.com has a piece that was picked up by the NY Times technology bits blog about Ribbit a newish player in VOIP who is taking a more platform approach to telephony and the web.

Can Ribbit Finally Bring Web & Voice Together?

If you strip away the hype (meaningless blather such as the company’s claim of being Silicon Valley’s first phone company), what they have done is built their own Class 5 softswitch and back-end infrastructure and married it to front-end technologies like Flash and Flex from Adobe Systems (ADBE).

Accordingly, Ribbit is offering API (Application Protocol Interface) access to much of our switch today, allowing third party developers to create rich integrated telephony applications without previous knowledge of telephony. Currently, the Ribbit API is optimized for Flash / Flex developers because of the pervasiveness of the technology (Flash is resident on 98% of the world’s computers). This means that Ribbit communication applications written in Flash will run without the need of a client download.

I'm starting to futz with video and video conferencing and voip. I got myself a Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooksand have been having a blast. tokbox.com let's you do p2p video without any software install. And we use Adobe Breeze / Connect Pro at work and it is fantastically easy to use and has pretty good video support.

If you're looking for something to do tonight I have just the thing. Come see The All-For-Nots play at Mercury Lounge (217 E. Houston Street - corner Avenue A & Houston) at 7:30. This is your chance to notch your I-saw-them-when belt so you are well prepared for when they mahir.

I'll be there tonight support my friend Kathleen, producer extraordinaire. It's also endlessly humorous to me that they are following a band called the The Neverbeens. I can't think of a better opening act for a psuedo-fictional real band.

This is really amazing. One family has owned the same townhouse in Brooklyn since 1866 and apparently they more or less kept most things. Be sure and check out the slide show.

The Ghosts of Clinton Street

Bar of Gold is a fairly simple word problem I give people I interview for technical positions. It's not huge think question, IMHO. It's really designed to see if you can conjure a thought process. And while there are, I'm sure high fa luting ways to solve it, a straight forward brute force attack and you can't help but solve it. The most common response I get from candidates is to stare intently at the white board and make a face like that makes me hope their are wearing and adult diaper. The most successful candidates at this just start solving the problem out loud and quickly realize that by beginning to solve it you pretty much can't help but solve it. I know this, because I was presented this problem in an interview with a much higher value and I managed to solve it.

Here is the problem:

You have 1 bar of gold and 7 days of work to be done. You hire a man to do the work for you and agree to pay him 1/7th of your bar of gold a day. You must pay him in full at the end of every day. The problem is you can only cut the bar of gold in two places. Where do you make the two cuts in the bar of gold so that you can pay him properly each day?

Additional Info: Since you live in such a remote location the guy doesn't have any where to spend any of the money you pay him from day to day and because you don't provide your employees with lockers he carries all his gold on him.

My feeling is if you start to solve the problem using trial and error you'll come across the solution pretty quickly. If you stare at it, you invite an aneurysm.

Now the funny part. I had to write this down somewhere. A while back we did a mass intern interview where the candidates showed up anytime from 10 AM to 3 PM and during that window we would try and get them seen by at least 2 interviewers. The thing about intern interviews is that you can't really expect the students to have specific technical expertise, you're looking for good foundations in Computer Science and problem solving and communication abilities. That's why I like the bar of gold. You have to have problem solving abilities and explain to me how you arrived at the solution.

Well, there was one candidate who was exceptionally nervous to whom I gave this problem. He looked as if is head was going to explode until I repeated the question about 5 times clarifying the problem. He then proceeded to scribble down the following formula and then look up at me half triumphantly and half in uncertainty and more or less remarked, "there."

$[\; 1\; -\; [\; 1\; -\; (\; 1\; -\; \Delta \; 1/7)\; 1/7\; ]\; 1/7\; ]$

There what? How did you arrive at this conclusion and what is the answer? Nothing. And while I'm not sure what that formula expresses, I'm reasonably confident it's not the answer.

In case you can't figure it out I'll leave the answer in the comments in a few days.

Answer posted in the comments 12/16/2007

If you're looking for directions to Dave & Busters in Phoenix click here

Today was my second all time ever visit to Dave & Busters. The first time was in Phoenix. There is a bowling alley at the one in Phoenix (actually Scottsdale) and we had a great time at the lanes with wife's family over Thanksgiving. While technically that was a D&B experience, it was a bowling alley. I did go upstairs there to the game area and play one of my favorite video games from years gone by and get hit on by a cougar. Overall, impression of the place more or less neutral - game room really didn't do much for me.

Today we went to the D&B on 42nd street in NYC for an intern event for work. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not ungrateful for an all expense, open bar, game play on the company, trip to D&B. I just wasn't finding much in the game room that was all that great. The whole place was littered with those terrible dexterity games where you drop a coin onto a shelf in the hopes that your coin will shove others off the shelf. What are those? Other than that it's one Dance Dance Revolution in the corner, a Donkey Kong / Super Mario Brothers / Donkey Kong Junior game next to Miss Pac Man and Space Invaders consoles. On the upside, having it be a Tuesday afternoon with two cocktail waitresses who have nothing else to do but follow us around bringing beverages. So at the end of the day, I don't ever really need to go back to D&B, but then again how does the old saying go, "the worst day fishing is better than the best day at work."

Where to start? Since I last posted the bathroom has more or less been entirely finished. Once they finally vacated last Thursday (Day 10) I was overjoyed. There was a board game group at work that night so I hung out and played. I got home around 11 PM, before my wife who was out with friends, to find a puddle in the bathroom coming out from under the vanity. I looked and found that the cold water feed valve to the sink was leaking. I sopped up the water; put a deli container underneath and called the landlord to express my displeasure.

So, day 11 - they come back and fix the valve. I didn't bother to tell him that the seal around the new kitchen faucet was crap. I'll fix that on my own.

Saturday morning, day 12, I'm cleaning up and going to put down a bath mat and realize there is a 2" darkening of the floor around the toilet - what granite floors do when they are wet. So I call the landlord figuring there is some water seepage from the base of the toilet into the floor. No visible water just evidence there is moisture there. He comes over and visits. Long story short, today, day 13, the landlord and the contract stop by and fix the tiny leak in the vanity drain, I had also found on Saturday. The Landlord called me today and told me the contractor assures him there is no problem with the toliet. Not that I care, not my building, so whatever. But they did fix the leaky drain in the vanity.

Bottom line I am thoroughly unimpressed with this contractor's work. The obvious problems aside, the work overall is ripe with cut corners and things that I am going to feel compelled to go back over and dress up a bit. I have to look at them every day.

My friend Kathleen's (creator of theburg.tv) latest endeavor has kicked off in anticipation of it's kick-off.  The All-For-Nots is a band out to "conquer the world wide web..."

I'm excited to see what she's got up her sleeve as I really enjoyed the burg.

I still enjoy watching my favorite episode of the burg - Training. What can I say, I live in Queens and I love the Doppelgängers

All that is left is the vanity, the medicine cabinet, the light fixture over the vanity, and theoretically they are also going to install a new faucet in my kitchen.  The contractor thinks he can do all of this between 8 AM and 11 AM tomorrow.  Yeah right. 

At any rate, the floor is in; the new toilet is in; the shower is in (with my hand picked nice shower head) and I can take showers at home again.  Basically, as soon as he left today and had said I could use the shower I showered, just on principle.

What I'm really afraid of is what he's going to bring for the Vanity.  I mean I already have "Suburban Housewife's Italian Fantasy" (thanks Sarah)  I'm afraid I'm going to get a vanity to match.  It's become painfully clear that because I don't write the check for the work, I am a bystander to be dealt with.  If I really wanted to affect anything I'd have to throw a major fit and piss on the relationship with my landlord, who is pretty great.  Arghhhh.

Well, here is the latest progress. 

I'm guessing this is as boring for you as it is for me, but rest assured you're doing a good deed - this is really cathartic for me.

I love this 80's hit and I have no idea what it means. Apparently, it was a love song?

I promise not too re-point you to or repost EVERYTHING Noam (Pygmy Goats - Man's Best Friend) posts but damn if I can't NOT post this one.

Shawn, I totally get it now. I'd probably go for stew, seems a bit small for kebabs.

I guess it must be day 8... They started last Tuesday.  I'm starting to care less what my bathroom looks like and more that I just get one.  Landlord has said it might be done tomorrow.  Let's all hope together.

I will be using that, big time. I love me the color codes. 

I just want my bathroom back.

Day 5 - Yep they worked on Saturday

Day 6 - Oh yeah the tile is ugly.

GoolgeBlogscoped has an article about the Google Intranet

What the Google Intranet Looks Like

What do around 16,000 Google employees stare at in the morning when they’ve arrived at the office? They might be looking at Moma, the name for the Google intranet. The meaning of the name of “Moma” is a mystery even to some of the employees working on it, we heard, but Moma’s mission is prominently displayed on its footer: “Organize Google’s information and make it accessible and useful to Googlers.”

The article is not all that exciting a read. I don't know really anything about GoolgeBlogscoped and based on the obsessive fascinated tone of the entry I don't think I'll be reading them much.

My wife and I spent some quality time this weekend getting ourselves taken off of spammy useless catalogs we got in the mail.  It all started when we just started going through the mail pile.  She had a catalog in her hand and remarked, "I need to get taken off this one".  I grabbed it and the phone and dialed the 800 number.  Then she handed me another and another until I had called 19 retailers.  At which point we were flabberghasted that we were recieving so much junk.  There are two others Dover Publications and Anthropologie that have no telephone number that I could find in the catalogs.  So overall there are 21 that I attempted to get us removed from (19 successfully). 

Here is the list of catalogs and the 800 numbers if you're thinking about removing yourself, although you will likely need the catalog to provide exact address and name information:

1. The Sharper Image (800) 344-444
2. Garnet Hill (800) 622-6216
3. Red Envelope (877) 733-6383
4. sundance (800) 422-2770
5. Urban Outfitters (800) 282-2200
6. Athleta (888) 322-5515
7. Wine County Gift Baskets (800) 394-0394
8. The Container Store (800) 733-3532
9. Eddie Bauer (800) 426-8020
10. J Crew (800) 562-0258
11. Woolrich (877) 512-7305
12. Uncommon Goods (888) 365-0056
13. Neiman Marcus (800) 825-8000
14. L.L. Bean (800) 221-4221
15. Space.NK (212) 941-4222
16. Fossil (866) 510-4460
17. The Territory Ahead (800) 882-4323
18. Title Nine (800) 609-0092
19. Sahalie (800) 458-4438 (this one deserves special mention, when I called the woman on the phone told me there were THREE catalogs she could help me with.  So, she took me off ALL three, the other two I can't recall and have never heard of)

There are 3 we decided to keep:

1. Archie McPhee
2. Crate & Barrel (we're in the market for some furniture)
3. Heifer International (which incidentally is a philanthropic organization dedicated to ending hunger and poverty)

We spread all the catalogs out on the floor and took some pictures so you could see how much stuff all this really is.

Friending, Ancient or Otherwise

“In tribal cultures, your identity is completely wrapped up in the question of how people know you,” he says. “When you look at Facebook, you can see the same pattern at work: people projecting their identities by demonstrating their relationships to each other. You define yourself in terms of who your friends are.”

In tribal societies, people routinely give each other jewelry, weapons and ritual objects to cement their social ties. On Facebook, people accomplish the same thing by trading symbolic sock monkeys, disco balls and hula girls.

While I was in Phoenix last week for Thanksgiving we did a little antiquing on 7th Avenue. We went to a great antique / architectural salvage place called

QCumberz Highly Recommend
4429 N 7th Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85013
map

Long story short, we've been looking for a couch / love seat for our living room - something small and well suited for our tiny NYC apartment. Well we came upon the following and managed to get it for $99 - a bargain if you ask me.

My wife initially picked up on the idea of using them as a couch for our living room. I was a bit skeptical because I'm not a fan of goldenrod, but after the fellow at the store told me how easy they would be to re-upholster and I got a good look at them, I was sold. Now all I have to do is get them here from Phoenix - Road trip anyone?

It's certainly old news that Google has released the Android SDK with a $300K bounty for "the best" app. But there are some interesting posts being made on how Google may actually be slowing development down because there are about 10M incentives not to share your expertise and help other developers out.

Is the $10 million Android contest actually slowing developers down? by ZDNet's Garett Rogers -- People with any level of programming skills and a vivid imagination are looking at Google’s $10 million dollar carrot with wide eyes — but is the contest actually working the way Google expected? I’d have to say it’s not — right now anyway. The contest has effectively caused knowledgeable developers to have an [...]

If an inexperienced Java developer is looking to create something unique, they generally start with examples provided in the SDK. When what you need isn’t covered by those tutorials, the next logical stop is to look at documentation or ask for help. Unfortunately, the docs are a bit dry for developers who learn best by example — this is where user contributed code plays a very important role.

The fact there is close to $300,000 on the line for winning projects is making most people think twice about sharing stuff with the community. PHP-like documentation with associated user contributed code would make developing on the Android platform a dream — unfortunately there is no such thing. Unless you are an experienced Java programmer with the skills to interpret the provided documentation without extra code to look at, there is a good chance you are out of luck.

Truth be told, I'm not going to disclose what I'm developing for my entry. The poker folks will tell you - "the pot odds are right". Then again, I am going to be pretty unrelenting in my efforts to get this product together as are most others I'm sure.

Das Keyboard

Blank Keys to Type up to 100% Faster Like on a piano, since there are no keys to look at when typing, your brain will quickly adapt and memorize the key positions. Within a few short weeks users increase their typing accuracy and find themselves typing up to 100% faster.

I just can't justify something this indulgent. I'm already a touch typer who rarely looks at the keyboard. Would it really make me faster? I was counting on 8 hours of practice a day to do that.

Where did day 3 go you ask? Yeah, I'm not sure either. Between work and having construction taking over my bathroom I'm a little out of it.

End of Day 3 - I have a new ceiling.

End of Day 4 - I have a bathtub now and the plumbing is in.