We were lucky, hurricane Noel is passing 75 miles to our East, but we are getting some backlash, expected to continue for another 9 hours or so.
James’s school is having their sixth annual crafters fair, which I’m happy to have attended this morning before the weather got too crazy.
I wanted to drop by the KofC today for a Wampanoag cultural event, but between the slick roads, the leaves and especially the high winds, opted to stay put.
You have to feel sorry for anyone who planned an event for today.
From NOAA:
A HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT EDT TONIGHT.
DAMAGING NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS WILL DEVELOP THIS AFTERNOON AND
EARLY EVENING. THE PERIOD OF STRONGEST WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO
OCCUR THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING BETWEEN 3 AND 10 PM.
THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION AND TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED
IN THIS REGION!
SUSTAINED WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE INTO THE 40 TO 50 MPH
RANGE BY THIS AFTERNOON…WITH PEAK GUSTS BETWEEN 65 AND 85 MPH
POSSIBLE LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING. WINDS THIS STRONG ARE
CERTAINLY CAPABLE OF PRODUCING STRUCTURAL DAMAGE AND WIDESPREAD
TREE DAMAGE. WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES ARE ALSO EXPECTED.
IN ADDITION…PEOPLE IN MOBILE HOMES ARE URGED TO SEEK SHELTER.
MOBILE HOMES ARE NOT SAFE WITH THESE EXPECTED WIND SPEEDS. THE
DAMAGING WINDS WILL DIMINISH BY LATE EVENING AS THE STORM PULLS
AWAY.

There’s a High Wind Watch in effect from 6 am to midnight tomorrow and possibly torrential rains as well, side effects of Hurricane Noel (as in Nole, not No-Elle).
“Power outages are likely”. Well, of course.

The famous chupacabra has turned out to be a coyote, albeit a hairless one.

A lesson for those corporate moguls who are slavering at the mouth to offshore their software development work: the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games’ online ticketing system crashed this week shortly after tickets went on sale.
So, on top of exporting dangerous toys and poison in toothpaste, the folks in China can’t seem to write a high-volume e-commerce website.
Maybe they should have farmed out the job to web developers in the US.

Had a golf lesson in the morning, did a little housework and laundry, paid bills, prepped a demo for today, drove Peter (who landed in Iceland this morning) to the Logan bus, plugged in the lights at P&B’s, then walked the grandkids around their neighborhood for trick-or-treating.
It was a mild, clear night, ideal to be out.
The kids live in a very family-friendly area, and we covered about five blocks on foot, including one “haunted” yard, with a friend of Bonnie and Peter’s and her son.
After unloading their first round of treasure, the boys hopped in the back of the truck and we finished canvassing the neighborhood. The high point was a house with a miniature phosphorescent village and train track in their garage, and a return trip to the haunted yard. We wrapped up a little after 8 pm.
The kids had a great time, and, having left a big box of SmartFood packets on the doorstep, I was very happy to see that my place hadn’t been trashed.

Workplace PTSD has been studied from several different angles, including causes of and reactions to physical violence; the impact of stress on sick leave and turnover; and conflict resolution techniques that go beyond mere disciplinary action.
I’ve been surprised to discover that there is also a literature on the causes and effects of bullying, in the workplace and in the schools.
The Andrea Adams Trust has identified the following characteristics of a workplace bully:
* unwarranted, humiliating, offensive behaviour towards an individual or groups of employees
* persistently negative malicious attacks on personal or professional performance which are typically unpredictable, unfair, irrational and often unseen
* an abuse of power or position that can cause such anxiety that people gradually lose all belief in themselves, suffering physical ill health and mental distress as a direct result
* the use of position or power to coerce others by fear or persecution, or to oppress them by force or threat.

Continue reading →

I’ve reached my limit with the vain and the pretentious.
Earlier today, I had a phone conversation with a youngish-sounding gentleman who was, to say the least, self-effacing and low-key.
He invited me to meet with him next week; I thanked him for the courtesy and we set a day and time.
Little did I realize that he’s the CEO of his company and has written articles for MSDN and other industry magazines which can be readily characterized as influential.
How very nice to interact with someone who has absolutely nothing left to prove.

I liked The Godfather Part III very much and had the great privilege of meeting Francis Ford Coppola immediately after the film’s release.
For all its supposed faults, III gave us one of the best lines from any movie, ever: “Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.”
And on the subject of III, I thought Sophia Coppola, who was eviscerated by the critics*, was a much better actor than Talia Shire.
So, there.
*Ms. Coppola was vindicated several years later when her film “Lost in Translation” won an Academy award for best original screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Picture, her redemption (III’s principle theme) thus proving that life, indeed, does imitate art.

A few years ago – about four, in fact – I was a “student” (did you know that “taliban” means “student”?) in an entrepreneurship program and wanted to write a business plan that proposed using scanners for supermarket shopping.
The leader of the course – an arrogant Babson college MBA with a chip on his shoulder the size of a redwood (he had a gigantic sign, “No Irish Need Apply” in the office of his $700,000 home and wrote the final presentation for a guy he favored, meanwhile throwing the rest of us under the bus) – said it was a stupid idea and I should drop it.
Well, our local Stop & Shop here in the boonies has just introduced scanner shopping.
Apparantly unbeknownst to the know-it-all MBA, Stop & Shop has been experimenting with consumer scanning devices since 2003, when they piloted the Shopping Buddy in a few stores. The Shopping Buddy was a pricey portable computer mounted on a shopping cart.
The Mashpee store uses hand-held Symbol scanners with memory and an easy-to-read display. At the store entrance, you scan your Stop & Shop card and are assigned a unit.
As you shop, you scan in your items, and the device keeps a running total of your bill plus your savings. It also displays unadvertised discounts based on your past shopping habits.
You bag your items as you go, and the system also lets you easily delete any item you want to put back.
Produce is about the only department in the store that isn’t barcoded, but they figured that out, too, by installing a scale and a printer in the produce department.
When you get to the checkout – either staffed or self-serve – you scan the reader once more, and your order is automatically downloaded to the register.
It was a lot of fun, and only one thing about the experience vexed me: as I was in one of the aisles, I heard the beep of another scanner. When I turned around, it was a thirty-something, techie-looking male. Son of a B!
I had some trouble with the scanner at the checkout; they said a few were a little quirky, but it eventually downloaded my order.
On the way out, I told the person at the scanner display that it would be very cool if the unit could beep on the aisles that contained the merchandise with the personalized discounts.
She said that they were probably working on it and I have no doubt that she was right.

I haven’t been having a whole lot of fun lately, and it’s making me cranky.
I start the day making a list of the obnoxious, horrible chores to be completed, like “Pay bills” and “Clean bathroom”.
For a change, it would be so wonderful to have a cheerful list of things to do.
Unfortunately, I am so out of practice that not a single example comes to mind.
Good grief.