Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Another Long Season Begins...

Yanks lose to Baltimore Ace Jeremie Guthrie 10-5.  Sabathia looked hurt.  Tex looked awful.  Good start.  Good start.

 

 

posted by JV @ 8:49 AM 0 Comments

Monday, April 06, 2009

Metallica and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Anyone else watch this?  Generally, it sucked.  However, some quick thoughts:

 

1.       I think I play Metallica as well as Metallica does these days.

2.       While I don’t know about Run DMC being inducted into a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that was pretty cool.

3.       Jason Newstead thanked Flotsam and Jetsam, which was awesome.  He called them “thrash metal pioneers”.  I enjoyed that immensely.

4.       Robert Trujilo thanked Mike Muir and Rocky George, which was cool.  However, I found Trujilo’s induction odd as he’s only really recorded one album with Metallica.  While I think he is an incredibly talented bassist and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, he just doesn’t belong in there with Metallica.

5.       Speaking of which… somewhere, Dave Mustaine is furious.  He wasn’t mentioned once.  He was shown in one of the early videos from Cliff ‘em All, but that’s about it.

6.       They managed to talk about Cliff Burton for some 15 minutes.  Cliff’s Dad was even there to accept on his behalf.  No issues with this.

7.       There is no number seven.

8.       Flea?!  The best person Metallica could get to induct them was Flea?!  What?  Perry Farrell wasn’t available?

9.       Flea’s speech was okay though.  He spent way too much time on Cliff Burton, but his opening was tremendous.  He described the first time he ever heard Metallica and the way it made him feel.  How he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  He spent a long time describing this first song and I was nodding my head in agreement the entire time.  It was exactly how I felt.  Turns out, our first Metallica song was exactly the same: Fight Fire With Fire.

10.   Flea wore a Crash Course in Brain Surgery T-Shirt.

11.   Both bassists played both songs (Enter Sandman and Master of Puppets).  I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the performance.  (available on You Tube)

12.   They had an all-star jam at the end.  Metallica, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Joe Perry, and others played “Train Kept a Rollin’”.  Again, underwhelming.  Sadly, Jeff Beck played the best solo.  I would have thought Jimmy Page would have played the best solo, but HE DIDN’T PLAY ONE!  Seriously, how do you let everyone on that stage solo EXCEPT Jimmy Page?!  This makes NO sense.

13.   And finally, when did Jimmy Page turn into an old Chinese man who looks like he just staggered out of an opium den?  This happened at some point before the Olympics closing ceremony last year.  I was just wondering if anyone could date the transformation for me.

 

 

posted by JV @ 8:21 AM 0 Comments

Friday, April 03, 2009

New Yankee Stadium

The stadium looks absolutely incredible. Every picture of the centerfield screen looks fake, but they're not. It's over 100 feet long, six stories tall, and curved. I can't wait to see this place in person on the 20th and I certainly can't wait to try the garlic fries.

While the camera angles don't look quite as good in this stadium, the YES network coverage keeps getting better every year. Tonight's broadcast could have been an ESPN broadcast for all I could tell.

It all starts on Monday.

posted by JV @ 9:27 PM 0 Comments

Saturday, February 14, 2009

I apologize to my blackberry

If I thought the Pearl was hard to type on at Lotusphere, that's nothing compared to the curve. The keys are so small and everything is in a different place. I think I may keep the Pearl after all.

posted by JV @ 8:15 AM 0 Comments

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Really?

I was listening to O&A this morning and they had Duff McKagan (former bassist of Guns ‘n’ Roses) on talking about stocks.  Have we really gotten to the point where one member of GNR writes a financial column while another is on celebrity rehab still?  WTF?

posted by JV @ 9:10 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, February 07, 2009

A-Rod Took Steroids

I suppose this really doesn't surprise me, but it sort of does. This
really does go a long way to show how many major leaguers were on steroids
back then (5%). I think it will eventually make it easier for people like
McGwire and Bonds to make it in.

However, the worst thing that it does is taint the home run record when
A-Rod does eventually get it. I thought the stain wouldn't stay with Bonds
for long. I was wrong.

posted by JV @ 12:43 PM 0 Comments

If you didn't watch Galactica this week, don't read this...

First, I thoroughly enjoyed last night's episode.  I was kind of shocked and a little disappointed that they seemed to wrap up the mutiny story line in two quick episodes, but there's only six left, so I'll give them a pass.  BTW, I didn't watch scenes from next week, so if I'm wrong, don't tell me.

The only thing I didn't get and that didn't sit well with me is how Adama just managed to get his men back and storm the CIC.  I mean, those guys were about to execute him.  Adama had already said, "if you do this, there will be no forgiveness."  The sergeant leading the firing squad had just told Adama that he wouldn't and couldn't follow his leadership anymore.

Then how/why the hell did the firing squad (I assume that was the firing squad) all of a sudden just say, "the hell with it, Adama's back in charge, let's follow him and re-take the ship."?  Because Adama said  he was re-taking the ship?  I don't know.  Not good enough for me.  Adama is one hell of an orator, but I doubt that was inspirational enough.

BTW, I hope that they court martial whoever fired on the president's raptor.

Oh, and how the hell did Colonial One fit into the hangar deck?  Is the ship that small?  Plus, the CGI from that scene looked terrible.  If they saved that much money on the CGI in that scene, they better have a Battle of Endor type scene planned for the final two episodes.

posted by JV @ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Live Blogging the OCS R2 Launch

Why not?  I haven't live blogged in almost two weeks.

I like the stage.  Looks like some sort of def poetry slam.  Steve Ballmer introduces your host... but before I get to that, are Steve Ballmer and Jim Cramer long lost brothers separated at birth?  Anyway...

Your keynote presenter?  Stephen Elop.  And the crowd goes wild.  Man, Microsoft is really full of themselves sometimes, aren't they?

Starts off by talking about the key role that Unified Communications plays, especially in today's troubled economic times.  Okay, fair enough.  He then officially announces the general availability of R2.

Is this the future of conferences now?  This virtual area I'm in has abstracts, a virtual backpack, and downloadable materials.  It's pretty cool, but I think it might make it less likely that I'll travel in the future.

Why are they interviewing a guy dressed like Austin Powers?  That doesn't even make sense.

Finally, some demos of the R2 features...

They are displaying the tighter integration with Outlook and the Exchange UC server.  Pretty cool.  Except for the part where he messed up the demo.  Oh wait, maybe he messed up on purpose to show off joining a conference from Communicator.

Here's an interesting little way to join a meeting...  You can log into OWA and join a meeting from a computer without even having Communicator installed (think kiosk or someone else's PC).

Ahhh, desktop sharing is finally available.  One step forward, one step back, I suppose.  For the record, I am virtually clapping for all of these new features.

Oh good, we're going to look at a visionary case study.  I didn't even know that a case study could be visionary.  I think I need to start describing more of the things I do at work as "visionary".  I wrote some visionary meeting notes this week.  Okay, I'll stop now.  Moving on...

The point of the case study (and I certainly wouldn't call it "visionary") is that you can leverage .NET to use OCS with other custom web applications.  While this is certainly neat, presence awareness in applications has been around for quite some time.

"That is the magic of software."  See?  It's not only visionary, the software is magic!  Go Microsoft!

40,000 employees on OCS.  That's less than half of their employees, no?

I think Jesus Jones wrote the music for this keynote.  I wonder what they're doing these days?

Now they're interviewing the customers in a talk show like format.  I'm not used to seeing this.  I actually think it's rather effective.  I'm used to seeing customer testimonials pre-recorded on the big screen during a keynote.  This is different.  It humanizes the product, challenges, and the company's rollout itself.  It almost makes it a semi-birds of a feather session.

Over 30 partners have announced products that are compatible with R2 including Tanberg and Polycom.

Now it's live Q&A time.  Seems to be taking a CNN Town Hall meeting format.  Again, interesting.

Is MS playing catch up in UC?  No.  They have a vision (remember?  duh).  This is all according to plan.  They are leapfrogging the competition.  Something about a paradigm shift.  Seriously, if this turns into all marketing buzzwords and softball questions, I'm turning this off and just downloading the software.

Will tightening budgets slow down MS' innovation in the UC field?  No, because people want better solutions in lean times.  Again, softball question.  What's next?  "People are saying MS isn't awesome.  Is that true?"  Strike two.

Is the PBX dead?  MS believes it is a dead end.  Not a surprising answer there.  They're trying to become your PBX.

Uh oh.  Looks like this is wrapping up and they're playing commercials now.  I think we're just about done here today.  I'm off to kick the tires on the new technology.  It's long overdue.

posted by JV @ 1:30 PM 0 Comments

Monday, January 26, 2009

What this tells us...

Is that the people of New York State have terrible taste.

posted by JV @ 3:43 PM 0 Comments

Sunday, January 25, 2009

NHL Skills Competition

Big let down this year. They need to get rid of the breakaway competition
where the players do crazy moves trying to score. Sure, the moves are
neat, but nobody ever scores.

I like the elimination breakaway contest. That's a nice touch. However,
the accuracy shooting seems too easy these days. Only three people had
ever hit 4 for 4 until last year. Now, three people have done it in the
last two years. They need to move the shooting line back a few feet.

Hardest shot is still entertaining, but fastest skater is too fast and
boring. The young stars game had no hitting.

The greatest crime of the whole thing, however, is the presentation style.
It went so fast. The graphics we're non-existent. If the sound wasn't on,
you would have no clue what was going on. The clock on the scoreboard
wasn't even synched up with the feed. Not a great showing in Montreal.
Here's hoping the game will be better.

posted by JV @ 9:59 AM 0 Comments