Don't Be Fooled By This Latest Scam!

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.
I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.
I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.
THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOVSO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY
MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

Math in the Real World

Sports in the Pacific Northwest: A Lifetime of Disappointment

(Disclaimer: This post was inspired by OregonRobot's recent ode.)
So, I now live in a place where sports teams experience success. For example, Austin is home to the University of Texas which regularly win championships and bowl games in football, basketball and probably a few more sports that I don't follow. I also live an hour and a half from the multi-champion San Antonio Spurs, and two hours from the Houston Rockets (who managed to finally give Clyde the Glyde the NBA ring he so deserved.) All of this has made me reflect upon the utter failure of sports teams from the Pacific Northwest to capitalize on superstar teams and talent during my formative years, thereby leaving me with a lifetime worth of buildup followed by massive let-down. In case you think I'm exageratting, let me give some examples:

• 1986 - Portland Trailblazers use #2 draft pick to select Sam Bowie, passing over a rookie Michael Jordan
• 1989 - Gary Payton and OSU appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the #1 team in the country. They stay in the top 10 all year, but fall to Ball State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. (BALL STATE! I don't even know where Ball State is!!!)
• 1990 - Portland Trailblazers lose to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA championship.
• 1992 - Portland Trailblazers lose to the Chicago Bulls in the championship.
• 1994- Seattle Supersonics hold league best regular seaon record with 63-19, but lose in the first round to the Denver Nuggets
• 1996 - Seattle Supersonics set franchise record with 64 wins and advance to the NBA championship series, only to lose to the Chicago Bulls in six games.
• 2000 - Portland Trailblazers up by 15 in the fourth quarter in game 7 of the Western Conference finals fail to score and give the Los Angeles Lakers the series. The Lakers go on to win the championship in 5 games.
• 2001 - Seattle Mariners set single season win record with 116 wins, yet fall to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship, 4 games to 1.
• 2002-2006 - University of Oregon makes five straight bowl games and loses all of them.
• 2003 - University of Oregon men's basketball team wins the Pac-10 championship and enter the NCAA tournament with a #8 seed, only to lose in the first round to Utah.
• 2005 - Seattle Seahawks go 13-3 in the regular season, and appear in Super Bowl XL as heavy favorites. They go on to lose 21-10 to the #6 seed, wildcard Pittsburgh Steelers.
• 2007 - University of Oregon football team is ranked #2 in the nation, but quarterback Dennis Dixon tears his ACL with only 3 games to go ending hopes of a national championship.

I'm sure there are many more Pacific Northwest fantastic failures. These are just the ones burned in my brain because they occurred during my lifetime, on national television. If you still think I'm making something out of nothing, here's another related list. It's a list of the 10 best athletes to never win a championship in the Pacific Northwest:

1. Clyde Drexler (Won a championship after being traded to the Houston Rockets)
2. Steve Largent (Played 13 seasons for Seahawks, held almost every record a receiver could hold, yet still never won a blasted thing)
3. Randy Johnson - (Never won with the Mariners in 10 seasons, but won with the Arizona Diamondbacks after being traded.)
4. Rasheed Wallace (Won championship in Detroit the year after being traded from Portland)
5. Gary Payton (12 seasons with the Supersonics, won championship after being traded to the Miami Heat)
6. Scottie Pippin (Won six championships in Chicago, none in Portland despite making the NBA finals in 2000)
7. Ray Allen (Five seasons with the Sonics. Won championship with Boston Celtics the following year after being traded.)
8. Ken Griffey Jr.
9. Alex Rodriguez
10. Ichiro Suzuki
Honorable Mention: Cortez Kennedy(Seahawks), Patrick Ewing(Sonics), Shawn Kemp(Sonics), Shaun Alexander(Seahawks)

Salt Lick

In Austin, there are lots of places to get good barbeque. If you ask any of the locals who has the best bbq though, you will almost unanimously hear that Salt Lick reigns supreme. Located about 25 miles outside of Austin in the dry town (read: no alcohol) of Driftwood, Salt Lick is certainly an experience in independant Texas culture. The buildings themselves are rustic and the seating feels somewhat like dining in a logging camp with long wooden tables with moderately matching wooden benches. Food can be ordered either individually or family style. The family style is all you can eat, but be aware that unless you are exceedingly hungry it's probably more food than you can or should eat. The individual plates are very large themselves and will give most normal people trouble trying to clean their plate so save your money as the all-you-can-eat is over twice the price.
Whichever course you choose, you won't be disappointed. The sausages are good, the brisket is great and the ribs are by far the best I have ever eaten. Sauce comes with the meat, but is purely optional, and I found that I actually preferred them without it. The ribs (which are cooked in an open pit that you walk past as you enter) was so tender the meat practically fell off the bone, and I found myself cursing the fact that I had eaten other things during the meal that were now taking up space in my stomach. Rounding out an already full meal are a set of fantastic pies with optional ice cream that you really have to try even if you feel like you can't eat another bite. The peach cobbler was my favorite although others swear by the pecan pie. I seriously doubt there is a wrong choice on the menu.
All in all, if you come to Austin, make sure a trip to Salt Lick is on your agenda. Just make sure you empty your stomach thoroughly before you sit down to eat. You won't be disappointed.

Bizarro Day

Yesterday morning I got up at 6 a.m. and got on an airplane. One hour and fifty minutes later, I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia. I spent the day at a fairly mind-numbing security industry conference, and then at 9:50 p.m. got on a different airplane only to arrive back in Austin at 11:00 p.m.
To think that in this day and age, I can accomplish in only 2 hours what it used to take months to do less than a hundred years ago is just bizarre beyond description. It's even more bizarre when it comes to these same-day trips. I travel a fair bit for work, and these always blow my mind. In a single day, I can travel half-way across the country, do some things, and then return home. How insane is that?
So what would make my day even weirder? How about running into Chris Carter at the conference and Evander Holyfield at the airport. True story. Weird day.

The Company Cares

To set the record straight, Hurricane Ike came nowhere near Austin. We didn't even get a drop of rain. Not one. The only ramifications that we had to deal with were refugees from Houston living in the hotels and schools, and a slight, pleasant wind in the 5-6 MPH range. Apparently, the word didn't get to our corporate headquarters either because when I got to work today, I had an email asking me to do a physical confirmation of all the employees in the Austin office. When I walked around to make sure, everyone laughed at me. I somehow knew they would, but I couldn't tell my disconnected corporate overlords that I had done it if I hadn't, and I also knew that any attempts to explain our lack of Hurricane Ike would fall on deaf ears. In the end, it was easier to just do the pointless task so the checklist could be completed. Sometimes Corporate America drives me crazy.

Blackberry Programming

So now that I'm done with school, I've been dabbling with programming again. My first post-graduate school project was to make a game for my kids on my Blackberry. I've done PalmOS and WindowsMobile programming in the past, but these were all C/C++ based. With my newly discovered free time, I decided that it was time to tackle both Java and RIM devices.
I'm the kind of person that really wants a project when trying to learn new things, so I decided that a simple game of Hangman for my daughter would be a great way to dive in. The biggest obstacle I had were the dev tools. Trying to decide between Netbeans, Eclipse, or the Blackberry JDE is just the first of many decisions along the way. To be honest, I haven't really figured out all the pros/cons between them, and my learning is still in progress. My friend Ryan also helped me out to get a running start and so it only took me a few days before I was able to make my first Hello World application. After that, I quickly discovered some of the positive aspects of Java and J2ME in particular. Using J2ME felt quite a bit like using many of the excellent cross-platform frameworks that I've encountered in the past. In only a few evenings of work I was able to get a fairly decent Hangman implementation up and running to the point that Lucy didn't want to give me my phone back. The unexpected side-effect was that my son had his feelings hurt because I made a game for his big sister and he didn't get one. Fortunately, I had an inspiration to make an Etch-A-Sketch type drawing application for him. This let me explore further depths of J2ME, and in only a couple hours, I had a game for him too. I really look forward to playing more with my Blackberry and J2ME and so far have found it to be a very positive experience.

Rudy's

So being new to Texas, I am discovering that I am new to barbeque. What I previously thought was "bbq" has turned out to be grilling. With that as a backdrop, my first major intersection with Texas style bbq was at a restaurant chain called "Rudy's." In Austin, there are four Rudy's locations and I have now been to 3 of the 4. I can attest that in general, they are all of the same quality; and that quality is mouth wateringly good. You begin your adventure at Rudy's by ordering from the front counter where the feel is more of a butcher shop than a dining establishment, however the smells wafting from behind the counter make your mouth water unlike any butcher shop I've ever been to. It is standard fare to ask if it's your first time at Rudy's, and if you answer in the affirmative, they will all yell something akin to "We got a new one!" You will then be presented with samples of any of the meats or sides that they serve, and I highly recommend that you try them all. My favorite at Rudy's is definitely the moist brisket, but the turkey is also quite excellent. I wouldn't bother with either the sausage or the pork ribs, but the baby back ribs should be tried. The meats are all served on butcher paper and if you are planning to make sandwiches out of it, you will also receive stacks of white bread free of charge. The sides are decent, particularly the coleslaw and creamed corn, but at Rudy's, the meat is the thing and with very affordable prices, you can get more than enough for a family of four for around $20. Because of the price and the easily accessible locations combined with excellent fare, Rudy's has quickly turned into one of my favorite Austin dining establishments. In less than a month, we've already had Rudy's 4 or 5 times despite plenty of other fine restaurants vying for our business. Don't miss Rudy's if you come to Austin.

A New Beginning

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