AT&T: Lesson from the Crypt #7: Don?t Outsource Thinking

Outsourcing thinking, though, will cause the brains of your company to atrophy. It?s a bad idea. I?m sure it never happens at the new AT&T (formerly known as SBC).

Comic 1 : Adventures in Synthetic Biology : Nature:
Adventures in Synthetic Biology

Oh man, this is too funny, ROFLMAO!

Squirrels kill dog:
David Pescovitz:
A pack of squirrels at a park in the Lazo village of Russia’s Maritime Territory reportedly ganged up on a stray dog that was barking up at them in the trees. Witnesses say the squirrels jumped down, attacked the dog, and killed it. From the BBC News:

“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

“When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them.”

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack.

While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds’ nests, he said, the idea of them chewing at a dog to death was “absurd”.

“If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests,” he added.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Mr. Toad lives on a vertex of a 3-regular planar graph. He decides to take a walk along the edges of the graph. He has no sense of direction but he can tell left from right. He decides that he will alternately take the left edge and then the right edge when he comes to the next vertex. Show that he will he eventually get back home.

More puzzles: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/puzzle/

Think Labyrinth: Maze Algorithms

Broke down and picked up GTA: Liberty City Stories at the EB Games across the street from the new H&M in SF… it’s hard to drive in this f’king game… and it’s kindda hard to hold onto the PSP and control the steering… I just suck in video games…

Anyway, I’ve spent about an hour playing this thing… Right now, I am doing a mission to go pick up a couple gangster brothers at a gas station shootout, last time I attempted this I picked up a van that was too slow and got chased down by the f’king cops… Next time I’ll see if I can find an Evo or an STi to jack… Needed a car big enough to carry a bunch of gangsters…

JenJen, Sherry and I spent Thanksgiving at my place this year. I reserved a turkey from Honey Baked Ham, picked it up Wednesday morning, which was probably their busiest day in the year as we spent a good half hour waiting in line, even though I had a reservation number on my Treo. Took about 2 hours to heat it up in the oven, Sherry and Jen felt like baking something else so they found some recipe for cookies and muffins at Food Network, they turned out okay…

We managed to finish most of the dark meat if the turkey, the rest was carved up in pieces and with it we made soup, and then congee. Great stuff… 🙂

Here’s a snapshot of the turkey:

Muffins:

Cookies:

some quick and dirty restaurant reviews:

• Arthur’s: Very close to my condo, it is only about 5 minutes away. Arthur’s is an old fashion upscale restaurant. The exterior looks like a motel, the restaurant itself is very large. We went there Tuesday night and all of the surrounding tables in the area were empty, so lots of privacy. Prices were high, but I had a $25 restaurant.com certificate so it was alright… Food… 7/10
• Habana Cuba: Cuban place, food was great, mojito was awesome, way better than the girly shit served at Cuba Libre, but not still not nearly as good as that place in downtown Houston recommended by Seoulfully. The food was better than Habana at their old South Congress location (the new 6th St location really sucks!). Pretty cheap, especially with a $25 restaurant.com certificate.
• Top of the Mark: I made reservation for this via OpenTable.com a long while ago, this place has much hype, and it does has a cool name. Took us a while to find it, like most things in SF, a missed turn resulted in 10 extra minutes going through traffic. The restaurant is located at the very top floor of the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, the hotel looks exquisite from the outside, inside, it’s a bit dated and old. The view from the restaurant was great, that is kindda why ppl go there, but SF really doesn’t look all that good at night, like if you’ve seen Hong Kong or NYC, SF is nothing special, seriously. But the view is probably the best you can get in SF… They have a set menu, and for $20 more you get wine pairing with each course, this is supposedly a good deal coz you get 4 glasses and they are $10 each by the glass. I think it’s a fair deal, it should really be about $5 a glass as it was just so-so, as was the food. They used really cheap wine glasses, which was a big turn-off. Definitely not worth thier price (~250 for 2), but it’s not bad if you feel like dressing up for an evening night out or impressing your date. There was live lounge music after 9pm, we saw the cutest gay couple dancing there, very cool, very SF.

CoverBuddy

This is pretty damn cool, looks like with this piece of software I would be able to control my iTunes with my PSP via WiFi. I’ll get it one of these days… My PSP has been in the glove box in my car for about a month now… I’m contemplating getting GTA: Liberty City, but I’m pretty sure I’ll only play it once or twice… Last game I bought was GT4 for PS2, even bought the GT4 wheel for it, but only played maybe 5 times total… complete waste of money…

I must say though, if games on Amazon qualify for Amazon Prime, I probably would have quite a few more games… It’s such a pain to order from anywhere else, or worse yet, to get it from a store… 😀

I love the idea of a building called ?The Cathedral of Learning?, regardless of which campus it?s located on.

Feld Thoughts

It was the best place from which to shoot out paper airplanes… freshman year at CMU, good times…