Tonynet Explorer

Bacon Catz

Thanks, to The Leslie Show for this nice post, "For Tony".

Where the Hell is Matt?

This is a great video. Where the Hell is Matt?

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Thanks, Angie.

Wordle Rocks!

Craig's Movie Blog pointed me to Wordle, a site where you can build cool word cloud images in different forms. This one is a cloud made from the text of my Best Way to Cook Bacon post. Very fun!

Too Cool for Me

I'm one of those people who actually click on ads in Facebook once in a while. An ad just now lead me to Cordarounds, makers of some cool clothes including the Reversible Smoking Jacket -- a corduroy jacket on one side and a crazy silky smoking jacket on the other. I think I'd look ridiculous trying to pull of that look, but I'm sure it would look good on someone.

I love the look of some of the details, but more important, the naming of their stuff is great. We're suffering through feature naming on IE8 right now, so I'm especially aware of feature names. We'd never be able to get away with a feature named "Vagisoft" to describe a soft liner material. Awesome.

Rock on, Alexander!

Our friend Joe clearly has too much time on his hands. At least he put it to good use. Here's a great video of his very cute son, Alexander, playing all four parts of Can't Stand Losing You in Rock Band (the greatest game of all time).

Sailing Again

I've been itching to start sailing again for quite a while, so this year I signed up to be regular crew on Rajun' Cajun, a J/24 I've raced on before occasionally. Last Tuesday was the first week I was out racing (I missed the week before.)

It was a pretty big night (meaning windy) with a front going through. Fortunately, we had a full crew of five people, so we were able to keep the boat pretty flat (good). For the first time with a full crew, we sailed well with no major gaffs in sail handling. We sailed three races that night and placed 11th, 6th, and 12th out of 26 boats -- not bad.

Anyway, it was super fun to be out on the water. I'm looking forward to racing tomorrow night too. It's good to have this regular event on my schedule so I can get out a lot this summer.

(If you look at the results, you'll see we're in the bottom half of the fleet despite some good sailing because we missed the first two weeks. You get the worse possible score if you miss races, which once again is a good reminder that the biggest part of any competition is just showing up.)

Carbon Grove

My friends Hillel, Jenny, and Walter at Jackson Fish Market built a lovely site called CarbonGrove, a carbon reduction reminder service and launched in Earth Day this year.

You answer a few questions then they give you some tips on how to reduce your carbon emissions. You can then plant one of the beautiful trees Jenny designed and then watch it grow.

One of the cool things they did on the site is build a WebSlice that let's you easily watch your tree grow in IE8. (WebSlices are a new feature in Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 that allow you to subscribe to part of a web page.)

Here's my tree (named "Chortle"):

Check it out!

(Disclosure: my team helped sponsor this project.)

Revolution Money Exchange

OK, I'm a sucker for "free" money. Ted Leonsis and Steve Case of AOL fame have started a new company to do electronic funds transfer, like PayPal, but without the fees for person to person transfer. I don't get their business model yet, but they're giving $25 to people who sign up for new accounts before May 15, 2008. They're also giving $10 for referrals, so if this sounds interesting to you, click the link below so we both get a little something...

(Thanks to Leslie for the tip. She got my $10...)

Rest Easy, Emma

I am unspeakably sad about the passing of a 4.5 month old girl I've never met. Emma was the daughter of two people I know through work, Matt and Ellen Kowalczyk. They're really acquaintances, but I feel incredibly close to them now. As Emma fought for her life, Matt blogged and Twittered about what was going on. After a mutual friend told me what was going on, I started following the story and got to know them through this very personal struggle, until it ended today with this Twitter

Goodbye, Emma, my sweet little fighter. You gave more to this world than most people give their entire lives. We love you. http://is.gd/4rM about 4 hours ago from twhirl

and this post. Ellen's Facebook status was another peek into what was going on.

At first, I admit I was a bit taken aback by how public they were being, but as with Chris' kidney thing earlier this year, I think the openness helped bring more of their extended network of friends in to support them. I'm guessing the writing was a helpful outlet as well.

I'm not sure if we'll ever be as open; we tend to be pretty private (even the kid stories I write about are highly selective and edited). That said, I feel privileged that the Kowalczyks shared their lives with me for a little while and let me know their daughter and her strength.

It's easy to think of the Internet as dehumanizing relationships, replacing personal contact with email, Twitters, and IM. In some cases it is, but with Emma and Chris, I was able to share a much deeper relationship and get much more insight into their lives than I probably ever would have in the pre-net world, and I'm grateful.

Predictions of 2008 from 1968

This is a great article from Mechanix Illustrated magazine, written in November 1968, speculating what life in 2008 would be. I thought this was especially interesting since I was born in 1968.

They were close in a few places:

• TV phone in your car: well, cellphones with video are close
• US population at 350mm: Currently, it's approximately 304mm
• "The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.": Got that right (well it's at least one of the most important items in 2008 households.)
• "Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills.": Yup.
• "You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.": Almost. They thought this information would come through the TV, not the computer.

Of course, there are a few doozies:

• No 250mph air cushioned, self-driving cars gliding over smooth plastic roads.
• No domed cities with moving sidewalks.
• No passenger rockets or hypersonic planes.
• No undersea resorts.
• No protein-rich algae processed into steak-tasting "meat".
• Heart disease not eliminated by drugs and diet.

And I really wish I had that 21st century commodity -- the intelligence pill.

I think our world is cooler in some ways (PCs, the Internet, and cellphones to name a few), but in many ways, I think we haven't delivered on the hopes of forty years ago. I want my rocket ship!

(Thanks to EricLaw for the pointer.)

What Happened to Bear Stearns?

I admit, I'm an idiot when it comes to the workings of the financial market, so I don't really get what happened with Bear Stearns, the subprime mortgage crisis, etc. Fortunately, I have friends who get this stuff and can explain it.

First, my old high school (and elementary school) friend Chooky has a (long), reasonably plain-English explanation of the collapse of Bear Stearns. Here's a bit to give you a taste.

So what happened with Bear Stearns? Very simply if we think of them as a hedge fund that is massively leveraged then all you need to go wrong is for their assets to go down in value enough that some bad things start to happen. Those assests that went bad started with the securitized mortgages above. Instead of selling all their mortgage tranches off to hedge funds and pension funds Bear Stearns kept some of them. These are called residuals. All the primary investment banks kept some of these tranches. Why? Well, they had good returns. Often the tranches they kept were the worst - the equity tranche. Sometimes they kept them because they couldn't sell them to anyone. They should have known better but again you have people shooting for the moon. They could lose their job but they could also be retired by next year.

My college friend, Adam Nash, added to this with a pointer to the presentation to JP Morgan investors in the JPMorgan/Bear Stearns deal and a link to a rude but funny stick figure explanation of the subprime mess.

Good thing I have smart friends with blogs to explain stuff to me. Check it out.

Pig Butchering Guide

Perfect.

See the original here, with links to get t-shirts, etc.

Food Fight

This video is an "abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict." It's brilliant and well done.

 

Visit Tourist Pictures for a breakdown of the battles and the cheat sheet of the foods used.

Truth in Advertising

This is a set of insanely funny videos. Not necessarily safe for work (well, at least turn down the volume.)

Connie, ring any bells?

Congrats to MIchael Chang

Michael Chang, the professional tennis player, was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame recently. (Here's the NY Times article on the matter.)

Michael probably doesn't remember, but his mom was my babysitter for a summer a long time ago back in Minnesota. There weren't tons of Chinese families in the area at the time; they lived near us, so our families were social. I think my parents are still in touch with his.

I have a distinct memory of playing ping pong with Michael and his older brother Carl. Michael was barely tall enough to see over the table, but he was quick and aggressive, slamming the ball despite his height.

They moved away to California so the boys could play tennis more earnestly. Obviously, it was a good call.

Michael was the first world-class Asian-American professional athletes I can recall. The whole community rallied behind him; even today he's a big celebrity in the Chinese-American community.

I see on Wikipedia that he lives on Mercer Island here in Seattle. Maybe I'll run into him again sometime. (For more, here's his official site.)

Anyway, congrats, Michael!

Play! A Video Game Symphony

As I mentioned last week, we took the boys to see the Seattle Symphony perform a show called "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony". The symphony played songs from various video games.

The concert was enjoyable. There were three large screens suspended over the symphony showing scenes from the games. While the scenes weren't set to the music, it was helpful to see the games with the music and fun to see old school stuff like the original Zelda or Mario games.

They also showed close-ups of the musicians playing; since we were about three rows from the back of the auditorium in the highest balcony, it was especially nice see musicians doing their thing. I wish they did this in all symphony performances.

I admit I was a little surprised by the quality of the scores. While some of the songs like Super Mario Brothers were just fun and nostalgic, the newer scores were often beautiful. Since video games have become as huge financially as movies (bigger now, I think), I guess it makes sense that they can attract a similar caliber of composer for games as movies. They sometimes felt a bit formulaic (for example, almost every fighting game broke into a martial snare drum beat), but I'm this may have been just the samples they chose. As a Microsoft guy, I was pleased how good the medley from HALO was; in particular, the opening bars of the HALO theme are really distinctive.

One interesting note: two of the composers, Jeremy Soule and Martin O'Donnell, were in the audience - not something I've seen before since most classical music composers are, well, dead.

The boys were well-behaved through the concert, although by the end of the three hour performance, Michael (7) was getting sleepy and fidgety (I was too). Andrew (10) really loved it though. All in all, it was a good first symphony experience for them.

In case you're curious, here's the program:

Nobuo Uematsu	Play! Opening Fanfare
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-Liberi Fatali
Koji Kondo/Nintendo	Super Mario Bros
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi/Sega	Shenmue
Joel Eriksson/Electronic Arts	Battlefield 1942
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-Aerith's Theme
Masato Nakamura/Sega	Sonic the Hedgehog
Tappy Iwase/Konami	Metal Gear Solid
Yoko Shimomura&Kikaru Utada/Disney/Square Enix	Kingdom of Hearts
Jeremy Soule/Bethasoft/UbiSoft	THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY SERIES-Swing de Chocobo
Yasunori Mitsuda/Square Enix	Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
Jason Hayes/Blizzard	World of Warcraft
Akira Yamaoka/Konami	Silent Hill 2
Martin O'Donnell/Microsoft	HALO
Koji Kondo/Nintendo	The Legend of Zelda
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-One Winged Angel

They also played a special additional score by Jeremy Soule, although I missed the title.

Zuiikin English videos

I've said it before, the Japanese are weird. These videos are part of a set that apparently tries to teach English through a weird combination of skits and dancing; while this is nutty enough, the phrases they choose are odd and funny.

Here are a few gems:

Seattle Symphony for Kids

Next week, the Seattle Symphony will be performing a show called "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony", described as:

Watch graphics from your all-time favorite blockbuster video games—including Super Mario Bros.,^® HALO^® and The Legend of Zelda^®—on the big screen while Seattle Symphony, Vocalpoint! Seattle and Northwest Boychoir perform the soundtrack.

They have a show next Thursday (1/24) at 7:30pm and a matinee Saturday, 1/26 at 1:00pm. Both shows are at the incredible Benaroya Hall. Unfortunately, it's not cheap; the lowest priced tickets are about $50 each with most of those sold out on Thursday already.

In any case, I thought it would be a fun way to introduce the boys to the symphony, so we're going to one of the shows. I'll let you know how it is.

Bill Gates' CES 2008 Video

It's been a while since I've been to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It's too bad I missed Bill Gates' keynote this year though. Bill has been the regular keynote speaker for years; since he's retiring later this year, this is probably his last one. He kicked off his talk with this funny video full of celebrities about his last day. Wish I had been there. Check it out:

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

We've Got the Axe!

Wahoo! Stanford beat Cal in the 110th Big Game yesterday, 20-13! It's been a long dry spell for the Cardinal; we haven't won since I started blogging, in fact: five years.

Overall, Stanford had a pretty bad year, but we beat USC when they were ranked #1 in the nation, and we won Big Game. That's about all we really need.

More on the Axe from Wikipedia (obvi).

Congrats to Aimee and Ives!

Well, I finally got rid of my little brother Ives two weeks ago. After 35 (almost 36) years, he finally found someone who can put up with him long enough to marry him. All jokes aside, Aimee is a wonderful woman with great family and friends. My brother seems very content now and is lucky to have her. I just hope Aimee knows what she's getting...

Aimee and Ives had the wedding in Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago and the home of Northwestern University. This was the first time I'd been to Evanston. It's a cute town, right on Lake Michigan. I see now why my Northwestern alumni friends really like it there. We stayed at the Hotel Orrington, which was centrally located, so we could walk everywhere.

The rehearsal and the wedding were very nice. My brother has a habit of getting teary on days ending in y and was a mess at my wedding so long ago. Of course, his wedding was no exception. At the rehearsal dinner, he choked up while handing out gifts, but I do give him and Aimee credit for holding it together during the ceremony itself (although it looked like they came close to losing it.)

As the best man, I gave a short toast (4 min, 30 seconds as timed by my friends - I had a reputation for overly-long toasts. Under five minutes is OK...) I was doing fine through the toast, working without notes and was almost done when out of nowhere, my throat constricted and I couldn't speak. I had a a terrified thought that I might dissolve into a teary mess and wouldn't be able to finish, but I pulled it together and got through it. I honestly hadn't seen or felt the surge of emotion coming. Wild.

After my toast, our fraternity brothers (Ives and I were both Kappa Alpha at Stanford) sang Kappa Alpha Rose to Aimee, a tradition at KA weddings. Aimee was a good sport about it, even though she doesn't have the "wealth of golden hair" described in the song (we did change the "eyes of blue" to "eyes of brown" in the song though.) Despite the fact most of us haven't sung the song for 10+ years, it didn't sound terrible (I sent the words to everyone ahead of time as a refresher.)

The boys looked really good in their black suits. Andrew (10) was the ring bearer, and Michael (7) was an "honor guard" along with another little boy. Michael wanted to carry ninja swords to help protect the ring, but Ives wisely demurred.

The weekend was especially fun for me because I got a chance to see tons of family and friends. We had almost all of our cousins, aunts, and uncles from both sides. It's been a long time since I'd seen most of them, and this was the first time I'd met my cousin Alice's husband and daughter. I also went out with my cousin Gary for beers, which was a new experience since the last time I saw him he was still way underage.

Ives and I have a lot of friends in common since we were both in the same fraternity at Stanford (Kappa Alpha) and both worked at Microsoft, plus one of Ives' friends from high school came out. As a result, I knew almost all of his out-of-town guests and had a great time catching up with them all.

Anyway, I wish Aimee and Ives well. I'm looking forward to having nephews and/or nieces soon...

Battle Sail!

The boys and I went to the Olympia Harbor Days today and went out on the Lady Washington for a battle sail. The Lady Washington is a tall ship sailing vessel, a replica of the original Lady Washington that traded for furs in the Northwest in the late 18th century; she was recently named the official Tall Ship Ambassador for the State of Washington (nice to see the state legislature really working hard...) She's was also the Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean and in Star Trek: Generations. She often sails with her companion, the Hawaiian Chieftain, another replica tall ship, as she did today. During a battle sail, the two ships maneuver for position and shoot blanks at each other with their cannons.

 

The Chieftain appeared to hold all the cards. They are a little bigger, a little faster, and better armed. (Chieftain carries four three pound deck guns to Lady's two three pound deck guns and two one pound swivel guns aft.) What's more, today, she had the weather gage (she was upwind of  us), which is normally a huge advantage in sail combat. Once we motored out into Budd Inlet and raised sail, Chieftain fired a shot to signal the start of hostilities and then bore down on us. As she drew near (slowly in the light winds), we unleashed a salvo from our deck gun and swivel gun. Chieftain was unable to respond since she doesn't carry any guns that face forward. We tried to tack repeatedly, but in the shifty, light winds we had difficulty (never really tacking). As we flopped around, we blasted Chieftain several more times. Chieftain never got a clean shot at us and resorted to firing at the pleasure boats that were watching the battle. (It's OK by me to sink a few Bayliners.) According to the captain, they typically try to keep the fights pretty even otherwise the passengers on one ship get bummed, but today, I declare us to be the clear winner.

 

The ship itself was cool. I've been on tons of tall ships before, but I've never sailed on one. It was neat to see how all the stuff works and how much harder it is to do everything than on a modern sailboat. They definitely have a hard time pointing (sailing upwind) and tacking. The crew was nice and seemed to know what they were doing; they have a mix of volunteers and paid crew. I'm seriously considering doing their two week volunteer training where you live onboard for two weeks and learn the ropes (literally). They do an evaluation, and if you pass, you can be a long term volunteer with them. It would be very fun.

Unfortunately, the boys didn't love it. Michael (7) for all his swagger, doesn't really like loud noises, so the cannon fire wasn't a hit with him. Andrew (10) had a better time but somehow got it in his mind that he was going to help with the cannons and be allowed to go aloft, so he was a little disappointed. However, he is game to go on their week-long family expeditions they do in the San Juan Islands every year. I'd love to do that with him next summer.

One a side note, this is the first time I've really done anything in Olympia (which is the state capitol.) It's pretty small and a bit worn out, but the area by the water front looks very fun.

Maps For Us

Please visit this site. For the children of America. Please.

(Thanks, Craig.)

Marshmallow Guns

Earlier this summer, the boys and I picked up a mess of PVC pipe and made marshmallow guns. Once you assemble the guns, you put a mini marshmallow in by the mouthpiece and then blow the marshmallow out. The marshmallow will negotiate all the turns in the gun and exit the muzzle - kind of cool really. The marshmallows melt in the rain, so clean-up isn't difficult either.

  

We got the initial instructions from Instructables. We used 1/2" (internal diameter) PVC pipe and cut the pipe into a few standard lengths (we used 3" and 7") for flexibility in recombining the pieces. Instead of the recommended hacksaw, we used a pipe cutter. This was easier and safer for the kids, didn't require a vice or bench, and produced cleaner cuts. This was the first time I've bought PVC; turns out you can only buy it in 10 foot lengths, so you'll have plenty. There was a hacksaw near where the PVC was in Home Depot so you can cut the long pieces down into something that fits in your car. (I got nervous when I saw the PVC initially...)

We didn't glue the pieces together (friction worked fine) so the boys were able to build all kinds of variants. They quickly learned that while the idea of a multi-barreled gun was attractive, dividing your limited lung power n-ways reduced the power.

The whole thing was super successful and very fun. We've since made water guns hooked up a hose and have been trying (unsuccessfully so far) to build a gun powered by compressed air (I've added a tire valve to a 2 liter bottle and pressured it with a bike pump.)

It's worth noting that I'm deadly with a four-foot section of straight pipe. I can hit the kids anywhere in the backyard with a marshmallow while sitting on the deck. Don't mess with Dad.

 

Of course, if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. Check out these crazy marshmallow guns...

Congratulations to Alinghi!

Alinghi won the 32nd Americas Cup today, beating Team New Zealand by one second! Alinghi was comfortably ahead on the last downwind leg with Team New Zealand still owing a penalty turn; it looked like the race was in the bag. Then, the wind shifted upwind. Team New Zealand dropped their spinnaker (the downwind sail) and put up their jib; Alinghi tried to do the same and ran into trouble, with their spinnaker flailing and pole out of control. They got caught in a light wind hole and New Zealand went past. TNZ did a double-tack for their penalty turn (unusual since typically boats will do a 360 - armchair sailors will be debating this forever) and were racing toward the line. Alinghi got their speed up just in time to nose over the line, ahead by a second. It's incredible that after about 90 minutes, these two boats were only a second apart.

This has been the most amazing Americas Cup. Alinghi won 5-2, but each race was fantastic. The boats were well matched for speed despite all the rumors of Alinghi's boats being half a generation ahead. Alinghi simply executed better. The commentators can't stop gushing about what a fantastic final this has been.

So, congratulations to Alinghi for defending their title and keeping the oldest trophy in sports. Also, kudos to Team New Zealand for doing such a great job through the Louis Vuittons and the AC.

Wow. I can't wait for 2011...

The Other Side of the World

It's map day, I guess. I'm sure everyone has heard the expression "digging to China", referring to the notion that China is on the side of the world. Well, here's a site that shows you what is really on the other side of the Earth from you (known as your antipodal point).

In case you're curious, the antipodal point for Seattle is somewhere in the ocean southeast of South Africa. The antipodal point for Beijing, China is in Argentina.

Pretty cool, in a dorky cartographic way.

Check it out: antipodemap.com

States' GDP Relative to Other Countries

(click for a larger view)

This is an interesting map that renames US states for countries with similar GDPs. It really puts the size of the US economy into perspective.

The full article is on strange maps.

Thanks, Adam, for the find.

Blogging from my phone via FlickR

Here's another attempt to blog from my T-Mobile Dash. I'm trying FlickR's post-to-blog functionality. Could be cool.



This picture is from today. Andrew (9) and I were power washing fiends. It's an impotant skill to pass down from father to son. Andrew decided to write his initials in the dirty chair. Bit gross really.

I'm Going to Foo Camp 2007

I finally got off my butt and made my travel arrangements to go to Foo Camp next weekend. Tim O'Reilly hosts this annual event at the O'Reilly Media campus in Sebastopol, CA. They invite 250 hopefully (supposedly?) interesting "Friend's of O'Reilly" (aka FOO) to get together for a few days to share ideas, debate, hang out, etc.

I was flattered to get an invitation; I'm impressed with the people I know who are going and am looking forward to meeting some of the others on the list. I admit I'm a bit unsure about how this will go since I haven't been before, but I'm excited to participate and learn.

I don't have an agenda I want to drive, but I'm still thinking of ideas of stuff to present. (Let me know if there's anything you want to hear from me.) Maybe I'll just talk about bacon.

Great Monty Python and the Holy Grail remixes

Like many geeks of my age, I'm a Monty Python fan. One classic scene is the Knights of the Round Table song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Here's the original, as a reference.

There have been some great remixes and remakes. This Lego version is a few years old, but it's still awesome.

This is an awesome Star Trek remix.

There are a bunch of pretty good ones with animations from various computer games, but I thought these were the best.

Anyway, enjoy...

Crazy bowling trick

The IE Program Management team went bowling Friday afternoon last week to let off a little steam. I managed to trip and fall on my first ball due to a shoe malfunction. I kind of screwed up my knee; it still hurts this week. (We did have a good time nonetheless, and I'm sure the team enjoyed watching me splat myself on the lane, drawing a foul in the process.)

By contrast, check out this crazy bowling video. The guy sets a ball rolling slowly down the lane, then sends a faster one down. The faster ball knocks down nine pins; the slow ball then picks up the spare. Amazing.

Very Cool GPS App

GPSActionReplay is a cool Java applet that lets you plot multiple GPS tracks over a map or image. It animates the tracks so you can see how each track formed. The obvious application of this is to replay races. The app has a bunch of extra features for sail racing like wind charts, etc. The UI is a bit confusing, but it's a fun way to watch and actually pretty educational (well, to sailors at least).

Here's the replay from a few boats in the race I did this week (our track isn't in there yet).

A Little Sailing of My Own

After all the excitement of the Louis Vuittons Cup, I was glad to finally get out myself this week. I crewed on Ragin' Cajun, a J-24 I've raced on a couple of times a few years ago. The weather was shifty, threatening to rain. Worse, the wind was very unpredictable, so we tacked back and forth for an hour as the committee reset the course a few times.

We had one start that resulted in a general recall. It was quite exciting. There were twenty-seven J-24's trying to hit the line at the same point (near the committee boat) at the same time. Mass chaos. Lots of yelling. Tons of fun. Same thing at the start of both races.

We did OK. Rico (the owner and driver) pulled a few cool moves at the marks, sliding by a dozen boats. Picking the correct side of the course to work well with the wind shifts was key, but we weren't super successful at that. In any case, I had a great time and hope to get out a few more times this summer.

In case you're interested, here are plots of our GPS tracks for the first and second races. I've added the rough position of the marks.

Nothing beats racing...

Team New Zealand Wins the Louis Vuitton Cup!

Congrats to Team New Zealand for sweeping Luna Rossa 5-0 for the Louis Vuitton Cup! They now get to challenge Alinghi for the Americas Cup later this month.

Luna Rossa sailed well; the races were much closer than the 5-0 score might indicate, but I think Luna Rossa simply wasn't aggressive enough. In the last race, they finally started attacking more, trying to take advantage of their faster acceleration after tacking in the light winds, but it wasn't enough.

Wahoo! Watch out, Alinghi!

Team New Zealand Off to a Good Start!

Emirates Team New Zealand is off to a 3-0 start in the first-to-five series against the Italians of the Luna Rossa Challenge for the Louis Vuitton Cup. The winner of the Cup also earns the right to race in the Americas Cup against Alinghi (Switzerland).

Today was a day off and a chance for everyone to think about the first three races. They've been close races against two well-matched boats. However, momentum seems to be on the side of New Zealand. The Kiwis have progressively increased the margin of victory in each race going from eight seconds in the first race (crazy close) to forty seconds in the second to 1:38 in the third race (after losing the start pretty badly). What's more, New Zealand has led around all of the marks.

The boats appear to be close in boat speed under the conditions so far, so the difference has been tactics and a bit of luck. In particular, Luna Rossa missed a chance to shut out New Zealand at the start of the third race, failing to tack over the Kiwis after winning the start. New Zealand found better wind on the right side of the course and beat the Italians to the first mark.

We'll see if Luna Rossa can figure out what's going on and pull out a win. They'll need to do something or risk getting skunked.

Go New Zealand!

Keeping Perspective on Microsoft

At Microsoft, we love to beat ourselves up, in some ways even more than others do (and that's saying something.) We focus so much on the clever things our competitors do (as if we're supposed to be the only ones with good ideas) or the successes they have that we sometimes lose track of the great things we've done.

I saw this article go by a few months ago and thought it was a good reminder of our success in one area at least: our financial success. I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but I think it's still relevant. Of course, we must never become complacent or too proud of what we've done, but it's good to have a little balance.

SeekingAlpha
10 Reinvigorating Facts About Microsoft's Profits
Monday April 30, 5:57 am ET

Joe Panettieri (The VAR Guy) submits: I have written extensively about Microsoft's (NasdaqGS: MSFT) problems. But last week, I got a stunning reminder about the company's power. It takes Microsoft only 10 hours of business to exceed Red Hat's entire quarterly profit. Skeptical? Check out the math, and nine other facts about Microsoft's most recent earnings report.

Microsoft last week announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. In other words, Microsoft's daily net income is about $55 million. That's $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours. Do some quick math and you'll learn it takes Microsoft only about...

• 10 hours or so (yes, hours!) to exceed Red Hat's (NYSE: RHT - News) quarterly net income of $20.5 million.
• four days to exceed Research In Motion's (NasdaqGS: RIMM) quarterly net income of $187.9 million.
• four days to exceed Starbucks' (NasdaqGS: SBUX) quarterly net income of $205 million.
• one week to exceed Nike's (NYSE: NKE - News) quarterly net income of $350.8 million.
• two weeks to exceed McDonalds' (NYSE: MCD - News) quarterly net income of $762 million.
• two weeks to exceed Apple's (NasdaqGS: AAPL) quarterly net income of $770 million.
• 18 days to exceed Google's (NasdaqGS: GOOG) quarterly net income of $1 billion.
• 23 days to exceed Coca-Cola's (NYSE: KO - News) quarterly net income of $1.26 billion.
• five weeks to exceed IBM's (NYSE: IBM - News) quarterly net income of $1.85 billion.
• 10 weeks to exceed Wal-Mart's (NYSE: WMT - News) quarterly net income of $3.9 billion.

For a dead company, Microsoft's profits certainly look lively.

From http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070430/33932_id.html?.v=1

(Fixed character problems)

Go Team New Zealand!

The Louis Vuitton Cup determines who will go on to challenge the reigning Americas Cup champion (currently Alinghi, the Swiss team). This week, the LV semi-finals in Valencia finished up. I'm happy to report that things are going my way.

First, I'm most happy that BMW Oracle Racing(USA) lost to Luna Rossa (Italy). Of course, normally, I'd be cheering on the US team, but my feelings toward Larry Ellison, the owner of the BMW Oracle syndicate, transcend even my strong patriotism. That BMW Oracle was the Challenger of Record (the runner up from last time), this is was Larry's third try at winning (he hasn't yet), and that Luna Rossa smoked their ass 5-1 makes me even happier. After this humiliation, Chris Dickson, the CEO and skipper for BMW Oracle and turncoat from Team New Zealand, resigned. Besides, Luna Rossa, with the help of their sponsor Prada, just looks better. They have a beautiful boat and great uniforms. Look good, sail good.

Almost as sweet, Emirates Team New Zealand beat a scrappy Spanish team, Desafio Espanol, five races to two. I've been a fan of Team New Zealand for a while; they're a class act and a great example of a smaller effort producing great results. I am, of course, even more a fan of Team New Zealand after having visited their base in Auckland, had lunch at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron (home club for TMZ), and sailed around Auckland Harbor on an old AC boat last year. That said, Desafio Espanol did much better than anyone expected in their first AC challenge. Props to Desafio for a good effort.

So, Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa will race in the finals starting June 1. The winner will go on to challenge Alinghi for the Americas Cup. Should be fun!

If you want to watch video highlights or watch a very slick computer representation of the race (the same one they use in the TV coverage and frankly a better way to follow the races), check out Americas Cup Anywhere.

Here's an old Larry Ellison joke just to finish things up:

Question: What is the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
Answer: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

Best Microsoft ad ever

As a long time Microsoft employee, I am saddened and sometimes embarassed by the consistently, um, poor quality of our ads. It makes me very happy when I see a great ad coming out of the company. Invariably, it seems that they come out of our international subsidiaries and not Redmond.

Here's a very well done and funny ad from the Dutch sub. Here's the blog of the guy who did the ad.

Here's an old one from the New Zealand sub that was fantastic too. I think it was pulled though by the corporate police. Too bad.

Anyway, enjoy.