June 2008

Remembering Bob Roush

Bob Roush at a StorageTek PicnicThis afternoon brought one of those emails that one never wishes to get. It was the sort of email that has a simple subject, just a person's name, and asks to give a call to the sender. While grateful for my friend who shared the news I always wish the news was better. Today it was the sad news of Bob Roush, 44, passing earlier this week.

Round Table Pizza shows how not to do business

Round Table Pizza still has jobs listed in Boise. However for employees of the west-coast pizza chain the unemployment notice came in the form of a note posted on locked doors.

While I can understand businesses choosing to change directions and models this way of doing business deserves to have major repercussions for Round Table Pizza. Imagine for a moment if it were your rent check that was due on Monday and you found out on Thursday that you're out of a job. A couple of times a year we would frequent Round Table but not any longer. The unethical business practice of giving employees no notice that they are out of a job is just inexcusable. There are at times unfortunate situations where companies go dark overnight but those are associated with really and truly going out of business. This was apparently not related to a bankruptcy or dire situations. Rather it was a calculated well-planned move that was intentionally designed to catch employees off guard. How do I know this? Well things like this don't happen overnight. Sometime back, probably months back, they started looking at how to save some dough. They produced charts and looked at markets. Had meetings and analyzed the numbers. Between the time they closed stores on Wednesday night and the time employees came to work on Thursday they closed up shop.

Mr. Deity - mid-week video diversion

Last week's conference exposed me to the wonderful Mr. Deity video series. The episodes are available on You Tube or through the podcast directory on iTunes.

Happy people are reading more but...

Today was a conference day and then a travel evening. Stopping through the time zones across the country some of those pesky little nits about the way rude people travel come to mind. Leaving Baltimore the plane was fairly full but not completely. In the exit row we had an empty seat and we're taxing towards the runway. As the flight attendants make their sweep through the cabin to ensure we're all tabbed-into slotted and fastened low and tight across our laps they notice a seat in the row behind me isn't in the upright and locked position. Turns out it doesn't go up. So the solution is to have the shoeless passenger move up to the empty seat.

If you haven't flown a lot it may not be immediately clear than when somebody moves into the seat next to you by passing their shoes up first it will be a long flight. As the captain came on to explain the weather-related delays, both in departing and en-route the seat was filled with a book-reading passenger. In fact the book seemed so good he couldn't take his eyes off it, even while moving. Now I should be thrilled to see people reading more. The thing is I prefer those cases when they read in their seats and not so much in mine. Airplanes are small and cramped these days for sure. But when the large person next to you chooses to read their book by taking up the whole row it gets annoying.

Perhaps when it comes right down to it my annoyance was furthered by having [amazon title 0060833262 inline] read in an in your face sort of way.

Adding video to Drupal posts the simple and valid way

I've been on a bit of a video binge lately posting several videos from YouTube here. This can be done several ways, including using the code supplied by video sites such as YouTube. The problem for someone who wants to keep their HTML valid is that YouTube posts the video snippet using <embed> tags which aren't valid HTML. However, like it does for many things, Drupal provides an easy solution. The video filter module makes it easy to put a [ video:URL] style tag in a post and have the video embedded. And best of all it does so cleanly with valid <object> tags.

It's worth noting there are several other modules like the embeded media field that can make the process work in other ways if one is developing CCK types and wants to include videos. So if you're looking for a solution that does even more be sure to check these out.

Equipment check and options

When pilots go to fly a plane there is a pre-flight check before each and every flight. This is a wise practice for many things including driving and bicycling. As a case in point the story of my evening will illustrate. About 45-minutes ago I left the house for a bike ride. Planning to ride for an hour or so. The story actually starts a couple of weeks back when I picked up a new pair of bike shoes at a REI garage sale. The shoes were just a bit larger than those I had before and were much more comfortable.

This week I got around to putting the cleats on them and tonight I took them for a ride. Everything went well, for a while anyway. With the garage door closing behind me I pulled down the driveway, turned on the bike computer and heard the reassuring click, click as my left-foot and then right-foot clicked into the pedals. Things went quite well for a longish while. Riding around the neighborhood and down some of the local streets and through the park all was well. Fortunately I decided that before hitting the state highway I should make sure the new shoes released from the pedals properly. A flick of the ankle and nothing... more wiggling tugging pulling and nothing. The realization that the cleats weren't tightened down enough floods the mind at this moment.

Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to destroy a way of life

Continuing on yesterday's video binge here is a great video about plans of the Southern Nevada Water Authority to suck up water from fragile parts of Nevada and pipe it to Las Vegas. The video looks at some of the impacts on areas of rural Nevada. It doesn't get very far into how risky this plan is for Las Vegas. Although SNWA would like to spend billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars to put in the pipeline the risks involved with having a whole city depend upon a facility that is impossible to secure flies in the face of the concerns of homeland security.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcoujfL0SNM]

Friday political video

Our PHP group had a great discussion of politics and the meaning of government last night. So this little video seemed appropriate to post for some Friday fun.

PBS Engage using Drupal

While working on some ideas for interactive media sites I came across PBS Engage which is a Drupal site working to engage viewers in the stories on PBS. Chapter 3's portfolio lists some of the cool things they worked on including a super-duper administrative interface for the backend of the site.

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