Rodent Regatta

In no order whatsoever are the following ruminations:

More people are issuing dares in traffic. It’s not the least bit unusual to have someone turn in front of you daring you to somehow violate all laws of physics that say an automobile driving at the speed limit can be stopped by a competent driver in ten feet or less.

More and more cars are being sold in Memphis that apparently lack turn signals.

Textpattern 4.0.4 was released this morning. I’m impressed that all prior sites work, but can now avail themselves of all the new features in the product.

Crime is up. Election day is near. Some world leaders are daring the rest of the world to do something about their contempt for all authority.

We’ve now got over 300,000,000 folks in this country.

IBM has just announced outstanding third quarter results.

The best television show of the new season won’t be decided for several more weeks—except for me. Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip has already won my loyalty. Aaron Sorkin’s writing of dialog has simply soared since he last wrote for Sports Night and The West Wing.

In something shy of two minutes last night, we caught a glimpse of the creative process required to fill ninety minutes of air time with a live television broadcast. The two minutes illustrated the breaking of a writer’s block and the sudden flood of inspiration that essentially developed the rest of the show.

The episode was called The Cold Open, and it indicated Sorkin’s respect for the intelligence of television viewers. He doesn’t waste our time and he doesn’t coddle. Listen and watch carefully and he’ll reward you with some of the finest dialog and actors that television has ever offered. Try to multitask with the TV as background noise and Sorkin’s work will be lost on you.

Teamwork, collaboration, chaos and deadlines were depicted as realistically last night as in any television show I’ve ever watched. Whether you wrestle with collaborative work among scattered people, or spend time considering the intrinsic business value of NBC as compared to Google, this show has something for you. It’s entertainment. It’s TV about TV. It’s metaphor. It’s full of lessons for anyone who feels challenged by the ways and means of today’s work place.

¹⁷Though the fig tree should not blossom And there be no fruit on the vines, Though the yield of the olive should fail And the fields produce no food, Though the flock should be cut off from the fold And there be no cattle in the stalls, ¹⁸Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:17-18 NASB

• 5 years since 9-11-2001
• 6 years since 10-12-2000
• 8 years since 8-7-1998
• 10 years since 6-25-1996
• 13 years since 2-26-1993
• 21 years since 10-8-1985
• 23 years since 10-23-1983
• 34 years since 9-5-1972

There’s more. Bali, London and Madrid. And, countless more.

Anticipating some word this afternoon from Hewlett-Packard’s telephone conference among board members, I went to the Wall Street Journal’s web site and read this article [subscription may be required]. The title is Divided H-P Board To Discuss
Leak Scandal, Dunn’s Future and it was written by Joann S. Lublin and Peter Waldman. Here’s a paragraph that caught my eye:

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Ms. Dunn said she knew little about the tactics used by outside firms hired by H-P, and said she was “appalled” to learn in the past two months that investigators disguised their identities to obtain private telephone records of reporters and H-P directors. She said she had previously thought the directors’ phone records were obtained properly.

What does it mean to “obtain the directors’ phone records properly?” It seems to me that anyone—short of the FBI—who calls my phone company and identifies themselves as me has instantly committed fraud. If a private investigator has been asked to get my phone records, they are faced with asking me for them, asking me for (written) permission to gather them or they must commit a crime to get them. What am I missing here?

Why isn’t’ something called pretexting also called identity theft and a crime? Can a chairman of a company the size of Hewlett-Packard be so naive as to cover her own mistake with something so silly as, “she thought the records were obtained properly?” Apparently so.