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Box office receipts climbing Theatres nationwide are raking in less and less money, despite gaudy summer blockbusters. Hmmm….let’s think about this. 1. This is the DVD era. Netflix and Blockbuster have mail-order subscription services for DVDs that come out 3-6 months following theatre release, allowing family viewing of films for essentially fixed cost. Contrast that with $10/ticket + popcorn. Oh yeah, about that 2. This is the HD TV era. For better or worse, even Joe Schmo out there has a 16:9 Plasma screen with Subwoofers the size of your Aunt Edna’s purse. ...

After rising with the sun both days this weekend and working outside both 95-degree days, Monday finds me exhausted. Case in point: I staggered into work, broke out our fresh-roasted coffee beans and made coffee. Only problem is, I put the RAW BEANS into the coffee filter. Thankfully, I realized this before turning the machine on. This weekend’s theme was exceeding expectations. I expected to have a light day of packing on Saturday. Instead, my whole apartment is packed and cleaned, and 75% of it is already moved to my new house. ...

I won my SCCA class for the first time since Last May :-) And I beat my arch-rival.

All organizations will eventually be run by those who stay awake in committee. I’m in a rather dilbert-esque meeting right now and I told Joel (who’s looking over my shoulder) that I’d blog his quote immediately. so there.

Miss Piggy is voiced by a MAN!

I’m assuming the phrase “Come to Jesus” comes from that scene in Flight of the Intruder where Fred Thompson’s character, acting as lead in the court martial of Jake Grafton and his bombardier says, “I hope you both realize that now is the time to come to Jesus.” Anyway, one of my guys screwed-up. Again. I yelled at him last time for his transgressions, and so I get to go to a meeting where a manager gets to “discuss” with me about his options. ...

Check this out: on June 15th I received a: “Congratulations you won a Mini Cooper” flash on the website and an email stating the same. The next step is they’re going to be sending me an affidavit in the mail within 3 weeks that has to be returned within 3 weeks (21 days).. then they have to verify my bottle cap and affidavit and then it could be up to a year until it’s delivered to the BMW shop and then I have 5 days to pick it up… so if all of this happens correctly … I won! ...

Okey, here’s the scenario: I’m moving to my new house 2 miles down the road on a Tuesday. No one’s free on a tuesday, save my mom, my aunt, Whitney’s dad, and me. This is looking…umm…troubling. More than likely, I’ll ask the leasing office if I can stay until July 2nd, so that I can get a regular moving crew over here for the really heavy stuff.

>>sigh« My GTO is up on the block. Guess I can only have one cool, impractical car at a time :D * * * In a related note, whitney and I were driving Toyotas this weekend. Hated the Matrix, really liked the Corolla. Really solid little car.

There are some people doing really neat things with technology. But, on the whole, my company is not doing it. So, I ask myself, why is this so? Some thoughts: * Lack of the “R” in “R&D”. It’s trite to say that 99% of computers is “programming” and 1% is “Computer Science,” but it remains true that the challenge today is analyzing problems and finding appropriate solutions. The thing we’re missing is knowledge transfer from the cutting edge to the troops in the trenches. ...

Here’s a blast from the past I found on ‘Wikipedia’: Dennis M. Ritchie’s Homepage And there, a barely tarnished gem, a PDF of the 1974 C Programmer’s Manual. 25 or so pages that clearly delineate the language that would inspire hackers throughout the world.

Today sucked as a team lead; it’s as if my post from yesterday came to fruition, as I had to dress-down a team member for not doing his job, only to be criticized by the offended party for being too heavy handed. Look, if you don’t want me to keep my people in line, then don’t come to me with crap like, “_____ isn’t doing his job. He’s off in la-la land while we’re way behind. Now, are you going to talk to him, or do you want me to do it.” ...

Here’s a pic to illustrate just how hard life is for the outside edge of the front tires of an AutoX MINI; My Mini weighs ~2500lb in autocross trim. I’d say 2000 lbs of that is on that right front tire in this sweeper. I need some CAMBER dang it!

Had an epiphany about why I like Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” and NBC’s “Apprentice”: People get fired. In today’s professional world, mediocre performers remain year after year, bringing down the average productivity of the group. Because there’s no turn-over, there’s no real incentive to replace those people who’ve lost their edge with fresh faces with new ideas. There’s a very real thrill associated with seeing white-collared folks dealing with the same crap (job insecurity, performance requirements) that blue-collar folks deal with every day.

Mr & Mrs Smith, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was one of the most entertaining and genuinely funny movies I’ve seen in a long time. A preposterous mismash of “Spy versus Spy” and The War of the Roses, the film hinges upon the genuine chemistry between Jolie’s type-A techno spy against Pitt’s type-B, shoot-from-the-hip spook. Okay, these are two of the sexiest people on earth, and they’re given this kind of premise. This movie’s going to sell popcorn :-) ...

Mark Rivera designed a great, fast course at the LFUCG dump truck training pad, and this time I brought the MINI instead of the GTO. video Coursemap I was #6 on PAX. Had a really good day, in a 3-way battle for the HS trophy. I kept getting better throughout the day, starting with a 41.2 and ending with a 39.8xx. Only .18 seconds separated first from 3rd :)

My MINI is fine. I drove home tonight and did accel. runs in 3rd & 4th from 25mph or so, and could detect no slippage. I also did no-throttle starts just feathering the clutch, and found no chatter whatsoever. So there’s $1k I can put back in the bank. Whew! Admittedly, the car does stumble when starting from a standstill with the A/C on, but it’s a 2700lb car w/no power. ...

As is my custom, I gave away the punchline before telling the story. Whitney and I had an ‘05 MINI Cooper (stock: 115hp), with the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) CVT’s fascinate me…imagine two pulleys connected by a belt. If the ratio of the pulleys remains the the same, you get a defined gear ratio. Thing is, in a CVT, the pulleys can vary their diameter, and hence the amount of mechanical advantage they provide. Great technology, but CVT’s are a dead end: No design yet devised can reliably handle much more than 200 ft-lbs of torque, so they’re only good for small cars. ...

Niiiiice new 19" flatscreen here at The BMW Store in Cincy. Well, turns out the fender-bender here is going to cost me a new wheel for the loaner and a new section on the bumper to install, so that’ll probably be $95 in labor + $40 for the bumper section, plus Lord-only-knows for a new 16" allow wheel. Fun times. Plus, I get to drive back to Lex, stay at work until my product is fixed (say, Saturday morning…).

Well, I ran into Mike while taking Patrick to the car dealership, and he said he’d price me the install of a new clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, lightweight flywheel, AND 4 shocks to replace the worn-out units on my MINI, and only charge me 10 hrs of labor. Plus, he only charges $45/rate-hr for labor. :-) Cars. They giveth, and yet, they taketh away.