Author: Gil

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All Along the Watchtower

I admit that I’m a little compulsive about checking traffic on my site. It’s not a very significant number, but it helps me feel a little wanted, and sometimes I can figure out if old friends or recent acquaintances are checking up on this blog, via the IP address and other info that SiteMeter shows me. Usually, I can see if the user was referred to my site by an external link, or a search engine. Lately, a lot of people have gotten here by searching for images of Giada De Laurentiis. Some stay a while. It’s a funny world.

This morning, something strange happened. I noticed a significant bump in traffic: about 30 people or so had checked in before 8 in the morning. I decided to look into the details, and discovered that nearly all of them were from the far east, and they were all going directly to a single post of mine, Moon over Malaysia.

Longtime readers who remember too much for their own good may recall this post. It was about how the Malaysian Biotechnology Corp. wanted me to stop by for an interview during the BIO conference in Chicago last April. When I looked up the country’s official policies toward Israel (“it doesn’t exist”), I declined the invite, writing a polite note to the PR rep in New York who was trying to arrange the meeting. I never heard back from them. It’s all in the post.

This morning, and late last night, and all throughout today, I kept receiving hits to that exact post. What was particularly interesting (or scary) was that not a single one of those hits included a “referring URL.” That is, there wasn’t a link on another site that led all these people to my site.

As far as I know, this means that they either all got the link via e-mail (but not a web-based e-mail like Gmail or Yahoo!, which would have left a referring URL), or there’s some site out there that linked to my post and is, um, secret enough not to leave a trace on SiteMeter. And it has users in the following locations:

    Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

    Tanjong Tokong, Malaysia

    Bilit, Malaysia

    Kampong Sinempuan, Malaysia

    Kampong Abu Bakar, Malaysia

    Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Kampong Tepi Sungai, Malaysia

    Sungai Besi, Malaysia

    Val D’Or, Malaysia

    Alexandria, Egypt

    Dakar, Singapore

    Coatbridge, UK

    Hull, UK

    Sheffield, UK

    Cardiff, Wales

    Berlin, Germany

    Perth, Australia

    Melbourne, Australia

    Toyama, Japan

    Sterling Heights, Michigan

    Garden City, NY (the user was on a computer at Adelphi University, alma mater of Baba Booey)

Some of these people stayed for only a second, while others hung on for a while or moved around on this blog. No one left a comment.

It was a little troubling, I admit. Fortunately, when I got home tonight, I received some reassurance.

It seems that, while the Malaysians were creeping around my site, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were busy driving through my neighborhood. They left a flyer in my door proclaiming “The End of False Religion Is Near!” So, y’know, I got that going for me. . .

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How many Microsoft points does it cost to kick your ass?

Microsoft’s getting ready to launch its iPod killer, the Zune music player, next week. Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal (pay only, so no article link for you!) reviewed the thing today. He tried to be kind, but it doesn’t look good:

[T]o buy even a single 99-cent song from the Zune store, you have to purchase blocks of “points” from Microsoft, in increments of at least $5. You can’t just click and have the 99 cents deducted from a credit card, as you can with iTunes. You must first add points to your account, then buy songs with these points. So, even if you are buying only one song, you have to allow Microsoft, one of the world’s richest companies, to hold on to at least $4.01 of your money until you buy another. And the point system is deceptive. Songs are priced at 79 points, which some people might think means 79 cents. But 79 points actually cost 99 cents.

[. . .] The Zune’s tag line, evident immediately when you open the box, is “Welcome to the Social,” a phrase meant to stress the device’s wireless song-sharing feature, and to reach out to the Zune’s target market, young music lovers who build social relationships around favorite songs and artists.

But the wireless music-sharing feature on the Zune is heavily compromised, in a way that is bound to annoy the very audience it is targeting. Each song sent to your Zune from another Zune can be played only three times and is available for playing for only three days. After that, it dies and can’t be played again unless you buy it. Even if you play the song only halfway through, or for one minute, that counts as one of your three allowed plays. In fact, in my tests, a song I sent to my assistant’s Zune expired after only two plays, one of which lasted just a few seconds. Microsoft attributed that to a bug that it said would be fixed.

This is reminding me an awful lot of that “Microsoft designs the iPod package” video. . .

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Swingers

Not that anyone comes here for political wisdom, but I sure am glad to see the pendulum swing this morning. It’s gratifying to me not because of any leftover leftist tendencies from my college years, but because it demonstrates what it is that works about our democracy: our ability to throw the bums out, or at least to wrest power from one group of bums and bestow it on another.

In the gratifying / infuriating department, it’s good to see that the 2004 sentiments like “we live in a permanent Republican majority,” “right-wing Christian fundamentalists have hijacked the country,” and “gerrymandering has rendered all elections meaningless” have proved to be utter bullshit. I never take it well when someone takes the present moment and decides that it’s an indicator of how everything will be for the rest of time.

Which gets me back to that pendulum. It swings. In my opinion, which is likely wrong, the end point of the pendulum’s arc (is that called its period?) was the moment at which the federal government intervened in the Terry Schiavo case. Plenty of other people will contend it was the Iraq war, while others will contend it was “the economy.”

So the pendulum swung in one direction, and now it’s swinging back. Let’s see some gridlock-induced compromises in the next two years! Go, Team America!

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Travels & travails

When I got to the airport yesterday, I found that the earlier flight to Newark was running late, and that mine would also get pushed off a bit. So I switched planes, got stuck with a middle seat, and made it home an hour before I was scheduled to get back.

This helped because I had no idea on which floor of the parking garage I’d left my car. I did remember the general area I parked, recalling that I’d pulled up next to a Chrysler 300, so I could check it out before heading over to the monorail. But as I got into the parking garage elevator yesterday, I asked myself, “What floor was that?” And I had no adequate answer to that question.

So I started on the second floor, and eventually found my Element of Style up on the fourth floor. Travel days that began at 5:30am are not good. That’s yer official Virtual Memories advice for the week.

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We got hats now!

For years, one of my favorite trade-show goodie-scores was a baseball cap from the legal firm of Morrison & Foerster, because it featured the company’s abbreviated name: mofo.

I lost the hat during my drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible in 2004, heading from San Fran to San Diego. I was peeved, especially because I lost the hat a moment after passing a warning sign about high winds.

Now, at last, I have a replacement. And it’s all thanks to the architectural firm of Hooker and Cockram.

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Yeah, Brock! You hit him so hard he has an afro now!

Official VM buddy Mitch Prothero sent over a news item about how the Washington Wizards’ two centers got into a brawl last week. He was amazed that Brendan “Brenda” Haywood showed some fire, body-slamming Etan Thomas.

I, on the other hand, was amazed that Haywood “[tore] out at least two of Thomas’s dreadlocks in the process.”

Now I seriously regret my decision to skip the Washington/Orlando game last night. I would’ve been close enough to get pictures of Thomas’s bald spot!

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I Live in a Suitcase

Well, them’s the best-laid plans. I decided not to spend $200 just to get into the Magic game (I could’ve gone with a cheaper seat, but it would’ve been pretty high up in the O-rena), and the conference people called to say that they couldn’t sneak me into the Pleasure Island get-together, meaning I’d have to pony up the $120 fee to explore . . . Pleasure Island! (I make a dramatic pause whenever I say the name.)

Deciding drunkenness is the better part of valor, I elected to hit Shula’s for dinner, knock back a couple of Hendrick’s & tonics with my 20-oz. Kansas City strip, and head back to the room for some awkwardly confessional writing. Because I’m all about customer satisfaction.

Which brings us to my hotel room, where I’m sitting in my underwear (black socks, natch) and listening to I Live in a Suitcase, by Thomas Dolby. It came from his fourth album, which is terrible, but I’ve gained an affinity for this song, which is about getting stuck in Los Angeles. Funnily enough, it’s just about the only major city I haven’t been to for a conference or trade show.

It’s also the city I think is least likely to offer itself up over the course of a 3- or 4-day trip. I’ve always had this impression that LA is much more a state-of-mind city than just about any other in America, that it reveals itself over the course of day-to-day life, but not to the tourist. This probably stems from being as spread out as it is, and as devoted to its key industry (entertainment, of course) as it is.

And it probably stems from my mythologizing of it, but I’m really not trying to romanticize Hollywood by any means. It’s just that almost every other city puts me in mind of a particular set of landmarks, of lifestyles, of business, of history, and I find myself drawing a blank over LA. I don’t think “Chinatown” should stands in for the city. Maybe I’ll make an extended trip there someday, but I doubt it’ll happen. If any of you have some commentary/meta-thoughts on LA to share, comment away!

But we’re in Orlando (or, more precisely, Lake Buena Vista, FL): Living in a suitcase also puts me back in the world of USA Today, as I mentioned during last week’s travels.

Over breakfast this morning, I discovered that avian flu is a subject for the Life section, not News. It seems that Indonesia isn’t doing so well treating it because “Decentralized power weakens grip on outbreak.” If only that junta were still running things.

On the plus side, it appears that coffee helps against Alzheimer’s disease, and just about everything else. Is nothing beyond the reach of coffee achievers?

The lead News story is about how Fresno is the most insanely hard-ass city on drunk drivers in America:

Police sneak into the driveways of convicted drunk drivers to plant Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and search their homes for evidence they’ve been drinking.

The “problem,” it seems, is that drunk driving fatalities have leveled off since the mid-1990s, after dropping annually for nearly 20 years prior to that. Rather than credit the reduction in deaths to improved vehicle safety and greater awareness about drunk driving, the article implies that it’s only police & the courts that can reduce the number of deaths. Hence, bugging the cars of convicted drunk drivers.

I also discovered that the Second Amendment doesn’t seem to pertain if you’re drunk:

One officer observes a man walking unsteadily as he leaves the bar. When he gets in his SUV and starts to drive off, other officers swoop down on him. The officers find a loaded Glock handgun in the center console. The man’s friend, who owns the SUV, walks over to show the police his concealed weapons permit. But he has been drinking, too, and the permit is void if he’s intoxicated. They arrest him, too.

In the Money section, we learn the valuable art of spin with the lead story Prius finally available without a wait. In addition to increased production, it turns out that reduced demand is a factor.

The Sports section told me that Ricky Williams is some sorta zen master:

When it comes to the search for elevated self-awareness and a higher plane of existence, Ricky Williams may be the [most] introspective athlete of all time. He is a vegetarian, a yogi, a vertiable Buddhist philosopher in shoulder pads. Unfortunately for the enigmatic running back, pro football does not place a premium on the quest for eternal truth and personal fulfillment.

Also, he really likes weed.

And I found out that Doogie Howser, M.D. is gay. All this over breakfast!

* * *

By lunch, I learned that there’s a staging of The Winter’s Tale that you might be interested in seeing, if you’re around NYC the next few weekends. It’s being directed by a guy who used to be my closest friend, but he’s been a douchebag to me for three-plus years now, so I figure I’ll skip out on this performance.

I do find it pretty funny that he can’t return a phone call or e-mail to me since 2003, but is quite content to send group e-mails asking for people to come out and see and/or promote his show. We’ve got different ideas of friendship, is what it boils down to.

Speaking of which, a bunch of my high school friends (Pennsylvania edition) have invited me to a mini-reunion next week down in Philadelphia, so I may come back with some entertaining anecdotes or photographs by Sunday. It’s one of those things where I realize how close so many of these friends have stayed in the 17 years since we graduated high school, and how close they stayed to me even though I only attended school for one year down there. Different ideas of friendship.

That said, I’m at a point in my life where I really don’t want to crash on someone’s sofa or air-mattress, so I’m trying to find an inexpensive hotel (sans bugs) that I can stay in Saturday night. I’m gonna get back to that right now, since I’ve given up on trying to figure out why my buddy Chip likes that Nightwood so darn much. It’s baroque; fix it.

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More with the decisions

I should mention that, instead of going to the Magic game tonight, I could partake in the big conference reception/party. Unfortunately, it’s being held at, ahem, Pleasure Island.

I have surveyed a decent sample set of attendees and exhibitors at this conference, and just about 100% of them agree: “Pleasure Island” is a really creepy name, and sounds like a ’70s stag-flick.

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Decisions, decisions

While the rest of America has to make up its mind about which way to vote tomorrow, I have to figure out if I want to spend $100 for a ticket to an Orlando Magic game, then spend $100 on cab fare to and from the arena, since I’m currently in the Disney Protectorate of Lake Buena Vista.

Which is to say, it’s not looking good, dear readers.

Fortunately, I found a bar that serves some high-end gin. So I have options, is all I’m saying.

Becaues we’re in Mauschwitz, the keynote address for our conference was a 45-minute presentation by a representative from the Disney Institute. He discussed innovation issues, and how what Disney does can translate into practices for the healthcare industry.

Which means, I guess, that drug companies should “lobby” members of congress into extending drug-patents indefinitely into the future, the way Disney has done with the copyright for Mickey Mouse. That’s innovation!