Shu In

It was one of those races where if you survived the first lap you were home free. The Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix race was run over the weekend and for the third straight year Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher came in first.

But in the first, first lap, the two Arrows cars could not start and had to be pushed off the track. This brought out a red flag restart. It was in this restart that all heck broke loose when once again, the drivers proved that you can not fit eight cars through an opening wide enough for only one. Ralf Schumacher literally ran up the back of pole leader Rubens Barrichello and went airborne flying what I would estimate to be at least 50ft (~15m). This first incident precipitated a second one in which six more drivers ended up playing bumper cars.

After everything was cleaned up there weren't a whole lot of cars left running. And once Michael Schumacher got past Juan Pablo Montoya, there was no looking back. A special congratulations to Australian Mark Webber who finished sixth and Mika Salo, driving Toyota's first entry in F1 who finished sixth. The eight cars left running at the end of the race were:

1. Michael Schumacher, Germany, Ferrari
2. Juan Pablo Montoya, Colombia, Williams-BMW
3. Kimi Raikkonen, Finland, McLaren-Mercedes
4. Eddie Irvine, Britain, Jaguar
5. Mark Webber, Australia, Minardi-Asiatech
6. Mika Salo, Finland, Toyota
7. Alex Yoong, Malaysia, Minardi-Asiatech
8. Pedro de la Rosa, Spain, Jaguar.

Who's Your Customer?

One of the things we are looking at in class is who is your customer? In the case of government, there are usually two. For the central staff agencies (budget, human resources, accounting, and legal), the customer is supposed to be the line agencies (health, human services, business regulation, transportation, defense, and education). For the line agencies, the customer is the public. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Most times, the central staff agencies have the Governor as the customer and line agencies have themselves as their own customer.

Before you think the private sector does it better, you should read InfoWorld's Bob Lewis (see his column here). Lewis points out:

Business, which is supposed to care about profits, return on investment, and shareholder value, is shrewdly marching in exactly the wrong direction. How can that be?

We all know the answer. A colossal accumulation of evidence shows that trying to please Wall Street analysts gains a few years of improved stock prices, after which the company crashes and burns. Many business leaders don't care about the crashing and burning. They focus on this year's bonus, which is pegged to stock performance, so they naturally consider Wall Street analysts more important than the customers.

This translates in to the lack of service in the private sector we see today. Lewis points to a study by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which purports to show that not only are consumers just as "satisfied" with the federal government as they are with the private sector, but that the federal government's scores are improving, while the private sector's are in decline.

Hmmm. Perhaps the public sector has finally learned something useful while the private folks are going in the wrong direction?

Reunions

My high school class of Hawaiian Mission Academy, the high school where I graduated from, is finally trying to get together for a reunion. Task 1 of the long list of things to do before then is to find all of our long lost classmates. Yes, I know, only 11 people regularly read this so there is little chance the word will get to the right people, but at least I'm trying. So, if you know any of the following people, and know they went to high school in Hawai'i, I would appreciate it if you would let them know we are trying to contact them and if they would email me at their soonest opportunity? Mahalo in advance.

Mr. Simon Cheng
Ms. Rita Corbin
Mr. Horace Farr
Mr. Clark Hallam
Ms. Nadine Haina
Mr. Barry Hotchkiss
Ms. Jerice Kezuka
Ms. Jennifer Knickerbocker
Mr. Kubota Kiyomitsu
Ms. Michele Lee
Mr. Bennett Lo
Mr. Kenneth Ma
Mr. Jack McCauley
Mr. Nathan Ota  
Ms. Sheri Parry [Chow]
Mr. Gregg Shiroma
Ms. Sanny Wong  
Ms. Harumi Zukeran

Aloha!

Try, Try Again

Microsoft very rarely gets things right the first time around. But never underestimate their ability to listen to their customers and change things down the road. Case in point, the MS Intellimouse 3.0 (see it here). This version of their premier optical mouse includes resized (smaller) thumb buttons on the left side and a flatter pair of buttons for the index and middle fingers on the top.

Both changes are welcome, especially the change to the thumb buttons. They are exactly what I've been wanting since I got the version 1.0 of this mouse. In the earlier version, the buttons were so large that it was difficult to move the mouse around without accidently hitting one of the buttons. By making them smaller, and moving them higher up, you give people a better chance of using the mouse without accidently hitting the buttons.

One strange thing I noticed though is, in the earlier version, when you lifted the mouse off the desk, the red LED underneath would go dark after a couple of seconds. In this version, the light stays on (at least for the 20 seconds I timed it). I always assumed the LED went off as a safety precaution as it is a Class 1 LED ( IEC 60825-1-am2 (2001-01)) but perhaps the precaution was not needed?

In either case, the mouse works fine so if you had problems using the earlier version, take a look at the current version, your fingers and wrist will thank you for it.

Aloha!

Unfinished Business

Seventeen year-old Tommy was buried yesterday in the National Memorial of the Pacific (see one site here) in Honolulu. Before we talk more about that, let's get to know a little about him and where he came from first.

Tommy was a young boy from Kennewick, Washington. Kennewick is located near the Columbia River a little north of the Oregon border and west of Walla Walla. From what I understand, the name Kennewick is Yakima for "winter paradise". So even though I've never been there, I assume it must have been a beautiful, but pretty cold place during the winter. One must wonder what he thought of Hawai'i, so far away and so warm, compared to his home. A different kind of paradise to be sure, but one he would not have much time to enjoy.

I can only speculate, but guess he must have been a persuasive young man to get his mother to sign for him (as he was under age) so he could enlist in the Navy as his older brothers had done before him. I can't imagine a mother wanting to let her young son go to such a far off place and put himself in harms way unless he had been so.

So he became an apprentice seamen aboard the USS Curtiss. Tommy had only been aboard the ship since December 1st when a week later, he and many of his shipmates died an untimely, and unfortunately, anonymous, death.

He, along with hundreds of other sets of remains had been buried with markers listed as "Unknown". That is, until an effort was mounted to try to identify as many as could be. So last year, his remains were disinterred and dental records revealed his name.

Some of his surviving relatives attended the burial service yesterday. Tommy was given full military honors in a solemn ceremony where he was finally laid to rest with a headstone engraved with his name: Thomas Hembree. Born May 17, 1924 and died on December 7, 1941. May he finally rest in peace.

Aloha!

Caucus Ruckus

First, congratulations to the voters in California who voted Gary Condit out of office. And congratulations to his opponent who was willing to take on his old boss.

In local news, the Democratic Party precinct elections were also held on Tuesday. In past years, it was difficult, if not impossible to gather enough people for a precinct quorum. But I guess people are finally realizing that the Republicans are on the move and it is up to them to get organized to oppose them. So every precinct made their quorum, which allowed them to vote for their precinct officers, some of which will be going to the county, and then state conventions in May (I was elected Precinct President and SWMBO Secretary/Treasurer).

Hopefully, this renewed interest, at the grass roots level, will translate into renewed interest and action at all levels of the party. Right now, the Party is still trying to redefine itself in a world much different from the one in 1954. And right now, local voters don't see a reason to even vote, much less vote Democratic. So there is much work to be done.

Mail Call

From: Jan Swijsen
To: Dan Seto
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 10:30 PM
Subject: Try, Try Again

Nice little mouse. But can anyone explain why the system requirements include 25MB of harddisk space? For a mouse!

--
Svenson.

From: Dan Seto
To: Jan Swijsen
Subject: Try, Try Again
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 06:45:18 -1000

Good question. Especially as it works out of the box without loading any drivers or software from the included CD. I later installed the software just to see what it does and other than allowing you to set macros to the button of your choice, I don't see anything you can't change with the default driver. But then, disk space is cheap and drivers keep programmers working...Perhaps if Brian has some experience in the area...

Aloha - Dan

To: Dan Seto
From: Jan Swijsen
Subject: Re: Try, Try Again
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 07:40:39 +0100

Yes disk space (and processor cycles) is cheap, still, because it is cheap doesn't mean it should be wasted..

Say five years ago a mouse used to be shipped with just a floppy disk, with more or less the same type of extra stuff on it. Now you get 10x as much stuff thrown and not a bit more functionality.

Of course writing compact, efficient code requires a good programmer who actually thinks about the task at hand and invests the energy to do his job right. The script cookers that sell themselves as programmers these days just can't do that anymore.

Of course, from a management point of view there is no reason to get a good programmer to do the job if a macro junky can do it in the same or less time. The sad thing is that writing a compact and efficient program takes more time so, again from the management's point of view, that new fanged, cut 'n paste kid looks better value than the real programmer.

I guess Brian would fit the whole stuff on a floppy. And being open source minded he would print the source on the label. <g>

BTW
How many bugs can you hide in 1.4 MB? And how many in 25 MB? Ha, now we know why the extra space was needed <g>

---

From: Phil Hough
To: Dan Seto
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 4:01 AM
Subject: being picky

"But in the first, first lap, the two Arrows cars could not start and had to be pushed off the track. This brought out a red flag restart."

Did you watch the same race as me?

Remember that F1 cars have a formation/installation/parade lap, before the start of the race. In the race I saw it was at the start of this formation lap that the two Orange Arrows didn't start... so where wheeled into the pits until the race had been started. So as I saw it (and I may be wrong, but I don't think so... otherwise I'd not send this), there was no red flag and no restart.

As I say... I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.... Whadda you reckon?

ATB.

Phil

From: Dan Seto
To: Phil Hough
Subject: Re: being picky
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 07:29:07 -1000

Hey Phil,

You may well be right. But the way I saw it was the count down went to zero, the lights went green, car tires lit up as everyone burned rubber and went flying down the track except for the Arrows. The course marshals then ran out on to the track to help push the cars clear acting as if they expected speeding F1 cars to becoming around Real Soon Now. But if this was the warm up lap, there would have been no reason for the other cars to accelerate so fast (notwithstanding, perhaps, wanting to heat up their tires) and no reason for the marshals to run as fast as they could to clear the track and get out of the way.

The only accounts I can find that say one way or the other is from ESPN (see it here) and Sports Illustrated/CNN (see it here) respectively:

"The accident occurred during the restart after both Arrows stalled in the scheduled start, leaving Enrique Bernoldi and Heinz-Harald Frentzen stranded on the track."

"Both Arrows had earlier stalled in the scheduled start, leaving Enrique Bernoldi and Heinz-Harald Frentzen stranded on the track. Both rejoined the race but were later disqualified."

Once the big shunt occurred on the restart, taking the eight cars out, the US SpeedVision announcers asked why the race wasn't red flagged again, seeing that they had already done so earlier for the Arrows (a good question by the way).

In either case, I can't find anything that specifically says there was a red flag, but there are at least the two links above that say the Arrows stalled at the "scheduled start". If they did stall at the start, then there was a restart. And if there was a restart, then there was a red flag on the first start. Oh well, no big deal. I'll post your comments and let everyone decide for themselves.

From: Phil Hough
To: Dan Seto
Subject: RE: being picky
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 17:54:23 -0000

In which case I submit the following evidence, to support my own view:

The following story from ITV-F1 (the only UK live TV show) explicitly states that the two cars "were both left behind when the rest of the field set off on the formation lap": [see it here]

Also the BBC: "Formation lap: Both Arrows cars are stuck on the grid as problems hit both Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi, but race should start as both cars are removed in time". In their lap by lap commentry: [see it here]

The wheel spinning you saw, is I'm pretty sure how they get their tyres up to temp, and something I've seen on pretty much every formation lap since I started watching F1 a few years back. The rushing was, speculating again, because a) they'd had to give the cars 30seconds to try and start (the rules) and b) they then had to wheel the cars all the way to the end of the pit lane, quite a way away.

Looks like the continental seperation sheds a different light on things :)) ATB.

Phil

Aloha!

Light Reading

Optical emanations. I don't know if this is more like gaseous emanations but a Newsday article (see it here) alleges that:

The flickering of computer screens and the ubiquitous LEDs found on modems and similar devices make virtually all electronic gear vulnerable to remote snooping, according to two scientific papers published half a world apart this week.

In one of the experiments, Markus G. Kuhen of the University of Cambridge in England, successfully reconstructed the contents of a computer screen merely by measuring fluctuations in light output on a nearby wall and running the resultant information through a simple signal processing filter. The other, by Joe Loughry of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver and Dr. David A. Umphress of Auburn University in Alabama (see the 300k pdf file here), used similar processing to successfully decipher the contents of modem transmissions by monitoring minute flickers in their LED (Light-Emitting Diode) displays at about 22 feet.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!