Ok.

No one makes a better burger, and you’re able to keep up with the rush hour orders like no one else.  Our receipts go up 30% whenever you are on shift.

Ok.

But honestly,  the french fries are just awful.  And the attitude really is tough to deal with.   Yelling at the drive-through customers because they drive a Prious isn’t good for anyone.  We need someone more versatile.

Ok.

KFC might be hiring now.  That’s just down the road.  The pay is a little less, and well, you’re working with Chicken which is not hamburger, but the team there is more tolerant.  Maybe you should go and check them out.

Yeah, well fuck you.  I’m going to Wendy’s and we’re going to kick your ass!

The societal structure in the coop doesn’t remain the same forever. At times, the Beta Male will take a shot at the Alpha Male. This may result in an all out battle, but seldom does it go that far. The Alpha Male consistently reminds the Beta and all his subordinates who the King is. He does this a number of ways. They include anything from a good, old-fashioned beating, a peck on the backside, or just a posturing where the Boss will put himself between the subordinate and whatever the subordinates’ intentions were. The dominant male will often assert himself by showing up when the Beta is mating one of the hens. When he arrives at the act, the Beta will yield, get pushed away, or take a beating. There’s a key here…
It’s consistency (huge point, remember this one!!!). The Alpha is ever-vigilant. He doesn’t let up for a second because he knows if he gives his subjects an inch, they’ll take a mile. If he lets things start getting away from him, he’ll have big problems on his hands.

When an Alpha Male ages, he’ll eventually be replaced. This can happen through battle or just by tiring of his duties. When the Alpha is replaced by a younger male, a chain of events takes place. Once the Alpha yields, he’s got a huge problem to face. The next rooster down the rung will have a go at him. Then the next, then the next. In a day’s time, he’ll can drop from Top Dog all the way to the doghouse. Lots of times he’ll end up last in the coop, even to the hens (who will also take a shot at him during his descent).

All this time, there never has to be a fight. When the Alpha decides to submit, he’s been beaten psychologically and seems so devastated that he’s unwilling to take a stance against any of the birds for anything. At this point he’s been reduced to simply saving his hide, and he knows it. There’s an exception here. If the Alpha is replaced because he’s injured or sick, when recovered, he’s going to come screaming back to take his rightful place.

I’ve given a lot of thought about what it means to be part of a social network, and frankly, I’m just not very social. And I’m OK with that. I prefer to have very close contacts; friends and family. Basically, the “ride to the airport” rule was applied. Can I call you for a ride to the airport and reasonably expect you’ll say “no problem.”. I extended this to friends that live in other cities, if I were to be in town for a visit.

I’ll keep my blog and Flickr account intact. Both are more cathartic for me personally, although there is a tertiary communicative effect.

-Jason

Should be pretty interesting. I was looking for culinary school somewhere in New York or possibly Europe, hoping to maybe combine a real vacation (away from CA) with something educational/mentally stimulating. After a quick and mildly frustrating online search, the SFBI really made a lot of sense. While not in an exotic locale (for me), it was highly reviewed and offers a myriad number of additional courses in other areas should I decide to pursue baking as another career (see earlier post on Pizza!).

We started with about 3 hours of classroom lecture on baking basics, which I actually found fairly interesting. I had a mild panic attack when we started doing some math, its been many years since I was in any institute of higher learning. Next, after lunch, we headed down into the real classroom, the kitchen, and watched as our instructor prepared a large batch of dough. The class broke into groups after and actually prepared some baguettes, which tasted pretty good.

Apparently by the end of the course, we’ll be “bread snobs” and be able to identify all kinds of traits of good and bad bread. I volunteered one of my loaves to keep for comparison come Friday.

The class is fairly small, 15 students. The distribution was kind of surprising:

6 Men, 9 Women

5 from CA, 10 from out of town (States represented: TX, GA, VA, OR, WA, HI, NY).

5 “Casual Cooks, 10 Food Industry. Of the 5 casual folks, 3 were pretty hardcore home chefs. (Myself and another women just are enrolled for fun. I sort of thought there would be more like us).

Instructor was great. Very engaging and enthusiastic. Should be a fun week.

I’m thinking of just going out and getting some and cooking at home, though a weekend cottage in Montauk would be the perfect complimentary place setting. Forget Outstanding in the Field, how about Outstanding on the Beach!

I literally had chills running down my spine. The heroics of the Coast Guard were palpable in print, I can only imagine what it was like for them, in person. The coordination between the Helicopter, the cutter Munro and the sister-ship of the ‘Ranger was precise and near perfect.

What I also find amazing is what didn’t happen…no one ‘forgot’ to check the standby Pratt and Whitney jet engines used by the Munro to literally haul ass (35 MPH through the Bering Sea in a 378′ boat), there was no special appointee of the President or other elected official to screw things up, they didn’t forget to bring enough gas. No excuses, just immediate and successful execution.

Contrast with the recent reactions to almost every recent government led rescue effort; Katrina, the floods in Iowa, the California wild fires (last year) and you see the power of training and preparedness contrasted against ‘good enough’ and ‘unforeseeable’ .

Tragedy can come in many ways, it just shouldn’t happen after an unexpected event.

There is actually a fairly well known theory that predicted the inflection point, Hubbert’s Peak, or Peak Oil.

Peak oil as a proper noun, or “Hubbert’s peak” applied more generally, refers to a singular event in history: the peak of the entire planet’s oil production. After Peak Oil, according to the Hubbert Peak Theory, the rate of oil production on Earth will enter a terminal decline. Based on his theory, in a paper he presented to the American Petroleum Institute in 1956, Hubbert predicted that production of oil from conventional sources would peak in the continental United States around 1965-1970 (actual peak was 1970). Hubbert further predicted a worldwide peak at “about half a century” from publication and approximately 12 gigabarrels (GB) a year in magnitude.

Turns out Hubbert was fairly accurate. The doomsday-ers have co-opted the theory and started a website called, smartly enough, PeakOil. There was an article recently in the NYTimes about survivalists moving off the grid and becoming self-sufficient driven by the fear that roving droves of gas seekers will storm their homes.. (Guns! Wack Jobs! Wacko Texas Revisited!). What I find interesting is the similarities with many green movements: locally grown foods, reduction in carbon footprint, reduced use of motor-vehicles, etc. In other words, the fringe is less fringy these days.

Below are a few charts which highlight the recent rapid rise of gas, along with an interesting chart that compares with crude oil prices. If I had the time, and honestly the aptitude, I’d like to pull apart the annual high/low delta. It seems there are three key price points: 1) ~mid-December which is the yearly low point, 2) early May which is the pre-summer peak, 3) early August which is the summer high before a run towards the December valley.

Chart with just gas (5 year)

With crude oil:

What is really interesting (scary?) is the fact crude prices appear to be increasing faster than gas at the pump. To me, this indicates there is the potential for gas prices to increase even more if they were to keep their historical correlation to crude. I won’t go into the whole “oil companies are evil and stealing from the public”. They are stockpiling profits. To do any less would be irresponsible to their shareholders. They claim this is required to fund present and future investments in alternative fuels. Lets all hope this is true. In the the meantime, public transportation and other forms of getting to around are now much more viable. A positive and natural outcome.

There are tons of ways to start cutting this data and looking at correlations, both obvious and obtuse. From a purely intellectual perspective, the (recent) oil crisis may be one of the more interesting challenges to surface in the last 50 years. (Passion! Profits! Hippies! More at 11!)

Not all “new thinking” leads to success, sometimes the failures are catastrophic and long lingering in our collective memory. Today is the 71st anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, a frequent reference for any project that is not well planned and poorly executed with a very public collapse. However, it is also the anniversary of the 4 minute mile barrier being broken by Roger Bannister. Bannister initially faced failure during the 1952 Olympics and considered quiting competitive running entirely. But, he instead he looked the the 4 minute mile as a challenge, something to retrain his mind and body to overcome. Success followed. Bannister looked at this as just one milestone in his life however, and now looks at his achievements in the area of medicine and neurology as more important than any timed race.

For me, this is really what signals the onset of Mobile 2.0. Innovation can now be put directly in front of users/customers. The feedback loop for making incremental, or wholesale improvements is near frictionless; technologic Darwinism is now in play.

The broader Internet went through a very similar transformation albeit on the engineering side. Web 2.0 was about having the tools and infrastructure to enable rapid development of ideas into services. Good ones thrived; bad ones were either modified or tossed by the wayside. Of course there are still huge challenges facing mobile developers, entrepreneurs, users, etc, but those challenges can now be translated into solutions.

Lots of bloggers and industry folks are continually talking about a ‘bubble’ in Silicon Valley tech (venture funded private companies). Personally, I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. The people I know involved in mobile companies have a passion for innovation and a pretty good understanding of how to succeed. Nearly all have worked both start-ups and the ones who are moving here bring a similar mindset. Show me the problem, let’s figure out a good way to solve it and than get shit done. That’s not a recipe for a bubble; it’s the foundation of practically every society around the world.

As I read about Microsoft’s decision to abandon their acquisition of Yahoo!, I couldn’t help but think how solid a choice that will turn out to be. Microsoft wasn’t buying technology, innovation or engineers; most good ones already left and those that remain will find no shortage of opportunities. They were buying reach and visitors, fools gold in today’s web application space. Yahoo! never understand how to foster innovation, at least during the time I worked there.

I wrote but never posted a long piece on why Y! lost their way. Thinking about it now, it’s not necessary. Res ipsa loquitor. While they might have the number one property in various categories (i.e. Web email), that hasn’t translated into a successful business model. Nor were the products they released ever revolutionary. Compounded by a corporate culture that rewarded sycophant behavior rather than effective problem solving and teamwork, the death spiral began long ago and cannot be reversed. My guess is their stock will get hammered Monday morning, followed by another round of layoffs leading to a further retraction in product originality.

They’ll be talk of future upside, organizational improvements and a unrealistic grasping to the straws of the ideals of the past. But all that’s moot. A friends father once told me an interesting parable in high school. I don’t think I ever really understood it, till recently.

A farmer kept his sheep in a pasture for years. There was plenty of grass, water and a shaded area for the sheep to hide from the mid-day sun. One day, someone accidentally left the gate open and all the sheep ran out. The farmer herded them all back into the pasture and closed the gate, now secured with a lock. The next morning the farmer went outside and realized the sheep had all jumped the fence and taken off, no where to be found.

Nameste.

Due to the concerns recently voiced by many REI customers, REI no longer offers (as of April 19, 2008) polycarbonate water bottles. Polycarbonate is a tough, translucent plastic that includes bisphenol A (BPA). Ongoing scientific debate about the appropriateness of polycarbonate for beverage containers has resulted in REI offering many BPA-free water bottle alternatives (described above), which have replaced the demand for polycarbonate.

Recent findings by a government agency were the key driver for the decision, as well as growing customer preference:

The National Toxicology Program said two weeks ago there is “some concern” about BPA from experiments on rats that linked the chemical to changes in behavior and the brain, early puberty and possibly precancerous changes in the prostate and breast. While such animal studies only provide “limited evidence” of risk, the draft report said a possible effect on humans “cannot be dismissed.”

In fact Nalgene, one of the most common brands, stopped manufacturing BPA based items entirely.   Wow.   Aluminum appears to be the container of preference now, which should benefit Sigg substantially.   Could be an over reaction, who knows.  I’m going to create a flask from sheep intestine just to be safe.