I love diagnosing other companies problems for them. This week… Internap in Houston couldn’t talk to an Akamai host reliably. This caused our external monitoring through Gomez to fail and throw alerts.

Beginning today…

Once again, the effort to cut out chocolate, starbucks (included in the former, since I only drink mochas), and to eliminate complaints as a form of conversation.

I’m going to call the official start date June 1, but this is a rolling start.

Crap. I just lost the game.

According to the deviantart stats, my iching photo is by far the most popular. Next would be the photo of the malibu pier. Don’t think anyone has bought prints, though.

I still don’t have my custom calendar hanging anywhere. What a waste.

A couple weeks back, I posted about a site that wanted to use one of my photos for their new edition of an online guide to california. Well, my photo made it:

http://www.schmap.com/california/panorama/#p=91570&i=91570_6.jpg

My pic is in the upper right, with attribution. If you click the arrows to either side, you’ll see the other photos they went with. I have to say, mine is waaaay better than the rest. 😉

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/05/16/great-work-perk/

A couple years ago, I heard about the “monty hall problem”, a question of probability that just was totally counterintuitive to me (and also a ton of mathematicians, so I don’t feel bad)… Here’s the situation:

You are offered a choice of three doors. Behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. You pick Door #1 (for example). The host opens Door #2 and reveals a goat, then offers you the chance to switch your choice with #3.

Now, most people look at this and say “well now my chance is 50-50, I may as well stay”. But that isn’t the case. You actually have a much higher chance of winning if you switch doors. The reason is that the host knows what is behind the doors and deliberately opened a losing door, so while your original choice has a 1/3 chance of winning, the other door now has (odd as it may sound) a 2/3 chance to win.

You can try it yourself with this flash game over on the NY Times site:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Really, go give it a try.

I looked at a nissan altima hybrid, which our editors say is the best hybrid you can buy, the one for people who like to drive, lowest true cost to own in its price range, etc… and well, it just bored me.

Then I got to tell the salesman and his boss that I wsn’t going to buy anything tonight like 40 times. This after they offered me about 8 grand less on my trade in than I owe on it…

And then I drove my car off their lot, stepped on the gas, listened to the engine… and you know, I don’t really want a different car.

Yes, the altima is sensible, its would be a smart decision, especially since I had them willing to make me a killer deal (they know where I work, and its month end)… but no, there’s more important things in this life than making the sensible choice. Especially when you can afford not to.