PicoBusiness

I have found one fairly compelling case for a private cloud. In the organization I am currently working with, there are lots of laptops sitting around (because of a recent layoff). It would make a fair amount of sense to set those laptops up as “cloudable” assets, so they could be used by developers, testers, etc to

Example uses:

• Stress test clients for a new version of a software application
• Clustering servers for experiments with improving the scalability of an application
• Failover test infrastructure
• Slave build servers (for use by Hudson, for example)

This would considerably improve the effectiveness of the organization, without (I would hope) requiring significant new expense in terms of hardware and software. This isn’t a paradigm shift, but it would be a valuable way to reuse current resources.

I have gotten some pushback on my relative excitement over the student loan forgiveness concept.

And he makes a lot of good points. But I still maintain that, yes, if I’m going to have my money stolen from me, and transferred to others, I would rather that money go to people who graduated from college instead of people who bought big houses. I think that, across the spectrum of unpleasantly unfair things, that is the least unfair option.

I’m sure there are people out there who disagree – who would rather see the money go to homeowners. I respect that.

If you have other ideas on a more fair transfer of money from your pocket to someone elses, suggest it. As long as you understand – it is going to happen – someone is going to get the benefit of your hard work, and it is not going to be you, or anyone you love.

Instead of stimulating randomly, focus on forgiving student debt.

I think it makes a lot of sense, relative to other ideas – in other words, if we must have stimulus, this seems like a sensible way to do it. And I say this as someone who has no student debt.

Many of the commentors at HotAir are against it, pointing out that they did the GI bill or saved up so they could afford college, or worked hard to pay off their loans, blah blah blah.

They are correct, in the sense that it is not fair. But in the current environment, fair may not be achievable. The best we may be able to do is ‘not insanely unfair’. And this seems to fit the bill.

Variations:

• Instead of paying the entire loan, pay one or two year’s worth
• Instead of paying the loans, grant the students a year or two’s interest-free forebearance
• Waive all interest (or make it a tax credit)

In many ways, 2008 was a pretty crappy year for me.

• I lost a job
• I got a new job
• My dad lost a lung
• I lost a dog
• I lost another dog
• I misplaced a third dog, but it came back alive
• I lost a cat
• I moved
• I lost another job
• My wife left me
• I found a job, a second job and a third job
• I lost my home (i.e. the kids moved to a new house)
• I got nothing for Christmas

Just writing this down has been painful. But it was not all bad.

• I did some volunteer work for an organization that really deserved it
• I created a couple of neat open source projects
• I ran a marathon in November, something I would not have thought possible even as late as August
• I discovered that I was too hard on myself, and learned to stop beating myself up so much

I sometimes wonder if I would have given up those good things in order to keep the bad things from happening. But I’m not sure. Which, I guess, means that as bad as the bad has been, the good outweighs it.

So far, 2009 has been pretty decent. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

If you put 1000 people in barrels, and push them into the Niagara river, and they go over the falls, about 100 of them will survive. If you put those 100 people into new barrels, and push them over Niagara Falls again, about 10 of them will survive.

And those 10 people will all write books explaining how their specific backgrounds, life choices, etc, were the reason they survived.

Most people are control freaks. They do not like to accommodate randomness in their lives. It doesn’t “fit the narrative”

While also getting this:

I participated in this, so I suppose I should link to it

http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/blog/163-ways-how-to-become-an-entrepreneur

Eeek!

Whenever I read a book with a plot twist, I always write a review that says ‘It was a stupid book and you could see the plot twist coming a mile away’

With the image caption: ‘But it turns out that *I’m* the zombie’

It’s a pretty well known fact that safer cars result in drivers driving less safely.

I wonder how much the social safety networks lead to riskier behavior in average life – “I can buy this expensive thing on credit, because even if I lose my job, the government will help me out.”

I’m not saying it always happens. But immunity to the consequences of bad decisions has certainly humbled our financial sector, no?

I am also not saying we should dismantle our safety network, any more than I am suggesting we install one of these in our cars.

From WaPo, in my inbox:

Breaking News: U.S. Federal Deficit Soars Past Previous Estimates

*Ahem*

This just in!:

• Breaking news: Many humans like to drink beer
• Breaking news: The Great Pyramids of Egypt are very old
• Breaking news: Smoking hazardous to your health

Apparently no one knows how to exploit it yet.

Google Chrome was the one target left standing. Surprised?

There are bugs in Chrome but they’re very hard to exploit. I have a Chrome vulnerability right now but I don’t know how to exploit it. It’s really hard. The’ve got that sandbox model that’s hard to get out of. With Chrome, it’s a combination of things — you can’t execute on the heap, the OS protections in Windows and the Sandbox.

last year, about this time, my dad had a lung transplant, after about a year of struggling with a degenerative lung disease.

As if to demonstrate his attitude about the whole thing, he has a new email address: tim1lung

Given that aging is caused by the inevitable decay of the telomerase at the end of the DNA in each cell.

and

Given that most “beauty products” strip away the old, dying skin faster, thus, causing the underlying skin to oxidize more quickly than it normally would.

Then

Wouldn’t the use of “beauty products” actually cause the skin to age faster than it would otherwise – i.e. you’re seeing healthy skin in the short term, but in the longter term, you’re actually aging faster than if you did nothing.