Cracker Barrel Stock up 27%

woah there, cracker barrel poppin' faster than a 'coon in a hound show, up 27% today. hashbrown casserole and okra anyone?

this trend of hedge fund action signficantly moving all these restauranteurs...unlocking value, essentially by spinning off non-core franchises owned by the companies (mcds begets chipotle, cracker barrel begets logans, wendys spawns tim hortons), lookout darden, red lobster and olive garden may be gettin' to the seperatin'.

The Powerpoint Virus

Some use it as a tool to convey information. Others use it as a tool to disguise lack of understanding. And like any technology, it has the capability to do good and bad in the universe. In case you felt your company was the only place it is used to confuse, a recent article on yahoo has the following statement from genentech's CEO:

"When Levinson sees signs of culture atrophy, he pounces, as he did in an e-mail to senior managers in December about "the spread of unintelligible, gibberish-laden PowerPoint presentations.... I have recently sat through several presentations that were simply incomprehensible -- mind-numbing, bloated discourses that were full of buzzwords and otherwise devoid of meaningful content. This is a serious problem, and the worst part is that it's spreading like the disease it is." (His abhorrence of corporate-speak helps explain why Levinson loathes consultants. "They suck you dry," he says.)"

Fun graphs of housing market overvaluation...

At overvalued.blogspot.com they are posting graphs of how various housing markets are deviating from the normal appreciation curve for real estate.

Bizweek article about Math careers...

I stumbled across a great read on some of the more interesting career opportunities for computer scientists and mathematicians in the next few years. You can take a read here.

a pill to remember...and a pill to forget...

Apparently, scientists are madly at work on a pill that helps you to forget stuff. They are speaking about targeting traumatic situations. Wow..methinks of the interesting implications of such a product.

The lack of posts recently is the hurried pace my life has taken in the annual review process at work, the preperations for 8 weeks sabbatical in australia and new zealand, and the 3 months after that i will be heading to shanghai.

Now, for the most part...this is good stuff, and i've learned alot about the relative competency of the average craigslist hound....i mean, who knew that there were so many people that surf the web that don't actually know how to read ?!? but i've had to prioritize posts lower than in the past. stay posted for pix as we tromp are way around down under!

Right now, I'm listening to some Dream Theater that Chad sent me....6 degrees of inner turbulence. good stuff.

Eminem acoustic "Lose Yourself" video

Was poking around video.google.com and found this acoustic rendition of "Lose Yourself"...now i just gotta reverse engineer that chord structure.

video is here , here's another one.

Heading home!

okay, officially done working for the YEAR.

Headed home for the holidays. A few days in P'burgh, then to good ole' e'ville:


Happy Holidays all!

Hamilton Mtn. Hike

This weekend Marty, Jodi, Stacey, and myself headed out to the gorge to do a little hike on Hamilton Mtn. The winds were crazy. We've had about a week of very cool (~30 degree weather) but very sunny weather, so we took advantage of it to take this hike, one of the best in the gorge and of perfect length. Took a few pix along the way and wanted to post a couple from the summit.

Two of the images above are from the summit ~2500 ft. Right as we were summiting a crazy intense storm was blowing in so we only spent a few very cold minutes at the top. was a great great time, and i got to try out my new uber xmas present jacket. the image at the top is a pix of 3 of us trying to stand up in the wind and not get blown off the side of the moutain. great way to spend a sunday afternoon!

New videogame designed to have no influence on kids behavior"

Scott sent me a link to this bit of entertainment:

"Tetris suggestively twisting and turning blocks, violent falling motions, and increasingly frenzied suspense are a potential influence on children," said video-game ethicist Steve Contreras. "By contrast, after playing Stacker, with its eternally unchanging shapes and gentle lowering actions, I doubt a child would ever want to arrange any sort of virtual block again. This is exactly what this controversial industry needed to rescue its reputation."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43441

The last console generation is here...yippee skippie!

This is the last console generation. Microsoft will spend billions smartly turf-fighting with Sony, and it is important for them to do so. I realize they expect to make money this time around, but its more important to minimize Sony influence before they provide a more profitable solution. Not that this is some nefarious plan, its just how I’m expecting things to play out. over the next 5 years very compelling horizontal solutions will emerge that are feature rich in the living room that minimizes the value of the console. The cycle is around 5 years (peak at 3-5, tail off for another 3-5, total lifecycle 10 year max). Dell is selling a reasonably equipped PC for $299 on their web site. The features are numerous: wireless controller, internet access, USB slots, hard drive, great graphics...is that the PC or the console I’m talking about? You can’t tell, can you? This new consumer device will emerge and dominate the living room.

And what pops out the other side? new machines…see…lots of people think games want to be in the living room so we can use that big ass TV…but that TV is actually a limitation of the display capabilities we have that are cheap enough to build with a $300 device. nothing is cheaper than free, and you already have a display, so they don't have to provide one...that changes soon.

So…the market goes horizontal in 2010-2012, then what? well, if you think your PSP rocks, wait until you don the goggles running tiny LCDs at high resolution from a device the same size and you can look around you with that light saber in your hands (ala the new Nintendo Revolution controller is a primitive realization). head mounted displays limitations have primarly been: latency, weight, and resolution. These will be overcome in our lifetimes.

and with that introduction...welcome the next revolution in gaming :)