Monday, December 22, 2008

Concerts

Janelle's post about Christmas music got me thinking about concerts I've been to.

The first one was an Amy Grant Concert I went to with my mom in 1989. I was 12, and I didn't know any better.

The next concert that I recall attending wouldn't have been until I was about 16 in 1993 or so when I saw the Rolling Stones on the Voodoo Lounge tour.

After that it's kind of a blur. I saw about 50 bands in the following 3 or 4 years. Some of those included: Green Day, the Offspring, Bad Religion, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Steely Dan, I Mother Earth, the Tea Party, Collective Soul, Silverchair, Junkhouse, the Watchmen, Everclear, The Riverdales, Rhymes with Orange, Zucherbaby, Dodgy, the Philosopher Kings, the Afghan Wigs, Jewel, April Wine, Neil Young, Finger Eleven, Earth Crisis, etc etc etc. If you haven't heard of some of those it's because their Canadian.

Then in the summer of 2000 I went to the Warped tour where I saw Green Day again, as a well as NOFX, Pappa Roach, the Long Beach Dub All Stars, and a whole bunch of less memorable bands

Since then my concert-going activities have been much more sparse. I saw Def Leppard about 3 years ago. I saw the Beach Boys around that same time. That was fun. I went to Styx & Boston here in Phoenix just a few month ago. That was kind of fun too. I've meant to go to several more that didn't work out -mostly because I'm way too busy. I'd still like to see Bon Jovi, Elton John, AC/DC, Paul McCartney, Muse, Pearl Jam, and a few others.

That's my concert history in a nutshell.

Monday, December 15, 2008

What have I been up to?

For the 0.5 people who regularly read my blog, I must apologize for neglecting it. I've been spending a bit more time than I'd like to have spent on school. I've been taking this Digital Media Entrepreneurship class over at the Cronkite School at the downtown Phoenix campus. This past Thursday was the deadline for our final project, Boomstick, which is finished, but still not accessible to the public.

I've also been working on a different project, this one for my Customer Relationship Management class. This project is a market research project that I've been working on for Siemens Building Technologies, which is headquartered in Chicago. We are tentatively scheduled for later this week to go to their offices in Chicago to present the results of our study to them. So that's added a bit of pressure to do a good job.

We've also been planning a trip to Disneyland and Sea World with the kids during the first week of January, and I'm planning on going to San Francisco for a three-day Marketing Club trip the week after I go to Southern California.

Apart from all that, and the two other classes I'm taking, and working at Bard Biopsy Systems, and all the family Christmas planning activities, that's all I've been up to.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Today's headlines...

Auto Bailout Talks Collapse

Auto bailout talks collapse over union wages

U.S. auto bailout package dies in Senate

It's Over: Auto Rescue Bill Fails in Senate, Voting 52-35

Rescue Bill Dies: End of the Road for Big Auto?

Auto Deal Collapses

Auto bailout talks collapse

Breaking News 11:29 PM ET:
Auto Bailout Talks Collapse in the Senate

"Three Words" Sink Auto Bailout In Senate

Car bailout falters in US senate

Auto bailout dies in Senate after compromise talks fail.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Detroit 'Big 3' Metaphor:

“The situation can be likened to a lifeboat with three passengers, one has gangrene from his toes to his bellybutton. That’s Chrysler. Another, GM, is a 350-pound man, and there’s a 250-pound man, Ford. There’s only enough food on board for two thin men. So who should get the food?”

from Bloomberg.com

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Canon EOS 450D (Digital Rebel XSi)

We ordered a new camera a couple of weeks ago. Chrissy has been collecting AirMiles reward points for about 15 years, and we decided to finally redeem some of them.

Our old camera, a Sony DSC-V1, takes great photos, but lately we've been having some issues with it. When we were at the Grand Canyon it ran out of batteries. And the last couple of batches of photos have all been out of focus in the top left corner. We got that camera in 2004 when Laela was 7 months old just before we took her to Mexico for the first time, and just before my sister Brooklyn's wedding.

So we were trying to decide which camera was best and we pretty much settled on either the Nikon D60 or the Canon EOS 450D. Both are great cameras, but the kind folks over at dpreview.com convinced me that the Canon would yield superior picture quality across more diverse conditions. So that's the one we settled on.

For some reason this camera has three different names depending on where you buy it. In Japan it's called the Kiss X2,



in the USA and Canada it's called the Digital Rebel XSi,




and in the rest of the world it's called the EOS 450D.




note - it's interesting how the layout turned out nothing like it was supposed to!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008


From TIME:

"At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks."

"He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one."

Monday, November 24, 2008

Binary


8-bit:

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
=64+32+16+8+4+2+1
=127

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
=64+1
=65

0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1
=4+2+1
=7

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
=1

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Why is NBC TV show online viewing so difficult?

I was trying to watch Heroes today with Chrissy, whose birthday is was. For some reason watching shows on NBC.com works well only about 60% of the time. Why can youtube have millions of perfectly-functioning videos, but NBC not? iTunes always works too for that matter.


The question then becomes: is NBC inherently defective, or does the problem simply lie with the people that work at NBC? Regardless of your political affiliation I'm sure you agree with me that it has to be both, because that would also explain the awful coverage of the Olympics and the company's apparent refusal to replace the peacock with a dancing bear -which would be way more hilarious.

From now on I may be forced to watch TV on the TV. No, I'm just kidding.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Happy 450th Anniversary Queen Elizabeth!

Did you know that Queen Elizabeth has been queen for 450 years? She was crowned on November 17, 1558.

Oh, someone just told me that wasn't the same Queen Elizabeth.

Never mind, I guess.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Living on the Beach


Our family has spent the past four days staying in a condo overlooking the Sea of Cortez in Puerto PeƱasco, Sonora.

Every time I come to Mexico I can't help but try to figure out a way to not have to leave. Even Laela and Ivy have been asking if we can stay here.

Living in AZ has made it a lot easier (and cheaper) to come down here, but the 4.5 hour drive, combined with the less-than-flexible MBA schedule, is just enough to prevent us from coming more than about once a year.

We were lucky enough this time to be here at the same time as the annual Rocky Point Biker Rally (or whatever it's called). I don't understand how it's pleasant to spend time on the beach in boots, black jeans, and black long-sleeve Harley t-shirts, but to each their own I suppose.

I'll maybe post pictures sometime, either here or elsewhere.

Cheers

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Election Day


Happy election day everyone.
Hopefully this president won't be both evil AND a complete moron.
Then again, we didn't necessarily know that about GWB in 2000 did we?

Monday, November 03, 2008

Missing Canoe

Having something stolen is one of the most aggravating things that can happen.

I had a cop over this evening. He pretty much said that there's nothing we could have done. Even if it was locked up someone would've taken it if they wanted to.

Right now there's an ad on craigslist that matches the description pretty closely. He's selling a red Coleman canoe for $100 ($200 less than any other ads I've seen recently). He also says he's had it for years but he's not sure how long it is. Sounds suspicious to me.

The cop told me that IF we had the canoe registered or something (canoes don't have to be registered in AZ) then they could act on an ad like that, but that in this case we'd have to carry-out a sting operation ourselves. There is a registration number on the canoe from 1997, but it's not linked to us in any way via any sort of paperwork.

The worst part is that this is my week off from school. I would have been using the canoe a lot more this week than usual.


Sunday, November 02, 2008

Someone stole our canoe right out of the back yard! It was tied up to the dock and everything. Who does that? I'm so mad that I don't even know what to say.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Regression Analysis


If you don't know what this means, you're missing out!

Regression analysis is a statistical method that allows you (among other things) to determine how well a set of variables can predict another set of variables. There are all sorts of caveats and conditions, but I've been spending a lot of time figuring out how it works.

If you only have one set of dependent variables and one set of independent variables, then the formula is:

beta[x]=(sum((xi-avg[X])*(yi-avg[Y]))/sum((xi-avg[x])^2)

and

intercept = avg[Y]-(beta[X]/avg[X])

Then any new x variable can be multiplied by beta[x] and then added to the intercept, and that gives you your predicted value of y.

Simple huh?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Final Exams

Final exams start for me today. This is the fourth of six 10-week trimesters in my 2-year MBA program.

Final exams are generally anti-climactic. I never feel really great coming out of them; but then again, they never really change my grades that much.

After finals are done I get a whole week off school. That means I actually get to see my daughters every single day for a whole week! It will be fun, and hopefully we'll get to do lots of cool stuff like going to the zoo, the planetarium, hiking, etc.

I was going to add canoeing to that list, but we do that almost every day anyway. That's our standard after-dinner/before bed activity.

Today whilst canoeing, we got about one foot away from a big turtle sitting on a little platform on the lake. He was alone this time, but I've seen as many as nine turtles all piled up on that same little platform. I'll add a picture sometime if I remember.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

I like living in AZ

I'm sitting here in the back yard studying for final exams and I just can't believe how nice it is.

There are turtles and ducks swimming by, the palm trees are swaying in the gentle breeze, and the temperature is perfect.

Not bad for the end of October!

Who knew that Arizona had such a great climate?

Well, probably the other 4 million people who live in Phoenix. And everyone who comes here from Canada for the winter. I'm sure they knew.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Barack Obama



We here on the editorial board of JJ Olsen have decided to officially endorse Barack Obama as our pick in the 2008 presidential elections.

This decision wasn't reached easily. We had to weigh how many times we had seen each candidate in-person, and that wasn't an easy task.

Well, it was kind of easy.



As the photos clearly demonstrate, I had a very up close and personal encounter with Mr. Obama and a few others. And that is enough of a reason to make this endorsement. Also, the decision of John McCain to appoint an embarrassingly unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate made it easier.


That's all. You can all go back to whatever it was you were doing.

Friday, October 24, 2008

AZ is Cold & Dark!


This morning at 5:15 when I left the house for work, it was as dark as it is in the middle of the night. It reminded me of when I worked as a landscaper in Edmonton in December 1997 when it was dark until 10:00 AM.
It felt almost as cold as Edmonton too!


This is my first blog entry via phone.
I just thought you should know that.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Quotes:



I'm retiring this from facebook and sticking it here. They both come up with hilarious lines every day, but I'm not quick enough to write them all down.

Laela: "Mommy, do you know what would be inconvenient?
If you shoot your mother with a cannon."

(Ivy gets in bed with us in the middle of the night)
Chrissy: "Is there a lizard crawling around in here?"
Me: "No, it's just Ivy"
Chrissy: "I mean besides Ivy"
Ivy: "There were 2 Swipers!"

IVY: Daddy, I have something very 'portant to tell you.
ME: Yes Ivy?
IVY: Cat poo poo! Ha ha ha!
(you can't make this stuff up)

LAELA: Mom, can I tell you something?
CHRISSY: Yes Laela.
LAELA: Did you know that I'm an ape and a candle?

Laela (while getting her fingernails clipped): "Mommy, do you think they're scared because we're killing them?"

LAELA (While deciding whether or not to email anybody a flash-based parade float that she made in a PBS-Kids online game):
"I don't want to send this one to anyone. It would break their brain. I don't want anyone's brain to be broken."

"Daddy, I miss the dwarf Tyler. He's a DWARF! A DWARF! Daddy, do you know what a dwarf is?"
-Laela Olsen

--also--

LAELA: "When I grow up I'm going to be a magician."
IVY: "I'm going to be a train station!"

--and finally--

Laela: "I know what it's like to be dead...but I'm not going to tell you...for lots of reasons. It would take all night."

Monday, October 13, 2008

JJ Olsen -Author


I recently finished writing my autobiography.

It is less than 1,200 characters long because that is all the space that the Blogger "about me" text field would accept.

Now that I'm an accomplished author I think that I will take some time off to do research for my next book...

Tuesday, October 07, 2008


Sun Microsystems


Tomorrow I'm going to listen to the Chairman of Sun Microsystems speak. I think it's pretty cool to hear from people like this, but that opinion is not shared strongly by my fellow MBA students. I've been trying to invite just 5 people. So far, of the 10 or so people I've spoken to, only 3 of them have confirmed they will come.
It's almost as if nobody is interested in UNIX or the Java programing language! I just don't understand it. We need more nerds to get MBAs.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Cockroaches


Today Chrissy found a large cockroach in Tim's fishbowl. Tim is Laela's Betta Fish. The cockroach was just floating there, and Tim wasn't paying any attention to it. I didn't know that cockroaches could climb into fishbowls.

Ah, the joys of living in Arizona!

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

BASIC.
I've been an 'amateur' computer programmer since I was a teenager. I wrote a program this morning on the bus with "Palm Basic" on my Palm Treo 755p. It pretty much just approximates the functionality of an Etch-a-Scetch.
I decided to post here.

print "Welcome to Etch-a-755p"
print "PLEASE SELECT BRUSH:"
print " 'a' for inverted"
input " 'b' for draw: "ll$
print""
input "Need Instructions? (y/n) "i$
cls:print""
if i$="y" then print "up/dn: up/dn buttons ", ,"left/right: mail/home buttons","exit: phone button"
print"":input "'Enter' to start... "vv
cls:m=80:n=80
do until keydown(4)=1
a=a+keydown(2)
b=b+keydown(3)
c=c+keydown(6)
d=d+keydown(7)
x=n+d-c
y=m+b-a
if x > 159 then x= x -159
if x < 1 then x = x + 159
if y > 159 then y = y -159
if y < 1 then y = y + 159
if ll$="a" then invertline x,y,x+1,y+1 else drawline x,y,x+1,y+1
loop:cls
print""
print" 'menu' + 'R' to start again..."
print""
print" 'menu' + 'E' to edit code..."

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

UBUNTU
I use Linux on my main computer. Linux is an operating system like Windows, but it doesn't have all those broken parts like Windows does. It's a lot more like Mac OS X, but you have a lot more control over the way everything works. Anyone can install Linux on their computer. All you need is a free* CD. Ubuntu is the easiest 'version' of Linux for a beginner to install. You can download it for free.


*of course nothing is actually free. You have to buy a blank CD and burn the Ubunutu installer onto it.

Monday, September 29, 2008



OK,
So it turns out I've been a "blogger" for nearly 5 years now. Who knew. Quite a prolific one at that I might add.

For those of you who don't know what I look like, see the picture on the left.

The picture on the right is a 'tesseract' which is the 4-dimentional analogue of a cube. There will be a test on that so make sure you understand it.

Our family went to parent-teacher-student conferences this morning at Laela's school. Her teacher said: "Laela is really good at everything she does." So now Laela is going to have an even more over-inflated ego! Her teacher did say that Laela needs a bit of practice writing in complete sentences, which is fine given that some kids in her class are still working on writing individual letters. Ivy spent the whole time passing gas, so that Laela's classroom would smell really nice when all the other kids arrived.