Daily crono / On personalities of IT-administrators / Battle of trees continues /…

Daily crono

Fridays are always long days, and this one was one of the longest. We always have the air transport policy seminar in the morning - this time it was exceptionally good as we are now getting more and more focused and start to put the final report together. Also, I start to learn more about the way policy making works in USA, which seems to be more complex and partisan than in Finland. Then, some Bengali food, which is another Friday tradition. After that, the not so super fast and demanding technology strategy class. I was getting bored, but I managed by resorting to all kinds of fidgeting. It always helps. Then I visited the dentist, and was surprised to realize that the MIT dental is not expensive at all. They take $103 from my wallet after taking one tooth out of my mouth. A reasonable deal. The rest of the evening was dedicated to technology strategy. We managed to finish the remaining two case study write-ups in less than 6 hours of work (some 7 hours of wall clock time including visits to the Subway and the Star Market). It was lean studying at its best. I encourage everyone else to take lean studying into use. It does help.

On personalities of IT-administrators

It occurred to me today, that a person who is doing any kind of IT-administration, needs to have a special strait of personality. Namely, the administrator has to get cooler and calmer, when a situation gets hotter and more threatening. So, one should use similar tests when hiring administrators as one uses when hiring e.g firefighters or commandos. Interesting?

Battle of trees continues

I got to know, that it is not the local forest owners who are cutting down the old-growth forests in the northern Finland. It is actually one arm of the Finnish state itself. This makes is doubly stupid: it would be easier and maybe even cheaper just to give the local people some money for not cutting the trees. But again, being reasonable is sometimes not a politically reasonable.

Clever marketing

The marketing system in USA must be really good. One of the best proofs of it is the fact, that so many people are carrying water bottles to everywhere, and drinking all the time. It is not really necessary for a human to drink during an 1.5 hour lecture - I am sure most of American were not drinking during lectures, say, 10 years ago. And even if it were necessary to drink, it is definitely not necessary to pay more for drinking water than for gasoline; especially when MIT is full of drinking fountains, and completely potable water pours out of any faucet. So, marketing has first created an excessive need to drink, and then an excessively expensive way of getting the water to drink. (The pictures on the left and right are taken from Kumar's penthouse apartment)

Order of names

When writing or preparing a presentation in a group, one has to write down the names of authors in the paper/presentation in some order. In scientific, refereed papers, the order follows the amount of contribution: the main contributor gets his/her name first. But when doing something not so serious, I have noticed another convention: the person who is actually writing the paper/report/presentation, puts his/her own name last. At least this is what my experience tells me.

Good things in USA, part 9

I have started to get help by email and I welcome any additional ideas. So, send my yours!. I include them to the list, if I consider the proposed thing good. Today's additions are: 78. GPS. 79. Jeans. 80. Blues (I used to own all J.J.Cale's records up to 1992). 81. Grocery stores, which are open until midnight. 82. Velcro. 83. Core-tex. 84. John Steinbeck. 85. Norman Mailer. 86. Copycops. 87. Apple computers.

Blogs of the day

The infamous Special Interest Group has its own blog. Unfortunately, it is mostly in Finnish, but then again, the SIG convenes in Finland anyway.
Much more serious is the the story about the situation in Iraq as told by Raed in the middle. The cost of this all, just for US taxpayers far exceeds $300 billion at the moment. The financial losses of Iraqis are unknown, as is the number of murdered civilians, which is estimated to be way over 100000. And all these numbers are growing by the way. It is a pity, that a democracy can lead to this kind of situations.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs April 2005".