The Lakers

I flipped open the newspaper this morning as was suprised to see so much drama in Lakerville. Overnight, two major things happened. First, Phil Jackson will not be the coach of the Lakers next year. Second, Shaq wants to leave the Lakers in a trade to another team. I expected the first, not the second.
Coach Jackson is taking the fall for the Kobe/Shaq personality trouble that refuses to go away. So be it. Phil’s made $30 million in the last five years, he was paid well to be the scapegoat in the end.
Shaq on the other hand is a different story. I like Shaq the player and lockerroom sound bite creator, but Shaq the business man is a problem. For all the good he’s done the Lakers, at this point, he’s become a problem. Instead of riding the gravy train a bit longer, he’s got to rock the boat, simply because he can.
Take a look at the salary structure of the Lakers:

Player

2003/04 Salary

Shaquille O’Neal $26,223,215
Kobe Bryant $13,497,500
Gary Payton $4,897,000
Rick Fox $4,549,500
Devean George $4,545,000
Derek Fisher $3,000,000
Stanislav Medvedenko $1,500,000
Karl Malone $1,475,833
Kareem Rush $1,096,000
Horace Grant $1,070,000
Bryon Russell $1,070,000
Brian Cook $752,800
Jamal Sampson $563,679
Luke Walton $366,931
Jannero Pargo $194,156
Maurice Carter $40,770
Ime Udoka $24,462
TOTALS: $64,499,915

To put this more visually and understandable, here’s a simple graph:


Notice that of the cost of Shaq is more than 15 of the 17 players on the Lakers. Kobe makes HALF of what Shaq makes. It’s out of whack.
Shaq is probably the most dominant player in the game now, but he’s 32 and fading. For all his skills, he’s not in top shape and isn’t playing in every game. He’s got a few more great years ahead of him, but you need to compare him to Kobe. And to top it off, next year his salary goes up by FIVE million dollars.
Kobe is 25. If he stays out of jail, the next five years will be Kobe’s best ever. He is the best player in the NBA, PERIOD. Offense, defense, speed, health, Kobe’s got it all. Best of all, he handles pressure as well as anyone in the league. And he’s getting better.
So if you are the management of the Lakers you can see that giving Shaq an INCREASE, which he’s been asking for, is nearly impossible. The money just doesn’t work. Shaq, for all his skill, costs too much to field a great team going forward. With his guaranteed increase and the desire for even more money, where will the Laker Management find the cash under the salary cap? Who will they cut?
For all the drama facing the Lakers, Shaq has made it easy for them. By leaving, the Lakers will probably get three top players in trade for Shaq. The salary cap problem is broken, and the team can coalesce around rising Kobe. The Lakers will become a team of speed and multiple shooters, like the Pistons who just spanked the Lakers.
Yes, the Lakers will have to face Shaq on another team, but the way to play Shaq has been made clear. Speed is the thing that Shaq cannot handle now. He simple is going to get outrun and outshot on a team without a partner the caliber of Kobe.
I’ll miss the Big Aristole, but it’s his pride that is doing the damage to the Lakers, not Kobe’s lack of sharing.

Trends by AT&T

Last night I went to dinner and met Hossein Eslambochi, the CTO and CIO of AT&T. It was a speech/dinner with other media tech people from companies like Sony & Tribune. I spoke with Hossein briefly and he’s a bright, truly technical person. Unlike many ‘buzzword and hand waving’ types, he understands the underlying technical issues and can talk intelligently about them. A rare ability in the modern world of CTOs where MBAs often take precedence over engineering types.
Hossein gave a brief talk about AT&T and what they are doing these days. Much of is was standard mom & apple pie customer focus talk, but he did give his Top Ten Trends. I thought you all might be interested.
10. Information mining will transform the way we do business
          Personalization and customization will become the norm.
9. Home LANs will proliferate
          Use of home LANs for telephone service, dual cellular/wifi phones
8. Wireless & wired lines will converge – accelerating virtualization
          Seamless connectivity
7. Security is critical
6. Death of Locality
          IP based environment eliminates the role of geography
5. Convergence of communications & computers will be a reality
          Convergence of phone & computers will outshine convergence of television & computers
4. Sensor networks will be everywhere
          All items and people will have IP addresses and be tracked
3. Wireless internet will be big
          Not what we are used to, more like 40-50Mb/s everywhere you go
2. Broadband will be common
          As common as telephones are today
1. IP will eat everything
          90-95% of the worlds communications will be via IP traffic
I don’t agree with everything, but the everywhereness of net connectivity is reassuring to hear from AT&T, the people would actually have to carry it out. With them sticking to standards based technology, hopefully the future will arrive with an abundance of choices instead of difficult choices between incompatible systems.

Neato MT tag trick

I was checking my referrer logs and saw a link from Disarranging Mine. I took a look and found an interesting tidbit of information.
Marie had stumbled onto my weblog and noticed even the small detail of my copyright notice at the bottom of the page. She made an excellent observation that my dates were wrong and showed how to keep them up to date.
I implemented the change and am quite happy. Thanks Marie, you rock.

Tracking the Coyotes

Last night while goofing off on the computer I heard the coyotes outsdie begin to howl. Soon the neighborhood dogs were barking up a storm in jealous rivalry. Obviously, the coyotes had found yet another meal in the wilderness that is South Pasadena.
After work and dinner today, I took the girls for a walk behind the house to the righ-of-way area where I last saw the coyotes. I told them we were looking for coyotes and coyotes signs. The said, “What are coyote signs?” “Dead animals.”, I replied.
Off we went. Not 100 yards into the walk, did we find the first cat remains. I poked at them and we discussed what part of the cat they were. The girls weren’t squeamish, just eager to find more. After a bit more, we found the first skull.


Obviously a cat skull, the coyotes must have had a nice meal from this little feline. As we wandered were found the remains of at least four cats, possibly six. Four different furs and large distances between the remains mean well fed coyotes. We found a second skull that was even larger and still had stink coming from it.
We found several places with feathers strewn about. Even Bluejay feathers, so the cats were quite busy as well. The best was finding a cat collar that was still closed. There were teeth marks on the leather, so you know the coyotes played with it a while as they devoured the poor kitty.

Here’s what the remains of a leg looked like. It didn’t smell bad and the fur still felt smooth.
When we got home, we told Michele about our adventure and she wants to go see for herself. Perhaps we’ll head up to another unexplored part of the right-of-way tomorrow.
So get your ass up from the computer, get yourself outside, and see what carnage is going on in your neighborhood.

Offer to former weblogs.com people

If you were one of the people that lost their weblog at weblogs.com I’d like to help get you back on your feet.
I pay for server space that is home to 30+ friends and family sites. Adding another 4-5 people won’t kill me. It’s full featured hosting with shell access.
So if you need some webspace, and you are one of the weblogs.com homeless, drop me an email. I’ll formally offer a year of hosting for free at a minimum, no editorial interference. I’m busy enough providing tech support to my wife and mother’s sites, so I hope you are semi-tech proficient.
I can’t help everyone, but I’ll do my part to help a little.

Wierdness in the Blogosphere

Let’s see here.
SixApart announces they will charge for their software and the Blogosphere comes unglued.
Dave Winer kills several thousand weblogs and barely a peep.
Here’s a Netcraft article on the debacle (via Halley)
So in summary:
SixApart gives away something for free, addresses money concerns, announces pricing scheme that includes free version, community views them as a ‘sellout’.
Winer gives away something for free, address money concerns, kills several thousand weblogs with no warning, community says ‘people should be grateful’.
WTF?

Cavalcade of stuff

Lots of stuff to debrief you about…
Riddick
Michele and I went to see Chronicles of Riddick. If they remove the middle third of the movie it would be great. In the middle, they go to some planet full of cool special effects, but entirely lacking in plot or storyline. Sure, red space lion things are cool, but why are they in the movie.
If you want to see Riddick kill lots of zerging mullet-headed space bag guys and take his sunglasses off many times, go see the movie.
Daughters
My daughter spent most of their weekend with Michele’s mom. They are tired but happy. I feel so blessed that Zoe and Mira have 6 loving grandmothers and grandfathers in their life. The see little anger and tons of love. With a childhood such as this, we know that they will turn out to be wonderful adults. I feel like a bad dad when I say things about going to bed, eating too much candy, and brushing teeth, but it’s my job.
Bruce Sterling’s daughter is posting on his weblog. Cool stuff. To top it off, she plays Lineage II and uses the word ‘suxxored’ correctly. I can easily see my daughters heading down this road in a few years.
Internet guy
There’s a guy on the internet that invented some cool stuff several years ago. I appreciate the good work. Since then it appears to me that he has mainly sat around and whined daily about the rest of the world. Other smart people like Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, Gene Spafford, and other have quietly continued to work toward making the net a better place with their ego firmly in check. This other guy’s ego is out of control. It kinda pisses me off that other people think he’s someone that people should listen to about current issues. It’s fine if he wants to rest on laurels, but he should stop taking pot shots at people trying to do good new things. I removed his feed from my aggregator and will stop reading his constant stream of effluvium. I suggest you do the same if you have any idea what I’m talking about.
Cargo
The latest issue of Cargo is out. It remains a Cruft Recommendation. Articles on cocktail gear, laptops, the science of anti-perspirants, and even a convincing article on pedicures. Squidly says to look at Sync Magazine, but until then, Cargo still gets the thumbs-up.
Fahrenheit 9/11
I watched the trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11. Boy, the conservatives are going to come completely unglued when this comes out. While I may not agree with everything Moore says and does, I have to agree with Teddy Roosevelt that “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Public Comment

Last night I went to a City Council Meeting to speak publically as I am wont to do.
The basic issue was whether the city should replace a stable that borders the Arroyo Seco Park with the 13th soccer field in the city. I think not.
At 6:30PM the meeting convened,


The special committee that worked for seven months presented their results to the council and the assembled masses. The committee recommended that the stables remain and felt there were serious problem with the soccer plan.
The crowd was 90% made up of stable supporters.

One after one the public got up and spoke there piece. After a number of these meetings, I’ve come to realize that most people don’t have a clue on how to make a point. There are basically two flawed methods they use, the Ramble, and the Script Read. In the case of the Ramble, the person gets to the mic and simply can’t make a point, they wander off into personal anecdotes that mean nothing. In the Script Read, they start rattling off a list of facts a figures quickly, making no eye contact and lacking all emotion.
I prefer the Previous Support method. When trying to convince the Council of something, you need to tie it to their previous support of another issue. By mentioning their stance on another issue, you appear to show respect and agreement with them. This makes them suggestive to your point. You then make an apt compairison to the current issue, explaining how their previous reasoning still applies.
The majority of speakers were in support of the stables and the general tone was running against the soccer fields. The last public speaker was the owner of the stables. Rather than basking in the warm glow of support, thanking his supporters, and offering to work with the city to address any concerns, he took and angry tone. Stupid move. He stridently argued about how he was doing nothing wrong and how the city had failed him in settling things. Deeper and deeper he dug his hole.
I left after three hours, while the council was still discussing what to do. In the end, they are probably not going to put in the soccer fields, but most likely they will entertain other offers on running an equestrian center there.
I tell you, the more I see of politics at the local level, the more I both love and fear it. Do yourself a favor, go to the next city council meeting in your town. You won’t be disappointed.

Autodiscovery & feeds

In the comments of my last post, Jason mentioned that my RSS feed did not have full posts. That’s true, but not entirely. The confusion is over what feeds I have and how they are declared.
Jason and I emailed a bit over this and I’ll steal from his replies liberally to explain things. I briefly met Jason at SXSW and he’s quite the web/blog/syndication saavy guy. Consider him getting full props for the meat of this post.
What Jason mentioned was that my RSS feed did not have full posts. The RSS 1.0 feed I was using didn’t.
I had three different feeds:
RSS 1.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.rdf -> not full feeds
RSS 2.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.xml -> full feeds
Atom -> https://www.cruftbox.com/atom.xml -> full feeds
So there were two things I was doing wrong. I didn’t think that RSS 1.0 could have full posts. I was wrong, you actually can. Jason shared with me a RSS 1.0 Full Post template for MovableType that I put in place.
The second thing I was doing wrong was that I was ‘advertising’ that I only had a RSS 1.0 feed. The syndication aggregator I use parses the page looking for possible feeds, so I never saw this problem.
In the main index of the page, there are link tags that explicitly call out where feeds are located so that an aggregator knows exactly where to find your feeds. The only link I had called out was the one for RSS 1.0.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.rdf" />
I wasn’t specifically calling out my Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds. To do that, I added these lines to my main index file.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="https://cruftbox.com/atom.xml" />
I decided that while I wouldn’t get rid of the RSS 1.0 feed, I wouldn’t advertise it any more. For all intents and purposes, I am telling the world that I only have Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds.
Make sense? Thanks again to Jason for his keen eye.