Liquid Egg Product

Success-Oriented Planning

This phrase appears in an article by Gregg Easterbrook from the unfathomably distant 1980, describing the financial disasters of the Space Shuttle program even before the first shuttle had taken off.

As it turns out, NASA’s concept of “success-oriented planning” needed a little tweaking to be useful in the real world:

But NASA had made its $5 billion to $6 billion projection based on “success-oriented planning.” That means it assumed everything would work the first time. Budgets were drawn as if redesigns would never be needed, as if no contingencies would arise, as if 520-second engine tests could be conducted with 300-second tanks.

Of course, NASA planners knew everything would not work the first time.

When a phrase sounds like gobbledygook, it probably is gobbledygook.

August 14th, 2007 no comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under History, Science/Technology

Spoon feed me the answers, please

As the candidate search goes forward, I’ve been slowly compiling a list of interview questions based on the candidate’s stated programming experience (C++, VB.NET, etc.)

A simple Yahoo! or Google search will yield a plethora of potential questions and answers if one will just take a little effort to look. This guy, Mark Wagner, had posted potential C# interview questions with answers and some helpful readers posted corrections and improvements.

Then there’s the people who want to snowball a potential employer into thinking they know more than they do, but are too lazy to do it themselves…

Questions are really helpful…

please send me C#,VB.NET and Web Services questions with ANSWERS on
ch.debarati@yahoo.co.in

Hi friends,
I am preparing for an interview, I would be very grateful if you can you send me the most frequently asked questions for C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET to fred_bry@sbcglobal.net.

Hey Friends,

As i m preparing for interview, please send me C#,ASP.NET and Web Services questions with ANSWERS on nasar_15oct@yahoo.com email address .

Thanking u in advance

Regards

Nasar.

yeah this materila is good,but its not sufficient.if u add little more to it,its better.anyone pls post me the .Net(C# and ASP.Net ) and SQL Server interview questions with answers to my mail id which is murali_june@yahoo.com

August 14th, 2007 4 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology, Weaksauce Losers

Why people have sex

According to University of Texas researchers, it feels good.

Well. Glad that one’s settled.

August 1st, 2007 2 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

I can’t believe I’m trying 3D Mailbox

One of my friends came across the unorthodox 3D Mailbox recently, and felt it was so odd, he had to share it with someone.

He said it was “too frightening” to try. However, unable to resist the siren call of representing all my e-mail as bikini-clad babes, I’ve downloaded it to see if it’s worth using.

The good:

It’s a creative idea. The ability to represent e-mail as a scantily-clad member of the opposite sex is a great hook (you can specify male, female, or mix).
They’re developing other “levels”, which will hopefully add variety and maintain interest. The next one is Los Angeles Airport, where the e-mails are represented by jets.

The bad:

Why can’t we move the camera freely? The camera locations are preset, and there are two levels of zoom. While this should be sufficient for usage, it’s annoying.
Their webpage claims “With over 60 camera angles, music and sound effects, you’ll never be bored!”, but I suspect it’ll get old fairly quickly.
Getting more levels and no watermarks on outgoing mail costs $30.

The ugly:

The program seems to eat up an awful lot of computer processor for the level of complexity of the graphics.
It can’t possibly be true that 40 people worked on this.

At first, I was a bit surprised at how much vitriol the program’s received (for example, here, here, here, and here). But now I understand. It’s not that good. And if I ever want to look at computer generated chicks in bathing suits, I can pretty much roll my own if necessary.

July 28th, 2007 2 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under CG, Science/Technology

Cell phones

I hate the idea of being expected to be available all the time. Wasn’t there a time in human history when we didn’t have to worry about getting random and/or inconvenient calls every hour of the day?

Not that people call me all the time, but I hate having to have this conversation:

“Donnie, why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”
“Well. Maybe I was sleeping or busy or something when you called.”

Learn this:

The Liquid Egg Product Law of Cell Phones
Having a cell phone <> 24/7 availability

July 25th, 2007 10 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

It’s like, the news, man

The Democrats held their YouTube debate last night, but I didn’t watch it. Who thought Dennis Kucinich was relevant enough to invite there? The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m voting against Giuliani if he gets the GOP nomination.

Jonathan Alter’s article on Norman Borlaug is an excellent read. An excerpt:

But the obscurity of a man of such surpassing accomplishment is a reminder of our culture’s surpassing superficiality. Reading Walter Isaacson’s terrific biography of Albert Einstein, I was struck by how famous Einstein was, long before his role in the atom bomb. Great scientists and humanitarians were once heroes and cover boys. No more.

There’s a saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Castleberry’s may disagree.

It’s certain that the male customers were not complaining.

July 24th, 2007 no comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under In the News, Science/Technology

On the phone with United #2

Not as bad as I thought. Had to call twice (this was company business, BTW). The voice used for their automated system seems random–there’s at least one female and one male voice.

Both the agents were female native English speakers, and understood everything I said. Definitely an added bonus. Although getting “Bob” from Sri Lanka would have made a more interesting story.

July 23rd, 2007 no comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

Big Liquid Egg Product is watching you

A couple days ago, the Reassembler was curious as to whether tagging a post with David Beckham would result in a traffic increase. (It didn’t.) That gave me the bright idea of posting about this site’s web stats and visitor profile. You know, because it’s so compelling. A month or so ago, I signed up with Performancing Metrics–they have a plethora of information, and you other bloggers may like to check it out. And don’t worry about being “spied” on; it’s not like I can get your home address or credit card number. Yet.

Searches:
There’s a good degree of interest in Manuel Uribe, the world’s fattest man.
Despite mentioning Jared from Subway only once in passing, people occasionally stumble their way here looking for him.
A few people got here via “400 lbs man”.
In other words, Liquid Egg Product is a good source for news about the ridiculously obese.

Computers you use:
As expected, IE is the dominant browser, with Firefox a significant minority. Almost everyone uses Windows.
A screen resolution of 1024×768 is more popular than all the others combined. One of you uses 1900×1280, and I think I know who it is. I’m curious to find out your monitor size.

Worldwide reach:
Most visitors are American (also very expected). Other countries represented are Canada, Singapore, Spain, Germany, Italy, India, Venezuela, Australia, Great Britain, Portugal, and Malaysia.

One of the most interesting things, though, I’ve found is this: I don’t seem to have a good handle on people’s tastes. Some of the posts I find most compelling generate little traffic, but other posts that (in my estimation) are dreadfully mundane gather more interest.

(CLARIFICATION: Did that last paragraph made it sound like I was disappointed or something? This is definitely not the case. It was more a curiosity than anything.)

July 23rd, 2007 7 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

Praying for well-commented code

Today, I finally get to restart on one of the major projects that I need to finish. For the five weeks, we’ve been putting out one huge fire so I’ve not had a chance to work on it.

Now I realize I have no clue where I left off, and don’t remember how all the code works. That’s one reason it’s good practice to comment the code, so it’s easier to see what the code does and why. (Believe me, this is an absolute necessity when looking at other people’s code.)

This was found at the top of one of the functions:

/// TODO: FINISH IT.

Good times.

July 20th, 2007 4 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

Old white guys and Senate website “design”

Old white guys

Have you ever wondered how insects tell themselves apart? We can barely see a difference between one praying mantis to the next, yet we know that somehow, they manage to determine who’s who.

It’s just like old white guys in government. Look at the picture at the top, and tell me how the heck we can tell those Senators apart. If it weren’t for the different color ties, those guys be indistinguishable.

There is one thing I must congratulate Congress on. The webpage the picture’s from is proof positive that Congress does have some self-control on the budget, as they clearly have not hired anyone to update the page design since the mid-90’s. A few things my co-workers and I noticed: