Villeneuve Family Portal

Good afternoon.

It’s really an honor to be here with you remembering this extraordinary person – Heather Haworth.

Heather taught my ninth grade advanced science class, during the 2001-2002 school year. My siblings also had her as a teacher and I know I speak for them when I say she was a terrific.

As a teacher, she was especially magnificent. She knew how to make ideas stick.

I want to share a few quick stories about life in her class so you can get an idea of how much fun she made school. She would often use mysteries to make lessons memorable.

One of my first memories is before the school move to the new Redmond Junior High. We came into class one day and we were asked this question: Resolved: Are beaver dams technology?

Those who thought the answer was yes were supposed to go to one side of the room. Anyone who thought no, the other side. I went to the no side with a small minority of the class. For the rest of that period, we debated the majority of our classmates, who argued that beaver dams were, in fact, technology. That was a Friday. On Monday, we came into class to hear the answer. I think most of the class was expecting the answer would be somewhere in the middle, but instead Ms. Haworth announced that our side had been right and the rest of the class had been wrong.

I also remember putting together hot air balloons. They took weeks to build in the autumn. Building them was tricky and we had to be very careful to do it right so that the balloons would inflate properly. One day in November, we went out and launched them. I brought along the school’s digital camera and took lots of pictures for the website.

When we moved to the new RJH she was able to use the new lab counters to do all sorts of demonstrations, or as we called them, demos. She was a pyromaniac… she loved to play with fire. She had a way of making chemistry very easy to understand which was helpful to me. Every lab we did was both fun and challenging. My best friend Dave, who was frequently my lab partner, always wanted to do the lab correctly, so he had a habit of asking Ms. Haworth for clarification. I gave him the nickname The Verifier because of this.

In the spring, we built bottle rockets. Groups were assigned to build different kinds of rockets. Each two person team engineered a different rocket. The one that Dave and I built wasn’t supposed to have a very long flight because of the way we constructed it. As it turned out, it didn’t fly at all. It exploded at the launchpad. Ms. Haworth thought this was hilarious, she walked over to ask us how the launch went with a big smile on her face.

Her bad days were not visible to her students. She always seemed so happy. Full of energy. She was a wonderful teacher and I will always be grateful for her encouragement and help.

She had spirit.

Wired is reporting that Universal Music Group has lost another lawsuit.

As viewers all over America know, television advertising is often needlessly repetitive and poorly produced. The number of creative spots that manage to strike a true emotional chord or offer useful information, though memorable, are few.

Most of what airs between programming on every channel consists of endless promotions for drugs, cars, and beauty products. Trucks leap over giant boulders, pitchmen talk up the virtues of the latest sleeping pill, and models smile for the camera while displaying the latest brands in cosmetics.

Nestled between the messaging of America’s major corporations are pitiful appeals from the owners of local dealerships and insurance salesmen. On occasion, there will be a sobering and thoughtful reminder from the Ad Council, or a comedic scene inviting laughter.

But these gems are hidden within a dry and scratchy haystack of bland and boring fare. If advertisers really want our attention, why do they spend so much money on thirty second messages that simply serve to irritate the viewer?

Seriously, this has to be the worst Bond movie title, ever:

Producers have revealed some of the secrets about the latest James Bond film, due for release later this year, including the inner turmoil that drives its suave superagent hero and its title: “Quantum of Solace.”

As titles go, it’s not as mellifluous as “From Russia With Love” or “Goldfinger.” But Daniel Craig, returning as Bond after 2006′s “Casino Royale,” says he likes it.

“It has grown on me,” Craig told reporters on the film’s set at Pinewood Studios near London on Thursday. “It doesn’t trip off the tongue. But why should it?”

Yes, but who is going to understand what it means?

Where did the producers get it from? Well, believe it or not, it is an Ian Fleming story – here’s some background from Wikipedia:

“Quantum of Solace” is not a spy story and Bond appears only in the background. Told in the style of W Somerset Maugham, the tale has Bond attending a boring dinner party at the Government House in Nassau with a group of socialites he can’t stand.

Bond makes a remark after dinner when the other guests have left in order to stimulate conversation, about always having thought it would be nice to marry an air hostess. This solicits a careful reply from the elderly Governor of The Bahamas who tells 007 a sad tale about a relationship between a former civil servant he calls Philip Masters, stationed in Bermuda, and air hostess Rhoda Llewellyn. After meeting aboard a flight to London the two eventually married but after a time Rhoda became unhappy with her life as a housewife. She then began a long open affair with the eldest son of a rich Bermudan family. As a result Masters’ work deteriorated and he suffered a nervous breakdown. After recovering he was given a break from Bermuda by the governor and sent on an assignment to Washington to negotiate fishing rights with the US. At the same time the governor’s wife had a talk with Rhoda just as her affair ended. Masters returned a few months later and decided to end his marriage, although he and Rhoda continued to appear as a happy couple in public. Masters returned alone to the UK, leaving a penniless Rhoda stranded in Bermuda, an act which he’d been incapable of carrying out merely months earlier. But Masters never recovered emotionally, nor recaptured any spark of vitality. The governor goes on to tell Bond how after a time Rhoda married a rich Canadian and seems to be happy. When Bond remarks that she hardly deserved her good fortune, the governor says that Masters had always been rather weak, and that perhaps Fate chose Rhoda as its instrument to teach him a lesson. Bond deduces that the dinner companions whom he found so boring were Rhoda and her new husband, and he tells the governor she was much more interesting than he had thought.

While the story does not include action elements, as other Fleming tales do, it attempts to posit that Bond’s adventures pale in comparison with real life drama. Bond reflects that the lives of the people he passes somewhat superficial judgements upon can in fact hide poignant episodes.

It’s not a spy story, you say? Well, it is now!

If there is anything truly exciting about New Year’s Eve, it’s the annual burst of fireworks from Seattle’s signature landmark, the Space Needle. Even though the light and the noise only lasts for eight minutes, there’s something fun and adventurous about staking out a location and patiently waiting to capture the illuminating explosions set against the dark, typically cloudy, sky.

New Year’s Eve 2007 was no exception. Not wanting to suffer in the cold, I waited to make the journey to a suitable lookout until the ten o’clock hour that night. I chose to watch the show from Wallingford’s Gas Works Park, less crowded than the streets of Queen Anne, but with a clear view of Seattle Center across Lake Union. To my surprise, the show started late and stalled twice, but my disappointment was muted.

Unlike the throngs of people standing on the concrete pier or muddy knoll nearby, my anticipation of a splendid, uninterrupted display of pyrotechnics had not been building for hours, and I used the sudden quiet to adjust the settings of my camera.

Fireworks are notoriously difficult to record, whether digitally or on film, without equipment programmed to the proper settings. Though I spent only twenty minutes in Gas Works Park, I got all the footage I wanted, and happily reveled in the good tidings shared with me by my fellow observers.

When Apple announced it would offer Safari for Windows last June, I was curious to see how the browser would compare to Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer…so I downloaded it and tried it out. I was quite surprised to find that the browser functioned like an alpha product. It was buggy, slow, and extremely unpleasant to use. I related this experience to a friend of mine who practically worships Apple (yet chooses to live in Microsoft’s backyard), and I was assured Safari would improve, because it was just the first public beta.

Well, almost seven months later, Safari for Windows is still in “beta” (version 3.04) and it’s just as horrible as the day I first tried it. It boots up slowly, stupidly attempts to mimic the font rendering of its Mac OS X brother, has trouble processing Javascript and can’t open files in protected folders. (It will return the error Safari can’t connect to the server). Apple boasts on its website that Safari is “the fastest web browser on any platform” stating specifically:

Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2.

And it executes JavaScript up to 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 2 times faster than Firefox 2.What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.

This is complete bogus. On my Windows XP SP2 machine, Safari struggles just to render web pages, let alone attempt to best Firefox, Opera, or IE in a speed competition. And it fails to execute Javascript consistently. It’s not in the same ballpark as the many mature browsers available for Windows.

I don’t know how Apple achieved the results it brags about in its own testing environment. Maybe there’s something on my machine that’s interfering with Safari, but I keep my system in good order, and other non-Microsoft browsers (Opera, Firefox) work well. But regardless, Safari’s performance in an Apple testing environment is a useless benchmark for end users. What matters is how well the browser works for the user, and that’s not the measurement the company is using in its marketing.

Even if Safari is improved, I doubt users of other browsers will switch to it. There’s no reason for them to do so. As far as I’m concerned, Mozilla Firefox remains the best browser available – for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Academy Award winning filmmaker Peter Jackson will produce two Hobbit films beginning at the end of the decade:

The makers of the smash hit “Lord of the Rings” films said on Tuesday they settled a legal dispute and agreed to make two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” but most likely without Peter Jackson directing.

Oscar winner Jackson, however, has signed on as executive producer along with his wife and producing partner, Fran Walsh, who also was instrumental in making the three “Lord of the Rings” films that earned $3 billion at global box offices.

In recent months, loyal “Rings” and Tolkien fans loudly proclaimed on Internet sites that they would not support a Hobbit movie without Jackson’s involvement, and Tuesday’s announcement brought them some welcome relief.

I figured the Hollywood wrangling would end sooner or later – studios can’t make money by stubbornly refusing to compromise and insulting the other players involved.

So New Line, MGM, and Jackson have worked out a deal. Here’s hoping the two films they release are as good as the first trilogy.

BusinessWeek has a good writeup about the back room dealmaking that made this happen, and TheOneRing has a post suggesting what we might see in the second Hobbit movie, which may be a “bridge” between the original book and the Lord of the Rings.

A couple of weeks ago, after waiting nearly a month, I finally took delivery of HP’s MediaSmart ex475 Server, which I’ve been wanting to try out ever since I heard about it in early 2007.

The system, which is based on Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, comes with a terabyte of storage, a 1.8 GHz processor (an AMD Sempron 64 bit) and 512 MB of RAM. While I’ve found the product to be very useful (centralized data storage, automatic backups, cool add-ins) HP’s software and support has left a lot to be desired.

I had reasonable expectations for the product, and I’ve been mostly happy with it.

What I did not expect, however, was that I would encounter a major error after using the product for only fourteen days.

This morning, while logging in to my Windows Home Server, I was greeted by this error:

Input string was not in a correct format. At system.Number.StringToNumber(String st, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer & number, NumberFormat.Info.info, Boolean parseDecimal)
At System.Number.ParseInt64(String value, NumberStyles options, NumberFormatInto numfmt)
At HPConfiguration.IniFile.GetLong(String key, Int64 defaultVal)
At MediaSmartUpdate.MediaSmartUpdate.GetiniConfig()
At MediaSmartUpdate.MediaSmartUpdater.GetSettingsValues()
At Microsoft.HomeServer.HomeServerConsoleTab.HPSU. HomeServerSettingsExtender.initializeMembers(IConsoleServices.svc)

The console loaded after I clicked okay, but under “HP MediaSmart Software Updates”, where I’ve previously seen the date of the last update, there were instead six Xs:

It seems the error is a malfunction in HP’s own software, which essentially runs on top of the Windows Home Server platform. The problem seem to be affecting the performance of the operating system, fortunately, but it is certainly annoying.

Thinking I should report the problem, I went to the ex475′s support page, and was surprised to find that email and live chat support for the MediaSmart server are not available:

E-mail HP

Support E-mail not available
» E-mail questions before you buy

So I called HP instead – the only provided option for contacting the company in regards to the ex475. The representative that I spoke with had not heard of the problem, and all he could suggest was doing a server recovery, which would result in losing operating system settings, including user accounts. I suggested that HP take the opportunity to investigate the problem, and he fortunately saw the wisdom in that, so I have sent a copy of the error message to HP.

It’s frustrating, though, that HP’s bundled software should just abruptly stop working. I certainly appreciate not having any bloatware on the system (trial offers, third party products, and the like) but why not just ship a clean version of Windows Home Server on a compact and sleek package of hardware, and let customers download the optional extras (like iTunes synchronization across home PCs, or the photo Webshare) only if they want them?

(There are great alternatives to HP’s offerings – if I want to easily share photos, for example, I could install the Windows Home Server Flickr synchronization plugin, and not bother with the Webshare).

My call to HP was the second time I had called the company about the ex475. The first time I called, I was curious to see if HP could tell me how to get into the desktop of my home server. (The ex475 doesn’t come with any peripherals, and the provided console software doesn’t have any kind of shortcut for desktop access).

After going through two people, including what sounded like someone at an outsourced Indian call center, I was told by the third that my simple question was “outside of his support boundary” and that if I wanted an answer, I would have to pay to talk to a product support specialist. Incredulously, I said no thanks. I managed to configure my router to support a Remote Desktop connection to the server on my own. I was able to run the .exe installer for Avast! Windows Home Server edition. (As far as I know, Avast! is the only vendor to be offering a security solution specifically for WHS).

There was of course nothing in the product’s manual that relates to the error I saw, although when I was flipping through, I noticed that HP had failed to properly proof the document before sending it to the printer. Take a look at this excerpt, Table 15 from the “Troubleshooting Tips for DRM” section of the manual:

Question/Issue: Why can I play and stream DRM content [from] my home computer but I can not stream it from my HP MediaSmart Server?

Answer/Resolution: The HP MediaSmart Server includes a media server for streaming iTunes music to PCs running iTunes through[out] the hous. See the section in the User’s Guide on iTunes.

For Windows Media DRM (WMDRM) content (protected .wma music and .wmv videos) the HP MediaSmart server does not support streaming of this content to DMAs at this time [do we want the "at this time"? we will support it after the February update; should we say that?]. Playing (and streaming) of WMDRM protected content requires that the device that is playing the content have a license for that content. When you downloaded the content to your PC, you also received a license to play that content on the PC. If you copy the files to the HP MediaSmart Server, you cannot copy or transfer the license to the server. The server must obtain its own license, and we do not provide for this feature in the current product.

As you can see from the bolded sentence in brackets above – which appears verbatim in the table! – somebody at HP forgot to remove a comment from the draft out of the copy that was sent to the printer. Oops. Pretty funny, too.

Perhaps more importantly, the paragraph above shows one of the fundamental flaws of digital restrictions management (DRM) – crippling a user’s freedom to move and back up their own legally acquired content (like a music library). HP’s MediaSmart Server cannot (yet) play or stream .wmas for people who have faithfully followed the encouragement of Microsoft and the RIAA and paid money for crippled digital music. You’re punished if you do what the record industry executives want you to do…funny how that works. I’m glad my music is DRM free.

Bottom line: if you’re thinking about spending several hundred bucks on a MediaSmart server, you want might want to consider another product preinstalled with the Windows Home Server OS, because HP’s MediaSmart Server software and its technical support have a good likelihood of giving you a headache, unless you’re really patient and enjoy solving computer problems.

This is the beginning of Reflections on American Life, my personal blog, where I intend to occassionally chronicle my thoughts about technology, sports, movies, music, and other interests. (I frequently share my political views at the official blog of the Northwest Progressive Institute, where I am executive director).