My 2005 Mustang is celebrating it’s third birthday this month. That means the annual insurance policy is up for renewal. The bill from the old company came in the mail - $1050.
Every year before this one, I’d pay the bill and that would be the end of the story. There was no competition. The state set the rates, and that was that. I could shop for better customer service, or a prettier logo on the top of the bills, but that was it.
This year is different. At long last the state is permitting price competition! I got a quote over the phone and two online, including one from Progressive. Progressive offered a six-month policy that will cost me $300 less over the course of the year.
Out with the old, in with the new. And $300 that will stay in my pocket.
Our schools are not on fire or radioactive. They are not on a bus with a bomb that will go off if the bus slows down below 50mph. In fact, they are not even “in turmoil,” as much as the Globe would like you to think so. Our superintendent resigned. That’s it. School Committee member Ron Spangler sent out an email today that called the Globe on their Chicken Little reporting: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Ron continues on: “The overwhelming majority of the people we’ve hired to educate our children are doing just fine. Their work in preparation for the school year is proceeding smoothly. . . . Principals and teachers are sending out their annual welcome back letters, same as always. The superintendent’s resignation will have no impact on our kids, or their classrooms.”
I still don’t even know why Nate Levenson quit. I’ve remarked before about how I admired his skill around the budget. I’ll miss him during budget season. I wonder if my opinion of him will change when I find out what his “impropriety” was.
As much as I liked him, he clearly pissed a lot of people off. There weren’t a lot of people who were undecided about him. He was loved and hated (in near-equal measures, looking at the last school committee election). It’s unfortunate that there was such hardening of opinion.
Ron again: “I think the only turmoil is in the places it can do the least harm. There’s turmoil among some elected officials. (This is new?) There’s turmoil on the Arlington List. (Gasp!) And there’s turmoil in the reporting of the local media, which sells papers and gets eyeballs on webpages, but doesn’t necessarily capture what is really going on.”
The silver lining of his resignation is that it gives the town a fresh start. It gives us a chance to let go of the conflict and abandon the battlements. Hopefully the new superintendent can be picked in a refreshed environment - no hard feelings, just good skills and a good person.
At the same time the new iPhone was released, they made it possible to write apps fir the iPhone (every iPhone user knows this, but not all of my readers are techies). One of the apps is a WordPress app.
This post is written and published in my iPhone. It looks like I can’t do links. I presume that is because the iPhone lacks cut and paste. But I can put up pictures, like this one from Thursday’s Sox game.
It’s hard for me to characterize the MBTA’s most recent insanity: Are they in denial about their security problems? Or are they so disconnected from reality that they think they can hide their security problems? Let’s explore the question.
First, a review of recent events: Three MIT students study the MBTA’s security and prepare a presentation to DEFCON 16. (Their advisor is Professor Ron Rivest, the “R” in RSA.) Dr. Rivest contacts the MBTA about the research. The students, the professor, and the MBTA have a meeting. Later that week the MBTA seeks an injunction in federal court to prevent them from delivering the presentation. The injunction is granted and the presentation is canceled. The presentation is filed as a part of the request for injunction, making it a public record. The presentation had also already been distributed on a disc to all of the DEFCON attendees. The article is readily available on MIT’s student newspaper website, The Tech.
Did you click the article? You should. It’s a big file, almost 5 megs, but it’s chock full of great pictures and clear explanations.
So, let’s review option 1, that the MBTA is in denial that there are security problems:
Do you think MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas believes his own words when he says that he’s “confident” that the claims will be “dismissed or dealt with.”? I’m assuming he looked at the same presentation I just did. He really thinks the claims can be dismissed? It seems to me that he’s spouting a line of bull, and the people who can contradict him have an injunction preventing them from proving him wrong.
Did he see the same pictures that I did of open locks, exposed fiber cables, empty surveillance rooms, and unprotected keys?
Maybe the MBTA is confused by that presentation. Maybe they just don’t understand how data is encoded in magnetic stripes.
And option two, that the MBTA thought they could simply hide the problems?
They sought the injunction, right? That argues that they thought they could hide the information. But if they’re trying to hide information, why did they file the information themselves as a public document? (ABC News: “But, not only had the presentation already been distributed at the Defcon convention, it was entered into public record when the MBTA filed its complaint.”) It doesn’t add up.
Maybe they thought that the injunction wouldn’t get any attention. It’s possible, I guess. But is the MBTA’s PR department that clueless? That’s a reach, even for Lydia Rivera.
I guess there is always option three, which is just incompetence. There’s an argument to be made here.
There was an article in this Sunday’s Globe Magazine about the office space I’m in. It’s a glowing review. There are even a couple mentions of my company, HubSpot.
Bloglines is down right now. Has been for at least an hour. I can’t read about the election, my friends, local news, professional info, humor, etc. It’s turned into one of those “holy cow, I use this tool every day, WHAT WOULD I DO IF IT WAS REALLY GONE!” moments. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on it.
So long, Manny, and thanks for the trophies. I was at that train wreck of a game last night, and while I knew intellectually that it might be Manny’s last, I didn’t believe it. In retrospect I wish I’d watched him a bit more closely, just to squeeze the last drops out of the Manny Era.
I’m glad the trade was done, but I’ll still miss him. The good parts, that is. Respect the Tek has it right: “Manny being Manny always was a double-edged sword.”
I look forward to getting to know Jason Bay. The question now is: Is this the Nomar trade of 2004, the purge that lights the fire? Or is this 2005, the post-championship year where the team collapsed in injury, age, and indifference in the second half?
I’ve been to hundreds of Red Sox games (really, hundreds - you do 10 to 50 games for 18 years, and it adds up). I can’t remember a game as pathetic as tonight’s.
I’ve seen worse pitching before. Beckett wasn’t awful, just not good. I’ve seen worse hitting before. There were some hits, and I’ve seen games with even less “timely” hitting. And the defense has been worse - think about the 90’s, as a whole.
Tonight, the pitching gets a middle grade. The hitting? Awful. The defense? Abysmal. Look at the talent of this team and evaluate the on-field performance tonight.
The tech community is all a-flutter this week about the launch of a new search engine, Cuil. It’s been a month since the iPhone 3G, and people are a bit starved for content.
Cuil did a good job generating buzz. The preferred version: “Ex-Google employees build a better search engine; David beats Goliath.”
#3 Their results suck. Search for “Cuil” in Cuil and you Search in Google for “Cuil” and you get a bunch of results that make sense, including a news article and Cuil itself. Search for “Cuil” in Cuil, and you get results like “Properties for Sale in Cuil Mhuine, Ireland”, “The Shire of Cuil Choluim” and “Download Chase Around the Windmill”. What a joke.
The search results must be good, better than Google, for Cuil to start winning share. That’s how Google got me to change from Alta Vista, back in the day - Google started giving me better results that Alta Vista. Cuil can format the results to their heart’s content, but it’s just lipstick on the pig until they give good results. Examples:
1) Start with the ego search. OK, I know I’m not the most famous Dan Dunn out there, but c’mon, I rate at least a mention! Fine, let’s make it easy, and say Dan Dunn Arlington MA. I know that there’s only one person that matches that search . . . but still, Cuil links to a dead server talking about NHruns.com 6th Annual Millennium Mile. Strike 1 for Cuil.
2) I think a classic search engine test is “broken windows.” Are you talking about your operating system, or the glass between you and the real world? Cuil takes a pass on this daunting question and unhelpfully suggests:
a typo. Please check your spelling.
your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.
Strike 2.
3) This one is, as they say, Not Safe For Work. Let’s say your name is Matt M. Let’s say, just for fun, that you’re a kid, and your parents have carefully made sure that Cuil’s “Safe Search” feature is enabled. And let’s say you do your own ego search for Matt M. You just learned something about gay porn.
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