Coach Thrasher

faceless, replaceable cog

Quote of the day: "The world wants you to be a faceless, replaceable cog in the vast machinery of production--but if you choose, and you work at it, you can become the sort of person we really need, an indispensable linchpin, a person who matters." -Seth Godin

Posted at 10:28AM Feb 03, 2010 by jason in General  |  Comments[0]

Noah's Tree Frog

I'm posting this Google Web Element for Noah, how likes to watch the frog chase and eat the flies. To feed the frog, click on the image to release new flies, and the frog will chase them.

Posted at 10:57AM Jan 10, 2010 by jason in General  |  Comments[2]

The bike has been returned!

The SF Police were able to recover it for me from someone trying to sell it, and Craigslist played a pivotal role. There were a total of 9 days from "theft day" to "reunion day". The bike was mostly unharmed save about $100 worth of parts that had been removed, all of which are replaceable. The cool stuff like my Paul's brakes, old-school XT pedals, and 36-spoke wheels, were still attached.

It was a pretty amazing turn of events from my perspective, as I'd never had a bike stolen before. The SFPD were very professional, and knew exactly what to do. I don't want to give nitty gritty details to protect the innocent, and officers involved, but my first and only interaction with the SFPD was great.

The key elements to my recovery were 1) filed a police report online, 2) call the station and get an officer on the case, 3) post a "STOLEN: " report on Craigslist under "bikes".

Noah, my 2-yr old son, and I, celebrated the return with a trailer ride to see "ducks and airplanes" at the Palo Alto airport.

Posted at 10:51PM Jun 09, 2009 by jason in General  | 

STOLEN Bike: custom fast-touring bike w/o stickers

It is quite ironic that, as I planned my trip to the Google's I/O conference by bike, I could not find any information about a bike valet, or inside bike parking, on any of Google's pages about the conference. Of course, I searched using Google.

This is the first time in my life I've had a bike stolen from me. The experience has left a very sour taste in my mouth.

As seen on Craigslist:

I'm posting as maybe, just maybe, someone has seen my bike. It was last seen the Wednesday morning at 9:45am, locked to the bike parking rail, on the corner of 4th and Howard. It was parked at the bike rack in the little courtyard next to the Metrion on the north corner of the intersection.

I left it there while attending a conference at Moscone. I'd thought taking the train, and biking, would keep a car off the road. I guess I'm totally naive about locking bikes in SF, as I figured the parking area's high pedestrian traffic would deter any would-be thief. I was wrong.

If you have any information about the bike, please let me know! I'd love to have it back. There's a picture of it below. Here are the details of the components:

- Shimano 105 hubs on 36 spoke wheels
- tires are Panaracer T-Serve (700x28c)
- rear brake is a Paul's CNC machined brakeset from the mid 1990's
- front brake is a cheap Shimano V-brake
- cranks are Shimano LX
- pedals are 1st generation Shimano XT dual-sided SPD
- rear rack (I think it's a Blackburn) (it did not have a pannier bag on it when stolen)
- rear derailleur is Shimano Deore
- front derailleur is Shimano, custom modified for the bike
- brake/shift levers are Shimano 105
- Blackburn mini-pump
- three bottle cages
- old Ritchey seatpost
- WTB seat
- Weyless stem
- Ritchey Pro 44cm handlebars
- fenders
- additional cross-style brakes
- V-Brake Travel Agent on the front
- SRAM-70 chain
- Shimano XT 12-28 cassette
- 3 bottle cages
- brown cork handlebar tape
- right handle bar end had a LED light with dead coin-cell batteries
- left handle bar end had a mirror

thanks!
JT

Posted at 08:41PM May 31, 2009 by jason in General  |  Comments[2]

Barriers to Innovation

This brings back the memories:

It's also why Silicon Valley hasn't been successfully replicated elsewhere.

Posted at 05:45PM Feb 12, 2009 by jason in General  |  Comments[1]

Silicon Valley Social Valuation

Wow, here's a juicy Silicon Valley bit: Michael Arrington is smacked down by Loic Le Meur at LeWeb for being American. This is really representative of my own experience here in SV as well. We take ourselves too seriously, as though nothing else matters besides work and our role therein. We don't develop the deep relationships that people do in other parts of the United States. When opportunities arise that require those deep relationships, we fail to identify them, or take positive action.

This concerns me, more now than ever. The world economy is down, and I strongly believe accelerating downward. Things (products) are getting devalued, yet economies like the United States have made strategic assumptions about consumerism, and are relying on people to buy more things to get us out of the mess. But that doesn't look likely to happen. We seem to have created a negative feedback loop: the less we buy to protect ourselves from the bad economic times, the worse the economic conditions get.

How is this related to Michael Arrington's smackdown? Well, I believe things that aren't material will have more value as the economy declines. One of those things is personal relationships. As such, I assume people that are morally or socially bankrupt will have a harder time than others, despite their absolute financial position. Unfortunately, the US, and particularly Silicon Valley culture, doesn't seem well positioned to take advantage of that value. We're not all bankrupt, but the perspective that Le Meur's post highlights is a point on the social gradient allowing a deeper evaluation, or valuation, of personal value than other neighbors in Silicon Valley allow.

Posted at 01:45PM Dec 13, 2008 by jason in General  | 

It's Time For Some Campaign'

JibJab rocks:

Posted at 12:29PM Oct 26, 2008 by jason in General  | 

What will Baby T. Look Like?

Here's a very cool online app that lets you find out what kind of person your child might look like given a picture of the mom and dad:

Face Research Demo

Very cool! They should have a kiosk version of this at bars.

Posted at 03:38PM Oct 10, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Baby Twitter Howto

For the family and close friends interesting in following things via Twitter, here's the scoop: I'll be sending SMS updates to Twitter, and they will be sent to your phone if you're "following" me. I believe this is the easiest way to let everyone who's not in Palo Alto (which is almost everyone), follow along. It broadcasts updates to everyone at the same time, and doesn't create a distraction at the hospital with a kazillion phone calls. It worked great with Noah. So, here's what you need to do:

1) use your mobile phone to send a SMS text message to 40404 with "follow thrasher" as the only text in the body of the message.

2) wait for updates on your phone

OR, you can create an account on http://www.twitter.com and "follow" my username, which is "thrasher". There are more instructions here:
Twitter Help

Posted at 10:49PM Oct 07, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Twitter Baby Alerts

Just like with Noah, I'm sending out Twitter alerts as things progress. To get SMS updates pushed to your phone, subscribe to my Twitter feed here:
http://twitter.com/thrasher

Current status: Bridget has been feeling nauseous, and has flu-like symptoms. This is a sign of early labor. She didn't have any of this with Noah, but hey, this one's a girl.

Posted at 10:22AM Oct 05, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Baby Seat Two

I've finally installed the second carseat for Thrasher baby #2, due in .... any day! My 5 seat car is now a 2 seat station wagon. Check one action item off the list. Bridget will be happy.

Posted at 10:45AM Oct 04, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Please, Thank you, You're Welcome

Noah is learning at least one new word every day. He's nearly 14 months old and already has a ~30 word vocabulary. It's amazing to see him identify something by name so quickly. He tries to pronounce multi-syllable words, but rushes through a bit to fast to get it all out. So "elephant" becomes "e-ant", and "Georgia" (our dog) becomes "Gege".

Bridget and I have realized that we need to interact with each other using proper communication so that Noah picks it up. Having been married for 4 years, we take appropriate shortcuts with each other in conversations. We've agreed to make a conscious effort to use "Please", "Thank you", and "Your Welcome" with each other while he's learning how to communicate.

Today I came across this timely quote for Noah:

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
-- Richard Feynman

My next step is to teach Noah how to learn to know something.

Posted at 04:41AM Aug 12, 2008 by jason in General  | 

jEdit on OSX 10.5.4

jEdit is a very lightweight text editor I've been using for years and years. Installation of jEdit on OSX 10.5.4 with JDK 1.6 fails due to a JNI incompatibility. Here's how to fix it.

Open the Info.plist file, and change:
1.5+
to:
1.5

This file should live here, if you're using Safari's download manager:
~/Downloads/jEdit.app/Contents/Info.plist

Now jEdit can be installed to your dock normally.

The problem (on my developer-centric machine) is that the default JVM is 1.6, and the JNI libraries fail to allow jEdit to launch. Apparently it's because the Java-Cocoa bridge is 32-bit. When running with JDK6, I was getting this error:

[jason@jmac MacOS]$ ./jedit 

[JavaAppLauncher] A 64-bit JVM is available for 1.6.0

[JavaAppLauncher] and it is the only version available

[JavaAppLauncher] JVMArchs not found in Java dictionary

10:16:04 AM [error] main: NSRuntime.loadLibrary(/usr/lib/java/libObjCJava.dylib) error.

10:16:04 AM [error] main: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/lib/java/libObjCJava.A.dylib: 

10:16:04 AM [error] main:  at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)

[SNIP]

Posted at 10:35AM Jul 05, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Many Miles Before I Go

This moment of my life is described by John Hiatt's "Before I Go". I could not love my wife or my son any more. We need to make the most of our time together as this moment only comes once.

Posted at 08:09PM Jun 29, 2008 by jason in General  | 

Gridflip Solution

There's a fun puzzle called Grid Flip on Facebook that had me distracted for a while.

Here's my solution:

S = 1624

Which is produced by the grid:

[   33   30  -10   -6   18    7  -11  -23    6 ]    44

[  -16   19    9   26    8  -19    8  -21  -14 ]     0

[  -17  -12  -14  -31   30   13   13   19   16 ]    17

[    6   11    1  -17   12   -4    7   14  -21 ]     9

[  -18   31   34   22  -17  -19  -20   24    6 ]    43

[  -33   18   17   15  -31   -5   -3   27   -3 ]     2

[   18   20  -18  -31   -6    4    2  -12   24 ]     1

[  -27  -14    4   29    3    5   29    8  -12 ]    25

[  -15   -7   23   23   -9    8    6   -8   12 ]    33

[   33  -23   19   -4   -8    7   11   12  -31 ]    16

[   20  -19  -15   30  -11   32   -7   14   -5 ]    39

[   23  -18  -32    2   31   -7   -8   24   16 ]    31

[  -32    4  -10   14    6   -1    0   23   23 ]    27

[   25    0   23   22   12  -28  -27  -15   -4 ]     8

[  -30  -13   16   -3   -3   32   -3  -27   31 ]     0

[   22    1  -26    4   -2   13   26  -17  -14 ]     7

[    9   18    3   20   27  -32   11   27   13 ]    96

[   17  -33   -7  -19   32   13   31   -2  -24 ]     8

[  -31   27   31  -29   15   -2   29   15  -33 ]    22

[   18   23   15  -28    0   30    4   12  -32 ]    42

[    3  -34   27   25   18   26   -1   34   26 ]   124

[   21   31  -10   13   30  -17   12  -26   31 ]    85

[   23  -31   19   21  -17   10    2   23  -23 ]    27

[    3   -6    0    3   32    0   10  -25   14 ]    31

[   19   -9   14   27  -20   15    5  -27   18 ]    42

[   11   -6  -24    7  -17  -26   20   31   25 ]    21

[  -25    4   16   30   33  -23   -4    4  -23 ]    12



    60   12  105  165  166   32  142  108   22    1624

flip_col(1)
flip_col(2)
flip_col(4)
flip_col(5)
flip_col(7)
flip_row(1)
flip_row(9)
flip_row(10)
flip_row(14)
flip_row(15)
flip_row(16)
flip_row(19)
flip_row(23)
flip_row(26)
flip_row(27)

Posted at 11:07PM Sep 08, 2007 by jason in General  |