Michael A. O’Neill

Author: Michael

  • Incentives in online dating

    My friend Kevin went on a first date last night with a man he met on The Onion personals (the same service I use). He had thought the fellow was a very well preserved 35 based on his picture. But, the picture was taken eight years and forty pounds ago. Another friend, CK, went on a date with a fellow who claimed he was 5’11" and turned out to be just an inch or two taller than her.

    Lying on online personals is pervasive, but it brings up the question of incentives and cultural norms. Kevin, CK and I both tell the truth in our online ads. I’m not the tallest guy, I’m scrawny, and that’s there in the profile. Neither Kevin nor CK can claim to be athletic or slim/toned. But here’s the thing: everyone else does lie.

    So what do you do?

    (more…)

  • Portland, Oregon

    Chanel and Trish bought a house in Portland, Oregon earlier this week, or so my mom reports. She just called, very excited, because she has all-but-committed to buy a 2BR condominium in downtown Portland. The building hasn’t been completed yet, and her apartment won’t be finished until May 2007. She’ll be on the 18th floor of what will eventually be a 23-story building. There are only 11 stories now.

  • The Strip: Part 2

    Skyline640x480
    My trip to Las Vegas the week of 25-MAR-06 for TheServerSide Java Symposium will be, I hope, my last for several years at least. Not my favorite place.

    But I dutifully brought my camera and tripod along with me to capture a few pictures.

    My first target was the skyline [click to enlarge]. I actually spotted a picture taken from some hotel or other in a travel guide, and was hoping to repeat it. The foreground had the curve of the hotel with yellow lines pointing into the Strip, which was a really nice guide. But I wasn’t sure what hotel it was. The Mandalay Bay, it turns out, has a restaurant at the top of one of their buildings, and it looked like they had those nice, directing lines.

    So I went up at around 4:30 and camped out with a glass of wine, waiting for the sun to set and that beautiful, deep blue to suffuse the sky. Much to my surprise, the haze resulted in more of a deep purple than blue. And, as I looked down the Strip, I realized that the hotel I had been looking for was The Wynn. Not only did it have those directing lines, but it looked south-by-southeast, rather than north-by-northwest, meaning the cool colors would have been more pronounced from the Wynn than the spot I chose. Still, things turned out alright, I think.

    My only other shot was completely unplanned. That same night, I lugged all my gear over to Caesar’s–after the pool party sponsored by Adobe, I figured I’d walk the Strip. As I walked over the pedestrian bridge between Caesar’s and the Flamingo, I couldn’t help but notice how strong the Flamingo’s neon sign reflected on the bridge’s glass walls. It was like the Flamingo was on top of the Bellagio.

    Flamingo_reflection640x480As I’m setting up my tripod to take the shot, some random guy walks up to me and says "you know the problem with that shot is that you’re going to get the reflection of the neon lights in the picture."

    I lifted one eyebrow and said, "yeah." 

    "Oh, wow, cool, that’s like a double-exposure or something!"

  • Digital Photograpy: a classic disruptive technology

    Hans Greimel, an Associated Press reporter, recently wrote a great article initially titled "A Farewell to Film" recapping the last 10 years in the photographic industry.

    The article gives a perfect description of disruptive technology and its impact on the existing market. A disruptive technology, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a technology that is radically different from existing technology. At the outset, a disruptive technology is often more expensive and less efficient than the incumbent technology, retains some traits that are superior to the existing technology, and does not appeal to the existing market.

    Digital photography is a perfect example.

    (more…)

  • Your call may be recorded for quality assurance

    MoveOn.org recently sent out an email to collect donations to help CommonCause promote the development of electronic voting machines with a verifiable paper trail.

    I’m absolutely fascinated by the issue of paper trails because, well… have you wondered about the line "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." Now, as The New York Times pointed out in an 11-Jan-05 article entitled "Your Call (and Rants on Hold) Will Be Monitored," there is an awful lot behind recording customer service calls.

    But the birth of recorded calls in call centers, at least as I understand it, was part of a database backup strategy. Think about it: your database administrator screws up and somehow turns off the database’s transaction log (for those of you unfamiliar with this, all modern relational database management systems keep a log of every individual change in data, and this log is written before the database is actually updated). Later that evening–before backups of your database are created–a power surge from a major storm toasts your database server. You attempt to reapply those logs to the database (logs are typically backed up more frequently than the actual database, and are stored on a different physical server). But you don’t have any logs because your DBA messed up.

    Your only hope is to pull the physical tape of every single call, and have your call center employees re-enter all those orders.

    This is Database Management 101–for critical systems, always have a backup that isn’t a database or transaction log, something physical like paper or audio tape that you can go back to if your computers completely fail.

  • Biking in the rain

    When I got off the train this evening, the rain was coming down so hard that sheets of water were running down the sidewalks and streets of Potrero Hill.

    I don’t know why, but biking in a downpour is simply exhilarating. I started singing along with my iPod (an Indigo Girls song), and a massive grin was pasted across my face. A fellow bike commuter, Dave, feels exactly the same way. Part of it is the dedication to a healthier commute, part of it is the freedom you feel by just experiencing the weather. But most of it is knowing that your colleagues think you’re a total nut job.

  • Under Guanajuato

    Biding my time at the airport. No one’s even here so I can check-in.

    I neglected to explain what I was doing in Guanajuato’s tunnels back when I was dazed and confused. For background, Guanajuato was founded in a river valley, and sometimes during the summer monsoon season, there was so much runoff that the town itself would flood.

    Actually, my sister has a great description of how this developer:

    "The wealth [from the silver mines] resulted in lots of mansions and other growth in Guanajuato and
    the river ended up carrying a lot of sewage. So the river was diverted into tunnels and the city continued to build on top. But then a
    combination of a 100-year flood that submerged the town’s main plaza,
    presumably in sewage, and other issues caused the city to decide to
    divert the whole river away from town. This left the old tunnels empty
    and dry. They were turned over to vehicle traffic and the central area
    of town was reserved for pedestrians.  The town has continued to build
    more tunnels to keep traffic out of town as the town has continued to
    grow.  Once a year in June they still open the dam above town and flood
    the tunnels – to clean out the tunnels or to empty the dam before the
    rainy season, I don’t know."

    Anyway, I spotted a postcard of the tunnels with one shot of a turn with a bunch of arches–very nice picture and pattern (photo hint: look at postcards when you arrive in a new place for ideas). I thought I found those arches the first time, but in the taxi back from Valenciana, I saw the real thing on Calle Hidalgo. Popped out, took some pics.

    Tunnels_bw1_640x480

  • Mina de Valenciana, Plata & Inflation

    Bocamina640x480
    La Mina de Valenciana is closed. In it can’t be closed permanently, because there are too many touristy shops at its entrance (which is big enough to accommodate more than just a few tourist buses). But it wasn’t open today. Only Boca Mina de Valencia, a much smaller, older mine a quarter-mile away near the Iglesia de San Cayetano, was open. It was underwhelming. Actually, I think any mine would be underwhelming. It’s a narrow, steeply descending hole in the ground.

    My guide spoke only Spanish, and that right fast. I caught maybe a quarter of what he was saying.

    The church itself [below] was gaudy: what you’d expect from an altar made entirely of silver and gold.

    The mines of Guanajuato–and of New Spain in general–are more impressive as an economic memorial. How many empires were destroyed by their own inability to adjust to the massive inflation caused by the flood of San_cayetano640x480silver and gold from the New World? The Ottoman Empire took five centuries to fall, but its refusal to act soon enough to counter the arbitrage opportunity provided by fixed silver-gold exchange rates shattered its finances. Or of the empires built? Northwestern Europe was forced to adapt much more quickly to the new financial regime because they had fewer economic alternatives (Spain and Portugal had mining, Italy in the Ottoman Empire trade). Anyway, interesting to see a hole the ground that proved as economically, socially and politically disruptive as the Bubonic plague in the 1300s, and industrialization in the 1700s and 1800s.

  • Souvenir shopping (or another pointless blog entry)

    I am exhausted. I should be out taking pictures of the mariachis or something. But without a nap, I’m just dead to the world.

    Got in a little shopping today. I bought at a painted devil mask, and some pottery. Apparently, Guanajuato area is famous for its pottery, called Talavera. Trish bought six boxes of tile, and has been taking them back on the plane a box at a time each trip.

    Cigarette_smoking_man640x480Earlier, I camped out at El Jardin de la Union, taking clandestine photos of the locals. Good shooting. I think I’ll camp out there tomorrow, too. I’m actually almost out of film. I have three rolls of black & white, which I’ll push for people shots if need be. And I have two of color. Actually, I should have three of color. I swapped roles (400 to 100) this afternoon, not realizing that my camera would attempt to rewind the rest of the way with the fresh roll, destroying a perfectly good roll of film. Annoying. But another reason to go digital.

  • Culto de los Muertos

    Next to El Museo de las Momias was a small exhibit on the "Culto de
    los Muertos." I didn’t quite get it. For example, there was a coffin
    containing, according to the sign in Spanish, of a man whose name was not
    recorded. The man who "we" know was German Chastity_belt_640x480 likely died of exposure to
    radioactive materials. OK, should I know who this guy was? I get the
    impression from the Spanish that everybody knows who this was, even
    though it was an unmarked grave. Why the radiation hypothesis? And why did this person have
    difficulty with sunlight? Was he supposed to be a vampire or something?
    Another body definitely had shaved incisors…

    What ever. I wasn’t impressed. But there was one item that caught my
    eye: a chastity belt [photo right] with metal teeth along an opening that would have
    ringed the labia. The reason it caught my eye was what the belt implied
    about the "ultimate" sexual taboo.