Author: Tim Jarrett

Trading ideas

Good article at the New York Times describing the research of one of my marketing professors, Ely Dahan, using trading simulations to determine consumer preferences for features of goods or services.

“The closing prices were generally consistent both with consumer sentiments culled from more traditional market research and with previous trading experiments at M.I.T. In just minutes, for example, the trading echoed the disappointment with the Aztek and enthusiasm for the MDX demonstrated by car buyers over the last year. ‘General Motors might have been able to save itself a lot of pain if it had run trading like this a couple of years ago,’ Professor Dahan said.”

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Turnabout is fair play

A funny little judo response to all the fundamentalists who burn Harry Potter books because they promote witchcraft: “Harry Potter fans warn against dangerous effects of Bible.” One excerpt:

“Reading the Bible teaches children to believe in the supernatural,” said one English Literature academic from Oxford University, Lewis Williams. “The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on water,” he said. “And the chance of serious bodily harm isn’t exactly minimised by that whole ‘resurrection-from-the-dead’ story either.”

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What color is your Kleenex?

Urrgh. I feel like I’ve been hit with a sledgehammer. Yep, folks, it’s that nasty cold/sinus infection that I’ve been avoiding all season. Aside from the pretty colors when I stand up too fast, it’s a very unpleasant experience. Expect minimal, and highly grumpy blogging today.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “You Are Invited” by The Dismemberment Plan on Emergency & I.

Man, I had totally forgotten about this song until the other day. This was one of those songs that hung around on KEXP forever but no one on the east coast seems to know. Kick-butt song…

I really didn’t stay too long there
Cause no one was having much fun
I made my way to a party all the way cross town
That was thrown by the friend of an ex-thing
I wasn’t sure if I should go
But when I got up in the place there were smiles all up and down
I grabbed my ex in the kitchen
I told her I was sorry I came
But she looked at me with a glazed smile and said
“You are invited
By anyone to do anything
You are invited for all time
You are so needed
For everyone to do anything
You are invited for all time”

That’s what’s up with AOL and Fire

A reader wrote in to point me to this information on the news site for Adium, another AIM client: “It looks like AOL shut down their TOC server at toc.oscar.aol.com.” The author also reports that connecting to java-aim-vip-m.blue.aol.com at port 5190 mostly works.

Actually, I just tried it and it looks like toc.oscar is back up. But it’s good to know about other people who are providing alternatives to the commercial client–especially ones that provide source code.
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On the importance of modeling Manila

I did the preceding UML (Unified Modeling Language) sequence diagram with a little tool called ObjectPlant. It’s a shareware UML tool that just became my new best friend. There are times when you have to stop and draw what you’re doing in a project, even a moderately complex project like this one. I’ll be posting some more pictures like the one below as my version of the “Busy Developer’s Guide to ManilaRPC” that Daniel put together.
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Inconsistency and bugs

I’ve finally figured out why Manila Envelope occasionally gets stuck in spinning progress bar hell. It has to do with how I handled user notification in the code.

Basically, there are three types of function involved: one gets user input, one executes a series of Manila function calls, and one wraps a SOAP call to a particular part of the Manila API. Unfortunately, I was reporting user errors via dialog boxes in all three functions in the chain.

Shows why my app was blowing up.

This sequence diagram shows the problem–I was letting the Manila handler do the notification to the user. This caused timing problems in the window controller that kept it from successfully stopping the progress indicator and returning control to the user.

Parties and HDTV and Harvard, oh my

From the New York Times: “Two members of Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals were accused of embezzling about $91,000 from the 207-year-old student group for drugs, a party and entertainment equipment.”

Two thoughts spring immediately to mind:

  1. $91,000? And it took the club that long to notice?
  2. I’m attending the wrong university. If you multiplied the annual budget of the two clubs I’m involved with by each other, it wouldn’t be a tenth of the amount that these two jokers embezzled.

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What’s up with AIM and Fire?

Every time recently that I try to connect to AOL Instant Messenger using Fire for the last few days, it fails to connect. It’s odd being disconnected from all your friends… (at least the ones that use AIM). For any of my other friends watching, yes I’m on MSN Messenger too. Instant messenging right now is one of those things where it’s impossible to use only one standard — too many people are on one standard or the other, making programs like Fire and Trillian necessary.

Adjusting patterns

I think my blogging habits will be changing this semester. Last semester classes were 1 to 4 every day, leaving plenty of time to wake up, blog, do reading, and eat lunch before classes. This semester my classes cluster from 10 to 2:30, so it’s a very different dynamic. I think I’ll be blogging mostly in the afternoon.

Good news from PA

I just got off the phone with my sister. Fortunately, the previous story turns out to be only partly true. My grandfather was suffering from low blood sugar, but not from another stroke. Apparently he had just forgotten to eat–not good if one is on insulin shots. He’s already on his way home.

Now all we have to do is find my mom. She hopped in the car to drive from western NC to pick up my sister in Richmond, then go to PA. They’ll have to call the highway patrol — she doesn’t have a cell phone. It’s probably time for them to change that. 🙂