February 24th, 2008
Here I am on my couch on a Sunday night, working and watching the Oscars in the background, and I decide to poor myself a little glass of port that I had purchased the day before. And what do I find out? The $18 port completely sucks! It probably doesn’t help that the last port bottle that I nursed at home for a few weeks was a $42 organic Portuguese kind. So here you have it: a port snob in sweat pants. I think I will still finish my one glass; the rest of it would work great in my vanilla ice cream.
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February 12th, 2008
Here’s what I made last night. This was my first attempt at Naan and I must admit there are some tweaking to be done. But the rest of the meal was great (and I will know better next time to take on something like this: took me close to 3 hours!)
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February 10th, 2008
This week I was ’selected by my airline for special security screening’ - and was totally cool with it. I went through the screening twice in fact, due to being stuck in Chicago over two days. As a frequent traveler with oft changing plans, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. And for the record, I am happy to comply with the screening, and in fact, I’ve registered with Clear, which required a significant amount of personal data and a background check, just to more easily get through security. While I’m usually very wary of the “I’ve got nothing to hide” slippery slope, when it comes to my 2 to 4 times weekly air travel, I’m willing to give a little to get a little. I’m a good guy, and want to see air travel secure, not just feeling secure.
So, why was I ’selected by my airline for special security screening’? Well, I was on a one way ticket, changed departure airports, and changed flights twice in one day. All for very good reasons - there was bad weather in the Midwest, needed to switch departure airports, couldn’t make the hoped for flight, etc, etc. This sort of thing happens when there is bad weather. This sort of thing exposes the weaknesses in the rules based systems implemented to select individuals for special security screening. When I went through security at O’Hare, just while I was in line at just one of many x-ray machines there were 4 other people waiting for ’special’ security screening. And you know why? Because the day before 80% of the flights were canceled and hundreds of people were re-booked. The rules based system that has been implemented clearly takes in to account too few attributes to be useful and results in far too many false positives (and likely too many false negatives). For example - I flew out on a multi leg one way ticket (on the same airline) since I didn’t know from where I’d be heading home. How about the frequency with which I fly. How about the fact I bought my tickets with an AMEX registered to a Fortune 500 company. How about the weather, and booking and changing through AMEX travel services. There are dozens of other attributes, and most would seem to point to stranded to business traveler rather than nefarious guy.
I work in fraud prevention, where pattern recognition and model building are critical to our success, and with the quality of models implemented for this special screening, well, I’d be out of business. If we really want something useful, let’s bring some meaningful attributes to the models and reduce the false positives. That’s all I’m saying, let’s apply some better models.
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February 10th, 2008
And I’m bitter. I have no proof, but it worked fine before I was ’selected by my airline for special security screening’ (a whole post to come soon) and didn’t work after. When dealing with the ’special’ screening, it takes a bit of effort to keep an eye on one’s bags, but traveling with two computers (one of which I am fond of) and being unreasonably attached to my Tumi luggage, I make a special effort to keep them in sight, and let me tell you - there was some rough loving for the Mac (and the Tumi luggage too, but Tumi is designed to, take it bitch).
When I got home and booted my Mac it looked like it was in photo negative color. There is a setting to do this, but the setting was correct, and connecting to an external monitor via DVI looked just fine. The only conclusion was that the display is fried. I took it to the Apple store in SF, and many of the Geniuses there commented that they had never seen anything like this before.
So, works fine, rough loving from TSA, not working anymore. There could be another explanation, but it would be great if they were a little more gentle with expensive computer equipment. Now I am stuck without my beloved Mac for 3 to 5 business days and a $300+ repair bill. The Mac may not be coming with me on trips anymore - I miss it, but too many opportunities for damage. At least until I get a MacBook Air, at which point not taking it seems a crime.
Categories: Science/Tech, Travel |
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February 10th, 2008
I have been studying French for ages. I started as a fourth-grader in Soviet Russia, lasted through high school, took grueling entrance exams at St Petersburg State Univeristy, picked it back up in US. Now, I am enrolled at local Alliance Francaise where my language level is deemed to be “expert.” In my current group, we have eight students. Four (!?!?!?) Russian women, a Croat, a Spaniard, an Indian , and one proud American girl. You go Hillary– the rest of your compatriots are either not interested or nto advanced enough to be in my group.
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February 1st, 2008
I used to have fun comparing the headlines on www.fox.com vs. other news agencies. This morning, I didn’t have to go that far. May I present to you the two faces of cnn:
#1 news on International Edition: “Iraq bombers were mentally disabled.”
#1 news on US Edition: “Killing of glamour model-bodyguard stuns Moscow.” + a sultry picture of said model.
What’s even sadder– the model was killed by a guy who was trying to steal her Porsche and it happened several days ago. Definitely not breaking news material but an excuse to put a barely-dressed woman on the front page.
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