Mission Impossible

Our huge project at Yahoo! has just launched... ta DA! As of about 6pm west coast time the new Yahoo! Video code named Griffin (the back end team was the lion, the front end team the eagle - i know. really silly.) launched. Stat server blowing up aside, everything is going relatively smoothly so far during the deployment. I have pretty much been working on video since my arrival at this job, and have spent many late nights sweating and laboring over this stupid thing. Our entire team has worked their asses off since January, subsisting only on a meager diet of red bull, bad chinese food, coffee, and sheer panic. It's still a little rough around the edges and needs some more polish and shine, which will take place in the form of bug-fixing in the coming weeks.

Go check it out if you want: http://video.yahoo.com

The product itself is basically Yahoo!s answer to YouTube and Google Video, allowing users to upload their own content. But wait... there's more! You also get your own "channel" where you publish your own content to, as well as keep playlists for other people to check out, tag and rate. You can also subscribe to other people's channels. I wasn't really convinced that the product was all that compelling until we actually got it into a state where you could actually start playing with it. And it's actually pretty cool, because it combines user-generated content with the already huuuuuge Yahoo! Search video library as well as content hand-picked by the editorial staff here that always manages to find the craziest stuff around.

But its been a rough road... Not that you are interested in the nuts and bolts of my job, but this morning I literally woke up from a nightmare that the embedded player was broken. The embedded player is the Flash video interface built for playing user uploaded content that is hosted here at Y. And about halfway thru the day today, sure enough, Dale found a bug in the stupid thing that was triggered by going into fullscreen mode in the embedded player. It ended up being my fault (doh!) and was due to some last-minute javascript fiddlings to adjust the way the player sits in the page, but ultimately won't impact the product... yet. Crisis averted. I'll circle back around in the next few days and fix it, this time taking into accound *both* fullscreen and embedded modes. When I first changed the code I had taken it into account but forgot to bulletproof it. Exhale.

I'll give you the super-secret magic query for just getting a list of the latest user-uploaded content if you promise not to tell anyone I told you, just so you can see what the embedded player is and see what I'm talking about: too late now sucka

The only video I happen to have in my posession is a video of CC's uncle Tom playing harmonica to torture the dog. I uploaded the video earlier today, and it was transcoded into flash and up on the site within minutes. It'll take about 24 hours for it to get into the index and be searchable.

More importantly, it seems that I get my life back now. I am once again free to spread my wings and float in the endless current of fresh air that exotic places such as the outdoors, away from my cubicle, affords. So if my communication has been sparse or I was a little harder to find lately, know that you are in my heart and thoughts and I would love to hear from you!!!!

This is Going To Give Al Gore an Aneurism

Scientific evidence that the Earth's poles were once tropical paradises has just been uncovered. 55 million years ago the Earth became extremely hot due to high levels of carbon dioxide or "greenhouse gasses" and the Arctic became populated with palm trees, alligators, and mosquitos due to its lovely 74 degree days. It goes without saying that the rest of the Earth was probably scorching hot. Scientist speculate that there was a "thermal event" that caused the release of these gasses, but what it was they have no idea. Link

Is This For Real???

Fools Gold

Elvis' favorite sandwich, the Fools Gold:

1 large roll of french bread
1 jar peanut butter
1 jar jelly
1 pound bacon

Hollow out the inside of the roll of french bread. Fill in empty space with peanut butter and jelly, layer bacon on top.

Home Furnishing

A sensible vaaase.

You need nesting cubes.

The Midas Touch

What is it with Texas-style Christianity?

Proving yet again that he has the power to corrupt everything that he comes into contact with, Kenneth Lay had this to say today after he was convitcted on all the criminal charges brought against him as the former CEO of Enron:


"I firmly believe I'm innocent of the charges against me," Lay said following the hearing. "We believe that God in fact is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the lord."

Story of my life.

Bombinate

bombinate: to buzz, hum, or drone.

Hot Moji Action

Andrew, the most dynamic battle bot in our pack of nerds at work, pointed me to Mojizu today, a character design community. That's his favorite above.

I kind of like this one:



And this one:

The Vegetable Kingdom

Girl Vegetables:
Lettuce
Peas
Corn
Broccoli
UPDATE FROM EUGIE:
Kale
Chard

Man Vegetables:
Onion Rings
French Fries
Carrots
Celery
Carmelized Onions (only if used to garnish a manly sandwich containing multiple phylums of meat products)

The guys I work with came up with this list at lunch today. Have you ever noticed how serious men get when they talk about sandwiches?

TalkTo.CC !!!!

It's official: TalkTo.CC is open for business! CC and Tim are right now traveling thru the mysterious and far-off land of Japan. CC's blog is now devoted to chronicling their adventures and I am shaking with anticipation. All the stories! All the pictures! It's just soooo exciting. Go check it out (it turns out CC is a total hit-whore, so by all means visit every day!). Link

Note to CC: notice I gave you a direct link from my page, no new window. SUCH generosity.

Mind-Boggling

Link

Working late has its rewards.

The MySpace Boomerang Effect

I've been really slow to get on the MySpace bandwagon, mostly because when I first signed up for it I didn't make any effort to find my actual friends on it, and would instead get emails from either sleazy guys looking to hook up or these other Vanilla-Ice looking guys looking to promote their brand new hip-hop album that just "dropped". But after a good year or two of vegetating there it seems like slowly every stray friend or ex-whatever I have ever had or thought about having has managed to track me down thru this thing (whether they wanted to be added to my "Friend" list or not).

But today I got home and there was an email in my mySpace inbox from Kristina Mariscal. And none of you mofo's knows the name Kristina Mariscal because she was my friend before anyone else. Ever. In the world. In first grade I was afraid of most of the kids in my class. I had never been to a "real" school before when I walked into St. Catherine's with my mom. I had gone to pre-school at Montessori where my teachers wore Birkenstocks and taught me the alphabet by "feeling" the letters. My most vivid memories of Montessori were of continually stealing seeds from the birds for a snack, sitting around in a circle singing hippie songs on a carpet, and Cappuccino - the class guinea pig who eventually died on my bathroom floor from being overfed. They don't have that thing in their brains that tells them to stop. I swear.

St. Catherine's was totally different. I remember walking into the classroom with my mom and thinking how strange it was that all the kids sat at desks in rows. They were learning the alphabet by reading the letters one at a time off the wall as Mrs. Bergamini pointed to them with a sharp-looking stick. I already knew the alphabet and even knew how to read so I felt kind of wierd, like I didn't belong. I remember her tone as she pointed at the letters one by one. There was no feeling in her voice. It was terrifying.

The kids in my new first grade class were much more aggressive than the kids in Montessori. They talked alot, were pretty loud, and all knew each other from kindergarten. Kristina looked and talked like the people in my family and seemed like the only one in class that was in any way familiar. We were both kind of quieter, more shy than everyone else (if you can believe that about me). We were pretty much best buds from then on, up until 6 or 7th grade. I remember she invited me to a party at her cousin's house one time and my mom made me wear this crazy dress that I didn't know how to get out of to go to the bathroom. Then my mom left and picked me up later, but in the meantime I was too shy to ask anyone to help me go to the bathroom so I ended up peeing on myself and hiding under a table instead. Kristina was such a good friend that she was really nice and never even said anything mean to me about it.

Our friendship survived many things; both of us switching schools, paint wars, birthday parties, Lori Zapotowski's divide and conquer tactics (then she moved on to Yvette and Yvonne Roncogliolo, the twins. It was better for everyone, they were more in her part of the alphabetical line)... But then Kristina and I lost track of each other because she moved.

So it's an interesting time in my life to be getting passed a note from the first person I was ever really really friends with (who turns out to be a scorpio - of course). I'm a good chunk through my Saturn return (knock on wood!) and am beginning to see the light at the end of this long tunnel of upheaval, change, and even transformation of my mind and spirit. All the chaos and havoc of my teens, early, mid and late twenties seems to be subsiding; at least INternally. I mean, crazy shit still happens, but now I know how to deal with in a reasonably sane manner without going all milk-bar on everyone. Most of the time.

The thing I realized in that first instant of seeing Kristina's grown-up picture on mySpace smiling back at me in the exact same way as 25 years ago, is that I have started disassociating my "new" me that has emerged from the cocoon of the "old" me, so much to the point that I have almost come to regard the "old" me as some other person... who has created a LOT of problems for "me" to work out. But there Kristina is, smiling at me on MySpace like not a day has passed. And I realize that I am that same person, too.

PS if any of you rotten bastards makes fun of my peeing story I will kick your ass.

Favorite New Album I Haven't Even Heard Yet

Does anyone remember the Gray Album from last year, the Danger Mouse project that mashed up JayZ with The White Album? Of course you do. Because it was the most original sound anyone has come up since... a long time. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. But it's cuz I'm excited about the new Danger Mouse project, which is a collaboration with the exquisite but inconsistent Cee-Lo Green which was finally released in its entirety today. The album is called "St. Elsewhere" and the dangerous duo are calling themselves "Gnarles Barkley".

Cee-Lo Green's sound is so gorgeous it gives me chills. I think he is the one man on Earth I would ever marry. Seriously. His music is truthful and when he's in the right mood, his voice sounds just like butter melting in the sun on a gravel road.

Here's the first single off the album.

Crazy.mp3

PS - The video for this song is pretty cool, too. There are two versions floating around, but I like Rorschach (sp?) test one. You can watch it here, but unfortunately you have to use Internet Exploder ("the big bad blue E") to watch it. I give you permission, this ONE time.

Tick tick tick tick

If you come today.. its too early
If you come tomorrow.. its too late!
You pick the timeeeeeee
tick tick tick tick.


Our team from Bangalore just left after visiting for a few weeks to work on our project at Yahoo. Sad.

Paraphenalia

I just looked at my countertop and realized i'm an addict. On a bender.

Hacker: The Aliens Are Here

I know I promised a more personal blog today, but I was planning this post since yesterday so it doesn't count. And besides, aliens hovering above us and proof of it is kind of important.

This guy pictured above is Gary McKinnon, a hacker that hacked high security clearance machines at the Dept. of Defense and NASA on a dial-up internet connection by writing a simple Perl script that looked for Windoze machines that didn't have a username and password setup yet (I love that the Dept. of Defense relies on default Windoze settings for security, BTW. I think I might order one of those Tomahawk missles for myself tomorrow).

He says that the government has been hiding anti-gravity and clean energy technologies obtained from, in once case, a crashed UFO that they were able to reverse-engineer and rebuild. He claims he saw photos of alien craft and that the aliens are regularly airbrushed out of hi-resolution satellite images. He says he saw the photos of alien craft via a Java application (so he doesn't have the files because they didnt download to his machine-- Gary! Gary! "Print Screen" will capture an image of your desktop and put it in your clipboard and you can paste it into any photo editing software from there, dude!).

He thinks the government is supressing this technology on purpose and that he is being prosecuted to be made an example of. I don't doubt any of his claims. From the following link you can also watch a video of an interview with him. I think he's kind of a hero, even if you don't believe his claims (and you think he looks like a character from V, the 80's miniseries where aliens posing as human beings take over the Earth). Link

Tell Us How You Really Feel

The judiciary gets a good laugh at the FCC's attempts to make the internet (and internet phone calls) wiretap-able. One of the judges called the FCC's argument "gobbledygook," the AP reports.

"Your argument makes no sense," U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards told the lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission, Jacob Lewis. "When you go back to the office, have a big chuckle. I'm not missing this. This is ridiculous. Counsel!"

Judge Harry, you rock. George Bush - this is why the executive and the judiciary branches are separate under our form of government. So the judiciary can laugh at your numb-skulled attempts at McCarthyism.

Link

"All hobbies and professions that are, essentially, cries for attention have one thing in common: self-congratulatory awards"

I am currently fuming because CSPAN has claimed copyright infringement on YouTube for hosting truthy video of the Stephen Colbert speech during the White House Press Corps's annual self-congratulation where he sarcastically flamed both the White House and its pet journalists for the mutual reach-around-iness of their relationship. The video of his speech was pulled from the YouTube server today.

Interestingly, CSPAN has other content up on YouTube that is has never claimed copyright infringement on. So the only question is whether this new moratorium on CSPAN footage on YouTube is the result of greed (they are selling it for the low price of $24.95 on their own website) or because they are brown-nosing neo-con swine? ...and is there a difference between these two motivations?

The original video I saw of it was on crooksandliars and is still up, if you havent seen it yet. Link

Why Don't You Stop Talking Mexican-ese?

I can't believe I've never pointed to whitehouse.org before from my blog. Here's a great article entitled, PRESIDENT DEMANDS THAT AMERICA'S SLAVE CLASS SING NATIONAL ANTHEM IN JESUS' LANGUAGE INSTEAD OF MUMBO-JUMBO MEXICANESE.

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Hindenberg

I wrestled with putting this up today. Because I figured most people saw it, but just in case, you shouldn't miss Stephen Colbert clowning Bush (to his face!!!) with his "truthiness" at the Press Corps dinner on Saturday night.

It's broken up into 3 parts cuz it's long but every second is priceless. I saw it earlier today but the YouTube reels are bigger than the one I saw. Its better for seeing the uncomfortable looks on the attendees faces as Colbert roasts Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Tony Snow... code name "Snow Job".

That's A Big-Ass Protest

Hey rednecks and people who want to keep "them" out of "our" country: it looks like its already "their" country...Link to Photo of SF Immigration Protest

250,000 protesters in L.A.
100,000 protesters in San Jose
60,000 protesters in San Francisco

It's pretty hypocritical for people who benefit from cheap illegal immigrant labor (uh, yeah, that includes you) to want to criminalize them.