Bush Leaves Country to Speak for the First Time as Ex-President

Serial failure George W. Bush had to leave the U.S. of A to speak for the first time as an ex-President and claimed that he won't criticise our current President because he "deserves my silence". It's apparent that he still hasn't read Lincoln's "It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt". Pitiful. Instead, the current president, the american public, and millions around the world deserve a series of apologies from him. 

Although the silence is pretty nice. 

Boulder Bach Festival

The Boulder Bach Festival is raging on this weekend. Tonight, they played a nice Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins along with two other great pieces. What a fantastic group of musicians -- you'd think the leads that aren't international musicians were all local Phd's. 

This year is the third that we've attended and they seem to keep getting better.

Photo Hanging and McGuckins

One of the most fantastic places in Boulder is our hardware/general store in the middle of town -- McGuckin's. You can get most anything there for building projects and get the best advice on how to put it up. The expertise and help at this place is priceless and our dog loves the place too. Here is a before of our empty living room wall with the rod layout guide...



Apparently, the hanging rod that we ordered from Red Envelope has feet that are meant for wood walls, not plaster.
After letting the guys at McGuckin's know about the rod feet, and the lack of information about the thickness of the plaster and the slats behind it, they provided all the advice needed to get the right parts for holding the frame.
The first part was to gauge the thickness of the plaster and the slat behind it. After drilling through the old brittle plaster with a 3/16 rock carbide drill bit (masonry bits do the trick!), an old coat hanger can be bent into shape, poked through the hole and then measured for thickness.
After finding out that the thickness was 1 1/4 inches, the McGuckin's guys provided these little engineered marvels -- "sleeve type wall anchors". A few of those across the top make for a sturdy fit for the rod.
Voila! One wall ready for a baby shower!

Jax Dinner and Top Chef

Yes, we love Jax. It's a fantastic seafood place in Boulder. Tonight, our friend Kate let us in on the awards the Chef Hosea achieved in the past couple of weeks -- it's impressive stuff. Apparently, he's a hit with the NYC crowd too.

Jax has the best oysters in town and some great infused vodka martinis. The scallop dish and the catfish dishes are out of this world. The entrees were great, although a little more salty than usual.

The four of us (can you find the fourth?)...

Happy Birthday, Dr Seuss!

One of the most influential modern artists. And fun to read.

Elephant and Dragon

I've been slowly getting through the Elephant and the Dragon. It's a slow read, partly because it seems to be a fairly scattered book, documenting politics and socio-economic forces in India and China and their impact on trade with the west.

The book seems to be written by a journalist that seems to stick with high-level opinions of the subject matter, without researching much to inform those opinions. Maybe it was written in haste, who knows? 

But throughout the book, the author persistently makes the point that in these countries, workers can churn out the same work for much lower wages as their "counterparts" in the U.S. This assumption simply has not been true from what I've seen. While many of the folks from those countries are doing some great work, around 2001, one of the startups I was working for was interested in outsourcing some of its networking programming to what was supposed to be the most talented tech center in China. Our execs visited, our programmers met their finest, and the groups at these centers simply did not have skills (although that is changing, I've seen some pretty excellent coding out of Asia). Another tech company that I worked with recently hired workers in India for their call center. The costs turn out to be the same as the centers in the U.S., only the accents and phony lines about the weather in your hometown turn out to be difficult to understand and a turnoff for customers. I am sure that's not always true for every effort to outsource, but often it is. It seems that some niche work can be very cost effective to outsource, but not all.

Anyways, the book has some great news about the increase in quality of living for so many that endured hardship under Mao and the challenges that India is overcoming in making progress. The author makes great comparisons about tradition and issues in India impeding progress, and the Communist parties' ability to make changes unimpeded. But then it seems that she leaves out examples of what happens to Chinese peasants, both old and young, when the government simply decides to build something as massive as the Three Gorges dam and immediately displace these people. 

Fairly interesting book about global trade.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

We finally saw "Who Killed the Electric Car?" last night. What an appropriate flick to watch as the Big 3 Detroit autowreck-maker executives fly private jets to demand taxpayer-funded bailouts. It's a frighteningly insightful documentary on how the practical implementation of GM's EV1 electric car was killed by the auto industry and big oil.

A few of the most interesting pieces of the film have to do with video footage recording Alan Lloyd's conflict of interests and parliamentary process actions during his pivotal role in California's hearings and decision-making to install "pumps" for electric cars around the state, the profit motivations of the Big 3 to continue producing internal combustion cars that require high levels of maintenance compared to no/low maintenance electric cars, and GM's sale to Texaco of the rights to Stan Ovshinsky's practical and inexpensive battery technology that already could have replaced oil consumption in the U.S. The battery itself made the electric car practical, affordable, and workable. GM quietly sold the patent and rights to the technology to Texaco in 2000. When there are trillions of profits for the Bush family and other oil interests to make over the next 50 years, of course these guys would want to suffocate such progress. 

Now, if you are an american, you get to go work another few days each year to bail out these guys. It's incredible how powerful and unsustainable the U.S. makers really are, and how well they commiserate with Big oil. Be sure to watch this movie now.