Musings from the UberGeek

Google Squared

Imaging searching Google and getting multiple results, but each result is related by certain criteria.

Wha?

OK. Search Google Squared, get results in a spreadsheet. It’s easier to demonstrate than explain!

Search for Rogers, AR Pizza:

Try a search for “dog breeds”, then when you get your results, click in the Add Columns box to get more info:

Here’s a cool one:

Search for “Ford gas mileage”  (I had to add the “Gas mileage” column)

Try some out and post your cool results in the comments!  Google Squared.

Rock… Paper…. ?

You all know how it works. It’s been a staple game for eons: Rock, paper, scissors.

It works like this. Count to three, show a hand signal for Rock, Paper, or Scissors; and based on the basic rules, someone wins or you tie and play forever.

Then, there’s the variations. My favorite version is the one popularized on the show “The Big Bang Theory”. It’s the one called “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.” Google it. The rules are slightly more complicated, nerdy, but fun.

However…

Tonight, I heard a version that may trump them all. Charlie (my 6-year-old) has learned variations of this game in kindergarten and plays something like “rock, paper, dynamite” or something like that. She was playing this game with her 4-year-old sister Kami and they were quite successfully arguing the rules of each of their wins.

Then the rules changed.

Charlie led… “Rock Paper Scissors; show me what you got!”

Charlie held her hand in a Rock symbol.

Kami held her arms out wide and yelled,

“I have God!”

I believe Kami won that round.

Stand By Me

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley’s base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz’s added some metal percussion to it.

The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

Listen to the whole thing. It’s really worth it.

2008 Tornado Statistics « 40/29 TV Weather Blog

Check out these Tornado statistics.   Really interesting.

2008 Tornado Statistics « 40/29 TV Weather Blog.

Echo from the past

You know that feeling you get when you’re moving, and you walk around the old house one last time to make sure you didn’t forget anything (but you’re really sort of saying goodbye)? It’s that bittersweet feeling of those good memories you had there. Pieces of home that you worked so hard for years that they’ve become part of you; so that in saying goodbye, it feels as though a part of you leaves as well.

That’s how I’m feeling right now. Although I’m not going anywhere, I’m changing jobs. My new position as Senior Pricing Coordinator for Anheuser-Busch started officially last Wednesday. I’ve been in IT since 1998. I’ve lived, breathed, and surrounded myself with code, hardware, bits, circuits, zeros and ones. I have accumulated knowledge along the way, and tried every day to make my life and my peers easier by creating custom scripts and applications that automate things.

Today I find myself rooting through all the folders on my hard drive at work, moving years of files and utilities off, and deleting what has effectively been my life at work. It’s a strange feeling. You might think that this isn’t a big deal, but I’m a dedicated person when it comes to my work. I take pride in my accomplishments, but never have I been anything but modest. Now, that work will disappear.

Sure, I’ll hand some of it off to my replacement, should this office be so blessed to get a backfill. But most of it is work that I did that will never get used by anyone else but me.

So today, as I still handle a few IT duties around here (mostly because I can’t tell people “no”), I look to my future of excel spreadsheets and endless meetings and conference calls and wonder if it was the right decision.

I may never know that. It’s a chance we take when we change our careers. But I know this: this opportunity was given to me by my boss here, and it was given because of my reputation, attitude and work ethic. I will never forget the ways that this has helped me and my family out. I also know that God has had a hand in this direction change for me. That in itself makes those meetings a little more bearable now.

To all of those people who may stumble across this rambling of words that currently work in those environments, do not think that I’m complaining. This is an opportunity for me. Sure, I’m sad to leave IT behind, but mostly: I’m excited and scared at the same time. I survived a major IT layoff at A-B, and I’m very thankful to even have a job currently, much less a full-time one and not a contractor position.

We shall see what I can become. I think my IT background will give me a lot of creative answers to the problems that lay ahead. I’ll leave you with a favorite quote:

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles