Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman or Scientific Ninja Troop Gatchaman - also known in the US as Battle of the Planets and G-Force
This is not the first cartoon I ever watched, but it is chronologically the earliest sci-fi cartoon I used to watch (I am sure Tom & Jerry and the Bugs Bunny cartoons predate gatchaman, but anyway).


Back, when I was young and living in Greece, at a time there were only two channels both state owned, there wasn't much to watch on TV in terms of cartoons (certainly nothing like the cartoon channel!) When television was deregulated and private local and national stations could come into existence, I turned the TV on and tuned into the local channel, and there it was! G-Force! I did watch a great number of episodes when I was young, but I never realized that there are over 100 episodes in this series!

I was sucked in by the series when I was a kid. When I visited my grandparents a few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the series is still playing on that local channel! Of course, all of the episodes I have seen, but it is always great to get a blast from the past when you turn on the TV in a room that you have not been in for a very long time. It is a continuity point from the past, to the present.
At some point I do want to get the Japanese version, all 100+ episodes.
The American English version was more sanitized, while the Japanese version was more mature in that it dealt more with death, jealousy, ire and just plain ol' shit-happens.
Here is the intro of the series for you:

The end of the semester that is! (yeah, I know, it's a stale joke!)
With only three more weeks left, I have two things to look forward to (well in addition to the end of the semester)
1. My Data Modeling Final Exam
2. My Object Oriented Systems Final presentation
Despite my recent development woes (see virtual PC and visual studio not playing nice with one another) I am feeling rather optimistic
At the very least I can code everything and I can make improvements on the database back end of the proof-of-concept application that I am designing. Now if the webserver does not work...that is a completely different story now, isn't it?

I know that other students, both in my school and in schools nationwide are getting ready for their final presentations, and most are undoubtedly going to use powerpoint. I just wanted to post this video of Demetri Matrin doing a great job at presenting his material, without powerpoint! Enjoy!

One of the funniest hours of comedy I have ever watched is the axis of evil comedy tour with Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, Dean Obeidallah and Aron Kader (No North Korean comic yet). I think out of the whole group Maz Jobrani is my favorite, but all of these comedians shine on stage! The DVD was only about $13 on amazon, and it was the best $13 I have ever spent. I have seen it three times already in a time span of a week and a half. If you like comedy, this is something that you should go out and get as soon as possible (laughter after all is the best medicine).

Most of the jokes are ethnic, and as you might guess arab in nature and interactions of ethnic communities with off-the-street "americans" (people who've been here since the Mayflower), but if you have ever grown up in a greek or italian family, you can definitely relate to the comedy.
Also if you have ever known arabs or iranians, sorry persians, you will find tons of good laughs in this hour of comedy.

Here is a sample:

Nokia's Series90 one-hit-wonder, the Nokia 7710!
This device runs a tablet operating system (Series90) based on the Symbian Operating system. It uses a stylus for navigation and I have a sneaking suspicion that Nokia's Tablet Internet OS, which powers the N770 and N800 internet tablets, was inspired, or partly based, on Series90. Doesn't it look cool?
I would like to get the version that also has DVB-H on it (you know, the limited edition that was used in the UK to trial DVB-H services!)
Yes I know that there is no DVB-H in the US. I also know that the phone only has a 1.3MP camera on it (my Nokia N80 blows its camera out of the water!), and the phone has no WiFi which makes it's amazing screen useless because I do not want to pay for mobile data (given that I have WiFi at home already!) Finally, because it is the one, and only, series90 device ever produce, applications for it are few and far between. The only redeeming quality is that it would be great for Satellite Navigation like TomTom.
Despite all that I still want this gadget, even though I don't need it!

Don't get too excited, it doesn't exist yet!
For those of you who don't know, Lifeblog is a suite of software for your (Windows XP) PC and Series60 smartphones made by Finnish phone giant Nokia. This application allows the user to extract data from their smartphone, such as SMS messages, MMS messages, audio and text notes, and any videos and photos that they have taken with their phone. It allows you to tag, categorize, sort and search through your "life" collection using the desktop application, or your mobile version that is installed on your phone. Since it is called lifeblog you have the ability to point the application to a blog you own and post selected items to that blog (want to share that funny photo or SMS you got? well you can!)

I personally use lifeblog as a way of offloading content from my phone (to keep its memory nice an empty for new content), keeping track of things, and occasionally posting a photo to my blog. There is only one problem: there is no MacOS X version for Lifeblog! Up until recently, I was able to have access to a Windows XP based PC, so I was able to offload my content. Now I no longer have access to a Windows PC, and there is no solution for MacOS X! Not even through emulation on Virtual PC! Lifeblog has been around of years, what's the holdup with the MacOS X version? Come on Nokia! There are those of us who prefer to not use Windows...give us lifeblog software for the Mac!

Yet another gadget that I want, but don't actually need!
This time it's the Motorola i930 smartphone (circa 2005). This geek device is am iDEN phone which also sports a triband GSM radio!
This means that you can not only use it with any iDEN carrier globally, but pretty much with any GSM network globally! That gives you a lot of carrier options! So why don't I need it? Well simple, I don't plan on switching to Nextel or Boost Mobile (for one reason), and I already own a GSM phone!
The other question is why would anyone not want it?
1. It sports an ancient version of Windows Mobile (version 2003) and the phone came out after WM5 was released!
2. No Bluetooth! I admit that I don't use bluetooth that often, but I do use it!
3. Bad battery life (according to reports anyway)
4. It is STILL $200 or so dollars!!!

At least it syncs with the Mac

It's been a while since I've had Boss Coffee.
I know that it's not comparable to 'real' coffee (you know the kind you brew), but it is sooooooo tasty!
I wish there were an asian food specialty store around here...

There are many times that I drool over some piece of technology. I really want to get these devices, "just 'cause", when I really might now have any use for them (or they just don't play nice with what I already own). Recently, the Sidekick 3 has been such a device for me. Being a self proclaimed gadget geek, I've wanted to try a sidekick for quite some time, but since I have Cingular (sorry I mean "the new AT&T" ) it would mean that I would either have to go prepaid and spend $400 for one, or get a two year contract with T-mobile and get the device for $200 (or get it on ebay used).

I could get the device, and I could mess around with it on T-Mobile's prepaid service (both prepaid and post paid is about $30/month). The device has issues that make it less appealing to me, issues such as:
1. Poor Web 2.0 (so no youTube, and other services I might want to use)
2. No ability to type in Greek (so SMS would be an issue)
3. No synchronization with MacOS (come on!!!)
Despite the shortcomings and the price tag (and the fact that I have a smartphone already) I still want to buy and play with one...talk about irrational behavior!

☠☢☣☢☣☢☣☠☠ Aaaarrrghhhh!!!! ☠☢☣☢☣☢☣☠☠
I am (finally) on the road to development with Visual Studio 2005 on my PowerPC Mac (with the help of Virtual PC).
It is slow, but I am accepting of this fact because it is emulation of x86 hardware and the Windows operating system on a PowerPC architecture on the MacOS.
After some general slowness, I added a few datasets to my ASP.NET project, I configured them, I changed my widgets to utilize those data sets, I hit "run" and...
chug....chug....chug...chuuuuuuugggg..... "there was a webdev error, please contact microsoft"....☠ aaaaaaaaarghhhhh! ☠
Theoretically what I have works...there is just no way of testing on my mac (until I get this issue fixed). So the battle continues...

After my hard drive crashed last summer, I did not bother reinstalling virtual PC on my powerbook. I took the utilitarian approach to this matter: my Windows XP virtual machine took up at least 3 gigabytes of my hard drive space, and emulation (as is expected!) is never going to be on par with running an OS or application on an actual x86 machine.

I had to return the work laptop (a slow Dell D600) because I wasn't using it for work-work but rather to improve my skill sets (by taking an object oriented systems class and learning more about ASP, C# and Visual Studio). Anyway - with three weeks left in the semester I am left without a development platform! yikes! I pulled off my dusty (achoo!) copy of Virtual PC, Windows XP, and visual studio 2005, and commenced the installation procedure last night I was done with windows after 2 hours of installation (including service packs), and I started installing studio 2005. The installer is still running!

To be fair, when I installed Visual Studio 2005 on the D600, it took just as long. I just hope that it's not too slow when it comes time to run it in order to continue the development of my semester project.

I've been working on this for the last four to five months - between work, life, and homework I haven't had much time!
Anyway, if you are considering the purchase of a smartphone (of any kind), have a look at this rather lengthy article I wrote on smartphones.
Enjoy!

Every now and then I see a sad story in the news that gives me this warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction - a sense of schadenfreude if you will. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it usually revolves around some sort of poetic justice (I am not sure I would call yesterday's even poetic justice) - anyway... I was reading an Engadget article about RIM's blackberry network being down Tuesday evening and part of yesterday morning in all of North America!

I could just picture millions of Crackberry addicts going nuts because they weren't getting any email, I could picture then twitching every time they thought they heard the buzz of a new incoming email. I know how this feels because I used to own a blackberry, and like many addicts out there, when I handed mine back to our Telecom Department for days I put my hand where my blackberry used to be holstered, and I reached to get a non-existed blackberry when I thought a new email had come in. I also tried to check - many times - if a new email item had come in despite the fact that I had no blackberry and no incoming mail sound had sounded! I got over my Crackberry addiction which makes yesterday's network outage all the more funny.

I know many colleagues, business people, executives and other fellow gadget aficionados in North America found neither the outage nor my comments funny (and probably complained of productivity losses - not to mentioned the poor RIM employees burning the midnight oil to fix the problem), but hey - that's why it's called Scadenfreude!

Good Day

I generally wait for games to go down in price before I buy them (I am frugal like that). Recently I bought Sonic Rivals and I must say that it wasn't what I expected but it is enjoyable. I did read the reviews, and knew it was a racing game before I bough it, however I guess I was not prepared for how much of a racing game it was. I still have not gone though all of the manual, but it just seems like I only need to press the analog stick forward and then press the X or O buttons whenever necessary.

I am sort of stuck on level two (with all the characters) - I keep getting attacked by my racing opponent, and even though I have weapons I don't know how to use them yet...I guess I need to RTFM. This game has some pretty nice graphics and it fun to play. The one thing that really annoys me is the half-baked attempt at dialogue. When your racer (whoever you choose) interacts with Robotnik (Eggman for those of you who don't know Robotnik) or with another character there is text based dialogue, which is fine. What is retarded is the fact that the two characters involved in the dialogue speak the FIRST word of that sentence!

example of what is on screen: "Hey! You stole my Chaos Emerald! I will get you for this!"
What is spoken: 'HEY!'

It gets annoying when you realize that they won't speak the whole thing and you have a series of evocations or retorts for no reason at all... all things considered though, thus far, this seems to be a good game. I am still waiting for a 'real' sonic game for the PSP!

Today is Marathon Monday here in Boston, however it's not like past marathon mondays.
Today it's cold, and wet...and windy! I've been living in the area since 1994, and I don't recall ever having such bad weather on marathon monday!
The Boston Athletics Association, the organizers of the marathon, have arranged for busses to pick up marathon runners 'who just had too much' and don't want to continue running. While I think that there should be emergency crews on stand by, in case of medical emergency, I think it is counter to the spirit of the marathon to provide transportation to quitters. Running a marathon is no simple task, I would not be able to do it (at least in the shape I am in), but if I were to run that would imply that I put a lot of work into it, which means that neither rain, nor slow, nor sleet, nor ice, nor gale force winds would keep me from running/sprinting/jogging/power walking across that finish line. Don't be a quitter!

Just my 2 cents - good luck to all runners

The light at the end of the tunnel that is!
There are three more weeks left in the semester, in terms of projects 5.
I have:
[a] two presentations for my OO class (no sweat, just need to sit down and finish up some code)
[b] two exams for my data modeling class (again, no sweat I don't think)
[c] one last homework for OO due Tuesday. This one has me scratching my head. I think I will spend all of Marathon Monday doing this one - but I think I can pull it off

Since I no longer have a windows machine at home anymore, I have to go to Campus on a sunday to use Visual Studio 2005 (If I had an Intel Mac this would not be a problem LOL)

...or rather find someone who will pay you for what you want to do

Finding one's niche might be a gargantuan task in and of itself, determining what you 'want to be when you group up' can be challenging as you don't know what you might like doing. When you do find out though, the next hurdle comes onto the scene: finding someone who will pay you to do what you want to do for a living. I posted my resume on Monster and on HotJobs. Two percent of people who viewed my resume saved it (so I guess they liked it). I keep getting jobs for Database Admins, Programmers, and Developers. I guess that's because of my knowledge of various programming languages and my BA in computer science - however I really have no interest in coding for a living, even though I can, I don't want to. Managing coding projects - OK, coding - no. One must realize their relative talents, and I realized year's ago that even though I can code, there are other people that are much more talented and much more efficient at doing that, so it is really surprising to me that I keep getting job 'offers' for coding jobs. I guess I need to tone down the coding aspect of my experience.

When I created my Monster profile, I was asked what jobs I was aiming for, I wanted to be a dreamer, so I said "Master Podcaster" and "Technology Writer". Looking at it now, I wonder what people who view my profile think. Do they think "Geek with a lot of potential to push out gadgets" an Adam Sessler for gadgets if you will (my intended message), or do they think "Slacker with no direction that just wants a cushy podcast job". I guess these people maybe are new media Luddites that think that podcasts, blogs, and other new media are fads that are not here to stay. I don't think that I will be an Adam Sessler (G4), or Ryan Block (engadget), but...I can always aim for it - coding be damned

Hello, I am 26 and I am looking for a job for the first time!

Yes, I know, this isn't the first time I have looked for a job, and whatever job I get will not be my first job ever - however this time period marks a seminal moment in my development as a professional and as a person since it is the first time I have applied to more than two or three places, and I am trying to figure out 'what I want to be when I grow up'. I started working 10 years ago when I was in high school, as an IT consultant of all things. However I was not looking for a job, it just fell in my lap and I loved it. However being a high school student, I could only work in the summer.

When I started college I started working on campus, but again the position fell in my lap as there are always workstudy jobs available on campus. Then, it wasn't a big leap to go from workstudy to full time employee - sort of a promotion really. Moving laterally within departments (for increase in pay of course) was the next move. In the mean time, I got my BA in computer science, my MBA, a couple of certifications and I am finishing up an MS in information technology. Education-wise I truly believe that I have out-grown my current job. This is not to say that the job I have is beneath me, to claim that would be arrogant and untrue - a job is a job.

However, there comes a time in a person's life where just going from job to job because it is convenient, or pays the right salary is no longer an option. Looking for a job that fulfills you emotionally, and fills your wallet with cash (to pay all of life's expenses) is quite a daunting task. Looking for a job - or rather a career, is like looking for love. It is a relationship, companies and the people that work for them have personalities, and those personalities must match and complement yours. They also have skills, wants and needs, and those must also complement what you bring to the table. A bad match can spell disaster both for the person applying and for the company (Enron anyone?).

So where am I looking? Monster, HotJobs, Craigslist, HigherEdJobs and LinkedIn. I've sent out a number of resumes and cover letters, and I am still continuing to do so. It is not an easy task, and it's time consuming - but the rewards promise to be great. -- this is quite a learning experience! I am 26 - and looking for a job for the first time.

Χριστός Ανέστη! to everyone out there
Happy easter - think of it as a second chance for your 'new year's resolutions'

Unfortunately no China for me this year
A combination of costs, vacation time, work and overall exhaustion (2 years straight of classes & work without any noticeable vacation).
Oh well...I'll save up my pennies, vacation time, and take a break from school, re-energize my batteries, and then we'll see - the great wall will still be there

The trip to China, a 10 day school sponsored trip (3 credits in international business) is now down in price thanks to the Confucius institute!
The original price was $2500 + transportation costs...now it's $1000 ($1200 max) + transport costs (which might be around $1000.
Room, board, transport in China is all taken care of with this price... I had made up my mind not to take classes this summer, and I don't know if the class will count as an Information Technology class, but I am seriously reconsidering taking this class in China ...
Thinking hard... hey at least I will be away from the dysfunctional organization for 10 days and I will be exposed to a whole new environment

I should be working on my object-oriented homework, however I can't get out of my mind how dysfunctional certain organizations are. With this theme in mind, I have given myself leave for a few hours to work on the subject of organizational dysfunction, more specifically the signs of a disfuctional organization:

First, from our friends at microsoft (who knew they did things other than software!): we have 3 signs of a dysfunctional company
Out of the three, my two favorites are: you've got bosses that like to point fingers and you've got a CEO that does not set priorities. I think that the certain organization that I am thinking about, certainly has these two down to an art.

Second, from coopercomm, we've got the 10 signs of a dysfunctional organization.
In the context of that certain organization near and dear to our hearts, I think that 9 out of the 10 signs apply to this organization: Constant Crisis, Organizational Insanity, Pluralistic Ignorance, Relative Success, Sub-Optimizing, Indirect Causes, OK Sorry's, Multi-class society, and broken behavior-consequence chain. I am not going to reiterate what the article says, the link is right above and it is a worth while read. I find that the some of the signs have been around for at least the last couple of years in this organization. Constant Crisis, Relative Success, Multi-class society and the broken behavior-consequence chain have been issues even before I started getting involved, however nothing was addressed, as a consequence it has gotten worse.

Third, the exec-pundit gives us even more signs of a dysfunctional organization:
Here is what applies to us:
High-turn over: Over the last few years we've lost three department heads, (this organization only has 5 departments!), they've sent someone off on sick leave (my personal opinion is due to work related stress), they've lost four non-dept. head employees to early retirement or they have gone to other organizations, and there are a number of people currently looking elsewhere for a job. Hmmmm.....
Low-turn over: We had an employee who was sub-par, and their supervisor knew it, but she did not want to do anything about it. That employee was about to the transfered to another department with the warning to the manager of you are going to have your hands full picking up after him - huh? is this a way to staff a department that is already understaffed?
Consultation with Attorneys: or rather in this case with the union. There are a few people that have consulted with union reps in the organization because of unfair work issues.
No Consultation with Attorneys: again, in this case the union. Employees are dissuaded from contacting the union and HR on work related issues, and from talking to other bargaining unit members about work related issues. This is not legal, and brings forth an air of fear.
Exciting Environment: No procedures! You do "A", you get scolded, you do "B" you get scolded and told to do "A" (despite the fact that you were scolded before). catch-22
Boring Environment: too much excitement is boring - really - most people either see this as a dead-end organization, they leave, or they resign themselves to routine.

Here are some more articles on Organizational Dysfunction for your reading pleasure
IIM: Symptoms of Dysfunctional Organizations
Dysfunctional Organizations: should you be a whistle blower?
The sick chicken