Revelations

Prior to my married years, I ate a lot of Taco Bell. I'd always had my "food" covered in the magical Fire Sauce.

Today's dental surgery's post-operative care instructions said "no spicy foods" and soft foods like "ground meat". So, I decided to stop by Taco Bell. I ordered some ground "beef" soft tacos. I was amazed at how utterly bereft of flavor Taco Bell's tacos are when not slathered in fire sauce. In fact, were it not for the taste of bandage in my mouth, the meal would have been utterly flavor-free.

Fmeh.

On Technology and Vendor Presentations

I hate sitting through vendor technology briefs. At the end, everyone's always asking "so, what'd you think". And, frankly, by the time some vendors' sales team is doing a technology brief, they're doing it about technology that's been around, in one form or another, for years - sometimes decades.

Technology generally tends to be iterative (even the "groundbreaking" stuff isn't all that earth-shaking if you were into the things that lead to it). As such, if you've worked with a given set of technology long enough, you can tend to predict where it's likely to (or at least "might") go. Thus, when it finally gets there - particularly when it finally gets there to the point of (sorta) being "easy" - there's just nothing all that surprising about it. So, it's hard to be impressed.

I kinda feel sorry for the people that are presenting the shiny/nifty/"new" stuff. They're spouting off stuff that is "new" to 90% of the people they present it to. Instead, when they run into me, they're hit with a barrage of "this sounds like a combination of technologies X and y: how does it differ from them and what do they have in common", or "this sounds like it's based on a product you bought X years ago: is it that same product and, if so, what have you changed/improved in that product since you bought it" or "this sounds like a product one of your competitors was peddling 'X' month/years ago: how is your version different (or why is does it appear to be missing a competing feature of the older product)".

Oh well.

Overall, I don't care about shiny/new/etc. At the end of the day, all I really care about is "does it solve a problem I haven't already solved" and/or "does it make it easier to do things I'm already doing". The rest is just window-dressing.

Sportsmanship Versus Honesty

I'm a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers. That means, after Sunday's 5-1 win over the (hated) Pittsburgh Penguins, I'm a happy camper. My team moves on and the Pens start playing golf early.

After the game, the press had their interviews with each team's players and coaches:

In that video, the Penguins coach, to me, says the honest thing. He acknowledges the Flyers win, but he doesn't go on to fall back on the trite "we wish them luck" bullshit.

For whatever reason, we've come to equate "sportsmanship" with non-genuine displays. We expect the losing team to be "gracious in defeat". So, when someone says something honest rather than polite, people get their panties in a bunch. 

It's not like Bylsma said, "I hope those fuckers lose and lose embarrasingly". No, all he said was "I can't wish them luck". I'm fine with that. In fact, I gotta kind of respect the man for being honest in a time where we value politeness over honesty.