Adam S’s Neighborhood

Only the second time I've seen one in my predominantly paperless office.

For those who haven't followed my last few posts, this morning, at 6 AM, Cincinnati Public Schools' magnet schools had open registration. We wanted to make sure we secured a slot for kindergarten. It is not uncommon for folks to camp out for days to get a slot. The one we targeted, Sands Montessori is a popular choice, with 65 applicants to all grades by the time registration opened.

They're letting us sleep in the school.

But, for a free tent, it's doing quite well. Here in the Sands Montessori line, we have what my dad would call a "slow, soaking rain." setting up the tent on arrival was a good call.

Registration for Sands Montessori is 6 AM tomorrow. 17 hours to go. I've set up for the long haul.

clipped from online.wsj.com This is the double life many people lead: yesterday's technology for work, today's technology for everything else. The past decade has brought awesome innovations to the marketplace—Internet search, the iPhone, Twitter and so on—but consumers, not companies, embrace them first and with the most gusto. Some forward-thinking companies are already giving employees more freedom to pick mobile phones, computers and applications for work The result, they've found, is more-productive employees. There's a reason professional chefs bring their own knives to work, rather than using a dull set of blades lying around the kitchen. The rise of the consumer market also means people have gotten a lot smarter when it comes to technology—and a lot less patient with substandard stuff at the office. Even with the weak economy, companies will find it harder to recruit savvy workers if they don't let them use their favored technology.

What's the first exhibit you visit at the zoo?

Look! An excuse to post more pictures of cats from the Cincinnati Zoo! We have an excellent collection of cats. For starters, by popular demand, a Pallas cat:

Last summer, there was a Pallas cat kitten, who was hanging out with a regular kitten. I posted some of the better photos. This is less good, but they look cute.
Olga is our snow leopard.
"What big ears you have?" you might ask the serval.
I've started to follow the Geoffroy's cat, as he seems to be overshadowed of late.
Ocelots always looked, to me, like cats that were still wearing their pajamas.

We had a minor baby boom in Cincinnati this year. This includes Eurasian lynxes,
tigers,
and fishing cats.
...I think I left one out....who was it? Oh yes! Nia Faye, the cutest cheetah cub ever!
Cincinnati is not only home to the fastest cheetah in the world, but the most Web 2.0 enabled, with their own blog, a presence on Facebook, and a feed on Twitter. By following them day-to-day, I've become quite taken with these cats. The trainers, I think, try to give a sense of their personality. For some reason, I think Eddy would get along famously with them.
There are plenty of other cats at the zoo--white tigers, lions, sand cats, leopards, bobcats and more! This has become my personal first stop at the zoo!

While I had posted other pictures from these visits to the zoo, these are ones that didn't make the cut--usually some combination of a less-than-great photo and better options for a similar shot. But, I wanted to put up new ones.

It's hard to believe that, ten years ago, we were making preparations for the Y2K cut-over. As an IT professional, this was something we had to plan for, prepare for, and test.

We spent lots of money on remediation. I know that more than a few companies chose to replace the systems outright. At the time, my office specialized in implementing such systems. After Y2K, everyone had a shiny new system--it took a while before things picked up again.

As this article notes, the use of off-shore people started with Y2K. Once companies realized the benefit, they realized they could continue to send work overseas.

At the end of the day, was disaster averted, or was it a waste? Overall, I think that the remediation effort served its key aim of preventing lots of annoying little problems from causing not a global collapse, but months and years of lost productivity after the fact, sorting it out piecemeal.

Y2K came at an odd time in the world of computing. It was at the heels of the first internet wave, when such technology became a key part of day-to-day life. Over the course of the nineties, what was something that tended to be part of big business was being pushed to smaller and smaller organizations. Y2K, I think, was the capstone event for this shift, leading to a few years until the next phase.

What's the longest you've ever waited in line?

Last year, I stood in line to get my daughter into a school. That was about six hours, and it was in the thirties. While I was able to submit the paperwork, she missed a different cut-off.

Next week, they are doing the same thing, and I'll be there (this time, in the middle of the night). My daughter has cleared all the cut-offs, so, so long as I make it in time, she should get in.

For my daughter's fifth birthday (today), I made cupcakes. These are very much from scratch--as my mixer is currently down, I stirred/mixed everything by hand. I have mad baking skillz.