Warmfuzzyland

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On further review, I’m cranking this up one star to four. It was a very entertaining read, and I really don’t like baseball much. In fact, this exposed some nerdy things about baseball analysis that had previously escaped my attention, and made it so I can at least talk with hardcore baseball fans about team management strategy.

There are subtexts in this book, however, that require some analysis after you finish the book (and the afterword) to really drive them home. It’s worth it.

This book is about heretical management ideas succeeding despite the status quo, and from a certain point of view, BECAUSE of the status quo.

This book is about analyzing markets for your own advantage (or that of your organization). Specifically, it’s about finding value that nobody else has noticed, yet, and purchasing that value for pennies on the dollar before the market catches up.

This book is about how interesting real-life characters who were undervalued by the status quo succeeding because someone discovered how to value them.

It’s for everyone, even non baseball fans like me.
View all my reviews

We of Subsector Socal40K had a great 40K day here at the pad. The layout worked out really well, allowing us to remain close to the other games but not too crowded. I cut together the video I took into a battle report, which I posted about on the group site.
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From IRC:


12:10 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> omg I can't stop playing Tropico 4
12:10 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> lol
12:10 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> it's just so awesome
12:10 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> last game, the fucking volcano erupted and burned down
a hotel and all the beach bungalows
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> killing my tourist industry
12:11 < BloaterPaste> lool
12:11 < BloaterPaste> nice
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> leaving tropicans jobless
12:11 < BloaterPaste> I have 3, but haven't played it yet.
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> and the rebel army grew
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> and then tehy attacked a police station
12:11 < BloaterPaste> lol
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> so the army had to go out and shoot them
12:11 < BloaterPaste> you play as el presidente?
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> massive gunfight in the streets like 1/2 mile away from
the tourists
12:11 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> and EL PRESIDENTE was out there with a pistol
12:12 < BloaterPaste> lool, so it's basically like mazatlan?
12:12 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> blasting fools
12:12 < BloaterPaste> haha
12:12 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> got out of his limo and just started blasting
12:12 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> it was awesome
12:12 <@Warmfuzzy_9ERS> this game is so great


I think I’m the only person on the planet who actually likes and uses the trackpoint thingy consistently. I’ve never liked it on other laptops, but I’ve always been a huge fan of the way the Thinkpad trackpoint mice worked. I was getting cygwin X working on my Windows 7 W510 today, and tried jumping through a few hoops to get 3 button emulation working in the native rxvt shipping with the latest Cygwin. rxvt of course wants a middle-click for paste behavior, and my Thinkpad, although pretty rad, does not seem to include a proper middle button, that is, if I want to keep all the cool middle-click scroll functionality intact.

Then I found this:

http://cybernetnews.com/helpful-tip-middle-click-on-a-touchpad-laptop-mouse/

You can use it with AutoHotkey, or you can just download his little executable. Worked like a charm. I highly recommend it.

See what I did there? An enticing title. Of course, it’s possibly going to draw people who don’t really give a shit about NetApp cluster naming hilarity. Oh well.

MrPinstripe recently set up some new gear for the Cosmic Colo, including a NetApp cluster. He named the heads Shaq and Kobe, which imo is bloody brilliant. Here’s a quick paste from our chat in IRC:

19:29 kobe> df -Ag
19:29 Aggregate total used avail capacity
19:29 aggr0 3445GB 1163GB 2281GB 34%
19:29 aggr0/.snapshot 0GB 0GB 0GB ---%
19:29 kobe>
19:29 .
19:29 shaq> cf status
19:29 Cluster enabled, kobe is up.
19:29 shaq>

“Cluster enabled, kobe is up.” Awesome.

Here’s a list of amusing command line shenanigans for your amusement. Share and enjoy!