cameron-webb

my only REQUEST

2007-02-15T01:10:00Z

My only “request” for today….

Please, Microsoft, for the love of the flying spaghetti monster, stop misusing the word “ask”. Ask is a verb. It is not a noun. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ask

The noun form is the word “request”. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/request

Use it all you want inside the walls, but have the courtesy to speak in a language that people can actually understand when communicating with the outside world.

“We tried to address the most important requests.”

“This was a major request from our customers.”

“This request was easy to satisfy.”

“I will not talk about your request for that hello kitty OWA theme.”

“No, not even if you ask me nicely.”

katrina

2005-09-06T23:03:00Z

No big intro. The government response to Katrina is too infuriating on so many levels and continuing to be so as the spin machines are brought to bear on the catastrophic lack of preparation. Lots of places to read about it and put together the pieces of the truth. Please do. Please get mad as I am. Please do something.

For now, rather than bring all the content from elsewhere here, I'll just post Senator Barack Obama's statement from his web site: http://obama.senate.gov/statement/050906-statement_of_senator_barack_obama_on_hurricane_katrina_relief_efforts/index.html#more

Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Red Cross volunteers work with evacuees at the Houston Astrodome. (AFP/Stan Honda)

I just got back from a trip to Houston with former Presidents Clinton and Bush. And as we wandered through the crowd, we heard in very intimate terms the heart-wrenching stories that all of us have witnessed from a distance over the past several days: mothers separated from babies, adults mourning the loss of elderly parents, descriptions of the heat and filth and fear of the Superdome and the Convention Center.

There was an overriding sense of relief, for the officials in Houston have done an outstanding job of creating a clean and stable place for these families in the short-term. But a conversation I had with one woman captured the realities that are settling into these families as they face the future.

She told me "We had nothing before the hurricane. Now we got less than nothing."

We had nothing before the hurricane. Now we got less than nothing.

In the coming weeks, as the images of the immediate crisis fade and this chamber becomes consumed with other matters, we will be hearing a lot about lessons learned and steps to be taken. I will be among those voices calling for action.

In the most immediate term, we will have to assure that the efforts at evacuating families from the affected states proceeds - that these Americans are fed, clothed, housed, and provided with the immediate care and medicine that they need. We're going to have to make sure that we cut through red tape. I can say from personal experience how frustrating, how unconscionable it is, that it has been so difficult to get medical supplies to those in need quickly enough. We should make certain that any impediments that may continue to exist in preventing relief efforts from moving rapidly are eliminated.

Once we stabilize the situation, this country will face an enormous challenge in providing stability for displaced families over the months and years that it will take to rebuild. Already, the state of Illinois has committed to accepting 10,000 families that are displaced. There are stories in Illinois as there are everywhere of churches, mosques, synagogues and individual families welcoming people with open arms and no strings attached. Indeed, if there's any bright light that has come out of this disaster, it's the degree to which ordinary Americans have responded with speed and determination even as their government has responded with unconscionable ineptitude.

Which brings me to the next point. Once the situation is stable, once families are settled - at least for the short term - once children are reunited with their parents and enrolled in schools and the wounds have healed, we're gonna have to do some hard thinking about how we could have failed our fellow citizens so badly, and how we will prevent such a failure from ever occurring again.

It is not politics to insist that we have an independent commission to examine these issues. Indeed, one of the heartening things about this crisis has been the degree to which the outrage has come from across the political spectrum; across races; across incomes. The degree to which the American people sense that we can and must do better, and a recognition that if we cannot cope with a crisis that has been predicted for decades - a crisis in which we're given four or five days notice - how can we ever hope to respond to a serious terrorist attack in a major American city in which there is no notice, and in which the death toll and panic and disruptions may be far greater?

Which brings me to my final point. There's been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I've said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.

But what must be said is that whoever was in charge of planning and preparing for the worst case scenario appeared to assume that every American has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk, and use a credit card to check in to a hotel on safe ground. I see no evidence of active malice, but I see a continuation of passive indifference on the part of our government towards the least of these.

And so I hope that out of this crisis we all begin to reflect - Democrat and Republican - on not only our individual responsibilities to ourselves and our families, but to our mutual responsibilities to our fellow Americans. I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the Hurricane. They were abandoned long ago - to murder and mayhem in their streets; to substandard schools; to dilapidated housing; to inadequate health care; to a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

That is the deeper shame of this past week - that it has taken a crisis like this one to awaken us to the great divide that continues to fester in our midst. That's what all Americans are truly ashamed about, and the fact that we're ashamed about it is a good sign. The fact that all of us - black, white, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat - don't like to see such a reflection of this country we love, tells me that the American people have better instincts and a broader heart than our current politics would indicate.

We had nothing before the Hurricane. Now we have even less.

I hope that we all take the time to ponder the truth of that message.

sxsw pick of the day - day 2

2005-03-20T01:05:00Z

i'm going with a venue for today's pick. lots of good acts, but getting from place to place is tricky. the weather is /perfect/ for sitting down in the Cedar Street courtyard and taking in a nice variety of things. Singer-songwriter for that after dinner digestion, Electronic to burn it off, R&B and Blues to take you through a nice cocktail or two, World at midnight to wake you up and some good Rock to close out the evening. All without having to leave the nice patio.

sxsw pick of the day - day 1

2005-03-18T23:05:00Z

Lots going on in Austin this week. Lots and lots of music and folks hosting parties and sports and such. St Patty’s today was fun. Skipped out of work for a couple hours to go hang out at the pub with kim, V and some friends.

Got to talking at the office about who we know from way back when and now who’s playing the sxsw music festival here. I haven’t been through all the mp3’s on the site yet, but just looking at the schedule I found enough folks to drop a couple notes on.

Today’s pick – playing tonight at 1am (about 40min - sorry for the short notice) – is a band from LA/Austin called Maimou. I met Juliana 10+ years ago when she was singing jazz standards with my friend Elias. Her stylistic range is amazing and Maimou is no letdown. Check them out. Trivia – Julie recorded all the phone system operator messages for Simpler-Webb when we moved into our first office.

Perhaps next year The Know will be on the list.

remember me?

2005-03-16T23:11:00Z

on the login page for the .text site is a checkbox asking “remember me?”. it's been so long since i blogged that i had the guilty feeling that the software was wistfully asking if i remembered it.

simpler-webb moved into new office space Feb 26th and the 3 months preceding were like having a whole other job on top of the other(s). we've grown to 30+ people and had outgrown the 4000 sqft we'd been in for the last 8 years and so it was definitely time. the new digs have a great new raised floor computer room, a nice noc for the 24x7 management & monitoring folks, a couple new lab and build areas and more of everything else.

violet turned 6 months old on 3/3. wow! time flies. she's such a great little girl - happy, curious, funny, cute. i'll post more pictures, really i will.

No spectators

2004-11-01T23:18:00Z

Vote!

Democracy needs a little more of the Burning Man ethic - No Spectators.

my tivo is dead. long live tivo

2004-10-17T23:19:00Z

Aye, carumba. The TiVo died Sunday. I hadn't realized how fundamentally different my approach to television is. Just the simple ability to get up and go get an Oreo whenever as opposed to just at the planned commercials is magnificent. It lets us watch TV on our schedule rather than the at the mercy of the network clocks, and with the new baby, that's crucial to ever being able to see a complete episode of anything.

I'm a bit disappointed in the hardware, because I don't think it's old enough to have the hard drive going south, even with heavy use. I'm also disappointed that TiVo doesn't have an HDTV device (for regular cable - there is a DirecTV HDTV TiVo) since I was planning to wait until that came out to buy a new one. But I'm obviously addicted as much to the TiVo as my crackberry, so the new TiVo is in place and performing its initial indexing and will be fully online shortly. Whew.

Technology is changing our lives. In some cases even for the positive. :)

For immediate release - Violet Gwendoline Elaine Cameron Webb

2004-09-04T17:20:00Z

AUSTIN, TX - Several local physicians and nurses claim to have witnessed the emergence of a new deity, dubbed "Violet Gwendoline Elaine Cameron Webb" by bystanders Andy Webb and kim cameron.

The 7 pound, 5 ounce entity appeared, at first, utterly nude to shocked spectators at the North Austin Medical Center, but quickly donned minimal vestments in an apparent homage to the late Mahatma Ghandhi. She appears to speak no English or other known language, although she is enormously adept at making herself understood, through both shrill bark-like sounds and Jedi mind tricks that seem to command all in her presence.

Standing only 19.5 inches tall, the tiny marvel has not yet revealed her intentions for the fate of mankind, yet seems content for the present to remain in the company of Webb and Cameron, who make their home in Austin.

She has graciously agreed to pose for a photo. http://cameron-webb.com/blog/gallery/image/42.aspx

Tour recovery

2004-08-03T23:21:00Z

First the withdrawal symptoms, then the recovery, then crawling out from under the pile of stuff that backed up. Monday July 26 was hard to get through with no Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwen to describe in their ever-so-colorfol way le grand boucle. I think the tour organizers are going to have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new way to keep the race interesting for the entire three weeks. The first week was a mess of crashes while everyone tried like hell to stay in the front of the pack - and pretty much wore themselves out in the process. The second week saw the first mountain stages and US Postal obliterated the competition on the first big hills. Richard Virenque nailed the polkadot jersey on the first day in the hills. The third week had the Alpe d'Huez time trial, which was epic, and the following killer mountain day. The rest was downhill. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Teams keep thinking they have a better idea of how to train than US Postal. They're still wrong.

Congratulations Lance! Congratulations US Postal.

tour time

2004-07-11T23:22:00Z

Forgive my distraction. The trip to Belgium, a day trip to Dulles, VA, and a customer project or two were the beginning. July 3 - July 25 is the Tour de France and I'm getting up early to watch the coverage on OLN. Regardless of who you're supporting in the tour, head over to www.wearyellow.com and pitch in to support and raise awareness of the fight against cancer (http://www.laf.org/).

For hardcore fans, there's a tour blog here: http://www.tdfblog.com/index.rdf

Jetlag

2004-06-17T23:22:00Z

My wife can't believe how easily I can fall asleep in most places to catch a little nap when needed. Usually just the shutting of the airplane door is enough to bring on a few zzz's. Strangely though, while true with any flight, whether large or small, smooth or rough, in the US, as soon as I get on a international flight I lose all ability to sleep whatsoever.

So, it's 6am in Belgium and I'm waking up, with a ripping case of jetlag, from 11 hours of sleep caused by a 24hour period of non-sleep getting here and spending a half day with a customer.

Perhaps I'll figure it out on the way home. :)

Vacation

2004-04-30T23:23:00Z

Have been on vacation - see a taste of the pictures in the Travel gallery.

We'll have a full gallery up on the main site now.

Aloha!

kitchen reflection

2004-04-13T23:24:00Z

+ Fisher-Paykel dishwashers (http://www.fisherpaykel.com/Quantum/DishDrawer/what_is.html) rock the house. We installed 2 of the half-size dishwashers (one either side of the sink) and they are fantastic. A lot of kitchen designers are specifying full size dishwashers in an elevated cabinet so that rather than the (full size) dishwasher being on the floor, it sits up in a cabinet 8-12 inches so you don't have to bend down as much. Great idea, but that creates an odd multi-level countertop that we didn't think would be as useful. With the FP units, they're both above a 10” deep drawer, but the countertop is all at one level. The FP's are amazingly quiet - you can stand next to them and have a conversation without knowing they're both running. We usually run just one of them every other day or so. The “economy” mode completes in 50 minutes or so and uses about 1/4 the water of our previous dishwasher.

- Nobody recognized until we were done that the hole in the cabinet for the double ovens was too high off the ground. We ended up with two nice drawers underneath, but it's a little tricky to get heavy things (a big turkey for example) in and out of the upper oven and the “broil” light is hidden unless you stand on your toes.

+ The island lets us work on finishing up preparing meals while guests are having a glass of wine and they don't end up in the way. The two of us can also work on different things without tripping over each other (though we do still end up tripping over the dogs, who seem to think right under the feet is the best place for scraps).

- I didn't design enough recessed lighting into the valance over the main sink. With the main lights (halogen cable lights) on, there's plenty of light, but with just the lights over the sink it's a little dim. The light fixture we ended up with also required non-standard bulbs to prevent a horrid glare coming out from under the shade.

+ The icemaker is fabulous for parties and even for everyday use. We can fill a bucket or cooler with ice and still have more available, and it's remade within a couple hours. No more running to the quickiemart for ice. The icemaker is also quiet except for when the pump is draining the meltwater. I suspect I could insulate the drainpipe for the island sink to improve this, but it hasn't been a big deal.

- We have a pair of cabinets for occasional dishes and the “fancy” wine glasses at the end of the counter over the sink. I need to re-do the hinges so the doors have a piano hinge in the middle and are attached at the back of the counter. Now the two doors are traditionally attached with a center open and you can't get around the near door to get things into the cabinet without reaching under the door or sitting up on the cabinet.

+ We upgraded the vent fan on the range hood to a 1200cfm unit that's roof mounted. On the lowest speed it clears more air than the old hood and is whisper quiet. On high speed it will clear the whole room in under 3 minutes.

- The big drawers for the recycling bins need to be upgraded to the heavy duty, full extension drawer glides that we have on the pot & pan drawers. When the bins fill up with paper or bottles the drawers start to scrape a bit.

+ The huge single-bowl copper sink (www.handcraftedmetal.com) we had built is awesome. Everything fits down in it to soak if needed and with pots soaking there's still room to work. The smaller island sink is also working out well and happens to be just the right size to hold the strainers/collanders we have.

- We still need to figure out how to get some of the fingerprints off the copper rangehood without having to re-oil the whole thing. It's less obvious with a little cleaning, but gloves on the installation would have been a lot better.

+ Pot filler faucet behind the stove is a very handy addition.

+ We redesigned the main lighting near the end of the project to leave the skylight uncovered and also to move it to the edges of the room from the middle. The halogen cable lighting we installed (www.techlighting.com) looks really cool and is like turning on the sun. I need to find a 1000W low voltage dimmer for it, and also need to get an electrician out to figure out why the 4-way switches don't work, but on is ON.

- I remembered to run extra network and cable wire to the back of the cabinets that face the living room, but forgot to run speaker wire and there was no good way to leave a chase.

+ The cork flooring turned out great too. It's soft to stand on, doesn't get too cold in the winter, and is really interesting to look at. It's also fairly slippery in socks, which is fun. It's slippery for the dogs too, which is bad for them, but good for us if we need to move one of them in another direction - they just slide across the room like they're on ballbearings.

- We put in a bin for the dog food that is hinged on the bottom and tilts out. Great idea, but we ended up with the handle/pull in the middle of it (vertically) rather than at the top and it makes it a bit tough to open when it's full.

+ Planning out the cabinets worked out great. When deciding where drawers and doors would go I printed out all the elevations and then listed all the stuff we had to store and figured out a logical place for it all. I ended up changing a couple cabinets to drawers and vice-versa and we ended up with everything put away and with extra space. We had two full sets of silverware and ended up putting one by the dishwashers and other dishes and the other next to the fridge, which was a change after the fact, but it works well.

- The appliance garages with the power outlets inside are a great place to keep all the gadgets. We went with lift-up doors rather than tambered doors and that makes us clear off the counter to open the garage. It's not horrid, but isn't as convenient as I'd like.

+ We decided not to stain the maple cabinets, but rather just to put a sanding sealer and shellaq on them and they look really good. I'm glad we didn't stain them down to a darker tone (there's also a nasty hitch with maple that if you stain it with /any/ little drop of water on it, the water drop will turn black after the shellaq goes on, so beware. We didn't have to deal with that though). We probably should have moved to a hotel for the 3 days the sealing was going on too - Not enough windows opened to get a good airflow going to clear out the concentration of chemicals - and I do mean concentration.

- Measure thrice. Our architectural drawings had wrong measurements for the pitch of the roof and mis-matched elevations for the ceiling, which caused a lot of extra time, effort and cost for me, the contractor and the carpenters to figure out how to reconcile it to a physical implementation. Further, 2x6 lumber isn't infinitely thin as it appears on a blueprint.

That's the brain dump for now. I pretty much alternated thoughts here, but that doesn't reflect how positive we are about the results. The “-” items are tips and pointers for anyone else considering a project like this.

did i say infrequent?

2003-11-13T00:28:00Z

It's been a busy couple of weeks. The kitchen wrapup is finally done. We've even had a chance to /use/ it a few times and it's awesome. I'll summarize lessons learned and things we did really right and really wrong in another note. We had friends in from New York and DC for a long weekend, which was loads of fun to do in a house not under construction any more (the last tradesman barely made it out the door before we got home from the airport). I went to the PDC in Los Angeles, which should also be the subject of another note. There was halloween (I posted a picture of Lucy in her costume). And it seems like non-stop stuff since then too.

Read Al Franken and Michael Moore's books over the last couple weeks too. These are funny, and well done, but will definitely make you mad (whichever side of the political spectrum you fall on).

October 20 - 90/10 rule

2003-10-19T23:31:00Z

Once the cabinets were finally set and sealed, it got crazy busy here. One day we had 5 trades in the kitchen at once trying to find space to get their parts of the project done. The countertops went on, the plumbing was finished, the carpentry was finished, lights were hung, the copper hood was mounted, paint was touched up... Today one last cabinet door is being installed, the ceiling is being repainted due to the range hood work, and hopefully the copper backsplash and electrical will get finished. The cleaners are also coming today to get some of the several pounds of dust out of the house.

There are a couple new pictures in the gallery of the (almost) completed product.