As whale watchers looked on with a mixture of awe and sadness, mother killer whales -- the most experienced hunters -- took turns ramming head- first, like 6-ton torpedoes, into the calf's soft underbelly, their force nearly knocking it out of the water, while others leapt atop the 20-foot baby, trying to drown it.

"It's the greatest predation event on Earth,'' said Richard Ternullo, a killer whale researcher and co-owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch, who witnessed the battle during one of the company's daily whale watching tours. "It's 100 tons of whales crashing together.''

via wetasschronicles (If you participate in water related sports you often have to suffer with a wet ass)

The original course we designed was around the offices of 1 North Ave in Burlington MA. This was a particularly good spot because there were lots of trees and the parking lots weren't too big. A section of the original course map is below. (You can click it to see a more complete map with hole info and rules.) Over time we extended the ten holes on this map to 18 - we even referred to them as the 'front nine' and back nine' like in real golf.

It was not uncommon to get some funny looks as we tossed our Frisbees around the office park. The girls in accounting and marketing called us the 'Nerd Herd'. One time while playing on a Saturday the police actually stopped up and asked what the heck we were doing. We simply explained that were Software Engineers working on a weekend and taking a break by playing some Frisbee golf. I don't remember if they made us show some ID but it was rather amusing. Another time Doug got a Frisbee stuck on the roof of the building you approach at hole 9 and had to climb a tree to get on the roof and retrieve the disk. After the experience of watching him awkwardly climbing up and down I recall telling Doug, "I think I've just seen proof that man cannot have descended from apes..".

We certainly had a lot of fun with it.

There's another software program that was written at Alpha that few people know about, "Pizza Three". When I worked at Alpha, Friday was Pizza Day. Everyone would put in a couple of bucks and we'd order pizza. Some people started to complain that they never got their favorite topping. They suspected that the people who called in the order were simply ordering their personal favorite.

So that same programmer who walked to school in his bare feet, Pete Lyons, wrote "Pizza Three". He put in each person's "vote" for toppings and then every week Pizza Three would democratically select the toppings to order based on who was eating that week. It would select one pizza randomly to make sure that those who liked the less-popular toppings such as onion and anchovy would have a chance of getting theirs. Pizza Three was a terrific program from Alpha Software. I hear they're working on an upgrade, Pizza Five version 4.6 (not to be confused with Alpha Four version 6 or Alpha Five version 5).

I think I spent a lazy Saturday writing Pizza Three after Rudy our warehouse guy complained that the only pizza left one Friday was green pepper and onion. Years later after the company had grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk a few times, another co-worker Ralph Francescone wrote Pizza Five but it never really caught on.

In commericals he usually plays a working class guy too. I cannot recall all the commercials he has been in but they are many. Most recently he has gained notice in the Boston area for playing in a Dunkin Donut commercial featuring Kurt Shilling. Kurt's trying to learn to speak like a bostonian - Pahk ya Cahr, Throw Wicked Hahd - and Jack plays a locker room towel guy who tries to set him straight. But he's been in a lot more. Look for him, he is everywhere, and now you know his name.

Doug takes the Joel on Software position of favoring Return Codes and offers the following code snippet as an example of why return codes are better.

do { try {
	if ((rc = tableCredits.open()) != OK) {
		// log
		break;
	}
	bUnwindTableCreditsOpen = TRUE;
	if ((rc = tableCredits.lock()) != OK) {
		// log
		break;
	}
	bUnwindowTableCreditsLock = TRUE;
	if ((rc = tableDebits.open()) != OK) {
		// log
		break;
	}
	bUnwindTableDebitsOpen = TRUE;
	if ((rc = tableDebits.lock()) != OK) {
		// log
		break;
	}
	bUnwindowTableDebitsLock = TRUE;
	if ((rc = ::IntegralTransaction(tableCredits, tableDebits, curAmount)) != 0) {
		// log
		break;
	}
} catch (...) {
	// catch miscellaneous exceptions here
} } while (0);
if (bUnwindTableDebitsUnlock) {
	tableDebits.unlock();
}
if (bUnwindTableDebitsOpen) {
	tableDebits.close();
}
if (bUnwindowTableCreditsLock) {
	tableCredits.unlock();
}
if (bUnwindTableCreditsOpen) {
	tableCredits.close();
}
return (rc);

try {
	tableCredits.open();
	bUnwindTableCreditsOpen = true;
	tableCredits.lock();
	bUnwindowTableCreditsLock = true;
	tableDebits.open();
	bUnwindTableDebitsOpen = true;
	tableDebits.lock();
	bUnwindowTableDebitsLock = true;
	IntegralTransaction(tableCredits, tableDebits, curAmount);
}
finally {
	if (bUnwindTableDebitsUnlock) {
		tableDebits.unlock();
	}
	if (bUnwindTableDebitsOpen) {
		tableDebits.close();
	}
	if (bUnwindowTableCreditsLock) {
		tableCredits.unlock();
	}
	if (bUnwindTableCreditsOpen) {
		tableCredits.close();
	}
}

boolean unwind = false;
try {
	tableCredits.open();
	bUnwindTableCreditsOpen = true;
	tableCredits.lock();
	bUnwindowTableCreditsLock = true;
	tableDebits.open();
	bUnwindTableDebitsOpen = true;
	tableDebits.lock();
	bUnwindowTableDebitsLock = true;
	IntegralTransaction(tableCredits, tableDebits, curAmount);
} catch (SomeException e) {
	unwind = true;
        throw e;
}
finally {
	if (unwind) {
            if (bUnwindTableDebitsUnlock) {
    		tableDebits.unlock();
    	    }
       	    if (bUnwindTableDebitsOpen) {
    		tableDebits.close();
    	    }
    	    if (bUnwindowTableCreditsLock) {
    		tableCredits.unlock();
    	    }
    	    if (bUnwindTableCreditsOpen) {
    		tableCredits.close();
    	    }
	}
}

"There is an overlap of management and leadership. Clearly, not every manager is a leader, nor is every leader a manager."
From: A Survival Guide for Project Managers; James Taylor; 1998 Amacom

"Leaders are better understood as a quantum phenomenon, while managers are well described through the classical physics lens."
From: The 9 Natural Laws of Leadership; Warren Blank; 1995 Amacom

"The transformational leader empowers others and keeps them focused."
From: Fusion Leadership; Richard Daft; 1998 Berrett-Koehler Publishers

"Managing and leading are not the same."
From: Team-Based Project Management; James Lewis; 1998 Amacom

"Management can never lead to passion."
From: The Passionate Organization; James Lucas; 1999 Amacom

"Leadership has been characterized as doing the right things; management as doing things right. Both are important."
From: Sales, Marketing, and Continuous Improvement; Daniel Stowell; 1997 Jossey-Bass

"The less managing someone does, the better off the company."
From: Jack Welch and the GE Way; Robert Slater; 1999 McGraw Hill Professional Book Group

"Leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing."
From: The Will to Lead; Marvin Bower; 1997 Harvard Business School Press

From: MeanBusiness This is not directed at you Roy ;-)

From 7. Donning a mascot's costume

"On a scale of 1 to 10, the stench (was) about a 50," Paul Pierson, a mascot for the Harlem Globetrotters, told Page 2's Patrick Hruby. "The stench (was) horrible. I'll tell you what: You can wash a costume, get it from the dry cleaners, use Bounce, Snuggles, whatever. But the moment you put it on and go out there for five minutes, that clean smell is gone. And that stench just comes straight through."

From 1. Players urinating in their uniforms

But it gets worse than just urinating in your uniform. In one game, Seahawks center Robbie Tobeck had an intestinal virus that left him with an unfortunate bit of -- how shall we put this? -- severe incontinence.

"I tried going to the shotgun, but we couldn't because of the crowd noise," Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck told the (Tacoma) Morning News Tribune. "It was a bad one."

The creature seemed to be wrapping itself around the boat, which rocked violently. The floorboards creaked, and the rudder started to bend. Then, just as the stern seemed ready to snap, everything went still. "As it unhooked itself from the boat, I could see its tentacles," Ragot recalled. "The whole animal must have been nearly thirty feet long."

The creature had glistening skin and long arms with suckers, which left impressions on the hull. "It was enormous," Kersauson recalled. "I've been sailing for forty years and I've always had an answer for everything,for hurricanes and icebergs. But I didn't have an answer for this. It was terrifying."

via wetasschronicles.com

I kept asking myself as I watched why anyone made a movie about this topic. The first three quarters of the film immerses you in the characters pain - maybe the word immerse is too subtle, drown may be more appropriate. The last quarter takes all that pain and piles on more and more until every character is broken. This is not entertainment in it's classic form.

I give a lot of credit to all the actors for being able to pull off a film with no real story except the pain of their lives. Ben Kingsleys is fantastic and deserving of his Oscar nomination. Jennifer Connelly is also very good in a performance a bit too reminiscent of the one she gave in Requiem for a Dream. The performance that I think deserves mention that I hadn't heard about before was that of Shohreh Aghdashloo an Iranian actress who plays Ben Kingsley's wife. She is very good with very little material. Among the extra on the DVD is a tape of her audition. It's an amazing thing to watch a professional actor move from emotion to emotion as she reads from different scenes in the film. It's very impressive.

On a personal note, as someone who has lost a friend to suicide it's a painful movie to watch. The vacant look on the faces of the actors as they approach the end is all too reminiscent and haunting. If you've experienced something similar be prepared for some intense moments.

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. ... Which one are you in this country? It's practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.

I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore but I tend to agree with the general premise of his Bowling for Columbine movie, in that a lot of Americans are afraid and this fear leads to a lot of selfish behavior. In the Columbine movie he was talking about gun violence but I think the mindset's the same albeit a step removed in this case with the weapon of choice being the military. A lot of people in the US are afraid of terrorists and so are accepting of any action against them, even if it means we hurt a lot of people in the process.

There's also a revenge factor and I'm not talking about President George W. Busch being angry with Hussein for attempting to assassinate his father. I think at a national level most Americans are ticked off that Hussein failed to act defeated after we kicked his ass in the first Gulf War. I think that made a lot of the population mad and therefore supportive of another war.

I also believe our short national attention span has contributed to support of this war. After 9/11 we wanted action. Kicking the snot out of Afghanistan didn't make us feel better and we didn't want to be patient and work with the UN. Any long drawn out solution, whether it be wiser or not, would have been a hard sell politically.

My last item, manifest destiny, is probably the hardest to backup but it's based on my own conversations with patrons of a local watering hole. A lot of people just feel it's our right - be it because we are, powerful, Christian, or just because we are Americans to wage war against Iraq. No deep cares about the long term consequences - just turn the place into a glass bowl.

Now this essay may make it appear I'm against this war, but I actually not. I don't want to go into my own reasons but suffice it to say it's not just because I'm addicted to oil or I’m a conservative – remember I’m a doughnut.

This was my biennial fishing trip with my buddies. Three days of fishing out of Islamorada, with a couple of days of horsing around the Keys. It's a fun trip, but my liver always needs a break after it.

Of the three days fishing two were spent in small boats out in Florida Bay back country. This is gorgeous water, very shallow, with lots of mangrove islands and birds. The above picture is me hooked into either a nice sized Lemon shark or big ray. Both were a lot of fun to catch. If you ever want to go fishing down in this area (and if you like to fish I highly recommend it), do yourself a favor and use the same guide we did, Matt Bellinger from Bamboo charters. Not only is Matt awesome at putting you on to the fish, he is a funny, funny bastard. I've fished with Matt three times now and it's always a hoot.

While on the trip we stayed at the Holiday Isle Resort on Islamorada. It's a fun place, especially for young folks or a group of men. I know my wife wouldn't like it, it's a bit beat up, but for a group of guys wanting to fish and have a few drinks without hopping in the car, it was perfect.