Chuqui 3.0

Daring Fireball Linked List: May 2008

Daring Fireball: Icahn Launches Yahoo Challenge

The problem with Icahn’s argument is that Yahoo’s stock price remains significantly above where it was prior to Microsoft’s offer. Yes, it’s still below what Microsoft offered, but not by much.

And the problem with this argument is that Icahn has been propping up Yahoo's stock by buying significant chunks of the shares. If you look at Yahoo's stock since the Microsoft deal collapsed, you can clearly see places where automated buying was kicking in every time the stock tried to drop below a given price point, and buying that was grabbing significant chunks of stock. In retrospect, it was clear Icahn (and probably others) were grabbing on weakness, but not letting the stock get too weak so that others might step in first. So the real question is "where would the stock be if Icahn wasn't buying all available shares?", and secondarily, if he changes his mind and liquidates, what will that do to the stock price? answer to these questions is far from positive for Yahoo. And the current stock price is not so much because that's where Yahoo ought to be, but because there are a bunch of investors seeing a profit to be made. If that ability fades and they all liquidate their holdings, watch out. Where would Yahoo's stock be? Certainly not $27 where it is now. Not $19, which is where it was when Microsoft walked in (but which, to me, was an over-reaction down that Microsoft saw as an opportunity) -- but $22? I'd bet on something around there. And frankly, if Icahn wasn't buying up available shares around $25, then some other shark would be buying them at $23 and willing to take a profit at $28 instead of $31. Even if Yahoo fights off Icahn (and few companies succeed there without losing at least an arm), there's another person like him who'll likely step in at the next price point down..

Life in LA LA land...

I've been down in LA again, visiting family. This time, it's because Dad was scheduled for an angiogram on Friday, and I felt it made sense to be here in case anything happened.

Well, the test found three arteries about 99% clogged, so he was immediately admitted into the hospital because the doctors felt he was too risky to allow home. Arrangements were made, and this morning, he went into surgery for a triple bypass. I'm happy to say that he came through fine and was in recovery and from talking to the doctor, there seemed to be no complications. If all goes well, he'll be in the hospital another week or so, then I'll head down to LA again to help get him home and settled.

The family (and myself) are all nicely de-stressing now, too.

So it's been an interesting week or so especially the last couple of days. I've been using the down time to study up on some work stuff, and have gotten out when I can to go out and do some walking and birding (trying to, instead of stress eat, get out and get some exercise. So far, it's worked)....

It's been a positive trip for birding -- spring migration is on, so the migrant traps are busy. I'm about five minutes from Tri-City park in Placentia, so that's where I head when I don't have much time. In researching orange county birding, I also ran across Lakeview Park, which is on the Santa Ana "river", and happens to be literally next door to the kaiser hospital (on Lakeview in Anaheim) where dad had his tests (his surgery is up in San Bernadino at a place that specializes in heart surgery).

I also took some time out Sunday for a more extended trip, visiting Huntington Beach Central Park for the first time, and a return visit to Bolsa Chica and then a quick drive up Newport Back Bay.

All in all, I added 7 birds to my life list:

Warbling Vireo, Orange-Crowned Warbler, Plumbeous Vireo, Least Tern, Elegant Tern, Rufous Hummingbird and Ash-throated Flycatcher, taking the life list to 196 (with a goal of 200 for the year, I've probably set the bar too low. Maybe I'll shoot for 200 species for the year list).

The year list added those 7, plus four more: Wilson's Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Semipalmated Plover, and Bewick's Wren, giving me 164 for the year.

I finally added two problematic birds to my list: Orange-Crowned Warbler and Rufous Hummingbird. OC Warbler isn't all that difficult a bird, but even when I've been in a group and had it called out, I've had trouble pulling it out of trees and identifying it to my satisfaction. This trip, I finally did so, so I can check it off. It was with a large group (20+) flock of warblers wandering Tri-city park, mostly yellow and Townsend's with some Wilson's for spice. And -- I think -- at least one Hermit, but I never got a good enough look to be sure and no photos. The photos I thought might be a candidate are bad pictures of a Townsend's that make it hard to see the facial coloration. Ohwell. I'm pretty sure a Hermit was with that flock, though, but not enough to call it out for sure.

And rufous? they've just been hiding from me, even in places like Ed Levin where they're known to congregate. Adn twice I ran into birds down south that turned out to be Allen's, but I finalyl hit an adult I could sit and study enough to be able to differentiate it from the Allen's.

Here's a hummingbird that looks to be a barely-fledged rufous or Allen's (probably Allen's) -- you can see just the barest hint of the gold/orange on the sides starting to come out, and there's almost no green yet. Teh orange makes it selaphorus, and the general lack of color makes it real young. Doesn't hurt that I saw Allen's at that location, so I'm fairly sure they were nesting there.

More enjoyable, though, was being able to pull out some of the vireos and get good enough looks and photos to get solid IDs. Those birds can be tough; I found a spot at Huntington Central Park where there were a lot of canopy birds and a snag that actually went into the lake, and the birds were using it as a staging point to get down to the water to drink. It almost made it a bit too easy:

One negative: bad light (grey and overcast) so I was shooting with flash, including a Miligrid flash extender, and I'm not thrilled iwth the light catches in the eyes in some cases. ohwell.

This is one where the light catch works well, adn the flash really brings out the faint olive coloring on the side:

And for the Plumbeous, notice the different eyebrow than the warbling:

Newport Back bay was really quiet, and I was running short on time, so I only stopped at the observation parking lot, and wandered across the street into the brushy area up in the hill rather than focus on the wetlands. It's a hangout for swallows and sparrows and stuff, and I was hoping to run into a loggerhead shrike or a blue-grey gnatcatcher (both seen there in the past by people I know); no luck, and it was pretty quiet other than the song sparrows, until the rufous popped up and gave me a good look, and then this bird popped up into a bush and hung out for a minute or two. I immediately realized it was a flycatcher ("Say's Phoebe. Boring. No, wait, not with that head!...."). Those two species made the side trip on the way home more than worthwhile...

I'd originally planned on either a run down to Salton Sea, or up into Carrizo Plain and Morro Bay, but of course, plans changed. maybe next trip, once dad is settled. But I don't think I did badly at all, and I'm starting to get the hang of tracking and seeing canopy birds better, and getting some decent photos.

And I can't not show off the ducks... Came back from the birding trip to the beach, only to say to mom "did you know you have ducks in the back yard?". fortunately, while they like the idea of nesting in the garden and using the pool, Remy had other ideas, and they moved on...

On the other hand, the neighborhood is pretty birdy, if not exotic: two mockingbird nests, a black phoebe couple, and for some reason, a flock of bushtits have moved in and are systematically cleaning all of the bugs and stuff off my mom's window screens....

My entire photo set is, as always, on flickr).

BERKELEY / Professor rips Caltrans over maze rebuild / He says work was too hasty and costly

BERKELEY / Professor rips Caltrans over maze rebuild / He says work was too hasty and costly:

But Astaneh said Caltrans should have taken the time to do the job right. Instead of simply repairing the fire-damaged portion of a concrete column, he said, all four support columns should have been torn down and rebuilt from scratch. And, said Astaneh, the work could have been done in 21 days for $1.5 million instead of the $5.9 million it cost, including bonuses for early completion, to get it done in 17 days.

and I wonder what four days of the traffic disruption and the economic cost of that disruption would be worth... Just looking at the cost of the repair exclusive of the costs of not having the repair in place is a biased analysis.

The Real Upgrade Apple Should Make To .Mac: Set It Free

The Real Upgrade Apple Should Make To .Mac: Set It Free (AAPL) - Silicon Alley Insider:

With .Mac and the iPhone, Steve Jobs has a chance to get people even more tied in to Apple services. Which is what Apple is all about. (See: iTunes.) But until .Mac is free -- at least the mainstream stuff like email, calendar synching, photo galleries, etc. -- we think it will continue to be a small, niche service at best.

Small? Niche? a year ago, it had over a million paying customers. What .Mac doesn't have is panache among the echo chamber of the geek elite. For the general non-geek consumer, it's doing just fine, thanks.

of course, to some people, if it's not hot among the bleeding-edge scouts, it doesn't matter, though, even if it has a large audience and is making money...

How many reasons do you need to not blog?

In theory, only one, if it's good enough.

But it's been one of those busy, complicated times the last while, but less than 24 hours after the Sharks ended their hockey season (and, of course, the hockey talk is over at Two for Elbowing), I'm jazzed to be able to say that at work, we've launched a new application that I think is really neat:

Introducing Laszlo Calendar:

Our Webtop family has grown to include a personal Calendar, a perfect complement to Laszlo Mail and Contacts. As we said earlier, Calendar is the most requested application and, while we’ve taken a lot of time to get this right, we have decided to release it a little early — as a Preview — because we want to know what you think.

Getting my parts of the beast ready has been a challenge, but also a lot of fun, and I'm really happy with the results. And we might even get a minute or two to catch our breath, but to be honest, there are some more fun things coming soon, and I have a bunch of work over on the openlaszlo.org site I need to wrap up.

But things will likely get livelier here again soon. Towards the end of the week, I'll be headed down to LA to visit the family again, because dad's going in for a medical test and I wanted to be around and get in the way; taking a day of vacation on the way back, and I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing -- Carrizo Plain and Morro Bay is the most likely, but I'm also thinking of Salton Sea for some birding and exploring the desert a bit, or perhaps a run up 395 to Bishop and up the back of the Sierras to Tahoe via mono lake. It'll come down to weather and how much driving I want to do...

Lots of stuff pending time to blog about. But until then...

4 million iTunes songs disappear, speculations abound

4 million iTunes songs disappear, speculations abound - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

Now the blogosphere is buzzing with the fact that Apple said they had over "10 million" songs in their library, then later changed the page to say "6 million." That's a difference of 4 million songs unaccounted for

Oh, good lordie. The blogosphere needs a life some days.

I'll bet that the first number is the total number of songs in all of the iTunes stores globally. And the second number is the U.S. iTunes list only, because someone realized that they do have that many songs, but nobody can actually access them all because of licensing restrictions. both numbers are probably correct, the larger number is one that opens Apple to "inflation criticism", so someone probably made the call to go with the U.S. store number.

Nothing to see here. Back to your parent's basement, you people who actually care about this...

Cool Tools Mac Power Block Hack (mine's better)

Cool Tools 08 Test:

Every Mac comes with a long, bulky power cord and a small 2-prong nub. You can interchange them, but both are far from optimal for travel and field work (i.e. conference/convention blogging). Here's my fix: use a power cord from a Sony PlayStation. There are other cords that will also fit into the Mac power brick, but the PlayStation cord is easy to find. Where the Mac power cord is too thick to easily coil or toss in a bag -- and has a ground prong so it's limited to those types of AC outlets -- the PlayStation cord is ostensibly perfect. It fits into the Mac power brick, coils up nice and small and has two prongs.

nice hack, but there's an even easier one: I always toss the three-prong cord and use the stubby two-prong connector on my blocks, and then I carry a 6 foot, white, two prong extension cord (about $2 just about any place). Has all of the advantages of this hack, but you end up with three outlets, which has come in exceptionally handy in hotel rooms (I use it for my CPAP, for instance, or when I'm in a room with wired internet access for the airport express as well as the mac) and in meetings where a couple of us can plug in and recharge on the fly easily. And it's a standard off the shelf part you can grab at a drug store if you for some reason forget to pack it...

I'm a fan of Alton Brown's advice: no uni-taskers. Carrying a lightweight extension cord in your computer bag gives you options beyond just plugging in your laptop.

Oh, and my solution doesn't void my warranty. This -- probably doesn't -- but if there's a problem of some sort, it could lead to disagreements. I'm always for not creating situations that lead to those kind of arguments unnecessarily...

The rumor is true..

By the way, the rumor is true -- Laurie's escaped Yahoo. She has a new gig, which I'm sure she'll blog about once things settle down. Especially now that it looks like she doesn't have a management structure that considered even personal blogging against their personal standards (her old management had a bad case of "I don't care what yahoo's policy is... this is my policy")

One amusing insight into just how bad the brain drain at Yahoo is: For various reasons Laurie left mid-week, and in her exit interview, she was thanked for not leaving on a friday, because fridays have become hell for the HR staff trying to fit in all of the exit interviews.

Yahoo's tried to recruit me three times since the microsoft offer came down, which has mostly amused me, because when I was actively trying to hire in there, they didn't seem that interested. Now -- I'm not. ohwell.

Oh, a suggestion for Jerry: it's over. has been for a while. You're not making yahoo a better place or a stronger company, and it's time to quit killing the company in the name of trying to save it (or, from my view, save your own skin, since you seem willing to kill off huge parts of the company in the name of saving it, as long as you keep yours).

Take your huge buyout from Microsoft and go start a green tech company. That seems to be where you want to be these days, anyway....

Laszlo Systems is hiring...

hey, is this you? If you're interested, drop me a line. the office is up in the San Mateo hills, very close to 280 off of 92...

Job Title: Innovative Server Engineer
Description: The next generation Web isn't just about using Ajax in the browser to achieve better interactivity. It's about a new division of labor between the client and the server, one in which the old page-generation paradigm is replaced with more fine grained, data-centric client-server interactions.

Laszlo Systems, the creator of the OpenLaszlo open source development platform, is seeking a Senior Server Engineer who will help define this next generation of server architecture -- one in which real-time communication, media streaming, and peer-to-peer interaction transform how the Web works. We are seeking a developer with real depth of experience in product development and large scale deployments.

The ideal candidate will be a hands-on engineer but also an articulate technical leader, who will work with Laszlo's applications team and platform team to define and build a suite of server-based modules and platform capabilities. The position reports to the Director of Application Development.

Skills:

* Strong Java language expertise
* Deep understanding of dynamic Web application architecture and deployment
* Experience building highly scalable server applications
* Backend integration: LDAP, MySQL, Oracle
* Web technology savvy: XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript
* Experience with open source software a plus

Cattle Egret in Redwood Shores

A cattle egret has landed in Redwood Shores, something like the third record for the species in the county in the last decade. it's very habituated -- I went looking for it this morning, found it sitting on the grass eating bugs in the intersection of a main highway in redwood shores.

Life bird 186, year bird 147, having also added forster's tern today to the year list down at radio roads...

The avocets are now in breeding color and looking for nests:

while I also saw a black-necked stilt on a nest on the radio road ponds. Down at the egret rookery in palo alto, we had night herons actively nest building, and snowy egrets congregating, but they don't seem to be nesting yet. Great egrets weren't seen this morning, and by now, in previous years I've seen them. I'll probably be visiting the rookery weekly until June when it calms down again, just to watch and photograph the process...

Pacific Slope Flycatcher

Pacific Slope Flycatcher
Originally uploaded by chuqui

Oh, meant to include a photo of the Flycatcher...

Pacific-slope Flycatcher and friends...

While out running errands today, I took an hour or so off and ran up into Steven's Creek park, just to get out for a bit... it's been over a week since the sapsucker's been seen, so it's pretty clear it's moved on, but I arrived just about the time today's Big Day team was leaving, and ran into Bill and Mary scouting for their big day next weekend.

There was a small clump of birders on the road up to the campground that were scouring the oak canopies (including Al Eisner, Ron W). They reported Townsend's and Black-chinned grey warbler, as well as a calling (probable but unseen) Cassin's Vireo, an enthusiastic but hiding Black-headed grosbeak, and western tanagers. About that time, of course, the leaf blowers up the hill kicked in.... Also reported was a hairy woodpecker nest, in a snag along the entrance road from steven's creek; look for the 15' tall stump just after you turn in towards the picnic area.

The others wandered off to check out the woodpecker nest and get away from the leaf blowers. I stuck around because I wanted to practice searching the canopy and trees. After a bit the blowers quit and the birds started again, but instead of a black-chinned grey warbler, I found song sparrows and spotted towhees and American Robin (which means I still have some work to do before I I challenge Al's abilities. Al, you can relax....)

The vireo kept calling and I kept at it, and about 30 minutes after Al left, a bird finally popped down onto a branch and gave me 15 seconds of good looks (and photo ops), and then popped out again. I never saw the warblers, but as I was leaving, I did get some quick but decent looks at a Western Tanager, too. I thought it was the Cassin's, but when I showed the photos to some of the senior birders, it turns out to be a Pacific-slope Flycatcher, which looks a lot like a Cassin's (smaller, different color beak). So it was hanging out as well, but not making any noise, waiting to trip me up. But we ended up getting it right...

On the way back, I stopped at the boat launch at the dam. Farirly quiet, but there were two Osprey hunting the lake, and two Caspian Terns fishing it, as well as a few D-C cormorants, one of which was wearing his breeding feathering over the eyes.

On the way out, I was going to check out the woodpecker nest, but another photographer was working on it, so I left that to later so I didn't risk disturbing it. it's easily visible from the road as you turn into parking area, so I expect we'll see some nice photos coming soon....

Pacific-slope Flycatcher is a life (184), and Caspian Tern was a first of year (142).... And thanks to Al for taking the time (again!) to do some teaching on songs and habitat and habits on the grosbeak and vireo.... I also had a female hooded oriole at the feeder here at home on Friday, and I realized I hadn't added hooded oriole to my life list. It's not new, but that makes it life bird 185 and year bird 143.

When I decided to start keeping a life list (I'm using eBird www.ebird.org), a question when to start. I finally decided to use as a cutoff my first birding trip to Morro Bay, since that was when I decided to take birding seriously (as opposed to be someone who takes photographs of birds); because of this, the lift list only goes back to May 2006, with two exceptions, both birds that I happened to have good photos of from before then.

I've currently set a couple of birding goals for the year; one is to reach 200 species (and with some luck, 200 for the year); the other, more of a longer-term goal, is to be the first to find and ID a rarity and have it confirmed, rather than follow the other birders and add known birds to the life list.

I've come close to that second goal a couple of times, but never gotten independent confirmation of the find. To me, that's a goal that indicates how my ability to find and ID birds is progressing. OTOH, there's still a huge amount of learning to do. My biggest problem to reach 200 species is going to be how much time I'll have and how wide I can travel. With the new job and Laurie leaving Yahoo for MacAfee shortly, I'm probably not leaving the Bay area all that much, other than trips to LA to visit family...

--------

Location: Stevens Creek Park, Conley Picnic Area
Observation date: 4/19/08
Number of species: 9

Pacific-slope Flycatcher 1
Steller's Jay X
American Crow X
American Robin X
Western Tanager 1
Spotted Towhee X
Song Sparrow X
Dark-eyed Junco X
Black-headed Grosbeak X

Location: Steven's Creek
Observation date: 4/19/08
Number of species: 5

Double-crested Cormorant 3
Turkey Vulture X
Osprey 2
Caspian Tern 2
Song Sparrow X