L.A.B. Unleashed

According to the journal, Science, the proof of The Poincare’ Conjecture, one of the seven millennium problems!  What an exciting and dramatic year!  The drama came when the "reclusive Russian", Grigory Perelman, refused to accept the prestigious fields medal for his amazing accomplishments.  It also looks like he will not be claiming the $1 million dollar prize, offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, MA.  The institute is offering $1 million dollars for the published proof of any one of the 7 (now 6) millennium problems, and since Perelman will not publish the proof, he is blatantly forfeiting the prize.  He must be happy living with his mother in the apartment in St. Petersburg.  I bet she does his laundry and cooks everyday, can you blame him really?! 

Perelman’s proof has fundamentally altered two distinct branches of mathematics. First, it solved a problem that for more than a century was the indigestible seed at the core of topology, the mathematical study of abstract shape. Most mathematicians expect that the work will lead to a much broader result, a proof of the geometrization conjecture: essentially, a "periodic table" that brings clarity to the study of three-dimensional spaces, much as Mendeleev’s table did for chemistry.

LINK: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5807/1848

On the way to work this morning I was listening to NPR and there was a segment about flying domestically without a government issued photo ID.  Did you know that showing an ID is not officially mandatory, after this court decision (pdf)?!  I actually knew this, because by accident last year, on my way to Lotusphere in Orlando, I was dropped off at the airport without my ID.  I didn’t even know it until I was up at the counter, checking baggage, and the ticketing agent asked to see my ID.  I opened my purse, looked in the usual spot in my wallet, and it was just gone.  I was frantic.  The temperature of my blood immediately rose to an unbearable level, and I felt my face turn bright red.  I thought, there’s a huge line behind me, and I’m the idiot that doesn’t have her ID, and is going to hold up the line.  The friendly agent didn’t miss a beat and assured me that it was fine, that I would just have to go through some extra screening.  He marked my boarding pass with a big black X, and sent me frazzled and scurrying off to the horrendously long security line.  When I approached the security agent, they immediately saw my big black X, but didn’t seem bothered by it.  They waved me through to the special screening area, which had no line, and no wait.  I was thinking … hmph, this is going to be a lot easier than standing in that huge security line!  That thought quickly flew out of my mind when I saw the screening agent snap on his latex gloves and approach me with a big smile on his face.  Just kidding!  Jeeze … did I get you?!  Actually, the "thorough screening" process was pretty NON-invasive.  They had a female guard pat me down and wave the wand over my arms and legs.  They did a special test on my carry on luggage and I was out of there in a couple of minutes.  I beat,  with flying colors, all of the people still waiting at the back of the regular security line. 

So, on NPR this morning, I learned that apparently, there are groups of people refusing to show their IDs at the airport on purpose.  They are in favor of more privacy, and actually made the point that they get through the security line a lot faster than everyone else.  I don’t think this is always the case, here is an example of someone that did not make it through at all.  Of course, in my case, I had innocently misplaced my ID, and I think it makes a huge difference if you are blatantly trying to fly with out one.  One of the interviewees on the radio said something along the lines of, suicide bombers don’t strike twice, so why would you require an ID?  That agents should be paying more attention to what’s inside the luggage, and what could be hidden on each person, rather than what their name is.  An interesting prospective, but I feel like there is probably a no fly list for a reason, right?  People have been determined to be of higher security risk for a reason, I would think anyway.  I understand a person’s need for privacy, that they don’t want the government to track all the places they have been domestically, but that seems like a luxury to me in this day and age.  Also, passports are required during international flights, they are closely watched and tracked, so it seems counter intuitive to have different security rules for domestic flights. 

Anyway, an interesting story on NPR, and I didn’t know I was such a rebel flying with out an ID!  Especially a whole year ago … so ahead of the times!

A nice follow up to my Ebay entry the other day, I have found a Google Desktop gadget that is quite useful.  It’s called the eBay Auction Watch, and it monitors any auctions you are interested in on Ebay.  If you are buying or selling, it will monitor the auction, let you know when bids have been made, or remind you minutes before the auction has ended.  After it is installed, it automatically prompts you as you are browsing Ebay to see if items you are lookiing at should be added to the sidebar:

If you click OK, it will then pop in & out of the sidebar giving you quick access to the latest status of the auction:

My sister is dying for a Tassimo for Christmas.  She is obsessed!  So this GDS gadget would be perfect for her to monitor this auction, giving her a strategic advantage.  Just another way to feed your obsessions and constant need for information on demand, while helping Google continue to infiltrate the universe.  Seems like a win-win to me.

I am looking forward to Lotusphere once again this year.  My hotel reservations are made, my flights are booked, and now I just need to get that presentation in tip top shape!  You can find a full posting of all the Lotus Domino presentations on the Domino Blog, including mine entitled, IBM Lotus Domino and IBM WebSphere Portal Administration Integration. 

Maybe I should bribe people to come to my presentation with some pistachio thumb print cookies….

Too bad these won’t last until late January, although I don’t think bribing with food is necessary anyway … the turnout last year was unbelievable!  Kevin and I will be bringing them into our upcoming office parties, so maybe some of you will enjoy them soon!

Similar to the concept of ghosts notes, for all you Lotus Notes enthusiasts, I have encountered a rare (i think anyway) and slightly creepy revival of my blog.  Today I logged into my RSS feed, Google Reader, and noticed a couple of my old blog entries, that had been lost in the blogosphere, were now popping up in my window.    Like little ghosts, the lost posts are slowing infiltrating my RSS Feed.  It started with 1, then 2, now I have 4 dead entries that are back.  They do not really exist though, when I click on them in Google Reader, a page not found error displays.  It is truly a ghost post.  Well, slowly but surely I am reviving the missing posts, by coping them from my Google Reader, matching the timestamps, and re-posting them with WordPress.  A lot of the links are broken and need to be relinked.  Some text files and code I had uploaded, using my old crappy FTP client (not FireFTP), are gone.  I’m a little surprised that data is actually lost from my hosting server!  My hosting company must have really gone to town in the month of October, because it seems all my missing posts are from that month.   What a pain, but since they are appearing in my feed, from who knows where, they obviously want to be re-posted, and I am obliged to do so.  Even my best IT guy thinks it is strange …. but he does not believe in ghosts.

I’ve had a lively office the past couple of days.  A buddy has been using the empty desk in my office, and it has been nice to have actual human contact at work.  Someone to eat lunch with and grab coffee with!  We’ve worked a lot together in the past, on Redbooks and Lotusphere, and we always have fun.

In any case, we got talking today (between paranoid gestures of "you have food on your face") about some new firefox extensions.  I love this new one I just downloaded, FireFTP.  I’ve been using it to upload photos and other data to the blog and it works great.  The best part is you don’t need a full standalone FTP client.  With FireFTP you can access the client right from your Firefox toolbar, and do your work in a new tab in your browser:

I used it to upload that image!  Cool, huh?!  Of course, if you are the hardcore manual, command driven, FTP type, I’m sure you are not impressed.  I’m sure you feel sorry for me, that I need a FTP client in the first place to do my uploading.  Maybe I get that feeling from living with a "purist" IT guy, or maybe I’m just paranoid.  Anyway, to you I say … enjoy your manual typing of ‘binary’ and ‘ASCII’ mode!

Over lunch the other day, some coworkers and I were discussing Ebay and buying and selling items online.  Kevin and I get in these phases every month or two where we go through the condo and scavenge for stuff to "ebay".  Maybe we are feeling a little tight that week, with all the eating out we’ve been doing, and want to get a little extra $$ in our pockets.  Or maybe we’ve found that perfect winter jacket at Jcrew, but it’s an ungodly amount of $$, so we make a deal that if we "ebay" enough of the funds, that is total justification to buy it.  For whatever the reason, we scour through drawers full of random electronics or closets full of old clothes we never wear anymore, snap some pictures, and throw the items up for sale.  Most recently I sold an old TI-83 calculator I found sitting in the back of a drawer since college, and a 10 year old leather jacket I got from The Gap.  Anyway, at lunch I shared that Kevin has some specific tricks he uses to maximize our ebay auction profits, and this morning over coffee I got the full Ebay scoop.  Here are 7 tips/tricks we use when selling items on Ebay:

1. It does matter what time your auction ends, so plan your post accordingly.  Think about the target buyer.  If it’s an electronic or computer related item, have the auction end during the day, when all the computer geeks are on their computers at work.  But don’t have it end during lunch, when they could be away from their desk, 3pm is a good time, and remember to adjust that for all timezones in the US.   If the item is clothing or a household item, consider having the auction end a little later in the evening, during or after dinner.  Those last bids are the big ones, and you want buyers to be waiting like vultures for the auction to close, so they can put their last big bids in.  You can even pay a small fee to set the starting (and ending) time of your auction, so it does not have to be the same time that you actually fill out the auction form.
2. Avoid selling internationally, it becomes more complicated with shipping, and calculating auction end times.  Plus, I’m sure there is a buyer for you somewhere out there across the good ol’ US of A.
3. Use flat shipping rates.  Don’t use the Ebay tool where you can have the buyer type in their zip-code to get the exact shipping cost.  It just creates one more thing the buyer has to do, and they may not follow through.  You can pretty much get away with shipping smaller items between $5 and $8 to anywhere in the US.
4. Never set a reserve price.  Buyers don’t want to see the current auction price in red, and not have any idea how high they have to bid to get above the reserve.  Making it a guessing game is not going to win them over.  Plus using a reserve price makes you look greedy.  Do a little research on similar items sold on Ebay first, and make sure you are comfortable with what people are getting, because chances are you’ll get around the same amount of $$.
5. Set your starting bid low, no matter what your item is.  This will encourage bidders to start bidding early, and by the end of the auction you may have a bunch of bidders which means the best thing ever for an Ebay Seller – a bidding war!  Plus, the lower your starting bid, the less Ebay fees you will have to pay.  Consider opening the bidding at 99 cents to minimize your Ebay fees.
6. Don’t use the "Buy Now" option.  You want to get bidders wrapped up in the auction, and if they see a large "Buy Now" price, they’re just going to go bid somewhere else.  You want to create as much back and forth on your item as possible.
7. Always take a picture of your item.  The first picture is FREE on Ebay, so you might as well.  People like to see what they are getting, even if it’s a standard item, like the TI-83 calculator I just sold. 

Those are Kevin’s tips with Leah’s spin on each of them!  I’m not saying these are the BEST and ONLY tricks out there.  They are just the ones we tend to use.  So, don’t waste time reading my blog, go dig through your garage, your closets, or sneak into your neighbor’s garage!  You may find some big ticket Ebay items.  With the Holidays fast approaching, its the perfect time to have a little extra cash in your pocket!  Happy selling!

If find myself so much more chipper lately.  Even though the cold has settled in and the scooter has been officially put into hibernation, I haven’t minded taking the 2 shuttle buses to the office.  I think its all the holiday music I’ve been listening to.  It is so soothing and gets me motivated.  The Trans Siberian Orchestra is running in a recursive loop on my pink ipod mini. 

I’ve been using my new found commuting time to catch up on some reading.  The first book I finished is called, All Souls, and was recommended to me by Charlie – a fun, smart, down to earth tour guide I met through a Junior League training.  He knows the author, has worked with him throughout the city, and I hoped it would give me a new perspective and insight into some of the neighborhoods around town.  What makes this book so good is the tone in which it was written.  It’s very conversational, matter-of-fact like, and as you are reading it you feel like you are sitting down with the author over a cup of coffee, listening to him tell you about his life.  Amidst this conversation you get swept up in the humor and the sorrow he encounters in his live.  Growing up in South Boston, he saw a lot of tragedy in his family, losing 4 siblings to violence.  His second book, Easter Rising, I am about 3/4 of the way finished with now, and this book is more reflective of how he changed his life and rose above this tragedy and violence.  I highly recommend both – excellent reads!  Me … the reading challenged …. has never flown through 2 books so quickly!

It is December 4th, 21 days before Christmas, and the pressure is on!  I don’t know what happened this year.  It seems retailers were all about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and now things are already picked over and sold out.  I don’t remember it being like this in past years.  Three big ticket items I went to purchase today were sold out … completely sold out!  Not just in stores, online too … even a nationwide search for these items did not turn up a single hit.  I am both frustrated and shocked by this result.  How can this be with 21 shopping days left?  That is plenty of time in my book.  I don’t even usually start thinking about my Christmas list until now.  Today, after realizing items I may want to purchase are already gone … the frenzy has begun.  I pretty much finished my shopping tonight.  I did it mostly online, but did spend some time at the mall after work.  I feel it has been a whirlwind 3 hours of my life, in a mad rush to make sure all those items I really wanted to get for people weren’t already gone.  And I did have to make some compromises and settle for my 2nd choice items.  My inbox is filled with order status and confirmation emails, even a pair of concert tickets (they could be for you)!  I guess with the ease of shopping on the internet, retailers are having trouble keeping up their inventory.  A part of me thinks some retailers are keeping their collections small this year, exclusive even, on purpose.  Maybe just to drive me … the late shopper at 21 days before Christmas …. NUTS! 

If you haven’t started yet … you may want to consider getting on top of that!