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Long week

What a week, I only worked three days but it turned out to be one of the longest weeks of the year. After spending most of my time this week keeping the AFCEA 2007 C4ISR Symposium on track (worthy of another post all by itself) we got called into a meeting to discuss a data call gone bad; Naturally the announcement was sent out at the last minute, I think I had 30 minutes notice to make a meeting that was 20 minutes away. We started the meeting reviewing our previous data call and discovered we did something wrong but we couldn't tell what; it just didn't make sense. We tried to determine the motive of the data call... but failed. We tried to determine the source of the data call but failed... So we made up some other business rules and made up a due date that corresponded to peoples vacation schedule.

Data calls in my organization are common and are usually quick turn
around, poorly defined calls for information from somewhere on high
(could be God for all I know) to do something non-specific. So this call was not unusual, The reason I'm posting this rant here is that part of this blog is supposed to discuss innovation. Today's post poses the question; how do you collect data on your organization without sucking all of the innovative life out? A question I hope to answer before I retire...

Powered by ScribeFire.

Wow, Can firefox cram a lot of stuff in their browser

I just downloaded the new Firefox and along with it several of their plugin's. In fact this blog post is being composed in a plug-in called performancer, which definitely has a spell checker and several other editing functions. The problem is that the browsing window is only two inches tall and about eight inches wide. This performancer, while integrating nicely with the browser was not intuitive to operate. When I turned it on, it greeted me with a blank window and a blue button that said publish, but when you pressed it, it informed you that you had screwed up and not provided a blog address. Unfortunately there was no instructions as to how you should proceed from there. It provides a way to read the metrics, or lack there of for your blog. Mine are to embarrassing to put here.



I also downloaded yoosers, that sounds a little like loosers, which I must be because I have no idea what the thing does other than consume about two inches along the right side of my screen. I predict that yoosers might be the first new plug-in to be blasted off the screen.



Acuweather has a nice plug-in, it adds the next two day's forecast along the bottom of your screen. It is small and expands only when you want it to. For example I can tell you that it will be 65 degrees tomorrow with a chance of rain in the morning without inturupting my typing.



I down loaded a number of other plug-ins that seem to have disappeared, hmmm... I wonder where they went? Oh well if this preformancer works, I'll probably blog about them, just for good practice once I locate them.

powered by performancing firefox

Scaled Composites

Scaled Composites

Traveled to Mojave California yesterday, to watch something that should have happened twenty years ago... A Commercial Space shot. While it didn't go completely without a hitch, it went well enough to deliver the one-man crew in the SPACESHIP 1 rocket/glider into space and back.

Which brings us to the subject of this blog... Why did it only take a $10M purse to inspire a team to come together to build this space ship? This technology has the potential of making many new space related technologies possible, why didn't NASA offer the $10M purse to get them out of their innovation slump?

I have always contended that the Government's role in acquiring technology is to reduce the risk to the private sector business. When technology is customized for Government use, the Government should pay for the customization, if the technology is so old that it's not profitable for a private sector company to support, the Government should pay. Basic research, like that done in the 60's to support NASA, is a perfect application of Government spending, the Space Shuttle wasn't as good. Yesterday Burt Rutan demonstrated that the risk for space flight has been reduced to the extent that industry can do it. That's great news for us tax payers, this event indicates that our technology is now mature enough to make money, allowing NASA to go back to its basic research mission.

Space... the next fronteer?

What a monmument to creativity

Wired Mag Article


Just went to this event up in Mojave, CA.

. These guys took NASA, a multi billion dollar government agency, and made them look bad... real bad. It's interesting to think about the implicaitons.



Some additional information can be found at



Wired Magazine seems to be covering this event heavily.