Human Stampede in Germany Kills 15

An ugly scene, this time, in Germany, at a gigantic techno music festival.

"The festival, which drew about 1.4 million people, was not immediately cancelled because authorities feared that could spark a second panic and more chaos at the crowded venue."

At least 15 dead inside a tunnel after mass panic broke out due to overcrowding.

The New York Times carries the Reuters story, with photos and video. Terrible.

This sort of thing seems to happen once a year or so somewhere in the world. No matter how advanced our technology, this danger will persist whenever large, dense crowds of people amass.

Obviously, the music festival organizers should have been better prepared to manage the crowd size and flow of people.

Haven't Watched TV For Months

It's a bit weird for me to admit that I haven't watched TV for months. As a kid, I watched tons of TV. As an adult, I curbed my watching to just some favorite shows. But lately, I've been going cold turkey without the boob tube.

Between work and parenting, these days I don't have much personal time available. Guess it's part of finally being a responsible adult. I try to catch up on sleep sometimes.

No TV has meant not seeing what many other people do see. Lately, that's meant not seeing any World Cup soccer games, not that I ever was interested in soccer. I totally missed the Lebron James announcement special, although I was plenty aware of it before and after from radio news while driving and news on the web.

Finally, A Power Drill

I'm approaching 40 and I finally got myself my first very own power drill. My wife will easily tell you that I'm not exactly a handyman. However, over the past few years, I've been assembling a pretty decent set of hand tools, even storing them in a rugged looking tool box, which it seems to me every responsible, grown man in America should have.

In the past, I've owned a power screwdriver, but one of my ex-roommates snagged it from me while moving out, which I didn't even notice until many months after the fact.

But a power drill was previously something that I never thought I'd need or really should have any business owning.  I guess that's what I still think of in terms of any sort of power saw.

Everyone and Their Mother

This is hardly a scientifically proven or statistically backed statement, but for the past couple of months, I've noticed in the Bay Area high tech job market that:

Everyone and their mother wants a product manager!

To make my point, check these out. These are all live job links, as of this blog entry posting, in no particular order:

iPhone >> Blackberry

I just got my very first Blackberry issued by my new job.

OK, so I'm not complaining about having to carry an electronic dogleash, and I appreciate the nice integration with MS Exchange for persistently sync'd work email, calender, and contacts. And I like not having to pay for it or having to submit any expense reports on its charges.

But I gotta say, the Blackberry's user interface, its screen pointer and little trackball, the tiny click keyboard, the cryptic screen icons, and the oversized in-browser action buttons, are all very tedious indeed. Even tiresome.

It all seems so 2006, like in an alternate bizzaro universe in which Apple and Steve Jobs never existed.

The iPhone, with it's multi-touch screen and easy UI, are just light-years ahead of RIM's Blackberry.

I very much prefer the iPhone.

Facebook Privacy Concerns Are Overblown

Now that the backlash seems to be subsiding, I gotta say that I don't share the recent concern that a lot of people have expressed about Facebook's privacy practices.

First and foremost, FB is a free service, if you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to use it.

Second, the whole point of FB is to share info with a sizeable audience.

2010 is turning into "2012"

Devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and China, plus other significant quakes in Mexico and Indonesia, and now this volcano in Iceland seizing up airline routes and freight flights (imagine no FedEx!) and shutting airports throughout Europe, all in 2010, which is only 3.5 months over. If this pace of natural disasters keep up, the premise of the movie "2012" won't seem so ridiculous after all.

Pasta with a Fresh Tomato Sauce From Scratch

Tonight, I cooked up angel hair pasta with a fresh tomato sauce made from scratch, inspired by the Chef Scott Conant segment of last week's Anthony Bourdain No Reservations "Techniques" special episode. For my first time ever, I blanched fresh tomatoes, removed their peels, removed the seeds and watery sections. I did Conant's high heat, hot olive oil, generous salt, potato masher technique with the tomato segments. Also, I did the extra virgin olive oil infusion with garlic, fresh basil, and red pepper flakes. I then cooked the pasta and finished it in the sauce, with parmessan cheese, the infused and strained oil, fresh basil bits, and butter. I mistakenly overcooked the pasta, in part because I seldom cook with fresh pasta, but the overall flavors worked out well. But I gotta say, it was a lot of work for only a small improvement in flavor from my usual quick and dirty spaghetti sauce. Perhaps I shouldn't have used ordinary supermarket tomatoes, since a couple were kinda mealy to start with, but my hope was the techniques would bring the best out of ordinary ingredients. 



Princeton News: A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

Princeton News: A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

How To Motivate Corporate Recruiters

Originally posted 19 June 2007, on LinkedIn Answers:

There are multiple components to motivating recruiters. Here's my take:

1. Hire only high performing and/or high potential recruiters as they will self-motivate and help motivate each other. Poor performing recruiters pose the risk of demotivating others, so coach them as best you can; and, if that fails, manage them out as soon as possible.

2. Respect the recruiter's strengths, established relationships with hiring managers, and total workload, when it comes to assigning new reqs. One-to-one recruiter-to-hiring manager relationships are far more important than letting any one recruiter own all the reqs from a whole department.