Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • It’s March

    So there must be madness. I’m very busy but I’ll still be doing the NCAA Pool (I’ll probably be in last place, but what the hell). For those interested in such things, I do the same pool every year.

    My point formula has always been the same. Each round is worth double the last round (1,2,4,8,16,32 for those with limited math skills). And on top of that you multiply the seed.

    So getting some of the early upsets is essential.

    But getting the final winner right is also essential.

    Which, to me, is the essence of March Madness. The early upsets and craziness is part the charm. But at the end, unlike in college football, no one is disputing who the champion is.

    Of course, I do not condone gambling, but I always appreciate people contributing $10 to cover my time and effort. And I tend to provide monetary gifts to those in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

    If you would like to participate, a PayPal account is useful. You might see a payment request for something like “dog grooming”. Work with me.

    I use CBSSports.com because they do a great job on this stuff. If you would like to join, the link is http://fish2011.mayhem.cbssports.com/e. The password is so secret only my closest friends know it.

    Or maybe it’s “fish” (no quotes).

    Let the madness begin…

  • Bachelor!

    My wife and oldest daughter are in Florida. My other daughter has a two day sleepover (it’s her spring break). So I’m totally by myself.

    Party! Craziness! Debauchery!

    Or not.

    I guess I’m just old. I did go out to dinner both nights (new pizza joint on Monday and my favorite bar on Tuesday). But for the most part I just worked a bit more.

    Had the weather been nicer I might have taken advantage and run outside. But we got snow and it got cold, so that didn’t seem like a great idea.

    At this point in my life, bachelorhood is way overrated…

  • Android Market

    This is an interesting article, suggesting that Android app revenues are puny. But does it miss an extremely important point?

    The iPhone market is built off of the fact that people will pay $0.99 for anything. All the revenue is up front payout.

    The Android Market is much more based on free apps with ad revenue. I’ve often considered this an unnoticed tax on the cost of an iPhone (my wife has easily spent $100 more on her phone than I have on mine because she has to pay for apps that are free on Android).

    Consider Angry Birds.

    It is free on Android. There are ads. They are unobtrusive. Angry Birds makes $1MM/month on these ads (that’s after being released for just 4 months on Android – those numbers will likely rise). Those numbers do not show up in the above linked article. That one app would ad 10% to those revenue numbers.

    Maybe not so puny?

    And the Angry Birds folks prefer the Android model because the revenues continue over the life of the app.

    You can argue over which model is better for users. Some folks would prefer to pay the 99 cents to avoid ads. But don’t spout revenue numbers for the app market unless you factor in ad revenue as well.

  • Popcorn

    For the record, I love popcorn. I have no sweet tooth, but I have a total salt tooth. And popcorn is top of the list.

    This is my favorite local bar (despite the fact that their web site is lame and uses comic sans font). Great beer, great food and they have and old school popcorn maker where you can help yourself. And they spice up the popcorn (obviously to get you to drink more beer) in a way that is totally delicious.

    My four year old, Victoria, likes popcorn as much as me. At the movies we are collectively dangerous. And she also think the popcorn at the Alehouse is delicious. This is both great and dangerous.

    Any time we go anywhere that causes us to pass the Alehouse, Tori will say, “I want popcorn”. Like I need my four year old to give me an excuse to drink beer. I find myself in the extremely strange position of arguing with my daughter not to go to my favorite bar.

    Of course, once in a while it is convenient to go there. “Hey, Tori, want to go for popcorn?”. Awesome.

    The crazy thing is that invariably after having beers, food and popcorn (yes, I know popcorn is food, but it’s really a whole separate category) I’m the one saying “Tori, it’s time to go”. She wants to stay, I want to go.

    Let’s recall, I love beer. Especially good beer. This place has tons of good beer. I love this place. But Tori can eat popcorn longer than I want to drink beer.

    I have the best daughter ever…

  • Flower Girls

    It took a while, but we just got some of the official pictures from the real photographer. So without further ado, Danielle and Victoria as flower girls:

    _MG_1167

    And dancing:

    _MG_9791

    And really, really tired…

    _MG_2091

  • Romeo and Juliet

    I mentioned the new Crocodile Rock version in my last post. This song comes from the new movie Gnomeo and Juliet, which is presumably an animated gnome take-off or Romeo and Juliet (I’m guessing with a happier ending).

    Danielle wants to go see the movie, so I explained the pun in the title and described the plot of Romeo and Juliet. That led me to explain that it is such a famous story that tons of other stories/movies/plays/etc. are based on it.

    Which then led me to West Side Story. Have I mentioned how awesome YouTube is, when you have kids?

    Instead of just describing how West Side Story is this amazing modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet with great music and dancing, I just go to YouTube and start showing clips of all the songs.

    And really, if you haven’t watched West Side Story in a while, it’s still amazing. Some of the best music ever, great dancing, 10 Oscar awards.

    The only proof I needed was an eight year old, completely entranced…

  • Dance Party

    Tonight we were watching something on the Disney Channel and a music video comes up with Nellie Furtado singing Crocodile Rock as a duet with Elton John.

    So of course, I have to point out to Danielle that it was his song originally and that the original version is better. But then I realized that I have the original on my iPod (Greatest Hits 1970-2002) so I could show her.

    Of course Danielle wants to watch the end of the show first, but after that I play the original Crocodile Rock. There’s me, Danielle and Tori dancing like fools to old school Elton John. I follow up with Benny and the Jets and every other up tempo Elton John hit.

    It was a big fat old school dance party with my girls.

  • Netflix Freedom & Responsibility Culture

    It’s long, but a very good and relatively quick read.

  • Andy Pettitte – We will miss you

    It’s been a tough off season for Yankees fans in the pitching arena. Yes, we resigned the greatest closer ever and signed a top notch closer to be the 8th inning guy.

    But we didn’t get Cliff Lee and now Andy Pettitte has decided to retire. The former is a bigger loss for the future, but seeing Andy retire is a bit sad for me.

    Not that I have any problems with his decision. He’s had a great career, has kids, presumably plenty of money, and four World Series rings. And as a fan he’s been everything you want in a player.

    Is a Hall of Famer? Probably not. In my mind he falls into the “close, but not quite” category. He wasn’t a #1 starter, often #2 or #3. But in the playoffs every Yankee fan will tell you that Andy often would pitch the key win after a loss. We always felt confident when Pettitte was pitching. Always.

    And he was a good guy. No media issues. Straight shooter. My wife loved him (not solely because of his pitching), generally referring to him as “my boyfriend”. Yes, he did HGH to get over injuries. These days I view that mainly as an “everyone was doing it” issue only to be judged on how they respond when caught. And Pettitte did what you should do. He fessed up, explained why and said sorry. You’d think it would be obvious, but why don’t most people do that? (it was B-12, honest).

    Anyway, a great pitcher and a great Yankee.

    Postseason series clinching wins:

    • 1996 ALCS
    • 1998 World Series
    • 2000 World Series
    • 2009 ALDS
    • 2009 ALCS

    And of course, the classic memory of Pettitte will always be the look to the plate. Cap brim pulled low, glove up high, only his eyes visible, focused on the target.

    Thanks for the memories, Andy.

  • Origami Risk Wins BI Innovation Award

    Origami Risk was one of the winners of Business Insurance’s 2011 Innovation Award. This is obviously a very big deal and we are all very proud.

    Our always brilliant Aaron Shapiro conceived and wrote the award application. Our always exceptional Linus Concepcion built some killer features. And some random talking head did some videos to explain how it works.

    We rock. Let the celebration begin.