I wish I did, but I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said about the earthquake/tsunami disaster other than to reiterate that it's a good time to consider donating to aid groups such as World Relief.

In other news, Alaska Airline's main competitor now has a website. Go visit SkyHigh Airlines. Be sure to read their inflight magazine, Good Intentions; this month's headlines include "Introducing Bench Seating" and "Personal Space: Get Over It." They also have a new partner, Noah's Livestock Transfer.

Rage.

I'm tired of trying to work with the R&D teams in India, especially when they become abusive because they can't understand what I'm writing. The 12 hour time difference does not help. A problem which should take two hours to solve ends up taking a week or more.

I can't seem to get into the holiday mood, either. I think work has a lot to do with this. A lot of people are leaving -- not for vacation, but permanently. Office supplies are dwindling -- coffee, paper towels, soap -- and we're startion to ration. I was going out and buying some of this stuff out of my own pocket, until I realized that this just allows our VP to continue to ignore the situation. No decorations anywhere, no group holiday lunch, not even a "happy holidays" e-mail from the VP.

I also just heard from our IT guy that he got yelled at because we freed up some disk space yesterday. See, IT charges us according to how much storage space we use; by freeing up some space, we decreased a revenue opportunity for them. WTF?

Magical résumé, work your stuff!

Is it alarming that I'm bored enough at Cadence to consider going back to grad school?

The Designated Hitter as Moral Hazard [NYT, registration required]

In a paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in January, Bradbury, the economist, and Drinen, the mathematician, noted that the rate of hit batsmen is 15 percent higher in the American League than in the National. [...] After they controlled for pitcher quality, batter quality, game situation and other factors that also contribute to hit batters, they found that the designated-hitter rule itself "increases the likelihood that any batter will be hit during a plate appearance between 11 and 17 percent."

Holy crap, part 7493

IBM is getting out of the PC business. [NYT] [AP] [TheReg]

This annoys me, as I'm typing this on an IBM ThinkPad next to my IBM NetVista at work. While IBM's products have neither been on the bleeding edge of performance nor cheap, they've been quite reliable and well engineered (IMHO). "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."