The Curse Must End

I am not a New York Yankees fan, but I don’t root against them. But to be honest, when the NLCS and ALCS started, I was rooting for the Cubs and Red Sox to make it to the World Series. I wanted the curse to end.

Last night when the Red Sox took a 4 run lead I was cheering. I thought the Red Sox were going to the World Series so I shouted at the bar last night “The curse ends tonight.” As a Mets fan, I should have know better. The most spectacular comeback in all of sports history is the 1986 World Series. Bill Buckner aside, the curse was alive for the Red Sox on October 25^th, 1986. That historic night in Flushing, Queens proved the Babe Ruth curse when the Red Sox were 1 out away from their first world championship since 1918. Last night the Red Sox were 6 outs away from the World Series and blew it. (I was there as a Mets fan in 1999, just 3 outs away, so I know how it feels.) So New York City is a bad place for Boston, first in Shea Stadium in 1986 and last night in Yankee Stadium.

Last night’s awesome come from behind victory for the Yankees was great for the team, their fans and my home, New York City. Unfortunately it was bad for the sport. The curse must end. Just not this year.

Email From Maegan This Morning

They are going for the summit next Tuesday (10/20) or Wednesday (10/22). Everyone asks me "I thought you can only summit Everest in May." It is still possible to do it after May in the fall. Here are the stats, odds are against my team, but I know that they can do it! Out of 1924 successful summits on Everest, only 279 (18%) has actually occurred in the fall. Out of those 279, only 17 happened after October 20. The majority of the fall summits happened 1953-1993. Those years had 608 summits out of which 232 (38%) were made in autumn! Strange. From 1994 to 2003 however, there has been an explosion of 1320 summits - but a mere 47 (3.6%) in the fall.

So if she is going to summit and ski down, she will just have to forget the odds and go for it. Good luck and remember to come back-please.

Thomas Jefferson v James Madison

This question of direct democracy versus representative government that Dad and I are talking about is not a new one. As I said the founding fathers of this country struggled with the very same question. The Federalist Papers contain James Madison's debate with Thomas Jefferson on this point.

Jefferson wished for a pure democracy whereby the citizens could assemble and administer the government in person. All people could then have a direct say in how they are governed and share in the power that is used to govern. He talked all about a new revolution every 10 years, yadda yadda yadda. No wonder he liked the French-they are still fighting the French Revolution and the Revolutionaries at the Bastille in July 1789 were quoting Thomas Jefferson (who was in Paris at the time as George Washington’s ambassador) as if he were their spiritual leader. So the French?  How many constitutions have they had since 1789? Last I counted it was 6, not to mention all that Napoleon crap. (Let’s also not forget the Reign of Terror.)  How many have the United States had? One quite successful one.

James Madison believed that we are all prone to faction--"citizens...united and activated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or adverse to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community" (Federalist Papers #10). "No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause," said Madison, "because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."

Duh. Madison argued that the remedy to the risk of faction (or"special interests") was a representative government where a small but carefully determined number of citizens are elected by the rest to act on their behalf and in the interest of the public good. He won, Jefferson lost. Basically Thomas Jefferson gained some ground in a 215 year old debate last week with the election of the Terminator.

Sorry Dad.

So everyone, just remember the United States is not a democracy, but a Representative Democracy. (And yes we are a republic too, but so are the commies in China.)

Total Recall

My Dad did not agree with my thoughts on the Recall Vote- see his email below.

I disagree 100% with Dad. For starters, there is a recall every 4 years. The founding fathers would not be proud, they deliberately created a representative democracy, not a true democracy. The Federalist Papers warn of mob-rule (I know Dad I still have your copy, I should give it back to you to re-read). Remember that the founding fathers did not trust the electorate (only white males at the time) the Senate was not even elected, but appointed! They did not trust the electorate, why should I. Plus I have 230 years of history to judge the electorate by.

I do not support referendum and initiative, just look at Switzerland trying to vote to enter in the UN, enough said.

Dad's message:

-----Original Message-----
From: Albert J Forte

Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 9:14 AM
To: Stephen Forte
Subject:

you have spent too much time at high altitude. Our founding fathers would be

proud of caliiiiiifornia.

Only 4 recalls and one succesful in  40 years. Comparing this to 9/11 is

rediculous. when did you lose faith in the electorate. Jefferson would love

this. The voters want recall on the books. I also support referendum and

initiative. Get some sleep ; you are nuts.

A little direct democracy once in a while might shake up the flow of special

  interest money.

I dare you to print this reply on your blog

The Case for Case

Ok I have gotten a lot of press because I love the Rozenshtein Method for creating cross tab queries. I have even traveled the world and spoke about it all summer at TechEds around the world.

I have gotten flack, especially from annoying Australians, about how “complex” the Rozenshtein Method is. So today I found myself writing a crosstab and used the Case Method.

It was an ad-hoc query that I have to run a few times over the next few weeks. It never has to run in another database like Access or Oracle. It was needed to be quick and dirty. I decided NOT to use the Boolean aggregates and use a Case statement. The basic structure of a case statement is as follows:

CASE  FieldName WHEN ValueYouAreChecking THEN TrueExpression ELSE FalseExpression END

Pretty easy no? Here is a sample:

SELECT tlkpWeekEnding.WeekEnding_DT as Weekending, DiceCat.DiceCat_NM as 'Job Category', Sum(tblData.TotalListings) AS 'Total Listings', SUM(CASE  Service_ID WHEN 1 THEN TotalListings ELSE 0 END) AS HotJobsTotal,

SUM(CASE  Service_ID WHEN 2 THEN TotalListings ELSE 0 END) AS MonsterTotal,

SUM(CASE Service_ID WHEN 3 THEN TotalListings ELSE 0 END) AS CareerBuilderTotal

FROM DiceCat INNER JOIN ((tlkpWeekEnding INNER JOIN (trelServiceURL INNER JOIN tblData ON trelServiceURL.URL_ID = tblData.URL_ID) ON tlkpWeekEnding.WeekEnding_ID = tblData.WeekEnding_ID) INNER JOIN DiceCatDetail ON trelServiceURL.JobCategory_ID = DiceCatDetail.CorzenJobCatID) ON DiceCat.DiceCat_ID = DiceCatDetail.DiceCat_ID

WHERE tlkpWeekEnding.WeekEnding_ID=75

GROUP BY tlkpWeekEnding.WeekEnding_DT, DiceCat.DiceCat_NM

Order by  DiceCat.DiceCat_NM

Here are the results, we move rows to columns:

View1
Weekending	Job Category	Total Listings	HotJobsTotal	MonsterTotal	CareerBuilderTotal
10/12/2003	Accounting/Auditing/Finance	37226	10021	9694	17511
10/12/2003	Banking/Mortgage	10657	2026	2886	5745
10/12/2003	Biotech/Pharmaceutical	7569	2290	2644	2635
10/12/2003	Engineering	20549	3513	5800	11236
10/12/2003	Healthcare	44080	4415	8028	31637
10/12/2003	Information Technology	34309	10637	8924	14748
10/12/2003	Insurance	8364	1900	2718	3746
10/12/2003	Legal	7962	1976	2498	3488
10/12/2003	Science	4636	0	1074	3562
10/12/2003	Telecommunications	3650	1005	1137	1508

So if this is so easy why oh why do I insist on using the Rozenshtein Method? Well, I don’t insist on using it all the time. I like it because it is super fast and make sense to me (I was into Math as a kid, sorry). I think that you should know both and use the one that you think is most effective for the job at hand.

Happy Crosstabbing!

Firehose Security and Privacy

Everyone is going a little too far with security and privacy. Some idiot hacker sends out an email virus and lots of ignorant people click on it and then lots of people blame Microsoft. The bigger problem is that then Microsoft responds with more firehose security methods. (Ever try to send an email attachment in Outlook now?)

Regardless, now the anti-virus people are trying to make our lives yet even more painful. Now if you install Norton Anti-virus, by default its Firewall software makes any web site that uses the HTTP_REFERER blow up. Like it is such an invasion of my privacy to tell a site where I clicked on the link to get there from.

So we had to change the code on our site to:

AbsoluteUri = Request.Url.AbsoluteUri

instead of

Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")

This clearly has to stop. The privacy police have gone too far. I am also worried about potential legislation in Congress (which I have personally lobbied against through ACT) on Privacy. Sharing my medical records and financial information is one thing, but quadruple opt-in is another. Give it a rest.

Open Up Mt. Rainier

Rainier Mountaineering, Incorporated (RMI) has a monopoly for guiding people up Mt. Rainier. (Unless you do it yourself.) This contract was due to expire in 2001, but is currently on its second 1-year extension. The NPS has recently proposed a range of alternatives for guiding at Mt. Rainier which will greatly affect the choices that we have when looking for a Mt. Rainier climbing guide service (see page 36):

 http://www.nps.gov/mora/current/CSP.pdf

The Preferred Alternative, #3, I enthusiastically support.  This

alternative, among other things, splits the RMI concession into three

concessions.with three equal companies having the ability to run trips on

Emmons, Kautz, and Muir routes. 

So send a letter saying that you support Alternative #3...and send it to:

Superintendent

Mt. Rainier National Park

Commercial Services Plan Comments

Tahoma Woods, Star Route

Ashford, WA  98304

or, you can send it by e mail:

mora_commercial_services@nps.gov

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The Biggest Threat to Our Democracy

While I am a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies (I have seen each and every one more than once), read his work-out book for travelers and am counting the days until Pumping Iron is released to DVD (33 days), I think that the California Recall of Governor Davis is a larger threat to our democracy than the 9/11 attacks and all of the controversial steps taken to ensure our safety (like keeping the prisoners in Cuba, etc).

For starters, I tend to be a centrist, but lean more to the right, so technically I should be happy. I am not. I am losing sleep over this. This threat to our way of life has nothing with Democrats, Republicans or the Terminator. It has to do with the “What have you done for me lately, “ short attention span, need results now, Internet culture that is evolving in this country.  Now people’s short attention span has turned to elections. This is bad.

Another problem is that people don’t like to take responsibility for their actions anymore. The voters have the option to recall an elected official, every 4 years! Governor Davis was elected barely 11 months ago and less than 4 months after he was elected the recall movement was started.

This clearly has to stop. The “what have you done for me lately” culture was seen during the recent war in Iraq. While not taking any sides on the war issue, about 6 days in the news media and popular culture were saying that it was taking “too long”. Six days to invade and take over another country? They can’t be serious. But alas the news media and popular culture were.

People have way to much of a sense of entitlement and this attitude will only come back to haunt us. What is next? Why not elect the president via TV ratings like predicted in the late 80s TV show Max Headroom?

Why didn’t they do this the first time?

I love DataReaders. You know this; I am a DataReader snob. I feel like a superior coder when I use a DataReader. Maybe it is my hatred of the false hype behind WebServices and XML that make me shun the DataSet. Or just my rather strange way of living my life. Who knows. Like most things you love in life, nothing is perfect. I have been using .NET 1.1 for over a year now since my company was an early adopter of Visual Studio 2003 and have gotten use to the HasRows property. For example if you want to test for an empty DataReader after you open it you can use code like this. (This code is more useful when you are NOT looping, but opening a DataReader for a single record.)

             if (dr.HasRows())

             {

                 txt1.Text=dr["MyField"];

             }

             else

             {

                 txt1.Text="No Data!";

             }

But what I forgot is that for .NET 1.0 (Visual Studio 2002), there is no HasRows property. You have to call the Read method which will return False when there are no rows. Here is the code. (Once again if you are in a loop, you would use a while Read=True and be done with it.)

             if (dr.Read()==true)

             {

                 txt1.Text=dr["MyField"];

             }

             else

             {

                 txt1.Text="No Data!";

             }

So this works, but my ultimate question about HasRows is why didn’t they do this the first time?