Nearly six years ago now, while working at 3Cube, we were putting together collateral and Web page templates for a new product roll-out, and as is common, one of the tasks was to create faux persons and companies, as placeholders. Rather than go with the standard "John Smith" from "ABC Company" or "Acme Inc.", I tried to dress it up with more real sounding names, while staying generic. I believe "Linda Johnson" from GoodFiles Inc. was one of the chief participants in our FAQs...

During one of these meetings, I presented an example which included a company by the name of "Asypta". It didn't mean anything, but it sure sounded good, especially at a time when companies would rebrand themselves, or spin off subsidiaries with neat-sounding names that added no real value. For some reason, I got all sorts of questions about "Asypta". It sounded real enough that my colleagues wanted to know if I had an in on the ground floor of a top-secret pre-IPO start-up or something... but I kept using the example and sounding mysterious.

I stumbled on the idea of "Asypta" as companies often can be found with an A at the beginning, consonant, vowel, consonant, A. Think about how many you can name... for example... Avaya, Asigra, Altera, Atipa, Asera, Altria, Ariba, Aceva, Acterna, Acteva, Adexa, Azanda... and I'm sure there are many more. At one point in 2001, I had registered the domain name Asypta.com, with the dual intent of acting as if it were a fake company, or secondly, to "grade" company names by their "Asypta factor". Ariba would be a 10 on the scale. Avaya another 10. Something like Alhambra... not so much. Asypta eventually came to stand for "A simple, yet pointless, technical acronym." It's worth noting that almost none of these Asypta companies explain their corporate name on the Web site. Simple, yet pointless.

Fresh off returning to the Bay Area from our East Coast travels, we turned right around from being business focused to being Oakland A's focused - a very pleasing endeavor. This morning, my wife and I caught up with a friend from high school and made our way to the Coliseum to start off the 2006 A's baseball pre-season the right way, with the opportunity to see A's players and coaches, get a tour of the player's clubhouse, and eat ballpark food, more than 60 days before the start of the regular season.

It wasn't overly crowded, like any playoff game, but very busy - focused on autograph seekers and a serious push for ticket sales. We got into see a Q&A with the A's four top rookies from last year (Huston Street, Nick Swisher, Dan Johnson and Joe Blanton), but late. The ushers would wave 1 or 2 or 3 in at a time to fill empty seats, so we got in and had an angle that saw all but Huston. Still fun and good spirits by all. The best comments were when Ray Fosse ripped on Swisher for saying Joe Blanton is the best bunter of the four - saying that to have Blanton pinch hit for Swisher in a bunting situation would be very embarrassing. Fosse also slammed the guys trying to learn how to play guitar, and swore he was going to use his noise-reduction earphones to block them out on the next trip.

We took the clubhouse tour, and I was surprised by how small it seemed, as well as the dugout. Fairly close quarters to say the least.

A hidden surprise was a Q&A with manager Ken Macha and coach Renee Lachemann. Macha is a good conversationalist in person and did well with the crowd - even when one person challenged his use of Joe Kennedy in a must-win game. The guy kept going back to it, and berated Macha so much that the crowd booed him. But Macha came back to Kennedy's defense in a big way, and we all applauded. Macha also had some good insight into dealing with Billy Beane and how to deal with a deep lineup, but he wouldn't spell out his opening day line-up.

Tomorrow morning will mark the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, and news site MSNBC has compiled a number of pieces commemorating the event, including an interesting piece on seven commonly held myths surrounding the morning of January 28th, 1986.

As with many famous sporting events, more people will say "they were there" or had seen it live, having ingrained the story so much with their own lives, that they too want to be involved, or to add personal notoriety to a famous happening - and that's just one of the "myths" addressed.

I remember learning of the Challenger disaster quite vividly. Still in elementary school, our teacher, crestfallen, told us that the shuttle had broken apart after launch, and all seven astronauts - including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, had perished. My mind racing, I formed a mental picture of these astronauts jettisoned into the black of space - gasping for air and finding only a hostile vacuum. Not until I had come home, and saw the news reports playing the event again and again, did I have the truth indelibly etched into my memory.

Space travel has always been dangerous as evidenced by Apollo 1, where three were lost in a fire, and Apollo 13, where a near-disaster averted a moon trip, and later became a major motion picture. But by 1986, a nation had forgotten this, and turned a lazy eye to the Shuttle program. As with car racing, it took a major accident for us to stand up and take notice again.

Our two-day jaunt in Boston is complete - we had nine meetings with about 25 people in total, and have three more to wrap up the trip tomorrow, just not in Boston, as we've landed in New York, and get to spend one odd night (for $279) here, with it 27 degrees outside, before doing our work in the morning and flying back cross-country to make it back to the West Coast late tomorrow.

Aside from being surrounded by East Coast snow this week, and walking duck-footed to avoid slipping on icy driveways and sidewalks, we've enjoyed the other East Coast tradition - of wearing suits and ties, and topcoats, to each of our stops. Often, we're expected to look like laid-back West Coasters with a casual dress and attitude, but have put our hosts to shame. It's not quite "Project Runway" on the WB, but the team cuts quite the pose. In preparation for the trip, I bought a new pinstripe suit at the Men's Wearhouse, the first one I've bought myself, and the first one I've purchased to match my increasing waistline, which is now officially more round than my legs are tall. I preferred being a 32 by 32 "square", but it was not meant to last. Days of being out on the road, eating out for every meal, and jamming back into cars or planes aren't helping either...

One problem with these quick stops in New York is there is zero time to "see the sights". I've been here three times in the last two years, and still haven't even glimpsed the Statue of Liberty or anything. Don't know which way to look out of the plane... someday maybe I'll come on a more-relaxed pace and stay for fun.

Going back to entertainment that all of us like, but a smaller percentage will actually admit to... Apple's iTunes Video store now features the entire first and second seasons for both South Park and Beavis and Butthead - two very funny shows, especially when they first launched, though South Park has definitely earned a higher level of staying power over time.

Let the dumbing down of America continue... but good for Apple. Yet another guaranteed revenue stream, and even more excuses to push us into eventually upgrading to a video iPod. Just like when they first debuted the iTunes Music Store, the video store's initial pickings were slim indeed, but as they continue to add more mainstream entertainment (and these are definitely mainstream), sales will follow.

It always seems like the big news hits when I'm out of town - so someone has to fill me in hours after it happens, just to catch me up. After months of anticipation in both cases, two big signings went down today that rocked the Northern California sports world, such as it is. First, the Oakland A's signed a one year, incentive-laden contract with the "Big Hurt", Frank Thomas, fresh off of a 16-year tenure with the Chicago White Sox, which had culminated in two injury-plagued seasons. Second, the Sacramento Kings traded away fan favorite three point sharpshooter Peja Stojakovic for the world-renowned bad boy Ron Artest, from the Indiana Pacers, just 24 hours after he swore he would never play for the Kings.

To start off, the A's have a fantastic young team, led by a pitching staff that surprised many people in 2005, with stability up and down the rotation, from Rich Harden and Barry Zito at the top, down to Joe Blanton, Dan Haren, and the off season signee Estaban Loaiza. But while they came close to taking the division away from the Anaheim Angels, their on-again, off-again offense needed an upgrade, especially in the form of a right handed bat with power. Thomas represented that power for many years with the White Sox, and very well could fill that role again, provided modern medicine and physical therapy do their trick. While many are very excited about this pickup, I'm more cautious. Thomas has been a shadow of himself the last few years, and has injury-prone written all over him now. But I wouldn't mind see him providing power at the top of the lineup, helping Chavez, Crosby and crew drive runs home.

The second deal is a little mind-boggling. Just last season, we saw a maniacal Ron Artest dive into the stands in Detroit on his way to a suspension for the rest of the regular season by the league. We all know he took time off earlier to make and promote a rap album, and is generally known as a hot head. Meanwhile, Stojakovic has the purest shot of anybody in the NBA this side of Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, and has been a mainstay for the Kings for the better part of 7-plus years. That makes the deal bewildering for us who only know the surface story. Others say that Peja's statistics are on the decline, and maybe with a better environment, Artest can thrive. Who knows? After all, just a few years ago, Chris Webber called Sacramento a cow-town, and wanted nothing to do with the place. Next thing we know, he's a perennial All-Star and MVP candidate... we'll see, but the feeling is hollow now.

Channeling Jerry Seinfeld...
"I mean, airplane movies... are they supposed to be so dull, I mean - come on!"

With all our travel the last few years, I've started to grow accustomed to the in-flight feature films, which are usually popular enough that we've all heard of them, but not blockbusters, making it unlikely I'd already seen them in the theater. On cross-country flights, the major airlines, including American and United, tend to offer 2-hour films to act as a sort of electronic babysitter for us grown-up toddlers, who are probably much better behaved and calm - even if we're watching the latest tripe from Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell or Reese Witherspoon.

Yesterday, we were satiated with the movie "Just Like Heaven", a cutesy film about a career woman who perishes in a car accident, and though separated from her body, she (now as an angel) communicates with the man subletting her apartment, and begs him to help her remember her now-lost identity. Turns out she's in a coma, and only he can see or speak with her... and they fall in love, blah blah blah...

Never would have stuck that on the NetFlix queue. But I watched it. Why? Because it was a frickin' five-hour flight, and we were a captive audience. In recent months, that same excuse can be made for why I sat through "The Longest Yard", "Bewitched", "Kicking and Screaming", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and other B-list Hollywood fare. They probably know that. I don't expect to see "Schindler's List" or "Pulp Fiction" on these flights (too edgy), let alone "Turbulence" or "Con Air"... thank goodness. Not to mention the element of plausible deniability. Given the majority of people on the mid-day mid-week flight were businessmen, they could all act macho later and claim never to have seen it, but deep down, we all know they secretly like the soft fare.

In the late 1990's, services like PointCast were all the rage, where it was imagined that consumers would eagerly snap up "push" media, where news, sports, and finance data would be downloaded to their computer at any time, when the content provider was ready. PointCast specifically was banking on a lot of idle time - as its service would be used as a "screen saver", offering your brain the ability to engage when your computer was resting. It didn't work out. After being talked up to the point where they were entertaining offers north of $100 million, PointCast stumbled and died an ugly death.

Years later, consumers are back in charge, enjoying the ability to customize their favorite portals, best exemplified by My Yahoo! and Google. In parallel, Internet users are finding new ways to get their data, from new devices and applications, outside of the browser. One of the most common is RSS (Real Simple Syndication). RSS can be used to send updated site information or news to customers who request it, not be pushed, in the way PointCast and others had dreamed. Now, nearly any HTML site can be syndicated using RSS, and this site is no exception. Through a site called Feedburner, which is one of the most popular on the Web, you can now subscribe to the RSS feed in your reader of choice, or add the page to My Yahoo! or Google, taking louisgray.com directly to you - making sure you don't miss a single story, and giving you the opportunity to catch up at any time.

You can find a link to Feedburner on the right sidebar of the site, as well as one-click buttons to add to your preferred home site, quickly and easily. Enjoy!

You know, just when you think you have it all figured out... the schedule gods go and muck everything up. With a flight to the East Coast set at 1:45, we thought it made good sense to have plenty of time to check in, go through security (with baggage including two laptops), and still have some clearance for catching my breath before the flight. But I didn't expect it would go so quickly! There was no line to check in, I whipped through security (only 3 ahead of me), and made it to the flight gate by 12:05, a full hour-plus before they begin boarding! I guess being too early is much preferred over being too late, but this is clearly not an exact science.

One upside to getting in early is finding a remote chair with easy access to power. That's a good thing. Let's hope that this kind of luck continues, in the unexpected chance one could find power plugs below the seat during the flight... but that's probably too much to ask for.

One of the first things I do every morning is pop open the laptop, check e-mail and catch up on news and anything I may have missed in the six or so hours I was asleep. I'm not as rigid as to have a set order of sites or time allotted to each, but the routine is fairly... routine. That's why when I woke up this morning and opened the laptop, only to learn there was no Web access, that was a little over the threshold for annoying.

Was it the Airport base station? Was it the cable modem? Was it the Comcast service itself causing the issue? Too many choices! Of course, I reset the base station. Nothing. I unplugged the cable from the base station and connected directly to the laptop. Nothing. I reset the cable modem. Nothing. I unplugged each and let sit for a while, and then plugged back in. Nothing. Grrr...

So I set back to my original spot and connected the laptop to power. I tried to ping Yahoo!. Nothing. A bit later I tried to ping Google... and after some delay it came through... slowly. But then it was as if everything else fired to life. Mail reported I had messages. WeatherPop kindly informed me it was 36 in Boston, where I'll be headed later. No good reason for the Internet being down, and no good reason for it coming back up. I hate that.

Tomorrow afternoon, we fly out to the East Coast to Boston for two days, and then on to New York. For some, that would mean tonight would feature mad scrambling and packing, tidying up, and checking of the Weather Channel multiple times an hour. For me, the sense of insecure panic hasn't taken over. It usually doesn't - at least unless I think I'm in danger of missing the flight (which usually means I'm only 20 minutes early). In fact, I don't even like to pack for a trip until the morning of, just so I can put that part of a trip off as long as possible.

Besides, the sooner I get the carry-on luggage out and start going through the closet for things, the dog tends to get suspicious, and from what I understand, she gets incredibly needy when I'm away. I don't know why that is particularly, especially as she lived here before I did, but that's what I've been told. The longer I can keep the fact I'm leaving a secret from her, the better off we'll all be.

Last year I tacked on more than 25,000 miles with United, flying out not only to Boston and New York, but to Orlando, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, to name a few places. Unfortunately, this week's trips are on American, and I don't have any kind of frequent traveler plan with those guys yet, so I'm basically screwed. That probably means I'll be in the middle seat of the middle row of the middle plane - and the cardboard I'll be passed as a substitute for food will have holes in it... and ... okay, I lied a little. I've already checked the weather, and it is going to be frickin' cold. We think it's cold here, just over 50 degrees, but Boston's a balmy 35 degrees now, on the way down to 28, and we don't get in until after 10 tomorrow night. Yuck. And no good excuses to go either. No Red Sox. No Fenway Park. Just business.

What's the difference between an occasional feature and a regular feature? Consistency. So here's the first of what I expect will be an irregularly occasional feature - Morning Notes, when things are too interesting to ignore, but time is limited.

Last night was the first night the NBA's made a good fight to stay relevant in the face of playoff football, and baseball's Hot Stove League. If I wasn't a half-hearted Sacramento Kings fan, one would hardly know the season was on, if we didn't have news of players entering the stands or demanding trades... but last night, rapist turned ballplayer Kobe Bryant put on a show, scoring 81 points, the second most in league history, behind only Wilt Chamberlain. On the same night, the Phoenix Suns and Seattle Supersonics combined for more than 300 points in a 152-149 double overtime thriller, capped by a 30-foot buzzer beater at the end of second overtime.

In non-sports news, rumors are still flying fast and thick about Disney buying Pixar, or was that Steve Jobs buying Disney? It's all so confusing! Oh yeah, and the Republicans keep proving themselves incapable of avoiding scandal. (here, here and here).

Enjoy!

Keeping with our Top Ten list theme, I submit what I view as the top ten political sites I visit regularly (or irregularly).

1. Daily Kos
2. This Modern World
3. Eschaton
4. Talking Points Memo
5. AmericaBlog
6. MyDD
7. Informed Comment
8. Bob Harris
9. Oliver Willis
10. The Next Hurrah

Super Bowl XL in Detroit will feature one team that's never made it to the championship game, in the Seattle Seahawks, and another who hasn't claimed the title since polyester pants and disco were all the rage, in the Pittsburgh Steelers. Though the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl in 1995, they walked away on the losing side, and have yet to get back. In today's games, there really wasn't much doubt who was going to win. Pittsburgh entertained a 24-3 lead over the hometown Broncos at halftime on the way to a 34-17 pummeling, while the Seahawks stymied the Carolina offense, allowing only a punt return TD by Steve Smith, and a garbage-time TD reception on their way to a 34-14 pasting of the upstart Panthers.

While the network TV folks might not be happy about Seattle/Pittsburgh, I've had just enough of Tom Brady and the boring Patriots year in and year out. I wouldn't have minded seeing Peyton Manning and the Colts get their shot, but they too had the limelight all through the regular season, while Seattle and Pittsburgh quietly prepared for the playoffs. It should be a good game, one that the odds-makers in Vegas will likely say tilts toward the Steelers, though I'm unconvinced.

As mentioned previously here, my Three And Out squad (we're talking Fantasy Football again) needed Pittsburgh to win to get a near-lock on the team's second trophy in five years. Now, it looks like we're there. At the conclusion of today's games, Three And Out is leading 229 to 207 over the nearest challenger, and has more players available than any other for the Big Game. (Matt Hasselback, Hines Ward, Pittsburgh Special Teams and both Defenses) Though I wasn't excited to see Steve Smith scuttled, he did pull off a masterful punt return for a TD, which in itself was worth 11 of his 13 points scored today. You've got to believe I was excited to see that - and doubly so as my Seattle Defense wasn't on the hook for giving it up. A great football day.

I hate it when I find out my favorite shows are being canceled.

My wife quasi-introduced me to West Wing when we were dating. I was always aware of the show, but didn't take to it until 2003, and using the magic powers of TiVo, I had it set to record all the older re-runs on Bravo, so during a regular week, I could get five older episodes and the new one from the current season on NBC.

With West Wing being moved to Sundays now, their ratings have dropped, and we were all shocked to learn of the death of John Spencer, who played the gutty Leo, running for Vice President alongside Jimmy Smits. But I still rooted for the show to go on. It's suspenseful, intelligent, and funny, all at once.

From the AP article: NBC Cancels 'West Wing' After 7 Seasons

The new president on "The West Wing" will be a real short-timer: NBC announced Sunday it was pulling the plug on the Emmy-winning political drama after seven seasons in May. NBC, struggling to regain its footing after the worst season in its history, also outlined several midseason schedule changes _ including the moves of popular dramas "Law & Order" and "Las Vegas." "The West Wing" announcement wasn't much of a surprise. Although this season's story line with a presidential campaign involving a Democrat played by Jimmy Smits and Republican portrayed by Alan Alda has been strong critically, ratings have sunk with its move to Sunday nights.

Oh well - as with NYPD Blue, I guess it was eventually time for the show to move on.

It's no secret that the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most expensive locations to live in the country, if not the world. I am agape at the "bargains" available in the rest of the country - where it's not uncommon to see billboards advertising homes in the "Low $80s to $100s" and beyond. Given it costs you more than $350,000 to get a 1 BR/1BA condo here, the difference is enough to make one consider other options. After all, with high speed Internet being a great equalizer on telecommuting and communication, and relatively cheap airfare available, then what difference does it really make whether one lives in Alameda or Albequerque, Mountain View or Montana?

Every month or so, we get notices telling us what prices homes and condos in our area have sold for, what the owners were asking, and what they received. On a back of the napkin calculation, one could easily guesstimate we could get more than $450k for our 2 BR/2 BA condo - provided we replace the carpets and hide all notice that a dog has been one of the primary residents.

Putting that in perspective, here's what a comparable amount of money will get you in other areas of the country:

Denver, Colorado: 4 BD, 3 BA, 2,700 sq ft $350,000
Billings, Montana: 5 BD, 3.5 BA, 3,000 sq ft $320,000
Kansas City, Missouri 5 BD, 5 BA, 1.4 acres $350,000
Atlanta, Georgia 4 BD, 3 BA, 2 story $350,000
Nashville, Tennessee 5 BD, 3.5 BA, 3,200 sq ft $350,000
Provo, Utah 5 BD, 6 BA, 4,800 sq ft $350,000

So, in theory, you're telling me I can trade up to a 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom, 4,800 square foot home with central air conditioning and a lake view, and LOWER my mortgage payments, and all I have to do is move to the Beehive State? Where do I sign up?