Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer to Home

Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer to Home

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The Past

The street view of our old Bothell WA house available on Google Maps.

We are still very nostalgic about our old house (our old life really.) Leaving behind friends and countless good memories is not easy even if we are close to family and old friends. We hope to find something equally inviting and warm to call home here in MA and start feeling a bit like we are getting closer to normalcy. We hope…

2010 World Cup Participants FIFA World Ranking – November 2009

Rank	Actual Rank	Team	Points	dB re #1 Points	Comments
1	1	Brazil	1632	0.00	Top Tier
2	2	Spain	1629	-0.01	Top Tier
3	3	Netherlands	1340	-0.86	Top Tier
4	4	Italy	1215	-1.28	Tier 1
5	5	Germany	1161	-1.48	Tier 1
6	6	Argentina	1103	-1.70	Tier 1
7	7	England	1101	-1.71	Tier 1
8	9	France	1049	-1.92	Tier 1
9	10	Portugal	1042	-1.95	Tier 1
10	11	USA	1025	-2.02	Tier 2
11	13	Switzerland	961	-2.30	Tier 2
12	14	Cameroon	949	-2.36	Tier 2
13	16	Greece	921	-2.49	Tier 2
14	17	Chile	909	-2.54	Tier 2
15	18	Mexico	904	-2.566	Tier 2
16	19	Cote d’Ivoire	903	-2.570	Tier 2
17	20	Serbia	892	-2.62	Tier 2
18	21	Paraguay	879	-2.69	Tier 2
19	24	Australia	848	-2.84	Tier 2
20	25	Uruguay	838	-2.90	Tier 2
21	27	Denmark	830	-2.94	Tier 2
22	29	Algeria	781	-3.20	Tier 3
23	32	Nigeria	763	-3.30	Tier 3
24	33	Slovakia	758	-3.33	Tier 3
25	35	Honduras	754	-3.35	Tier 3
26	38	Ghana	746	-3.40	Tier 3
27	40	Japan	735	-3.46	Tier 3
28	48	Korea Republic	671	-3.86	Tier 3
29	49	Slovenia	663	-3.91	Tier 3
30	83	New Zealand	383	-6.30	Just happy to be there
31	85	South Africa	381	-6.32	Just happy to be there
32	91	Korea DPR	359	-6.58	Just happy to be there

South Africa-bound!

Greece made it! Greece won the away game against Ukraine in Donbass Arena with a goal by Dimitrios Salpingidis in the 31st minute after receiving a dream pass from George Samaras that beat the offside trap. Like Charisteas said in an interview:

"It doesn't matter who (of us) scores, but I am very confident (one of us) will."

That scorer was Salpingidis!

A superb team effort by Tzorvas, Moras, Spiropoulos, Samaras, Katsouranis, Charisteas, Karagounis, Vyntra, Salpingidis, Papastathopoulos, Kyrgiakos, Pliatsikas, Tziolis, and Gekas.

CONGRATULATIONS GREECE!

The draw for the 2010 World Cup is on December 4. Looking forward to the opportunity to erase the bad (awful) memories of the 1994 World Cup.

BTW, the first leg (in Athens) ended 0-0.

Related Articles:

FIFA.com: Greeks return to the world stage

ESPN.com: Ukraine 0-1 Greece: Greeks provide Donetsk shock

Goal.com: Ukraine 0-1 Greece: Salpingidis Strike Sends Otto's Men To South Africa

Leading the Way

That is the title of an article written by Graham Warwick that appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. In it Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) Chairman and CEO Bill Swanson talks about disruptive and sustaining (incremental) technology innovation. Among other things he said:

“You want an organization where that’s cultivated, but no one side suffers at the expense of the other. I have watched organizations take away resources from the incremental innovation teams to fund those that are disruptive. What you can create are haves and have-not's and that is one way to destroy innovation. You need both.”

Spot on! I too have seen organizations pouring resources on disruptive half-baked ideas at the expense of upgrade releases that actually pay the bills. A good balance is needed.

Frequently these half-baked ideas generate a lot of excitement (possibly rightly so), they become part of the near term product roadmap, and counted on for millions of $ of revenue promised to stakeholders and shareholders. The problem is that more often than not there is no straight path between a widget with blinking lights that some wizard hacked together to address basic usage on a bench and an actual product that works properly per customer requirements (complete with proper HW, SW, safety, documentation, production testing, etc.) Program delays, resource crunch, added costs, etc ensue.

The end result is that the company hurts, the employee morale suffers, and over time upper management loses every bit of credibility. Of course, the mess could be avoided if the people that are selling the disruptive technology up were in touch with reality or if the people that are pushing down to get things out faster knew the difference between feasibility and productization.

FIFA World Ranking Top 20: November 2009

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Brazil	1632
2 (2)	Spain	1629
3 (3)	Netherlands	1340
4 (4)	Italy	1215
4 (4)	Germany	1161
6 (8)	Argentina	1103
7 (7)	England	1101
8 (9)	Croatia	1087
9 (10)	France	1049
10 (17)	Portugal	1042
11 (11)	USA	974
12 (6)	Russia	982
13 (15)	Switzerland	961
14 (29)	Cameroon	949
15 (18)	Czech Republic	928
16 (12)	Greece	921	Home wins against Latvia and Luxembourg in October (World Cup qualifiers.)
17 (21)	Chile	909
18 (24)	Mexico	904
19 (20)	Cote d’Ivoire	903
20 (13)	Serbia	892

Play-off game 1 against Ukraine tomorrow in Athens. Good luck!

Full table can be found at FIFA World Ranking.

It’s been a long, long time…

New state (Massachusetts), new city (Reading), new job (Raytheon), same basic subjects: Propagation and scattering of waves, beamformation, signal processing, modeling and design, and system integration.

We certainly miss our old home in WA and our old neighborhood. Sigh…