Victor Rozek
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As I See It: Legacy
September 24, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIt was shaping up to be a near-perfect day, except for that not-so-small matter of the dead horse. It began as the big finish to a busy summer; a trip to the Wallowas (Oregon’s mini-version of the Swiss Alps) to visit a friend and, ostensibly, to spend a little time in the mountains. Personally, I love mountains with a yearning that borders on the irrational, and I hadn’t had my fill of the high country this year, so I was eager and impatient to hit the trail. The morning after we arrived, I stood outside in the crisp early-autumn air,
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As I See It: Game Changer
September 10, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreLet’s say you’re young and idealistic and still naive enough to believe what politicians tell you. And after watching one of our three-day infomercials, otherwise known as conventions, you’re feeling inspired to register voters for your favorite candidate. But you have no registration forms (which often vary from precinct to precinct), and even if you did, who knows where one precinct ends and another begins? Plus, you don’t really know what you should say, or which doors are likely to remain open once you reveal your party affiliation. But you do have something in your pocket that can solve all
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As I See It: All the Server People, Hot, Hot, Hot
August 27, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThe same day the temperature topped 110 degrees in Oklahoma, I happened to listen to a radio broadcast featuring several scientists and climatologists discussing climate change predictions for the Pacific Northwest. Computer models foretell that–in the not too distant future–temperatures will rise 7 to 15 degrees, and the snowpack in the Cascades may fall as low as 5 percent of current levels. As a result, some rivers are likely to be seasonal, and those with moderate water flows will be too warm to support salmon and other fish stocks.
In the Midwest, the future appears to have already arrived. Thousands
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As I See It: The Other Motivator
August 13, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWith the Olympics having just concluded, a number of third-tier events will again fade into quadrennial oblivion. Sports like synchronized swimming, skeet shooting, and beach volleyball (in which scantly clad women frolic in the icy British rain) got their 15 minutes of exposure, if not fame, and will now be consigned to the devotions of small bands of loyalists. One such sport, parochially known as ping pong, has been upgraded to the more sober-sounding table tennis by serious practitioners who have transformed a basement pastime to a form of quick-twitch warfare.
I was curious about the sport because of a
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As I See It: To Serve, To Strive, And Not To Yield
July 23, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreShe arrived at the dining room as she always did, carrying a baby doll. The woman, like the doll she clutched, was damaged; her appearance shabby, her demeanor distant. She waited her turn in line, acknowledged a greeting from the doorman with a slight nod of her head, and shuffled in looking about for a place to sit. . . .
Stephen Covey, he of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, died last week of complications from a bicycle accident. At age 79, he lost control of his bike on a steep hill. Happily, one of his habits
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As I See It: The Visionary
July 9, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreHe was a world-class marathon runner, but he is not known for that. He was a defender of human rights, but neither is he known for that. He is better remembered for having shortened a long and terrible war, and for being an originator of the field that remade the world in the last half-century. That field is computer science, and his name is Alan Turing. Yet given his many achievements and with everything to live for, why then did he commit suicide at the age of 42?
Turing was a child of the British Empire. His father was a
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As I See It: The Three Graces
June 25, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read morePeople who lived during the Great Depression often greeted each other with a question: “Are you working?” For millions, finding work was the daily imperative and it dominated every waking hour. Notably, no one asked the quintessential question of our time: “What do you do?” That is a question born of having choices, which themselves are the products of affluence. Back then it hardly mattered. There was dignity in simply having a job, and sanctity in labor that could provide food, shelter, and the most elusive commodity of all during hard economic times, hope.
The importance of securing a job–any
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As I See It: Bad Boys Rising
June 11, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreA few decades back when Stanford University decided to drop its mascot moniker “Indians,” the administration held a naming contest open to the student body. Students were encouraged to submit suggestions, and the most frequently chosen name would win. Things were progressing nicely until someone decided to check the tally. The students, evidently inspired by the business practices of the university’s founder Leland Stanford, voted to replace the politically incorrect “Indians” with the economically incorrect “Robber Barons.” The contest was quickly retired and some quivering bureaucrat selected “Cardinal” as the new mascot–the color, mind you, not the bird. Probably didn’t
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As I See It: Pocket Litter
June 1, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreFor those in the “pocket litter” collection business, things are looking up. They’ve got a project with a $2 billion budget, courtesy of us the taxpayers, and a whopping 10,000 contractors who, as we speak, are building an ugly but exceedingly spacious data center to be filled with high tech toys. And, overruns will not be a problem.
If you’re a supercomputer maker, server provider, or manufacturer of storage devices and count the NSA among your customers, these are equally heady times. You’re probably ecstatic, hyperventilating with anticipation. You’re going to sell a lot of hardware, and overruns are almost
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As I See It: A House of Many Windows
May 21, 2012 Victor Rozek
… Read moreA friend of mine was having relationship troubles. His girlfriend complained that he seemed incapable of going “deeper,” meaning he was resistant to the level of commitment she craved–a lament many women will no doubt recognize. From his perspective, he didn’t want heavy commitment, he wanted light companionship. He had a variety of interests, enjoyed doing a great many things, and wanted someone to share them with. Of course, one of his interests was sex, and therein, if you’ll pardon the expression, lies the rub. Essentially, he wanted a woman in his life, but not in his house. And things