Technology, Business, and Doritos

I have stated earlier that I am not a big fan of the trendy “Mexican” restaurants around this area (Cafe Rio and Costa Vida), because their food is basically candied.   Not even near spicy enough, and an extreme lack of a range of flavors.  These places are so one dimensional it is funny.  Anyway, it occurred to me after a few months the big draw of these places are their salads and more specifically their “special” dressing.  I knew that this dressing was just a tomatillo ranch dressing with a few other things, so I searched a bit and the recipe below is almost exactly the same as the dressing used in the restaurants.  So now, you can make your own salads without forking over money to these posers.

You HAVE to use Hidden Valley Ranch or the ranch gods will smite you with a curse so terrible you will never recover.  If you use fat free Kraft Ranch then may heaven help your soul.  And if you don’t want to offend them at all, actually buy the ranch seasoning packet and mix it with Best Foods mayo.  Kraft or any other mayo is heretic.  You just make a large batch of this stuff and it lasts for weeks.  It is good on salads, fajitas, burritos, rice, and scrambled eggs.

Creamy Tomatillo Dressing
Place the following in a blender:
3 fresh tomatillos, cut into quarters
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 cup buttermilk (or make w/dry buttermilk mix)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 package of dry Ranch Buttermilk Dressing Mix
1 cup fresh cilantro (abt. one bunch)
5 stalks (1/2 bunch) of green onions w/ends
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 to 3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. crushed cayenne pepper

Combine well in blender and refrigerate one hour.

With the rise of Ruby on Rails, the combination of Prototype and Scriptaculous (yes I know I forgot those stupid periods) has become very popular.  I downloaded the libraries to use on my php sites and there was just something about them that didn’t fit well with me.  They also seemed really bloated.  I searched around and found jQuery.  This library is simply amazing, small, and effective.  I have now converted a few other developers to jQuery.  Of course I never am a homer with these things, so if you enjoy using a different library I see no reason to change.  In the end they all look the same, users don’t care what goes on under the hood.  I think developers often forget that.  There are several other javascript/dhtml/ajax libraries out there that have big followings, including Mootools and a few others that slip my mind.

I have watched over the past year or two how almost every fellow “super nerd” has moved from Utah Valley for jobs elsewhere. In fact, I found that there is a massive shortage of quality developers/engineers here and it isn’t getting better. Here are my thoughts on why this is, and I think it pertains well to any area trying to court the tech crowd.

1. Utah valley has not figured out how to value and treat engineers/programmers properly. Instead of putting them on a pedestal like Silicon Valley and the Seattle area has done, they are still way down on the totem pole here both in pay and stature. For the most part the system is still stuck in the managers/marketing are the top dawgs. I have tons of stories from my friends here who were treated like dirt and a blue collar employee by CEOs, managers, and investors. These guys control your companies destiny, and the way you treat them will directly affect your business.

2. Because of this lack of value put on good engineers, and the emphasis is on good, many of these engineers are going to areas where they can actually afford a home because the pay isn’t competitive. The housing market is so overpriced in Utah valley that I honestly cannot understand what people are thinking. At an average wage of 35-40k in Utah valley, the average home price is hovering around 220k, which will be burying most people up to their eyeballs in debt.

3. Outside of these two things, there is a lack of proven successful software companies currently alive in the area. I know there are the standard examples, but many of our old stalwarts either are struggling or have relocated. An increase in investing directly into the companies of engineers would help, instead of only those companies led by someone with an MBA or in some inner circle. Show the developer community some love and they will give back, otherwise we will continue to cycle a crop of 1-year-out-of-byu-or-uvsc developers.

I know you are trying to hide your excitement.  It’s all right, I understand.  Prizzles.com is now live and in ultra beta.  What is it?  Well, put simply it is a site for sudoku and other puzzle lovers.  Right now there are unlimited sudoku puzzles and a cool word search wizard, but I will be adding crossword puzzles and other word games.  This site is very tongue in cheek and will have a bunch of other fun things to waste your time, so just ignore my insanity with it.  Do sign up though, or spread the word to someone who likes Sudoku and word games.

I occasionally watch Saturday Night Live, and one skit that is often shown is an ultra modern family whose house is designed all in white with crazy “ergonomic” furniture as well as other things.  The last time I watched it I realized just how similiar their design is to Apple’s.  Now don’t get me wrong, Apple’s design is very clean and functional, but in my opinion very sterile.  While this design is fine in moderation, when everyone has one it becomes very strange.  I have asked myself, where else have I seen ultra clean white, brushed steel, rounded corners…..oh yeh, the hospital.  The last thing we want is a world where our homes look like hospitals.  As a note, I have a brushed steel mini-pc case, so I am part of the problem.

My grandmother, who died just a little over a month ago, loved color.  In fact, she said that white flowers were “weeds”, and when she was picking out her flowers for her funeral she picked out the white ones.  Her love for life and energy came out in the colors she loved.  And so it makes me wonder, is this design style just a broader reflection of the lack of life, energy, and creativity in this country?  I personally think it is just another in a long line of signs including the lack of reading outside of business and gossip books and the amazing decrease in science and engineering graduates while we are getting more lawyers, doctors, and managers.

I debated on whether to write about some political thoughts I have been having, but I am going to do it since so many things have been bothering me lately. So, I am going to turn on full rant mode to get it out of my system.  Hang on to your seats!

I have now received approximately 1 billion emails telling me about Mitt Romney and how great he is and how someone knows someone who personally knows him etc etc and that I should fork over money for him. Now I understand this is how all these runs go, but I have some big worries about the blind enthusiasm. First, as everyone knows now, Mitt is LDS (Mormon). A recent poll showed that over 30 percent of Americans would have trouble voting for a Mormon. The supporters around Mitt are up in arms over this, but I see a lot of hypocrisy in the whole thing. How many are backing him just BECAUSE he is Mormon? There is no difference in blindly backing him then them refusing to vote for him, yet so few see this. What everyone needs to do is throw out the fact that he is Mormon and then decide whether he has merit. Don’t just make a decision on a few bullet points you saw on candidate fact sheets. I personally have not made a decision. I honestly have a lot of worries about him, and many things I like. Just because he did well with the Olympics doesn’t automatically make him fit to be a President. While he did serve as Governor of Massachusetts, he left with a very low approval rating, and I don’t know if a lot of his supporters actually know why that was. Anyway, this leads me into a second point.

What is up with the Democratic party’s infatuation with Hollywood? There is this spat with Hillary and Obama and worrying about the backing of a producer. Why do they care! When I look for advice I usually go to prayer, my wife, parents, teachers, friends, enemies, cows, bricks, amoeba, Hollywood. In that order. So whoever Hollywood backs I usually choose the opposite. A headline on CNN today said “Could Oscar ignite drive for Gore ‘08?” Wow, just wow. So now a good measure of what makes a good President is whether you can make a good documentary film. In my mind it is a problem with inference in today’s society. A+B = C, so C must equal F. What!? Like I said with Mitt, being a Harvard grad or a venture capitalist doesn’t make you a good President. Making a documentary on global warming certainly has nothing to do with being a president. Sure you gain skills you can take with you, but you also could have no skills suited for it. I mean that is like me looking at a good Excel spreadsheet creator and saying, dang, you could be a great PHP developer. I mean c’mon, they both are on a computer, they are the same!

Lastly, I have to comment quickly on the mobs that follow candidates. When you see the “groupies” that follow them it really makes you wonder why their loyalty is so strong. I think that the desire for people is very large to be a part of something larger than themselves, something they can fight for, regardless if they deep down believe in it. I think that drive overcomes most of them until the actual platform and candidate is really just secondary. They could be supporting an amoeba (sorry, secret word of the day).

P.S. - Got my tire slashed today. In three years here we have had a battery stolen out of our car (yes the battery!), our cds (neighbors got entire sound system stolen same night), my wifes purse stolen in front of her on her tray at the mall (thanks to all the citizens who let the guy run out untouched through the entire mall with a pregnant lady yelling behind him), and now my tire slashed. Apparently someone forgot to tell all the people we have lived by that our area has a low crime rate….

I caught this following set of links on CNN today and thought I would share (they took it down after an hour or so).

Apparently the only thing “worst” than the Iraq policy is CNN.com’s editing.   This one is pretty good, but nothing can rival my favorite from last year when a story was only up for an hour with a headline, “Rice tries to smooth relations with Turkey”.

Now I know that we all make mistakes, but I have never seen a website that relies on the written word have so many headline blunders as CNN.com.  In reality, these news sites are built on editing.  I will forgive a social networking site who accidentally publishes funky headlines, but a multimillion dollar news site? I read CNN a lot more than FoxNews.com because of the web design and layout, but FoxNews hires much better editors.  Maybe CNN should take a page from their competitor.

Pardon the corny humor, but traffic stinks in more ways than one on Fridays.  Website traffic takes a precipitous drop at 1 - 2 pm as people leave work (what does that say about job productivity?), and then on the commute I have to deal with 20 gadjillion college students going out on dates on the road.  Curse you Friday, bring on Monday.

I haven’t talked about food or Doritos specifically in awhile, so I was sitting here eating a new flavor of Doritos and decided now is as good a time as any.  The new flavor is Spicy Sweet Chili.  Now, unless they roll Doritos in dirt I will probably eat them, so it is hard for me to give an unbiased review of the flavor.  However, I am not that big of a fan of sweet and savory.  These chips are just a little too sweet for me, and the flavoring is too artificial and too strong.  They need to reduce the amount of “doritos flavor dust” by about half.  It might take me a bit to get through this specific bag, but I need to.  There is another new flavor waiting for me on the fridge.

As for the second part, Doritos had a contest for users to make commercials for them and five finalists were put up for a vote on their website.  Luckily the easy target using sexual innuendo wasn’t the winner though it seemed to be winning on the website at first.  I guess I can have faith in our society’s good taste for a little longer….maybe.  My personal favorite is one called “Mouse Trap”.  Go here to view the five finalists.  They are all amateur videos, but are extremely well done.

So,  a friend and someone who worked for a short time with me at FundingUniverse, Brett Stubbs, just recently launched a new site called ConvinceMe.net where you can debate on any topic under the sun.  There are open debates, competitive debates, and “king of the hill” battles where you argue who is the “best” or “worst”.  He was featured on TechCrunch.com, and although there have been a few bumps along the way, it has brought in a ton of new users.  It is a fun way to vent and get a good laugh at some of the responses.  I think it has staying power.