The mermaldad Free Agency Plan

It is once again the time of year when the free agents in basketball go looking for the deal that will make them the most insane amount of money "because they are worth it". It's an exercise to remind the fans that professional sports are not about loyalty, community, teamwork, or any other quaint concept so much as they are about money. Basketball is certainly not unique in this regard.

If I were a big-time sought after free agent, here's what I'd do: I'd have my agent and lawyers write up a contract that was fair, the kind of contract that I would have ended up with after all the negotiations in a normal free agency. Then I'd announce that this was the contract that I would sign with any team that wants me. Any team that agreed to these terms would join a pool.

I'd pick a national charity and announce that the community that raised the largest amount for that charity would get the contract. It would be a way to make at least some of the obscene amounts of money that are spent on sports go to something really worthwhile, and perhaps remind people that there are things that are more important than money...even in the world of sports.

Good Experience - Epson

Today I had a very pleasant experience with a problem I was having. A little over a year ago I bought an Epson Artisan 800 printer. This is an all-in-one printer with a flatbed scanner, a document feeder, a six color printer, fax, and wireless capability as well as a CD printing tray. I've been very pleased with this printer as it fits well with the way we use a printer. It lives in a closet in the center of the house, and all of the computers can print to it. It is a little noisy, but since it is in a closet, this doesn't matter much. About the only thing I have been disappointed with this printer is that you can only fax from scanned documents, i.e. you cannot send it documents to fax directly from the computer.

A few weeks ago the printer jammed on a sheet of paper. This has not been a big problem with this printer, but when it happened, it did a really good job. The paper got all crumpled up inside the unit. After removing it, and cycling power, the device gave me a "An error has occurred. Turn off the power, wait a few seconds and turn on the power. For details, see your documentation." I tried resetting power a few times, but the error persists. So I called Epson. They explained that this error indicates that something has failed mechanically in the printer. They then told me that they would send a replacement printer. I was impressed, since warranties on printers usually last 90 days or so.

Listening to the news from Haiti this morning, I learned that search and rescue efforts are being hampered by a lack of bulldozers and other equipment for clearing rubble and extract trapped people. The damaged airport there is overwhelmed with planes trying to bring in supplies and people to help so the likelihood of airlifting a bunch of bulldozers in time is low.

It occurred to me that a compact device to serve as a surrogate bulldozer would be really useful. Something a little bigger than the famous "jaws of life", with lots of flexibility for different situations, and lots of provisions for working in the field where tools, parts, and machining equipment are scarce. Ideally such a device would fit on a palette for easier loading onto a cargo plane, and could be loaded onto a vehicle as small as a pickup truck for deployment.

The open source model has always been an effective way to develop software, and increasingly hardware. There are tons of hardware tinkerers who do things like build working R2D2 droids, or Stirling engines, who might welcome the opportunity to build something really important.