Robert Cortines, the superintendent of the LAUSD schools received a bomb threat and then closed all schools today. 640,000 kids were sent home along with approximately 100,000 teachers and administrators. The threat was “electronic”.. I am guessing emailed from the Tor network or something like that.
Was Robert Cortines decision the correct one?
Let’s look at the facts:
Humans are nothing without our family and friends to help us put our lives in context. Imagine a world with no one else on the planet. What would you do during the day? Where would you sleep? Why would you care? It’s like a little kid left alone for the first time at home – it would cause an existential crisis.… read more “Humans: Social, Tribal Creatures”
We had our Coalition Christmas party last night at EnjoEat in Culver City. It was great spending time with everyone!
I saw this idea from one of my friends and decided to do it myself!
2015 has been a great year for me personally! I asked Laurel to marry me, and fortunately she said yes! I visited Bangkok in April and Europe in July. My grandparents came and visited me for a couple of weekends in September.… read more “Joel Gross 2015 Annual Report”
Interesting information I came across today. For a 170 pound athlete, a fat gain of 2% (or 3.4 lbs) results in a vertical jump height loss of 2″ and a 40 yard dash time increase of .26 seconds.
That is pretty crazy to me. Currently I weigh about 198 pounds and am 6’6”. I am not fat but definitely not skinny either.… read more “Body Weight vs Speed”
I had an interesting meeting with a client this morning. The clients business is a very big one, so the people we work with there are not connected in any way to the founder / owner.
It is fascinating to compare the difference between business owners and business managers. Owners understand the trade offs between branding and revenue generation.… read more “Owners Vs Managers”
I have been reading the Harry Potter series in my free time the last few weeks and really am enjoying it. I saw the movies a couple of years ago, and they were excellent too.
I love working on the weekends since I have zero distractions from emails or people who need things. I can focus 100% on building the web applications Coalition needs. Building these applications is kind of like working on a puzzle or playing chess… interesting problems to solve usually!
Most people can’t wait for the weekend. There are endless jokes and cultural memes about Thank God It’s Friday and resenting when Monday comes back around.
In my experience though, after a long weekend or vacation I usually find myself less happy than when I am working regularly and getting things done. The sense of purpose and accomplishment that I get from work I generally don’t get from play.… read more “Work is Vital to Life Satisfaction”
I have not done much MySQL optimization before, but I have been diving into it deeper the last couple of days. Previously, I have read “High Performance MySQL” by OReilly, but I had not had a chance to put it into practice. Now I am working on my live management feedback web application to improve query performance and schema optimization.… read more “MySQL Optimization”