Archive for February, 2009

Jose Nazario, manager of security research at Arbor Networks. If Nazario were manager of marketing research, he might have given his mug another quarter turn to show off the Arbor Networks name and logo.

On Thursday morning, when The Chronicle used a front-door exploit on Arbor Networks’ State Street offices (i.e., went to visit the company), Jose Nazario made his computer screen display a steady vertical scroll of numerical strings separated with periods, one string per line, each in formats like 99.999.999.999.

The strings were recognizable as IP addresses (the numerical identification of a machine connected to the internet), but they were flying past fast enough that it wasn’t possible to visually track an individual number from the bottom of the screen to the top. That’s not surprising at  6.1 million lines per hour.

But who,  exactly, is Jose Nazario, and what’s he doing with screen-upon-screen full of IP addresses?

Is this actually the work of some mysterious cabal? Why yes, it actually is – even if “mysterious” overstates the case a little, given that the work, underway a couple of months prior, was announced on Feb. 12. [Full Story]

The Freep reports that some people are turning to art in these tough economic times. The article quotes Ann Arbor resident Kimberly Kachadoorian, who took a Raku pottery class at the Ann Arbor Art Center after losing her contract job at Ford. She has since found another job, and now volunteers at the center: “When I’m stressed out, I do more art. It’s my escape. For that little moment of time, the worries aren’t there.” [Source]

Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners (Feb. 18, 2009): Commissioners got another cold blast of economic reality at their most recent board meeting, as county staff laid out revenue projections for 2010-11 and asked for feedback about how cautious they should be in planning for the future. Pretty darn cautious was the general consensus among commissioners, saying it would be easier to deal with the budget if their projections proved too pessimistic than if they planned for higher revenue that never materialized.

County administrator Bob Guenzel and his staff also presented various scenarios for increasing revenues, as points of discussion, not recommendations. Those included a couple of options to raise or reapportion taxes that would require voter approval and appeared to have little traction among commissioners at this point. [Full Story]

Maria of the Gastronomical Three writes a review of the recent fundraiser Diner for a Day, held at the Ann Arbor home of Jeff McCabe and Lisa Gottlieb to raise money for filmmaker/activist Chris Bedford: “The food was great – well prepared, hot, efficiently served. And there was granola, milk, bacon and eggs to take home if you wished, as well as some very stylish t-shirts and dish towels to commemorate the event. But even greater was the good fellowship and the sense of being connected to my community and the way in which the room buzzed around the shared love of food and place (at least, I think that was it, not the coffee. Ok, the coffee probably helped).” … [Full Story]

A Washington Post article looks at the possible consequences on teens who text, quoting David E. Meyer, a UM psychology professor, about the impact of texting while doing other things: “You’re not truly time-sharing. You’re flitting back and forth, and the flitting itself is taking processing capacity.” [Source]

Short item from the My Life in Hipsitucky blog: “Last week I was able to jog without winter wear. Today I am worried about the possibility of having to shovel out the parking lot at work. The forecast today (as per Michigan Radio) calls for 3 to 6 inches of accumulation and something called ‘freezing fog!’ Sounds like a D&D spell.” [Source]

The Detroit News profiles Ron Weiser, an Ann Arbor businessman, founder of McKinley Associates and major fundraiser for George W. Bush who’s now taking the helm of the state’s Republican Party. Says Weiser: ”If you have a business and it’s losing money, it doesn’t matter how well it’s run: You have to change it or it’s gone. And in the Republican Party, our profit is winning. We haven’t been winning, so we have to make changes in the way we do things.” [Source]

Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board meeting (Feb. 18, 2009 ): At its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, the AATA board postponed a vote on its vision statement until its March meeting, when the board as a whole will thrash through the statement. A bit of news relevant to the board’s vision of the future was the announcement that the number of candidates for the executive directorship has been winnowed down to five. That position has been open since Greg Cook’s resignation in early 2007. Speaking briefly to the board at the meeting on the topic of its search for an executive director and the issue of countywide service was the mayor of Ypsilanti, Paul Schreiber. [Full Story]

A DTE worker takes a chainsaw to one of the utility poles in the alley behind Downtown Home & Garden. Despite some concerns about the cars below, no dramatic pole-dropping incident occurred.

When The Chronicle heard the rare buzz of a chainsaw in downtown Ann Arbor late Friday morning, we followed that sound to its source: A DTE Energy crew chopping off the tops of three wooden utility poles in the alley behind Downtown Home & Garden.

It took three trucks to do the work, navigating a narrow alley, phone and cable lines, and cars parked near the poles. One truck had a hydraulic arm with a hook dangling down to affix to the pole. A second truck had a cherry-picker that hoisted one of the workers aloft with his chainsaw. [Full Story]

A post on the Doodlers Anonymous blog promotes a doodling contest in Ann Arbor – “Doodle Me This: The Art of Diversion” – held at the Common Cup Coffee Shop. The deadline for applying is Feb.28: “Doodle Me This! is a unique opportunity to display and appreciate art that artists never thought would be shown. It’s sincere and random. It’s silly and poignant. Besides, you know you’ve been dying to show everyone that picture of the dinosaur firing rockets out of it’s eyes.” [Source]

In a report on the Feb. 19 New Enterprise Forum awards, we misspelled Peter Dresslar’s name. We note the error here, and have corrected it in the original article.

The Dallas Morning News, in an article about cellphones being used as classroom computers, quotes UM professor Elliot Soloway, who developed software for cellphones that’s being used in some schools. Says Soloway: “Laptops are oh so ’90s – they’re your parents’ generation. While every kid does need a computer, the computer that will happen on will be cellphones. The cellphone is now as important as a pair of shoes or a coat.” [Source]

Ted Dacko, CEO of HealthMedia, was named the 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year at the New Enterprise Forum's annual awards event Thursday night.

HealthMedia, says Ted Dacko, is “a company that shouldn’t be here.”

Just a few years ago, the Ann Arbor firm was left for dead. They had 85 employees, a burn rate of $685,000 a month, and very little revenue. Venture capital funding had dried up. Dacko was working there as vice president of sales and marketing when the previous CEO quit – two weeks before the firm would literally run out of money.

The board asked Dacko if he wanted the job. If he took it, he had two choices: Make a go of it, or lock the doors.

If you know the rest of the story, you know why Dacko was honored Thursday night with the New Enterprise Forum‘s Entrepreneur of the Year award. [Full Story]

USA Today’s HealthDay column looks at a UM study on the impact of living near fast-food restaurants. Says Lewis B. Morgenstern, the study’s author and a professor of neurology at UM’s School of Public Health: ”The only thing we are certain about is, if you live in a neighborhood with a high fast-food restaurant concentration, you are at increased risk (for strokes).” [Source]

A page from Mary Wessel Walker's handmade recipe book.

The Masonic Temple on West Liberty seems an unlikely place to find a food entrepreneur, but when The Chronicle arrived there one Tuesday morning earlier this month, Mary Wessel Walker was already aproned and baking at the commercial kitchen there.

“I’m experimenting a lot with recipes I haven’t tried in large quantities,” she says, opening a jar of honey that had crystallized from the cold. Those large quantities are for her customers –  eight families who’ve signed up to buy a weekly amount of baked goods from CFK Bakery, Wessel Walker’s newest venture. [Full Story]

Despite the talk at city council of digging a hole and putting cars into it, what's meant by an underground parking garage is somewhat different from this photo illustration.

Ann Arbor City Council (Feb 17, 2009): City council’s Tuesday meeting began and ended in the woods: Dicken Woods (celebrating its fifth anniversary) and Bird Hills Park (off-leash dog problems).

In between, the deliberations on the Fifth Avenue underground parking structure sometimes ran off into the weeds, with some councilmembers seemingly more interested in rhetorical flourish than in just laying out an unadorned case for or against the decision they eventually made, with only Mike Anglin dissenting: to approve the site plan and financing (up to $55 million in bonds) for an underground parking garage at the “library lot.” The facility will, on the slightly reduced scale approved on Tuesday, provide around 670 additional parking spaces in downtown Ann Arbor.

The agenda item drew a mix of downtown merchants to the meeting, who were in favor of building the garage. Among them was Tim Seaver, co-owner with his wife of Tios Mexican Cafe on Huron Street, who offered a single wistful sentence of support: “I just want to let you know: I firmly support underground parking.” He had spoken earlier during public comment time against the use of the Huron Street property, purchased last year by the city of Ann Arbor, in order to create 16 (above ground) parking spaces. [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor Police Department has released its crime stats for the week of Feb. 8-14 (PDF file). Incidents include eight home invasions, four assault & batteries and three auto thefts, among others. [Source]

One of 19 Art Deco reliefs on the Ann Arbor News building. The figure is using an ergonomically-challenged switchboard phone system.

Since The Chronicle launched last fall, we’ve been covering the monthly meetings of the Ann Arbor Public Art Commission. At that first meeting we attended in October, the group discussed a project to take inventory of all the public art in the city – the idea is to create a database that can eventually be accessed by the public, giving details of where each piece of art is located, who the artist is, and any other relevant information.

Separately, we were later contacted by a Chronicle reader who said she’d like to see a series about public art in the city – essentially, the same kind of thing that AAPAC is compiling. So until their project is online, The Chronicle will be taking up our reader’s request in an occasional look at this city’s public art. In our definition, we’ll look at art on public and private buildings, as long as it’s visible to the public. We’re starting with something that’s connected to the field of journalism: the Art Deco reliefs on the Ann Arbor News building. [Full Story]

The New Gay posts an interview with Michelle Chamuel of the Ann Arbor band My Dear Disco. The band is heading out on tour – here’s how Chamuel says they find fuel for their vegetable oil-fueled bus: “Sometimes Christian (Carpenter, the group’s bassist) will call ahead to restaurants or if we have friends in town we will ask them if they know restaurants that fry things. Other times we’ll be driving around and see a place that has a grease trap in the back, look inside to see if it’s useable and then ask the company if we can take it.” [Source]

The Freep brings hope back to Wolverine fans with a list of five potential recruits at the quarterback position that the coaching staff is targeting for the 2010 football team. With Steven Threet’s recent decision to transfer, more talent at quarterback will need to be added to the roster, already augmented since last season with freshmen Tate Forcier and Denard Robinson.  [Source]

Sindh Today reports the possible discovery of liquid water on Mars, splashed onto the leg of  NASA’s Phoenix Lander, with the supporting theoretical arguments  made by Nilton Renno of the University of Michigan, who is a member of the Phoenix team.  Despite the impossibly low temperatures that are too cold for the pure form of water to exist as a liquid, it is thought that the water has high enough levels of salt for it to stay liquid at much lower temperatures.  [Source]