Which prompted me to write the following python code to figure out when the rest of these date palindromes occur within this millennium: (I know I could have used a list comprehension with filtering, but this wraps better…)

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
day = timedelta(hours=24)
def calc(start=None):
    date = datetime(2000, 1, 1)
    for i in range(0,365*1000):
        date = date + day
        str = date.strftime("%m%d%Y")
        if str == str[::-1]:
            print "%s %s" % (str, date.strftime("%m/%d/%Y"))

Which results in the following:
10022001 10/02/2001
01022010 01/02/2010
11022011 11/02/2011
02022020 02/02/2020
12022021 12/02/2021
03022030 03/02/2030
04022040 04/02/2040
05022050 05/02/2050
06022060 06/02/2060
07022070 07/02/2070
08022080 08/02/2080
09022090 09/02/2090
10122101 10/12/2101
01122110 01/12/2110
11122111 11/12/2111
02122120 02/12/2120
12122121 12/12/2121
03122130 03/12/2130
04122140 04/12/2140
05122150 05/12/2150
06122160 06/12/2160
07122170 07/12/2170
08122180 08/12/2180
09122190 09/12/2190
10222201 10/22/2201
01222210 01/22/2210
11222211 11/22/2211
02222220 02/22/2220
12222221 12/22/2221
03222230 03/22/2230
04222240 04/22/2240
05222250 05/22/2250
06222260 06/22/2260
07222270 07/22/2270
08222280 08/22/2280
09222290 09/22/2290

If you tweak the code to use the time format (”%m%d%y”) you get the 2 digit year palindromes which are really only interesting over a 100 year span since they repeat:

101101 10/11/01
102201 10/22/01
011110 01/11/10
012210 01/22/10
111111 11/11/11
112211 11/22/11
021120 02/11/20
022220 02/22/20
121121 12/11/21
122221 12/22/21
031130 03/11/30
032230 03/22/30
041140 04/11/40
042240 04/22/40
051150 05/11/50
052250 05/22/50
061160 06/11/60
062260 06/22/60
071170 07/11/70
072270 07/22/70
081180 08/11/80
082280 08/22/80
091190 09/11/90
092290 09/22/90

So get ready now for the 2 more this month, your next chance to party is in November of 2011.

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So I’ve reached a crossroads of sorts in my research. I’ve learned a fair amount through passive research. And now I’ve come to the conclusion that to learn more I really need to become active in the field and run my own experiments.

I think that means working on this blog. Setting up a couple more highly focused blogs. And generally rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty. I hope to record my success and failures here as well.

So to set the baseline. This blog is currently at a Google toolbar page rank of 3. And sense I haven’t been writing much in the last few months, the traffic is next to nothing. I’m currently sitting at 4 feed subscribers.  I have upgraded to the latest WordPress, updated the theme, and installed a number of plugins. (More on the upgrades in another post.)

So on with the fun. Check back often to see my progress.

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Unfortunately the two new employees that I had starting today at Mozy, pulled me away from a good chance to “get pumped” for more information on Berkeley Data System, Mozy.com, and Mozy Pro.com. I did however get a� funny IM from Phil Burns during the breakfast saying something to the effect: “We’ve been talking about you and Mozy for like 20 minutes.” It’s good to know that our products are finding so much interest� with such talented� technology professionals.

For those of you that don’t know about Mozy, it’s simply the best online remote backup solution on the market. It’s fast, easy, and very affordable. MozyPro.com is the business version of Mozy that offers all of the enterprise features without the pain and expense typically found with the more established legacy solutions.

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FEMA already have 2 of these $500,000 units and the military is looking at sending them to Iraq. I’d love a personal/family size unit if they were priced in the $200-$400 range.

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Here’s a link to the podcast: http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1624.html

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With Walmart’s decision to offer flu shots and $4 prescription drugs (based on their amazing buying power), it’s only time before they enter the in-store clinic market. Already market tests like this one in Utah are showing that consumers want the same fast, efficient, customer friendly service in health care as they are use to getting at the grocery store. My advice to traditional Doctor’s offices: evolve now while you still have a chance to keep your customers. 

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But when it comes right down to it, I’m spending a lot of time with my family and I’m catching up on a ton of projects that I’ve been putting off for the last several years as I’ve been building startups.

When will this end? That’s the true experiment from which I’m starting to see results. My creative juices are starting to flow strong again. I’m feeling recharged and full of energy. It’s only a matter of time before I jump back into the fray. But until then, I can’t recommend semi-retirement enough. It sure would be a bummer to work 40 years only to find out that I don’t like retirement. It’s a good thing I took some time to figure that out.

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Bruce Fryer with a new startup Digisense brought up the Amazon S3 web service is being used by JungleDisk.com to provide super low cost online backup.

An interesting part of the discussion turned toward how to improve the agility of an organization. Scott Lemon brought up the idea that bi-annual layouts encourages healthly innovation. Phil mentioned that sometimes you need to cut of the head of the organization. And the way to do that is to create a separate organization and have it compete with the old one. The history of HP and Target are good examples of this.

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Spring break at Wal-Mart

Thanks to Kirk Weisler for the link.

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InfoTech Article: Water Fall Process

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InfoTech: Logical Technology

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The spirit of this business shift is, what I believe, a critical step for businesses to succeed. This spirit is captured in this quote from the Fast Company article:

“Fundamentally, customers don’t want choice. They just want exactly what they want. Your job is to help them figure out what it is they want, because often they don’t know or can’t articulate it.”
 - B. Joseph Pine, the author of Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition (Harvard Business School Press, 1993)

Our challenge as technologists and business owners is to customize / personalize our product offerings in such a way that our customer can easily identify them as something they want. No amount of marketing fluff can overcome bad product management.

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http://www.space.com/news/060309_ark_update.html

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So I know you’re dying to ask, why would someone pay for these answers. It’s really quite simple. Software is great at solving some problems, but it can’t compare to the human mind when it comes to problems such as “likes and dislikes” or image or voice processing. So the answer is simple, provide a mechanism to ask 10,000+ people a simple question and you have solve some pretty hard problems in massively parallel manner.

Thanks to Scott Lemon for the heads up.

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InfoTech: Blogging

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