Multiple Explosions and Fire at Welding Supply Company near Downtown Dallas

Update (10:33 am): The company is Southwest Industrial Gases, Inc. There were multiple explosions from propane tanks. The local news has some impressive video of the explosions. From what is being reported, emergency crews have quarantined the area and are just letting the fire burn itself out because it's too hot to get close.

Update (12:00 pm): I've received several calls and instant messages from people theorizing this is some sort of test for terrorists. It's possible. With all of the more recent news of terrorist probing security areas. The first thing is to determine if today's explosions were deliberate, but also keep in mind the world is full of people who destroy property for various reasons like insurance fraud. I wouldn't jump to conclusions until the facts are published or there are more incidents.

Update (4:00 pm): So far the explanation for the explosions is blamed on a faulty connection between gas cannisters.

The fire was caused by a malfunction in a device called a "pigtail" that created so much pressure in an acetylene cannister that it auto-ignited, Lavender said. Then that cannister heated up those next to it. He said he didn’t know how many cannisters were ignited.

“It’s almost like a sprinkler system," Lavender said. "One pigtail goes into the top of one acetylene tank and it goes into the next and just fills them up in a relay type of situation. But once you have one failure, then everything’s at risk.

"That’s what started the explosions. One right after the other.”

In 2009, Clarian will begin charging workers up to $30 every two weeks for insurance if they let health risks such as smoking or high cholesterol go unchecked.

Clarian is not the only employer to use money as a motivator for employees to shape up.

More employers are zeroing in on obesity and smoking as the primary culprits for the ever-rising cost of health care. And that means companies increasingly are tracking not only their employees' productivity but also personal information such as their waistlines, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Some companies already have been monitoring employee health habits and sometimes charging premiums accordingly. But some programs, such as Clarian's, are moving beyond the honor system to mandatory health questionnaires and screenings.

This is the other side of government intervention in the medical industry. Companies exist to make a profit, and if the government won't let them, they will have to pass bill to the patients. There is so much regulation in medicine and insurance that insurance companies are now going to become the health police. I predict that within 10 years, your grocery receipts will be examined along with proof that you work out regularly. Welcome to the future.

Things I don't miss about Chicago winters:

• Shoveling my driveway
• Head-numbing cold squeezing my temples like a vice-grip
• Shoveling my driveway
• Having to make sure there is at least half a tank in my car at all times to prevent ice in the gas tank
• Shoveling my driveway
• The dirty, salty snow that tracks everywhere and stains everything
• Getting stuck behind a snow plow on the Eisenhower
• Did I mention shoveling my driveway?

Yes, this is a PostNuke site. I like PostNuke for the most part. Now there is a part of me that wanted to convert to a real blogging application like WordPress. However, my site is optimized for search engine indexing and most of my visitors get here via Google. I can't find a clean way to convert to WordPress without hosing my Google placement and I've also been reading that PostNuke-to-WordPress conversion is not simple.

I have customized a lot of code on my site to make it behave like I want. As a result, moving to the latest version of PostNuke may not be that easy for me, but that's the path I've chosen. I've started working on the new, improved site, but it's the lowest of my life priorities. When it launches, you'll know.

Gartner analyst Linda Cohen started off her presentation at Symposium ITxpo with a command for the audience of 6,000 attendees: "You have to stop outsourcing now." She said that the chaos created by compulsive outsourcing is making it harder to produce results. Her point is that too many companies have taken outsourcing to an extreme, heading offshore because it's faddish, juggling multiple contracts with incompetence and lacking sufficient governance discipline.

The linked article above also includes a list of eight myths related to outsourcing. I'm not going to get in to how the article reads like a press release for the book itself, ZD News will have to live with itself for that. However, back when so-called "journalists" were publishing articles about the horrible human tragedy known as outsourcing, I thought there were more compelling reasons not to outsource (see Outsourcing Heart Strings).

I haven't read Cohen's book and I probably will. The high-level points made in the quote above are valid. However, the point is not about not outsourcing nor is it about "multisourcing". To make those decisions, business management must first decide on a solid business model and then determine how to make that model run like a finely-tuned instrument; this is not a new concept.

I'm just wondering if most company decision-makers need to be spoon-fed a diet of buzzwords and repackaged fundamentals, or if these types of books are created to make the old seem new to keep the business book market active. Granted, I'm sure there is a lot of compelling new research from Gartner included. I will reserve judgement until I read it. But if I saw that there were valid business reasons for not outsourcing more than a year ago, then why is the business press only covering it now? Maybe because instead of researching back then, journalists just wanted crocodile tears. Now that Cohen has done the leg work for the media, the real story can be told.

Naturally, that kind of answer is considered poor form socially. It's like truthfully answering when asked "how are you today?" You are not supposed to honestly answer that question unless you are over 70 years old.

I think I'm going to stop asking people how they are. I want break out of this horrible social prison we have created where people ask questions when they don't want the truthful answers. Instead, I'm going to ask questions that have more real-world meaning. When somebody starts to bitch about being busy, I'm going to ask "Do you mean you were gettin' busy?" followed by "Cuz if you weren't, then I really don't want to hear." That will stop the gripe-fest but will leave open the opportunity to live vicariously through their experiences.

"How does this look?" and all of its variations like "Does this make my butt look big?" and "Does this make me look fat?" etc. are examples of questions never meant to be asked, but should especially be avoided at all costs. I also think that "What are you doing?" is a loaded question, especially when asked of someone who is home alone on the phone. When you ask somebody that on the phone, do you really want to know what that person is doing? I thought not.

I'm particularly fascinated with the process by which movies are made. The line producer is the movie's project manager. The line producer knows everything about the mechanics of day-to-day production. The fifth episode aired last night and the line producer, Ben Ormand, has emerged as the hero of the story. There was a scene last night where Ormand, after a day of shooting, calculated how much money was wasted that day. It was $5,000 wasted on actors who were not used because of a number of factors.

I think project management in other industries can learn a lot from Hollywood. For example, being that I'm in software development, I think I could learn a lot from Ben Ormand on managing complex projects. I'm a very strategically minded person. I can look at large development projects and know that, for example, in six months, I can produce a complete, custom software solution for a large company. However, the day-to-day stuff is not planned out in advance. There are many reasons for this. One of the reasons is there is no formula for how many lines of code should be produced within a certain amount of time. I noticed on Project Greenlight that every day was mapped out by the line producer and crew prior to shooting. Obviously, film costs money, people are paid by time, and none of this is cheap.

Is it possible to apply the filmmaking process to software development? I don't know. My philosophy has always been that each industry seems to remain isolated in its own bubble. People who move from one industry to the other always have something valuable to share.

I will keep this in mind as I start the project plan for my next project. Already I'm thinking I can have more tangible milestones and I can break development costs down to a smaller level to tell if I'm on track. I'd love to be able to know if money is getting wasted sooner and stop the financial bleeding like the line producer did on Project Greenlight. Most of the work I do is based on the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It's an old model and I'm thinking it's too old.

Watch Project Greenlight, it's good television and it really shows how the business of filmmaking is not unlike other projects.

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine.

Many studies in the past have shown where human sexuality is not much different across cultural boundaries and is even similar to primates. For instance, the other day I couldn't resist a trip into the newsstand where I buy my favorite magazine, Buttcracked. The price has gone up to nearly three banannas, but I'm too embarrassed to have it delivered to my home address. I'm thinking also of upgrading DirecTV to include BooTV just to catch my favorite show "Junk in the Trunk". It only increases my subscription to 45 Capri Sun pouches a month, but hey, it's good TV.

I'm waiting for the comparisons between human behavior and apes as a result of this study. The media loves to make humans inferior and primitive, like the animals of the world know better how to live than we do. Well, the real news today is not that we are like animals in our behavior, but it is that through scientific research, we have taught a whole mess of monkeys capitalism. They value their juice, but they will gladly give it up for some booty.

Hat tip: milamor

Without getting into a serious rant, the votes were what they were. No amount of polling, projections, analysis, or speculation changes reality. Too many people place too much faith in statistics and not enough in reality. I recommend reading How to Lie with Statistics by by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis to get a handle on how statistics are not always what they seem. The exit poll fiasco demonstrates there are too many people with nothing better to do than analyze the crap out of stuff like polls, making much out of nothing. They freaked when the polls were wrong. Polls are not perfect. I don't need to tell anybody intelligent that.

Thanks to user, milamor, for the guest post yesterday.

If you have them, take your kids with you. Explain how the process works and why we do it. Explain why YOU are doing it. Admit that yes, there are problems with our election process and in some ways, it seems rather absurd, but that is no reason to slack off and keep your vote to yourself. If people stop using a system because they have no faith in it, the system will never get fixed.

My sons have accompanied me to elections ever since they were born. They are finally old enough to talk with me about how I view the different sides, what comforts me and what concerns me, and who I prefer. They ask questions, and I give answers. They know the Election Day drill – where they will stand and wait for me, quietly, respectfully. They will ask if they can put my ballot in the scanner, and I will say no, it is my vote. Then they will ask who I voted for, and I will tell them it is none of their business. When we get in the car, they will ask again and receive the same answer. Bottom line – they know the decision of who receives my vote is between me and the nifty scanning machine. They know that the beauty of the American vote is that it is mine to give and that one day, they will be able to cast their own.

At the ages of seven and ten, my children see both mystery and power in the act of voting, and they are anxious to do what hundreds of thousands of Americans can do but don’t. They have heard on the news and at school that THIS is an important election year, but they have always known that EVERY election is important. They know that voting is a right and a privilege and a responsibility.

You know it, too. Go vote.

Thanks to Lee Chapman.

"They make a living out of what they really enjoy, as opposed to most people who have jobs they don't like," Honda said.

Honda, 36, a millionaire himself, leads a semiretired life in Nagano as a dad, writer and owner of three businesses. He declined to be photographed for privacy concerns.

Millionaires "like the people they work with. They spend less than what they earn," he said. "They have very good relationships with their partners, children, friends and acquaintances."

There is also a good chance that in the past, many millionaires experienced failure — including financial and marital — and learned from it, said Honda, who married for the first time at age 23 only to get a divorce three years later.

Honda noted that, contrary to one popular image of rich people being big spenders, many real-life millionaires lead frugal, nondescript lives.

"They might be someone who owns a chain of five or six dry-cleaning shops," he said, "or a man driving a van in a worn-out uniform. You would never think he was rich."

Don't forget that most rich people are just like you, except they work longer hours and learn from their mistakes.

Oops. I accidently left out the link to the article when I first posted it. I added it above.

I have lots of good Mervyn's stories.

Because I worked Receiving, I wore jeans and t-shirts. That meant I got to help Security when they needed somebody to help with shoplifters. This was always fun because shoplifters could take a good two or three hours to follow and apprehend, and that was always better than wheeling merchandise around in the back rooms. One day, I was helping Security when I passed kid playing with the escalator handrail. I told him to stop playing with it as I walked by and then I heard horrible scream. The kid got his hand caught in the handrail return. I was supposed to be following a female shoplifter who was carrying around about $100 worth of bras and underwear. Once the kid hurt himself, I stopped that and called Security. While we were trying to work with the kid and his hysterical mother, the shoplifter went into the bathroom and dumped the merchandise in a toilet and peed on it. People can be so lovely.

Another time, we chased a guy out of the store into the parking lot where we tackled him and held him down while he convulsed and claimed to be having a heart attack. We brought him back into the store and found that he had six pairs of jeans wrapped around his legs and torso underneath his clothes. Maybe the heart attack was real after all.

The people I worked with at Mervyn's were great. I met my first real girlfriend there. One of my good friends I worked with was a guy who ended up becoming a male stripper at La Bare in Dallas. My boss was a Filipino guy named Gabby who one of the funniest people I've ever met. In fact, the entire Receiving crew was awesome.

Mervyn's was a bright spot in my early career where I learned a lot. I think it's a great store and it's a shame that Target Corporation doesn't know what to do with it.

Knowing better than to get into a political debate over the differences between Bush and Clinton, I didn't respond. To me, the answer has nothing to do with who is President and everything to do with the volatile nature of the economy and culture. The 90s did more damage to American business culture than any other time (with the possible exception of the 60s). Unless you were a dot com millionaire who had enough foresight to cash in and get out, you are like me. You worked at a young startup for a high salary with free Cokes and Krispy Kreme and all of the high-bandwidth Internet you could use. Benefits were cheap and the promise of stock options kept you at the office for all-nighters.

How about a reality check? During the late 90s, money was spent on ideas and stories rather than solid business plans built on sound principles. Young CEOs destroyed good ideas because they ultimately didn't even know how to flip burgers at McDonalds. I personally worked for a company with two vice presidents who were twenty-two and twenty-four year old brothers. When it all came out, they had squandered much of the company's venture capital on country club memberships, Lexus company cars, and god knows what else.

There was nothing healthy about the waste of the 90s. The dot com bubble set up Americans to think that wealth came easy and everybody deserved a job where you could bring your dog to work. Now, we are experiencing the most positive economic growth in twenty years, and public opinion on the economy is skewed at best. Economic pundits analyze negative consumer confidence and make it political. It's not political; it's perception and expectation.

While unemployment in the U.S. is hovering around five percent, many other countries have higher rates. Historically, five percent is not bad. Some politicians would have you think we are in another Great Depression. The reality is that we are doing okay. No, it's not the 90s, but then again, unemployment didn't go down to zero, either. What did go out the window was realistic expectations.

My wife used to work for a major retail chain and the stories she would tell me about her teenaged coworkers was enough to make you sterilize yourself to prevent having a future teenager. She would tell me stories of single mothers aged eighteen still partying all night long. Or I'd hear about other kids who only showed up to work when convenient.

My grandfather complains of the same thing. He has taken new hires to a construction site and when the new hire saw the actual work involved, he would just leave without even a "thanks for wasting your time on me."

Russert in the interview said that his parents' philosophy was, "You're loved but not entitled." I nearly drove off the road. He nailed something that I was mistaking for laziness. I dared to call the newest generation of young adults the Laziest Generation when they are really the Expectant Generation. Many feel like they are entitled to free stuff. Entitled to easy jobs. Entitled to do anything they want without consequences. They expect everything for nothing.

If I were a sociologist, I would definitely study the attitudes of our newest generation. If I were to study those attitudes, I think I would find that there are many reasons to explain the attitude of expectation. A good friend of mine put it this way. He and I were watching the news reports from the last Woodstock where fires were set, the stage was destroyed, and young girls were raped. My friend looked at me and said, "It's all the Gap's fault." I laughed and then later I realized there was a lot more to what he said. The kids perpetrating those crimes were mostly rich, suburban kids with pent up anger. They've had it all given to them from day one. They have unfulfilled expectations and they are angry about it.

I would hate to think that the Greatest Generation was the peak of American culture. I would like the newest generation to get over what they don't have and focus on what they can earn.

I just moved into my new office in Dallas. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined having an office; I worked from my home for the past year and a half.

How to Know When You Need to Move Your Home Office

Last October, I was working in my home office when two of my company's partners were visiting from out of town. We were sitting in my office going over marketing strategies when I receive a phone call from a client who needed to drop by. Visualize my office: four PCs, a laptop, a Xerox Phaser printer, an HP LaserJet 4v laser printer, and a television; all in a 15" x 15" room. I was probably three degrees shy of reaching flash point.

As my client arrived, my six-year-old and my three-year-old decided to visit me in the office. Between my client who was so hot he need to stand outside the office door, my three-year-old reporting on her latest poop, and my two partners using my weight bench as a desk, I decided I need a place to actually get some work done.

So here I am. It's cooler and less noisy. I have a great view of the Dallas skyline and an unfortunate view of Interstate 35.

There is a downside to not working at home. First of all, I moved my Phaser to the office. No longer can I easily print things without worrying about inkjet refills. I also now exclusively rely on my laptop at home. Also, my MP3 collection is now in the office and not piped through my home stereo. Most importantly, I share a public bathroom with everyone on the seventh floor–I'm strongly opposed to public bathrooms. The one on the seventh floor isn't too bad if it's first thing in the morning. Although there is a an irritating air freshener that hasn't been refilled in a while and it beeps every thirty seconds. Can somebody explain to me the purpose of a digital alarm on a friggin' air freshener?

Overall, I'm more productive and I guess that's the point. It might even be because the digital air freshener keeps me from getting too comfortable in the bathroom.