Friday, September 27, 2013

Yankees give Mariano Rivera a tearful moment to cherish

NEW YORK – The best gift of Mariano Rivera's farewell tour is something he cannot touch. It is the joy of a surprise and the emotion of friendship and the indelibility of a memory and all of the saccharine stuff that belongs on a Hallmark card. Cynicism defines modern sports, and that is all well and good so long as it can find a counterbalance in the tears of a man overwhelmed by happiness fighting sadness.
Perfection was the seed of an idea in the head of New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi. It was an umpiring crew that germinated it. It was Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte ascending the dugout steps at Yankee Stadium. It was the smile when Rivera saw them. And it was what came after, a scene not done justice by a picture or a video or words or any of the things that will try to capture it. The man whose job entails composure above everything lost it. After 19 years of dead-eyed stoicism, Mariano Rivera let down his guard and took one minute to cry his eyes out.
[Related: Get Mariano Rivera gear]
What happened Thursday night, the final one in which Rivera will take the mound in the city that grew to revere him, means so much more than the paintings and cowboy boots and chairs made of broken bats with which other teams feted him as he hit ballparks across the country this summer. They were trying to pay homage to the greatest closer in history, his 652 saves and a fistful of World Series rings attesting as much, and to a great man, his humility and actions doing the same. Eventually, those gestures will collect dust somewhere. This one is forever pristine.
"It was amazing," Rivera said. "It was amazing."

Mariano Rivera cried as he left the mound for the final time at Yankee Stadium. (AP)

Baseball reserves these sorts of moments for a special few. This was Cal Ripken jogging around Camden Yards, Lou Gehrig telling Yankee Stadium and the world that he's the luckiest man on earth. Girardi wanted to do something. He caught Rivera as a player and relied on him as a manager. "He made my job fun," Girardi said. "He made my job easy. But probably more important than that, he made all our lives better."Talking in the past tense – acknowledging that Rivera, at 43, will leave baseball after a three-game series in Houston this weekend – caused Girardi to tear up, too. He talked about how he dreamt up the idea of Jeter and Pettitte, Rivera's teammates since 1995, going to the mound with one out remaining in the ninth inning and taking the ball from Rivera to allow him one final walk off the mound, one ovation from those who packed the stands that aren't packed much anymore. Girardi asked umpire Laz Diaz, who ran it by crew chief Mike Winters, who gave the go-ahead. And so it would be.
Rivera would jog in from the bullpen in the eighth inning, "Enter Sandman" straining one final time through the Yankee Stadium speakers, to fix the mess rookie Dellin Betances left him. He would do it because that's what he does. And then he would return for the ninth, induce a comebacker and a pop-up, and stare back in at catcher J.R. Murphy. There was one more out to get, and any closer who takes his mind off that isn't worth much of a damn, even if his team is down 4-0 and his appearance is more ceremonial than anything.
The ovation came almost instantaneously. Jeter and Pettitte emerged from the dugout, and Rivera was oblivious until they were about 75 feet from him. The dimple in his left cheek flared. In between the eighth and ninth innings, Rivera had retreated to the trainers' room to keep his arm warm, and the gravity of this night, of coming to terms with his final moment of consequence at Yankee Stadium nigh, bombarded him – "All the flashbacks," he said, "from the minor leagues to the big leagues all the way to this moment."
So this. This. His tear ducts could not withstand this. He handed the ball to Pettitte, lurched into him and wept. Pettitte let go of his hug, as if to give Rivera permission to move over to Jeter, only to see Rivera squeeze harder. Five seconds yielded to 10, which carried over to 20, which continued onto 30. And after half a minute of burying his head in Pettitte's shoulder, Rivera did the same with Jeter. This, he was saying. Thank you for this.

Early Twitter Employees to Miss Out on Millions

As Twitter prepares for its IPO, some of the company's earliest employees will become instant millionaires -- even billionaires.

But not all members of Twitter's founding team will cash in. Like many Silicon Valley startups in their infancy, Twitter's original team changed quickly. Ideas evolved, and some of the people who played an integral part in the early days soon found that they were no longer needed.

"Your position has been eliminated": Such was the case for Dom Sagolla, or @Dom, the ninth Twitter user and one of the original employees at the social network.

In 2006, Sagolla was head of quality at Odeo, the podcasting company that would eventually spin off into Twitter. As Odeo grew rapidly, Sagolla's role grew more important. But when Apple decided to launch podcasting in iTunes in 2005, Odeo knew it was in trouble. The company decided to reinvent itself.

The employees at Odeo decided to hold a hackathon, an event where everyone splits into teams and comes up with new ideas. Jack Dorsey created the idea for what would eventually become Twitter. He teamed up with Sagolla and German engineer Florian Weber to pitch it to the Odeo crew. The idea was a hit. Odeo co-founder Noah Glass joined in four days later.

But Sagolla's role in Twitter was short-lived. Twitter's other co-founders took him for a walk in a San Francisco park. They told Sagolla they were eliminating his position.

"It was clear that they were just cutting headcount," Sagolla told CNNMoney. Sagolla was one of four people who lost their jobs that day.

Though he potentially lost out on a fortune, Sagolla is good-natured about his dismissal.

"I call it my billion dollar MBA, because I got nothing," he joked. "I don't know what I would have deserved. If I had stuck around and contributed more maybe I could feel like I deserved more."

Since being let go, Sagolla worked at Adobe and set up an iPhone developer camp.

Can't get a visa: Weber, or @florian, stuck around for a bit longer. He played an integral role in Odeo's transition to Twitter, and, along with Dorsey, Weber built the first prototype of Twitter.

"I still remember the time Jack and I were sitting in the conference room at Twitter and discussing the concept of 'following,' whether it implies obedience," Weber told CNNMoney.

Kenyan girls basketball team mourns death of young teammate in mall shooting

Coffino comes out of Division I assistant jobs in the Northeast and the professional minor leagues from upstate New York to New Mexico to Texas. Basketball had bounced him from the States to Qatar to Kenya, where he had come this year to coach an African boys academy of raw, giant teenagers.
Soon after, Coffino was offered the chance to make some extra money coaching the girls at an international high school in Nairobi. Before these girls – before this tough, little point guard named Nuriana finally led them to a victory – never had the coach been moved to tears watching his players celebrate. They changed that for him, the way this journey to Africa has changed him forever.

needed a coach. The job paid $70 dollars a week.
"How could I turn that down?" Coffino said with a laugh. "I'm obviously spending more than I'm making here."
They gave Coffino a plane ticket, a house to live with his 13 players and a part-time cook six days a week. They practice and play games on outdoor courts, with bald basketballs and holes in the bottom of their shoes. Sometimes, the games get rained out. "Once, we couldn't play because they couldn't clear goats off the court," Coffino said.
Most of the players on his boys team fled the civil war in the south of Sudan, pushed through refugee camps and lived to tell him stories of lions picking off friends and family on late-night pilgrimages to freedom. He's taught his roster of long, wiry players the fundamentals of the game, and they've re-taught him the most rudimentary fundamentals of coaching.
"This reminds me of something John Wooden said: 'Never assume that your players understand what you're saying,' Coffino said. "They speak English, Swahili and sometimes things get lost in translation. I just assume they made a mistake, and I'll ask: 'Did you hear me? What did I just say?' I'd lose my cool. But this has taught me to be a lot more patient."
In the wake of the terrorist attacks targeted against non-Muslims, Coffino doesn't leave the house he shares with his players without an escort. "My guys here won't let me go anywhere – not even to the market – without three or four of them flanked at my side. Three 6-foot-10 Africans and a little Italian guy."

Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake

Bill Gates

Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake

Bill Gates has finally admitted the puzzling Control-Alt-Delete key combination used to access the login screen on personal computers was a mistake.

"It was a mistake," Gates, co-founder and former chairman of Microsoft, said during a recent appearance at Harvard University. "We could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button.

“You want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software — actually hard-coded in the hardware — that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect, instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like a login screen, and then it listens to your password and then it’s able to do that,” the billionaire software mogul explained.

The odd combination was originally designed to reboot a PC, but it became part of PC folklore as a login prompt in early versions of Windows. The IBM PC that Gates helped develop was introduced in the fall of 1981.

Gates' admission came after years of debate over the origin of Control-Alt-Delete.

"Finally," Taylor Soper wrote on GeekWire.com.

In a 2001 interview marking the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC, David Bradley, the engineer who came up with the Control-Alt-Delete sequence, blamed the oddity on Gates.

"I may have invented it," Bradley said, "but Bill made it famous."

That left Gates "looking rather awkward" for more than a decade, TheVerge.com said.

In 2011, Bradley said he still didn't know why Gates used the Control-Alt-Delete for the login screen.

“Why they used it for the login also, I don’t know,” Bradley told CNET. “I guess it made sense for them.”

While Windows 8 defaults to a new login screen, the Control-Alt-Delete requirement is still used in Windows XP and Windows 7, and it still works in Windows 8 as a shortcut for locking your PC or accessing the task manager.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

World Wide Technology

Company

World Wide Technology, Inc. is a systems integration company founded by David Steward and Jim Kavanaugh in July 1990. WWT provides technology and supply chain solutions with a focus on the commercial, government and telecom sectors. Wikipedia

Headquarters: St. Louis, MO, United States of America

Founder: David Steward

bout World Wide Technology

World Wide Technology (WWT) is an award-winning systems integrator and supply chain solutions provider that brings an innovative and proven approach to how organizations evaluate, architect and implement technology.

Founded in 1990, WWT has grown from a small product reseller into a global systems integrator with more than $5 billion in annual revenue and more than 2,200 employees throughout the world. WWT serves the technology needs of large public and private organizations around the globe and ranks 93rd on Forbes Largest Private Companies list. WWT attributes its ongoing success to strict adherence to core values, a clear vision and mission, and a customer-focused team of professionals. As evidence of our strong corporate philosophy, WWT is ranked #24 on FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list.
Our Advanced Technology Center (ATC) provides hands-on access to more than $25M in cutting-edge data center, virtualization, collaboration, networking and security products along with technical expertise from an expansive team of engineering resources. Live and remote access to ATC demonstrations, executive briefings, workshops, labs, proofs-of-concept, advisory services and training support informed decision making and maximizes technology investments.
WWT also offers a complete array of configuration and integration services along with a full suite of advanced logistics solutions enabled by sophisticated supply chain management infrastructure. We are ISO 9001 certified and recognize the vital importance of security and compliance across the supply chain. With more than 22,000 square feet of secure integration space and the capacity to simultaneously configure and integrate more than 35,000 systems per week, our Integration Technology Center (ITC) reduces the risks, costs and complexity of IT deployments.
Whether we’re transforming a data center, streamlining logistics and procurement or enabling cloud computing, we’re exceptionally responsive to our customers’ needs and are committed to the highest standards of quality. Plus, our facilities infrastructure team and professional services allow our customers to focus on their business and mission priorities while lowering total cost of ownership.
But what truly sets us apart is our extraordinary team of highly certified professionals, every one committed to understanding our customers’ long-term goals, and ensuring they achieve them

Tom Cruise Actor

Tom Cruisewith his wife and daughter

Tom Cruise Actors

Tom Cruise

Actor

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, widely known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards. He started his career at age 19 in the 1981 film Endless Love. Wikipedia

Born: July 3, 1962 (age 51), Syracuse, New York, United States

Height: 1.70 m

Upcoming movies: Edge of Tomorrow, Mission: Impossible 5

Spouse: Katie Holmes (m. 2006–2012), Nicole Kidman (m. 1990–2001), Mimi Rogers (m. 1987–1990)

Children: Suri Cruise, Isabella Jane Cruise, Connor Cruise

United States men's national soccer team

The United States men's national soccer team, often referred to as the USMNT, represents the United States in international association football (soccer) competitions. It is controlled by the United States Soccer Federation and competes in CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football). The team is ranked 13th in the world according to the FIFA World Rankings, and 15th in the World Football Elo Ratings. They have appeared in the last six FIFA World Cups and hosted the 1994 edition.
The men's national team competes in the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup, in addition to the CONCACAF Gold Cup and other competitions by invitation. They achieved a CONCACAF-best when they reached the semi-final at the 1930 World Cup, finishing 3rd. After qualifying for the 1934 World Cup, and withdrawing in 1938, the next World Cup participation came at the 1950 tournament, causing an upset by defeating England 1–0 in their second group match. After 1950, the US didn't qualify for the World Cup again until 1990.
After the 1990 World Cup, the US qualified automatically as hosts of the 1994 World Cup, eventually losing to Brazil in the round of sixteen. From then on, the team has qualified for every World Cup since, up to and including the 2014 World Cup. The national team improved on an international level, reaching the quarter-finals of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, where they lost to Germany 1-0. In 2009 they reached the final of the FIFA Confederations Cup, eliminating top-ranked Spain 2-0 in the semi-finals before losing to Brazil 3–2.

United States