Statistics challenge

Pedro is attending his weekly seminar on product management and this week the speaker works for Macromedia as Director of Product Marketing. Estimate the following probabilities:
1) When addressing the class the speaker uses Portugal as an example;
2) When doing this she is looking straight at Pedro (remember they don't know each other!)

That's true this creepy thing happened tonight...

Man's best friend

Copyright Santos Vieira, 2005

(108 th) Big Game Week

Cal plays Stanford this weekend in Stanford. This is called the Big Game, because of the rivalry that goes on between the two schools. Last year Cal was pretty strong and we beat Stanford 43-6! This year things seem to be much different and Cal has been struggling with quarterback problems... so much so that coach Tedford decided to use for the Big Game as a quarterback a guy that has been playing as running back! Anyways... the campus gets a new face at night during the Big Game week.

Canstruction's over

After about 2 months of work we finally did it. The Saxophone was built and is now being exhibited at the COPIA Center in Napa. As the project manager I couldn't be more pleased. Despite the shortage of manpower we did it on time and under budget! The pix below are a few of the ones that were not in my hard drive when it crashed...

Dark...

...as my spirit after loosing my hard drive and part of my life in it

Blue...

...the color of the screen that started everything...

"Com um quilo de carne (...)"

Há uns tempos conheci um romeno que me disse que a frase "com um quilo de carne ninguém morre de fome" se pronuncia da mesma maneira e tem o mesmo significado em Português e Romeno. Como isto se passou numa festa numa casa de estudantes "internacionais" eu achei que era uma brincadeira (ou bebedeira?!)... Finalmente hoje tive oportunidade de testar esta história pois conheci um romeno em casa de uma colega nossa israelita. Pedi-lhe que repetisse a dita frase e então não é que soa mesmo igual?!...
Mais curioso ainda foi descobrir algumas coisas que se pronunciam em Hebreu da mesma forma que em Português... começando pelo "a e i o u", passando por "pijama" e terminando em "música". Incrível!

Still Halloween!

"Put the lime in the coconut"

It is amazing what advertising can do... and how much our brain fails to realize that. Today I run into another blog talking about Coke's commercial for the new Lime Coke. After watching the commercial we get the feeling that the chorus is: "put the lime in the coke, you nut" . Isn't it?... Well... apparently Coke used an unchanged tune from a singer (Richard Dawson) that died in 1994 and therefore it is believed that the lyrics that you hear in the commercial are "put the lime in the coconut"! We think that we hear the first ("put the lime in the coke, you nut") because the marketeers show these altered lyrics on the screen when the tune is playing!... So you listen to the original lyrics but read other slightly changed lyrics and your brain is tricked! Crazy stuff!!
(http://semanticcompositions.typepad.com/index/2005/05/lime_mondegreen.html)

Halloween 2005!

This year we went to a Halloween party with our friends from the business school. While Marta used her costume to show the best in her like kindness and praise, I used mine to show what I am missing more and more (check pics to see what I'm talking about!).

Who are these people?!


Yep. That's us! (Thanks Ivo for the costume!... not the nun's costume of course)