23. June 2010 by admin.

Life happens, people move in, move out, move up, move along. It seems like over the past several years, some very wonderful people have moved in and then moved along. My life was touched in some important way that was evidently intended for the moment. The internet has made the world a much smaller place, but even so, we can lose touch very easily.

Quite some time ago I was the one that moved along, when I left Birmingham to move to the Gulf Coast. It was a good move for me, but it carried a cost. Vowing to keep in touch, of course that reserve faded with time. Even the annual Christmas cards were eventually abandoned.

Many years before that, I left my home town for military service, again, a good move but with its own cost. Throughout the years that have intervened between then and now, many, many very good friends have passed through my life.

I thank God for Facebook, really I do. I’m reconnecting with some of those old friends and connecting for the first time with some of my family.

But not all.

There are still some significant friendships that I’d like to renew, that I haven’t found on Facebook yet. I haven’t given up hope, I keep searching every couple of months for those names; roommates out in California, study buddies at UAB and TSU, fellow torture victims at Defense Language Institute.

Even now, having set down my own set of roots, I know that any day now I could receive notice of another friendshift. It happens.

Let’s not lose touch!

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22. June 2010 by admin.

It’s no secret that I’m not a blind follower of Steve Jobs and all things Apple. But the more I use Apple products, the more I find about them to like.  Not love, but like.

I seriously enjoy my iPhone, and my macbook and I get along remarkably well. I also enjoy my Windows and Linux machines, and I have several other non-Apple branded devices that are great. I don’t own any singular stock in any technology companies, so I don’t have any interest in how well any company does in sales, beyond the fact that a healthy company will be able to service its products in the future. I can be completely honest in my impressions of the latest operating system installed on my iPhone, and I will.

The first thing I noticed was that my wallpaper is showing behind my icons–an immediate plus for me, because my wallpaper is a picture of my Savior, it’s a picture I really like, and even though the icons obscure parts of the picture, I can still see it, and it still serves the purpose of reminding me to keep my eyes on Him.

Creating folders for my icons was very easy–just dragging one icon on top of another. Fortunately I did think to choose two in the same general category, and I ended up with a same-sized icon-looking thing that said Productivity with two mini-icons in it, one for Evernote and one for DropBox.  I followed the same procedure for six other folders and got five pages of icons down to two. Not sure yet how I’m going to like that ultimately, but right now it’s pretty cool.

Email has some cool changes. I can see the contents of all my inboxes in one list, each inbox separately, and each account with its own other folders separately. Additionally, this update corrected a condition that I alone may have experienced. We use a system called JIRA for our project management activities. When a change is made or ticket is created, an email is sent to each of the relevant parties. Previous to this update, I could see, in the email, only the header information for the ticket, and I would have to go to the JIRA program to see the ticket itself. Now the email itself is bringing in all of the information. My boss said his has always done this, and I didn’t know that, and I hadn’t thought anything about it, because there were several issues I had with stuff "working" on the iPhone,  like any Java-based websites.

The camera zooms now! It’s not a huge distance that it zooms, and it’s not a physical zoom. It’s a decent zoom for a phone camera, though, more than it had before. Let’s face it, it’s still a phone camera. If I need a high-quality shot, I need to use a real camera.

Now for the hot topic: Multi-Tasking! I saved this for last because it was the thing I was most looking forward to, and if anything spells anticlimactic in this update, Multitasking is it. I’m lukewarm toward it because the performance of the concept is lukewarm. The applications seem to be put into a state of suspension, not much more "live" than they are when you close them out. Bring an inactive app back to the front still requires it to come up out of that state of suspension. I haven’t noticed any real difference in opening the app from scratch and bringing it back up from a different app. I’m also so used to having to open it fresh that I’m not pulling it up out of the "tray," but I suppose if this were my first iPhone, I would go to the "tray" first for my open apps, sort of like doing the "alt+tab" or "command+tab" to cycle through the open apps on your computer. It remains to be seen if keeping apps "open" in the "tray" will suck up performance or battery life.

Overall, I like this update. Previous updates have messed with the order the podcasts were listed in, and since I listen chronologically to them and do so as I drive, having them listed chronologically is something I appreciate. A couple of times I nearly put my podcast listening on hold while I waited for Apple to fix it. But given the amount of stuff that gets tweaked and played around with in an update or upgrade, once they fix it I’m a happy camper.

If you’re on the fence about this upgrade, find someone who’s got it and play around with it. I think you’ll find enough to like in it to justify going for it.

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10. June 2010 by admin.

My garden is a teacher. I have become convinced that all of life’s lessons can be learned or understood in a garden.

Most recently, we have been harvesting corn. God blessed our corn crop this year beyond our expectations.  We pull it from the stalk, chop off both ends, pull the husks, remove the silks, cut the kernels from the cob, blanch it in water to kill the enzymes, cool it, and bag it up for the freezer. It’s time-consuming and labor-intensive. We don’t particularly love the effort but we definitely enjoy having the corn all year long. The process hasn’t changed much over a very long time.

We had heard that allowing the huskless ears to stand in cold water would make removing the silks easier. Like everything else "they say," we cast a skeptical eye on it.

Then came the evening that we knew we would not be able to complete a whole cycle of the process with the ears we had picked. So we packed them in an ice chest and buried them under the contents of two bags of ice.

Wonder of wonders, the next afternoon as I began to remove the silks from the ice-cold ears, I found them decidedly more cooperative. All of a sudden, I became a believer in something we’ve always heard "they say" to be true.

Something else happened that afternoon, though. My tolerance for remaining silks left on the ears dropped to near zero. I now had a process that made better results easier to achieve.

I work with some amazing people. Some are very creative; some are detail-oriented; some have incredible technical skills; some are visionaries. Every one of them would look at yesterday’s great results as mere mediocrity if a new tool enabled them to raise the bar on themselves.

Read that last phrase again, I promise you it’s true. We will raise the bar on ourselves as skills improve, as tools improve, as processes improve.

It’s what we do.

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9. June 2010 by admin.

I just downloaded Qumana. I think it has a learning curve. It doesn’t seem to have "installed," and it takes FOREVER to load. That may not be its fault, I’ll restart and see what happens.

edit:  Okay, got it. 

The reason for wanting this piece of software was that I almost never get to play on a windows machine at my house, until my new laptop gets here, in maybe a couple of weeks.

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26. May 2010 by admin.

I just found Windows Live Writer on my computer.  Okay, I don’t spend a lot of time on my computer for a self-proclaimed techie/geek.  So this is really just a test to see how well it works. 

I entered the url of my blog and my credentials. Live Writer downloaded the theme and the blog. I’m going to see how it handles the upload in just a minute.

What makes this so much more useable for me is that I can write a blog whether or not I’m connected to the internet. See, I don’t always have “the cloud” available to me. My host is 1&1, and the blog was really easy to set up there. The price was right for my first blogging attempt, and their services are non-invasive, which is important to me.  But since I never got serious about the effort, I never learned Word Press or any other blogging tools, so I’ve always just stuck with writing online. I like this. I really like this.

I’m going to insert a picture that will have zero relevance to anything I write here, just to see how Live Writer handles it.

 This is one of those blog posts that doesn’t mean anything to anyone but me. But now that I can do this anywhere, I intend to.

Is this program included with or available for Windows 7? I sure hope so!

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18. March 2010 by admin.

It’s been a while since I put anything up here.  I am so sorry. It was really bad manners to neglect my devoted readers.

I live down here in the South, in the land of good manners.  Children are taught at a very young age to address adults as “Ma’am” and “Sir.”  Obviously that alone does not constitute good manners, but, unfortunately, I’ve seen a good many children, and adults as well, whose training in manners extends no further than “Ma’am” and “Sir.”

Folks, good manners is so much more than just addressing adults by proper titles.  Manners isn’t about saying certain things and doing certain things. It isn’t about knowing which fork to use at a formal dinner. It isn’t about not wearing white shoes after Labor day.

Good Manners is about respect.

Good Manners is treating people as you would like to be treated in a perfect world. It’s about putting people at ease and making them feel comfortable. Often it is as much a matter of knowing what NOT to say, possibly knowing enough to say nothing, rather than knowing WHAT to say.

Good Manners is really very easy but it may take a bit of retraining.  Very simply, think of what you would like to be on the receiving end of, and act accordingly.  Grammatically pathetic that was, I know.  But it’s really very simple.  If you don’t think you’d like people calling attention to a mole on the side of your face, don’t call attention to someone’s mole on the side of their face.  HOLY COW–that means you  may have to start engaging the brain before putting the mouth into gear.

Strange concept for these times, especially when we can post whatever is on our mind almost instantaneously in 140 characters or less, and out to the whole world! The new social media has made it much easier to communicate faster; it’s still up to us to do it better.

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11. November 2009 by admin.

As a certified (certifiable?) geek, I love tech toys.  So it would stand to reason that when I heard on the radio of a liquidation sale to be held at the Pensacola Fair Grounds that would include closeouts on various technology goodies, I was ready to go.  In my mind I was halfway there by the time the radio spot was finished. I knew of several items I had been interested in, and if the prices were good enough, I could do a lot of my Christmas shopping in one day.

 I arose early Saturday morning and made my way to the Pensacola Fair Grounds.Breakfast at one of my favorite quick-service breakfast shops; then on to the venue.  Looking into the windows of the exposition hall I discovered that I could indeed do a great deal of my shopping in one day. I saw many other items, purses, sunglasses, etc., and figured that the liquidators were not only unloading electronics from places like maybe Circuit City stores and distribution centers, but likely several other stores we’d heard had gone under over the past year. Clothing stores, household retailers, stuff like that.

Just a few minutes prior to opening, the signs reading “entrance” that were taped to the front doors were replaced with signs that read “admission $7.”

WHAT?  Pass!  I left.

Blue Star Productions, the organizer of the liquidation event, lost my business forever that day. Overhead is part of the cost of doing business and needs to be built into the prices of the goods.  Retail stores do not charge you to examine their inventory.  I have attended liquidation sales in the past and this was not common practice.   I was prepared to spend a lot more than $7 dollars in that event.  Over that $7 Blue Star lost a lot more.

Additionally, no admission fee was mentioned in the radio spots.  It was sprung on us as we waited to enter.  This is dishonest, I don’t care how you couch it.  It wasn’t an outright lie, the radio ad did not specifically state that no admission fee would be charged.  Consumers do not assume that they will have to pay to shop.  They assume they must pay to BUY, but not to SHOP.  I understand that if they had advised of admission to be charged in the radio ad, most of us in line (and at least all of us that left) would not have shown up.  The advertiser counted on consumers having already put enough effort out to get there that it would be a waste to leave. In my case, that was true.  I had driven an hour to get there.  From my standpoint, feeding thieves is a bigger waste. My dollars need to be directed to honest businessmen.

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29. October 2009 by admin.

…and by that I mean a RIGHT as an ENTITLEMENT, as opposed to a WRONG or a LEFT.

I learned this in college, in an excellent class called Political Philosophy. As much as I would love to mention the professor’s name, I don’t have his permission to do so.

One of the most memorable concepts that came from that class was our discussion on developing a theory of rights.  A theory of rights must do four things to be a full theory.

1: give a name to the right being defined

2: Identify who has that right

3: Identify by what virtue or value the group in #2 has that right, and

4: Identify the responsibilities placed on others as a result of the group in #2 having that right.

This is going to be an excellent exercise for many of you who think you have rights but others think you don’t. You need to be able to articulate WHY you have that right and WHAT IT CAUSES OTHERS to have to do or not do.   One example is the Bill of Rights enumerations. We have the right to, for example, assembly (#1).  WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES have that right (#2). We have that right as an unalienable human right granted by our Creator (#3). You may have to dig beyond the Constitution to support that, I can’t remember which document I read that tied that right back to the Declaration. And for #4, the responsibility placed on others is to step back and let us assemble, to not interfere with our assembly.

An additional ideal in a theory of rights is the understanding that one person or group having a right must never infringe on any other rights of any other person or group.  So our right to assemble peaceably must not infringe on the right of any other group to assemble peaceably, or to do any other things that we as a society acknowledge as being rights.The claim of a “right to healthcare” fails to identify #4 to any satisfaction.  However, I will entertain any and all attempts to do so.

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25. October 2009 by admin.

How many things do you have going on right now?  How many things do you typically have going on at any given time?  During a typical workday, how many programs are open on your computer desktop? Is dinner cooking, laundry in both the washer and dryer, and a conversation occurring on the phone or with your kids? It may surprise you to find that you’re not doing all that at once.  And don’t take offense, but you’re not physiologically capable of doing it all at once.

Neither is your computer. You may have several programs open at once, but the processor in the guts of the machine is still handling instructions in the order it receives them. Even with the dual-core and quad-core processors built into the current  generation of computers, there are limitations as to how many and what type of activities can be conducted simultaneously.  If you’re curious about the nuts and bolts, this website has an explanation that comes pretty close to plain English: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dual-core-processor.htm

Most of us live our lives in a single-core scenario, even if we don’t want to admit it.  Instructions must be processed in a queue, and that queue may also include decisions, actions, and conversations. You may, for example, be on the phone and reading email "at the same time."  Face it: you will miss a few words of the conversation if you read each word of the email. Or you will merely scan the email for important words or phrases so as to not miss anything important in the conversation.  But it is simply not possible to pay adequate attention to the phone conversation to catch every word while genuinely reading the email.  You cannot carry on two separate conversations simultaneously.  You will switch back and forth between them, but you will not give them both your full attention at the same time. Having said that, it is possible to engage in one activity that requires a great deal of attention and another that requires almost no attention. Examples of this: stirring a pot of soup on the stove while conversing with the children about homework; raking leaves while you converse on the phone.

That which we call "multitasking" is a lot like the physical act of juggling.  Juggling has a lot less to do with how many objects you have in the air than it has to do with what happens to each object as it lands in your hand.  Juggling isn’t so much about great catches as it is about great tosses.  You must toss each object into a place in the air where it will predictably end up in nearly the same spot. Your hand must, of course, also end up in nearly the same spot, but that’s much easier to accomplish than the toss.   I have not been able to accomplish a series of good tosses. I am physically inept at juggling.  With practice, and a great deal more patience than I normally exercise, I may be able to juggle three objects one day. "Multitasking" has started making more sense to me since I found the parallel to juggling.  The tasks I face at any given time cannot all be accomplished at once.  I have to select the most important objects and weigh them, then decide what to do with them. Each must end up in the air for a time.  And each will land, and hopefully each lands in my hand.  As it lands in my hand, I decide what to do with it: does it go back up into the air, or can it take it out of the mix, or do I need to hand it to someone else?You don’t need to freak out if you cannot multitask all the priorities in your day.  Handle each appropriately, or decide to set it aside. Toss into the air carefully.I promise you, no matter how good you think you are at "multitasking," you’re nowhere near as good as your computer, and even your computer does it all one item at a time.

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28. September 2009 by admin.

This is the final installment of the AT&T saga.I called to terminate the service on the air card today. The initial customer service rep was very courteous and understanding, but the call had to be transferred to another department in order to terminate the service.  the rep was courteous, as I expected he would be but I quickly lost patience when he first suggested that the early termination fee could not be waived until someone from the tech support department recommended that it be waived. I asked whom I needed to speak to that I hadn’t already spoken to.  His next suggestion was that I convert the data number into a cell number and then find someone to take it over, at&t would handle all of it pending standard credit approval processes.  That had been suggested before.  I responded that I really didn’t think I should have to jump through hoops to get this done, it wasn’t my failure to perform that was causing the problem.  He had another suggestion, that I find someone to take financial responsibility for the plan and transfer it to them.  Agan, this is not my problem; it’s AT&T’s.  My final suggestion was that I’ll just pay the fee and make sure the world hears about it.  That’s where you, the reader comes in.No, everyone isn’t going to have this problem.  But when you are evaluating a mobility solution for your family or your business, you need to understand that AT&T doesn’t make any claims that the service will work when you need it most.

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