Category Archives: About Me - Page 32

Writing About Writing

Posted by on March 13, 2014 No comments

I’ve taken up a new project that I hope I can complete before burning out.  It’s a book.  Not a fiction or story book, it’s an instructional guide on using a financial application.  Holy snore.

I started the document with an outline of what I wanted to instruct on.  Then, because I hadn’t used the application before, I had to figure out how to use it and how to apply it to the specific business I was targeting.  So I started writing a story about a fictional user and performing the actions in the application as the user would have.  I did a story spanning a six-month period presenting different challenges each month and explaining how to address them in the application.  That turned out to be a pretty enjoyable part of the writing.  I guess it was a fiction book after all.

But then, I had to do “the rest”.  It’s a very well-known fault of mine that I am able to work on a project by either making big brush strokes or by focusing on the detail and finishing touches.  I can’t do both.  So in this case, as is most typical of me, I’m painting huge areas of text, and now I need to go over it again and touch up here and there.

Actually, it’s more like I’m putting on multiple coats.  At this point, I’m re-running through the story, capturing screen shots and making sure the instructions are explicit and accurate, so I’m trying to read it from a end-user’s perspective.  Then, I have to fill in the actually reference part of the book, explaining each task in greater detail, without the context of the story.

Then I want to incorporate other financial perspectives from other companies, in case I didn’t think of a certain scenario.  Then I need to get it technically reviewed by a finance person to make sure what I present is correct.  Then I need to create a website to promote it and provide updates and answer questions after the release.  Then I publish it.

I certainly don’t want to get overwhelmed by the amount of work that lies in front of me, even if I do realistically have to know everything that is still to do.

Moving Pictures

Posted by on March 3, 2014 No comments

If there’s one application that I can identify as one of the longest-lived applications I ever used on any computer, it would have to be ACDSee.  This photo viewer, then photo manager, has been installed on every computer I’ve ever had.

Like all software exposed to time, the program started to get too big and tried to do too much.  I tried out different versions, sometimes dropping back to really old versions to avoid the bloat.  Then one day, I had a change of heart and I purchased the newest version.  What a sucker move that was.

So now I had the newest version, with all of its new, sparkly, excessive features.  I also had a nice, shiny new computer, so they played pretty well together.  Then slowly, it didn’t.  The software started getting slow.  It started nagging me to upgrade.  It maintained a link with an online account set up with their website.  It never got any more updates, because the world had moved on to higher version numbers.

Things started to get really out of hand when ACDSee started taking upwards of 15 seconds to open a single image and over a minute to enumerate a couple hundred files on a network drive.  So, in the spirit of my other biggest and bloatedest posts, ACDSee is getting the boot.

So what is its replacement?  I’ve tried a program called Phototheca and it was really nice, but it requires you to work with a local photo store.  It would be great if all your photos were on the local drive, but that’s not my situation.  Then I tried Faststone Image Viewer and I stopped looking.  I’m extremely happy with this application.  It’s almost exactly like the old ACDSee versions – it’s fast and lightweight, but unlike those old versions, it’s made for modern CPUs and OS’s.  What took ACDSee many, many seconds to open, Faststone opened immediately.  The only issue I have with it is the way it handles zoom-clicking in the viewer.  But I’ll adapt.

Oh, it’s also freeware.  It has no online integration, no licensing, no hidden installers during setup, nothing extra.  It’s just good, clean, fast software.  And it’s free.  I always find it odd that nothing is allowed to stop.  It has to keep growing until it collapses under its own weight.  So, goodbye ACDSee, you’ve been replaced with a new version of your older self.

Missing The Creative

Posted by on February 25, 2014 No comments

It happened again.

Quite a while ago, I wrote about inspiration and timing and how life gets in the way of being creative.  This morning, I got stuck in a traffic jam from an accident and was watching some of the cars jockeying for position and stealing any small space they could get.  It got me thinking of the typical sociological study of humans dealing with scarcity of resources.

A short story started to form in my mind with all the elements I typically rant about: overpopulation, class warfare, unwillingness to work together, entitlement (not of the typically-accused have-nots, but of the have-enough-demand-mores), all set in a dystopian future, which seems closer every year.  But the more I built the elements up in my mind, the more they got crowded out by the things I had to do today at work.

Ah, what if I wasn’t working?  I could get out of the traffic jam, grab a notebook and jot down ideas.  Then when I got home, I could start writing a nice, depressing short story.  I recently read a Stephen King book – I think it was “On Writing.”  King talks about his experience being a writer and some of the ways to be an effective writer.  The biggest thing I got out of the book is the balance between being alone so you can create and getting out and building experience and inspiration to create.

I suppose it could be possible that I could carry this idea for the rest of the day and work on it after work, but I’m in a profession where you have to use your brain pretty heavily throughout the day, so I can’t keep these ideas up in the air like juggling balls.  Back in the old days of pizza delivery, absolutely, I could.  But, life gets in the way.

Further Adventures In LinuxLand

Posted by on February 11, 2014 No comments

Well, as I previously noted, I didn’t give up on putting the incredible Linux on that older laptop.  I spent a bunch of time searching online for info and found someone who installed a  version of Mint on the same model laptop as I had.  So now I have a viable candidate.

It took me a couple attempts to discover that the laptop doesn’t support USB booting, so CD-R it has to be.  I install the new Mint version and on reboot, it doesn’t boot.  No GRUB recovery bullshit, just “Error 18,” which, amazingly, is a greater bunch of bullshit.

In researching the highly-specific error #18 of the boot up process, I find a discussion that answered all the boot problems I’d had up to this point.  The hard drive partition was too big.  Yup.  Linux, the most advanced OS ever, the OS that runs massive server farms, massive web servers, massive file servers, massive everything… has an issue with the 250GB drive in my laptop.  The answer is to make two partitions, one small one for /boot and the other for / (the root? I have no idea).  So, another install with some manual partitioning steps and holy shit!  I have a booting, running, complete Linux laptop.

This is hardly my first foray into Linux, so I somewhat understand a few of the quirks.  I mean, I am somewhat prepared to be disappointed.  However, this install had some new wonders in store for me.  First up, connect to the network and get on the Internet.  Wireless connects without any issue, although the prompts for a password for some keychain were unexpected.

Firefox is installed by default, so I kick it off to get online.  The first thing I notice is that things are actually pretty slow.  This is consistent with my previous attempts to enjoy Linux for its lightweight, incredibly speedy performance (that never materialized).  Because the Linux version is pretty much in line with the age of the laptop, I have an abhorrent version of Firefox – 3.03.  This could be why things seem so slow.  I launch the Mint software repository to get a new version of Firefox or at least a different browser.  It fails to load.  Ok, I go to Google and download the latest Chrome.  It won’t install because of some invalid dependency.  Ok.  I go to Mozilla and download the latest version of Firefox there.  It downloads an archive file.  Huh.

Let me step aside here and point out the two competing mindsets with software development.  One side is Microsoft’s, where backwards compatibility is paramount.  For this choice, you can use nearly every version of Windows on nearly every piece of hardware out there.  The obvious downside is that the code is more bloated than it needs to be and contains code that is obsolete or vulnerable to hacking.  On the other side is Linux, which includes Apple and Android.  Here, you have a specific version made for specific hardware.  Once the next version of hardware comes along, you’re left behind.  You get the benefit of having the best code of the day working on your current device, but you are forced to upgrade hardware to get the latest software.  Right now, as I install Linux on this old laptop, I am relegated to the past, with an unrefined UI and outdated tools.

Now, back to the present, I have this Firefox archive file that I don’t know what to do with.  I try the obvious action of extracting the files to the desktop and look inside the folder contents.  I can’t tell what I’m supposed to run.  There’s no setup, no install, no run-this-to-make-go anywhere.  So I click on a few things and nothing happens.  There’s also no installation instructions in the file.  So, I give up on that.

As I’m struggling with this, an issue that happened a few times during my install attempts bit me again.  I know from experience that Linux has some odd fascination with multiple desktops.  Somehow – I still don’t know how – I triggered a “change desktop” command through the touchpad.  All the shit I was working on is gone and I can find no way to get it to come back.  There is no icon anywhere to change desktops.  FUCK THIS.  THIS is why Linux is reserved for geeks and nerds and will never be mainstream.  I consider myself to be a geek, but this lack of usability offends even me.  I looked through the sparse help information provided and couldn’t find any answers there.  Eventually, I found some way to make windows from all desktops appear in the task bar, so I could switch to them regardless of where they were hiding.  By that time, I was pretty much done for the night.

However, now that I’ve discovered the key to making Linux boot on this laptop, I think I’m going to try out a version called Joli Cloud, which looks kind of like a tablet OS, with a greatly simplified UI.  Stay tuned for more anger.

Beating Myself Up

Posted by on February 8, 2014 No comments

Ok, so I must be masochistic.  I came into a old laptop that was being disposed and I thought I’d try to install Windows 8.1 on it.  Guess what?  It worked!  However, just the OS itself pushed the hardware to the point where the CPU fan was running non-stop.  So I gave up on that idea.

Then, buoyed by success, I went to the other extreme.  I brought out the big bag of idiocy that is Linux.  I’ve tried Mint before and I liked it.  So I burned a disc of the latest Mint.  The laptop froze during boot.  Hmm.  I do believe I’ve seen that before…  So I burned a disc of an older Mint.  Laptop boots, finds sound and network, we’re good to go.

I do the installation, and in the process, I wipe out all disk partitions and start from scratch.  Install proceeds well and I reboot.  As soon as I hit the button to restart, I started mocking the system, saying “Now we’re going to go to a black text screen that spews out a bunch of statuses.  See, this is why normal people don’t use Linux.  No one wants to see that shit.”

Well, I must have offended it, because on bootup, I get a black screen that says:

GRUB loading.
Welcome to GRUB!

error: out of disk.
Entering rescue mode…
grub rescue>

Seriously, what the fuck?  I’m approaching this install as if I can give this laptop away as a basic Internet device.  GRUB?  “out of disk”?  What the fuck does that mean?  I then had the following conversation with GRUB:

grub rescue> help
Unknown command ‘help’
grub rescue> ?
Unknown command ‘?’
grub rescue> mount
Unknown command ‘mount’
grub rescue> diag
Unknown command ‘diag’
grub rescue> go
Unknown command ‘go’
grub rescue> exit
Unknown command ‘exit’
grub rescue> quit
Unknown command ‘quit’

You know what?  I fucking HATE Linux.  I did some searches on that error and I read all kinds of crap.  But mostly, no one knew how to fix it.  Someone made a wild suggestion that not only might the hard drive be bad, but the motherboard may be as well.  That’s insane.

But you know what else?  I’m going to keep fighting this issue for probably the rest of the day.  And if I succeed, all it will do is tell me what level you have to be at to make the supposed best OS in the world “just work”.

My New Child

Posted by on February 6, 2014 No comments

Yup, I have a kid.  I hate children, too.  Let me explain how this happened.

I do the finances for a non-profit organization.  It’s brand new and doesn’t have a ton of structure yet, so pretty much do-what-you-want.  So as part of my duties, I decided I’m going to start emailing members when their membership dues are due.

I have an email account for the org’s domain, but the email server doesn’t have any contact management.  No problem, I’ll create a Windows Live account for that email and use the People function to store the addresses.  Works fine, since Windows Live Mail uses People as the contacts.

So I start the process to create the Live account.  During creation, I am prompted for my date of birth.  I’m not going to use mine, duh.  I could make one up, but this should be something that anyone in the org can remember in case they need to reset a password or something after I’ve passed the reins.  So I use the date the org was formed: 10/1/2013.  I click Save.

Now, to my surprise, I am told that a minor cannot use the Live services without parental consent.  Damn it.  This account now belongs to a 4-month old.  So, without thinking much, I logged in as myself to authorize.  Congratulations to me, I’m a parent now.

It would be easy for anyone to create two accounts and authorize one from the other, so there has to be a way to prove that the “parent” account is really an adult.  How is this done?  By charging your credit card, of course!  A minor can’t possess a credit card, so that’s foolproof.  Or something.  Cost to have a kid: $.50.  Some of that gets donated to charity, which I suppose is great.

So I figure I totally own this little shit now.  After all, I paid for it.

Watch Out.

Posted by on December 14, 2013 No comments

I mentioned in a past post that I have a small watch collection.  I say it that way because recently, I considered collecting watches.  I thought I had a fair collection – isn’t more than one a collection?  I had one valuable watch handed down from my dad, four watches all of the same make, just slight variations, then two gifted watches that I didn’t care for.  My plan was to start collecting watches I like.

A little bit of research online showed that that’s not what “watch collecting” means.  Watch collectors are, put bluntly, fucking snobs.  There seems to be only a couple of ways to garner the respect of a watch collector.  Either already have a collection of high-end timepieces, or if you  are starting out, ask for advice and say your budget is something like $5,000.  So, my “collection” of sub-$100 watches is probably an insult to their art.

I had mused on collections in a really old post and came up with the decent conclusion that a collection really only has value to the owner, not to anyone else. (like hair, I said.  Crazy.)  I thought a bit more on it and considered the absurdity of the concept of collecting. Here I am buying $70-100 watches and there’s a whole lot of people out there that couldn’t (or wouldn’t dare) buy a single watch for more than $20.  In that regard, I am very fortunate for my situation, but I certainly don’t have the audacity to look down on someone because they don’t see some perceived value in watches that I see.

And that’s kind of the point.  Why do we collect things?  The high-end watch collectors must be smitten with the amazing craftwork in a watch, and I can understand that.  The issue is that the appreciation of the complexity of the watch is not what is conveyed to a potential fellow collector.  And someone that is buying a watch for a new collection (with a budget of $5k), clearly can’t appreciate the device at the same level.

Really, after all is said and done, a watch tells time.  A $20 Casio digital quartz watch is just as accurate as a Rolex, and doesn’t come with a regular maintenance schedule.  If you’ve never known about luxury watches, yes, they do need to be serviced regularly.  Pay a lot up front and keep paying on schedule.  So, the argument “That watch will last for your lifetime,” loses its charm a little when you have to effectively pay the cost of a new watch every few years.

Given all the thinking I’ve done on this now, I am going to go ahead with my “collection”, although it’s not going to be classified as a collection.  I’m not sure what else to call it.  It’s just a set of watches that I like looking at and wearing and that have the expected purpose of telling time.  As part of their purpose, they match my wardrobe and match the activity I have planned while wearing them.  That’s a balance of practicality and fashion. 

Maybe someday, I will have the desire to own a device with an amazing internal structure and will find the cost of owning it to be worth the reward.  But that day is not today.

Out With The New And In With The Old

Posted by on November 7, 2013 No comments

I guess it wasn’t meant to be.  I am back using “the tank”  – my old keyboard.  I gave the new slimline KeyTronic keyboards a fighting chance.  but I’ve ruined three already – not a good sign at all.  The first one, something happened under one of the keys, so I pried off the key caps to fix it and wound up breaking the spring on one of the keys,resulting in the key being stuck down.  I RMA’d that keyboard and I think I had to pay shipping.  Its replacement, I spilled a very little bit of Coke on it, and the Delete key started sticking.  There was no way I was going to pry off the keycap to clean it!  So I lived with the sticking delete key for quite a while (and I use it a lot).  The keyboard I took to work has actually failed from use.  The left Control key sticks randomly.  With all the key commands I use every day: Ctrl-X/C/V – cut/copy/paste, Ctrl-E – Execute query, Ctrl-S – Save, Ctrl-A – Select All, Ctrl-Z – Undo, it just couldn’t handle the stress.

I’m taking the other tank to work and will start using it there again, too.  I have some new co-workers, so I suppose they’re going to be ridiculing me for my ancient technology.  Laugh if you want, but it is damn good technology.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to.  When I started typing this post on the old keyboard, I was surprised at how much better the action felt than the thin, low-profile style.  It’s much more forgiving.

I still have one of the slimline keyboards.  It’s still new in the box and I’m unsure what I even want to do with it.  I think it’s going to be donated to a junk sale.

Going the Extra (Rewards) Mile

Posted by on November 1, 2013 No comments

Ya gotta be hustlin’, all the time.

In a previous post, I had talked about my Capital One rewards miles and buying gift cards vs. statement credit.  It was a couple years ago and in that round, I bought up some gift cards because they were a better value than statement credit.  This recent rewards shopping session has given me an interesting opportunity to take advantage of.

Normally, a $100 gift card is 15,500 points (miles, whatever).  However, they offer some $200 cards for 20,000 points, which is clearly a better deal, but sadly, they never have any cards I want, like restaurants.  In my regular browsing visit to see if they have added any $200 dining cards (nope), I saw a Neiman Marcus gift card for 16,000 points – a $200 card.  Wow, for 500 more points than a $100 card, you get a $200 card.  Too bad I don’t have an ounce of care for Neiman Marcus.  $200 might buy me a pack of handkerchiefs.

But, that is still an awesome value and I can’t get it out of my head.  I have enough points to get $600 in cards.  That same number of points equates to only $240 in statement credit.  Maybe I can sell the cards for cash.  After some quick research, I found a website (cardpool.com) that buys gift cards (at a discount, of course).  Their simple online calculator says I can get $510 in cash for those cards.  That’s over twice as much as I could get from statement credit.

Quick math time: Statement credit is about .5 cent per mile, gift cards at normal rate are about .65 cent a mile, these NM cards are 1.25 cents a mile.  Even with the premium for selling the cards, it’s still 1 cent a mile.

Now, to be clear, I am grateful for finding and being able to take advantage of this opportunity.  Part of my gratitude is that I just happened across it and part is that I don’t have to do this.  There’s a lot of people who have to do similar things like this just to get by.  Buy low/sell high/make it through tomorrow.

After signing up for an account on Cardpool, I got looking at the cards they sell.  They’re sold at varying discounts.  It got me thinking some more.  if I know i ‘m going to be spending the money somewhere, why not buy a gift card at a discount first?  Really, 10% off at Outback or Chilis is still 10% off.  And since gift cards are just like cash, you’re not restricted to coupon use.  I think I have a new source of savings.

Un-Disposable

Posted by on October 23, 2013 No comments

Today I felt pretty good about myself.  I kept myself from spending more money.  I did this by simply repairing what I intended to replace.  This story goes back a little ways.  It’s about my watch.

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned my watches before, but I have a small collection – a collection I recently am trying to build up a little.  I don’t really like heavy things on my wrist, so I have been attracted to Skagen watches because they are so thin.  When you get them in titanium, they’re even lighter.  As an aside, the current trend of huge watches offends me greatly.

I’ve been wearing Skagen watches for probably over 15 years.  One of the first watches I had, I loved.  Then the battery went dead.  So I filled out an RMA form and mailed the watch off to Skagen for battery replacement.  I never saw the watch again.  Worse, I never saw that model again, so I was never able to replace it.  I think I didn’t wear a watch for a period of time after that incident out of grief and protest.

Years go by and I’ve got a few more watches, a couple Skagen and a Wenger.  One day, I snag the mesh band on something and it pulls a link out, causing a sharp spur.  So I go to Skagen’s repair site and find that a replacement band is about $25.  That’s $25 on a $70 watch, quite a decent percentage of value.  So I balked at replacing the band.  Instead, I spent $100 on a new, nicer Skagen.  It made sense, and that watch has served me very well for years.

But the watch with the broken band has been sitting in my watch case ever since.  I really do like it – the lightest one I have and it has numbers on the face, instead of just ticks.  So recently, I went back to the Skagen website to order the band.  Now all of a sudden, you can’t buy replacement parts.  You have to send your watch to a service center for repair.  Yeah, I’ve been through that one before.  No thanks.  I search around online and the supply of replacement bands is very small and more expensive.  What the heck is going on?

I found my answer: Fossil bought out Skagen.  And with that purchase, they completely changed the way service is done.  I have little love for Fossil.  I owned one watch by them and it never “worked” for me, then it stopped working, literally.  So it was a huge disappointment to hear the news of the sale.

Now, I was going back and forth between buying a replacement watch ($70), or actually paying the now $30+ just for the band.  Oh, and the battery needs replaced ($12).  Then it hit me.  The Dremel!  I have tools!  I can grind this spur down, and if I fail at doing that, what have I lost?  I was prepared to chuck the watch anyway.

So, with the precision of an amateur dentist, I chose a grinding bit and went to town.  Totally anti-climatic, it took like 3 seconds and I had a flawless result.  Why I didn’t think of that earlier, I don’t know.  No, I kinda do know.  I’m a wasteful, consumerist American.  Everything is disposable. 

But, I’m  compelled to look for a deeper meaning here.  Why didn’t I just toss the watch and buy another?  After all, I did buy a replacement model and still didn’t throw it out.  Maybe I have a deeper connection with that watch than I realize.  I’ll get the battery changed this weekend, and I have a new watch in the mail, and I have a plan to buy another watch (maybe even two) on my upcoming vacation, so we’ll have to see which watch gets the most face time in the end.