An Honest Try

Posted by on May 22, 2013 No comments

I’ve played around with Linux in a few different forms on and off in my computing years.  Recently, I’ve been pretty impressed with the Ubuntu and Mint offerings, since they are really starting to look like polished pieces of software, with friendly installers and GUI management tools.  So, I happened across an older laptop and decided I would make it an Internet machine.

My biggest problem with Linux is that I am a Windows developer.  That means I spend a lot of my time in Visual Studio and SQL Server, neither of which are suitable for Linux.  I could probably get by with Wine emulation for most other applications, but developing is what I do, so I need Windows.  But I figured I could have a laptop that is just for Internet, and with Linux, it would be a speedy little device.

I keep an Ubuntu USB stick handy for disk diagnostics, so I booted that up on the laptop with no problems.  The laptop’s hard drive was dead and I was waiting for a new one.  I figured I’d try something fun and try installing Ubuntu to a 16GB naildrive stuck in the laptop.  Just so you know, it’s impossibly slow when running off a USB drive acting as a hard drive.  No SSD speed here.

Last night, I got my new hard drive, installed it, and downloaded the newest Mint version onto a USB drive.  I went to install and the system froze.  Tried again under compatibility mode and Mint essentially said the machine was not compatible.  So I tried with the newest Ubuntu.  Same thing.  I should have figured as much since Mint is built from Ubuntu.  So I went and installed the older version of Ubuntu I had on my diagnostic USB drive.

Mind you, I went into this install with a pretty positive attitude.  Maybe I was a little unrealistic in how lightweight and fast Linux is supposed to be, but lots of things started adding up.  Downloading the ISO images was so slow.  I thought Linux was huge in universities and they had lots of bandwidth.  I guess that’s not as true anymore?  I was surprised that newer versions were less compatible with older hardware.  I thought things always got better with time.  Then, the install itself took a surprisingly long time to finish – over an hour.  Again, maybe I’m being unrealistic, but I think that my expectations have been molded by the enthusiastic Linux community.

Finally, after install, I have a desktop and everything’s working pretty well.  I map a network drive and try out a few application.  Then the Update Manager pops up.  Yeah, I’m using an older version, so I have to update.  Woah, 471 updates!  That’s almost four times as many as Windows XP’s post-install updates (~120).  Alright, go ahead and update me.  Another hour passes and now I have to reboot.  Linux needs a reboot?  I restart and when I get back to my desktop, I’m prompted for my wireless network passphrase.  That’s odd, I thought Ubuntu would save that.  I re-enter the password again and Ubuntu prompts me again.  Oh.  The 471 updates broke my wireless network driver.  Where do I go from here?  Which update did it?  Not knowing the details of Linux, how would I even begin to troubleshoot this?  Can you even roll back updates in Linux?

So here’s where I picture myself at: I can reinstall fresh then either skip all updates or try to find (guess) which updates botched the wireless and exclude them.  Looking through 471 updates is not high on my list.  The other option is to install Windows XP, which I know will work.

The Future Is In The Past

Posted by on May 3, 2013 No comments

Today I was forwarded an article about a new computer input device utilizing gestures and the article was teasing with a headline like “gestures replace keyboard and mouse.”  Uh huh.

Go ahead and pile this technology on an ever increasing pile: Stylus, touch, multi-touch, swype, and Kinect.  All of which are supposed to be revolutionary and every one has not replaced the keyboard.  Or maybe that’s not true.

Long ago, computers were for highly-skilled people – researchers, academics, scientists.  Then they went mainstream.  Personal computers took over every household.  Then, people started demanding less “computer-looking” devices, so the style element of PC’s was addressed.  More recently, it seems the public has been clamoring for simpler interfaces, reducing the need for input devices.  Enter gesture and touch input.

Depending on which camp you are in, this advancement – or decline – of computers is only a subset of the reality.  Throughout all of it, the standard computer, with boxy tower case, keyboard, mouse and monitor (or monitors) is the mainstay of the creative computer users.  The alternative input devices are too imprecise and too inefficient to actually create anything of quality, whether it be art, code, or engineering.  The sacrifices made for aesthetic purposes limit the raw power needed to actually do work.  So because of this, the computing landscape has split into creators and consumers.

The media keeps hyping that tablets are the future.  This is actually probably true.  The majority of people are not going to need or want the power of a full computer setup.  Combined with the news that there are fewer students with computer programming skills than in previous years, this forms a scary trend.  In a few generations, it’s entirely possible that the use of an actual computer becomes exclusive, just as it was in the early days of computing.  If you have a full computer, you could be viewed as old-fashioned, or maybe you’d be viewed as a genius.

The media also keeps saying that the PC is dead.  This in absolutely not true.  If this were true, there would be no way to create future software and hardware.  However, if they were to say, the consumer personal computer is dead, they may be on to something.

To me it’s very sad to think that we almost had something.  It’s as if we were right on our way to having a super-intelligent global society and a huge shockwave hit and lowered the bar for everyone.

Payback is a Bitch

Posted by on April 25, 2013 No comments

Yesterday during work break, I went on a walk.  It was a strange, rather painful walk, as my feet were killing me most of the time.  I resolved that I would wear different shoes if I was going to go walking again.  After getting back and settling down, I found that I couldn’t sit.  My back would twinge in that way that says “get ready, here it comes…”  So, I did what was reasonable.  I put some ice on my back and left work to get home and lie down.

At home, I applied the TENS belt and was disappointed after an hour that it wasn’t doing any good.  So I did some leg stretches and then knocked myself out with my in-case-of-emergency-take-these medpack and slept the night away.  I woke up in the morning very, very slowly.  During this extended period of reflection, I found that the stabbing pain was still there, recurring every 10-20 minutes.  Additionally, I found the pain radiating down my leg.  Ohhhhh….  Nice to see you again, sciatica.  How have you been?  I thought I kicked you out years ago.

In my experience, I have two types of back problems.  One affects me when I move and one affects me when I stay still.  It’s my good fortune these two problems don’t occur together.  The first case is severe.  It starts with little warning jabs like I had, then when you don’t expect it, bam.  You are frozen solid and then immobile for about a week.  These incidents have been chronicled in older posts.  The second case isn’t as bad.  I mean it’s not awesome or anything, but it’s not debilitating.  I can take care of it with a few weeks of leg stretches, focusing on the hamstrings.  The important thing is that since I know it’s the second case, I don’t have to necessarily be cautious about moving about.

However, the timing of this recurring injury is interesting since I’m scheduled to take classes this weekend for Reiki.  Reiki, for those that don’t know, is energy healing.  I have a series of pages that I’m writing for this blog on my Reiki experiences that aren’t released yet, but will be shortly after my classes.  This is going to be an excellent first test of the healing ability of Reiki.

No News is Good News

Posted by on April 23, 2013 No comments

Having a hyper-connected civilization is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, we have been able to share knowledge and ideas at an unprecedented rate, which has certainly advanced the technology of our world.  On the other hand, we have been able to share stories of misery and fear wider than what is prudent.

Many people are reluctant to consider humankind as a global civilization, but these people are constantly bombarded by news (almost always bad) from other countries around the world.  Even more common, is the reporting of news across our country, again, almost always bad.  I seems it has become normal to worry and fret and become angry over people and situations that we have no connection to and will never have any connection to.

A shooting here, a dying child there, animals running from a wildfire, record cold temperatures way up there.  These things don’t matter.  They are daily trivia and conversation starters.  They do not have an impact on a national scale.  Yet, the news is full of these stories every single day.

It is not helping that the news is becoming more entertainment-oriented.  Fox News is moving towards more of op-ed reporting, instead of reporting the news, they have a personality delivering their opinion and analysis of the news.

In discussing what I felt as strange about my workplace leaving the news channel playing the Boston bombing all the time and my co-workers streaming live news at their desk on the manhunt for the bomber, I created a really long sentence.  No, seriously, it was suspected that these people who were glued to the news coverage were trying to feel connected to a national tragedy, like “where were you when 9/11 happened”?  I can’t really understand why it takes an event of misery to make people feel more connected.  And oddly, it doesn’t really work that way when the event is local.  In those cases, people tend to shut themselves in.

Think local, do local, care local.  Those are the people that really matter.  And if we all do that, everyone is covered.

Serving You More By Providing Less

Posted by on April 17, 2013 No comments

Long after I’ve stopped using Quicken, the emails still continue to amaze me.  Here’s the quote to start off this topic:

“Many of our customers ask why we discontinue certain services and the answer is simple—to better serve you.“

Today I got an email from Quicken stating that I had to upgrade to Quicken 2013 because they were shutting down services for Quicken 2010.  Which services? 

  • Transaction downloads
  • Online Bill-pay through Quicken (not sure if that’s different from banks’ EFT-style payments)
  • Stock quotes and portfolio management through Quicken
  • Technical Support (except online self-service)

Well, 3 of the 4 items are Quicken-provided services, so if they want to shut them down, I don’t have an issue with that.  It’s the first item that bugs me.  The transaction download portion has a server component and a client component.  The Quicken software is the client.  The banks run the server component. 

I know how banks operate: slowly.  There isn’t any way Quicken could force banks to update their software by their imposed deadline.  Many banks will have these libraries integrated with their own software, so there would need to be some rewriting involved and major amounts of testing and documentation.  Not going to happen.

What option does that leave?  Time-bombing the client so that it will become inoperable on a specific date.  Downloading transactions is what the majority of people would use.  The bill-pay, I’m not sure of.  But, in order to better serve you, we think it’s best to not let you do this any more.

I can’t remember if I still have Quicken installed somewhere or not, but I’m going to be testing this out.  First, if they did manage to get all the banks to upgrade their code and change the format of the QIF file, then it should fail to import into MS Money.  Otherwise, I’ll guess that you can manually download transaction files and import them.  This is a slight inconvenience, but it’s not rendering Quicken unusable.  However, at that point, you have the same level of functionality of MS Money Sunset, so why not use a better application?

Here’s the bottom line.  There’s nothing new in banking.  There’s no reason to upgrade banking software.  Quicken is milking this cash cow for as long as they can.  By practicing forced obsolescence, they are forcing their customer base to choose between paying forever or leaving them.  I made my choice.  Mint.com is certainly helping people make a choice. Hmmm.  I think I need to revisit mint.com and see what’s happened since the last time I gave them a try.

Change For The Good, Right Now

Posted by on April 10, 2013 No comments

In the “these things happen to other people” news, I’ve been a target of a hacker.  As hacks go, it was fairly significant – my EBay account.  The hacker bought a whole bunch of stuff, surprisingly not using my linked PayPal account.  EBay locked my account quickly, notified me, and took care of most all the issues with fees and listings.  Regardless, I felt obligated to apologize to a bunch of people who got caught up in the mess.  One person had actually shipped the product by the time I emailed them.

I’ve been online a long time and my password strength has grown with the ever-increasing threat.  I’ve felt I’ve had a decent password, but I suffer from what a lot of people probably do, and that is password entropy – using the same password on every site.  Well, that’s not entirely true since I do use a variant of my main password for those sites that don’t support the special characters I used.

Now it’s time to get real.  Just before I discovered my eBay account was hacked, I had dealt with some spammer sending me over 7000 emails of random text.  So I was giving consideration to changing my email address, and why not have a different email address for every site?  So my email address for Bank of America would be bankofamerica.com@mydomain.com and for Expedia it would be expedia.com@mydomain.com.  This would be relatively easy to remember and would identify if anyone sold my email address to another company or if my email was stolen or harvested.

But at the time, I felt a bit overwhelmed with the task of changing ALL my emails.  Now, since I have to change ALL my passwords, I might as well go through with it.  In addition, I’ve decided to use a password manager, KeePass.  It seems to be a pretty slick utility and I’m surprised I never gave it a chance before. I think my main reason for avoiding it was that I never wanted to be unable to access a website because I didn’t know my password.

But upon closer inspection of that fear, it is very similar to other fears that keep you from (positive) change.  The fringe cases override everything.  It seems everyone is afraid of the word “can’t,” because it is only interpreted in its absolute and permanent sense.  It’s not “I can’t do this,” it’s “I can’t do this right now.” And the “right now” part is what makes the modern time so awesome, hectic, and dangerous.

So, with KeePass, I can have a password file on my home computer and there’s a version for my phone that I can keep synched.  That should be well enough to let me do what I need when I need to.  And for the other cases, it’s going to have to be the other person disappointed when I say “I can’t” because I’m not going to let it control me.

Quit It

Posted by on April 8, 2013 No comments

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/why-quit-job-now-151346969.html

Now here’s a real doomsday article:  Quit your job or get fired.  And this speaks to the heart of the problem – 24-hour news, which has certainly caused a serious decline in people’s outlook on life.

Let’s start with the basic problem of 24-hour news.  You need to fill up your time with something. So you pull anything that will attract an audience, which usually means extremist positions.  Putting the sensationalism aside for a moment, watch the news for a while and see how much of it has any bearing on your day.  Miners trapped somewhere?  Landslide in South America?  Violence in the Middle East?  What’cha gonna do about it?

So you hear about this every single day.  There’s always a crisis somewhere, why do we have to absorb the world’s misery?  How long can we do it before we become tainted by that misery?  It’s too late.  When did this change?  1980.  The start of CNN.

Older generations remember “the nightly news”.  You had an hour, maybe two hours of news.  And the harsher news was the 11 o’clock news, which was reserved for adults who stayed up that late.  When CNN came, there was news all the time, which then spawned competition, and we go from there.

It’s no surprise that since that time, people have become less trusting, more cynical, and more paranoid.  If you hear a story every single day about rapists, it doesn’t matter that every story is in a different city thousands of miles away from you, the news makes it sounds like it’s local.  You act more defensively, which makes other people act defensively.  Then you end up where no one will help anyone.

But anyway, back to the story.  Here’s a person listing the reasons why your job is worthless and if you don’t quit now, you’re just going to get fired.  It’s a terribly narrow-sighted view of employment.  Is he right?  Sure, for some positions in some industries.  But he applies the fear to everyone, pitting employees against their employers.  He fosters distrust, which become material when it is fully believed.

I read a line somewhere that said “Nobody ever gets fired.  They always fire themselves.”  When someone starts suspecting that they are being targeted, they’ll behave in a way that invites suspicion.  “What I fear most has come upon me.”  If you want to take that further, you could apply it to all of the negative news that is programming people to expect the worst.  Personally, I’ve never been happier since giving up on TV and news.

In this article, the pundit says some pretty silly things, like  “If you’re stuck in a cubicle, you have a target on your back.  Temp staffing is sweeping the nation.”  What business operates fully on temp labor?  A business has processes and rules.  Why would a business bring on a bunch of temps, train them, dispose of them, and then do it all over again?  From a meeting I just had yesterday, my employer invests about 50k to keep an employee for one year.  That’s why we want to hire the right person the first time.

The 10 reasons to put in your 2-week notice list is so random and contradictory that I can’t even address it.  “Money is not happiness” and “Abundance will never come from your job” are a couple of head-scratchers.

So, with all of this doom and gloom talk, what’s the proposed solution?  Not sure.  A “compromise” is offered where you can keep your job (while you can, I guess) and do side work or start a new business of your own.  But the actual solution?  The title says to quit your job.  The pundit says temp staffing is sweeping the nation.  The pundit also says that companies are replacing employees with cheaper temp staff.  So, the solution must be to quit your job and work as a temp for less.  Which works out well for the pundit since he’s in with a temp staffing company.

What kind of gall does it take to help companies destroy their workforce and then tell the remaining workers, “Just give up, already.”

Deviation

Posted by on April 6, 2013 No comments

In a Talking Heads song, there is a line, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”  In statistical terms, the enjoyment level of heaven would be 100% with a standard deviation – or variance – of zero.  The song tries to express that as long as the deviation is zero, the enjoyment level could be 100%, 80%, 40%, or 0% and it would all be the same.  Because, without variance, how would you know any different?

An oft-used phrase, “It’s all relative,” has more meaning than we typically intend when we casually toss it out.  Any evaluation of any experience is based upon past experience.  Our report of that experience is either expressed in relative terms or, failing a basis of comparison, a threshold evaluation.  How was your day yesterday?  “Good.”  Good, relative to other days I’ve had.  How was your skydive yesterday?  “Awesome!”  Awesome, compared to other activities like working.  Or maybe, “Good.”  Good, compared to dying.  Living through an experience is an example of a threshold evaluation.

I bring all this up in memory of getting over a nasty cold.  I don’t get sick.  Well, although that sounds like an absolute, I mean I don’t get sick with any regularity.  Less than once a year.  Living like that, you forget and take for granted how good it feels to be healthy.  My standard deviation was falling.

This can apply to just about anything in life.  You don’t know how bad (or good) your relationship was until you start a new one.  You don’t know what life can be like when you’re suffering chronic pain.  You don’t recognize how convenient having a car is until your car doesn’t start.  Breaking out of a rut is nothing more than adding a deviate sample to your population in order to increase the mean.

Acknowledgement Received

Posted by on April 4, 2013 No comments

Sometimes it’s difficult to determine what the norm is for service in the current day.  For such a long time, I’ve been told that customer service is the differentiating factor in successful businesses.  Businesses that sell products compete on price, selection, and service.  The way I look at it, you can get anything at any time, thanks to the Internet.  Then it becomes a matter of convenience and time determining what you’re willing to pay.  And with products, service is almost an afterthought, especially in this self-service age.  But what about when the product is a service?  You’re competing on price, quality, and service.  This is the tradeoff triangle, Good/Fast/Cheap – choose any two.

The other day, I called a car dealer near my workplace for some service.  It would be more convenient for me to go there since my local dealer is farther away and I’d need to schedule for a Saturday.  Asking for the service department, the phone then rang a few times and went to voice mail.  I found this odd.  I was expecting to wait on hold for a tech to pick up.  So I left a message.  That was at 12:30.  When I left work at 4:30, I hadn’t gotten a call back.  I called again and ended up in voice mail again.

Like I said, it’s difficult to tell if this is normal, modern customer service.  Personally, I think it’s terrible.  Maybe I’m a snob, maybe I’m unrealistic.  When someone is calling you and they want to give you money – and my voice mail message listed the services I wanted, which would be a decent sized bill – you should jump on the opportunity.  Further, I am a new customer, so this is my first impression, however, I can’t think that an existing customer would feel any differently.

So what was I expecting?  I was expecting to sit on hold.  And I think at some point in the past, this would have been unacceptable for some, but I was fine with it.  Being in a phone queue is pretty normal nowadays.  If things were average, I would just sit and wait for a long time.  If the service level was better than usual, I would ring back to the receptionist, who would ask if I’d like to leave a message or keep waiting.  If the service was even better than that, the service manager would jump on, explain he was busy and ask if I’d like to wait or leave my callback info.  The key here is being acknowledged by a person.  This is why it is very quickly becoming commonplace to be greeted by the whole staff when you walk in the door.  “Welcome to Firehouse!” “Welcome to Rita’s!” “Welcome to Subway!”  It sounds hokey, but it really does work.  But for my experience, I spoke to no people and I ended up talking to a generic voicemail box.  I wasn’t even acknowledged.

It seems that a phone system upgrade could fix this issue, for me, anyway.  My suspicion is that the service dept. knows that calls get kicked to voicemail after 4 rings, so there is a lack of urgency and unless they aren’t doing anything at that moment, they’ll just wait it out.  The phone should keep ringing and not give them an opportunity to ignore a customer.

At this time, more than 24 hours has passed, so I guess they don’t want my business.

Hidden Windows Features

Posted by on April 2, 2013 No comments

Windows 8 has gotten a lot of press, mostly negative, for the Metro Start screen and the lack of the traditional Start menu.  In all that debate and discussion of the pros and cons of the new design, a few obscure features that are new to Windows 8 have been overlooked,  These new functions show that Microsoft continues to innovate and improve the Windows product.  Some features may not be available in all Windows versions, so your experience may be different when attempting to use these.

Morse Code Entry

This functionality was added to Windows in response to a demand for increased security, especially in the military space.  A recent news story discussed how the US government was investing in major upgrades, including Windows 8.  The Morse Code Entry (MCE) system is designed to allow secure data entry for sensitive communications.

One of the most effective ways to steal information on a computer is to install a key-logger application.  These applications capture each keystroke and store it to a file for later retrieval.  This means username and passwords that are typed in are captured, along with emails, chats, URLs, and all other typed in data.  MCE defeats this by allowing text entry using Morse code.  Open up Notepad and begin a message by pressing the . key as you would on a Morse transmitter.  Windows detects the patterns and converts the dots and dashes to characters for display.  The keylogger simply records a series of periods, with no timing information between them to indicate a dot or dash.  The keylogger has been defeated.

Internet History Sync

This feature was added for US markets, but ironically was requested by some specific governments in Asia.  The simple description of the new service is that all Internet addresses accessed by a Windows 8 computer are synchronized with a central server.  It’s like your normal Internet History in IE or Chrome, but extending system-wide.  By default, this data is transmitted to a facility in an undisclosed location, operated by an unknown organization, but Microsoft is quick to point out that the data is secure and there is nothing to worry about.

From a technical perspective, this feature was extremely easy to implement, since all DNS resolution occurs in a system module.  Initial reports show little to no performance impact from this enhancement.  Although it can’t be confirmed, this feature may not be new for Windows 8, but may just be getting announced with this version.

Subliminal Mechanics Framework (SMF)

For developers, this new framework API is long-awaited.  It provides a way to inject messages into the video output that are only perceived at a subliminal level.  Most computer monitors operate at 60hz and higher, so displaying an image or a message for one of those frames would hardly be noticeable.

According to the API documentation, SMF is a great tool for any of the following:

  • Display motivational messages to keep the user working
  • Display religious messages to inspire a user
  • Display corporate messages to improve worker loyalty
  • Display “targeted” advertisements to improve sales
  • Display messages of national importance to improve compliance

SMF is currently only active when using Metro applications, which explains the urgency to deprecate all classic Windows desktop applications and replace them with Metro versions.

Internet Simplification

If you are unable to find any information on these new features on any other blog or news source, then Internet Simplification (IS) is enabled on your Windows computer.  This enhancement is being back-ported with each update to Microsoft software.  So although it’s new with Windows 8, it’s not exclusive to Windows 8.  The purpose of this application is to make the Internet easier to navigate by reducing the number of sites that have redundant information.

The Internet Simplification service leverages the search results from the Bing search engine and will redirect a web browser to the best (or first) source for the information being searched.  Since this blog post is the first source to discuss these new Windows features, it will be considered “authoritative” by IS, and will be redirected to, regardless of what search engine originally performed the search.  It’s also possible that this whole post is bullshit, but the IS service has been through a few revisions already, so the chances of a bullshit posting being flagged as authoritative by IS are pretty slim.