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Reboot & Graduation

Posted by on July 22, 2014 No comments

I saw an online forum post recently with a request on options for backing up photos.  The person had a recent scare where they thought they had lost their hard drive and all their photos and was looking for something more.

This thought led me to remember the loss of all of my email some time ago.  When was that? …wow, three years, almost to the day.  You know what?  I don’t miss it.  I mean, there may be some times that I think about it, but as a whole, I don’t need it.  That was a different person.

That made me think, what else don’t I need?  And what else could I and others be hanging on to that are really unneeded.  Things that could be keeping us in a rut, keeping us from reinventing ourselves, from really progressing.  As I’ve said before, these things are an anchor.

Wisdom comes with age, they say.  Not sure it’s wisdom, but I sure wish I had some of the thoughts  that I do now when I was younger.  Then again, maybe I was incapable of those thoughts.  Back when you’re young, you’re just struggling to get ahead in the world, and damn if that isn’t so much harder now then it used to be.  So any idea of me dropping everything and starting from scratch is a little biased.

I think I’d be better prepared for rebooting my life as a young person because I’d have the energy and drive and not a lot of baggage that comes with being an established adult.  But I would be missing all the knowledge of how to get ahead that I’ve gained in my years.  Things like business knowledge, common sense, handyman skills, social skills.  All these I wouldn’t have available back then.  Yeah, things seem easy now, but I’ve been doing it for a long time.  The only thing I lack is youth.

But how appealing that sounds.  Just to have a schedule of every three years, you sell everything, move somewhere new, ditch all your friends and start over.  You could take on a totally different personality, have totally different interests, and through making new friends, experience things that would be completely incompatible with your previous life.  In a sense, it would be like experiencing reincarnation within one lifetime, with the benefit of keeping the memories of your past lives.

Oddly, that has been a very strange recurring thought for me – what will my next life be like?  I think about the missteps I’ve made in my current life and what I have learned in this life that I hope I recognize early enough in my next life to really make a larger impact on the world.  A bigger impact than I can do here and now.

Could I completely start over right now?  Doubtful.  Although it’s a very appealing thought, I feel that I am laying groundwork for something bigger in the future.  Learning patience and tolerance.  Developing empathy and recognizing evil… not evil exactly, but getting a good read on people and their motivations.  Seeing how selfish motivations are fleeting while sacrifice and sharing give much greater results.  Nowhere is this moral exercise more on display than in modern politics. 

So, this life is simply a study session.  I feel like I’m in my Junior year, and just like traditional school, the Senior year is going to fly right by and then you get to graduate. 

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.

Revamped Office

Posted by on October 17, 2013 No comments

Welcome to my hell.  Actually, I mean, welcome to my productivity trap.

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Many years ago – 8 to be precise – I made the purchase, nay, the investment, in good office furniture.  I ordered from Staples’ business collection, the Bush Cubix series.  Not so long ago, I revisited that purchase and was utterly shocked that I had spent nearly $500 on two pieces of furniture: a 60” desk and a bookcase.

However, as time has proven, you get what you pay for.  This furniture has been excellent despite the fact that I’ve never taken care of it at all.  But all that is going to change soon.  As you can see, my workspace has become a storage space for everything.  It has no purpose, and when I sit down at it, I am uninspired and lost.

To begin this change, I spent another $500 on two more pieces from the Cubix collection: a 3-drawer storage unit and a stand for my printer and papers.  I can’t get the hutch and locker yet.  Someday…  But, this is going to get the stuff off my desk, giving me a clear view with less distractions.  Then once everything is off, I can clean the desk.  There are some chips in the finish from a very poor decision I made one night involving a clamp.  While bemoaning the fact that my clean desk was still going to be marred, I hit upon an idea that gave me hope and inspiration for the future of my home-office work.  That idea is the humble leather desk pad.

Ok, maybe it isn’t humble.  In a lot of ways it’s pompous, since it’s a executive thing, but it doesn’t have to be.  Look at the current state of my desk.  Look at how many things are sitting in front of me.  Now imagine a desk pad blocking all that junk.  The desk pad says, “No.  Not here.  This is not storage area, this is creative area.”  And that is where I am drawing my inspiration.  In the chaos that is my desk right now, the desk pad is going to be a sanctuary of openness.  Things enter that sanctuary to be worked on, then are retired to their homes.

Of course, the new furniture is the other part of it.  Right now, there is no home for everything on my desk.  Also, my files are in a box in the closet off to the side.  Because it’s such an annoyance to go to the closet and get the filing box, papers to be filed pile up in my “outbox” on the right side.

Not shown in the picture is my bookcase, which is stuffed full of junk.  Yes, there’s books in there, but there’s also spindles of DVDs, envelopes, paper, labels, a drawer organizer with all my office stuff in it, manuals, and some art.  Art that is crowded out where it doesn’t  even look like art, it looks like junk.  So with the addition of my new storage units, I can get the stationary stuff and DVDs out of there.  It will give more room for proper display.  It will probably kick off another round of downsizing, as I re-evaluate the things I haven’t touched in years.

Since I have at least a week to wait for the new furniture, I have plenty of time to dwell on this, make notes, research and consider different layouts, and write about it all.  My home office is also my studio, with a recently-reduced number of keyboards (2), and some guitars.  The picture shows the heavily-underutilized rack stand, acting as a printer and mixer stand, with a couple of drawers.  I have a couple of torch lamps in the corners that are probably ready to be retired.  I can replace them with LED sunlight lamps if needed.

The bottom line is, I need to visualize what I want.  And what is it that I want?  I don’t host guests in my office.  My original layout accommodated stepping between computer and keyboards when recording.  Maybe I need something like that again?

And then…

This is my new workspace.

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The desk is no longer against the wall, it is now in the center of the room.  One of the biggest things this relocation did for me is put the ceiling light directly over the desk.  Now I am not backlit while at the desk and my keyboard doesn’t suffer from being completely shadowed.

As mentioned, I now have a three desk storage unit to hold all my desk pieces and files.  I have a printer stand that has taken a lot of clutter off of my bookshelf.  My bookshelf is now in front of me, where I can put some more artful items.  Although the pictures don’t show it, I also have shelves on the wall.  I now have more shelf space than pieces to put on them.

And in the center of the desk is the desk pad.  I have used this just as I describe.  It is a clear space (except when the cat feels like being the center of attention).  I bring items into that space: bills, letters, computer parts, whatever.  I do the work and clear it out.  And as with my new tool kit, there is a place for everything.  I do have a junk drawer, which will need to be addressed, but that also means that everything in it needs to receive a designated place.

Has it helped my productivity?  I think it’s a little early to tell.  I am happy for all these changes, but honestly, it did not cause a huge change in motivation.  I think I’ve been going though a slight bout of depression, from which I am now recovering.  If that’s what it was, then it’s good I’m coming out of it into a more organized living area which will be receptive to creation.

The Tools of Efficiency

Posted by on October 14, 2013 No comments

Oh, wretched neglect. 

I pulled my motorcycle, Nile, out after yet another long period of ignoring.  The poor thing was covered in cobwebs and everything in the trunk was mildewed to death.  I might need to buy a new trunk, it’s so bad.

But you know what?  I have pulled Nile out on average only once every six months and she has never let me down.  It takes a bit to start, but the battery is never dead, she never fails to eventually start, and she rides as solid as I would expect.  Because I ride so little, I can never tell if she’s riding poorly or not.

But it’s now beginning to be riding season here, with the deadly heat, bugs, and monsoon rains going away.  Which means it might be time to begin considering spending money on something different.  The bike needs new turn signals.  The rubber stalks are dry-rotted to the core and are literally crumbling apart.  So, I purchased new turn signals.  That will probably end up with a blog page, with pictures of the whole process.  And then, I’ll do the front signals.

In order to change out the front signals, I’ll need to take the front fork apart.  That requires a 22mm socket, which I don’t have.  You know what that means… shopping!

So, long story short, a 22mm socket is $7 at Sears.  But, they had a 255-piece tool kit on clearance that included a 22mm socket for only $180.  The decision was pretty easy.  See, the last time I bought tools was probably about 15 years ago.  It was an entry-level Craftsman socket set.  That set served me very well for all those years, but taken as a whole, my tool collection was pretty poor.  The sockets were “organized” in ziplock bags, the wrenches were incomplete, random, china-made castoffs.  Despite having a massive two-level rolling toolbox, I didn’t have any way to organize my tools.

Now with this set, every piece has a molded place in a removable tray.  My wrench set is fully complete and my socket set is expanded.  The kit makes the task of replacing the motorcycle turn signals a breeze, knowing I have the exact tools I need right at hand.  I don’t have to fish around for the right sockets or wrenches (usually discovering that the size I need is not in my collection).  Most importantly, finishing up means returning each piece to its proper place.  This will make me more productive in the long run.  It’s the same premise I based my office redesign on. (future post spoiler)  And despite having more tools now, having a cohesive set makes it seem like it’s one unit, instead of sets of sockets, wrenches, and screwdrivers.

But, back to the bike.  I have changed out the rear signals and I have been riding more.  I did recently  get soaked to the bone on one ride home from work – just like the good ol’ days.  And I still can’t complain that Nile has been rock-solid for me.

Windows 8 Users, You Need To Do This.

Posted by on September 26, 2013 No comments

Windows 8 has been around for quite a while and there are still people that are pissed off, frustrated, and confused about it.  It’s all about the Start screen.  People don’t know what it’s about or how to use it.  My initial message to people was, “Get over it.  It’s the Start Menu, just in a different display format.”  Then when they still didn’t get it, it became, “Stop worrying about it, just start typing and search for the program you want.”  Now I have a new message: “Don’t be afraid.”

Here’s my Start screen at work.  It is not intimidating; it is not confusing; it is everything that I need to do my job and nothing more.  You can have this in three easy steps.

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Now, when I say, don’t be afraid, I mean it.  What you need to do is right-click the hell out of your icons and remove them from your Start screen.  What you want is only the programs you use on a daily basis.  You might be saddened to see how little you use your computer when you seem to have so much software installed on it.  Once you have done that, you will immediately feel less overwhelmed.  DO NOT BE AFRAID.  All of your icons and shortcuts are still searchable, findable, and re-add-able in the All Apps screen.  Trust me, when you have your Start screen finished, you’re going to be freaked out when you see everything behind the scenes.  And that was the old Start menu.

Now for step two, creating groups.  You see that I have five groups of icons, we’ll cover the naming of those groups in step three.  For right now, merge everything into one group, then start dragging icons out of the main group, when you see a highlighted column appear, you will be creating a new group when you drop the icon.  Think in terms of categories.  Don’t worry if your groups are out of order, we can rearrange whole groups in step three.  Originally my first two groups were combined, but there didn’t feel like there was enough whitespace, so I broke some icons out.  it changed my four-column group into 2 two-column groups, and it gave me a new “category”.

Now for the final step three.  Once you have your new, limited icons set up, move to the lower right of the screen where you see the “-“ minus/zoom out icon.  The Start screen will zoom out and you can work on your layout at the group level.  Right-click each group and choose Name Group, then give it a meaningful category name.  While your group is selected, you can drag it into a different position.  Click a blank area of the screen to zoom back in.

Now, take a deep breath and look at what you’ve created.  It’s a launchpad for your work.  Never mind all that hype about live tiles.  Maybe someday it will be worthwhile to hit the start button to get caught up on bunches of little details, then jump back out.  This is more about arranging your desk.

The very first thing you do when you install a new application is take all those new stupid icons off the Start screen.  That is, unless you want to keep the application’s primary shortcut – if it’s something you are going to use very frequently.  If you won’t, get rid of it and find it later via search.

Bank Breakups

Posted by on July 27, 2012 No comments

Now this requires comment: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/insight-banks-bristle-breakup-call-040505806.html.  In fact, I’ve hesitated from doing commentary type posts, but I figure I have some things to get out, so I’ve created a new post category for these.  I can move some of my prior posts into that category as well.

William Harrison, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co – "It gets back to management and risk-taking, and you can screw that up at a small bank or a large bank."

Correct.  But when you screw up at a large bank, your impact is magnified.  It’s also harder to do at a smaller bank because there are less hands involved and it’s harder to hide your actions.  Notice that the quote is not from a CEO of a small bank.

Robert Bostrom, general counsel of Freddie Mac from 2006 until last year – "The financial crisis was a 200-year event in the making that would have happened regardless of how big the banks were."

I can’t find any relevance to the 200-year figure pulled out of the air here.  The stock market began in 1792 and there was a crisis in 1817, but I suspect that Mr. Bostrom is implying that everything from the beginning of the US stock market contributed to the situation we are in now.  To say that this would have happened regardless of how big banks are is just insane logic.  What a cowardly display of denial of responsibility.

"People around the world, like me, for example, need the services of these big integrated investment banks," said the founder of a major private equity firm.

How many people are like you, Mr. Anonymous Private-equity-firm-founder?  How many banks are needed for your services?  No disconnect here.  It’s entirely possible his statement could have been, “I need the services of one integrated investment bank.”

Richard Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo – "There is this conventional wisdom that big is bad or risky.  I don’t think there is any evidence that that is the case. Banks fail mainly because of concentration of risk."

A fair statement.  You can be big and diversified.  But you will also be slow to react and burdened with an oversized expense structure.  But in complete agreement with the statement, banks do fail because of concentration of risk.  Why do they insist on doing so?  And if the bank was smaller, its impact on the economy as a whole would be lessened.

Bill Isaac, former chairman of the FDIC- "We need a good discussion about how these institutions might be simplified and much better regulated."

Ok.  The whole structure of corporations is flawed, and it’s interesting to note that Google has gone down this path and is destined for the same result.  One company that tries to do too much and cover too much area will collapse under its own weight.

As much as I hate war, there is something to be learned from it.  Multiple smaller units will outperform a single large unit provided they all share the same vision and battle plan.  As you conquer more area, your supply line increases and slows response and adds vulnerability.

As much as I am involved with software development, there is much to be learned there as well.  If you develop a large application, it becomes harder to change over time due to internal and external dependencies.  Larger applications operate slower because they consume more resources.  Well-designed applications can fail in one section without affecting the whole.

You want a good example?  TD Ameritrade created TD Bank.  They can have all the brand identity, cross-promotion and integration they want, but they are separate entities.  You want a good non-financial candidate?  Microsoft should create Microsoft Hardware and separate the hardware design/manufacture from the software development.  Big companies like to tout that their many departments shield them from losses when one department suffers.  There’s nothing that should stop one company from investing in another partner company, but when they lack that separation, the company as a whole must suffer for the failures of the one department.

It seems everyone on the outside knows what needs to be done, but no one is willing to take the first step.  Everyone on the inside is blinded by the alternate reality.

Revaluation

Posted by on May 28, 2012 No comments

If you want a good opportunity to re-evaluate your life, help someone pack and move. Notice the amount of time you are spending taking care of stuff. Notice the moments of "oh, I forgot about that!" Notice how some things are carefully put into storage and some things are carelessly grouped together in meaningless piles.

Look for the redundancies and duplication. Look for the obsolescence and uselessness. Count the boxes and estimate when each would be opened, if ever.

It’s pretty simple. Do you really need 50 glasses and cups? Do you expect to serve 16 people with all those plates? What about the manuals for the phones you don’t even own anymore? Did you check, or did you just toss the stack of manuals in a box?

Moving should be a opportunity to do a full review and inventory, but many people, I suspect, simply see it as an event involving moving everything from one location to another.  It’s no secret, I have given up on “stuff”.  I just feel that my beliefs have been strengthened and that maybe another round of downsizing should be in my future.

If I ever had to move, how many people would it take to move my stuff?  As I look around, I feel a little disappointed.  It’s too much.

Weight Loss

Posted by on July 18, 2011 No comments

A couple of posts ago, I talked about becoming independent as a person and a computer.  Then I talked about being weighed down with historical data.  So, in the process of migrating my data off the server and to my workstation, I’ve managed to accidently and permanently lose a lot of weight.  Specifically, it was my PST file from Outlook.

So how does it feel to wipe out years worth of emails, contacts, and appointments – past, present, and future?  How does it feel to have backups going back to a couple of days after the date you need one?  Should I be happy about this loss of history coinciding with starting a new life?

And the Undelete software is running a deep scan.  Nothing found on the quick scan.  It seems the file is gone for good.  Even if it did get found in the deep scan, the chance of a 15GB file being fully uncorrupted, and with PST files being notoriously impossible to recover once corrupted, my chances of success are close to nil.

This is my chance to start fresh.  I had folders nested within folders, probably a hundred in total.  All of my online activity, like registrations with websites, bill pay records, receipts, personal emails, business emails – all of this stored in that one file.  But now, I’m going to start with Inbox and Sent Items.  I can recover some contact info from Windows Live to jump start my contacts, but the rest must rest in peace.

Digital Weight

Posted by on July 3, 2011 No comments

To get right to the point, I’ve been a computer user for a very long time.  I have a lot of digital files.  First, it started out as backups to floppy disks.  Then CDRs became practical, so I merged everything up to CDR.  Then DVDRs became practical, So I merged everything up to DVD. Now hard drives are practical, so I put everything on a network hard drive.  In many cases, I still have the old DVD disks and in some cases the CDRs.

So a couple of weeks ago, my network drive started experiencing the click of death, so now I’ve purchased a RAID1 NAS box with 2 1TB drives.  So I copied all my files to my local computer and figured I ‘d get things sorted out before moving them off to the NAS.  I am finding myself overwhelmed by the volume of data I have collected over 20 years.  Some is personal, some is business from each of my jobs in those years.  Email archives, chat logs, games, documents, zip files with other zip files in them, and more and more.  And in spite of my whining, it’s still less than 500GB, a pittance even compared to some people’s music collections.

Probably 97% of all of that stuff is useless.  Either outdated, duplicated, or irrelevant.  However, even though I understand this, I am reluctant to delete it.  Yeah, I can probably delete the install file for Winzip 95, but the copy of my resume from 1995, although useless, is still a curiosity.  There is no practical reason to have any of this stuff.  The only possible usage of such things would be to have the ability to say “Oh yeah, you should see my resume from 1995!”  Or you could bore the younger generation with stories of how things used to be, showing them 256-color GIF images in 640×480 and say how awesome that was at the time.

Even my saved work is useless.  Those coding styles are long gone, there’s no reusable code there.  The emails are useless, those people have moved on to some other email address years ago.  My pictures, music and writing still has some personal value, since it’s only me that cares about it.  And that’s kind of what it comes down to.  Who cares?  Who is going to contact me and ask “Remember that thing we emailed about back in 2004?  What was that company name?”

All of this stuff is weighing me down.  It’s like having to maintain a library (or a cemetery) all on your own.  I just spent $250 to preserve this digital flotsam and keep it safe.  I’ve been in the process of trimming down some obviously useless material, but now am stumped over how to reconcile years’ worth of file versions.  I think my plan at this point is to make ISO images of the original DVDs/CDRs.  this way, I still have everything, but it appears smaller.

Digital pieces are definitely more manageable than physical memorabilia.  In fact, I’ve been planning the purchase of a scanner to lighten my load of photos, making more digital weight, but reducing my footprint.  Again, with the downsizing…