As I sat down to do this review of 2014, I went back and reviewed my goals. I knew that I wasn’t really working towards them, and we’ll get into the reason why in a minute. But to say that nothing really got done in 2014 would be a mostly true statement. At least from the perspective of personal goals. And will henceforth be referred to as “the lost year.”

So what happened in 2014 you ask? My wife decided to divorce me. She found someone else she would rather be with (trust me, I’m the better man here) and left me. Destroyed our family, made dealing with our special needs son more difficult, and refused to talk  about or work on the marriage. Between dealing with the emotional and mental fallout from that, there just wasn’t enough energy to do the things I had planned on doing in 2014. I gave no technical talks, did zero CodeCasts, and didn’t finish my book. What this means is that all of my goals for 2014 will be moved to 2015.

The only thing that got done was music got written for my band’s newest record. Between me writing music like crazy and my singer/lyricist’s ability to write lyrics at neck breaking speeds, we got most of a new album written and even had some left over for a new EP that’ll see the light of day in early 2015. This was the outlet I chose for dealing with my issues. It was quite a healthy outlet and let me work through some of the stuff in my head and in my heart.

Lets look at what was suppose to get done in 2014 and will now get accomplished in 2015.

Weight Loss

I’m mostly finished with getting to where I want to be weight and body wise. I did manage in 2014 to get down to around 165 pounds but then put went back up to 175. Also got my body fat percentage down to 19% but it’s now back up around 23%. My goal in 2014 was to get my body fat percentage down to 15%. This will be the goal in 2015. I’lll look at accomplishing this by really getting serious about my exercising. I’ll get back to walking and running almost daily, and hitting the gym to lift weights following a routine, sticking to it. We’ll also attempt to eat less fast food, and expand the meals I eat at home sticking to leaner meats and better snacks.

CodeCasts.tv Episodes

One of the things I wanted to do in 2014 was get CodeCasts.tv back up and running on some kind of at least semi-regular schedule. I’d like to see me getting a new episode out every week, but will settle for every other week if that’s what it takes. It may start out every other week and move to every week as I get more episodes completed and waiting for release. Some topics I have to look at covering are: Metaprogramming Ruby, Bash, Various Unix tools (grep, ack, sed, etc), test driven development, and maybe some VIM related episodes.

Writing

First and foremost, I’ll finish my book “Ship It!” in the first quarter of 2015. For me “Finished” means it’s purchasable on Amazon as that was the original goal. My good friend (who’s also a self published author) finished the initial round of potential edits earlier this year but given all the other things I was trying to deal with, it just fell to side.

Also, for 2015 I will attempt to write a fictional short story of Amazon Kindle Single length (5,000 to 30,000 words) and release that as well. I have a character that I’d like to explore and a short story seems like a perfect way to begin doing that. It’s a bang for buck scenario where I can start to write stories in a fictional universe while working towards a goal of a full fledged book for the character down the line.

Music

While my band has been hitting it out of the park (believe me, you’ll love what we put out here soon), I haven’t worked on my personal music and songwriting since before I got married. This is an area I’ve long wanted to improve in and since I have time again I’m going to put some effort into. My goal is to release a 5 song EP by the end of the year, at a minimum. A full length album would be a nice stretch goal, but definitely want to get the EP done and released. And by “released” I mean at a minimum it can be purchased via Bandcamp.com. I will do my personal best to record all the instruments, using helpful software instruments where ever possible.

Some of these goals I’ve already started to work on. I usually transition from working on the current year’s goals to the next year’s in December. Given that most of these goals are being carried over from last year, it’s easy to start working on them now. Keep your eyes and ears open, I’m hoping to bring lots of goodness your way in 2015.

As of right now, I’m seeking employment. I’d like to stay in the Ruby on Rails world, but I’d be willing to entertain Javascript positions with Ruby on Rails back ends, since Javascript seems to be popular (and important) these days and it’s something I need to become better at. I’ve got almost four years of Ruby on Rails experience building my own web applications and helping my employer and friends build theirs. It has to be a full time, salaried job, with benefits (good or great medical coverage is a must due to my son’s medical issues), and I’m looking to take on a telecommuting (remote working) position. No more 2 hours worth of commuting every single day. I know that all may be asking much, but I know I’m good enough to make it work.

A little about me: I’m a software developer with 10 years experience, primarily in C# and Ruby on Rails, but I’ve done work in the past in Java, Python, and Objective-C though I wouldn’t claim to be “good” at those. I have worked in both Windows and Unix like environments and have server administration in both. I’m a huge proponent of open source technologies. I’m a quick study on new languages, especially when surrounded by others who are extremely familiar with the language. I work on “make it work, then optimize it” philosophy because, I believe, if you can’t make it work you’ll never understand how to fully optimize it. I’m also a fantastic communicator, I’ve written a book, scripted and recorded screencasts, been on a radio show, and given many a tech related talk.

I’m writing this blog post mostly as a way to inform my colleagues and friends that I’m looking for work. I know a lot of people who do what I do, so I’m sure someone I know has job leads of some kind. Also, it’ll allow me to link to my current resume for anyone that might think I’d be a fit at their company.

Download my latest resume.

Things change, and sometimes we have to roll with those changes. This is me, doing that.

First lets cover the tools I’ve used to help me be successful, and then I will tell you how I used each of them achieve this weight loss.

• Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto (affiliate link) – A fantastic book that explains more than just how to lose weight but how to build muscle and burn fat. It goes into the science without being hard to understand and spends a good deal on the why before getting into the specifics of how.
• Fitbit One (affiliate link) – A fitness tracker device with wireless syncing to computers and some of the more popular smartphones (iPhones & several Android devices). Tracks steps, mileage, floors climbed, activity level, and most importantly, calories burned. The Fitbit website also allows you to track your food and syncs with services such as MyFitnessPal, allowing you to track not only the burned calories but your intake as well.
• Fitbit Aria Scale (affiliate link) – I didn’t purchase this until over 2 months into my weight loss journey, but afterwards I regretted not doing so. It tracks your weight and your body fat percentage. Knowing your body fat percentage is important in understanding your overall health level as it ties into your BMI number which is what doctors use to determine if your obese or not.
• MyFitnessPal – Tracks food and fitness activities. Requires manual input but their food database beats out the one on Fitbit’s website considerably. I use it to track food only.
• Runkeeper – Smartphone app (iPhone and Android) that tracks several types of fitness activities using GPS. Easy to use and easy to see a log of your activities.
• Gorilla Workout – Another smartphone application used for daily body weight workouts. Contains 4 levels for those with different fitness abilities and has around 30 “workout of the day” (WOD) for each level.

That’s it. That’s all the things I used. And here’s how it looks in graph form:

Now lets get into the specifics.

Firstly, I purchased a Fitbit One, at the time Fitbit didn’t make an armband like they do now (the Force and the Flex, also affiliate links). Once I had this, I clipped it on and got a feel for how it worked, soon after that I started entering my food into the Fitbit website. Just doing these two things helped me get a fantastic understanding of how much junk I was putting into my body and how inactive I was as a whole. There was nothing more eye opening than seeing, daily, how many calories I was burning versus how many I was taking in. Activity burns calories and seeing how inactive I was showed me how much extra calories I was taking in. This encouraged me to start taking walks during the day.

I started taking one walk a day. And I thought this was good. They weren’t long walks, and they didn’t take me very far. At least not at first. But eventually I saw the activity number go up and started seeing the number of burned calories go up as well. Then I added some of my colleagues to Fitbit so I could see their steps, and that’s when I was hit with a big realization.

I wasn’t doing enough. Not even a little bit.

I at the time I was averaging maybe 5,000 steps a day. My friends were more in the 10,000 to 12,000 range. Big eye opener. Also, I don’t like being in last place so I started adding a second walk every day. Eventually working my way up to the default Fitbit goal of 10,000 daily steps.

I also started watching what I eat. Not necessarily cutting the junk food, but watching how much of it I took in. I started reading nutrition labels to see calorie and carb counts. I wasn’t cutting carbs, I was trying to reduce and increase my protein intake (in the book, you learn that protein helps you build muscle which helps burn fat). At this point I started seriously logging my food (initially with the Fitbit website, eventually moving to using MyFitnessPal). This allowed me see how many calories I was burning versus eating. So, I pledged to always burn more calories than I ate. It didn’t matter if I burned 50 more calories or 500 as long as I burned more than I took in. The only way to burn fat is to ensure that your body uses the fat stored on you instead of the energy you take in with food, burning more calories than you take in helps this.

A funny thing happened as I did all this. My body eventually started telling me it wanted to run instead of walk. I didn’t start running seriously until almost 2 months after I started walking two to three times a day. Once I started running I noticed that my average paces were better than when I had tried to just start running the past. I also felt better and didn’t feel as much pain from the runs because I had built up to running rather than just going out there and running. I’ve also stuck with it far longer than I had in the past.

My daily goals had be these:

1. Burn more calories than I take in, and do that by…
2. Control the number of calories going in, meaning eat smaller meals. Don’t super size the fast food, eat a sandwich at the office instead of going out, and snack better
3. Be more active, hit the step goal, do extra activity to better ensure we achieve goal 1

This was (and still is) my “fitness philosophy” for the first 4 months or so. Once I got under 200 pounds, I added muscle building exercises to my routine. I experimented with a few things before landing on the Gorilla Workout app. It took some time, but eventually I finished level one. The reason I did this is because building muscle helps burn fat, and in case you haven’t figure it out yet, this was my primary goal. Sure I want to see the weight number go down, but I also wanted to become more fit and that is not done with weight loss alone. But I didn’t want to do too much at once, so I built up to doing things. There was a natural progression of:

• Track base food intake and base activity level
• Do one walk a day
• Do two walks a day
• Start running
• Start doing muscle building

I didn’t do all of this at once, I started simple and added things as I got into a nice routine. This allowed me to stick with things longer than I ever had before and stay (mostly) on track. With the addition of the Gorilla Workout something else started to happen. My weight loss slowed a bit but my body fat percentage went down as I replaced the weight from fat with the weight from muscle (which is a much healthier way of having a heavier weight).

Like “Burn the Fat…” says, whenever you start working towards being healthier and more fit, you do eventually hit a plateau. Unfortunately, I’m in one right now. I’ve been hovering around 178 mark for a couple of months now, but I also haven’t been doing as much exercising. I’m still running almost daily but I’ve put off the strength building and being crazy about what I eat. I’m still burning more calories than I take in most days but it’s not in the 300-700 range I was doing when I was on a hot streak.

While I’m unhappy that I’ve been in a rut lately, I’m not being a downer about it either. I’ve lost 42 pounds, I did it it without drastic changes to what I eat, and I’m much healthier now than I was at this time last year. And that’s a huge win. No, I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m so much closer than I was when I started that it hasen’t seemed impossible for a long time now. My plan is to eventually get back on track and lose the last 20 pounds and get my body fat percentage where I want it. And if I do one before the other I’m still going to consider it a huge win. I’ll keep going until I’m done.

If you’ve been looking to lose weight, I highly recommend starting small. You will definitely need to track your food intake and the amount of calories you burn. You’re going to have to exercise (at least a little), but if you can get your diet in check, that’s 3/4 of the battle. You can do it. I did. You just have to start small. Begin with setting small goals and build on those achievements. Start with losing five pounds, then work on the next 5. Repeat until you’ve met your goal. Build up to running, don’t just go out there and start running. Walk first. Don’t try to do all these different things. Make small changes and once you’ve established a change as routine, add another small change. Even the tiniest progressions are still progress.

Get out there. Do it.

I now wish to remedy this problem. Not only to be able to bring more to these discussions I enjoy having, but I think that better understanding various topics would improve myself overall. There are lots of things I wish I understood better, and not all of them fall into the realm of political discussions. There are aspects of science I would love to be better versed in. I’d love to understand things like mechanics, electronics, and other forms of engineering better. But these topics take time to digest. You have to read, comprehend, ponder on, and eventually regurgitate the information. So I’ve come up with a plan to help me with this and I’m writing this post as both a way to tell others so they can help keep me on track, and to allow others to join in on the “fun” because I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like a better understanding in some of the topics I plan on learning.

This the plan.

Pick a subject for the year. For example, I’m picking economics for 2014. I will then find 12 books on that subject that should give me a decent understanding of various points of views, theories, and thoughts on the chosen subject. I will then spend each month of the year reading each book. The goal is to finish each book within the specified month. Again, for example, I’ll be re-reading “Wealth of Nations” in January of 2014. In February, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”
by John Maynard Keynes. And this will continue throughout the year. While the goal is to finish each book, there’s a good chance I might not be able to read the entire book within the allotted month, should this happen, depending on how much of the book is left to read, I’ll either finish it or just move onto the next book. The idea is to grasp a decent understanding of the concepts and ideas presented in each book, not become an expert on them. In January of the following year (2015), I will then attempt to write my understanding of the various thoughts, ideas, and theories down in my own words. This is will be the proof that I at least understood the basics of what I read.

I understand that doing this isn’t going to make me an expert in the chosen subject of study but I’m almost certain to walk away with a better understanding of it by the end of the year and that’s my goal.

I then plan to do a completely different subject each year. Some possible topics I’m considering are philosophy, US constitutional law, physics, and world history.

If you’re interested in joining me on this, leave a comment, I may work on creating an online community for those of us who are interested in doing this.

There’s been a lot of talk about “women in technology” lately. Most of it is centered around the discussion that there are not enough women working in technology, specifically as developers. There are miles upon miles of prose about how programming is a “boy’s club” and that we’re “sexist” or a million other insulting things about male developers. Some posts even get flat out offensive about this.

I’m not saying that these complaints and opinions aren’t completely valid. Sure, the profession has it share of idiots just like all the other professions out there. But we only seem to hear about these cases. We never hear big deals being made about men mentoring at events like Rails Girls, an event specifically about getting more women interested in programming. Or about the conference planners who actively attempt to balance out the rosters with female speakers. You don’t hear about this stuff simply because it isn’t part of the angry side of agenda.

But here’s the thing that bothers me most. When people talk about this topic, it’s usually about how there aren’t enough women in leadership positions or that a conference is being boycotted because they didn’t line up “enough” female speakers. While valid points, I have to ask, are we solving the problem or the symptom?

Sure we can have the discussion about how there aren’t enough women programmers, the next big conference doesn’t have enough female speakers, and how some jerk at the last conference made a sexist comment or had a near naked lady in his slide deck. These are things that need to be talked about. But I think to specifically pick a woman for a job position or a speaker at a conference simply because they’re a women is the exact opposite of fixing the problem. In fact, one could argue that to do so is still sexist.

But no one seems to ask why things are the way they are. Is the actual problem deeper than simply “we need to hire more women programmers” or “we need to make sure our speaker gender ratio is close to equal”? Aren’t those really just fixing the symptom rather than the problem? Because what if no women are applying for the job? Is the company suppose to sit on the opening until a woman applies? What if there aren’t any women sending in talk proposals to the conference organizers? What if the topics women are submitting aren’t as interesting as the ones a guy is proposing? Is it the conference organizers job to pick a woman’s talk simply because it’s given by a woman or to pick and organize the most interesting talks among those submitted, regardless of the speaker’s gender?

Why are there not more women getting into programming at a younger age? What problems are they facing when they’re younger that seems to discourage them from pursuing software development as a career path? This, to me, seems to be the more important problem to solve. More specifically, it’s the actual problem to solve. Don’t we need to find out what is causing younger women to not choose technology or programming as a hobby? At what age are we losing them? Are we even losing them? Did we even have them to begin with?

Would there be benefit in local user groups hosting something like Rails Girls for younger girls (think junior high and high school age)? Should we, as software developers be working with the local schools to give these girls the opportunity to work with computers and really see how much fun writing code can be? Can we offer special classes to the Girl Scout troops in our local area? What about something like “Maker Girls”, a Maker Fair but targeted specifically at females?

I agree that there aren’t enough women working in the technology field today. But I think to say that companies aren’t hiring enough women or that conference organizers aren’t picking enough women speakers isn’t really tackling the actual problem, which is more about numbers than women not being picked (while I’m sure there’s some of the latter I don’t really feel it’s the bigger problem). Put another way, there aren’t enough women in the field to be hired into top positions and there aren’t enough females submitting talks to conference to better balance the gender ratio because women aren’t picking this as a hobby or career path.

Getting the root of the problem about why the numbers are skewed, to me, is what we should be focusing on. Getting females interested in the field at a younger age by showing them this isn’t “just for boys” may go a long way in solving the problem rather than just attacking the symptoms.

I want to focus on the “aiding the enemy” part because even though he was not found guilty of doing so, it raises some very important questions about who the “enemy” is that I predict will play a much larger role when the United States government does finally get their hands on Edward Snowden.

What does “aiding the enemy” mean? Since we have no idea what the government means by that statement (as they can change it at their whim), I’m going to assume they mean helping terrorist groups and countries doing things we don’t approve of (like say, Iran or North Korea).

But, what if they charge Snowden with this? All he did was inform the American people (and people of other nations) that he United States government was spying on them and that the major technology corporations were in on it. I want to state this part again: He informed the American people. Meaning that charging Edward Snowden with “aiding the enemy” would make “We the People” into “the enemy” and that is a very scary thought.

If the American people are “the enemy” according to their own government, then we may be in a downward spiral that we may never come back from. This is something that transcends political affiliations. Regardless if you’re “right” or “left” this is something that you should not only think on, but be concerned about. If you’re the enemy, then we live in tyranny and all the actions of the Revolutionary War were in vain. We will have become that which our founding fathers rallied against.

With something like iCloud, I don’t have to worry about disk space locally. I can just save things to the cloud. If I get a new computer, my files are still instantly available to me because they’re saved somewhere other than the computer I created them on. This is immensely powerful. Yes, I know it has some disadvantages but stick with me on this.

Both Apple and Google are working to create a world where local storage is irrelevant. Apple has iCloud and Google is slowly moving things to Google Drive. The new Chromebook Pixel comes with 3 years of 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage for storing your data. And the Chromebooks all work on the basis of storing data in the cloud rather than on the local hard drive. Apple in recent updates have introduced a nice set of APIs for iCloud. Allowing developers to let their applications save to the cloud rather than the hard drive. Basically going a similar route as Google. We are heading into a world where disks are no longer the center of our day to day storage needs. It all goes to the cloud and it’s there regardless of the computer we’re on. Imagine when it gets to a point where all our daily storage is done in the cloud. Your computer boots into an operating system and and all your files are in the cloud, you only store what you need locally when you know you’re going to be offline for a while (like say, taking a flight).

Sure this has some downsides. One you’re going to have to choose who you want to be in charge of that storage and at the moment there’s very little hope that you can do some this in a cross platform way. In other words, there’s very little hope I’ll be able to access my iCloud files on a Windows machine. Things like Google Drive, Dropbox, and even Ubuntu One are trying but there’s little hope and using these backends as a completely connected file system. If systems gave you the option to choose your connected filesystem that would be great, but there would need to be a standard so that all these things worked in standard way. For the moment though, we’d have to pick a silo.

I imagine that someone is going to move their systems into this space within the next 3 to 5 years. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet on Google as they’re already most of the way there with their Chromebooks. However, Apple isn’t going to be far behind on this, iCloud isn’t perfect yet, but I imagine they will get the kinks out over the next few years and in five years it’s going to be what I’ve described above. Your hardware boots an OS and the file system is 90% cloud based.

“We need federal gun control laws because gun control laws done by a state don’t matter because people can just go to another state to get guns.”

You hear this a lot when people point out that states Washington D.C. or cities like Chicago, IL have strict gun laws yet very high crime rates. The logic is that the strict gun laws don’t work because the surrounding areas have lax gun laws and that’s where people are getting the guns and it’s because of this that these places with strict gun control still have such high crime rates.

This logic is flawed.

Why is this logic flawed? The crux of this thought process is that it is guns that are the problem. Guns that are restricted by a state or city are still attainable and brought into the areas where the guns are less restricted. Lets use Chicago as an example. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws of any city in the United States. While you can own a gun in Chicago, the ability to do so is blocked by forms and red tape. The surrounding states all have some variation of laws allowing concealed or open carry, meaning their gun laws are less restrictive than that of Chicago.

Below is a chart comparing the various kinds of crime in Chicago to those of the surrounding states.

Chicago data was supplied by the FBI crime statistics by metropolitan area, while the surrounding states were provided from Disaster Center. All numbers are from 2011. The reason for the split data is that the Disaster Center (which uses the same reports the FBI uses), doesn’t have a break down by city. The Chicago numbers are for Chicago-Joilet-Naperville, IL which includes Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendal, McHenry, and Will counties.

What we see here is that a states with less gun restrictions have lower rates across the  board than those of a single city with the strictest of gun laws. This is the point at which a gun control advocate would say “well of course because people go to those other states to buy guns.”

If guns were the actual problem, wouldn’t those states with less restrictive gun laws have higher rates than a single city? Could it possibly be something else that’s the problem for all the violence in Chicago, and not guns? Even the state of Illinois has a lower overall murder rate than Chicago (other cities in Illinois have less restrictive gun laws than those of Chicago, but this changes soon due to some recent laws that passed in Illinois state legislation).

I argue that less restrictive gun laws do not lead to more violent crime. If I look at these numbers, it certainly doesn’t help anyone trying to make that case. If you’d like another example you can look at Washington D.C. and compare it to the surrounding states that have less restrictive gun laws. You’ll see a similar pattern.

Maybe it isn’t the guns that are the problem.

This is not in anyway a slight on Site5. Their service has been fantastic over the years. But all I really do is host a few blogs and I can do that for less money and without a lot of the overhead that comes with having your own servers. Seriously, if you need your own hosting solution, Site5 is a great resource and you should check them out.

I moved everything to WordPress.com for a couple of reasons, one was financial, the other is security. WordPress.com keeps their system updated with the latest version of WordPress and it doesn’t require any intervention from me for these things to happen.

First, An Education

Before we go too much further, I feel that you need to watch this video because it actually explains the difference between what an actual military assault rifle is versus is what is currently sold to the public that many on the side of gun control label as “assault rifle” (they’re two very different things).

Also, I need you to understand what the phrase “semi-automatic” means versus what the media wants you to think it means. A gun is considered to be “semi-automatic” when trigger has to be pulled for each round to be fired. In other words, the gun can only be fired as fast as you pull the trigger. Granted, you can pull the trigger very fast, but you do so at the cost of accuracy (unless you have lots of practice). A lot of handguns fall into the category of “semi-automatic”. What the media and gun control proponents want you to think when they say “semi-automatic” is “fully automatic” in that you pull and hold the trigger, the gun will fire until you release the trigger or it runs out of bullets. A semi-automatic weapon doesn’t work that way, it only fires a single round for each time the trigger is pulled. In fact most handguns sold today are semi-automatic.

Rifles sold to civilians are semi-automatic, the trigger has to be pulled for each round you want fired. Turning these guns into fully automatic weapons, while possible, is very illegal. It’s also illegal to sell the parts to do so to a civilian.

You Don’t Need a Gun Like That

You’re right. No one needs a gun like that. However, in today’s society we all have, buy, and want things we don’t need. There are several kinds of cars out there. There are many variations on alcohol. We don’t really need all the different kinds of cars or alcohol but we have them. In fact, at one point in our history we attempted to ban alcohol. That didn’t turn out so well did it? I digress, lets move on.

For the purposes of this argument, we’re going to ignore the fact that in the United States we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. You can argue all you want about the meaning of the second amendment, but the Supreme Court has ruled the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right on numerous occasions, including the more recent D.C. versus Heller case which shot down the capital’s ban on guns. Again, I’m digressing.

Since gun owners don’t need an AR-15, then I propose that we ban other things we as a society don’t need. I propose we start with cars.

We don’t really need cars that go over 35 miles per hour, so all new cars need to be built to not exceed this speed limit. Also, we don’t need cars of various sizes and colors. You can have a car or a truck. Both will only come in black, they will all be the same size, and they will all have four doors. There will be one size for trucks and one size for cars. They will all come with cloth seats as you don’t need leather seats. They will have AM/FM radios only and will contain bluetooth for hands free phone operation. You don’t need a CD player or Mp3 player. You will not be allowed to modify your car with different tires, all tires will be the same kind of tire. We don’t really need big tires, therefore they are now banned.

Why will your new car only do 35 miles per hour? All speed limits will be lowered to 35 miles per hour, that way we don’t need to reduce speed limits for neighborhoods. We’ll all have one speed we drive. You don’t need to go faster than that.

Don’t like the car analogy okay, we’ll move onto alcohol.

We don’t really need a few hundred varieties of beer and liquor. We want it. We even like having a range of choices. We don’t need them though. Alcohol causes as many if not more problems than guns. It destroys families, can cause depression, leads to thousands of deaths via drunk driving. Some have even called alcohol a “social disease.” So, I propose we limit the kind of beer available. You only really need Budweiser. It’s a beer. You don’t need the many varieties on beer.

Now that we only serve Budweiser for beer. We have a beer. You don’t need a light beer, a beer energy drink, or even beers with added flavors. We don’t need ales, wine coolers, and so on, so we can just ban all those. Remember you don’t need them.

But Guns Are Made To Kill

By now, some are saying “yea, but guns are only made to kill things” and why they think this is a argument is beyond me. I own three guns and I’ve shot several more. Want to take a guess at how many people I’ve killed when shooting my guns? Here’s a hint, it is less than one. Yep, that’s right. My guns which “are made to kill” have killed zero humans (and zero animals for that matter too). Now, ask me how many paper targets I have put holes through, or how many clay pigeons I’ve killed. That number is going to be a lot higher.

Alcohol’s sole purpose is to inebriate. It’s not meant to be refreshing, in fact it’ll make you more thirsty. So one could argue that since alcohol’s sole purpose is to inebriate, that the makers of the substance are, in fact, encouraging people to be inebriated. While inebriated, people tend to do stupid things since their judgement is impaired resulting in injuries or even death to themselves and possible others.

You can own guns and never take the life of a single living thing. Yes, guns making killing things easier, but that’s not their only purpose. People like shooting guns. They like shooting a variety of guns like a car guy likes driving different kinds of cars or a home brewer likes to make and drink different kinds of beers.

Saying you want to ban a gun because of how it looks, operates, or whatever stating “you don’t need a gun like that” as your reasoning is just as ignorant as me saying we should ban all other forms of cars and beer because you don’t really need more than one type of beer or one type of car.

I can understand some people don’t like guns. That’s fine. I’m not really a fan of beer. But I’m not trying to ban your beer, so please stop trying to ban my guns.

A new year is about to begin, so it seems appropriate to reflect on the previous one. The 2012 year started with the family in Nebraska so my son could receive some specialized medical care. We had been there since early December 2011. It was a long month.

For 2012 I had set some goals. They included losing some weight, launching a couple of mobile apps, and reading more books from the “The List.”

On the losing weight front, I didn’t really get very far until the last month or so, but once I concentrated on it, the weight started to come off. You can find more details on all of this in my post about the Fitbit.

My plan for launching mobile apps was also kind of a bust. There are a few reasons for this though. While I didn’t launch any mobile apps, I did launch CodeCasts.tv, Jotting Journal, and I helped a friend launch a thing he was working on. Jotting Journal is something I’m particularly proud of as it went from it’s first lines of code to launching in 30 days, which I think is an amazing turn around.

For CodeCasts.tv, I did launch it, managed to stay ahead of myself, then we had a small home accident that involved my office and CodeCasts.tv kind of fell to the side. I’ve scripted out the final 2 episodes for the current series on Git, and once I get them recorded and uploaded, I will make all the Git videos available in one go. Then I have to decide if I want to try and continue the weekly releases or just release things as I get them done. I like the idea of consistency but I know that I won’t always be able to meet the deadlines. If you have some thoughts on where CodeCasts.tv should go as far as the release cycle is concerned, let me know in the comments.

So no mobile apps this year, but Jotting Journal mobile apps are in the works for release some time next year. It’s actually my primary technology related goal for 2013 and something I won’t skimp on because I’m really excited to get it done to better Jotting Journal’s market position.

On the subject of books, I read a lot last year. I managed to beat my goal of 2 books a month. I hit my goal of the number of “list books” I wanted to read. A large number of the books I read this year were from the “Dresden Files” series. Those books were a whole lot of fun, and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a solid bit of fun reading. I could have probably read more list books, but instead I decided to do a Bible reading plan that allowed me to get through the Bible within the year. Since I gave it precedence I managed to finish the entire Bible in less than a year. I’m happy with the trade off. I hope to add more “list books” to my “have read” list in 2013.

So 2012 had some dropping the ball, dropping it and then picking it up in another place, and hitting a home run. You’re not going to meet all the goals you set for yourself, but any progress is still progress. Remember:

“‘Dead last’ is greater than ‘Did not finish’ which trumps ‘Did not start.'”

One day while perusing Google+, I ran across a blog article written by Louis Gray about the Fitbit. The article talked about how he got the Fitbit tracker and their wifi scale, then proceeded to step and stair his way to a lower weight. Seeing the some of the graphs that you can see on the Fitbit website sold me on the device, but Fitbit was getting ready to release an updated tracker. So I waited.

In mid-November I finally ordered myself a new Fitbit One tracker. I clipped it to my jeans and started tracking my steps and floors climbed. I didn’t really do much more than that first couple of weeks. I kind of, in a non-strict way, would log my food into the Fitbit website, but I wasn’t religious about it. Immediately I started noticing trends. First I noticed that I was really not all that active. Sure, I knew this, but seeing it right in front me, in numbers, with no real way to shrug it off was disheartening. One could even say it was a little depressing. Secondly, even with me not religiously logging my food I noticed that I had horrible eating habits. High carbs, high sodium, very little protein. Basically the worse kind of diet that could exist. The reality hit pretty hard. But it put the reality right in front of my face. There was no hiding it anymore. I had to make changes. Good thing was, with this new data in front of me, I knew where I could start.

I decided on accomplishing two things to start with. Since the Fitbit helps keep track of how many calories I burn, and I could log how many I take in, I decided that my first step should be to create healthy calorie deficits. I needed to start burning more than I took in. I needed to be doing this daily. I decided that I wouldn’t care if I took in 20 calories less or 500 calories less than I burned for a day, as long as the number of calories burned was more than the calories taken in. I’m doing this in a number of ways. The first is through portion control. Instead of getting the large fries and big burger, I get the junior burger and the small fries. Yes, it’s still greasy food, but it’s less of it, meaning less calories. The second step was when I could control what I ate, I’d eat better food. Yep, I have to start looking at labels. Another thing was to increase my overall protein intake. The solution to this was protein shakes using Syntha-6 protein powder (not weight gain powder, just protein). Add a couple of these a day to bring the total number of meals up to 4 or 5, while ensuring calorie deficits, and I’ve started to see an improvement in my food numbers. Better mix of carbs, fat, and protein.

The second thing I needed to do was to get more active. I’ve found that this is a little easier said than done. With that in mind I decided to start small. I would take a single walk a day, and I would ensure it was at least a one mile walk. Simple enough. Walking is less taxing on a person than running is, and it’s pretty easy to accomplish a one mile walk in less than 30 minutes. I needed to start simple. I knew trying to pick up running again would just have me missing a day and feeling bad about it and that would lead to a thinking along the lines of “well, I missed the last one, what does it matter” and that would get me no where. The same thing happens for the walking, but the walk is so easy that it’s harder to have a excuse to not just go walk around the block. Even if I don’t get the full mile, I can easily walk around the block a couple of times. I justify this by thinking that some walking is better than no walking.

A strange thing happened though. As I started walking, I watched my step count increase. As I saw my step count get closer to the default step goal Fitbit gives you when you first activate your device, I wanted to take more steps to hit that goal. The result was longer walks. Another result? I added an additional walk after lunch at work. All in an attempt to hit that step count goal. Once I added some of my other Fitbit owning friends to my Fitbit account and could see their steps I saw how even my meager attempts to get more steps was leaving me in last place. And I don’t like losing. What happened? Slightly longer walks and attempting to ensure I had multiple daily walks.

With my attempting to reduce my calorie intake, ensuring I burn more calories than I take in, and the addition of light but regular exercising, I’m happy to report that I’ve lost five pounds in one month. Sure it’s a small number, but it’s encouraging because I’m seeing results already. Having my bad eating and lack of activity thrown in my face has forced me to make a conscious effort to be healthier and more active. Eventually I will start running again. I’ve already thought about it. My thoughts are slowly moving from “I need to go walk” to “I need to go run” but I want to walk for a solid month before I add running. But that’s the thing, my brain and body are getting to the point where they want to do these things. I’m not having to force myself to do it. Sure I still miss walks or I have a day where I don’t burn more than I take in. But seeing that in a pretty graph just encourages me to continue. Having a bad day is going to happen, but if my good days greatly outnumber the bad, that will lead to me meeting my weight goals.

I’ve lost 5 pounds already, I’ve got at least another 25 to go.

But it didn’t take but two to four hours for my Twitter, Google+, and Facebook feeds to fill up with political rhetoric about the need for more gun control. It got so bad that I had to actually stop reading my social network feeds and I’ve only glanced at Facebook a couple of times since then. I want to talk about the problem with gun control legislation.

Lets ignore the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States has stated on multiple occasions that the Second Amendment to the United States protects individual Americans’ right to keep and bear arms (U.S. vs. Cruikshank, Dred Scott, Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, U.S., & U.S. vs. Emerson ). But we’re going to ignore that.

We’ll also ignore the fact that Supreme Court has on numerous occasions also stated that the police have no duty to protect you (also here). That whole “who needs guns, we have the police” argument, that’s now null and void. Again, we’re ignoring this.

We’re not going to ignore the fact that in 2 of the most recent mass shootings have been held in what are define as “Gun Free Zones” and in the case of the elementary school, it’s a huge fine plus jail time for carrying a gun on school grounds in several states. Here in Texas if you have a CHL you can bring your gun onto the grounds but you can’t actually enter the school, doing so could result in your license being suspended. So the gunman brought his gun into a building that he legally could not.

But there in lies the problem with those that want to bring about more gun control laws. They want more laws. We have plenty of laws regarding guns on the books. We also have strong laws about murder. Yet, those laws were completely ignored by the gunmen when they decided to enter a theater and/or a public school building. Gun control laws won’t work because criminals don’t follow the law. The laws against murder didn’t stop them from killing people. The laws that prohibit guns at the school didn’t stop them from bring their gun inside to commit the horrific acts.

Lets present this another way. In the United States, cocaine is illegal. It’s illegal to possess. It’s illegal to make. It’s illegal to import. It’s illegal to sell. In other words. You can’t possibly ban cocaine in the United States any more than it already is. Can you honestly tell me that there isn’t an single gram, ounce, or pound of cocaine anywhere in the United States? Get my point? Cocaine is illegal in just about every way possible yet it can still be found in the United States. Why? Because criminals don’t obey the law.

The idea, that we need more gun control laws in order to stop criminals from doing bad things is like saying you need more water to stop from drowning. The logic is so flawed. Yet, we have so much of our society who think and truly believe that gun control laws will stop criminals. They’ll do as much good as those “No Guns Allowed” signs did for Aurora and Sandy Hook.

Just like those “No Guns Allowed” signs, the only people that will abide by gun control laws are law abiding citizens. More gun control laws won’t stop criminals from getting guns. In fact, they won’t even stop maniacs from getting guns, because currently unless you have a criminal record there isn’t much stopping you from buying a gun legally (yes, you already have to pass a background check to get purchase a gun). Gun control laws will only make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to purchase guns. Aren’t those the people we want to have the least amount of trouble when buying a gun?

That’s where I think my disagreement with gun control is. People who want more gun control want less guns. Period. They don’t want anyone to have guns, except the police and the government (lets look to 1930s & 1940s Germany to see how that works). They’re idea of “control” equates to “ban” and I’m not okay with that. I don’t agree with the idea that just because I don’t like something it should be banned and no one should be allowed to have it. That’s just idiotic, in my opinion. You don’t like guns? No one is forcing you to buy one, use one, or shoot one. Why should I not be allowed to own a gun simply because you don’t like them?

I’m all about having a discussion about keeping guns out of the hands of known criminals, the mentally ill, or anyone else that we feel collectively as a society shouldn’t own a gun. I’m also all about discussing criminals who didn’t commit violent crimes being able to regain their Second Amendment rights once they’ve completed their time, probation, and waiting period. So when we talk about guns I want to talk not only about keeping them out of some people’s hands, I want to talk about putting them back into others who prove they can handle the responsibility. I’m all about discussing gun laws. I am not okay with discussing the banning of guns. Banning guns won’t have the effect people think it will, and criminals, they’ll still have guns because criminals don’t obey the law.

Again, criminals don’t obey the law, so more laws isn’t going to stop them from doing the things they want to do. Laws will only affect the law abiding, since they are the ones that actually follow the laws.

Say hello to Jotting Journal. A private web based (or “cloud based” if you’re into buzz words) online journal. This web application is meant to be a place where you can log your private thoughts and do so in a more cross platform manner than some of the other more popular journal-ing applications out there.

I decided to go all out and make this a straight pay service. I’m charging $36 per year and you get the first 30 days free to decide if you like the product or not. Don’t like it, simply cancel your account and you won’t be charged a thing.

Right now it’s entirely web based but it utilizes Twitter Bootstrap’s “responsive” (I hate this word) design elements. Though the responsive design hasn’t been 100% tweaked yet, it works nicely on mobile devices like iPads and smartphones.

I’ll be spending a good part of the rest of the year to tidy up the web UI a bit and add some small features here and there (like the recently added Markdown support). Then, next year I will focus on building some mobile and desktop applications for it. I’ll begin by focusing on Android and iOS devices. But I’m hoping that by the end of next year I’ll have a suite of applications you can use to update, edit, and review your journal.

So feel free to give Jotting Journal a try. I hope you enjoy it.

Note: This may make some people angry.

To get it out of the way, I’m going to tell you up front that I’m generally more on the conservative side of politics than on the liberal side. One might go so far as to call me a “Libertarian” and it wouldn’t be a description that’s far off. Also, I’m a Christian. That word has many meanings these days, but to mean it simply means that I’m a follower of Christ. I don’t consider myself to be “crazy” or a “Bible thump-per”  but I do view the Bible as something sacred, and I attempt to live by its principles.

All that being said I want to be clear from the start that I am not trying to make people angry with this post, but these are some thoughts that I’ve had over the last few months and things I’ve wanted to say with regards to some of the more popular talking points in our political discussions today.

Size of Government

If you know me personally or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably heard me say how much I dislike both candidates. To me, they’re two sides of the same coin. Really what it boils down to is that I’m against a large federal government and both candidates are  campaigning on more government, just in different ways.

I want smaller federal government and bigger city, county and state government. So, no, I don’t want government provided healthcare, I want to see a reduction in welfare programs, and I think bailing out companies with tax payer dollars is a seriously bad idea (and totally negates the idea of a free and open market).

This is a big issue for me, and it really sets the stage for how I feel about other things, as you’ll see later on.

Economic Policy

Because I’m generally for a smaller federal government, I’m against crazy government spending.

We have a massive debt, that both Republicans and Democrats have contributed to over the course of our history. Both have spent and both have saved. As a conservative, I want us to be spending less. And right now, we should be working like crazy to reduce our spending.

People tend to think that I don’t want to hear discussions on single payer health care or fixing social issues through taxation. That’s not true. I’ll listen to any and all ideas. However, I’m not going to really be okay with doing more government services until we can get our spending under control.

We had to raise the debt ceiling. How the heck did we even hit the ceiling in the first place? Come on! Really? We’re so in debt that we had to raise the amount of debt we’re allowed to have and people think that spending more money is a viable solution to the problem?

I don’t want to hear us talking about how we’re gonna provide healthcare, pay for more welfare, have more wars, and what not, until our government can prove that it can spend responsibly. Because right now, they aren’t exactly doing a great job. And this goes for both sides.

I’m not against raising taxes, I’m for raising them by a percent or 2 across the board, not just the top earners and then cutting government spending across the board by a minimum of 10%. That means all programs. Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, defense, all of them. If it receives money from the federal government, it’s federal subsidy is now reduced by a minimum of 10%. Increase your income, but reduce spending now. Not 5 years from now. Not 10 years. Not next year. Now.

I don’t care if you say the president’s budget is going to be “deficit neutral in 5 years” because there’s a chance they won’t be in office that long and the next guy will undo whatever they did.

Women’s Rights

Lets touch on a few social issues.

I’m all for equal pay for women. If they do the same job as a guy, they should get paid the same as a guy and if she can prove that isn’t the case, she should be able to take her employer to court and win a handsome sum of cash. The fact that this is still an issue is so far beyond stupid it boggles the mind.

As a conservative and a Christian, I don’t agree with abortion. I wouldn’t recommend a woman get one unless it was a serious health risk. However, I don’t believe they should be banned as some Christians do, and as most on the left seem to think all conservative Christians want. No, I don’t want them banned. I think anything past the first trimester should be extremely limited (I’d argue that after a certain number of days it’s not even an option but that’s a different discussion), but not banned.

Seriously, if bacteria on Mars is considered “life” then what’s in the womb is a life.

And on the subject of birth control, I’m not against it. I don’t think the government should be able to tell a religious institution that they have to cover it in the medical plans they provide their employees, as I think that’s a violation of First Amendment rights. I also think it should be up to the employer who’s paying for the insurance what should and shouldn’t be covered in a policy. That’s an employer’s right. It’s a woman’s right to not work there and instead work for some place that has insurance that will cover birth control. More on this later on.

I do not think (and I’m sure many on the right share this point of view), that these things should be banned. I just don’t want my tax dollars to be paying for them. There is a difference, and people seem to not understand that just because I don’t want tax dollars paying for it, doesn’t mean I want it banned.

I’m okay with there being abortions (again, I don’t agree with them and would try to talk a woman out of getting one), birth control, and whatever else a woman feels she has a right to. Just because she has a right to it, doesn’t mean it’s gotta be paid for with tax dollars, and it doesn’t mean that the government should forcibly make employers pay more for medical insurance that covers those things.

Last I check this was still America. A woman has the right to an abortion (according to our Supreme Court), that doesn’t mean she has the right to have it paid for by tax dollars or her company provided medical insurance. Same with birth control. You have the right to it, doesn’t mean you have the right to someone else paying for it.

Gay Rights

Let’s tackle another biggie. Gay rights.

As a Christian, I believe that homosexuality is a sin (see Romans 1:26-27 and 1st Timothy 1:8-11). Does that mean I hate gay people? No. As a Christian, I believe we’re all sinners. So as a sinner, how can I realistically hate someone because they sin differently? I tell you this not to be “holier than thou” but rather to tell you where I stand.

I think that has an issue, this is one that shouldn’t be anywhere near our politics. It’s a social issue. It has little to no bearing on our economic state. And I think that the GOP needs to give up the ghost this one.

Let gay couples be married civilly. Let them be able to go to the court house get some kind of certificate and give them the tax benefits. You can change the name of the certificate so that it doesn’t say “Marriage Certificate” on it. If they need the religious aspect they can find a church to “marry” them. But, a church should not be forced by the government to marry gay couples if they feel it’s against their beliefs (there’s the First Amendment again).

Seriously, the fact that we’ve somehow made this a political center piece just astounds me. I don’t agree with the lifestyle. But hey, I’m a sinner too.

Class Warfare

When did we start punishing success? When did it become bad to make lots of money? When did it become a thing where people who have lots of money are “evil?” I don’t understand this.

We have an entire movement who’s sole purpose is to protest against “greedy corporations” using the internet that’s backbone is provided by corporations on devices also made by corporations, so they can meet in parks that are paid for by tax dollars collected from corporations. Seriously, how is the irony so lost? Do any of these people understand that a business exists for two reasons? Make money and provide a service. If a company is big and has lots of money, well they’re doing it right aren’t they?

If we all start to view having money and being successful as a bad thing, what motivation are people going to have to actually be successful? Is it not counter-intuitive to hate on success? I know plenty of people who have had more success, made more money, had higher positions, or just had a better station in life than I did. It’s never bothered me to a great degree. Then again I was raised with the understand that:

1. Life is not fair and
2. There will always be someone smarter, faster, stronger, richer, more successful, or just plain better than me

In life there are winners and losers. Not everyone is gonna be a winner, and not everyone is going to be a loser. Mostly people are gonna fall somewhere in between the two.

That’s not to say I think people that make their fortunes doing illegal things shouldn’t be severely punished for it. But just because someone used the system or found a loophole is no reason to punish them. Sure, close the loophole. But if they didn’t do something illegal, why punish them because they found a way to make money?

People are making a big deal because Romney is rich. Well sorry, but why does Obama get a pass? He’s richer than most people too. Sure he may be not as rich as Romney, but he made over a million dollars last year. I’d consider that at least kind of rich. He’s got more money than anyone of those people protesting for Occupy.

People also want to point out that during Romney’s time at Bain capital he off shored jobs. So did lots of companies. In fact there are companies still doing that. They also say he closed businesses. Well, not every business is successful. Not everyone has a job forever. Companies go under, people get laid off, and people get fired. It’s the world of business.

The way some people talk it’s like they think that no one should ever be fired or laid off. Not sure what world they live in, but I’m gonna guess it also contains fairies and unicorns. Getting laid off and fired sucks, I know, because it’s happened to me. Sure it’d be nice if it never happened to anyone, but that’s not realistic is it?

All this point attention to Romney’s wealth is doing nothing but furthering class warfare. Making it more “us versus them.” Which is going to accomplish nothing. Plus it’s a little hypocritical when it’s people like Obama who many would also consider “rich” pointing the fingers.

Why are we not encouraging the middle class to start businesses? That’d be something I would encourage government spending on. Encouraging people to start businesses so that they can potentially be successful, thus contributing to those same funds that helped them get started. Also if more of them start successful businesses, then that decreases this so-called income gap. And more businesses means more places to shop, which should help the economy.

So see, everyone’s fighting the wrong battle. Instead of saying “we need to support the middle class” we should be saying “how can we help them be more successful?”

Rights and Tax Payer Money

In closing, I want to spend some more time on this because it seems people don’t understand what having a right means.

Here’s an example: I have the right to bear arms therefore I can go and buy a gun. A gun is not provided for me, I still have to spend my money to acquire a gun. I have the right to an attorney, our government also says they’ll provide one if I can’t afford one. Therefore they’ll pay for it because they’ve explicitly said so.

See the difference there?

Going back to birth control, because a big stink was made about this. Catholics believe that birth control is a sin. That point of view is protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, the government telling the Catholic church that it has to provide coverage for birth control in the medical insurance it provides it’s employees is a violation of that First Amendment right.

A woman has the right to birth control. She doesn’t have the right to have it covered by her medical insurance. No one’s denying her the ability to get birth control. But if she wants it covered by her medical insurance, she probably shouldn’t work for the Catholic church.

An employer should be free to provide medical insurance to their employees that they can afford. If they can’t cover something someone feels they should have covered, that person has the right to work elsewhere.

Understand?

Lets look at this another way. You have the right to buy a smartphone, you don’t have the right to have one provided to you by your company. If you company chooses to provide you one, that’s their right to do so. Just as it’s their right to not give you a smartphone. It’s also your right to not work for a company that doesn’t provide you with a cool phone.

Just because you have the right to something doesn’t mean you have the right to have it paid for by someone else.

In Closing

I want people to be able to live their lives without much government intervention. Live your life. Don’t infringe on anyone else’s life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness and we’ll do fine. But no one owes you a thing.

I know this is a long post. And it’s probably made some people angry. Hopefully it made some people think for a second.

Mostly I hope you just say “yea, that’s your opinion, mine’s different” because I’m not really going to argue any of this. If you don’t get what I’m trying to say by now, you’re never going to understand and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

What upsets me most about the verdict isn’t that Samsung was punished for copying, but rather that this verdict validates that Apple solved common problems. For example, one of the patents was for the ability to recognize phone numbers in text and be able to click on them to call the number. Sorry Apple, but Skype was doing that with their browser plugin, for years before your iPhone came out. This is just one example of several of the patents Apple used in their lawsuit against Samsung. In another patent, they actually claimed to have invented the idea of showing information at the top of the screen of a device (like battery levels or incoming text/email). Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t cell phones doing that well before the iPhone? I remember my Razr doing that well before the iPhone. Or what about their search patents? Samsung had to release updates to “fix” their phones because Apple has a patent on searching across databases found on a device (like search history, contacts, notes, and so on), you’re gonna tell me that searching across different data silos on a device wasn’t obvious or that there wasn’t already prior art for that (Google Desktop Search anyone)?

So while some of what Apple “invented” they have legitimate claims to, some of the things they have patents for are either obvious, or there’s plenty of prior art that the patent shouldn’t even be remotely valid. But, this verdict gives credence to not only these patents but to the broken patent system as a whole, and this is where I have problems with the verdict. And lets not even touch the whole “rectangle with rounded corners” thing that’s suppose to be “trade dress.”

What I want to call every pro-Apple person who’s claiming victory to do is to go and actually look at the patents involved. If you’ve spent anytime in technology for the last 10-15 years, you’ll see that there is, in fact, a lot of patents granted to Apple that have plenty of prior art. Apple is a great integrator. They managed to make a device that does multiple things well, something other companies have failed at for decades. I don’t want people to feel that I’m trying to discredit Apple’s contributions. They did, in fact, completely change mobile computing, can’t deny that. I’m discrediting the patent system which granted them patents where plenty of prior art existed to make some of these things either “already done” or “obvious next steps.”

The verdict is a big win for Apple, but it is a loss to innovation, not because Samsung should have been allowed to so blatantly copy Apple, but because the patents Apple has been awarded means other companies can’t do things that are pretty obvious or have plenty of prior art because Apple’s has patents on it. The verdict has validated a broken patent system, and that, I have problems with.

However, give some recent events in the home office, I’ve gotten a little behind on my backlog. I have several episodes for the next series in various stages of completion. But I’ve been without my primary audio editing machine for 2 weeks now, and it’ll be another week before I can get back on it. The computer is fine, it’s just been unplugged.

So what happened? My little office is on the opposite side of my kitchen at home, specifically one the walls in my office sits directly behind my fridge. There was a small leak in the water tube for the ice maker that managed to leak long enough to completely soak the carpet in a good chunk of my office (going under a wall), closest to my desk. As a result I had to unplug everything and move my desk so that we could pull up the carpet, dry it and the foam padding underneath, and relay the carpet back down. Since I had to move everything anyway, my wife and I decided it was time to finally build my new desk, which just needs a couple coats of stain and it’s done.

I’m hoping to have my desk completed and my computer set back up by the end of the week so I can get a few more episodes completed, thus filling the backlog up a bit. After which I promise that you will get a slew of new videos.

This makes angry. Sure, I can’t do nothing about it and I’m mostly over the initial anger from reading that this happened. But I think that’s it’s a pretty bad move by Apple and here’s why.

First off, if you read the linked stories, you’ll see that the main reason the judge gave Apple the injunction it was seeking was because of a search related patent. Specifically it’s a patent for unified search. Type in your search in one place and it will search through several various databases for results. A more specific example is if I type in a name on my phone, it might bring me back a contact card, a few search results, a facebook link, maybe even songs stored on my device that contain those names, and so on.

The problem with this patent is that if you read it, it’s exceptionally vague, and it could describe just about any kind of unified search. In other words, it’s not specific enough to Apple’s unified search found in iOS. Also, unified search has been around long before the patent was granted to Apple (filed in 2000, granted in 2011), so there’s plenty of prior art and thus this patent shouldn’t have even been granted. Heck, there was similar searches on desktop computers for years by that point. So this issue is specifically with the patent system, and not Apple itself.

Why I’m having issues with Apple over this is because they continually claim or at least allude to Android (and thus Android devices) being an inferior product to it’s own mobile OS, iOS. So Apple, got a judge to grant an injunction that prevents the sale of the Galaxy Nexus (a product Apple feels is inferior), and thus while it’s off the market it no longer has to compete with that device. Here’s where the problem comes in. If Apple truly believes that Android is an inferior product, then it should have no issues competing with it in the consumer market, correct? Yet, it’s gone and gotten the device removed, thus removing that bit of competition.

Thing is most people buying a Galaxy Nexus either aren’t interested in buying an iPhone, or they’re gadget nerds and they already have an iPhone, so either way, Apple’s not really losing a sale here.

This makes angry. Sure, I can’t do nothing about it and I’m mostly over the initial anger from reading that this happened. But I think that’s it’s a pretty bad move by Apple and here’s why.

First off, if you read the linked stories, you’ll see that the main reason the judge gave Apple the injunction it was seeking was because of a search related patent. Specifically it’s a patent for unified search. Type in your search in one place and it will search through several various databases for results. A more specific example is if I type in a name on my phone, it might bring me back a contact card, a few search results, a facebook link, maybe even songs stored on my device that contain those names, and so on.

The problem with this patent is that if you read it, it’s exceptionally vague, and it could describe just about any kind of unified search. In other words, it’s not specific enough to Apple’s unified search found in iOS. Also, unified search has been around long before the patent was granted to Apple (filed in 2000, granted in 2011), so there’s plenty of prior art and thus this patent shouldn’t have even been granted. Heck, there was similar searches on desktop computers for years by that point. So this issue is specifically with the patent system, and not Apple itself.

Why I’m having issues with Apple over this is because they continually claim or at least allude to Android (and thus Android devices) being an inferior product to it’s own mobile OS, iOS. So Apple, got a judge to grant an injunction that prevents the sale of the Galaxy Nexus (a product Apple feels is inferior), and thus while it’s off the market it no longer has to compete with that device. Here’s where the problem comes in. If Apple truly believes that Android is an inferior product, then it should have no issues competing with it in the consumer market, correct? Yet, it’s gone and gotten the device removed, thus removing that bit of competition.

Thing is most people buying a Galaxy Nexus either aren’t interested in buying an iPhone, or they’re gadget nerds and they already have an iPhone, so either way, Apple’s not really losing a sale here.

It got me to thinking and it hit me later that this shouldn’t just apply to your relationship with God (though that is important), but it can and should apply in all aspects of your life. Stop riding the middle, stop making excuses, and do something about it.

Wanna lose weight? Stop complaining about being overweight and start running. Wanna launch a business? Stop thinking about all the things it will do and start making it do one of them. Just one. That’s all you need to start with. Wanna write book? Wanna make movie? Wanna write a song? Stop thinking about it. Stop making excuses. Stop starting sentences with “when I…” and begin starting them with “I am going to…” because anything else is just daydreaming.

The message my pastor was trying to express to his congregation was “start going all in for God.” And it’s an important message. What I want you to do is, start going a little in* on whatever it is you want to do. Because a little in, leads to a little more in, and then a little more, and so on.

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Take the first one. The thing about taking things one step at a time is that if you take the wrong one, you didn’t go too far down the wrong road.

* You can’t go “all in for God” and then go “all in for yourself” as that conflicts a bit. Point is: Stop making excuses, and get it done.