whatever

A Plea from George

2012-01-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

Please watch George's msg.

We need to stop the arguing.

Sometimes There Won't Be Any More

2011-04-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

My parents had the typical mid- 20th century life. They were married in 1950 and then the 5 kids arrived over the next 14 years. My dad provided the income as my mom stayed home to raise us.

I have many vivid memories about growing up, the son of a school teacher and a businessman (hardware, plumbing, refinishing). I also remember the struggling through school with money; don't get me wrong, my folks 'loaned' me money (that I never had to repay) but I also had to get part time jobs to pay for school. The only money I had in my pocket when I started college was what I earned thru the paper route and odd jobs around the area, like “rock” picking and “corn detassling”… If you don’t know what those things are, then you have a little more to learn… I didn’t have a car, I got to college by sharing a ride with someone who did have a car.

I was fortunate in that my chosen career was in a growth area, computers... Throughout the 70's and 80's I had decent opportunities but also challenges, largely by not being in the right company at the right time. Or by not starting my own company, perhaps that path was just not for me.

In the early seventies a construction worker could afford a house a new car and his wife could stay home with the kids if she so desired, just as my mom did in the 50's. My mom went back to work in the ealy 70’s. Things were already changing .

I got married in the 80’s, and we could afford things, but the key for us was both of us were working. We had a portion of income that was discretionary income. We are what the Nixon and Reagan era called the “silent majority”.

Today, a similar construction worker (to my example above) lives in an apartment or house with others and their chances at grabbing the brass ring are slim. My neighbors are like this. The truth is, the dollar isn't worth anything anymore.

I have some money saved up, and a little more than a year ago I thought I might buy one of those distressed properties and rent it out. I’d be helping the economy, is how I justified it. The 'bank', however, wasn't being reasonable, even in the face of creating this mortgage mess. Or you could think of it this way… They were being reasonable if you could stand a negative performing asset for many years, all the while hoping that the housing market takes off like it did before the crisis. Everyone raise your hand if you believe this one.

But it doesn’t really matter, because the government bailed them out and now we have merged bank entities that are even larger than when this started.

So, if the dollar isn’t worth anything, what is? Time. Material things in the digital age are a lot like the dollar.

Someone once said a song can say as much in three verses as a novel does in 300 pages because of what it leaves to the imagination. Imagination will always be the best thing going. Walt Disney built an empire around that simple idea. I'd like to think I still have an imagination, rather than some rich dude without vision.

Seriously, though, time is the thing I don’t have anymore. Lot’s of people complain about the same thing. In my current job, for example, I put in plenty of hours trying to make sure my projects come in on-“time” -- which really means on the dates that someone has set without truly understanding what’s going on. I make pretty good money at this, but it’s kind of eating me up inside.

I read a lot of those 300 page novels, but I am “reading” by listening to them as audio playing with some software on my mobile phone. It saves me time, it allows me to escape… Actually, I read more this way about a variety of subjects, than I have ever really done in the past. Hopefully, this balances out. Allows me to have some imagination and to have some practical sides to what I do – to what I am.

Have you ever noticed something, however – rich people are always trying to move to the artsy part of town. They wish they had that imagination; someone told me this. Then they buy it up and what happens to the neighborhood? It becomes sterile because all the artists can't afford to live there anymore.

Somebody smart said a life without struggle isn’t worth living. My daughter’s choice in music is something I pay attention to. Some of these artists are truly facing or faced some serious issues. This is why their music is good, they have suffered for it; and the music tells of their struggle. My daughter thinks she is suffering to, because I make her do the homework with me (math) and I insist on accountability for her grades. This latter point, I don’t do so well on, because I’m a bit of a softy.

Sometimes she takes it out on me, because I’m the one withholding things from her. She doesn’t really know what suffering is, and a part of me hopes that they never has to, but when we really get down there and think about this, the individual really has to suffer in order to be good at what they do. I hope she can learn that life lesson without too much damage. Because the kind of suffering that some of these folks (her music) have gone through can break a person and there might not be any pieces left to put back together again.

I hope, however, that she doesn’t ever forget the danger of “what if there isn’t anymore?”

My wife ran across one of those emails that circulates the inter-tubes, where the question was just that…

One day a woman's husband died, and on that clear, cold morning, in the warmth of their bedroom, the wife was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't "anymore". No more hugs, no more special moments to celebrate together, no more phone calls just to chat, no more "just one minute." Sometimes, what we care about the most gets all used up and goes away, never to return. Before we can say good-bye, say "I love you."

In this round-about way, I’ll get to my point… My dad is in the final days of his life. Oh, he’s not going to kick the bucket in the next day or so, he’s not on his death bed. He’s had bouts with illness and more, but he’s been a survivor, primarily because he’s had a good chance at life and because he’s had some doctors willing to try new procedures to help him, extend his life. I could go into a bunch on this topic alone, but let’s just say his renal doctor is pleased at the progress my dad has had because of a procedure some years ago and most of the other men in the study group are dead. – But my dad is not going to live much longer and I’m trying to come to terms with that.

And while this is good, because it’s probably the healthy thing to do, it’s also causing me a fair amount of soul searching, just last night for example, when I couldn’t sleep. Most of this comes around to this question of “what if there wasn’t ‘any more’”.

If there is one message I hope to get across to my daughter, it’s “don’t waste your time being mad or trying to do stupid things because you’ve got some teenage angst against your parents.” With traffic accidents and illness and things, sometimes there won’t be any more hugs.

…its best we love it, care for it, fix it when it is broken and heal it when it is sick. This is true for marriage… And old cars… And children with bad report cards, and dogs with bad hips, and aging parents and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.

thoughts from the 'tubes

2011-02-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to a few email lists, some things that I find interesting.

One of these was from Bob Lefsetz, his "Car Trouble" post

one paragraph stood out in his post as remarkable advice for everyone. And in this day and age of people cutting you off in traffic or frowning at you on the street, or today in particular, as I had an extremely bad day at work, where people are dumping all over you and your project... Stuff like this is important.

Even though it was difficult he (the subject in Bob's post) put on a happy face. And he discovered the energy he gave out came back in spades. If he was nice, people were nice to him. He made all kinds of new friends.

Go out and make some new friends this next week.

Tom

Where is that remote?

2010-12-22T01:18:00.001-08:00

Originally written summer of 2010, for my dad:

I was reminded recently that the current state of affairs for licensing of video content on the "airwaves" or the "tubes" is all a mess. I didn't come to this conclusion lightly, I have actually been trying to study it and finding information is quite hard to come by. You see, there is a portion of people that are involved with this who don't want the public to know what's going on because what's in place is "working", and then there is a portion who don't care, they simply want to throw out the old and put in the new "everything should be free" model. Is one better than the other? This is really hard to say, partly because today's model is fundamentally broken. But let's step back…

In the beginning of what we might call "Content Providers 101" there were the networks, those companies which came after the invention of a form of technology, radio at first and eventually TV's and Movies. In

America

, these companies were licensed by the federal government and given a charter or a "public trust" to use the "airwaves" wisely. They created some studios or at least got into bed with production companies that owned studios and then the radio show was born. The TV shows soon followed, when that technology finally became viable. In both of these forms, the radio show or the TV show, all of this was paid for by an advertiser who subsidized the creation of the show itself with money to the studio or production company and in turn the show itself was broken into pieces with commercials in-between those pieces of the show.

Perhaps (as was with radio) the announcer himself (because it primarily was a guy, in those days) would "talk" about the advertiser's product, and that led to an interesting style of merging of the two, where the show itself would transition into the commercial and then even back to the show, and it was hard to see where the commercial was. The old Paul Harvey radio shows, which are still going, have their "And now, Page 2" signature line to indicate where the commercial was over. Even in today's form of radio, there still are forms of this style and the best example of this is Leo Laporte's "This Week in Tech" series of podcasts. A podcast, by the way, is just a form of a recorded radio show, but deferred. You don't have to listen to it live, you can listen to it many days or weeks afterwards. Leo does this particularly well, with his commercials for Audible, the audio book company, especially when his guests on these shows get into the act and do their own variant of the product testimonial.

Television didn't follow this model so much, in that the commercials are almost always separately produced. The traditional model has been that a "commercial" or an advertisement (Ad) would have it's own time slot within the content of the show. The Alfred Hitchcock shows did this particularly well, with his dry "and now a word from our sponsor" lead in to the Ad itself. The Ad was separate from the TV show. There are exceptions coming on air now, of course, where the show's actors become the principals in the commercial.

The TV Commercial industry sometimes has its own production and studio entities. If you look anywhere on the intertubes, you will find millions of references to the TV Commercial, you can watch some of the popular ones; from the Superbowl, to the funny ones, the classics, even lists of songs used in commercials. These lists and variations are extensive. My Dad, my Grandpa and I would be fishing sometimes with the radio or sitting at home and watching the TV, and when those commercials would come up, well it was time for a break to get something from the kitchen or something to use that remote for (after Space Command made TV watching totally different). When we were out in the boat, it was a moment to talk, since you were not supposed to talk (it scared the fish) and it distracted you from the baseball game (that great American pastime) as that was what you should be listening to. This concept of channel surfing wasn't even an option when I grew up… there was only one station.

In 1966, I remember having to go across the street to my grandmother's house to watch Star Trek (TOS – The Original Series, as it's now known as) because she could get NBC (she had an extra antenna) and at our house, we couldn't. About this time, I was 13 years old, I started to wonder about these commercials. Sure, you had to buy the TV, and soon after black and white came color television, but I often wondered who is paying for the program itself? There wasn't an Internet in those days, no Wikipedia… no place to go to look up things other than your Encyclopedia Britannica or the local library and nothing was in either place about this stuff. Later on, there were more channels, on something that was called UHF and I found that this acronym meant Ultra-High Frequency, but there wasn't anyone around to explain such things. I did understand radio a little bit, my Dad had given me a transistor radio when I was young and I sure did study this thing. I took it apart and I put it back together again, time and time again. My Dad had no electronics background, so I couldn't really get any help from him. He was a WW2 army recruit, served in

Italy

, but he was in charge of the POWs, while others may have been learning about radar or electronics or the kind of soldiering we associate with the army, e.g. combat. Plumbing and painting/varnishing and refinishing was his profession as I was growing up.

I tried to talk to the local TV repair guy in town about how this transistor stuff worked versus the vacuum tubes, but he was kind of cold and what was this kid, asking all of these questions… I could not find much information about my radio in the encyclopedia or anywhere else, so other than understanding that tubes were replaced by transistors, I couldn't figure much more than that. There was no internet, no Wikipedia. We had an encyclopedia (World Book, I think) but it had nothing about this stuff, it was too new.

Of course, this shift from analog to digital electronics was really a big deal. Not too long after this I remember seeing and then actually owning (WOW) a digital watch with the little numbers that glowed red. I couldn't really take this watch apart, I didn't have the tools for it, and I would have probably destroyed it if I tried, which is not how one acted when I grew up, you needed to take care of your things. In my off time, I used to help out my Dad at the hardware store that my uncle and he owned. I would clean the store and sell things to customers, I knew how to mix paint colors by hand (something that has also gone the way of history), I could sweep out the store in the early winter mornings with snow, believe it or not, as something to catch the dirt. It was always cold in there, with only residual heat from the day before and it was the only time you could do that, because if it got too warm, the snow would melt and then you just had a wet mess of dirt and stuff and not a clean floor. When I was younger I would play in these huge appliance boxes that the washers and dryers came it, my Dad and my Uncle sold these and other things you think of for as hardware store. A bunch of these boxes, taped together… you have an instant fort. These were fun and simpler times.

We had a radio (tubes) at the store and my Grandpa and I would listen to the ballgame when there was a game on. Small town

America

didn't offer other kinds of diversions, I was too young to own a car and too old to just play with toys. The movie theater shut down about the time I was 10 years old. Sometimes I would write stories, but I don't know where any of them went, and I would draw, but mostly I would draw electrical circuits, because I had seen them on the appliances and I wanted to control things, lights mostly, as well. I learned how to do this from a basic electricity book that my school library had. Nothing digital, of course, in something like this, but it did spark an interest in me. I am sure I drove my Dad bonkers, especially in my late high school years when, after having built my own stereo components (from a Dynaco kit) I thought he and Mom should also have a "real" Stereo system. Nothing like having more lifelike sound for listening to music; that's what I thought. We were in the middle of building a new house, but now I am sure my Dad was much more focused on the house. He and Mom had put a bid on an old house in town; it was sort of abandoned. The taxes weren't getting paid, but for some very small amount of money, he was able to buy this house, which he subsequently paid to have leveled to the ground. My folks come up with their own design, I'm not sure if it was a purchased set of plans or if they had hired an architect to come up with it, but the building fit the building lot, which sloped from a high point near the street to a lower point at the back of the lot, where the alley was. This split level house was a marvel to me and I just had to leave my own impression on it, and the stereo was going to be it. I purchased the speakers for the den and mounted them myself in the ceiling, ran the wires, and put those wires through the floorboards, to the next floor where the new stereo would sit on some kind of furniture. I think I deferred to both of them as to what kind of furniture it would be, but I do remember given them lots of pictures to look at, from the Sears Roebuck catalog. I was even going to build this in shop class, in my last year of high school, but something must have deterred me, because it never got built, and the new stereo finally resided in a more traditional form of furniture, an end-table, I think.

The ceiling was to be later covered over (except for the holes for the speaker itself) with ceiling tiles. I think I put up most of those ceiling tiles myself, stapling them to evenly spaced strips of wood. I had more speakers in the ceiling of my bedroom, which was on the 2nd floor. I remember my Dad put his foot down with regards to my plans to create a built in stereo component system in this bedroom, "we're just going to have paneling in here" – and in the end, this was ok, as my plans were pretty half-baked.

Anyway, thinking about bugging my Dad, I had done similar things down at the hardware store, where I had different strings running to the string pulls of the different light bulbs in the store. They were hanging from a very old 2 wire kind of electrical wiring system. You could actually see the two wires running along the ceiling, one on one side of the base the other on the other side, the base then ran two wires down to the light bulb socket itself, perhaps 3-4 feet lower (the store had tall ceilings) and all of these were in a parallel circuit, another circuit I had faithfully drawn in my journal.

I was amazed by all of these things on the TV, however, the Star Trek show, the Lost in Space series (I can see remember, Robbie the Robot saying "Danger Danger, Will Robinson"). I used to dream of being in a space ship and I also remember drawing another picture of plans for how living quarters would be laid out on a circular space ship, a flying saucer, much as the Robinson's craft was. They had such great gadgets. I used to wonder how advertising could pay for all of the TV shows. I had an inkling of how much this stuff should have cost, after all, I was selling fuses and circuit breakers and even small appliances to customers of the store. There was plumbing fixtures and glass for windows and paint and tinted paint. I don't think I have ever thanked my father for letting me work in the store with Grandpa, it was probably the most valuable teaching lessons I could have gotten from my boyhood experiences … the value of things. But as I say, I could start to imagine the scale that a movie or a TV series would have for costs. When I was old enough, I had actual jobs getting paid actual money and I started to understand the cost of labor and then I could really imagine the scale of these costs the production companies would pay.

Toward the end of my high school years, computers were really out in a big way. The government was of course using them all over the place. There was a moon landing in 1969 and all throughout the 60's there was all of this space race activity, with Mercury, Gemini, and then the Apollo missions. Like just about every other kid at this time, I devoured every scrap of information I could. Sure, I wanted to be an astronaut, like the other kids, but I was also interested in how this stuff all worked. By the time my junior year was done, I was looking at newspaper want ads for jobs that computer programmers could have. It seemed like extraordinary amounts of money, in some cases $20,000 per year! One guy at the hardware store told me that I would never make that kind of money, that it was insane to pay someone so much money.

My Dad couldn't help me much with this, his experiences were in the plumbing and refinishing (painting and woodworking) industry. The hardware store was interesting as a place to work and it allowed my Dad and my uncle to store stuff and stage products (like the appliances). But I don't think it made as much money as either of them would have liked. I don't think they ever paid my Grandfather anything for "minding the store" while they were out in the field, installing a furnace or water heater, I think Grandpa would have refused to accept any money anyway. It was something for him to do after he retired. And we didn't think twice - if the fishing bug struck Grandpa, we closed the store and off we went to the lake, often to just fish by the store.

In college, I had access to better information, of course, and by the time I had gone through my first year of General Ed classes and realized that my chosen, "safe" major of Nuclear Physics, was probably going to be a dead end (the industry didn't have that great of a track record, even then) I had found the Computer Science department and a fledgling department with one of the first ever Computer Science degree programs, I realized I could actually achieve this computer career and have a good paying job. Besides, when I talked to the department head, he practically begged me to get into the program AND help out in the computer science lab because it was so hard to find anyone to staff things, this early on. In a short while, I was a lab assistant, helping students find their ways through bugs in their Basic, Fortran and Cobol programs.

Meanwhile, this Radio, TV, and Movie industry was plugging along another 20 years until something amazing happened. The Internet! All of a sudden, you could get access to (in the beginning) written material on lots of stuff, mostly from universities. The early Dial-Up connections were not sufficient to get the next wave of content to show up, the audio or video stuff we are more familiar with now. But clearly, this advertising model was something that people were looking at, especially once you got by the companies that were total shams, highly speculative financed ideas of how the internet could be used for this, that, and the other thing. I remember telling my wife, who told her Mom, that you could shop for brooms and household stuff on the internet (think WebVan). And her Mom told my wife she was crazy, no one would buy things that way.

While true for some things, like household items, lots of other goods are actually cheaper via the internet channel than any other way. The old school media firms, like the TV networks and the Movie studios where getting a little worried, however. This has led to our current state of affairs where content is largely licensed and the terms of those licenses are what dictates what you can do or what you can consume. My Dad, now, who while quite old in human terms, is still a major baseball fan, particularly with his favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. But those games are not always televised where he lives. The reason for this is the licensing terms. The community he lives in is pretty rural, and while there is a cable company in town they are quite small and they can't afford a line-up like you might have in a larger city, such as were I live. I might have 85 some channels as part of my basic cable package, but Dad and Mom only has about 20. If the Twins are not being broadcast, chances are he can't watch them.

My sister invited us out to her place, where she has a satellite dish for her TV, and we watched a game out there, via the dish. The Twins were not being shown on the channels that he has in this house. My sister and I were then talking about how to get him the same channels that she had in her Dish TV package, but in the cable TV package that the folks had. But there is the cost issue, complexity (cable box is on the ground floor) for the rest of the TV's that they have, that will introduce confusion (what channel is that on, new remotes, etc.). Since I am experimenting with XBox Media Center (XBMC) and Boxee , I thought for a moment about this avenue (streaming television content). Maybe for about 10 seconds, but no – more confusion for them – especially when all you want is to turn on the TV and see TV.

I was also thinking about recording stuff at my house, and streaming to their TV. But, any kind of broadcast that you record (such what you do with your home PVR or DVR) is probably illegal to recording it in one place and then view it in a different household. Remember all of the hullabaloo over VCR tapes from 15-20 years ago?

In the end, Broadcast TV or Cable TV, where the advertisers pay for everything and the customer has a monthly fee – it's just simpler. Internet streaming has a longer term business opportunity, but one that will continue to be complex as the content owners set the rules for the sale of the replay of their content. The cable and broadcast players have most of these deals in place. I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to continue to do this, but the "deals" they work up with the various networks is truly the most complex stuff on the face of the earth. Nuclear physics pales in comparison… I tried to watch an episode of a TV series that I missed on my homemade recorder. Something had happened to the computer that I use for this, and the show didn't get recorded. No problem, I think, let me watch it on "Hulu"… only it was now about 3 weeks since that particular episode had aired, and when I browsed to the place on Hulu to watch it, it wasn't available. A little further reading revealed that Hulu could only "broadcast" this for 5 days after the show airs, after that, it's pulled down. Now, what's the sense in that? If I watch it 5 years after it's broadcast, the show can be still be supported by the advertizing model (with then current ads) in Hulu, even if it's only watched once in a while.

Note, I wrote the word "broadcast" instead of "stream" because from the user's point of view, there isn't really much difference. Sure, the stream might be able to be paused, and broadcast cannot, but the basics of the arm chair or couch viewing experience are largely the same. When we say "stream" the vision of a computer and it's screen is what people usually think, but this is not necessarily the case.

Similarly, now, there are streaming sports pieces of content showing up in other places than the TV; VerizonWireless recently launched an NFL "app" which allows some games to be streamed to the smaller mobile phone screen. Usually, sports is only seen in the broadcast, cable and satellite forms of distribution. And now, we're full circle back to my Dad, and his favorite Minnesota Twins.

Will he see a world where you "tap" into a feed or launch an "app" and watch the game on his favorite device? Perhaps not… Partly because we're not there yet from a licensing point of view (I don't think technology is the problem any longer), and partly because there is a generational thing. Certainly if a new TV came out, and he bought it because his old TV was broken AND the TV had a simple to use method (like changing channels on a remote) to select the "game" to watch it…

I will certainly see this kind of capability and my kids will as well. But for him, growing up, major league baseball was on the radio and when he was finishing up on his 3rd decade, broadcast TV finally was getting there where he could watch it. But, it took a few more years, because we lived in a rural part of the

United States

, and … well, it just took longer.

But, this mobile phone and internet stuff, it's mostly beyond him. And as long as broadcast/cable TV is there, that's just fine with him. If "internet" comes into my folks house, it will be because I need it there when I'm staying with them, but this is really unlikely, because for the most part, I already have mobile internet on my phone or in my laptop.

New posting about Facebook

2010-05-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

So what are you going to do on May 31st?

http://technology-perspectives.blogspot.com/2010/05/facebook-what-to-do.html

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Friends, what are they?

2010-05-10T01:13:00.001-07:00

The dictionary lists one of them as “a person with whom you are acquainted” and yes, today, I have one person in mind. A better definition might be “a person you know well and regard with affection and trust.”

With all of the social media attention recently, with Twitter and Facebook and the like, there are a few terms being thrown around, like “Friend Me on Facebook” or “Follow Me on Twitter”, or just what is this thing called FriendFeed? It seems like everywhere I turn these days, someone is asking me this – “Friend me on Facebook.” Sometimes it’s a person; sometimes it’s a company. Should I become “friends” with a company? GE – I don’t know, Comcast – nope, Rockwell, Nike, Ford? How about HP, or Accenture? Barrick Gold, or Ryanair, or Phillip Morris (jeez I could talk a bunch about how big tobacco and these “scientists” of theirs setup the climate change debate we’ve been going through these last few years), or Halliburton, or Monsanto?

It’s a difficult situation with social media these days, as I said, everyone wants to be your friend, and I’ve “followed” a small group myself, those people with similar interests on Twitter, or my family on Facebook. But I find myself (after posting a few things) wondering what all of the fuss is about. Isn’t this all supposed to be about communication?

My daughter is totally caught up in the Facebook phenomena, until she got in trouble with one of her friends from school, and before we got things brought under control, some hurtful things were said, in the rather public forum that these internet companies have set up. In the last presidential election, a number of appointees didn’t get jobs because it’s so easy to “Google” information about a person, especially since these companies have opened themselves up to the search engines. And I didn’t want that for my daughter. A few of these “presidential” appointees have been in totally embarrassing situations, where pictures of themselves in totally inappropriate situations are displayed for all to see. Is this friendship? In my daughter’s case, it became a teachable moment.

Recently, since she’s matured a bit and since we talk and monitor her account (and she knows we do, usually complaining about her privacy, until I gently remind her that you have no privacy with your “friends” when the friend-feed or facebookers are really just selling your information because you checked a privacy setting on the website wrong – and besides, most of these privacy laws are setup to keep the government from looking into your private things, not corporations. This isn’t a very clear situation on the legal front.)

Recently, as I started to say, she’s had some terrible comments posted on some of her pictures at this Facebook social network. In the most specific of terms, it’s called “hate speech” – but Facebook won’t do much, a little research indicates they are not doing much to keep the anti-holocaust hate groups from spreading more of their own version of hate. And if thousands of people complaining to Facebook about a holocaust issue isn’t changing their minds about how their business should be doing the right thing, how am I going to get their attention about one little girl’s Facebook picture albums? I’m sorry, but I’m all for free speech, but just like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, there are limits. And that’s why I know I have to take this to the “hate speech” writer’s parents (yes, this other person commenting is a child). I was calling around to get the parent’s phone number, and one mother I talked to was saying that this boy is a little ADHD, a little hyper, as if this excuses the behavior. I didn’t say anything to this; my mission is to get a message, very crisp, to the “responsible” party, the parents – while there is some time for them to influence how their boy grows up. Maybe it’s already a bit too late, that part I don’t know.

Like many of the older generation, I grew up in a pretty strict family setting, one where you didn’t talk back, you “minded your elders and your manners” and you largely were deeply loved. Sure there were lots of exceptions, everyone remembers the kids being picked on in school (and they still are getting picked on, it’s just more gang-like and that by itself is very troubling) and the sibling rivalry getting out of hand, and when Dr. Spock was saying spare the rod and spoil the child, there was probably a fair amount of what today we might call child abuse going on. Some pretty famous serial killers have been formed by family situations that are totally out of control.

For the record, we are adoptive parents, and we had to go through a “ton of approvals” – background checks, finger printing, house inspections, pool inspections, locking up the poisons in the household, and locking up the medicine cabinet, too. We’ve always said, anyone looking to have a child, not just adoptive parents, but anyone, should have to go through these procedures. We are also biological parents, and none of this applied to that child’s birth. You were supposed to have learned all about this from your own parents, the village takes care of the child, all of that. But after my children were born, I realize now totally deficient I am as a parent. I also know I can’t give them up. I have to be their parent, even with my faults.

Consider this – when a person on Twitter claims 37,508 “Followers” – can anyone of them truly be a friend? Maybe 10… I told my daughter quite a few years ago she might find 2, maybe 3 people she could truly be friends with in her whole lifetime. And that’s not counting the “special friendship” the parents are supposed to have with their children. Parents are responsible and they are “leading” in a certain way – “do as I say” are the words uttered, usually more than not, because we all have our faults – “not has I do…” Kids; they want to have a lot of friends.

I talk to one of my “friends” on the phone just about every week, usually about the standard stuff of life, although with these last few years, since she and my father are getting up there in years, sometimes it’s light stuff, like what did you have for dinner, sometimes it’s heavier, like politics, (hardly ever about religion), sometimes it’s really heavy stuff, like where are the wills and trust papers. I would love to talk on the phone to my Dad more, but I usually write, in big type face, because he can’t hear very well at all, especially on the phone, he cannot see without some magnification of the letters. But we have to do and accept what we can.

So, I talk to my Mom on the phone. And sometimes in person (I arranged for some work time in Minnesota recently, working from the old homestead while helping getting the house winterized, rather than working from my office). My folks, they are not very big on email, so I usually print out things and send them in the good old USMail.
Sometimes we talk about things that happened long ago, like when I used to throw my baseball up on the roof, pretending to be Harmon Killebrew, who was a famous (to me at least, 573 home runs, Hall of Famer) baseball player. Or about my “glue cake”, so described because as a small child I found a picture of an Igloo cake in a cookbook of hers, but I didn’t pronounce it correctly. It became a birthday cake for one of my birthdays.

We talk about the old chalkboard at the top of the basement stairs, where we would do some math problems, while she cooked meals. We talk about my electrical shock as a very small child (I was trying to pull a cord for a fan out of the socket, and I got my little fingers around both of those prongs, before I got the darn thing out of the socket). We talk about my dangling a microphone down the clothes shoot into the basement, because I was trying to eavesdrop on my sister’s slumber party. We talk about her car accident, going to college; after she and Dad had raised 5 kids. We talk about her other car accident, where she ran into a deer, and got to bring the carcass home (I think my Dad quit deer hunting after that, since she was having better luck than he was). We talk about my duck hunting with my Dad, and we talk about the famous goose hunting trip to Canada, where my Dad, my Uncle, one of Dad’s friends, and I drove lots of hours, in order to lay in a cold pit in the middle of a wheat field among some goose decoys, “hunting”.

Sometimes we talk about much more recent things, like my daughter’s budding modeling career (she’s 13 years old) or my son’s experiences at the drug store where he works (customers in retail are so much fun- that’s sarcasm, by the way). We talk about the squirrels, or the people in her town. We talk about the people in my town. We talk about the people in Afghanistan, we talk about the people in Georgia (where my Dad’s heart attack occurred).

We don’t talk too much about our dreams and aspirations, oh, I certainly complain about not having enough time, so busy with life and all. I shouldn’t really complain at all, since there are many people that have no time, not any more, since they died in Iraq. Or maybe they have too much time, since they didn’t die in Iraq.

You see, that’s the problem, I figure, we don’t talk enough as a society any more, we twitter, we post, we email, we present, we pitch, we shout, we yell, we do talk… but we don’t listen much, now do we. One person talks, the other is supposed to listen.
But we don’t have time, we are too busy, we have other obligations… so this is one little obligation I decided some years back I would take on, partly because she (and my Dad) were getting older and I was the “distant” child, working on the “left” coast. My sisters all live very much nearby, but my brother and I are a very long plane ride from home. But mostly I did this because I wanted to find out more who my parents were. And not too much later from when I started this calling her every week or every other week, I realized it wasn’t such a thing, an obligation… It was pleasant conversation, with someone that I know well and regard with affection and trust. It was a time to talk to my friend, my Mom.

So, “reach out and touch someone”, as the old commercial used to say. And not only on Mother’s Day, which is the busiest time of the year on the phone lines, but on Sunday, any Sunday, or maybe Tuesday, yes, I like Tuesday, too, but I’m busy then, sure you’re busy, and I’m not? Maybe Twitter works for you, if your Mom is into that; perhaps email works, but something about us humans, we just love to talk, and like I say, not so much love for the listening part, but I’m working on that.

Maybe this new fangled Video Conferencing stuff will work for you, but you’d be surprised how much information can come across this thing we know by different terms and actions, like “dial” even though the dial has largely disappeared and most teenagers don’t know what those holes in the old phone sets are all about – or “give me a ring” even though the mechanical bells that “rang” have long since been displaced with the electronic beeps and tones, and on your cell phone, it will even play music when someone calls you. (My Mom’s mobile says “play ball”.)

The phone is connected to a wire which is connected to a CO (“see oh”) which is a Central Office, but the wire is sometimes referred to as a cable and it might be connected to a Cable Company at their Head End, which is kind of hard to explain. So is Octothorpe, that strange name for the # key, below the 9 and to the right of the 0 on the DTMF or “Touch-Tone” phone. It’s also called the tick-tack-toe, cross-hatch, hash, number, pound, and lord knows what else. The key below the 7 and to the left of the 0 is called “Star” – but that doesn’t hold a candle to Octothorpe… I know what DTMF means, I don’t think my Mom does. We’ve lost some of our terms with most people saying “What?” to “tip and ring”… or explain to your children why jacks are female and plugs are male, and if you don’t understand this, take a look at Michelangelo’s “Temptation and Fall”. And don’t get me started on acronym’s, what with CPE meaning customer provided equipment (AT&T) and company provided equipment (GTE) at total opposite ends of the spectrum, now it’s customer premises equipment; so I guess a CPE used to be a CPE or a CPE, oh my brain is hurting.

Still, don’t let technology get in the way, son. Call your mother.

Posted via email from Wunderphul

No Excuses

2010-02-21T13:24:00.001-08:00

Check out this newspaper account ---
Not since I posted (link) about txting and driving last November, have I seen anything that matches this "no excuses" campaign going on in the South of Britain. I had thought it was going to get worse for drivers, because we are being slowing going over to the dark side of talking, txting, makeup, and other nefarious things, like Mike Arrington (thanks Technorama for the link). Personally, I have no sympathy, just fess up, pay the fine, try to do better. This stuff really does have to stop.

Special pleadings are not acceptable in the “No Excuse” initiative being run here in Dorset, a largely rural county on Britain’s south coast. The yearlong, $1.25 million project — a combination of advertising, education and increased police patrols — is an effort to reduce the number of accidents caused by driver inattention, a common problem across the car-driving world.

My favorite from the newspaper account (I found this in the NYTimes, but the story was originally in the Weymouth Journal) is:

“I was out about a year ago and we stopped a lady who had three children in the back of the car,” he related. “The officer said, ‘Why aren’t these children belted in?’ and she said, ‘They’re not my children.’ ”

#tech101

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Want Everyone To See Your Credit Card Transactions?

2009-12-11T13:49:00.001-08:00

As the Internet matures, slowly but surely everything we do in the real world is going social. But there’s a limit to how much information we can explicitly share on all the various services. A new service, Blippy, launching today in private beta, has an interesting way to take something you do everyday, buy things with your credit card, and automatically push those transactions online for others to see and interact with.

via techcrunch.com

I am having trouble seeing what the positive would be, from the individual's viewpoint.

Posted via web from Wunderphul

Traveling home

2009-11-29T16:25:00.001-08:00

I-5 northbound - stop and go because of the holiday traffic... :-(

I did not plan this very well. No, I did not.

-
Tom (mobile)

Posted via email from Wunderphul

More dumb things, tragic - and perhaps hope...

2009-11-11T21:12:00.001-08:00

Continuing the texting and driving theme... (LINK)

The NY Times and CBS news has conducted a poll http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/02textingside.html and it seems that there are really high percentages of people agreeing about no texting while driving. Penalties, penalties, penalties...

And then there is a story about how Britain has become very agressive in the punishment area http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/02texting.html obviously hoping to curtail the behavior (heavier than "click-it or ticket" and more along the lines of "use a gun, go to jail" -> "text while driving, go to jail")

But actually, I think this technology has promise to help solve the problem in another way
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090525/170623/

While I have worked with and around face recognition software before, this particular application of similar technology would (I would think) allow a driving pattern to developed and stored within the system, because the system has to eventually recognize what the driver is looking at. According to Toshiba, it can be used to alert the driver to inattentive driving (or to operate car navigation system by combining the eye direction and manually-operated switches). The former alerting mechanism, I think, would allow this driving pattern, implicitly, to be differentiated from the texting "looking" pattern. Become inattentive, because of the texting, the system would "alert the driver". Let's hope the alerts don't lead to an aftermarket of methods of disconnection.

What do you think? obviously, more work to be done (they would need to eliminate the computational requirements that force a PC into the car, or simply wait for more horsepower) and, according to their statement in the article, they have no plans to commercialize this yet.

Still - here is something that might be worthwhile, something better than relying on GPS and/or accelerometers tied to the texting function.

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Driving, texting, and otherwise doing dumb things

2009-09-28T23:09:00.001-07:00

I had someone almost sideswipe me over the weekend while I was out and about. It made me think about the following items I had recently seen on the "tubes"

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/07/18/technology/1194841442782/distracted-drivers.html a NYTimes video article on drivers distracted by the technology

http://3g4g.blogspot.com/2009/09/youtube-clip-on-dangers-of-driving.html a film made by a police department in the city of Gwent in the U.K. A fictional, but all too real, crash caused by a Welsh teen's texting while driving.

Why is it that we "consumers" think it's our god given right to do what we want, without regard to our own and other's safety? Perhaps the same could have been said for motorcycle helmet laws in the U.S. until finally most states adopted them solely to cut down on the expense of medical care for those critically injured in this fashion.

The same thing for smoking, in that you can't in many places any more, principally because of the direct medical costs associated with the behavior.

Perhaps this will be the angle that will ultimately be taken in order to force us to behave like sensible people. California (where I live) does have talking on the phone (without a hands free headset) and texting laws designed to prevent this. Mostly, I fear, these laws are ignored. I say this because I've seen a fair amount of tickets being written, but the practice continues, in spite of the tickets. Other places have similar laws and I suspect are also being ignored as much as out here in the west. -- Since there is a direct relationship between the behavior and the ultimate consequences, e.g. the crash, the medical care, the lawsuits - it's only a matter of time before there will be a stronger set of talking/texting laws -- a mandatory "helmet" law for our cell phones?

That would be scary for many of us, now, wouldn't it?

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Additional Moon Landing Trivia

2009-08-09T15:09:00.001-07:00

Back in July, I posted about the upcoming moon landing anniversary.

Well, the 40th for this historic event has come and gone, but I did run across some additional information courtesy of the ABC Science show, from Australia. They were rebroadcasting an interview with the astronauts at the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, and what was really funny was the interchange between John Getter, KHOU in Houston and Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Buzz Aldrin had answered the reporter's question on what's different between 1969 and 1989 with some kind of bland stuff like in the 60's we were ripe for commitment, that now so much more technology was available, that we could do a lot, things are changing Alvin Toffler style, but it was expensive. He left off and I certainly had the impression that the commitment in the 80's was somewhat lacking but he did say that he had hope that things would continue on (from the original missions).

Michael Collins must have been the straightman for the Space Program, because he replied: "President Kennedy said that we were going to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, that was his goal. President Bush (George H Bush), whom I consider to be a president as dynamic as Kennedy, I think, in today's climate would have to say, 'I think we ought to dedicate ourselves to the goal of perhaps considering appointing a commission, after due deliberation with the Congress of investigating the feasibility of certain long-range goals for the space program, perhaps even including a mission to Mars.'

I laughed myself silly... Maybe he had lots of time in the Command Module to think up this stuff.

Posted via email from Wunderphul

What's wrong with Medicine?

2009-07-12T13:20:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, it just rains...

Wife has been coughing alot lately, me too for that matter... She has
phone appt with doctor today, great idea, btw, keeping costs down...
probably some kind of bronchial infection, it's been going around...

I help out by going to the pharmacy to pick up some meds he's ordered
for her... There are 3 packages and 3 months worth of prescriptions!
About $125 - oh my.

Certainly, if the condition persists that long, I would think we might
be trying other things by then. We have cheaper mail-order refill
perscription options by then as well.

I am going to consider this a "click the wrong box" sort of problem,
but it illustrates the importance of patient responsibility and taking
care of your own self.

I know too many lemmings who just unquestioningly do what the doctor
says. Speak up people, ask questions.

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Free Read! - Personal Effects: Dark Art - Chapters 1 thru 4

2009-07-05T11:01:00.001-07:00

Download now or preview on posterous

PEDA-Chap1-4.pdf (1766 KB)

Something for you to read, see if this book is something for you.

I have my own copy, am reading it now, but just in case you'd like to see what all the fuss is about...

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Pictures of Julia

2009-07-03T19:25:00.001-07:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from juliaposz's posterous

It has just arrived! - Personal Effects: Dark Art

2009-07-03T17:42:00.001-07:00

I just started reading, and the cool "extras" just invite you into the story.

Posted via email from The Wunderphul posterous site

Moon landing trivia

2009-07-01T18:42:00.001-07:00

We are coming up on the 40th anniversary of the 1st Apollo moon landing (July 20) in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to touch down, kick some dirt around, bring back some things and generally kick off a whole generation of geeks (like me!).

Actually, we were already gearing up for things, from the famous President Kennedy speech, to (and I think more importantly) the support the teachers got in school for science and especially space related things. Everyone was interested in space exploration. There were books, cartoons, lots of stuff to keep this budding generation of geeks ready to go. Some of these early 3-4th grade readers I still have, having rescued them from my closet at my family home in Minnesota.

Of course, I was late in the generation. The engineers that were at NASA and other places like Lockheed and Boeing were earlier (older?) in the generation. But for all of us, it sheparded in a time of excitement and of hope.

I remember Walter Cronkite (who now is suffering from cerebrovascular disease and is not expected to recuperate) and his distinctive reporting style on the CBS broadcasting network as the launch, flight, landings and returns of the Apollo missions were carried out. I would sit up late into the night during those missions to watch and listen to everything the television (black and white, btw) could give me about each of those men that went on those journeys into space. I remember creating a table of all of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, who was on them, who actually flew, who did space walks, and how long, how many orbits, and for the Apollo's, what the objectives or landing sites on the moon were.

I even own an old style phonograph record of the audio highlights of this first Armstrong/Aldrin landing (Apollo 11) and I distinctly remember that the first reported words on the moon where not that "one small step" sentence, but something more pertinent to the mission. That bit of trivia I'll leave to the readers to ascertain, or if you cannot find it out, then drop me a note and I will help you out.

For other interested trivia (thanks to George Hrab- check out his #121 podcast episode) there were 10 other things, for example: The Apollo 11 flag was purchased from a Sears store local to the Manned Flight Center. At the time, Annin & Company was Sears supplier of nylon flags. From what I've read, it seems impossible to confirm this for sure at this time. In an interview in 1992 with NASA Chief of Technical Services, it's indicated that the flag may have been purchased through a government supply catalog, which also may have been locally procured. Nonetheless, an interesting sidelight to Sears history, which I wrote about over in my technology blog. Have a look.

There are probably more than 10 things, a lot of history is probably lost in the course of life and the moving forward part of life. Maybe there will be a lot less lost because of the "internet age" -- don't you think?

Posted via email from The Wunderphul posterous site

Personal Effects: Dark Art

2009-06-27T17:56:00.001-07:00

Back in the first part of the year, I posted that Sigler and Hutchins are really good authors giving the old school publishing industry a run with an alternate business model.

JC Hutchins' latest book, Personal Effects: Dark Art, is out, at bookstores and online, I've ordered my copy, and a prequel is playing in the feed at JC's site, and at Podiobooks. The book is a supernatural thriller, great storytelling, and will keep you up at night, either reading, or scared to go to sleep. The book is also different, in that you get some "personal effects" like ID cards and photos and if you call the phone numbers with some of the items, you get the character's voicemail; google the characters and institutions, you will find real websites to further shore up the storytelling infrastructure, like the hospital website or the main character's myspace page.

Personal Effects creator is Jordan Weisman, of the Alternate Reality Game storytelling genre. Think The Dark Knight, Year Zero, and I Love Bees.

Maybe you won't be a simple passive reader, you might become active in the story, because you can find out things that the characters themselves don't know... or do they?

Posted via email from Thomas's posterous

Great Post by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer

2009-06-25T02:50:00.001-07:00

Today, Phil revealed this great story at (link, he was reading about it at SFGate) about quantum entanglement

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

wow, I am thinking, two homeless men

he goes on to say, that the article said that two other people witnessed the attack and observes that

Oh, too bad! There goes the defense; the observers collapsed the wave function. Otherwise, he could’ve pleaded guilty and not guilty.

Hee Hee - I laughed myself silly

Posted via email from Thomas's posterous

Contagious

2009-05-26T00:18:00.000-07:00

Coming up to the last episode of Contagious, by Scott Sigler.

The latest podcast episode was posted Sunday, only one left. You can get the feed and listen to all of the episodes where Scott reads them for free at
http://www.scottsigler.com/

If you like horror with a science bent, you're gonna love these.

Time, Sigler, Hutchins

2009-01-31T11:42:00.000-08:00

Gotta love these guys. Their heart (and tons of time) has gone into their work and the marketing "buzz" is starting to pay off.

Give them a listen at Podiobooks.com (Infected, Contagious, 7thSon book 1)or at the author's websites. I just finished Sigler's Nocturnal and it was great!

The 3rd issue of RKMag is out!

2008-11-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

Julia is also in this issue, check out the work that this fabulous group of kids is accomplishing.

Alternate link

Julia is on page 13 and 33.

Julia's in a magazine! part 2

2008-07-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

Get your own - Open publication

Julia Graduates today

2008-06-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

5th grade - she's done - now on to middle school.

Scary

More Wildlife at home

2008-05-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today, I was quite surprised to find a deer in the yard. A poor picture, but it was the best I could do... (she moved away quite quickly when I approached)

Some tomato plants are loosing their leaves. I wonder why?