They Don’t Know

I have had, at least I think, generally above-average tech literacy for most of my life.   I make my career in being an, at least I think, high-priced tech consultant… and generally was good at helping people research problems.  I spent my latter years at college helping scrub and then harden student’s personal computers from all the Ills of the Internet as of 2002. Sure I do the same “How do I make computer/phone/car stop doing [un-nerving thing], Google?” thing as most folks, but for some reason I seemed to zero in on the issue and fix it quickest.  So I am comfortable with the idea that I have encountered and know how to fix a lot of random tech issues.

That being said, the most complicated and confusing and “unsolvable without some sort of large replacement purchase” issues are always courtesy of my Mother.  I mean, I have seen heisenburg upgrades of Internet Explorer (I can’t see it in the ‘windows features’ list to uninstall it, but when I try to install a new copy, it says it’s already installed!?), I have seen more toolbars than an auto shop… but this most recent thing makes me think my mother just got cursed by someone.

So, I’m printing out some documents for my mother to read, and the printer jammed… and as I was yanking out the crimped sheets from the printers every orifice,  I noticed that in the paper maelstrom there were some small strips of paper that were about 8 inches long and 3/8ths inch wide… and they were perfectly cut, not something torn off by something getting caught in the printer.  The end of one was also singed by getting caught close to the fusor.

There were a few more jams, a few more strips, and eventually the paper ran out, and in picking up the remnants of a plastic wrapped, reputable all-purpose paper, and STRIPS STARTED FALLING OUT OF IT.  I shook the rest of the ream from both angles until about 40 or 50 of the little suckers were littering the floor.  And this was not like, some local hand-me-down paper from the friendly mill down across town or something, this was Georgia Pacific, bought in Office Max/Office Despot/Staples Should-not-have-little-strips-n-shit paper.

This is the sort of thing I don’t see anywhere else that has reassured me of my mother’s status of an aggregator for strange tech problems.  I may soon be inquiring to the services of Young Priest & Old Priest LLC.

I believe it was the Life On The Shit List podcast (or LOTSL if you are looking in iTunes since they don’t like wirty dords) where I heard someone say that it was easier to make habits than set resolutions or goals.  The example given was a guy who had a gut who made it a habit of going to Yoga every night and, well, lost the gut after months and months of 7x a week bendy stretchy core exercise.  That pretty much sums up the approaches that have seemed to work for me, so I’ll frame my resolutions/goals/what-have-you for 2013 as habits that have been working, have not been working, and that I want to form over the next year.

• Habits to Keep or Ramp Up
  • Early to Bed, Early to Rise:  I have taken to falling asleep around 9:00 PM, and waking up around 5:00 AM.  It means I get out of the house at 6:15 and work by 7:00, and leave work by 3:00 or 4:00 and avoid some of the worst traffic.   It also means I work through most of the daylight.  This has helpfully been enforced by Cairo, the insane weenie beast who will pretty much start licking my face and kicking me in the stomach if she is not let out by 6:00 AM
  • Save up for expenses I know are coming:  I got a SmartyPig account, and set up monthly debits on things I know are coming that are going to be expensive (Insurance Payments, Car Tires, Vacations/Staycations, etc).  It has slowed the amount I contribute to loan over-payment and emergency savings… but it has also drastically reduced the need for me to dip into those emergency savings, and I consider that a good thing
  • Super-Budgeting in general:  I have a silly way of budgeting that involves both high tech tools like Mint and Google Calendar and  low tech tools like Index Cards… but it works for me and forces me to spot-check where money went.   I have actually had a few “No, I can’t buy that yet because I went to lunch with such and such for so and so” and made decisions about whether I wanted to go out to lunch next week or buy Whatever Thing I had my eye on.
  • Gym:  I was pretty good about going to the gym at least 3 times a week.  a bunch of weight moved up into my back, chest, and shoulders, and my knee stopped bothering me (or when it did bother me, it was because I had just done 50 step-ups on it and it stopped bitching as soon as I got home)
  • Eating better:  I was pretty good about making lunches, using sparkpeople to track calories and keep myself honest about how many times I had already had candy.  With this and the gym I had gone from oscillating between 225-235 lbs to oscillating between 215-225 lbs.  I hope this year to make it to oscillating between 195 and 205 lbs.
• Habits to fall back into
  • Social Planning:  For some reason, I stopped planning things as much as I used to.  Parties and cons and vacations sort of went on autopilot.  I stopped reaching out to people to make sure they could come or to see what they wanted to do.  I wasn’t as good about hitting up people to hang out and started not seeing them nearly as much.  I want to see those people, have a better idea of who might be making it to my parties, and be more excited about what I am doing for Con.  Also, if I take time off and don’t plan things to do… Eric starts to plan chores for me, and I don’t have nearly as good a time.
  • Active Listening:  I need to be better about remembering names, pulling more important nuggets from conversation, making eye contact, and picking up on things that people say.  This means turning away from the computer.  This means acknowledging something I missed instead of blaming the other person for something I “didn’t hear.”
  • Handwriting Cards:  I wrote a lot more thank you cards and Holiday cards than I did this year.  I want to write more cards because it’s fun and people seem to respond well to it… although I am going to try out a plan for Christmas cards of buying a bunch of them now (when they are on sale)  writing a generic message in a card appropriate to the recipient about once a week, and then mailing them all out the day after Thanksgiving day.  I can’t tell whether the idea is brilliant or disingenuous.  Probably a bit of both.
  • Podcasting:  I podcasted.  I need to fall back off the wagon.  I had fun visiting with a bunch of local podcasters the week before Christmas (and Big Fatty) and I need to keep up to stay in touch with so many of the wonderful people I have met through it.
• Habits to start
  • Analytic Shopping:  If I am buying something… ask what it’s replacing, and if it isn’t replacing something… where it will live in my already full house.   This also goes for asking for gifts.
  • Semi-daily cleaning:  We have a dog now.  The dog is made of hair which gets everywhere.  Instead of cleaning lazily once a month… I need to probably run the vacuum over everything once every two or three days… and need to be a lot better about mopping up after the dog tracks mud into the house as opposed to once every three weeks.
• Habits to Drop
  • Leaving both doors of the garage open:  so that Cairo can sneak out and run off… where she plays Gingerbread Dog (“Can’t catch me!” *sprint*)
  • Autopiloting my career:  I should at least give work the opportunity to block things I want to do and I think will be interesting before getting bitter about not doing them.
  • Replacing a meal with a tube of cookie dough:  Eating that much cookie dough (or even only half a tube) seems to be a way to make my brain hit the shiny red “abandon ship” button for my entire digestive tract

I just ordered new tires for Amelia (the 2010 Miata): Continental ExtremeContact DW 205/45ZR17 Because Reasons:

1. Every review seems to be one of three things:
a. “OH MY GOD THESE ARE THE BEST TIRES EVER”
b. “I really, really like these tires but they wore out after only 25,000 miles (15,000 miles if they were used on a track regularly)” <— Welcome to the world of “Max Performance Summer” tires. They are so grippy because they are a bit less soft than toothpaste.
c. “I replaced the Michelin Pilot Super Sports on my [insert expensive sporty car here] with these and while they rode more comfortably they performed a bit worse and were a little bit louder. This offended me and I went back to the Pilots. Not too bad a tire however…” <— Michelin Pilot Super Sports go for about $250 a tire on my car (and can reach upwards of $500-600 a tire on really fancy cars with wide, thin tires)…. You can apparently get them for $195 a tire from COSTCO occasionally. The tires I just got are more like $105 a tire. I’m more than okay with 98% performance for 50-10% of the cost.
2. They have a little “DW” stamped into one of the treads. When they are no longer safe for wet driving, the “W” wears away. When they are no longer even safe for Dry driving, the “D” wears away.
3. I already have Contental ExtremeContact DWS (the higher-treadwear all-season version… DWS is for Dry/Wet/Snow, hence the DW’s are Dry/Wet only) on Lina (the 2004 Mazda3) and was so impressed I talked Eric into getting them for his Fusion (“They slip a lot less!” he says).

I look forward to around 22,000 miles of gleeful driving on the shiny new shoes!

(Image ganked from http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Continental/ExtremeContact-DW.htm)

My first computer was an Apple IIe.  I remember it had a teeny color monitor and a humongous keyboard/computer combo that it sat on top of.  I also remember not really using it too much beyond a winter olympics program and thinking that the programming program, logo, was really stupid (honestly, I think logo set me back 10 years on coding, probably stumping whatever hacking/cracking prodigy I could have been at the time).  It was followed closely by a Macintosh LC… which had they keyboard separated from the computer piece and a bigger monitor.   I remember being so excited when I got a color 3-pass scanner and a color inkjet printer and finding out that it took my little LC about 3 days to scan a page from omni at full resolution.  The LC also marks my forays into the Internet with a 14,400 bps modem and america online.  After the LC, I had a powerbook 520 for most of grade school and the beginning of high school and a Performa 6300 CD to get me through high school.  The Performa ended up going to college with me, as did one of my brothers hand-me-down gateways.  After the hand-me-down gateway showed that it would have trouble handling windows 2000 and eventually XP, I built my own box out of components at a local store, when 256 megs of RAM was the most expensive thing at about $300.   I also took an old box and converted it to Linux as it was conducive to the *Nix systems I was learning to program-on at school.  The Performa sort of fell by the wayside and collected dust, and eventually ended up being used by my grandfather to entertain my younger cousins and help do some graphics work.

I always held a torch for Apple, thinking that OS 6, 7, 8, and 9 were always the nicest, prettiest and easiest systems compared to Windows and *NIX systems.  So I was thrilled when Steve Jobs rolled back up to Cupertino and the computer labs at my university started to fill up with quiet iMacs and students started carrying colorful iBooks with them.  I loved OSX’s secure and powerful Linuxey roots.  I squeed at the Apple Store’s shinyness. I started following all the releases and lusted after 3G chips and eventually 4G chips.  I eventually got my G4 Powerbook 12″ and my iPod video, bought Eric a few iPods, colluded to get a friend an iPhone and had friends collude to get me a core 2 duo macbook.   I remember the long screeds I wrote on various forums about how cool the iPhone was.  I podcast on my macbook and can rattle off a few really cool things I did on it for friends and family.

But then, Apple started to become a real dick company.  I feel like it started with the iPhone and really solidified with the iPad.  I’d always heard about Steve Jobs’ legendary asshole-ery in private but the success of the iPhone and iPad I feel gave Jobs and Apple license to fire their PR firm.  They moved from quirky “think different” ads and mildly snarky “well, we feel we are less likely to piss you off” Windows comparisons to flat out “we are the best damned thing in the universe” aggrandizement.   All the SDK’s for iOS were for-pay and OSX-only. Maybe the cash flow and success got to them, maybe Apple just caught the dick company bug from AT&T, but I found myself liking them less and less.

The final straw was the patent pimping.  Apple has several patents on phones and tablets, they don’t have the most… Microsoft has the most… but what few (and spurious) patents Apple does have they are using to try and dick over other technology companies.  They are constantly in lawsuits with makers of Android phones and tablets to try and get injunctions against their sale around the globe.  The patent system is not intended to be used in that way.  It’s designed to let the patent owner go “I thought of this nuance first, if you want to use it, you need to give me a nominal fee” not “I thought of this nuance first, you can’t ever use it because I don’t like you and/or you threaten my market share”.   This was emphasized back when all the car companies were trying to use their patents to mess each other over, judges simply started throwing out such cases and forced the companies to go into rooms and work out licensing deals… much like they are doing to Apple now (thank goodness).

The patent system does not let you patent the mouse trap, it lets you patent your version of the mousetrap.  If someone else makes a mousetrap that is better, then you are SOL… but innovation won out.   Sort of like when MS Windows won out over Mac OS because it was cheaper and could run on non-pricey not-Apple hardware, much to Steve Jobs’ chagrin.  The final patent point I want to make is that Microsoft had the power to really screw Apple over with it’s mountain of phone and tablet PC patents, but they didn’t, they instead chose to just make money off Apple and wish them luck.

Either way, Apple’s shenanigans affected me directly.  I never ended up getting an iPhone because I am very loyal to Sprint and Apple got to them last.  I ended up falling in love with the HTC Android phones, and when it came time to replace my Evo 4G with an Evo 4G LTE, I had to wait even longer for my pre-ordered phone because the Evo 4G LTEs got held up in customs due to an injunction Apple filed against HTC way back in April 2012.

It’s just bad business.  Me not being able to get my Evo didn’t make me want to go get an iPhone instead… I would have gotten anything but an Apple product just to spite Apple.  I’m not going to say I’ll never get another Apple product again (most of my music is tied up in iTunes, and Garageband and iMovie/Final Cut on OS-X are the best podcast/movie editors I’ve run across)*, but I no longer feel the need to get the shiniest, newest apple within 2 months of a release.  I feel like I’m probably just going to replace what I have by buying the old computers from people who were upgrading to something newer.  I also expect Apple to take a lot of rough hits over the next couple of years, as the biggest companies always seem to lose focus due to swelling waves of middle management that stifle and drive away talent.

I no longer carry the torch for Apple.  They aren’t something to be proud of anymore.

*Edit Aug 2012:  Yeah, Samsung vs Apple trial verdict today… Right now I just don’t see myself even replacing the macbook.

Waaaaay back when I started listening to Mikeypod.  It’s been on my podcast player through my various downloadable upheavals, mainly because he finds some good music and you can tell he really loves it.  He is also almost always around to chat a bit, and through these chats I found out both of us shared a teacher at one point.

Anyways, he asked for a review of his latest episode in a non-twitter form, and here it is:  I listened to it and enjoyed it as always, heard what his guest, Tim Elsenburg of Sweet Billy Pilgrim was talking about when he said he enjoyed his string work on the latest song, and otherwise made a dog-walk and cardio session that much more enjoyable.  So give Mikeypod a shot.

Every day I come home to a lovable ball of fur that I just can’t help adoring despite many nips, growls, and occasional stinkyness.  I also get to see Cairo!

Cairo is an awesome dog, and the lovable proportions of a half-a-dog high and one-and-a-half dogs long make her look like the adolescent version of many other creatures I love.  So now I give you a guide for how to make your own Cairo with fauna that may be more accessible for you.

• Tried and True method:  cross a miniature dachshund with a black labrador.  Mommy will either have to be a trooper or daddy will have to be a jumper.
• Seal it with a kiss:  Take harbor seal, put on diet, fit prosthetic digging feet
• Otterly adorable:  Imprint on an otter pup, thin out hair on tail
• Don’t give a shit:  Take honey badger, keep benadryl handy,  occasionally dip in black ink.
• Prairie home companion:  Take prairie dog, fit prosthetic snout, roll in toner.

I’ve had an odd couple of weeks.

The smattering of crappy workplace situations from last year appear to have congealed into a minor career mess which will require focused efforts to clean up. I got to sit through several meetings which could have been very embarrassing and dis-spiriting but for the folks working with me genuinely wanting me to succeed and get better. It also gave me something I’ve been desperately seeking from my employer: much more focused goals. So I feel like I can move past it all and will do my best not to bitch constantly about the extra work that suddenly appeared, (Also, one of the much more focused goals seems to be “just do the extra work that suddenly appears and try not to bitch so much about it”). Also, instead of being in a project that seems to have me working twice as hard on things I don’t like with no detectable opportunity for leadership (like the middle of last year)… I am in a project that I enjoy which has plenty of opportunities for leadership. Thus, I am keeping my hopes high, my efforts focused, and my tongue leashed. Ultimately, if I can’t get it to work out, I will feel like my current company and I have given each other plenty of chances and I can separate from my workplace citing that we just don’t grok each other.

Cairo giving her “I love you and would prefer not to discuss the chewed-up, excrement soaked/filled shoes at this time because I am vulnerable right now” eyes.

We got a now-3-month old puppy from the Atlanta Humane Society. Her name is Cairo, she’s a Doxidor, a Dachshund/Labrador mix (and as I say to all people after releasing that info… “Don’t take too long to think about the physics of that”). I had my eye on her ever since she was a 2-month-old puppy: the Atlanta Humane Society supplies pictures of their adoptable animals on their website. I fell in love with her soulful eyes and the concept of having a dog that looked like small-to-medium-sized Labrador that had been kneecapped. I also love that she is pretty much the closest thing to an otter I will be able to get.

But of course, this means I am in puppy hell: An dirty upper circle where a slavering fanged beast nips at your hands and ankles and pees on lots of things. It’s amazing that a puppy which can figure out how to get around the barrier, find nibble-able things in the smallest of nooks and crannies, recognize her name and hear treat bottles being opened from 400 feet away…  Can’t understand things like “No”, “Ow!”, and “Stop that!”.

But she is awful cute.  She is also therapeutic.  While Eric and I don’t squabble less, the fallout and resulting “ooooh, why you so mean” cattiness that usually follows our squabbles is shortened dramatically because, well, there is a cute puppy who wants attention, and neither of us is cruel enough to deny dog joys from (or foist all dog-responsibilities to) the other.

Finally, last night I confirmed why I am glad I got the cloth seats in the Miata.  Eric and I were driving around in the Miata with the top down on a beautiful cloudy day… and I went to a friends house for the ending bits of his birthday party (the primary reason for the driving around), left the top down, and it got sprinkled-in.  Luckily my friend alerted me to the drizzles (ironically because his puppy alters her behavior when it precipitates) before it became serious and helped me towel out the one or two millimeters of water and put the top up.  When Eric and I eventually prepared for our wet-butted ride home, it had rally started pouring.

When I got home, I toweled out Amelia the Miata some more, and left the top slightly back, and by this morning it had dried out.  I appreciate the design of the Miata even more now.  None of the instrumentation or other electronics got wet because the steep rake of the windshield protected them, and all the areas that were getting wet were plastic and easily dried/cleaned.   If I had leather seats I might have just shortened the life of it considerably.

So that seems to be the theme of 2012.   New things happen, but the choice to get angered or annoyed by them is up to me.

Post-a-list, engage!

• Ongoing resolutions from last year, and probably for the rest of my life
• Health: I am older, bolder, and fatter. I also have creeping blood pressure that spiked horribly after my year and a half California ordeal management. Thus, I continue working out, eating better, and avoiding salt, despite my love for it. I feel like my health zenith is to get back to a 32 inch waist, upon which my knee, blood pressure, and mood shall all improve. Alas, I read the most depressing article that once you take off a significant amount of weight, you basically get to obsess over it your whole life because having the weight changes you physiologically: Your muscle tissue is that much more efficient, your digestive tract treats all food as godsends in a famine condition, and your mind wants to think about the new calorie counting hobby constantly.
• Organization: My house is not an unmitigated mess, but I have piles upon piles of old (if not semi-sensibly organized) stuff that I really don’t need to keep anymore. It’s getting to the point where I have lost a few things just because I hid them in a spot underneath something else that I can not remember which pile was where. As my memory for phone numbers gets replaced by the fancy Google contacts list synced to my smartphone, I hope to go through piles, files, and shelves… find tons of stuff to chuck or gift, and give everything I kept in the house a clear, roomy, obvious home that even my dotty-ness can figure out in a pinch.
• Communication: Communicate better with coworkers, friends, loved ones, and random folks on the Internet who like to read/listen-to my blather. My hope is for more blog posts and podcasts, less friction and more meaningful interactions, better gift ideas, less “crap, what is this person’s name/last-name/rank” moments, and of course… world peace.
• New resolutions for this year… and probably for the rest of my life
• Adjust station within workplace accordingly: Sometime between last year and this year, my company has done its best to clarify what it wants from prior company that got eaten and how we-the-eaten can better portray what we are looking to do and willing to do. My first reactions, after seeing what other consultants in other divisions tended to go through, was to throw an embarrassing tantrum. After calming down, I had an epiphany just in time for the new year (but alas, not the financial new year) that I was barking up the wrong tree with my career path. Thus, I have been having discussions with coworkers and am ready to stake out my position and have my reasons clear, and I think it will get me in a much better place regarding what I want to do.
• Austerity and Economic Recovery: Last year I inherited some new financial responsibilities. I am not hurting by any means, but my occasional sprees which used to just get eaten up as “I saved less this month” are now actual “I ate into savings a bit this month”. Thus, in tandem with an inventory from Organization… I’ll need be a lot more wary about what I buy, when and for whom.
• Read more: I spend a lot of time in a car, and the first thing I do when I get home is put on the TV to some movie I’ve already seen a billion times before. I have a Kindle, and not one of the fancy color ones. I need to get through the books I have there, they tend to be more fulfilling and much cheaper in the long run. I find myself wanting to be appropriately labeled “Voracious reader”

Otherwise, happy new year! Hope you are well.

So, I have been thirty for a couple of months now, and I just went to DC to celebrate two of my good friends turning 30. Here is what I have learned thus far…

• My body is more efficient. Every calorie is extracted from food, and muscle that has already been built will do everything rather than letting new muscle be built. And every pang of stress is turned immediately into another mmHg of blood pressure. Bastardy body.
• I’m more mellow. I tend to go “is there anything I can really do about it, will being dramatic get me anything” and usually the answer is no. I will gleefully poke fun at people when they get that way, however. It’s much too fun to not.
• I go to bed and wake up way earlier.
• I never really drank, but my friends who do I’ve noticed have cut back and switch to water much earlier. The result is a pleasant surprise (“Hey, I was feeling that last drink rather hard, I was worried I was going to get sick or be really hung over but I went to bed and woke up early and felt fine”) as opposed to a nasty one (“I’m sorry my retching and crying kept you up too…”)
• Changes in routine that involve exercise hurt that much more. I went to the Kart track at beautiful Summit Point raceway and did the “Kart till you Puke” deal… which means I did 10 11-minute sessions in karts that could do about 50 MPH (which is almost two hours of rather hard driving) and I have almost lost the use of my right arm. My recently old friends who went with me were complaining of bruised rib cages

Needless to say, work out and eat better now, young’ns.

I have to come out about something to all my friends and loved ones because they sometimes forget and try to convince me to forget.

I do not like bars!

Do I drink? Sure, a little maybe when I am at a restaurant or at my own house. But I never seemed to get into the recreational drinking that college was supposed to have taught me, and I don’t feel particularly addicted to alcohol either.

So the idea of having a little building where you stand around and drink is about as appealing to me as a little building full of exotic rubber nipples on display. I won’t seek them out on my own, and I’ll only go hang out with you in one if I like you and I’m not too hungry or tired and don’t really have much better to do. If I am tired or hungry or have something better to do, I will not join you. And if I become tired or hungry or find something better to do, I will probably leave you rather quickly if you’d rather stay at the bar, and if that makes you sad… don’t be, it’s simply because I don’t like bars.

Bars tend to be loud, smokey, and standing room only. These things make me surly on their own… but the whole notion of “why the hell am I here anyways” tends to make me outright cranky.

Yes, even if the bar has pretty good food. Because it’s bar food… which means it’s greasy finger food that doesn’t do my figure any favors and I was hoping to get the salad and chicken sandwich.

Yes, even if coworkers are going. I’d rather head home or to the hotel and fart around on the internet than drink with coworkers. I know I’ll have more fun.

Yes, even if the bar has naked people. Because bars full of naked people are full of non-naked people who are distracted who step on me and spill drinks on me.

Yes, even if the bar has an amazing beer menu. I don’t like beer that much, and the types of beers I do like are the watery american pilsners that taste like bread smells which means the bar owners will give me that sad look that lets me know I am held in contempt for not knowing what I am missing.

Yes, even if your friend(s) is/are there or there is an awesome social scene. I would rather go to the restaurant or the ice cream shop to meet your friend(s) and people watch because there will probably be better parking, service, and I won’t count the minutes wondering when I can leave.

Let it be known that I don’t like bars. Don’t be surprised or anguished when you drag me to one and I proceed to not have a good time.