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New Year

In 2011…

I started smoking again.

I took a new position in my chosen career field.

I started something resembling an adult relationship.

I proved that I am good at what I do, no matter where I may be doing it.

I ended the relationship (my first in 12 years) when I realized it wasn’t right for me and wasn’t making me happy.

I said goodbye to friends.

I helped a dear friend in need.

I went to Dragon*Con for the first time, and had a blast.

I stood beside my best friend at his wedding.

I spoke publicly for the first time that wasn’t related to business in over a decade. And didn’t suck.

I was diagnosed with a common, though underdiagnosed genetic disorder.

I had an MRI for the first time.

I visited Philadelphia for the first time. And binged on raw oysters and Bloody Caesars.

I learned first-hand that bloodletting is still a thing.

I decided to return to my old office when my time in the new place is up.

I was scared that people I care about might die.

In 2012…

I’m going to stop smoking. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. Smoking will kill me.

I’m going to clean this apartment.

I’m going to get back into the habit of cooking for myself.

I’m going to more seriously investigate the possibility of moving, beyond window shopping on the Internet.

I’m going to go to more concerts.

In going to be a better person to myself and those around me.

What Price the Deal?

CNN has a headline right now that says “Violence Mars Black Friday.” I would contend that “black Friday” is not a thing of beauty that can be marred, like my mother’s Queen Anne dining table. It’s a horrible day, when people engage in the worst sort of consumerism and psychotic bargain hunting, which the retailers have chosen to exploit, in recent years.

I hate the big retailers as much as the next guy. They engage in the worst tactics to get people into stores. They advertise huge sales on big ticket items to lure people in with the promise of getting one of a handful of the big sale items, whipping people into a frenzy. And thousands are taken in, and consumed by it. That being said, for some things there are no excuses. If saving a few hundred dollars is important enough to you that you’ll assault someone, you are EVIL.

On Hyperbole

As we see the images coming out of Egypt, I think it’s important to remember something about what’s going on in our own country. In various places on the Internet, I’ve seen folks making comparisons between what police are doing to the Occupy Movement protestors and what security forces are doing in places like Syria. There’s one important difference. In Syria and Egypt, the police are using live ammunition, and shooting people dead. Blood is running in the streets. What’s happening here is reprehensible, but the two are on completely different levels. Let’s keep things in perspective, and keep our commentary accurate.

Women versus Girls

This is one of those things I’ve never really thought about. To me, women my own age have always been “girls.” “Woman,” has always meant someone significantly older than me for some reason. This is probably a bad thing. I’m going to make an effort to stop using that word. Because I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a problem in the tech world.

I’m reporting this thought here, because it was originally on my tumblr, which I use mostly for silly shit. interesting though: I wonder if I really need to continue that division? Do I need a to be on tumblr and have a “serious” blog? My cant tumblr be for serious posts and for image macros? I guess there aren’t actual comments over at tumblr, though.

Inbox

Last night, I listened to the first episode of “Back to Work,” one of several excellent shows, produced by Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 Studios. While I was listening, I was cleaning out my inbox, which at the time had approximately 200 emails in it, all of which I had read. For some reason, last night while I was listening to Dan and Merlin Mann talk about getting back to doing what you want to do, my 200-message inbox struck me as a very bad thing.

So I went through all of those e-mails, asking myself a few questions.

“Why did you keep this?” If I didn’t know or couldn’t remember I trashed it.

If I had a satisfactory answer, I ten asked “Do you still need to keep this?” If the answer was “yes,” I filed it someplace other than my inbox. If the answer was “no,” I trashed it I eventually got the number down to 14. Fourteen emails from nearly 200.

A lot of the emails I got rid of were important once, but not anymore. Updates on very transient events. As an example, I still had the e-mail chain between my father, brother, and I when my mother was in the hospital with pneumonia several months ago. Very important event. Long since past. Those emails are all gone now.

I filed some stuff; things I’d left in my inbox because they had information I’d need later. As I was going through, I realized that while, yes the information will be useful again, I wasn’t going to need it soon enough that I needed the message sitting in front of me all the time. It needed to be in a filing cabinet, not a post-it on my desk.

One common thing among all the stuff I deleted or filed. It was stuff I’d forgotten about. I’d consciously left these messages in my inbox at one point, but after sitting for a while they stayed there for no reason. My inbox had nearly 200 e-mails because of inertia. That’s a bad thing. I’m going to do my best not to let that happen anymore. Once I’ve done what needs to be done with any given e-mail, I’m going to get it out of my inbox. I’m going to be ruthless about it. And I’m going to try to do this at work, too, where practical.

A couple of hours ago, I watched a video of a talk Merlin does called “Inbox Zero.” In it he talks about exactly the problem I had. And gives a lot of tips for getting out from under email and avoiding getting buried in the first place. I think it’s worth a watch for anybody.

Dear California, SHUT UP

Yes, California, the East Coast earthquake was a small earthquake. But you have earthquakes all the time. The last time we had an earthquake that strong over here was 1944. If the next quake of moderate size comes after a similar interval, then for a large portion of the population here this quake will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Familiarity breeds comfort, resignation, and contempt.

Some Thoughts on the Tablet Market

Via Daring Fireball comes this story from All Things D. Apparently sales of the HP Touchpad tablet have been so bad that Best Buy has said “DO NOT WANT.” they have, in fact, asked HP to take them back because, as a retailer, apparently they would rather have their stores and warehouses filled with things, that actually, you know, sell.

I think the big problem for tablet makers, aside from Apple, who seem to be doing fine, is that they have been (and still are) playing catch up. Apple was first out of the gate with a great product that provides a great user experience. In order to really compete with the iPad, it seems to me that any other tablet has to at least match the quality of that experience, or better yet, improve upon it. This is where would-be competitors have failed, I think. Some have tried to compete on the basis of one thing the iPad cannot do, namely Flash support. This might seem to be a smart tactic, as a lot of websites use flash. But the problem is that getting Flash to work well on tablets is hard, therefore chances are your device will do it badly. Doing things badly is not a good way to compete. I think that Steve Jobs and Apple knew all this, and that’s shy iOS doesn’t support Flash. They made a conscious decision to dump flash and thereby avoid any detractions from the user experience.

If a tablet supports flash, but flash doesn’t work well on it, then your much-vaunted Flash support stops being your killer feature and becomes something your tablet sucks at. Why would anyone choose a tablet that does anything badly, when one could have an iPad, which does so many things so well, for the same price or less? I think most people wouldn’t. And being able to, say, root your Android tablet, or customize it more than you can an iPad isn’t going to do it for you. You may get the geeks who care about that, sure. Tinkerers and fiddlers, but it won’t help you with the masses who just want a cool toy to browse the web and email and check Facebook on.

Flash support won’t make a winner. Hardware specs won’t make a winner. Build quality won’t make a winner. A lower price for a lesser experience won’t make a winner. You need a great user experience. That’s why the iPad is a winner. I’d be interested to see another tablet make do what Apple did: ditch Flash and focus on doing everything else well. Try to beat the iPad at it’s own game.

I guess I should include a disclaimer that I’m typing this on my iPad.

Internet Trickery

Advertisement for a scam "business" disguised as a consumer watchdog site.

Here’s something a found on the internet yesterday. It came to me by way of twitter spam that was retweeted by someone who I think reckoned the original poster’s account had been compromised. It’s an advertisement for a scam outfit called “Online Trade Training.” It’s sneaky because it’s made to look like some sort of consumer watchdog website, purporting to refute claims that the Online Trade Training is a scam.

There’s two ways to know that this is an ad and not the real deal. One is the fine print (the word “advertorial” at the top, and a bunch of legalese at the bottom). I’m pretty sure no one does this. I know I didn’t. I determined it’s a scam the other way. I read through the content and noted that unlike a real review of a product or service, it tells you nothing about what the product actually is.  Big red flag. To paraphrase, the site basically says “We thought it sounded too good to be true, but then we talked to this person to lives RIGHT WHERE YOU DO, and it’s totally legit!”

I hate this kind of stuff. This kind of straight-up deception should be illegal, if it’s not already.

“Pro-life” Bullshit

Contraception, homosexuality, sexual abuse and other social issues lead to the destruction of the traditional family and to the destruction of life.

That’s the opening sentence of the Virginia Right to Life, Inc. newsletter I received today. I don’t even know where to start with this. How can anyone seriously insinuate and kind of link between people’s sexual orientations and abortion? Ridiculous. Something interesting to note: if you visit VRTL.org, and check out their newsletter archive, you’ll see that up until early 2007 “spousal abuse,” was included in the laundry list of things that “lead to the destruction of the traditional family.” At some point in the last four years it was removed. I find it ironic that they deleted one of the two items that actually does destroy families. These people would be laughable if they weren’t so harmful.