Geek

I talk a bit about how sometimes it feels like advances in technology are basically destroying our society as we know it. My primary belief to support this is because technology is advancing faster than society’s capacity to handle this growth. The population hasn’t evolved quickly enough to keep up with the new technology being released to the masses.

This being said, I am fully amazed and appreciative of the fact that I am able to watch the latest NASA spacewalk at the International Space Station in real-time from my desk at work on a second monitor while writing code. The signal is coming from over 350,000 kilometers away, being pushed to Twitter and Periscope and instantly available on a computer the size of a 1/3 of a pizza box but more powerful than anything that was even dreamed of when we first started exploring Space.

This helps me maintain my sanity and faith in humanity. We’ll get through this and the disparity around the technology-people connection will eventually balance out (though it’s taking way too long).

We need to move forward. We have a whole big Universe to explore.

In the earlier days of the World Wide Web we’d all have our pages set to a “home page” or “start page”, which was usually a portal that included little snippets of information. You’d find things like the weather, the latest news headlines, and updates from your favorite Geocities sites.

Web browsers today tend to steer us toward a blank or search page upon initial load in today’s Modern World. Apple in particular would rather we use apps to garner the information we used to grab through a web portal.

At work this morning I fired up Google Chrome, since that seems to be the dominate choice for web browser at the company I work for and since I write applications, including web applications, as my livelihood I should probably use the browser everyone else is using, and I went to Google News. It hearkens back to the old style “Start Page” quite a bit with headlines, local weather, and a couple of other little bits of information one would presumably like to see at the beginning of the day.

Two things stuck out at me this morning.

Not only does the Google News page have a section dedicated to checking the facts, but they also let one choose their default temperature of Celsius, Fahrenheit, or Kelvin.

Metric goodness is always appreciated. Notice I have it on Fahrenheit at the moment. I’m switching it to Celsius today.

It’s amazing what runs through my mind when I’m writing code at work. When I get into my “awesome development zone”, that wonderful place where the code just flows from my fingers without an error or bug to be found, my mind goes into this multi-threaded mode where I’m writing amazing software without really thinking about it and daydreaming about something completely unrelated and random.

Today my brain started thinking about the 1970s television series, “The New Adventures of Wonder Woman”. Everyone is familiar with the Lynda Carter led show, and I specifically thinking about some of the music cues in a couple of the second season episodes before they went full-tilt disco with the “stepping” disco beat theme song.

Not only was the “transformation music” of the second season consistently awesome, there were other music cues that were quite fun. In the episode “The Pied Piper”, Martin Mull plays an evil flute player named Hamlin Rule has hypnotizes women, including Jan Plumb, to do his evil bidding. The audio processing on his flute tracks was super groovy, even for the 1970s, and one would think it would be confined to when he played the flute.

But no! There’s a brief five to ten second interval in the later episode, “Seance of Terror”, which features Bobby Brady/Mike Lookinland’s younger brother Todd Lookinland as a kid with psychic and telekinetic powers, who is being cared for by his evil aunt and uncle. Said relations want to sabotage peace talks and guarantee ongoing border wars for the country Tarmania, securing funding for the meanies that hired them.

I can vividly recall watching this episode in the spring of 1978 on my Mom and Dad’s 19-inch Zenith in the Family Room. I remember noticing the groovy flute music cue back then, and here we are 42 years later and I’m still talking about it.

I remember liking the actress that played “Aunt Theodora”, the mean aunt to Todd Lookinland, “Matt”. She was played by Kres Mersky. I really liked her speaking voice. When working the room with the ambassadors, she had such a classy presence, even though we all knew she was evil. There was a certain je ne sais quoi about the way she carried herself and I found it entrancing. It was perfect for the role, even though it was Bobby Brady’s brother that had the special powers.

I remember Ms. Mersky being on various shows in the 70s and 80s; she seemed like she was everywhere, but looking at her IMDB profile she wasn’t on as many shows as I had thought. I think I might have been confusing her with Lynnie Greene, who starred in the one season “On Our Own” the same year, and who also went on to play “Young Dorothy” on “The Golden Girls”.

Anyways, I got to thinking about Ms. Mersky again, she also reminded me of a woman I worked with back in my days at Digital Equipment Corporation, so I decided to look her up.

I found this website from 2010 around a play she wrote and starred in, “The Life And Times of A. Einstein”. It’s a one woman show about the life of Albert Einstein as seen through the eyes of his secretary Ellen.

Ms. Mersky’s latest entry on her IMDB entry is a short called “Rope” from 2008. It’s hard to search for a short called “Rope” on Google, but perhaps I’ll eventually find something further.

According to her bio, Ms. Mersky was 28 years old when she played Aunt Theodora on “Wonder Woman”. (My how the looks of 28 year old have changed in 42 years!). I found her personal website, but it looks like it hasn’t been updated in a number of years.

Nevertheless, I hope she is well and enjoying life and doing what she loves. I know seeing her today when I watched the entire Wonder Woman episode of “Seance of Terror” made my smile.

Now if she could have done something about Diana’s disguise wig.

I’ve always been fascinated by things that are connected. Before my interest in computers formed, as a young kid I was fascinated by power lines, especially the high-tension wires that criss-crossed their way across the country side, connecting the villages and cities to the power plants in the area. One of my earliest memories of this interest were a set of (what later knew to be) 115 kV lines that paralleled Interstate 81 north of Syracuse, N.Y. The lines in question used towers or supports that did not have four feet firmly planted on the ground, but a single ladder type arrangement. There are variations of this design all over Upstate New York, mostly in the old Niagara-Mohawk service area. In all our travels I’ve never seen this design used in any other state.

On our recent trip to see my family I noticed the towers and lines along this corridor are being replaced. My first thought was that they’re not that old, but then I realized I’m over 50 years old and they’re at least that if not more, so I decided to do a little bit of research.

The lines follow an old railroad line dating to the turn of the 20th century. The power lines appear on surveys as early as 1920, so they’re most likely over 100 years old.

Now I get why National Grid (the current power company) is replacing this little slice of my childhood.

Looking at the photo I hastily snapped while driving on Interstate 81, you’ll notice the new towers (or pylons) are dark brown, taller, and have a bolder impact in the aesthetics of the landscape.

I’m sure they’ll last at least 100 years.

Addendum: I love the Internet. More information on this project is available here.

I spotted this sign down the street from our hotel here in New Orleans. There’s something comforting to me about seeing the unchanged, pretty much constant GE “ball” logo. It’s a shame their appliances don’t live up to their legacy (and are made by Haier).

Anyway, I know GE does a lot in medical and aerodynamics and nuclear plants but I didn’t know what “GE Digital” was. It turns out it’s a computing company that does a whole bunch of things, including Internet of Things things.

I’m intrigued. I’ll have to do more research on the company and see what that’s all about. After all, things connected together are nifty in my book, and I’ve always been fascinated by GE.

I love legacy technology. Youtube suggested I watch this video about AT&T operators in 1969. My mom was a telephone operator for New York Telephone for a little while in the mid 1960s; I wonder if her job was as colorful as what was depicted in this video.

Back in the day one of the things I enjoyed about Christmas shopping was seeing which stores were using what technology at the checkouts. It was really the highlight of my shopping experience on the day after Thanksgiving. This was long before it was called “Black Friday”. I remember people thinking Zayre Department Stores had gone crazy because they were open 24 hours in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Notice how pleasant everyone is in the picture above. I’m sure in the madness of today’s Black Friday someone, somewhere was punched in the face. It might have been over an Instant-Pot, a television, or a cheap, knockoff tablet, but I’m sure the police were called more than once.

I didn’t bother following the mayhem on Twitter today. I was too busy working.

I’m not particularly a fan of the shopping experience, especially since technology has become so boring. I know it’s nearly magic that I can order everything I want without leaving the home, and that’s all due to technology, but I what I would give to see a cashier punch some numbers and the price and to be pleasant about it again.

In 2009 I hosted a Windows 7 Launch Party. It was a fully sanctioned, fully supplied by Microsoft Windows 7 Launch Party. I received two copies of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition: one for a giveaway and one for myself. I had party favors and a list of suggested games and feature demonstrations. I watched the Pre-Launch Video designed to prep us for the merriment, and which has also been parodied all over the Internet over the past decade. I played honest and true geek.

In 2009 I was all in on Windows 7, and that was even after being part of the testing team for the preceding Windows Vista fiasco. I had Windows 7 installed on my MacBook Pro at the time. For the most part I really liked the platform and user experience.

When the iPhone, and later the iPad, came out I went all in on Apple products; the integration was just easier to manage. After writing code and doing network things all day long (and through long hours of on-call nights), I wanted a home setup that just worked. Microsoft products still needed fiddling, Linux required a LOT of time and energy that I just did not have, and Apple made promises of It Just Works. For the most part, it did.

As a geek I’m happiest when I’m all in on one computing platform. The OCD side of my brain has a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of using Microsoft Word on Mac OS or the Google Chrome browser on my iPad. Storing my files on Dropbox and then working to sync everything together to work with dissimilar operating systems just runs contrary to the way my brain thinks.

But being all in on one platform in 2019 is really not feasible.

Over the past several months I’ve tried to make all of our home automation magic run on Apple’s HomeKit. We can yell into the air, “Hey Siri, turn on the lights in the dining room”, and Siri will do it around 65% of the time.

“Hey Siri, turn on the lights in the dining room”. Three of the four lights come on.

“Hey Siri, turn off the lights in the dining room”. All the lights go out.

“Hey Siri, turn on the dining room lights”. All the lights come on. We then enjoy a nice meal.

“Hey Siri, turn off the dining room lights”. Siri replies, “I don’t know how to help you with that.”

“Hey Siri, turn off the dining room lights”. One light goes off.

“Hey Siri, turn off the lights in the dining room”. The lights in my office come on and then a HomePod starts playing profanity-laden rap music. I suppose it’s Siri’s way of tell me to f*&k off.

Needless to say, Siri and her HomeKit are not reliable. Not even close. Luckily, I still have a couple of Google Home Minis so I fired them up, waved to KellyAnne Conway through her microwave, and asked Google to do some home automation magic.

Google Home did everything it was told to do and probably told the NSA, CIA, and the FBI about it, but by God the lights in the dining room were finally off.

In 2019 I can’t be all in on Apple. It doesn’t “just work” anymore and iOS 13’s release has been a disaster. I remarked on Twitter today that the IMAP protocol used to handle email has been around for a couple of decades but Apple has somehow figured out a way to break it for the iPhone and iPad. I can no longer reliably fetch email on my iPhone, even though it’s been fine on this exact phone for two years prior to iOS 13. Folks online suggest wiping the phone out and starting over.

That hearkens back to the days of reinstalling Windows 98 every other week. It’s like iOS 13 is the Millennium Edition of Apple software.

Because my mind works best in “computing canisters”, I’m making a private list to define what constitutes my computing ecosystem. I’m still working out the particulars. The family is all on iMessage and FaceTime, so that’s not going anywhere. Over the past year I’ve paid for subscriptions to iCloud Drive (again with the 80% reliability rate), Dropbox (plenty o’ security holes, enough to resemble Swiss cheese), and Google Drive (works natively on everything but Linux and will prolly guarantee my pictures ending up on a billboard someday). These three will be narrowed down to one by the end of the year. I’m leaning toward the billboard risk. I’m using my existing hardware, tying it together with some of the Google sauce (still waving to KellyAnne through the microwave!), and hoping for the best. Once I have my methods documented I’ll feel more comfortable about this whole arrangement and I guess I’ll just have to apologize to Steve during my next prayer session.

As the 21st century progressed technology was suppose to become more reliable, safer, and cheaper. Yet mediocrity is the name of the software game, people are losing millions to scams, everyone lives their life on horrid social media platforms, and it’s becoming common place to spend over $1K on a cell phone. Expectations are so low that folks are pleased when their phone lasts for a year. Imagine swapping out your rotary wall phone in avocado green every year.

Madness? You betcha.

I’d love to hear where others are living in the computing ecosystem game. Are you all in on one platform? Do you mix and match? Are you a little Jamesway and a little bit Bradlees?

There’s a McDonalds at nearby Woodfield Mall that has a mix of cash registers made by Panasonic, NCR, PAR, and IBM. The dated, dissimilar systems work together in harmony. As a retail computer geek this absolutely fascinates me.

Perhaps they have the right idea.

Even though I’m an Apple guy, I’m not afraid to admit that one of my favorite desktop backgrounds, or wallpapers, of all time is the “Bliss” wallpaper from Windows XP. A couple years after the release of that iconic version of Windows, an updated version of the Bliss wallpaper was released with some of the newer themes that were available at the time. This wallpaper then took top spot of my favorites.

Bill Gates once said “Bliss” was inspired by that feeling you get lying in the grass watching the clouds go by. I totally feel that when I see this wallpaper.

Another multimedia feature I’ve always enjoyed was the startup sounds from the pre-release version of Windows Vista, called Longhorn. It’s a shame this sound never made it to the finished product; I always thought it had a wonderful, soothing sound to it instead of the tinkles they settled on for the official release.

I use Windows 10 at work and it makes more bonks and boings than I care to think about. I keep the sound turned down on my speakers because the various warning noises break my concentration.

I guess I need more bliss.