Geek

Very early in my professional career I worked for Digital, otherwise known as Digital Equipment Corporation, commonly (but erroneously by corporate standards) called DEC. At the time I was with the company it was the second largest computer company in the world. I was one of about 120,000 employees. This was back in the late 1980s.

One of the mantras at Digital was to always do the right thing. You could always ask for forgiveness later. Even at age 19 I took this approach with my career and I made changes in software that turned out great in the long run, but I had to ask for forgiveness for going outside the development processes that had been in place long before I joined the company.

The company I currently work for is primarily a Microsoft shop, even though we use Linux all day and every day on our servers. A while back I was given a Windows 10 laptop to replace the Mac I had insisted be present for me to join the company; it seems they wanted to go all Windows on the desktop and Macs just weren’t fitting into that scheme. The company does offer a BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device program and many opt to do this. When the Windows 10 laptop arrived I registered my work MacBook Pro into the Bring Your Own Device program, which kept it alive on the corporate network. I’m lucky that I work remotely; the MBP can’t be plugged into the network at an office.

As a “ Crazy One”, I am able to get a lot of work done on my Mac. I even spent hours over the holidays comparing my workflow on the Windows 10 computer versus my workflow on the Mac and how much of a difference it made in my levels of productivity. I am 34% less productive on a Windows machine, mostly because of a lack of cohesiveness in the software experience on Windows, and because of the number of reboots required during the day (the company uses a mix of 32 and 64 bit software which I think makes Windows 10 cranky).

Plus, the fan is running all. the. time. on the Dell laptop they gave me.

I don’t know if the BYOD program is going to remain alive forever at work, but I’m going to continue using this MacBook Pro for as long as I can.

If someone doesn’t like it, I’ll ask for forgiveness later.

In the meanwhile, I’ll continue to dazzle to the best of my ability. I mean, getting things done is what it’s all about, right?

One of the biggest challenges in protecting privacy is that many of the violations are invisible. For example, you might have bought a product from an online retailer—something most of us have done. But what the retailer doesn’t tell you is that it then turned around and sold or transferred information about your purchase to a “data broker”—a company that exists purely to collect your information, package it and sell it to yet another buyer.

Tim Cook Calls for US Privacy Regulations in Time Op-Ed. Link to story originally found at Macstories.net.

Apple often gets lumped in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. when it comes to online presence. But Apple is not like the others. Tim Cook is looking for action on protecting users’ data privacy.

I’m sitting in a local Starbucks working on a couple of blog entries and other computer related tasks I had scheduled for today. At the moment there are 26 laptops or tablets in use through this rather large location. I casually glanced at each of the screens as I walked to my table in the corner and I noticed a solid trend.

Every user is using Google Chrome. It didn’t matter if they were on an iPad, a Mac, or a Windows computer. Google Chrome is front and center. Everyone is on the web and they’re using Chrome to get there.

I’ve expressed my concern with Google and their ad based model in the past. There’s a part of me that doesn’t like the idea of personal data being scraped for ad sensing purposes (and who knows what else). But the fact of the matter is, if you follow my “Technological Golden Rule” of never typing anything into a computer that you wouldn’t want to appear on the front page of the New York Times, you shouldn’t have a problem, right?

The thing about privacy is not what Google is going to sense through my interaction with the Chrome browser. It’s what’s being picked up on webcams and other IoT (Internet of Things) devices like Alexa powered smoke detectors and Android powered refrigerators. Google Home devices or Alexa? They can muted with a hardware switch or unplugged. And honestly, I know where they are in my home. It’s the incredible number of webcams I see on neighborhood streets. I just figure I’m being watched at all times. It’s like being chipped without the shot.

As a software developer currently focused on web applications, I have to use Google Chrome. That browser is the standard for users today. Microsoft is getting ready to move their Microsoft Edge browser to the Chromium base. (Chromium being the base Google Chrome is built on). And let’s face it, Apple’s Safari may be fast on Macs, but there are times when it struggles with rendering web pages properly.

Go ahead, join me and use Google Chrome. Just please continue to be safe in your browsing habits and always be mindful of the information you’re sharing online and how you’re sharing it. Read up on VPN services for public access (personally I use Private Tunnel when I’m surfing in public).

Be a smart Internet citizen.

It’s just after 1:00 a.m. in Chicago and I’m sitting here playing around on the computer. More specifically I’m playing with an old, beat-up Lenovo ThinkPad T410 running Debian Linux. I don’t know the age of this computer but it still runs like a charm.

You’d think after being a geek all day at work I wouldn’t have any interest in being a geek until all hours of the night, but here we are. This is when I exercise my skillz (snazzy ‘z’ there) and explore new things on old computers. Honestly, I love my MacBook Pro from 2015 but frankly it’s boring. I know what it’s going to do, I know how it’s going to do it, and it’s been doing it the same way for years. Messing around in Linux is always an adventure, and when I can keep the computer running as expected for more than one hour after tinkering, I consider the evening a success.

I’m just realizing that it’s Friday night and I’m acting like being up at 1:00 a.m. means it’s wicked late. I used to DJ until 3:00 a.m. a little over a decade ago, but then again a little over a decade ago I was still in my 30s.

I might not have as much pep as I used to but I’m still filled to the brim with geek.

So in 2009 Microsoft shared a video (with a follow-up a couple of years later) proposing where they saw technology in 10 years. Some of the technology shared in the video included double sided smartphones or “smart cards”, billboard ads that recognized who you are, wall-sized video conferencing with a shared tactile experience, and much more. Take a look at this video to see where Microsoft wanted us to be today.

https://youtu.be/t5X2PxtvMsU

I’m kind of bummed that it’s 2019 and it feels like we’re not even close to achieving this vision, nor are we really headed in the right direction.

The doubling down of monetizing user data (primarily through social media) instead of trying to see how we can creatively use data has really put a kink in the vision timeline.

I still hold out hope that someday we’ll get this timeline back on track and start heading toward a “Star Trek” like future again (where we focus on the good of humanity instead of the greed of money).

Let’s see what 2019 really brings. But more importantly, let’s see what company or who tries to nudge us back onto the sane timeline.

This is so cool.

“You can zoom all the way in to this 24.9bn pixel camera pic and minds are being blown.”