This is my weekend. It’s not an entirely bad thing, but this is what I have been doing for most of my weekend.
$right_now = time();
if ((strftime('%F', $right_now) == '2011-02-04') ||
(strftime('%F', $right_now) == '2011-02-05))
{
echo 'I am working at home this weekend!';
}
exit();
So last night I spent the night at the Holiday Inn closest to work. I didn’t get the best of night’s sleep, but I did manage to get enough to keep me productive throughout the day. Worried that I was going to sleep through my alarm, I woke up several times during the night. Because of this, I had quite a selection of dreams peppered through my slumber to keep things interesting. For the first time in quite a few nights, I didn’t dream about tornadoes (thanks for taking over that duty, Erik) but instead I had one of my “performance frustration dreams”. These dreams usually come up when I’m worried about not doing well at something and they frequently manifest themselves as something music or radio related; for example, I can’t get CDs into the players fast enough to avoid dead air on the radio or I can’t beat match a mix while DJing at a club, no matter how many times I have been able to mix the two records in question in the past.
Last night’s spin on my performance frustration dreams involved a live performance of the group Heart. In my dream I was one of their sound engineers for this comeback concert, and I was in charge of making sure the recorded music augmented their live performances perfectly. Because I had to make sure the tracks matched the instruments, I was challenged with playing vinyl records that had been recorded at home. And because it was a rowdy crowd, I had to spin the record on top of a beer bottle while holding the needle in place. I couldn’t let the record wobble in any way or else Nancy and Ann would sound all warped, and that would be bad. The record ended up falling off the top of the beer bottle and the whole show slowed down into a warbling, draggy sound. Just as everyone was looking at me for messing up this comeback tour, my dream morphed into something more interesting that didn’t involve frustration at all.
That all being said, because of last night’s dream, this track has been my ear bug, playing over and over. If you follow me on Rdio, you’ll notice that I have played this track several times today trying to get it to move back into my enjoyment category and out of my repetitive category.
So, out of respect for the Wilson sisters of Heart, and with my apologizes for wobbling the record that was spinning on top of the beer bottle, here they are with their 1987 hit, “There’s The Girl.”
Great track, by the way. I LOVE the backup vocals on this. Interesting, melodic backup vocals do a lot more for me than lead vocal acrobatics.
I believe that under the right parameters, social media has a spot in the workplace, especially for folks in technology related fields and positions. One of the greatest assets at my job is that fact that if I am stuck on building a piece of code or trying to find documentation on a very old piece of equipment that I am trying to integrate into our network, I am able to reach out to others that have had the same kind of experience, whether it be through a Google search or reaching out on Twitter or a conversation in an IRC chat with geeks like me. This is one of many reasons that I have my Twitter account. I know that there are folks that like to use Twitter as an “enhanced chat room” where they publicly trade quips back and forth and occasional post photos of various parts, and that’s fine, but my personal work ethic dictates that that sort of interaction needs to be confined to off hours. It’s just the way I roll.
One other thing that I enjoy about Twitter (which is my favorite of the big, primarily word-based social networks), is that if you follow the right people, you’ll learn of news pretty quickly. I turn to Twitter before anywhere else when I hear that there may be late breaking news. When we had the little earthquake last year I saw “Earthquake!” (from a person in Virginia) on my Twitter feed at the same time as it was happening in the office. Kind of cool. I love following Twitter during political debates, discussions and other such events. I have a Twitter list set aside for my growing political information habit and that’s what I usually have scrolling by on my desktop. Oddly enough, these bits of information usually keep me focused on the task at hand, because it keeps my mind wandering when I’m doing tasks that don’t require a lot of brain cycles. It’s just the way I’m wired.
I was working on The Big Project yesterday when I saw my supervisor’s reflection in my super glossy monitor. He was standing behind me and that doesn’t really bother me because he’s a good guy and I enjoy working with him. I went to look someone up on iChat so we could drop them a line when my Twitter feed popped up over another window. Unfortunately, the Twitter name of the latest update was a little suggestive.
Oops.
Though it’s known that I follow Twitter at work for the reasons mentioned above and nothing was said about what had appeared on my screen, I felt somewhat ashamed of myself because I don’t believe that that sort of activity belongs in the workplace. Though I’m a goofball, I still believe that a high level of professionalism should always be maintained and this little thing was not demonstrating my beliefs. So last night I decided to clean out some of the racier accounts that I follow on Twitter and to make doubly sure that nothing like that happens again, I created a separate Google Talk account so that I could continue chatting with the vendor that uses Google Talk without having my former Google+ contacts pop up on the chat window list (what’s that about, anyways).
I always worry about offending people when I unfollow them on a social network, because it’s kind of like a slap in the face, especially without an explanation. And because I’m already rather selective as to who I follow on Twitter and the like, it’s not a huge deal for me, but nevertheless, I felt that this particular incident was less stellar than I strive for when I reach for the stars.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Even though it’s Friday and my head is in a bit of a weekend space, I have to admit that I’ve been rather productive at work today. As I was driving into work this morning, I realized that I had lived up to one of my resolutions from last year, and that was to be more organized, primarily through the Getting Things Done methodology that is touted here on the web. During the year I tried a couple of different software packages that are designed to make your GTD experience as wonderful as possible, but I ended up settling on OmniFocus on the Mac, iPhone and iPad. All of my work and personal stuff is mingled together in this one application and I constantly get reminders and the like of stuff I should be doing or need to accomplish. Last night I had a reminder pop up that told me that I needed to replace the burned out lightbulb in our shower. Before my attempts at being organized I wouldn’t have remembered until I went to take a shower and flicked the switch, only to discover the bulb out, and then I would have had to go streaking through the house and down to the basement to grab a new bulb and done the handyman routine in my birthday suit.
See? I can get mentions of me being naked into even the most mundane topics of a blog post.
Because I was reminded that I needed to do this, I was able to enjoy my shower this morning without worry of not seeing all the relevant parts and I didn’t have an attitude from having to flash the cat as I made my way down into the darkest parts of the house in search of a light bulb.
It’s wonderful when something from a resolution sticks and it works.
Now if I could do something about my spending habits.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I once worked for a small radio station that had a very limited budget. Because the station was small and just starting out, the record companies didn’t really pay attention to the station. And when a record company doesn’t play attention to the station, they don’t care if you play their latest hot sensation or not. And since they don’t care if you play their latest hot sensation, they don’t give you records (or in our case, CDs) to play. Since everything about the music industry (aside from a selection of genuine artists) is profit generated, they’re not going to waste the few cents needed to give you a CD so that you can play their song, since they don’t care if you’re there because you haven’t built a name for yourself yet. This posed a problem for me as the Music Director of this station, because to have a successful radio station you need to do more than play Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” over and over and over again, especially when you’re going for the young and hip generation (resurgence of bell bottoms notwithstanding).
The limited budget presented to me for promotional purposes and music purchases was $1.46 every two weeks. Actually, I exaggerate, I wish I had that much to spend. I ended up begging and pleading with a local record store to see if they would give me records in exchange for advertising. I ended up with $100.00 a month in “trade”, as we call it. The problem with working with the record store in this fashion was that we didn’t get any new music, we got established music, which was fine, I guess, but when you’re competing with another radio station and you’re throwing lines like “Where the hits hit first” around, you have to live up to the hype.
Enter Napster.
Napster was this new, fun program that let you download songs for free from others. Back in the day, it was cool because you could get tracks that were only available on vinyl as MP3s, meaning we could play the long dance mixes of songs without having to put a turntable in the phone-booth sized studio. In addition, since there seemed to be some unscrupulous people in the music industry, we were able to play leaked tracks of songs that would have never seen the light of day. (Ironically, I’m still kind of proud of two things from my radio career: getting yelled at by a VP at Warner Brothers Records for playing Madonna’s “Music” before it ever hit the street and then having the VP yell at me again a few hours later when he heard us play what is now known as “You Thrill Me”, the demo and unreleased version of Madonna’s “Erotica” single. Like a good gay, I lived dangerously when it came to Madge in her prehistoric years.)
We were kind of walking a fine line when it came to using Napster tracks on the radio station because while radio station music is all marked “For Promo Use Only”, and that’s what we were doing, we didn’t really obtain the music according to the rules. On the bright side, this unfortunate practice did get us noticed by the record companies and actually helped our ratings enough to get us listed in the all mighty Trade Magazines. After this all happened, the record industry cared what we played.
However, there was a part of me that felt really dirty getting ahead in this manner.
I have to admit that as a former radio guy and as a computer programmer, I’m not the biggest fan of illegal obtaining intellectual property. It’s not right. I see it as stealing. I have been given black CD-Rs that were marked “Windows 2000 Datacenter Server” and told to install them for a customer. There was a time when I could type the Office 2000 installation key from memory because the one-use key had been installed on so many different machines. It’s all wrong. I get why folks don’t want their stuff pirated. I’m fine with purchasing music and books and television shows and movies and computer programs, in fact, that’s what I do on a daily basis. I just don’t appreciate it when I’m treated as a criminal for making a copy of a song so I can have a copy on my laptop and on my desktop. I don’t appreciate being told that I should have to buy an extra copy to have a CD with my favorite tracks put together as an album. I don’t like that.
You may have noticed that sites across the internet, including this one, were “blacked out” and urging you to call your elected officials to urge them to vote down the SOPA and PIPA acts passing through Congress next week. These acts, if passed, will give folks the ability to turn down a website, without warning you first, if they suspect that you’re hosting any sort of content that they deem illegal. Essentially any site targeted would have it’s identity removed; you’d have no way of getting to it even though it’s still sitting there, right on it’s server. And this is if they SUSPECT you’re hosting illegal content.
That’s not the way to do things, folks.
Positive reinforcement always garners better results than the converse. Legitimate copies of music should be treated with the respect it deserves and the consumer should be allowed to do with it as he wishes, as long as it’s not violating the normal distribution channels of the associated industry. If you like your friends MP3 collection, let them listen for a while and then let them buy their own copies. We never saw folks sitting at a bus stop reading a Xeroxed copy of “War And Peace”, why would we just make digital copies of our music and throw it out all over the place? Place nice so that the industry learns that they have to play nice.
As a quick aside… the current Congress is the most dysfunctional, unproductive Congress in the history of the United States. Our elected officials know Solitaire and Microsoft Outlook ’97 on their laptops and little more. Do we really want to give the government the opportunity to enact legislation that marks American citizens as criminals when they don’t really get technology in the first place? We don’t want the government in our bedrooms and we certainly don’t want them in our earbuds.
Call your senator or representative today and urge them to vote against SOPA and PIPA. Google it for more information.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Ok, gentle readers that use iPads and have a blog. Please tell me what program you’re using to blog from your iPad. I just had a very long, thought out and well written blog entry typed out in BlogPress and the program just ate it. Like it was being written on a PC. Remember those “Switcher” commercials Apple did in the early 00s? I believe the girl’s name was Ellen Feiss or something like that.
I was typing along and then poof! the blog entry was gone.
BlogPress devoured my blog entry. My well written, thought out, articulate blog entry. Gone.
It was a really good blog entry.
Never to return.
I’ll try again tonight, when I get home and have access to my computer.
Sigh.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I have been struggling with an issue with one of the servers at work for a couple of months. Said server runs Linux and was setup before my arrival to this job. The folks that originally set up the server are long gone and didn’t believe in documentation, so no one really knows how the server does it’s magic, it just does magic. To fix the issue that we were having, my supervisor contacted the tech support department for the company, the ones that take care of this sort of thing, and they told us that they had no idea what we were talking about. The trouble ticket was referred to me.
I didn’t sleep well last night. I wasn’t really looking forward to going to work this morning because quite frankly my ass was dragging. My husbear was going through his morning routine and because I know that he can be very aware of my mood in the morning, I was trying really hard to be pleasant, or at the very least, non-committal to a mood. I figured it was going to be a quiet, productive day and I’d just keep to myself to get through it. I didn’t foresee any grand moments, it would just be a utility day.
I decided to start working on the server problem this morning because I have a hard time wrapping my head around writing code first thing (the company would have such a better coder in me if they’d let me work any damn hours I wanted to instead of the regimented 8-5). I logged into the server, replicated the issue that breaks it and then started tinkering.
I had it fixed in less than ten minutes. It was a geek ‘hosanna!’ moment for me. I high-fived the person in the next cubicle. I made a small noise of elation and most importantly, I woke up.
It’s the little moments that can turn a day completely around. Thank goodness for those little moments.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I’m curious as to how many people started listening to satellite radio (Sirius/XM here in the states) this week because they received a new radio as a gift this past weekend. I know that Scott was very excited about his new satellite radio that he will be having installed in his Jeep. Tech toys are fun.
The folks on Sirius/XM 70s on 7 are saying that there are “thousands and thousands” of new satellite subscribers already. I find this interesting. I have satellite radio in my Jeep and I have to say that around 80% of the time it makes my radio listening on the commute better. There are times that satellite radio is really no different than cable television; a bunch of channels that are spewing out crap. A while back I was flipping around the dial when I landed on Martha Stewart’s channel. While the famed handiwoman wasn’t on her own station at the time, there was another woman who had one of the most annoying voices I have heard in a while going on and on about her private parts. I found this a little bit surprising because I didn’t think that a woman going on and on about her private parts and how they work really fit how I thought a Martha Stewart channel would sound like; I thought there’d be things like how to decorate cookies and grow plants and make a killing in the stock market. I don’t know who the woman was but she was very annoying.
If you listen to some of the music channels you’ll start to realize that they’re not really that different from the terrestrial counterparts, aside from the fact that they don’t have commercials (which is a really big plus). They like to play the same songs over and over again, though. The 80s on 8 channel is in love with Billy Joel. The 70s on 7 channel is torn between Billy Joel and Elton John. The Studio 54 channel plays 12-inch disco mixes of songs from the day in their entirety. I say you just can’t get enough marimba, even if you must listen to all 12 minutes and 32 seconds of France Joli’s “Come To Me”. As a former club DJ, I know that playing a 12-inch disco mix in it’s entirety is bad form and people in a club get cranky when the same song goes on for 12 minutes and 32 seconds.
So I’m curious as to how many people are actually avid satellite subscribers and enjoy it thoroughly. It seems to me that the services like Pandora, Spotify, Last.Fm and Rdio would be cutting into the satellite service revenue, but what do I know. I feel bad for terrestrial radio though, that’s just embarrassing these days.
I was approached a few months ago about designing and building a dance-based internet radio station. I met with the internet radio company and everything, but something didn’t feel quite right. I didn’t feel that I had the proper time and energy to spend on such a project, especially since it would be a side job type of thing until it made some serious cash. Truth of the matter is, I’m not really big on the latest and greatest in the way of current music. The use of auto-tune deprives the listener of any sort of heart, soul or feeling of a song. It’s reduced to a purely mechanical experience, one that is meant to generate revenue and nothing more. That’s one of the reasons I left radio in the first place; it became a bland, money hungry, computerized venture with no connection to the listener. Generic solutions to metrics and equations. I’m not going to put my blood, sweat and tears into something that gives no emotion back. A classic dance station would be a different story, something between the disco era and the auto-tune era. That might be interesting. Maybe someday.
Perhaps I could sell the concept to Sirius/XM for all their thousands and thousands of new subscribers. Let them bring the heart and soul and connection back via satellite.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
So I haven’t been feeling very social lately, though you would never guess this by my online activity because it seems like yesterday I was checking in all over the place on Foursquare. Many find Foursquare mundane. To tell you the truth, I too find it mundane, for the most part, because whether I’m standing in the middle of a random Dunkin’ Donuts is really going to have no bearing on the big picture of the world, except that I’ll be standing next to a jelly donut or something on that big picture, but I must admit that I get a kick out of seeing others that I recognize from Foursquare checkins. That’s kind of cool to me.
I have been doing some weeding and pruning of my various online social media accounts, trying to see what is going to fit right for what I want to do in the year 2012. I’m not a huge Facebook fan, though I am active on there because many family members, many friends and co-workers and a good chunk of my old high school buddies are on there. My rule of thumb for Facebook is that we have to know each other outside of the internet but if we don’t yet, we are going to meet somewhere, somehow within the next year. I’m not big on numbers, I couldn’t care less as to how many friends I have on Facebook; I’m content to have quality over quantity. My Facebook is, for the most part, intended for general audiences with a rating of PG-13 at the most. I do drop an occasional blue word on there, but not while I’m at the Dew Drop Inn. (And I don’t remember what show that is from, to my horror.)
Twitter is a bit of a different animal. I just honk out updates that are seemingly random. Well that’s because I think my brain acts randomly. I follow news makers, I follow actors, I follow geeks, I follow bears. I actually have a couple of Twitter accounts, including the one under my pr0n name, but it’s usually “TheTechBear” that gets the most activity. That particular account is not pr0n and you won’t see any shots of either my meat or my potatoes.
Since a lot of tech people who feel that they are important are on Google+, I try to maintain a presence on there but it feels like a desolated place. I have a couple of hundred people in my circles but there’s less than a dozen from that group that use that service with any sort of regularity. I keep hearing that Google+ is going to CRUSH Facebook and Twitter, spit them out and then laugh like a monster from Scooby-Doo (complete with bouncing jaw) but I have yet to see any sort of indication that this is what is really going on. I find the Google+ app on the iPhone to be rather annoying because it feels limited; on the iPad it’s just a mobile version of the web site and that’s buggy. In all actuality, I have been moving away from Google provided services over the last couple of weeks, the only thing, other than search and Google+, that I am using the service consistently for is Google Reader, which is maintaining my RSS feeds. They’ll probably get moved to Flipboard, now that Flipboard is available on both iPhone and iPad.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, I use Foursquare for location check-ins. Over the last couple of days I have started using Path 2, a social network designed for “family and close friends”. Path 2 is a gorgeous app and does everything in a timeline view. So far I have three connections on it, and these connections are people that I really like (based on internet interactions over the years) and that I have full intention in meeting very soon. I have yet to get the rest of my family on it, but someday that will happen. The thing I like about Path 2 is that I am able to forward selected information from Path 2 to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, so I am able to do things in one spot and then share at will. I like that.
I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon pretty early in the game and I love the service. You can see my Instagram photos in the left hand column of this blog thingee, here. Since I’ve been playing with Instagram I haven’t done much with my Flickr account, but one of my goals of 2012 is to take many, many more photos with my non-iPhone camera equipment, so I’ll probably revive the Flickr account soon. In fact, I have a model that has agreed to pose sometime in January for one of my ideas so I have to admit that I am rather excited about that.
Several weeks ago I completely stopped watching podcasts from the folks at TWiT and therefore I’m off of their IRC channels. I found myself unable to sit through an episode because everyone was trying to ham it up and I just wanted to hear what they had to say about tech and the like. When the producer started chiming in like an off-camera voice from god I decided that was enough and deleted them. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m not interested in folks that are tipping the scales in favor of self-serving behavior. Maybe I’ve just grown tired and need a rest.
So despite all of these connections and networks that I am part of, I haven’t been really feeling that social. I have quite a bit of email to catch up on due to the things that have been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks. Chatting in realtime is better anyway; though I’m not big on Facebook Messenger (there’s something that creeps me out about it but I couldn’t tell you what exactly), but I like using IM when I am on the computer, it just seems that folks are on differing systems (Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc.) so I never know which one to sign into and I don’t want to be signed into a bunch at once. Unlike many of my gay brethren, I’m not looking for pseudo-sexual activity online when I’m logged into chat and I’m not going to go through the effort of getting myself pretty to start up the webcam and perform like a trained seal (I always tell people that I have plenty of benefits at home, thank you and no, Earl isn’t into trained seals).
So let’s recap, just in case I start feeling social again:
Twitter = TheTechBear
Facebook and Google+ = under my name, click the Facebook badge in the left hand column here on the blog
Foursquare = who knows, I think it’s tied to my phone number
Instagram = TheTechBear
Flickr = TheTechBear
Instant messengers = it could be anything. I need to find one service and create an account and go from there. Suggestions? Skype is iMachias.
Oh, and Google Voice (forgot I still use that until just now), in case you want to leave me a voicemail without actually reaching me: (315) 313-4579.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
So today I went on an impromptu road trip. Earl is out of town with Jamie and Scott is out of town doing his thing and it was such a beautiful day I decided that I needed to go drive some back roads. I headed towards the western Catskills. The reason for this direction was simple; I had heard that the last traffic light on NY Route 17, the Quickway and the Southern Tier Expressway which goes from near New York City to the Pa. border near Erie, Pa., had been removed. I wanted to see what they had done to remove the last light, which was at exit 98 (Parksville/Cooley). I confirmed that the light has been removed by way of relocating the roadway to the southern side of the lighted intersection, resulting in a nifty bypass that goes up over the mountain. Exit 98 is now just marked Parksville.
Getting to this intersection was an adventure. As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy riding over the back roads, especially roads that have been replaced by expressways. New York State has recently marked several “Scenic Byways”, one of them being Scenic Byway Route 20. Route 20 crosses the state at it’s midsection (part of US Route 20 that goes from Boston to the west coast) and I was delighted to see that they had posted “Scenic Byway ALT Route 20”, which follows the original Route 20 before they made parts of it four-lane in the 50s.
I didn’t even know that existed!
Back when I was a kid my dad would take us for Sunday drives and try to get me lost. 95% of the time I knew where we were and could get us home. Today I tried to get myself lost by just randomly turning at roads that were not marked as a dead end. I finally found myself in the isolated village of Walton. From there I made my way down to the aforementioned Route 17, checked out the bypass and then headed westward, following the original alignment of Route 17 (which isn’t really marked that well) all the way to Binghamton. I just started my second tank of gas for the trip and have stopped at Panera for a bite to eat before heading home. I’m still trying to figure out which way I’m going to go to get home, because I know the roads between Binghamton and home pretty well, but I don’t think I want to approach it randomly and find myself in the middle of nowhere at midnight.
One thing about riding the back roads (and some dirt roads in the process) is that the gas mileage in the Jeep is fantastic. Highway driving actually kills the gas mileage of my beloved Rubicon, it’s a good thing that I have such an affinity for the back roads.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!