Geek

Launch.

So one part of The Big Project at work today had it’s official launch. There are users officially using the software that I wrote for their day-to-day operations. It’s kind of cool. The launch is going well with just a few minor adjustments that need to be made along the way. I’m pleased and I feel good.

I’m really looking forward to our vacation to Disney in a few weeks.

With the spring-like weather so far this week I have been really feeling the need to get on my bike. I’ve been daydreaming about a two week ride I want to do sometime in the near future but I don’t know when I would have the time to accomplish this. The other day I wrote about the fact that I am so very much Upstate New York proud, and I am, but I wish that I could ride my bike outside, year-round. That would help my psyche a lot. I didn’t think that I would feel the effects of SAD (Seasonal Affectation Disorder) this winter because it has been such a mild winter, but since SAD has more to do with being cooped up in the winter darkness than with actual snowfall, I have been feeling the effects of it without realizing it, I guess. The twice a day walks at work certainly help, especially on the recent days of abundant sunshine. This helps keep my mood sunny.

Because my new software is going to be used 24×7, I’m a little nervous that I’m going to get calls in the middle of the night this week. I don’t think that’s the case, because there’s enough of a backup plan to accommodate the needs of the users when I’m not available, but I still worry about this once in a while.

Perhaps I wouldn’t worry so much if I was out on my bike.

21 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 2

iPad2.

The birthday boy is enjoying his birthday present. I’m teaching him how to be a geek in style.

20 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 3

Tech.

I often mingle my tech blog posts with my other blog posts here on “Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.” In an effort be more focused in 2012 (even though we are 49 days into the year), I have created a tech blog (again!) with the hopes of remembering that I have it and maintaining it regularly.

If you want to take a look, it can be found at thetechbear.net. It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment but I’m looking forward to it growing into something credible as we merrily roll along.

18 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 0

Big Cats.

As I awoke yesterday morning I went through my “Schedule B” morning routine (as I like to think of it). This is the routine that I follow when Earl is out of town on business. It involves a slightly modified shower time, some lunch assembly, chopping up turkey or ham for the cat’s food dish and an extra pet on Tom’s head as I utter my usual morning phrase to him, “Bon appetit, mon chat. Je t’aime. Il y a beaucoup, aujourd’hui!”

The Schedule B routine also involves laying in bed for a few moments longer and flipping through the news, blogs and the like on my iPhone, because I can never have my iPhone more than an arm’s length from me. It’s the way I’m wired and I don’t think that I’m too obnoxious because of this fact (though I blog about it more than some might like).

As I was flipping through the various apps on my iPhone, pinching and zooming and swiping and tapping, I started reading about Linux and whatever advancements were being made in the desktop computing arena with that operating system. I usually start thinking about migrating away from Apple products when I start to get bored. Having a short attention span that requires a routine that one labels “Schedule B” can lead to that sort of boredom. It’s what I do. I try not to make it as expensive for us as it used to be.

Right on cue, Apple announced yesterday, with no rumors or speculative glances from the “click on my ad” media, the dawning of their latest iteration of operating system, OS X. This guy is called “Mountain Lion”.

w00t! w00t! w00t!

My head snapped right back to my Apple senses. Somewhere, an angel named Steve smiled as he strummed his harp app on his iPad.

Mountain Lion will officially be out this summer and breathes a little more intrigue into the Macs we have in the house, as it further integrates everyday computer tasks with living in “The Cloud” via their iCloud service. This is nifty. We have already taken advantage of iCloud in our merry little household by the consolidation of our calendars that we all live by, our groceries lists and our chatting habits as we IM each other between rooms (or hotels if we’re traveling). I’m not going to go into technical details here but suffice it to say that I am very excited about Mountain Lion and how it’s going to be “more iPad like” in the way we do things on our Macs. I have already taken advantage of the IM app now dubbed “Messages”, which allows a user to send and receive IMs with folks using any iDevice. Messages is out in beta form, so there’s a few glitches here and there but I really like the direction they are going with the app.

Since I make my living as a programmer (among other things in the technical realm), new iterations of any operating system, but especially OS X, are just my cup of tea.

I’m looking forward to getting to know this big cat named Mountain Lion.

~~~

Tip o’ the hat to reader JonInAtl who pointed out to me that the WordPress app for iPad had been updated. I no longer have to suffer through the BlogPress fiascos, because this update fixed the bluetooth keyboard issue. Jon took time out of his day to send me a tweet letting me know about this. I like that sort of thing. Thanks much.

17 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 1

Path.

A while back I talked about a new iPhone app called Path. It’s actually version 2 of Path, called, appropriately, Path 2, (wow that’s a lot of commas; I apologize to anyone that’s allergic) and it is a pretty nifty app in that it creates something like a hybrid twitter or Facebook stream/Foursquare check-in notification/Instagram photo sharing space for your closest friends. The idea behind Path2 is that you only connect with your closest friends and family so you can be a little more intimate with the details of your life. After all, there are some things in life that you shouldn’t share on Twitter. For example, I’ve seen people share the time, place and method of their latest sexual escapade on an unlocked Twitter stream and to me that’s just freaky. I know that I live my life pretty openly on the Internet but there is no way that I would ever proclaim to a random group of millions of people the specifics of how, when or where I just had sex. There a couple of reasons that might lead to that sort of proclamation, for example, if you want to share the boundaries of your creativity or if you want to advertise your abilities so you can get a higher rate.

I think I digressed.

Anyway, Path2’s design through it’s gorgeous app was to urge you to be a little more personable with a select group of people with your internet life. I used it and liked it for that reason; I only followed a half dozen or so people on there and it was kind of nifty. If I want to go for the full-on broadcast of details, I could by just telling the app to push my details to Twitter or whatever.

Now, the Path2 app and service is free. This always leads me to taking pause, because you can hardly ever get something for nothing so there has to be some sort of catch. Well, I haven’t figured out the mechanics to figure out how the folks at Path2 were making money. Actually, I didn’t invest enough time to figure out how, but when there’s little to no money involved there’s usually data-mining so that it can be sold to an advertiser. It’s kind of like my feelings about Google; as a Google user you’re not the customer, you are the product and the applications are the factory that build the product base. I figure I was just another Path2 product.

Now here’s where it gets wonky and it makes me angry. I read on Daring Fireball this morning that Path2 has been uploading the ENTIRE ADDRESSBOOK on your Android or iPhone to it’s servers, WITHOUT your consent. That’s right, data that can be linked back to you is being stored on Path2’s servers and nowhere did you agree to that sort of thing.

That’s bad.

Now, I know that Google and Facebook and a ton of other services and applications do the same thing, but they let you know that in the very, very small print of their Terms of Service. I completely abide by the “don’t put it on the network if you wouldn’t want it on the front page of the New York Times” rule I learned back in 1988 when I worked for DEC. When I put my address book on iCloud, I know that I am doing it and I know where my address book is being stored and I know the possible ramifications from doing so.

It is not cool when a company does it without my permission. Not only does that damage the reputation of the company in eyes, but it damages trust in Cloud computing in general. And that’s not good. Because we wouldn’t be able to do the millions of nifty things we do with our smartwhatevers if we didn’t have the power of cloud computing behind them.

Path2 was deleted off of my iDevices this morning at approximately 5:40 a.m. They’ve lost my trust. And getting back my trust would be damned near impossible unless they completely opened up the source code for their app so that the world can see what they’re doing.

In a world where honor and integrity seem to be less important, it’s unfortunate when elements of today’s technological niceties seem to reinforce that fact.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

8 February 2012 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings Why. 3

If.

So tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time the application that I have been writing for the past two months goes to production and loses its “BETA” status. Starting tomorrow every bug is now a feature and will perpetuate my need for continued employment with the organization.

I’m tired, but I feel like I have accomplished something.

The application in question is a project within a bigger project and that is coming along nicely. The authoring of the app has been my largest consumption of time, I am looking forward to getting back to a somewhat normal work routine by this time next week. In the meantime, I’m tired but I feel good. I was up at 4:30 this morning so I could get to work early and teach the overnight crew how to use the application. I’ve taught two more classes since then. I don’t have another class to teach until tomorrow; I’ll write reports and chase bugs in the code in the meantime.

Sometimes I wonder why people read my blog, mostly because entries like these are rather boring and I just ramble on about being tired but feeling a sense of accomplishment. This weekend Earl and I are going to mix it up a bit and do it up like we used to when we were young. We’ll be sure to share some pictures.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

6 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 3

Weekend.

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();

5 February 2012 by J.P. Geek 3

These Dreams.

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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.

2 February 2012 by J.P. Deep. DJ Geek 0

Discretion.

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

27 January 2012 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings 2

Organization.

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

20 January 2012 by J.P. Geek 0

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