Geek

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

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

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 I’m an active user of Twitter. Well, if I’m going to be technical, I actually use the Echofon app (for iPhone, iPad, Mac) to get to Twitter. I don’t use the actual Twitter app itself because I find it to be buggy. When it was called Tweetie it was good, but then Twitter bought it and screwed it up a bit and now I don’t use it anymore. Besides, Echofon allows me to keep my various flavors of the app in sync with one another and that’s kind of cool.

I think I’m digressing.

One of the cool things I like about Twitter, besides the fact that you can read about an earthquake before it hits you, is that you can reach out and sort of touch famous people in a digital sort of way. My friend B.B. Good once made a comment to a fan of her radio show when the fan was all gushy about being near B.B.; “Being on the radio is a job that I love and the cool thing about it is that a lot of people get to hear what I do for living.” I tend to like celebrities that have that sort of presence about them. I want to feel that if we actually knew each other, they’d sit down over a lunch and chat about normal thing, even if it was the intricacies of their art because that’s what they do, but nevertheless, they’d be kind of normal while having this conversation. I despise it when fans tweet at a celebrity things like “OMG please say hi to me.” That’s just ridiculous.

I follow quite a few “famous” people (of all degrees of fame) on Twitter. Right off the top of my head I can name ten, there’s probably more. Some of my favorites are Amy Brenneman (because, of course, I find her incredibly sexy to look at and because she is wicked, wicked smart), Audra McDonald (because if there was ever an angel on earth with a good head on her shoulders, it’s her – what an old soul), Kaley Cuoco because she seems quite funny and Alec Baldwin. Curiously, Alec will not respond to my personal judge of character question regarding using a blade or electric razor when shaving. He probably finds the question odd. Either that or he’s too busy answering mundane, idiotic questions from the fans that are all gushy over his chest hair.

I have recently started following Ruth Buzzi. I have always found her funny and I was happy to see that she’s embraced the digital age. I met her at Assembly Mall in Somerville, Mass. back in the late 80s when Laugh-In was on Nick At Nite. She was cool to talk to. Her tweets are humorous. Today she is celebrating “Caturday”.

One person that I follow kind of disappoints me with her tweeting, and that’s Reba McEntire. Her tweets started out being personable, i.e. “Houston, you were a lot of fun tonight!”, but lately her tweets refer to her in the third person and I find that creepy. “Reba will be in Nashville tomorrow, get your tickets!”  I understand that the tweeting responsibilities have probably been handed over to an assistant, and that makes me lose interest in following Reba because I don’t want PR, I want to just see Reba the person instead of Reba the performer.

I know that folks that are famous have to maintain appearances in order to make a living at being famous. I guess I’m most attracted or interested in following them on Twitter if they remain grounded and seem human. Twitter is about making connections. It’s best when it’s a human connecting to another human.

 

I have been spending a lot of my downtime reading the biography of Steve Jobs. This book is very well written and I’m having a hard time putting it down when I need to move on to something else (like sleep or eating, for example). I’m reading it on my iPad since I pretty much have the iPad with me all the time, but I also bought the hardcover edition so that I could honor the evolution of technology. Actually, I thought it would make a good coffee table book.

My, it’s a big book!

Even though I’m a pretty rabid Apple fanboy, I didn’t know a lot of the details of Steve Jobs’ life. I know that he could be very cranky in his interaction with others and that this was a result of his quest for perfection and/or reaching a certain vision that he had. Many describe him as a visionary. I don’t dispute that in the least.

I am surprisingly finding this book inspiring. I have mentioned before that I am working on The Big Project at work and there are some folks that want to make the software implementation “good enough”. I’m not willing to settle for that. I want to make this conversion to the new software, to borrow a phrase from Steve, “insanely great”. You see, I don’t think that I should be wasting my time doing something halfway when I can invest just a little more time and go all the way with it. It bugs me when a new version of Windows or iOS or OS X or whatever comes out and it is missing a feature or something doesn’t work, only to be told that it’ll be fixed on an update. I’d rather delay the implementation and do it right the first time than let the user down on the initial experience and sour their feelings on what should be insanely great with a bunch of error messages and the like.

As I make my way through this book I am discovering that I share a trait with Steve and that’s what I call my “extreme binary thinking.” Earl helps me keep this trait in check, but I have a tendency to say judge things on a scale of awesome to miserable without addressing the fact that the subject could actually be somewhere in the middle. As I said, Earl keeps me in check on this and I know that I can always do better in toning down this tendency of mine. Now I don’t go into group meetings telling folks that whatever they’re presenting in a pile of crap but I am visibly disappointed when I feel expectations aren’t met due to laziness. This, in turn, leads me to be rather harsh on myself when I feel that I haven’t met my own standard of perfection. I then get cranky when folks out in the everyday world don’t live up to my vision of the way people should be (for example, not knowing what you’re going to order after standing line for 10 minutes blabbing on your phone or worse yet, going up to the Panera counter and asking for fries.)

Reading Steve’s biography is helping me keep all of this in perspective and it’s actually forcing me to look at myself, my behavior and how I conduct myself both in the business climate and in the real world. Because I have seen the same tendencies in Steve, I am forcing myself to look for the positive and how we are headed in the right direction for the vision that I have, instead of dwelling on the negative and making people miserable. My progress can probably be measured in baby steps, but at least I think I’m headed in the right direction.

I’m looking forward to continuing this book. I highly recommend it to both fans and non-fans of Apple.

Yesterday morning I woke up naturally at 6:30 a.m. This excited me aside from the fact that I was waking up at such an early time on a Saturday morning, because it meant that my circadian rhythm was in sync with my schedule again, because if it was Monday morning, it would be standard time instead of daylight saving time and it would be 5:30 a.m. instead of 6:30 a.m. and I need to get up at 5:30 a.m. to get to work on time.

It was a good way to start the day.

I was so excited by this revelation that I had a hard time trying to sleep in, since it was Saturday and all, so I grabbed my iPhone and read some email that I really need to respond to. Amongst the email messages was a comment from my friend Erik on a previous entry about insomnia. His comment included the suggestion of Pzizz, an app available for the iDevices.

Well his comment reminded me that I already had Pzizz! I promptly found the app on my iPhone, donned a pair of headphones that would be easy to sleep in and fell promptly asleep for two hours. I used it again last night and aside from some mayhem with the school clock collection in the house during the time change (more on that in a moment), slept like a baby. I feel great this morning.

There is further information about Pzizz on their website. I am finding that the iPhone app works great for me, especially when coupled with a really good set of earbuds.

As I have mentioned many times before, our house has a collection of school clocks wired in every room. These clocks advance once-a-minute with the familiar two-click sound that has been heard in classrooms around the world for more than a century. All of the clocks are made by The Standard Electric Time Company, the company that made the original clocks in my elementary school, which of course was the first time I was exposed to such a thing.

The clocks are run by a server in the basement which is controlling relays via a program that I wrote (to provide the electrical impulses required to close and then open the magnet-driven mechanisms in each clock). This was a cheaper alternative to buying a master clock like what would be found in the main office of a school today and something that I’m rather proud of. The program keeps track of what times the clocks allegedly say at any given moment and if they’re behind, will send out extra impulses to catch the clocks up to the right time. I had also written in a routine that would stop the clocks at 01:59 daylight time the first Sunday of November and have the clocks sit there for 62 minutes before resuming at 02:01 standard time.

Except the pause mechanism didn’t work.

So at 02:00 daylight time it became 01:00 standard time. Except the clocks thought it was still 02:00. So they decided to start advancing the 11 hours required to get them to 01:00. Two clicks per minute, 60 minutes in an hour, eleven hours “behind”.  That’s a glorious 1320 clicks in the middle of the night. It took the clock system about 15 minutes to advanced that far.

Except a certain geek wrote the program to consider military time. So the server actually thought they were 23 hours behind.

I made it downstairs in no time once I saw the clocks advanced further then they should have. I disconnected the power to clocks, stopping them when they said 01:43. And there I sat, rewriting the program to avoid future mayhem and waiting for real time to catch up with the clocks. I started them back up at 01:46 when they then advanced the three minutes they were behind.

That’s when I went back upstairs and fired up the Pzizz again and had a wonderful night’s sleep.