Geek

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.

 

It is no secret that Apple makes billions and billions of dollars profit on all their iDevices. They frequently bounce around the top 3 list of companies based on their value. They have tons of cash because they’re good at what they do.

While I believe they are giving back to the human experience by giving people quality ways to connect to one another through their iDevices, they’re not as active in philanthropic efforts as one would hope they would be. This is one of the reasons that I occasionally consider switching back to the Microsoft platform; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to bringing innovations in health, development, and learning to the global community (description taken from the website). Bill and Melinda are using a good chunk of their fortune to make important changes in the world. I like this, and this is the reason I have quite a few pieces of Microsoft hardware in my toy box.

I mention from time to time that I have a keen interest in Linux, the free, open-source operating system alternative to Windows and Mac OS X. While it pertains to my geek side very much, I also enjoy Linux, particularly Ubuntu, because it’s very design allows one to take an older, discarded computer and turn it into a relevant contributor again. This, in turn, keeps computers out of our landfills that much longer and allows us to send these machines that were deemed not powerful enough to places where they might not be able to afford it. They may not be the latest and greatest nor the shiniest, but they work just fine and are able to importing things in regards to research, education and the like. And as a quick plug for Linux: No Viruses!

It makes me happy to see that Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook is starting to turn the philanthropic philosophy at Apple around a little bit. I hope he continues that trend. As I get older and because I have the luxury to do so, I am start to consider these types of efforts more in my purchasing decisions. I am also pursuing Linux at home actively again, not because it’s a badge of honour for a geek to be using Linux, but because I have the ability to contribute to the various Linux projects, including Ubuntu, and if I can help make the experience better for the user, then maybe someone somewhere using Linux for an important cause out their in the wild will be able to do what they need to do that much easier.

I have started a little computer journey in the effort of using my skills to give back to the world. I am a lucky geek in that I get to play with technology for my job with a company that keeps people connected with one another. By contributing to various Linux based projects and by sharing my experiences and educating people, I strive to help others to stop thinking about how the computer works and instead focus on using their computer as simply a tool to achieve what they really need to achieve.

The new blog is located at thetechbear.blogspot.com. (Update: link fixed, thanks Erik)

A number of years ago, as I sat with my cousin in a hospital waiting room, wondering if my sister was going to make it through her battle with Legionella and come out in one piece, I remarked that I needed start doing more to contribute to the human experience and to make the world a better place. I suppose everyone says that sort of thing when a loved one is sick and they have lots of time to think and worry while waiting in a hospital. The important thing is to actually take the action and do something, using their natural skills and abilities.

When we do that, I believe we truly can make the world a better place.