Finding Relevance in Silliness

A certain small person I know, like many other persons both large and small (myself included), very much enjoys blowing the paper wrappers off of straws. Unfortunately, the drinking straw manufacturers may have decided that this activity is potentially hazardous and are intent on discouraging such behavior. The perforations often found at the ends of the wrappers seem designed specifically to make this activity impossible.

My ploy is generally to see first if another person at the table will be successful in blowing off the wrapper. If they are not, I usually decide it is not worth the effort to try myself. On a recent foray into the land of fast food, the scene played out just has it had many times before... only this time with a bit of a twist.

Soon after the small person discovered the paper wrapper on his drinking straw was going nowhere, we all settled down to eat. Ever watchful of his surroundings (I'm going to have to learn to be this much more observant myself), small person calls out - "Hey, I saw someone shoot a wrapper!"

I've learned not to question the observations of this small person. He's nearly always right. In this case, I have no idea if he was correct or not; it turns out to be completely irrelevant.

Hearing, though, that someone else was successful where we had not been, caused my mind to race. If there was a way to make it work, what would it be? Then it hit me.

"I bet I can shoot a wrapper at you," I challenged. "But if I do it, you have to promise to let me tell you what's more important than how I did it."

It took me two tries, but ultimately I made it work. Even with a perforated wrapper, I was able to blow it off the straw, just like the old days.

The secret, I explained, was in first believing it was possible. Holding that bias meant that I did not give up until I had discovered the solution. My mistake in the past had always been that because I had seen other attempts fail, I had made the erroneous assumption that what I wanted was not possible.

What perhaps surprised me the most was how quickly I discovered a solution once I was certain one had to exist.

For anyone curious about how it was done, it turns out that sliding the wrapper partway off so that you have room to make a gentle twist or two that cuts off airflow through the perforations is one way that works pretty well. There may be others.

Do you have proof that drinking straw manufacturers are trying to eliminate good clean silly fun or do you have other counter-seriousness measures you care to share? Send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so we can encourage more humor in life.

What if the challenge in front of you is not as impossible as it may seem?

Cobbler's Children's Shoes

Well, I know what I'm likely to be spending most of my day doing. Apparently the fan is out on the power supply for the old computer I use as a print and scanner and weather station server. Alarms started going off VERY late last night and I just sat and stared at it wondering what the heck it was till I figured out it was the overheat alarm. What a drag.

At least I was still up (working on the background info for the project that I've decided to take on as part of NaNoWriMo). It would have been even more of a drag to have been woken up by those rather obnoxious alarms. Of course, now I can't really print until I get this thing taken care of.

I don't fool myself though - the job is not really just as simple as changing out the power supply. This is the second time in about a year I'll have had to do that so clearly something else is up. Which means, of course, that unless I want to keep changing out power supplies and risking further damage, I'm going to have to take the time to figure out what is up and do it pretty darned soon.

I don't exactly have a great track record there though - like many techies, I tend to have my systems running closer to the edge (at least for my own capabilities, if not always the true edge) than really works to keep it all running in top condition, which means my equipment regularly crosses the line into inoperable or barely-operable-using-annoying-workarounds. And I don't always take the time to fix it right, just fix it enough to get it back operational again. It's a case of the cobbler's children having no shoes. Such minor problems invariably are simply larger problems waiting to happen.

On the good side, when the larger problems raise their heads, I usually recognize that I myself am the root cause for ignoring the earlier warning signs I and don't go looking to point blame anywhere else. Strange how the reality that things are FUBAR and it's all my own fault should be in any way a good thing. Hmmm, maybe I can prepay for a trip to de Nile.

I'm curious how you approach important, non-urgent issues and hope you'll send some thoughts to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. And if you happen to know what (besides replacing the whole box) could readily be done to fix whatever keeps sending my power supplies into never-never land, go ahead and let me know that too.

What are you putting off today that could become a serious issue tomorrow?

Geekier Than Thou

With most geeks, only one thing matters - being smarter, or more of a geek, than the next person. The odd thing is that for the rest of the world, being a geek is the last thing they want to be. Of course, since they're not geeks, most of us who are don't much care what they think. And therein lies part of the problem.

There are entire message boards of geeks telling each other off for not being smart enough, since the ability to be clever is the only measuring stick worth using. Everyone else is stupid so why care what they think?

There are stupid people out there, certainly and it frustrates me to no end when I run into them. Don't confuse different types of intelligence, though, with stupidity. And I beg of you not to think that your kind of intelligence is the only kind that matters. In my book, people who only think one way are as difficult to be around as those who don't use their heads at all.

So you make a great product... so what? If only people who are as smart as you can make it work, do you think you're going to have much of a market share? So you're the best troubleshooter or the best programmer who ever walked the earth... so what? If no one can work with you long enough to find a solution that meets more than just the needs you think are important, then what good are you?

And don't worry, I'm not talking about you or where you work, at least not on purpose. I've seen this more places than I can count. I also realize that what I'm saying is likely to only hit home with those who already see things the same way I do (if you do, I'd love to hear from you - we're in the minority and need to strengthen our numbers). Everyone else is likely to point out that I'm only a manager and not smart enough to be credible. Fortunately, I don't worry about that a whole lot. My friends and family know better. I'm geekier than they are, so clearly I'm a geek. They usually forgive me, though, because I work pretty hard at speaking human most of the time.

What experiences have you had on either side of this fence? Have you or anyone you've seen crossed that fence and seen both sides? Is there hope for the human race? You can always let me know at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com.

Managers - how well do you understand and address this aspect of geekdom? How do you establish and maintain credibility?

More on Toys

One of the people who picked up on the Trillian kick pointed out that it maintains a weblink history. This can prove very handy for capturing all the links that tend to fly back and forth. It also means there's no pressure to go visit every last site right this minute. Of course, given my own level of impulsivity, I probably will anyway. In fact, that's probably the single biggest reason why I hadn't really noticed before now.

For storing and managing links, I still prefer Backflip. I like their Daily Routine feature and the notion that I can visit my favorite sites without worrying which computer I'm using. Plus, the ones I visit most often float up onto a Top 10 list that I find very convenient. I'm curious, though, to know more about what everyone else uses - besides the Favorites or Bookmarks lists in their browsers, that is.

If Backflip counts as Something Old and Trillian as Something Blue, then the Something New must be Monday's announcement of the pending availability of the Treo 650.

Yes, it will have BlueTooth, just as everyone has been expecting, and it will have an MP3 Player too. I could care less about VersaMail, as I consider Sproqit to be way better, but then I admit to a certain amount of bias around that one. What I don't know is how much they plan to charge for this puppy - that bit of detail is noticeably absent from the marketing literature I received though I can't say I'm really all that surprised. It should drive down the cost of the unlocked 610's on ebay though.

Help me fill in the gaps by sharing what you know about prices, other technologies you prefer, functionality, etc. at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. If you'd rather talk about functionality you wish was available, that's okay too.

What role does technology play in your life?

Toys

The recent posts on the new Google Desktop utility got some folks to thinking a bit about toys and other new things.

So far, I've been pleased with Trillian as a substitute for all the various forms of instant messaging I use; it does IRC too. The only other IM tool I still have on my system is MSNIM - apparently it's "integrated" too tightly at this point to remove; go figure. I just leave it logged off though and don't actually use it anymore now that I've got a "one-for-all" solution.

I also had Mooter pointed out to me as a new search tool. Having been a Lycos fan way back (was that the original? I forget; my memory is failing me), only gradually making my way through the other search utilities until Google became more popular, it's tough for me to say yet how I'll feel about Mooter and whether it will ever entirely replace Google for me... I will say it's a pretty interesting approach though.

Speaking of interesting approaches, how about the Can't Find It On Google site. Help each other find stuff you can't locate and (presumably) help out the search utilities improve their products at the same time. Cool, eh?

Then there's this Sproqit thing - way cool, true desktop access (in theory, for anything at all that you've got there; in practice, they're starting with the most important stuff - mail and files) from anywhere you can get to the internet from a Palm or Pocket PC device (other devices to follow, I'm sure but my favorite at the moment is the Treo). Now that they've got a release out, you may want to check it out for yourself.

What other toys do you know about that could help save the world? Send links or other info to techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let's talk about how you use this stuff to make your lives better.

How well do you use the resources available to you?

What Privacy?

At least one person is surprised and several more are rather dismayed at just how effective that new Google utility is. Here's what I want to know - exactly how private did any of these people think their email would be, accessing it from a tradeshow floor computer?

Even with passwords, there is caching, there are Sniffers (the original, plus others going by the genericized name), keystroke-capture utilities and all sorts of interesting (and much more hidden than a big ol' icon in the systray) methods of snooping if somebody really wants to know what you're up to. Sure, this is easier. It's also more obvious that you can't expect the level of privacy you wanted.

For that matter, what sort of privacy are we really expecting when we're using computers at work, even when we're the only ones on them? My personal policy generally was to stick with writing and keeping only that information I truly believed in.

Sure, there is a time and a place for everything and there is some information I might prefer stay private, at least for a while. That said, if I conducted myself authentically, there was no point in feeling badly if anyone discovered the "real me". Having anyone read what was on my computer (in theory anyway) would have been no worse than having them overhear a conversation that I held in public.

Aside from making at least basic attempts to be un-snoop-worthy, I also always made an effort to keep my computer locked so that no one else would be able to readily browse around my files & email (Google desktop or no)... I came from the old school where if you want privacy, you have to think about your own security. Teaching that to others in the computer lab at school (WAY back when) usually involved installing a "bumma.com" file on their account if they walked away from terminals where they were still logged in. The next time they logged in, those students usually found themselves being cursed a blue streak or in some looped program where the only exit was to go to the person who wrote the thing and admit you were an idiot.

My bumma.com files were mostly nicer than that but I'm guessing that a gentle reminder to "hey, remember to log off next time, dufus!" is not nearly as effective as getting called another crude name every time you tried another command.

So - how big a privacy concern is this utility for you? Will you be using it? Send your thoughts to techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so we can get an sense of the opinions out there from the sorts of folks I care about.

What does privacy mean to you?