I do not often just reference another article, but this article was insightful on so many levels that I wanted to point to it here. The article points up the latest example of “conventional wisdom” in the press that has little to do with reality.
Within the fast-forward world of campaign journalism, it’s not considered cool to examine the recent past in order to provide context for today’s events. (We know it’s not cool because nobody does it.) Nonetheless, here’s a very brief history lesson that the political press prefers to ignore.”
I signed on to this blog today to write a blog post. It took a long time to initialize. When the blog dashboard came up, it said the blog had no posts.
I did the normal debug first step. I shut it down and then restarted. Everything is fine.
I exported the blog just in case, groaned at the size of the exported file, came back and deleted all spam comments, and then exported it again. Much better.
It seems to be fine now. I will assume that the database did not open, or the database server was unavailable, or something else was temporarily unavailable. I am not going to trace the problem unless it happens again. But I am glad I have an exported file.
I think I will also go and backup the database just to be sure.
I support Senator Barack Obama. I say that in this blog.
Adsense picks up on Bararck Obama and presents ads about Barack Obama, some of them negative. That creates a quandary. Do I allow those that are trying to place negative ads advertise on this blog?
I cannot really click the ads to find out if they are reasonable, because that is click fraud. I do not want to spend my time reading negative Senator Obama ads. So I restrict the negative ads that I see.
It is simple to go to Adsense and register the URL of those that I would prefer not show on this blog. It is the first time I have used that service.
I sometimes think that RoboForm is my best productivity tool.
It keeps track of userid/passwords for all the web services that I use, and not only that, allows me to automatically enter them as well.
I find myself looking through the RoboForm list to remember the name for a webpage I have not entered in months, selecting the webpage, and then being signed on and presented with the service.
I am pleased that John Edwards was not nominated for a Democratic office. It would have been just too painful.
Russia and Georgia go to war. An earnest CNN reporter asks the Russian ambassador why Russia invaded a sovereign country. Wonder if the reporter has heard of Afghanistan or Iraq.
President Bush criticized Moscow’s military violence in Georgia. Wonder if President Bush has heard of Afghanistan or Iraq.
The Olympics have started. The medal totals are given by country. China tries to make a good impression on the world. A citizen of China kills an American man there to see a family member compete in the Olympics.
Malaysia faces another sodomy trial. Apparently if you get close to winning an election to topple the existing rulers, you get charged with sodomy.
If I do not post on the blog regularly, I do not know what to write about. There are too many things backed up and I do not know where to start.
Seems that is the way with many things. If you exercise everyday it is a pattern and it generates energy to keep it up. Getting started again after a period of no exercise is difficult.
It is the difference in a smooth running stream of water versus one that is jammed up or backed up with debris. Getting the debris out the way is required to get it running smoothly again.
Entrepreneurs are encouraged to join networking groups. These are the groups that meet regularly and help each other find referrals for new business.
Some for very organized and very large, like BNI - which claims to be the largest business networking organization in the world. Rules are stringent, attendance is compulsory, participation is required.
Others are local, spontaneous, disorganized and fun.
I have had success finding business by going to business networking groups, but I resist going. I have to sort that out.
I wrote an RSS tutorial. I know a little something about RSS, but the RSS feed for this blog is broken. I have had it on the task list for a while without giving it priority. But it is getting embarrassing to have this RSS feed broken.
I will update to WordPress 2.6 first, then fix the RSS feed.
OK:
Used the Automatic Upgrade plugin to upgrade WordPress to 2.6
Upgraded the plugins to new versions where appropriate.
Finished or deleted all the drafts
Reviewed the comments, which reminded me of the sixties:
Sex (All the porn sites, some with dozens of links)
Drugs (Viagra, Levitra, and others)
But instead of Rock and Roll - Poker and Gambling.
The RSS Feed is fixed. Easy enough. Feedburner was pointing to the incorrect source rss xml file. Such a simple fix for an ongoing problem. Oh well.
I use logmein.com. I find it to be a good service. I have no financial interest in the service, although as I write this I think I should sign up and be an affiliate.
I have a desktop and a laptop. Many are getting away from that combination and just working with a laptop, but I still have both.
When I go out on the road, I take my laptop. If I am working on the Internet, I just connect directly. But sometimes I want to access a program that is only on my desktop, like Photoshop.
Then I connect to the internet, sign on to logmein.com, and then link up with the desktop. I can use all the desktop products.
I am certainly aware that there are multiple products and services that do this, but logmein is my favorite, and for what I described, it is free.
The reason that it came to mind today is that the video card on my desktop died. I will put a new one in soon, but in the interim, I started the desktop and the laptop, and I am accessing the desktop through the Internet.
So I am sitting here using the desktop monitor and keyboard, but running through the Internet using the laptop. The laptop and the desktop are a few feet away, but I am sending the packets over the Internet.
Now I know of course there are other ways to connect, but this way was already set up, and so it was the most expedient to do.
Keeping computers operating and running well requires regular effort, unless you have an Apple Mac of course.
I have never had a Mac, but people I know that have one tell me the Macs work without fail all of the time, and even clean their own monitor screens, but I do not know if they are exagerating.
I had some work to do on my computers this week, so the first thing you know is that they are not Macs. Now why would I own something that requires constant effort? Because I also work on other people’s computers, and get paid for it. Makes no sense to become an expert on Macs. No money in it.
This week my monitor was going out, starting to tile, flicker, and behave badly. So I got a new monitor. I did not buy a new one, just asked around and got a couple of monitors that other technicians were not using.
Same problem. hmmmm … must be the video card. So I gave the video card a little push to make sure it was seated properly, and now there is no signal at all. So today I will put in a new video card and see if that is really the problem.
I am like most technicians, and have boxes of computer parts, boards, wires, and connectors. I will go through the box and see if I have a video card. I do not play video games, so any video card that works is ok with me.
My desktop continually gets reworked with new parts. I wonder if there is any thing original that came when the computer was first put together, other than the case.
Today, in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney is quoted as follows “You think when you open a bank account that the money belongs to you. That’s not the way the bank sees it and it’s not the way the law sees it.”
I learned this lesson the hard way. It is a long painful story, but I know now that money in a bank account is not always under my control. I argued with a bank long and hard about this point, but I lost.
The article tells the stories of various people that also learned the lesson. They were all shocked as I was. A most painful lesson.
I have had more client work recently. I like to do client work for lots of different reasons.
Clients always push me in a different direction. They want something done differently than I have done in the past. They want a feature that I have not used before.
I work too much on my own. It is good to get out and work with clients.
Many of the clients I work with are out of town and I work with them using telephone and email. Recent clients have been local and I have had face time. I had to get a hair cut.
I added the audio player plugin to WordPress today, so of course I had to add an audio. I picked out an audio I did some time ago when I was doing a daily podcast at BizIII.
I am pained when I watch the Presidential Campaign. It seems as a country we move to the lowest common denominator in this process. I am not sure what it would take to rise above the current process and make the discourse more civil.
The contest between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton was brutal, and there are hard feelings even yet.
It reminds me of the notion that we fight the hardest with those that are the closest to us.
In religion:
In Islam, the Sunni Shiite divide seems to cause as many wars as Muslims and everyone else.
In Christianity, and Protestants and Catholics have fought throughout history and recently in Northern Ireland.
In the animal kingdom
Lions and others are most territorial and fight each other with gusto.
The battles of Bighorn sheep, moose, and deer are certainly dramatic.
To outsiders, there was probably not much difference between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
I live in the San Francisco area, East Bay. In the summer, we get hot days and cool nights. I understand it is because the humidity is low. When humidity is high, it holds the heat after the sun goes down.
Yesterday during the day was in the 90’s. Last night is was so cool I turned on the electric blanket for a while to warm up the bed. This morning the window is open and it is cool. I have a light jacket on while working at the desk.
The weather forecast is for the low 80’s today.
In this part of the East Bay, it is regularly hot, so there is Air Conditioning everywhere. It is always a question of when to turn the Air Conditioning on, and when to turn it off.
And I know when I blog about the weather, it is because I am worrying about things I do not want to discuss. I suppose it is like making conversation about the weather during ackward moments. I hope you have pleasant weather today where ever you are.
So what did I learn while moving to a new web host.
The HTML and PHP code was well organized on my local computer with both a local and remote backup. It was uploaded to the new webhosting with no problem.
The .htaccess files did not work the same on the new web hosting site, and had to be tweaked. It was a simple change, but a significant impact.
The most significant impact was the email accounts being down. I should have given the email a higher priority. But it is all working down.
Restoring MySQL databases was smoother than I had anticipated. I wanted to control backup and restore with PHP, but so far that has not worked.
On the new webhosting, I moved everything to PHP 5 and MySQL 5. That might have caused some problems. I have one vendor PHP routine that is not working, but instead of trying to debug it, I am going to download another PHP script.
Moving the WordPress blog took some time, because the problems were not apparent. I finally just installed WordPress fresh, and reinstalled all of my theme and plugin changes. That went quickly.
The wordpress database restore worked just fine. I lost two posts, but I remembered them and posted them again.
Blogger blogs were very easy, I just had to republish.
In testing everything on the new web host, I found problems that I did not know about. I have a task list of things to fix going forward.
Finding the right webhosting vendor is a crap shoot. Basically, I decided to pick one with no setup and monthly fee so I could check it out and make good notes in case I had to move again, which I did.
Bottom line was that even though there were system wide problems to start, usually one parameter fixed many problems.
I moved Webhosting provides and had to transport this WordPress blog from one Webhost server to another. It went pretty well. There are always wrinkles to work out, but all in all, a pretty smooth process.
The biggest problem was trying to reload the database. The problem was too many records. There were thousands of spam comments, once I took them out of the batch SQL file, all went well.
I did not backup over the last couple of days, so I did loose a couple of blog posts. It is a very minor situation.
I will recreate two and the other one is better not recreated.
Opiophobia is the unreasonable fear of prescribing opiates by both the medical professions and the public.
Opiophobia is responsible for the current situation where people on pain medications suffer difficulties from medical professionals, friends, and family.
I want to know where Opiophobia got started. I am doing research which I am capturing on a blog called History of Opiophobia.
I have identied several papers and books on the history of OpioPhobia, but they are either vary expensive or behind a firewall. I am continuing to reasearch.
Senator Obama and Senator McCain give us two different approaches to choose from.
They differ on the Iraq war, diplomacy, economics, taxes, and social issues.
I would like to add my voice to the chorus that is suggesting we look at those differences and vote according to which way we want the country to go.
We do not need to slander these men who want to lead the country. Let their positions on the issues stand or fall on their own merits. Let the citizenry reason and decide without rancor.
When Irag invaded Kuwait, the United States came to the rescue. We drove Iraq out of Kuwait.
Then we invaded Irag, but we are the biggest guy on the block, so there is no one to rescue Iraq.
The other day I was talking about Iraq with a colleague, and he could not understand why they did not welcome us with open arms. I suggested that if Canada did not like George Bush and invaded us, would he welcome them with open arms? He laughed and said he would learn how to make Improvised Explosive Devices if we were invaded.
But somehow it was different he said. Saddam Hussein was evil, George Bush is not. How many evil guys have we had ruling countries in this century: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein, Amin, Kim Jong-il, and many others.
I am writing PHP code for a project that I am working on. There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that I really enjoy writing the code. But, I enjoy the coding so much that I keep wanting to do the code. I keep putting off more urgent and important tasks. That will end today - today is urgent and important tasks only. The code is important but not urgent.
I wake up thinking about the code and ways to improve it. Maybe it is just an excuse to stay in bed for a few more minutes working out the next routine to be coded.
It is certainly a type of system that I have written before, but as always, things change over time. So I bring some experience, but there are always new things to learn.
OK, I will set a goal for tasks to complete. If I complete all the tasks, I will take some time to code.
I am taking all the color parameters out and putting them into one file. ../color.css. Because of the nature of CSS, I can replicate names of course, and it is last on the list.
I want to create different files for different color sets. I am not a sophisticated color person, so I use one of the many color sites to find compatible colors. I create the file and then have a “blue” set or a “orange and red” set of colors in different files. I can quickly change color sets to change the complete color scheme of a website.
There are lots of issues of course.
Matching Adsense code
Matching photos and logos
Matching graphics
But overall, I like doing it. I get tired looking at the same colors, and it is a good thing to be able to switch color schemes effortlessly.
The next thing to do is to create one for this blog. I am tired of these colors.
Whatever happened to Windows XP SP3? Did I miss the memo?
I am still on SP2 - I just checked - and I do the regular Windows updates. Perhaps I need to manually choose to install SP3.
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system.
I apply all the updates, so perhaps I am at the equivalent of SP3. I have not heard the customary screaming about SP3, so it is either a clean update, or no one is doing it.
And what about Firefox Version 3? I signed up for the memorable day to download and install the new version of Firefox. I am still waiting.
I have read some reviews that say it is a fine product, so I will make it a point to download if soon in the big day does not arrive.
I just have to remember to not do them at the same time, because then if there are problems I will not know which one caused the problems.
When I find myself wondering what to blog about on a particular day, it usually means that what is on my mind is not something I want to blog about.
It is like running into an acquaintance who asks how you are doing and answering “I am doing fine”. There is no reason to speak of the fears, the failures, the problems, and the disappointments.
I sometimes think that I should start another blog - an anonymous blog - so that I can speak about what is really doing on.
One of the things that stops me is that I am not sure what makes it truly anonymous. Seems like one can penetrate the IP address of posts and identify people pretty quickly.
Maybe I can look up Mini-Microsoft and see how he or she did it.
It is hard to focus on work because my mind keeps going to the Aids Lifecycle. The closing ceremonies should be going on as I write this post. My son rode this year.
My son is a cyclist, and I thought he was riding because of pure altruistic motives - to raise money for Aids.
Eventually I found out about the demographics of the riders.
Lots of gay men
Lots of older straight men.
Lots of young straight women.
Very few young straight men.
My son is a young straight guy. He is meeting lots of fit, young, engaged straight women. Just another benefit of doing a good thing I suppose.
For whatever the reason he rode, I am very proud of him.
Tracy Kidder wrote a book called “The Soul of a New Machine” about a computer design team.
One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, “I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.”
I was thinking of that quote today. I have been dealing with units of time no longer than an hour, or a least a few hours.
Is Twitter up or down?
Is Senator Obama or Senator Clinton or Senator McCain going to give a speech?
What is the latest on CNN or MSNBC?
Work on critical client updates.
Watch a scheduled webinar.
I am going to take some time this weekend and meditate and read a book. Think about something longer than an hour.
There are two major political parties in the United States.
The two parties represent 60% of the people in the United States.
Independents and other small parties represent 40% of the people.
CNN and other news stations normally have two pundits, one from the Republican Party and one from the Democratic Party. Today they had on Jessie Ventura, who represents the 40% who are not part of either major political party. It is refreshing to have that voice.
Senator Obama and his staff understood it was delegates, delegates, delegates. They organized and went after delegates. They went after small states and large, primaries and caucuses, but always with the eye to delegates.
“Between Idaho, Nebraska, Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Alaska, Obama would amass 118 delegates to Clinton’s 57.”
The most interesting analysis I saw for Senator Clinton and staff suggested that she would have been better served as the “passionate” candidate and not the “experienced” candidate.
Senator Obama used the Internet. He supposedly had a group of twenty somethings working the Internet from the start. He used social media, websites, Twitter, Facebook. He raised money and engaged individuals over the Internet.
Now Obama has to engage the older voters.
The Younger voters are saying “Yes we can”.
The Older voters are saying “Who is Obama”.
The Democratic primary raised questions of racism and sexism.
The Presidential campaign will raise issues of ageism.
Adding just a few things to my daily schedule has made my day very full. Time seems to race by.
Bird sitting for a couple of cute parakeets
Watching the Aids LifeCycle news because my son is riding in the event
Paying attention to the Democratic Party nominating process
Voting in the California primary today. Yes, the California primary was split and we voted for candidates early, but the other part of the primary is today.
Along with the client and business work.
Adding just a few items seems to make the day very busy, but it could be because some of the items have an emotional charge.
I looked at a website today that I created 5 years ago. It was a mess.
The HTML had lots of repetitive code.
There was no CSS.
The website used FrontPage extensions which I would never use today.
The website loaded slowly.
There were some simple changes that I had to make but they were difficult to make. I suppose I will have to retool the website. FrontPage extensions will be obsolete soon.
If I had the time, I would welcome the opportunity, because I like to take messy code and create more elegant code.
Today, I am watching the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee.
Some observations:
I am so happy I am not a Democrat (I am not a Republican either).
Will Rogers was right when he said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
Supposedly, the Republicans are taping angry members of the Democratic party saying they will vote for Senator McCain before they will vote for the “other” Democrat. It will be a coming attraction on YouTube.
DNC Meeting Protest “DissNfranChise?” is already up on YouTube. The background music is Linda Ronstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved”.
I’ve been cheated
Been mistreated
When will I be loved
There will be no party unity after this meeting. Bet on McCain.
Scott McCellan wrote a book about his time in the Bush administration.
The central thesis is that the United States government is immersed in a campaign culture. Scott says that everyone, including himself, is so involved in partisan politics that they were short sighted about everything else.
It was more important to spin an issue toward the Republican side than to tell the truth.
It was more important to be loyal to the Republicans than to tell the truth.
It was all consuming to be caught up in the partisan fighting.
When asked why he did not protest or quit, Scott says that he was in a partisan fight and was so focused on that that he had to leave government to see the ramifications.
It sounds like the campaign culture to me. Can anyone discuss the situation between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama rationally these days? There are advocates on both sides with known talking points.
I am convinced that the TV news casts could use one pundit with two hats to comment on any of the stories.
Put on the red hat and do the Republican talking points.
Put on the blue hat and do the Democratic talking points.
And the for the Democratic primary
Put on the Hillary hat for those talking points
Put on the Barack hat for those talking points.
Then at least we would not have people talking over each other.
Another Reverent has been taped giving a shocking sermon.
What is it like to be one of those ministers?
You are a prominent religious leader in the community. You have built a large church with thousands of members. You are respected in the community. You sit on advisory boards.
You stand in front of an adoring congregation preaching, your congregation is responding positively, the ‘Amens’ are loud, and the adulations are sure to follow. At the end of the sermon people shake your hand, tell you it was a great sermon, and say ‘God to bless you’.
Then the sermon shows up on CNN. You are roundly criticized. Pundits are shocked. The congregation is criticized. If a politician has attended the church or been endorsed by you, the politician is vilified.
As I was finishing my work day yesterday, the movie Curse of the Golden Flower came on TV. I watched it from start to finish.
It was a visual feast. A stunning collage of colors, ritual, martial arts, family intrigue and grand opera themes.
I do not normally check to see what reviewers write about movies, but I did read a sampling of reviews about this movie. It was so magnificent visually that I wanted to read other’s reactions.
Almost every review remarked on the incredible visuals.
And every review discussed the plot that was a stew of intrigue, betrayal, murder, poisoning, and stepmother-stepson, and stepbrother-stepsister passion.
Today is Memorial Day - the last Monday of May. Today we remember those that died while in the military service of the United States in any war or military action.
It was originally called Decoration Day, because on this day the dead were honored by decorating their graves.
I remember as a young man getting dressed up and going to the cemetery at this day. There were flowers everywhere. People decorated graves of relatives whether they had died in the military or not.
When you went to the cemetery, there were veterans in uniform giving out poppies and requesting donations for some veterans fund. Usually, we all got a poppy.
It was an obligation of the day, and people dealt with it in the normal way
Some got up early and took care of the obligation early.
Some procrastinated and went later in the day.
Our family went early in the day. We had moved a good deal, so there were no relatives buried in the vicinity, so we paid our respects to the relatives of friends of the family.
The decorating of graves seems out of step with life today.
First, we are rarely in the same place as the graves of our family members that have passed.
Second, we acknowledge the family members that died by addressing their spirits or memories.
I will take a moment today to remember my Mother and Father. Their graves are too far away to decorate, so I will remember them and smile.
That is the advice given to aspiring writers. Write every day.
I am blogging every day. It is starting to effect my writing. I am starting to think more about word choice and sentence structure.
I did not start blogging that way. I started by just trying to get some thoughts into sentences and hitting the “publish” button. Check. That task done.
I was an English major and an aspiring writer at one time. I discovered it was not for me. But I certainly would like to be able to write better.
I read some blogs that are written well. They are captivating and engaging. When I read good writing I find myself reading more intently and staying with the writing longer.
I would not mind if my readers had the same experience.
Potential website clients will call and ask how much it would cost to make a small change to their website. Boy is that tricky.
I cringe as I wonder if the previous webmaster used any sort of technique for common code.
Will there be a dynamic template from Expression Web, Dreamweaver or Frontpage.
Will there be server side includes for the common code.
Will the code be standard enough for a website scan and replace.
I wonder if the client can find their Web hosting user id and password, or whether that disappeared with their last webmaster. Of course it can be retrieved. It usually takes a conference call with the web hosting site, the owner, and myself.
I wonder if there is any unusual pattern of redirects that must be followed. I started to look at one website where the redirects were 4 deep. A went to B went to C went to D. I have no idea why.
And I wonder if the previous webmaster has two duplicate sites depending on where the visitor is coming from. It must have been an analysis to see if one worked better than the other, but I changed the website, then discovered there was a duplicate site in another subdirectory.
I have discovered these and other traps waiting for me as I look at a new website. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to make sure the there are no traps.
The California Supreme Court ruled that the law prohibiting same sex marriage is unconstitutional. Same sex marriages will probably begin in California 30 days from the ruling. There will be a constitutional amendment on the ballet in November so the people can vote to change the constitution if they wish.
The entire issue resolves around the fact that the state gave special considerations to married couples. If the state gives special rights to one group, it cannot withhold those rights from another group.
Let us step back and consider. What if the state did not consider marriage in any of the laws, taxes, or benefits.
People could create civil unions to protect jointly shared property and share benefits. The IRS could give special consideration to civil unions if that is the law. Social Security benefits could be defined by civil union.
It is not a far stretch to go from corporations to civil unions. We form groups that are treated as entities by the state. This would be another one of those entities.
Marriage should just be a issue for the church. The state should be prohibited from even asking about one’s marital status. It should be as unimportant to the state as someone’s baptismal or communion status.
If marriage is a religious institution, it would take place in the church as do baptisms, communion, confirmations, and other religions rites.
I do not have a problem if the Muslims have up to 4 wifes. I do not have a problem if the Latter Day Saints have multiple wives. I do not care if churches practice infant or adult baptisms. I do not care who prays to what God. Those are matters left in the Church.
There would be no marriage license, unless the church issues one.
The state can provide another kind of legal entity called a civil union with tax and benefit laws. The state should get out of the marriage business entirely.
I am writing some PHP code. It is for a project that I am have been working on. It is the most elaborate code that I have written for a good while. Just about everything that I am coding is something I have not coded before.
The coding process, however, is most familiar. I use a combination of “top down development” and “step wise progression”. We used to have signs that said “programmers do it top down”. That was before we were engineers.
Sometimes I start to blog about something, and it seems I have blogged on the same topic before. It is not a problem to blog on the same topic of course, but I do not want to write the same blog post more than once.
On the other hand, I am not sure anyone including myself, would notice … or care. If the thought comes up again, perhaps the best thing to do is just to write it down again.
I could do a search and try and discover if it is in the archives, but I am not sure I want to do that. Perhaps it will be different enough this time not to matter. If it is what is on my mind today, why not just write it.
If you have a Monday to Friday work or school week, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.
Sunday is the classic touchstone for optimism versus pessimism. It is either a wonderful full day of no work or school, or a depressing end to the weekend.
Now some of us work every day, so it is a moot point, but it is fascinating to see how people react.
I work on Sunday, but I get very few client calls or emails that need to be answered, so it is a different sort of day. I schedule a project each weekend to take advantage of the uninterrupted time.
I am watching the Tweets as my son rides 100 miles today getting ready for the Aids Lifecycle. The last tweet was at 80 miles.
I am helping my family move Ethernet wire around the apartment so they can find the coolest spot to work. I will go out later to get a switch and some more Ethernet to make it all work smoother.
I am watching Book TV and it is always good to watch people discuss ideas. I remember the adage that little minds discuss people, average minds discuss things, and big minds discuss ideas. On book TV, at least some of the time they discuss ideas.
I consolidated my task lists so there are fewer tasks and a clearer priority.
I continue to unsubscribe from all email newsletters and ezines. I want to move all subscriptions to RSS so that they are under my control.
The process has been most interesting.
I received this email:
If you are receiving this email, it means you are NOT signed up to receive our weekly … newsletter. Don’t miss an opportunity of wealth as we will make the website only available to subscribers soon. Subscription is free.
The spam was so blatant it took me a minute to understand.
I have also had to do this process a number of times.
An email newsletter arrives. One that I subscribed to some time ago.
I click the unsubscribe link in order to stop the newsletter.
I am taken to the website where I am asked to login, but I do not remember my password.
I follow the instructions to reset my password, which means I get another email.
I read the email, follow the instructions to retrieve my password, logon on and unsubscribe.
I receive an email notifying me that I changed my password.
I receive an email notifying me that I unsubscribed.
That totals 4 unwanted emails to stop the newsletter, but at least it worked.
I have also had this process.
I receive an email newsletter to a specific email account.
I follow the unsubscribe link to a website.
The website asks me to logon to change my subscription, but I do not remember my password.
I follow the link to retrieve my password, but the website says I do not have an account.
Here is another one. I received one today that said:
If you want to unsubscribe to this email, simply block the following email - xxx.domain.com
I want to block it before it gets to my computer of course.
I should have kept a log of my adventures, but I did not think it was going to be so interesting.
I was up late last night coding PHP to add functionality to my website. If the functionality works well, I will use it on other websites. It is so consuming to program.
Today, I am doing all the other business with the understanding that when all my business tasks are done, then I am rewarded by being able to code. You would think that after being a programmer for 40 years, it would get old, but it does not.
I was a manager for part of that time, but I always seemed to find some code to write.
We are having our first heat wave of the year. It was over 100 degrees today. It is not a major problem to survive, it gets hot in the afternoon and then cools off. It is pleasant now.
There is air conditioning in our apartment, so it is pleasant.
However, my computers have apparently been overheating today.
My laptop is sitting on two cold packs now, and it is running consistently for the first time today.
My external hard drive has a fan pointed directly at it, and it is running consistently for the first time today.
Yes I do worry about moisture with the cold packs, but I wrap them in paper towels and do my best to keep them dry.
My son is getting ready to ride in the Aids Lifecycle. It is a bike ride that will take place June 1-7, 2008, as cyclists and volunteers will travel 545 miles through beautiful California from San Francisco to Los Angeles. My son will be one of 2500 cyclists riding in the event.
When my children were young, we did not restrict their Internet access. We talked about the dangers openly, asked them what they knew about the dangers from their readings, and asked them what rules they followed. We agreed on the rules.
Do not give out your name or address
Do not agree to meet anyone
When they were in elementary school, the computers were in a public area of the house.
That was just about it.
I am not saying that was wise, it is just our style. Having a frank talk about the dangers allowed them to set their own limits. I knew they were going to visit porn sites and other sites, but I was much happier that they did it without having to try and hide it.
When my son was a Freshman in high school, he told me if I ever wanted to go to a porn site, he had account and password hacks.
When I set up computers for parents now, I am often instructed to put on the parental controls. I of course do it, and I always think back about how it was when my children were small.
I do not have any regrets. I still think we were right. But it is definitely worse now on the Internet, so I do wonder if I would put on parental controls now. Probably not.
I have been working to reduce Spam and undesired email. The results are starting to show.
The Junk email folder is now full everyday. I review it but I will not be doing that much longer. I will change the rules to delete the spam without checking. I am just using the Outlook processing for now, and it seems to be working ok.
I make a distinction between mail boxes and mail folders.
Mail folders is where I store email I want to save
Mail boxes is where I receive email. Email is sorted into a dozen or so mail boxes.
Everything that does not get sorted into a mail box ends up in the Inbox.
When all works well, there are very few if any emails in my inbox.
If email shows up in my inbox, one of the following happens:
If it is spam, the keystrokes Alt-A-J-B send it to the junk email folder.
If it is mail that I expect to get more off, I create a rule and sort it into a mail box.
If it is a subscription, I cancel the subscription. No email subscriptions; only RSS.
If it is a one-off email, I process it or store it in a mail folder.
My overall time on email is being greatly reduced. I am trying to use that time looking at my RSS feeds without flying through them. More considered reading.
Listing to the Gillmor Gang discuss the Microsoft - Yahoo deal that fell through. There is the standard list of pundits on the call. They do not agree.
I cannot help but think of the political pundit shows. There we know what position pundits are going to take depending on their party and the candidate they support. They are spinners.
With this crowd, you never really know who is going to take what position, but there are certain perspectives that are predictable.
Robert Scoble will talk about the employees at the companies involved.
If Jason Calacanis was on the call, he would say the deal can be understood by looking how much the deal would add to search & online advertising.
Mike Arrington will call out someone else on the phone call.
Dan Farber will have the broadest industry view, and include in the analysis companies that are not directly affected.
Doc Searls adds the humor. Are you on Twitter, or “some other drug”.
I try to learn a new Treo feature each day. There is a lot to learn. I have had Palms for years so I know the Palm OS, and thought I knew many of the applications.
Here is one example. I looked at the calculator. It looked like the standard Palm calculator. Nothing to learn. Then I hit the menu and looked at the options. There is an option for an advanced calculator. After you get to advanced calculator, you have the choice of
Math
Trig
Finance
Logic
Statistics
Weight / Tmp
Length
Area
Volume
The only point is that each little application has multiple layers to be investigated.
Today was shut down day. Time to turn off the computer for a day. I did not do it. I worked on the computer all day.
There were financial reports to do, client websites to tweak, email to answer, and now, a blog post. There were things to look up on the Internet, blog posts to read, and IM’s to answer.
But there was no Twitter to respond to: I am not doing Twitter.
And there was no FriendFeed to read: I am not doing FriendFeed either.
And I found out that
My son biked 70 miles including a climb of Mt. Diablo
Microsoft is not buying Yahoo
My new Treo has many more features than I first imagined
We moved from a fax machine to online fax. It was more difficult than I had imagined it was going to be.
I used to do online fax years ago, but I forgot that was the time we accessed online using a modem. Fax was built in.
It is not possible to just move to email with attachments. Most government, health insurance, and businesses want actual faxes. That is the way they are used to doing business. It required an online to fax machine process.
I picked out a fax service that is available both online and with a client frontend.
Faxit Nice is the Web Service
Faxtastic is the client piece
The difficult part was to get the scan process working effectively. We have an HP All-in-One machine and it is only a few years old, but the drivers had to be downloaded and upgraded. Some of the software would not work with IE 7 of all things.
At the end of the process I scanned in 14 pages, tweaked them so they looked sharp, and prepared them to be sent off using a nice client package.
I am watching the situation with Jeremiah Wright and the presidential campaign with interest as are many Americans. I thought Jeremiah Wright’s performance in front of the Press Club was incredible theater.
In all the talk about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama there is one thing that amuses me, and that is the assumption that Senator Obama had to have known about the fiery sermons in question even though he was not there, because people would have discussed them.
What? People would have discussed a sermon or even remembered it 5 minutes after it was over. How unusual.
My father was a minister, he was fond of asking people during the week if they could remember any of the points of last Sunday’s sermon. People could not. Even if it was incendiary.
I listened to my father’s sermons for many years, and the only part I remember clearly is when he was telling sons to respect their fathers and turned around to the choir where I was sitting and pointed directly at me. That got my attention. But I did not discuss it with anyone even though I worked with people who were there that day. No one that I knew discussed sermons.
I am working on reducing my email. I am unsubscribing from any email that I can. I am doing all I can to enhance my spam filter.
It is interesting to see the varied processes to unsubscribe from an email subscription.
Some of them are an easy one-click process that takes you to a screen that says you are now unsubscribed. Terrific.
Some take you to a screen that asks if you are sure, and asks why. Usually that is a check box and a submit. That is ok.
Some want you to log on using your member name and password and update your subscriptions. At this point, I have usually forgotten my password, so that is another step. Then I log on, change the password, update my profile to cancel subscriptions and leave. Then I get another email that thanks me for visiting. Hmmmmm.
When I am asked the reason, I say I am moving to RSS which puts me in control.
My external hard drive has failed several times now. It does not give any errors, it is just no longer available.
It started when I moved it to the new desktop. It happened several times right away. I had it tucked between two other items, so I moved it because I thought it might be getting hot. It went several days without a failure.
Yesterday when it failed, I lost my Outlook pst file completely. It was just gone. I had a backup, but I lost the email of the day.
Today I am trying on a different USB port. It is an external drive holder, so the next thing is to take out the hard drive and install it into the computer. I did not want to do that because now I can move it to the laptop with little effort.
I do not care for computer games that required a high degree of eye-hand coordination. That is just not me.
But I do like the strategy games. I like most of the card games. I like FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.
My favorite is Reversi or Othello. It has strategy. It goes quickly. There is little eye-hand coordination.
My favorite strategy game on the Nintendo was Lolo. After I wrote that I looked it up and found an online version of the game. I tried it of course. It is still challenging and interesting, but it certainly takes longer to play than I remembered. And it requires a bit more eye-hand coordination than I remembered. But it is just as addictive.
That will be a reward when certain tasks get finished.
I heard a story about Lance Armstrong, the famous cyclist. I have no way of knowing whether it is true. Lance was asked how he was able to bike up the alps. Lance responded that to think about biking up the alps was too much, that what he did was look ahead and see a tree or bush and focus on biking to that tree or bush. Then he found another target and biked to that target.
That is what we should all do when things get difficult. Find a milestone, and get to that milestone. Then pick another milestone and get to that milestone. Do not worry about biking up the alps, it is just too much sometimes. Just get to the next milestone.
It is a lesson that I need to learn and re-learn. I am focusing on that lesson again, trying to focus on one set of objectives and not getting distracted by all the things on the horizon. So far so good.
I am unsubscribing from all my ezines and email newsletters. I am only going to subscribe to RSS feeds from now on. If they ask for a reason, the comment is “RSS or nothing”.
There might be a newsletter that I enjoy so much that I will not unsubscribe, but so far I have unsubscribed as each one has arrived. Sometimes I have immediately subscribed to the same material using RSS.
People think differently about clicking on the unsubscribe link in a newsletter.
One school of thought assumes that if there is a unsubscribe link, then the sender is following the rules and the email is probably not spam.
Another school of thought says that it is just another way to encourage one to click on a link that either downloads malware or validates the email.
I am examining the ezine, going to the site, signing in, and unsubscribing to avoid any danger. It will take weeks to get through them all because many are monthly, but each time I unsubscribe I feel better.
Then I suppose I will have to go through my RSS feeds and trim them.
My son got mugged yesterday. He was knocked to the ground by four males who demanded money. He was on the ground with one attacker drawing back his fist over this face.
A plain clothes officer happened to be driving by. The officer stopped his car in the center lane, jumped out of his car, left the door open blocking traffic, and drove off the attackers. The officer arrived in time to prevent any robbery or battery from taking place.
Of course the attackers threw my son down on his right shoulder where he had broken his collar bone several weeks ago. He was on his way to the Doctors to have his collarbone X-rayed and checked. The X-rays showed no new damage.
As is often the case, it was good news and bad news. The good news
The police officer foiled the robbery before any serious damage was done
It happened on the way to the Doctor so the collar bone could be checked right away.
And for me, the good news was that we were going to meet that day anyway so I was there to offer whatever moral support I could.
