Signs of the Times

July 30th, 2009

I’ve been spending some time working from my “East Hampton office.” That is to say that I brought my Dad down to his place in East Hampton Village and I am working from the guest room upstairs. At the end of the work day I generally take a walk. Our place is just off Newtown Lane and down from Main Street. These are the two big (relatively speaking) shopping streets and I like to look in the stores. And at the people – East Hampton in the summer is outstanding for people watching. But that is another blog perhaps. One of the things I notice is the signs in the stores asking people to behave. Cell phones seems to be a big issue. For example:

  • Please no eating, drinking or talking on your cell phone
  • There are places where it is not polite to talk on your cell phone – this is one of them

Interesting to lump cell phone usage to eating or drinking in a store. And the second one is clearly a plea for civility and courtesy.

An other sign I found interesting said “Sadly, this shop is under video surveillance” Clearly the proprietor is disappointed that someone would actually steal from them and that they have had to resort to such measures.

The most fun sign I have seen, and I have seen it other places as well, read “Unattended children will be given a cup of espresso and a free puppy.” Now there is a threat parents can relate to. Seems a bit harsh though.

Posted in Observations | 3 Comments »

Getting Tired of Laptops

July 27th, 2009

I’ve been using a laptop as my primary machine for years now. At least six but probably more like 8 or 10. The only time I use a desktop is when I use someone else’s computer. Mrs. T’s perhaps to play games. Or a computer in a public place. Most of the time a laptop is just fine. But lately it doesn’t seem fine.

Part of it is screen size but not completely. At home I have a 19 inch screen attached to my docking station. That helps a lot. I have a 21 inch LCD I need to make room for and that will be even better. Part of it is the keyboard. I’m seriously looking at plugging in a full-size USB keyboard. I feel constrained on a laptop. Lately it seems like the constraint on my fingers is leading to constrain in my brain. In any case it is starting to feel like too much work on the laptop keyboards.

Performance is not an issue for me and neither is memory or disk space. Four GB of RAM seems fine and I have lots of extra disk space. No it is the I/O. Hopefully the large keyboard and screen will help when I’m home.

Anyone else feeling like this or are you using desktop systems a lot? Or are laptops enough for you?

Posted in gadgets, questions | 5 Comments »

The Henry Louis Gates Jr Affair

July 24th, 2009

I’ve been following the issue of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr and his arrest. BTW Why do they always have to say “Henry Louis Gates Jr?” Why not just “Henry Gates” or even “Dr. Gates” or “professor Gates?” Are their that many Professor Gates at Harvard? Any way to the big issues.

I’ve listened to interviews with both Dr Gates and the police officer who arrested him. The stories don’t completely match which is to be expected. But honestly I didn’t hear anything in the interview with the police officer that made it clear why Gates was arrested. It seems to me the officer could have given Gates his name and badge number and just left. Yelling at police officers isn’t illegal is it? I mean as long as their are no physical threats its still free speech right? SO why the need to arrest Gates? That I just don’t get.

The police arrived to investigate a robbery. Gates was upset about being a suspect. I can understand that. He assumed that it was because he was a black man. There don’t seem to be any real evidence that this was the case though. One would have to be naive to think this sort of thing doesn’t happen to white men. Oh it probably does happen to black men more than white men but I find it hard to believe that a white man would have been treated any differently up to that point. If a call came in about a burglary I would expect the police to ask anyone they found in the house to produce ID no matter what race they were.

I would also expect most people to get upset being questioned like that in their own home. Most of us though are more intimidated by men with guns and would go out of their way to avoid confrontation with the police. I was stopped for a “traffic violation” once and the officer got quite belligerent when I calmly tried to explain that there was a delayed light and that the light on my side was still green even though the light he could see was red. Frankly I was afraid for my safety and I’m a white guy. So I shut up and prepared to fight the ticket in court. Fortunately when the officer called this in the office cleared things up and I didn’t get a ticket. No apology either I might add. Yes I still harbor bad feelings about that officer. I think he acted stupidly. But getting police to admit error is very difficult.  Gates should get an apology unless there is more to the story than what I have heard from the police side but based on my own experience I see that as unlikely.

In the Gates case I think both Gates and the officer acted stupidly. I’m sure they are both really smart people and mean well but either one of them could have calmed things down before they escalated the way they did. The officer should have calmed things down because that is his job. If Gates is so smart and professional and mature he should have seen that no good was going to happen with what was going on and calmed things down. Likewise there were other police there who should have stepped in to avoid the confrontation that led to the arrest.

Speaking of acting stupidly, the President should never have made the comments he did. I don’t disagree with his opinion but I think it was unhelpful to the situation. If nothing else it hardened the stance of both individuals which is not good. Now of course neither will own up to any mistakes which is a shame.

Also it hurt his credibility with the police. Did it help him with some people? Perhaps but to what practical good. I think he should have said something like “It is a very unfortunate situation that I am disappointed to see see happen. I am happy that the charges were dropped. I’m sure a complete investigation will be done and will wait for that before making more specific comments.” Privately he could have supported his friend and he could have requested an independent Federal investigation. But to publicly state something was stupid without more information was ill advised.

You know, just because something bad happens to a black man doesn’t mean race was a factor. There actually are black/white/Hispanic/Asian/native American people who do bad things. No really. I’ve also seen white people get arrested by non-white police and don’t know of many cases where they were arrested because they were white. Though honestly having seen white students being beaten up because of their race I would not be amazed if people were arrested in some cases because they are white. But assuming race is a factor without evidence is, well, its racist.

Posted in law | 1 Comment »

Good News, Bad News

July 21st, 2009

I care very little about the stats for traffic on this blog. I care some and I do keep meaning to ask for access to the Google Analytics information but not enough to do a lot about it. For my work blog I do care and care a lot. Largely that is because my boss who determines things like raises, bonuses and good stuff like that cares about it. I’m not solely numbers focused so don’t get too hung up on that. But since I am also crazy about statistics I watch the numbers closely for that reason as well.

One of the things I always hoped for was that I would build up more of a regular audience. That is to say people who read regularly either by RSS subscription or hitting their favorite link. I track this a couple of ways. Analytics tools show direct traffic, referral traffic and search engine traffic. The percentage of traffic from search engines (which tends to be one offs and not regular visitors) is going down. It was 60% and is now around 50%. I also use Feedburner for subscriber information. The good news is this appears to be happing. Feedburner reports an average of over 400 subscribers (I like the 7 day average for this) for example. This is wonderful.

The bad news is that the total traffic is going down. What’s up with that? Well the clue is that the percentage of search engine traffic is down. So while I am getting more regular readers the total readership is down because search engines are sending me less traffic. And I have no idea why. Technorati shows many fewer in links than it did a year ago. I peaked there are over 100 sites linking in and now it is down to 25. Scary. Why is that? I don’t think I am less interesting. Rather I wonder if a lot of the in links were spam links and Technorati and the search engine companies are doing a better job of filtering them out. (BTW I’m seeing a good number of search engine traffic from Bing which makes me happy. Try it out if you haven’t.)

I hear from other bloggers that their traffic is down as well. Could it be that search engines are not driving as much traffic to blogs as they used to? Or are they spreading it out more? What is going on? Anyone else looking closely at their blog stats and seeing similar things?

Anyway in the short term I think I have to think about how to tell this story to my boss so as to properly set his expectations. Assigning meaningful metrics to blog activity is not a science. Some would say it is not even a good idea.

Posted in blogging, questions | 2 Comments »

Time V Money

July 19th, 2009

One of the things that become more clear as one gets older is that time is a limited resource. On the other hand money is something one can (usually) get more of. So while I have a reasonable appreciation for money I value it most for when it can be used to save me time.

For example. yesterday I was trimming my bushes with an electric hedge clipper and managed to cut the extension cord. It wasn’t the first time and I doubt it will be the last. Once I found and reset the circuit breaker and took a good look at the cord I decided I was done for the day. I was too tired to continue and do a good job. This morning I found a replacement plug and used it to repair the extension cord. Well that was the goal. It turns out that something when wrong and the cord was shorting out. So I took it all apart, looked it over, tried a few things and low and behold … yeah it was still shorting. So now I am faced with a decision. Do I keep working on the cord or do I get a new cord? Working on the cord, assuming I finally get it right, only costs me time. Buying a new cord costs money. I got a new cord. Well to be honest I used another cord I had in the basement but I’ll probably still have to replace the cord eventually. The cost of a new cord is less than the value I place on my time.

After reading an article that did a lot of economic analysis on free time/recreation time compared to time one is paid for I set a value on my time (for things like this) at half my hourly pay rate. So if something costs me half what I get paid an hour and will save me an hour it is worth paying for. Or rather it is not worth not paying for. Unless of course it is something that I enjoy doing for the fun, exercise or has other non-monetary value to me.

This is why I pay someone to cut my lawn BTW. I hate cutting the grass and there are many things I would rather do with my weekend. It is also how I justified hiring someone to paint my house a couple of years ago. It is a model that works for me.

Of course this sort of thing applies to a lot of  things. For example I can program user interfaces much faster using Visual Studio and VB or C# than I can using Java. In fact I think that the cost of buying Visual Studio would pay for itself (at full suggested retail) in a couple of days over using a ‘Free” Java environment. This may not be true for everyone of course but it sure is for me. That’s why I don’t understand anyone using price of tools as a reason to use Java over VB or C#.

I understand the “write once, debug everywhere” argument for Java. Not the free verses pay argument. I suspect that a lot of professional developers who use “free” tools also pay for some performance enhancement tools as well. Most pros do in most any field. The trade off though is the same – will the cost of the tool pay off in time saved or other means. So much comes down to that trade off between time and money.

Posted in Philospohy | No Comments »

A Week Without the Internet

July 12th, 2009

For a while now I’ve been thinking that the Internet is a major cause of stress for me. There is not much avoiding it usually. I depend on it for work at the very least. So going on vacation seemed like a good opportunity to take a break from it. And I’m not just on vacation but I’m on a cruise. There is no cell phone coverage and no Internet connection unless I want to pay some rather high prices. I have done this before – paid for an Internet connection on a cruise ship but I was working that trip. So while I can get an Internet if I really want one it is easily avoidable. If  I want to avoid it. So I’m trying.

As I write this intro it has been about 36 hours without a connection. The first half day I found myself often reaching for my cell phone to check email. It made me realize just how often I do this. If there is any “break in the action”, say waiting on line for something, my first action is to check email. This does not seem all that healthy to me. Avoiding more direct contact was not so bad until this morning.

My normal first activity in the morning is to sit at my computer and find out what is going on. I scan my email. I scan Tweetdeck looking for Twitter mentions, direct messages and scan my feed from the high priority people I follow. I also scan the Internet news, some RSS feeds, check the weather and my calendar. Usually before I even visit the bathroom let alone eat or get dressed. This morning that was not an option. It was a minor shock to my system.

During the day is easy because I have plenty to do. Food, pool, onboard entertainment, etc. Plus I brought a bag full of books. Reading a good book distracts me from anything. I haven’t been reading a lot for the last several years because the Internet grabs me first and I don’t get to the books. This also doesn’t seem healthy to me. I miss my books. I have really enjoyed reading the last several days. My reading jag really started on the plane home from my last business trip a couple of days before the cruise.

Still more then a few times I have wanted to look something up on the Internet and not been able to do so. I was expecting email to be the big thing I missed with blogs and Twitter being next. But being able to look something up is running in the lead so far with Twitter in a strong second place. We’ll see if this changes during the rest of the trip.

Tomorrow should be easy because we are going on an excursion to see some Mayan ruins. There are things to do on the ship when we get back. Keeping busy my be the answer for me. But so far the break from the Internet hasn’t hurt me. On the other hand there is going to be a huge backlog of email when I get home.

[Note: posted on my return, well most of the way home, from vacation. Still no email because I let my password expire but I hope to fix that tonight or tomorrow morning.]

Posted in Life Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Knowledge and Intelligence are not the same thing

June 23rd, 2009

As a teacher one of the things that frustrated me was students who claimed not to be smart. Or that they were stupid. In most cases this was far from true. What the student  should have been saying was that there was information (knowledge) that they didn’t have. Stupidity is hard to overcome but a lack of knowledge is relatively easy to deal with. Intelligence is not knowing a lot (having a lot of knowledge) but being able to use that knowledge.

Knowing more information doesn’t make one smarter. Oh for sure it may help people make better decisions but if they were not smart enough to use the information it wouldn’t help them. I think that some of how to use information can be taught. I am not convinced that people’s intelligence (smarts if you will) is a fixed value. The mind can be trained. Information helps with that training but it is not intelligence by itself.

One of the things I used to say was that ignorance was curable but stupid was not. I’m starting to think that stupid can be improved to some extent but that it is difficult. Ignorance though remains pretty easy to cure. The problem is that it still takes some work and some people are not smart enough (or are too lazy or something) to put in that effort. And that is a shame.

I think there are a lot of very smart people who are not getting the knowledge they need to properly use their intelligence. This is the biggest problem in education today. Some kids don’t think education will help them. Others think they are stupid (often mistaking knowledge for intelligence) when they are not. Others have teachers or parents or peers or other external pressures not to learn or to make an effort at school. others think they don’t need it. I’ve known a couple of athletes who expected their athletic ability to make knowledge of other things unnecessary. I’m  not sure how to turn all that around. But we sure are missing a lot of potential when we lose the opportunity to provide knowledge to people with the intelligence to really use it.

Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

My Hamptons

June 13th, 2009

The new TV show Royal Pains is bringing some attention to an area of Long Island the media likes to call “The Hamptons.” I was born there and growing up we referred to the area as “the south fork.” Or perhaps “the east end [of Long Island]” When I was growing up there were summer people – artists, writers, actors, miscellaneous rich people – who had big summer homes but there were also baymen and farmers – lots of farmers – and it did not get the media attention it does today.

Today there are sort of two dimensions (dimensions in the science fiction sense that they occupy the same physical space but hardly interact) to the Hamptons. There are the rich and famous who occupy one dimension and the other people who live in another. For ease of use I refer to the first group as summer people and the second group as year-round people. Strictly speaking many of the “summer people” come out more than just in the summer and may even live here (I am in East Hampton as I write this) most of the time.

The media (TV and movies) mostly presents a fictional view of the summer people. The year round people are kept in the background. I can’t say I am very familiar with that dimension of the Hamptons though. The year round people a bit more. While I haven’t lived in the Hamptons full-time for 50 years I do visit regularly and my father still lives here. I like to think of myself as a “displaced Bonacker” who knows something of the area.

The TV show Royal Pains is fairly unique in that it does show some local, year-round people types. The hospital administrator who was born and raised in Southampton (not explicitly stated but the only hospital in the Hamptons is in Southampton – I was born there) for example. The most recent episode showed the star helping a sick fisherman. Why they didn’t add some authenticity by finding a way to refer to him as a bayman I don’t know. Baymen is a general term for people who make their living from the bays and ocean around the Hamptons. That is a word I would have liked to see in the show’s “Hamptons Glossary” but I guess as it is a local word not a summer people word it didn’t make the cut.

It’s going to be interesting to watch this show (Royal Pains) to see how it treats the year round people. My suspicion is that the writers and the people working on the show are more generally influenced by summer people. There are many of them in the TV business. I’m not sure how much interaction they have with year round people other than to buy from them, hire them to do work around their houses and see them in the streets. Will they take on the number of immigrants (legal and otherwise) from south and central America? How about the summer workers from Ireland who come to the area in droves? And what more of the hard working baymen will we see?

I actually wonder how they will handle the rest of the year – not the summer. Will the late season events like the Hamptons International Film Festival (October) be an opportunity to have a bunch of high profile cameo appearances?  Will the Hampton Classic show some international beauty (ever notice how many gorgeous young women need treatment on TV shows?) falling off a horse?

Yeah, I guess I like the show. The doctor is a good guy. The young rich kid he befriends is really interesting. The hospital administrator is more attractive than most of the rich people but is still a strong and complex person one can respect. The brother and the physicians assistant add something good to the mix. The USA Network does seem to do characters well. Plus I like to keep my eye open for places I know. 🙂

 

Note: Strictly speaking a Bonacker is from Springs, a village in the town of East Hampton, but more general usage tends to include the most of the town including the village of East Hampton.

Note: If you go to the East Hampton Village page on Wikipedia you will see a picture of the old Hook Mill windmill. That picture is very close to the view from my bedroom window when I was a small child. Our current house is close by but doesn’t have that view.

Posted in rants | No Comments »

Information and Power

June 13th, 2009

There is a saying that knowledge is power which in many ways is quite true. Related to that is that the control of knowledge (information) is also a great power. I’ve seen this several ways in my personal experience. Most recently I was on a jury. Over and over we were told to make our decisions based only on the information (evidence) that was presented to us. We were not to do any outside research on our own. No visits to the scene, no reading in newspapers, no Internet searches, nothing outside the court room. The clear goal is to let the lawyers with some help from the judge completely control the information we had.

That is the way the system is supposed to work and I guess it is mostly a good one. But for someone who likes to look up thing and dig deeper it was a little frustrating. I don’t like it when others control my access to information. But I played by the rules even though I felt like I was missing information.

More in the past was my involvement on a school district budget committee. In that role I and the other members were charged with setting the annual budget for a school system. The administration (business manager and superintendent) had almost complete control over the information we had available to do that work. Oh we could ask other people (principals, department heads, and teachers for example) but even with that for much of what we needed the administration was our only option. I remain convinced that there were times when we were “played” to some extent. Not that I suspect the administration of ill intent just that in order to get what they thought was important then controlled what we knew,

The great myth about the Internet is that it removes or bypasses the filters to information. That it empowers people by providing information they did not always have. It’s a nice story and to a great extent there is truth there. But some information is never going to be fully available online. It is in people’s heads and passed by word of mouth. It is hidden in obscure language and/or jargon. Over time some of it will be exposed but there is so much out there. Which brings up information hiding. The old stick the needle in a haystack principle. Search engines can only help so much.

Ultimately you have to be able to trust people. Trusting the powerless is so much easier than trusting the powerful though. Insisting on more transparency and holding people accountable for providing information will help. Setting standards of transparency will help create an environment were it is expected. But I think it will take time. The powerful do not relinquish power easily and the power to control information is a temptress.

Posted in rants | No Comments »

Responsibility is Hard

June 5th, 2009

I spent three days on jury duty this week. It was an interesting and thought provoking experience. Throughout the process everyone treats jurors very seriously. One is constantly reminded of the jury being critically important to the process. Jurors are treated well. That is to say everyone shows the jury respect. There are comfortable chairs both in the jury box and the jury deliberation room. There are snacks and beverages in the deliberation room. The judge, who rules the process, speaks to the jury in respectful tones and works hard to minimize the announces of process and delays. Plus there are oaths to take which are explains and anything but mere formality. This all helps the jury to take their role seriously.

I found myself paying closer attention to testimony and discussion than I can ever remember paying in my life. It was not a strain even though the testimony was sometimes repetitious and not that interesting. It was still important. After two days of listening to testimony and evidence it was time to deliberate.

Everyone on the jury takes this deadly seriously. We are after all deciding the future of another person’s life. We don’t determine the punishment – that is the role of the judge. But the jury determines if there will be a punishment. It’s a big deal.

The jury I was on spent four hours in deliberation. Everyone wanted to be sure that they were absolutely sure of their decision. Did the prosecution prove their case? It’s a big difference between “we think they did it” and “we are sure without doubt that they did it.” No one on my jury seemed to be willing to just vote with the majority to get it over with. We reviewed evidence – pictures, videos, audio recordings. We discussed timelines and testimony. It was intense.

I mentioned that during the trial I fell asleep every night and woke up every morning thinking about the case – reviewing the evidence and testimony in my mind. I weighted what I had observed and analyzed every piece of it. The people I told about this agreed that they were doing the same things. This is responsibility and this is people working to take that responsibility seriously. It is not easy. It is not easy mentally and it is not easy emotionally. But it is what responsibility is about.

I came away from this experience feeling better about the jury process. There may have been some things I might have done differently if I had been one of the attorneys in the case. Though of course I can’t really know that. But I do believe that the jury did everything they could have and should have. That is a comforting thought.

Posted in law | 3 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »