FeriCyde Chat

Want more Free / Open Source Software in Your Work Life?

2011-01-18T11:43:00.002-05:00

If so, you should read my series (part I published today) entitled Being a Free/Open Source Software Catalyst : Part I.

My plan is to cover as much of the social components of this situation as possible. I have a lot of experiences in this arena to share. Stay tuned!
-=FeriCyde=-

Time for Linux on the Door Stop

2011-01-06T12:58:00.002-05:00

I've written my first editorial for 2011 and Posted it on LXer.com.

It's basically a decade in review piece, and it talks very much about how Linux has not taken over the Desktop -- and that it doesn't really matter any more, because in many ways, Linux has arrived.

Enjoy!
-=FeriCyde=-

Obama back speaking to the kids!

2010-09-14T10:50:00.002-05:00

Looks like Obama is back speaking to the school children in the US, likely in an attempt to force them into his socialist point of view. Well, that, or possibly our president simply would like to do something leadership oriented, and speak to the kids in our country, and encourage them to do their best.

Being the positive kind of guy I am, I'm pretty certain it's the latter. The former opinion was how it was being cast at about 6:30 or so this morning when I surfed past the anchors at Fox news as they told the story.

But honestly, I have a link to a letter to the editor from last years speech that sums up the situation much more clearly.

Quoting:

Let's thank Bennett and others who had the ability to foresee Obama's school speech "as an attempt at political indoctrination of the youth ... similar to the Hitler youth movement or the Soviet Union." And let's appreciate that they took action so that the threat was averted.

Before you get your panties in a bunch over this, bear in mind that the above text is sarcasm, and nearly a year old.

If you read it closely you'll see that the author is none other than my old man. Now you know the source of my sarcasm as well.

Dad, I love you man.
-=FeriCyde=-

How to report an unauthorized call to the FTC ...

2010-06-18T11:22:00.002-05:00

First, if you have not done so, you should register your phone number in the "Do Not Call" national database. Kind of sad that we have to worry about such things, but lately there have been a lot of scams running that (besides soaking up valuable cell phone minutes) are potentially quite expensive and damaging.

One involves someone saying they will sell you an extended warranty for your car. I've comically accepted the calls before for entertainment value (and to understand the scam a bit). Honestly, if someone calls saying your warranty is just about to expire a lot of things should set off alarm bells. Some of my favorite responses: "This is great timing! The transmission just went out in my 1954 DeSoto! Can I buy coverage to get it fixed?" Better: "I have a 2000 Hudson Hornet... You can insure that? Awesome!" The scams are well documented and the primary offending company was recently shut down. Hopefully the people executing the scam are doing jail time now.

Another scam involves someone from "Cardholder services." I've had a few of these end recently rather abruptly -- before I could say the phrase "Please take me off your list." The more generic the call -- the more likely it's a scam. Cardholder services to what card? What interest rate range are they talking about. Do they even know who they are calling (let me answer there -- no, they're doing robo-calling through a range of telephone numbers hoping to hit a live body).

In all cases, reporting these things to the FTC is a good idea. Here's the web site:

https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2

You'll find a link on there to also register your phone number in the do not call database.

Do your civic duty -- if you get a call like this, report the idiots and help the FTC shut them down. And if you're not pressed for time, it doesn't hurt to waste a little bit of their time (the scammers) in the process.
-=FeriCyde=-

Android Fragmentation

2010-06-09T12:06:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: I'm a long-time users and enthusiast when it comes to Linux -- and I own a Motorola droid.

Recently, there have been a few articles that talk of something called Fragmentation in regards to the Google android operating system. These articles talk about developer-centric problems and the general lack of stability as compared to other operating systems, such as Win Mobile and Apple's operating system for the iPhone.

This is my humble opinion: none of this crap matters to anyone but developers and technical journalists. The Android is for the most part, from what I see, unstoppable. It has recently taken the mobile operating system space by storm, spawning multiple products from multiple vendors.

It will continue to do so, despite any kind of stupid fear, uncertainty or doubt. Here are the reasons why:

Android phones work acceptably for the vast majority of smart phone users.
Unlike the strategic mistake that Apple made -- the Google android operating system is available from a host of carriers.
Unlike Apple, the android store is far more open to developers.
The operating system and the underlying development components are transparent. They are truly open in most respects compared to Apple.

Sure, developing for a moving target of device capabilities, APIs and "fragmented" operating system versions is going to suck. Sure, the interface is no where near as smooth and polished as Apple's. Sure sure sure, lot's of things compared to other proprietary vendors.

At the end of the day, the decisions that Apple made will continue to make their product the Cadillac of phones. The Droid will be the Chevy.

And the real reason it will continue to sell will be obvious to the end users: Most times, all you need is a Chevy.

Those of us in the Free/Open Source community will wax onward about why people should choose freedom over tyranny and all that important stuff that's right -- and I wish that these things mattered to a lot of people. Sadly, most people haven't a clue. At the end of the day, Apple will still have a huge market share -- but over time, I'm willing to bet that Linux (Android) will take a large or similar percentage.

More carriers, a good product, more choices, less cost. It's a simple equation. It reminds one of the bad choices Apple made in the 1980's to single-source their own hardware and sue the crap out of anyone that tried to establish anything close to a competing hardware platform. I'm not saying that mobile devices will be exactly the same as that territory -- the devices are replaced much faster and cost far less. But it sure is similar.

Fragmentation though? No one on the receiving end will really care all that much. The market physics pretty much dictate the outcome -- Android will march on, more or less unstoppably, regardless of any kind of FUD around the platform.

Because, most times, at the end of the day, you just need a decent phone that works at a reasonable price. Android definitely delivers that.
-=FeriCyde=-

Google Goggles

2010-05-25T11:44:00.002-05:00

Rocks!

I was sitting down chatting with my Aunt and Uncle over the weekend and they were asking about features of the Android phone I'm using -- and I had recently loaded google goggles -- and hadn't tried it.

Sitting in front of me is a picture on the wall. My Aunt says something like "That picture is so old, it probably won't recognize it."

Well, conversely, that's not exactly the case -- stuff that's been around a lot, it did really well on. It instantly recognized (and brought up several links related to) a Norman Rockwell painting on a nearby calendar. It recognized a DVD I had brought over to watch with them. It was darn impressive, actually.

If you have a 'droid -- you need to try this thing. It's supposed to someday recognize plants from their leaves, and is supposed to recognize bar-code (it failed, unfortunately, at that task ever time I tried it).

Entertaining at least! Give it a whirl:
Google Goggles
-=FeriCyde=-

My Letter to my Congressman May 10, 2010

2010-05-10T06:47:00.003-05:00

It's that time!

Time to Write Your Congressman!

Dear Mr. Boccieri,

Please fight to strongly regulate (or eliminate banking usage of) derivatives -- basically my view of the banking industry of today is that they want this form of legalized gambling so they can continue their reign as American Royalty.

Without solid regulation we're going to be back where we were in 2008 -- I've been reading about some people saying things like "we don't need to regulate, we just need to let these institutions fail. Hey -- I'm all for that, but I know that when the time comes, without some solid regulation and change, whomever is on stick flying the plane of Congress that day will very likely do what's been done in the past.

I see the bankers lobbying Congress like crazy (it's in the news today). Of course they are -- they get all of the rewards of taking risk with none of the accountability.

Please do the responsible thing here -- regulate these overpaid non-capitalist leeches while the opportunity presents itself. End corporate banking welfare. Make them accountable for the incredible damage they've done to our economy. The lack of sympathy for America is illustrated by the incredible bonuses they gave themselves this year -- basically fiddling while our country burned.

End American Royalty -- be a part of strong derivative regulatory change. Restore some sanity to the financial markets. Make banking a less risky venture for the health of America. Add some kind of regulation that ends the role of our government in bailing out these idiots when they fail to do their job (managing risk is part of the role of a financial institution, and clearly that's where they failed).

Thanks for Listening,
--Paul Ferris

Hardware for the Holidays

2009-12-29T07:54:00.002-05:00

It started with my disgust of Xandros on Lisa's netbook...

Basically, I bought Lisa a netbook a while back and although it's capable, honestly the OS was a smouldering pile of crud for the most part. The touchpad stopped working properly, it was slow and likely someone else would have given it up for dead. Digging around a bit, it looked to be a no-brainer to put Ubuntu remix on the thing, so I set about making it happen. Seriously 30 minutes into the experiment it became obvious that the folks at ASUS are either asleep at the wheel, need their heads examined or are taking payola from Redmond. Why? Because Ubuntu remix on this netbook feels more polished and stable than any out of the box OS experience I've had to date.

And Lisa is happy so I'm happy with it. I've been able to throw a lot of extra hardware configuration at it with literally no issues. i-Pod nano [x] Check. Canon MP620 (network, wireless, no less ;) [x] Check. Digital camera [x], Scanning over the network [x] -- some of the configuration took place while she was using the darn thing (apt-get is so nice over ssh). Xandros was almost completely out of disk space. It's running at about 70% space right now and happy as a clam.

The old Kodak DC215

While looking for a memory card I stumbled across an old digital camera I had in a drawer from 1999 (my old LinuxToday days). Hmmmm. Will it blend? ,I thought, mischievously. The Kodak DC215 was dead thanks to it being dropped and the battery tray getting slightly damaged. It was a pretty decent camera in its day, though. And I just couldn't bear something with such sentimental value being tossed out when it might make a really sweet web-cam. Soooo...

It turns out that Graham Crawford's SDK for the DC210 series cameras is still available. It's last update was in 2005, built for Red Hat back in the day. I needed a serial cable for the camera. Googling around a bit, I found a pin-out -- and a matching cable that probably came with the camera. So I had a serial cable, the software, and a broken battery tray. I needed a power supply. I have a drawer where I toss old out-dated power supplies ... found a matching cable for the lug on the camera, and the power-supply for a Netgear hub was close (7.5 volts -- hey, that's near 7 volts, right ;). So, some electrical tape, the cable, a Dell PC running Ubuntu -- we're all set. 30 minutes later I'm taking photo's with a shell script.

The photo's are available via serial (albeit a bit slow). It would be nice if I could pull them off the SD card directly from the Canon network printer -- it's one of the few devices I own that still has a Compact Flash (CF) reader. Is it possible? Turns out that you can use:

$ smbclient -I [IP address of Printer] /foo/canon_memory/ " "

And the "foo" above could be anything, for what it's worth. I'm mainly interested in the utilitarian value here of being able to have a nice, easy spot place in the house where the photo cards can be plugged in and the data sucked down to the central photo repository (where they're backed up, cataloged, etc).

Broken Digital Picture Frame

It's over 2 years old, and as far as comparing to the latest digital picture frames, pretty lame. On the balance side of the equation, though, we're not (Lisa and I) heavy digital picture frame users ;)

The pictures from our latest camera simply would not load on the thing. -- for one, it has a brain the size of a walnut, so the 8 mega-pixel shots were only going to load, one at a time, sometime in 2011 -- for the first one. That is, if it could read the Jpeg file format, which for some strange reason, it couldn't. I located the factory PDF manual for the thing, and it was about as clear and concise as raw enigma machine data. So I did what any decent hacker would do -- I started looking at the difference between the Jpegs from the old camera (the one from 1999) and the new ones. It turns out to be something missing in the EXIF data, a part of the Jpeg file format. If this sounds like something you've never heard of, my guess is that you're not into digital media much. I know I wish I could forget what I've learned about it all, because it took some digging around to discover all of the nasty stuff you can do to Jpegs to make them behave.

The digital picture frame isn't huge and has a really lame display -- like about 6x4 inches with an over-square rez of something like 900x250 (yes, it's really that bad). Meaning that 320x240 would look just fine on thing. The down side is that this kind of resolution is really pretty pathetic and it's not likely to win over anyone who is looking at the pictures for detail. On the plus side, however are the following facts:

  1. We're not looking at the frame for the quality of the pixels -- just for sentiment.
  2. It has a brain the size of a walnut; 320x240 images load very quickly.
  3. With the rez of the frame, 320x240 looks about as good as anything else, anyway.
  4. You can cram quite a bit of 320x240-sized, compressed Jpegs on a 2Gig SD card.
  5. My eyesight isn't all that great up close anyway ;)

Sooo, off to the races -- could I find a way to?:

  1. Shrink our catalog of photos easily.
  2. Fake out the EXIF header such that the frame would read it.
  3. Not interfere with the normal operation of the SD card otherwise.

And the answer is, of course, with Linux, just about anything is possible. The key operating lines of a script (which ran for about 3 hours total on about 1/3 of our catalog of digital pictures) are:

        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && echo From $J to $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        /usr/bin/convert $J -resize x240 $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && /bin/ls -l $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        /usr/bin/jpegtopnm $DIRNEW/$FILENEW > $P1
        /usr/bin/pnmtojpeg $P1 -exif=$EXIF > $DIRNEW/$FILENEW
        [ $DEBUG -gt 0 ] && /bin/ls -l $DIRNEW/$FILENEW

The EXIF header being inserted in the pnmtojpeg line above is completely bogus. It's not even the right resolution -- the digital picture frame simply doesn't care (Lisa's iPod nano is a different story, by the way -- it worked for all of the pictures taken landscape). The pictures ended up tiny -- 2500 pictures taking up a whopping 80 Megabytes -- literally pennies on the dollar, space-wise. This means that I can simply put the script in the root directory of the flash card and make it execute upon insertion on her netbook. Imake a directory called "DFRAME" next to the "DCIM" directory, and clone files into there. Works like a charm. I'm fairly certain that I can simply pull an EXIF header with the right proportions to fix the script so her iPod nano can show them properly.

Through all of this, the joy of having an operating system that behaves (and can run software from literally a decade ago) is something to behold.

Happy Hardware for the holidays!
-=FeriCyde=-

Flight of the Penguin, er, Phoenix

2009-11-25T09:18:00.002-05:00

Dear Diary --It's been too long...

I'm in full-blown Phoenix mode. For those of you who wish to understand what I mean here(Reference Wikipedia):

A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (sun city in Greek). It is said that the bird's tears contain healing abilities of pureness, and their cry is that of a beautiful song.

I'm starting a new practice around what I've done in business for the past decade or so: Changing culture and embracing Free / Open Source Software. I'm also doing a bit of recruiting and sales. This is a natural extension and progression but in many ways it's a re-birth. I'll be blogging more about Free Software (big surprise) in the near future.

My thoughts have been consumed lately on all of the things that consume a startup -- my time has been sucked into a large void in some respects, but that doesn't excuse my blogging absence (it just explains it).

In my new role I'm truly getting to know the movers and shakers in the Free/Open Source (FOSS) space. It's a wonderful re-engagement, because I was far more connected in 1999 than I have been in 2009 (that is, lately). The happy surprise for me is that, unlike 1999, the world is happily embracing FOSS -- it's all over the place now. It would be laughable for people to ask questions like "Is Linux ready for the enterprise?"

I'm sharing some of my findings from the perspective of a sales person -- I'm getting to do that kind of duty now. I get to talk to a lot of people that are pondering the FOSS question.

The question is now turned the opposite direction -- the real question is "Is your enterprise ready for Linux?" There are still some hold-outs, in other words, that still see heavy value in proprietary infrastructure. A lot of these companies are now looking at FOSS with a far more serious gaze. The money is driving the activity, unfortunately.

The "Free" in Free Software is still about the cash for these companies -- and that's a crying shame. It's sad, because it's not about the cash at the end of the day (although a serious bundle is often on the table when these choices are made). Rather, it's about liberating the IT of your company -- it's about having real choices, flexibility and freedom as it pertains to using the technological underpinnings of your business solution.

My Phoenix is an intentional "burn-down" of the old Paul Ferris. I'm far from done on the technology side, by the way -- my time has been spent doing architecture and development for the past couple of weeks, so it's not like I'm going to ever shake that ability. The bird that is rising is one of new ventures, planning and entrepreneurship -- very exciting stuff.

For those friends who've been asking -- thanks for the gentle prodding. I'll write more often and you posted.
-=FeriCyde=-

Linux on Netbooks

2009-08-14T12:36:00.003-05:00

You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard about the current "netbook" craze. Basically, there is not really solid definition (in my not so humble opinion) of what a netbook truly is -- my definition is this: A laptop that has superior battery life, reduced features and that is so small and convenient that it fits in your purse (if you're of the proper gender to be carrying one, or if you're purse/gender agnostic -- don't get me started on this topic).

Anyway, I bought one for my wife recently -- running Linux, of course.

Now, there's been a lot of misinformation about Linux on desktops/laptops and netbooks. It's too hard to use, it's not familiar -- it's not Windows -- people return them at a higher rate than Windows.

But, not according to Dell, it seems. There are many reasons that this is news. Dell is the quintessential user computing device vendor. They have a well recognized brand and off and on, have courted Linux on the desktop. Linux has a lower acquisition cost for a hardware vendor -- and on a $300 computing device, there isn't a lot of margin.

Barring all of that strategic schpew -- the fact is, my wife uses an Ubuntu laptop and seems to have taken to the netbook with a minimum of fuss. I use her viewpoint as an indicator of sorts. She doesn't hold much back in terms of criticism -- if it sucks I'm going to hear about it in short order. She's not a technology lightweight -- she uses facebook, email and web browsing as good or at a higher competency than all but my tightest technological contacts -- but she's not a programmer or IT type.

In short, if she can take to a Linux device without a lot of training on my part, I assume that the general public should have few to little issue.

And this describes her experience -- the Ubuntu laptop has been a terrific device, and she's used it for a couple of years now without issue. The netbook has a simplified interface, in comparison. It's an SD-based device (no hard drive) and so far so good, it has worked well.

I've always been skeptical of the claims that people can't use Linux as a network computing platform. My own experiences with my family (Mom and Dad use Linux these days as well) tell me that the market is fragmenting. I won't get into all of the technical reasons why Linux on the desktop is a good thing -- I could, and I've done so many times in the past -- all I'm going to say is that I'm happy to see that it's not hard to acquire a device running Linux these days.
-=FeriCyde=-

Ebert Discusses Discussion

2009-06-17T11:03:00.004-05:00

Roger Ebert's latest blog posting hits upon one of my favorite topics with the strength of a sledgehammer and the aim of a laser. His main point -- that our news has degenerated into a swill of yelling and uncivil discourse. That this lack of civility has become dangerous -- especially compared to times past.

I've spent a lot of time talking on this blog about this very issue. Whether or not you agree with the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, is irrelevant (and not the focus here). It's their technique -- their polarizing speech and the way they make the news more about propaganda than about level, balanced discourse. Our society is in danger of being polarized into groups of people that are more and more informed by people who are less and less informative. The anger is obvious. Keith O spent miles of airwave ranting against Bush. Bill O is now doing something similar -- his party didn't win, so he's going to spike the punch, that's my opinion. Spend some time (it doesn't take much effort) searching on YouTube for "shut up" video with Bill in it -- what he's doing is unpatriotic by his own measure. We're supposed to support our president, etc, etc.

I've had enough of this kind of partisan stupidity. Dialog -- quiet, carefully thought through actions, serious planning and lucid introspection of America is now in order. We're in a crisis of massive proportions, and these people and their obviously hate-mongering methods are not helping.

Roger Ebert says it better than I do. Read his blog for a really good breakdown of the present news break-down.

No, I don't know the fix to this problem. Given the fact that things like Rush and Bill sell really well these days, it's hard to imagine what fix is in order. I do know, however, that what we have is broken. Our media and the lack of local news coverage, the lack of independent voice and the popularity of junk news is a disease. We need the balanced clear voices of a truly moral news media to balance our democracy.

I shudder at the thought of a media run by the government (or even regulated). The fact is that somehow our society needs to come up with a way to pay for truly "fair and balanced" news reporting (in the strict, true sense here). The fact is that I don't want the government to do this for us. The fact is that corporate media has illustrated, really well for that matter, that they're not up to the task either.

How might this be accomplished in a democracy where free speech is supposed to be the order of the day?

Thoughts welcome,
-=FeriCyde=-

Paul Krugman and Staying the Course

2009-06-15T10:51:00.003-05:00

If you get a chance, read Paul Krugman's latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Basically, there are people that want to call off the recovery. They're wanting the US economy to be as responsive as say, a TV remote. Sadly, it took years of failed trickle-down economics to get us here, and it's going to probably take a lot of changes to pull us out.

Paul Krugman has my respect for a multitude of reasons. His lucid insight and eloquence surrounding the economy has a strong history of accuracy to boot. This article is more of the same.
-=FeriCyde=-

A Glimmer of Hope for GM

2009-05-11T09:22:00.002-05:00

I've blogged a lot about GM and American auto makers in general of late.

A lot of negative press, for most of that. It's only fair that I post something positive. Over the weekend, I got a chance to drive a 2010 Camaro. It was Saturday morning, and through some really strange coincidences, I have a contact at a Chevy dealer that has been keeping me posted as to when the new cars would ship.

Complicating matters, I wasn't feeling my best, so it wasn't the most pleasant time for me, but I drove out to the dealer and took a look anyway.

It was a silver V6 and automatic -- not the car I would choose, but it turns out, quite a bit to whet my appetite.

The long and short of it is this -- the 2010 Camaro is a beautiful work of art. It's everything a pony car should be and more. The V6 version lays down over 300 horsepower and everything about it was right. Drop dead gorgeous, quick, solid and the only time I've seen a GM product in real life that looked as good (in this case, better) than the prototypes I'd seen at the Cleveland auto show.

If GM can make things like this happen, pull some electric vehicles out of their past and put them back on the road and return to the creative force they were (even half of that), they can make it. This car was amazing. Of the three pony cars out now (Challenger, Mustang and Camaro), this one is the most beautiful in my humble opinion. The Challenger is a close second. I have to say that my impressions of the Challenger are similar, but that the thing is huge. It's been designed (the Challenger) to make this less obvious -- to get an idea, take a look at the size of the tires, and things begin to swing back into focus.

Bringing up the tail in terms of style, the latest Mustang is not quite there. Somethings' wrong with the back half of the car -- the prior attempt was very true to heritage, and yet somehow always kind of left me feeling like it wasn't all there from a styling perspective. The new Camaro and Challenger make it really clear what's missing.

It's nice to have choice, though, at the end of the day. Who would have expected this -- at this time, no less.

Let's raise a toast -- Here's to there being enough gas at a reasonable price in the near future to sustain some decent burn-outs ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

The Beginning or the End of the Republican Party

2009-05-07T04:25:00.002-05:00

Rush, what a guy! He's apparently urging Colin Powell to leave the Republican Party ... along with McCain? Note that a lot of this is right off of CNN's web site. There's a lot of free press for Rush in there for a web site that's supposedly got a liberal bias. (Hint to die-hard conservatives -- when stuff like this is going on, something is fundamentally wrong with the picture). Gotta wonder, Rush -- who's going to be left in your party at the end of the day?

Even worse, the statement that Powell chose to endorse Obama was racially motivated. In case you think that this is me simplyfying Rush's words, here's a clip to watch that will make the point clear.

I read Powell's endorsement and justification with interest when it went down last year. It's anything but racially motivated. If anything, it was a lucid description of everything that I was feeling about the McCain campaign. You can hear this in Powell's own words if you're still not convinced.

Here's the deal -- Powell in the above clip is right -- he's dead on about what's wrong with the present party. What is interesting, is the stark difference between Rush and Powell.

Rush: Pretty much a person executing in units of rhetoric at high volume. His reputation be damned -- he makes money riling people up and unfortunately, wrecking the republican party at the same time. He's like a disgusting cheerleader -- never in the game, always yelling from the sidelines with simple-minded chants.

Powell: Total contrast to Rush in almost every way. Powell is commanding Military figure who has a reputation for honest, quiet and intelligent dialog. He's been on the field during some difficult moments. He's truly served our country.

I have a lot of friends on both sides of the political spectrum. Some of the more liberal ones are looking at the sad state of Rush affairs and smiling. They know that the more this continues, the smaller the party will be at the end of the day. They know that their agendas will be more likely to pass through congress and the senate (and they're calling for revenge).

As a moderate, I'm looking at this situation with a bit more distress. I'm worried that the lack of balance in our (often broken) political system will make for some serious instability. The people that follow Rush are either watching for entertainment value -- or they're true believers in the snake oil being sold.

It's like Professional Wrestling -- there are a lot of people that love to watch, even though they know it's fake. And then there are the people that really don't get the joke. I honestly believe that Rush's followers have to fall into those two categories. It's hard for me to believe that that many people can be that stupid, or simple-minded.

Rush's postulation that Powell's endorsement of Obama was completely racially motivated is simple minded. It's an example of Rush either being stupid, or maliciously defamatory. And it's a racist statement itself -- its says "Powell is lying, because he's black -- you just know it."

Part of me has to wonder if Rush is truly that stupid -- I sit in disbelief that he can be that stupid, and then I remember Occam's Razor. I have no true proof that Rush is being mean-spirited here. The simplist explanation is that Rush truly is that simple-minded.

Because anyone that takes the time to read and listen to Powell's breakdown of why he was endorsing Obama would find good reasons that have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with what's wrong with the Republican party.

The core of what's wrong is all over this blog posting -- the tendency to aim at the simple-minded and divisive rhetoric when complex solutions that require everyone's effort are required.

People like Bobby Jindal, as I've said before, aren't going to cut it for the party. The Party needs to step up and listen to the small, quiet, logical voices of its true leaders. The beginning of this change is in the nucleus of what Powell is and has been saying since before the election was over -- that to be inclusive, they're going to have to morph into something that abhors people like Rush.

And I think it's going to be a while, unfortunately, before that happens. Possibly a decade at this rate. The party will continue to shrink -- especially if idiots take Rush's advice. Given the popularity of his radio show, that's a distinct possibility. The party will eventually be very exclusive. It will be like, so exclusive that it will be made up of only loud, obnoxious talk show hosts.

I forgot, talk show hosts that talk racism with a wink and a nod. That talk about the "real" America forgetting that the real America is comprised of immigrants. The only "real" Americans here are the American Indians, if you want to get down to the demographics of the situation. The rest of us rolled into town a couple hundred years ago and started a new government that was pretty inclusive (if you don't count some slavery, land-grabbing and massacre). I'm probably not a "real" American in Rush's eyes anyway -- Puerto-Rican and Scotch-Irish in heritage, he would probably tag me as too hispanic. I seriously don't know or care -- I don't want to speculate too much because the last thing I want is to come off as loud and stupid and rhetoric-driven as Rush.

No, the potential here is for the new face of the republican party to become someone like Colin Powell. Someone who truly understands what's wrong -- who's not afraid to tell everyone to turn off the Rush Radio Raunch and move on to straightening out the party. Without that kind of balance, the party will continue the slide toward irrelevance that it is facing today. That's why I titled this posting about the beginning or the end -- it's moments like this where the vestiges of intelligent people that are truly loyal to the party can see the problem at hand with clarity.

Possibly Powell, in other words, can lead the Party back on track. The alternative (to listen to Rush, and leave) is far more damaging to the country at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Let's Regulate Corporate Banking Welfare

2009-04-28T17:18:00.003-05:00

CC'ing the world on my dealings with my congressman (who has responded to me dutifully in the past), John A. Boccieri:
===========================================
Congressman Boccieri,

Given the recent bail-out of financial institutions using government-backed funds, I have to raise a couple of issues and ask for your consideration of the implications as opportunities arise to address the issues at hand.

1) Bankers are supposed to manage risk.

2) Some of these people have clearly missed the mark, managing this risk. At the same time, the executive management of these same institutions were compensating themselves at a rate that most of us (the vast majority of your constituency) would consider obscene.

3) Having our tax dollars shoring up this risk is a dangerous proposition for our government.

4) They're continuing to pay themselves as if they were creating wealth -- recent measurements show that they're attempting to return their pay to pre-2008 levels.

Reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1 (Article reference is Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times entitled "Money for Nothing").

I ask you as my representative in the House to please do your part to regulate this new form of welfare. If we're going to turn the banking system into a new welfare state then there should be welfare-like compensation for the executive management. If they don't want this kind of regulation then they should find ways to be profitable and not take the money as a loan from United States taxpayers (such as you and I).

That's my request -- feel free to call anytime.

PS: Posting this on my blog as well -- just keeping you informed. I trust you as my representative and believe that true democracy requires transparency.

--Paul Ferris.
===========================================
Writing your representatives is a really good idea. I'm sharing here in the hopes that everyone reading will feel similar motivation to get involved with their government and the overall solution. Vote, contribute and protest if need be. But above all things, be informed and involved.
-=FeriCyde=-

Pontiac, the mark of Dead Car

2009-04-26T05:11:00.003-05:00

GM is about to give Pontiac the axe. What comes to mind when you think of Pontiac? Youthful, Wide-Track, ... Sporty -- Dead?

The Pontiac brand has been targeted by GM management. It's likely going to be gone soon.

First a disclaimer: Paul Ferris isn't a fan of GM products -- I do think that new Camaro is smokin' hot though, and I'm a big fan of the Corvette -- though I'm not likely to own one simply because of the impracticality of a 2 seater in my life. Fact is that if there is anything I'm not it's a car snob. Cars are expensive. I have things I'd rather have my money doing than soaking up the remains of a BMW or some other brand of vehicle. If I want to have fun, a decent Toyota, Ford or Honda is probably going to fit the bill. I've blogged about my tastes in Mustangs and various other car-related opinions over the years. I've also made quite a few comments on GM and their deletion of brand-names.

So it is with no surprise that today I read that GM is finally doing the obviously stupid, and killing off Pontiac.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not totally in view of the GM brand management lineup here -- what I am aware of, however, is that the management of this company has to be one of two things:

Chock full of political stupidity.
Just plain stupid.

Dozens of reasons not to kill of brands come to mind. Think of a much reduced GM here -- one where the people that manage Pontiac and say Chevrolet are merged together into a cohesive unit of people that were the exact same size (or smaller) than the people that used to manage just the Chevy brand. In this new scenario, the Pontiac brand is sold at Chevy dealerships and vise versa.

In this new reality, GM simply manages the Pontiac brand the way that someone would manage option packages on cars. If a Pontiac branded car is coming down the line it simply gets the right badging and color options. If a car is one of the signature items for Pontiact it might get different grills and/or body panels. In some cases, the Pontiac version of a corvette, for example, or Camaro (for another obvious example -- something called a "fire bird") is manufactured. Otherwise, it's essentially a branch off of the Chevy item of the same name.

This isn't hugely different than what's been going on for the past 20 years or so. There was a time when Pontiac cars had completely different bodies, engines, transmissions. The buyers expected this kind of differentiation. The world has changed (more on all of that later). Buyers of today are not looking for the same thing they were looking for in 1969.

But GM -- wake up here. You may survive for another year doing stuff like lopping off your Pontiac leg. You're going to do it at massive cost, however, if you manage to piss off a whole bunch of Pontiac fans. I don't have to speculate much here -- likely there's a bunch of Pontiac executives that are slated to get the axe. Why GM can't pull it's head out of its collective ass and simply merge all of its executive leaders into a cohesive team that manages all brands is likely a big part of their problem.

The GM of today has to shrink in executive leadership -- let's hope that they can pick the best of the best inside of the company. Let's hope the people that stay behind are frugal, nimble and most importantly creative problem solvers -- and not simply blowing away brand names because of political infighting -- like I suspect is going on -- I don't know for sure that this is the case. If you're a GM executive insider, feel free to post some comments here or send me a private email.

The sad thing is, the GM of today has to be a completely different GM than the GM of 1959. The GM of 1959 functioned in many ways as a bunch of independent car companies. Buyers of a Pontiac or Chevy took note of the massive differences with pride. Those days are obviously gone. GM can't afford different executive leadership for all of the different brands -- but I'd argue that they still need those brands to be GM. Managing the brands shouldn't require different dealerships, assembly and so on. This is the point I'm trying to make. The fact that they're killing Pontiac says that they don't get part of their problem.

GM has to face some rather obvious glaring problems (that have nothing to do with brands) head on:

They're no longer the manufacturing technology leader that they once were. Hybrid cars, fuel cell vehicles, lagging engine technology -- I have no doubt that they have had the jump start here from an engineering perspective. They have smart engineers, in other words, that have been in front of the competition, and probably on all of the times I just listed. They have moronic executive leadership that hasn't let the cool stuff get made -- there's a rather obvious problem they need to fix. My father and I go to the Cleveland auto show -- we see their prototype stuff. It never makes it into product form. In the mean time, a few years go by -- someone else makes it happen. This has to stop.
Quality: GM quality is getting to be something of a joke. I have a next door neighbor that is a huge GM fan -- his wife just bought a brand new Saturn product -- and on the first day it blew an ABS sensor. I have a friend with a brand new truck -- the expensive alloy wheels look like crap. His dealership wants to replace them with "refurbished" items. His wife's brand new car has a set of headlights and grill that look like junk. And this is just me thinking of examples -- I haven't gone out to interview people or something -- these are examples that I've just accidentally came across in the past couple of weeks.
Brand cultivation: GM needs to have its Mustang or F150. No -- I don't mean that they need the trucks to be better, or to go head to head with the Mustang on effort (that would be cool, though) -- I mean that one of the things about Ford is that they're obviously starting to get the fact that brand management of automotive products involves making the same products (with minor improvements) year after year.
People come back for quality. They come back because their kid someday needs a car for college -- and that [brand item] served them well. The lights must be on somewhere in the company or they wouldn't be doing the new Camaro. They wouldn't be making the Corvette, Impala and Malibu. Sure -- there are times to make new brand items for people to get attached to -- those times are not to be every year or two, in an effort (I'm supposing here) to get people to forget the crappy product that the Citation or Cavalier turned into. No obvious choices for this come to mind. This is probably a core weakness; GM has not made a long-running product that gained market share and made lasting brand awareness in quite some time.

It's truly as sad day when one of your brand detractors is sitting on the fence lamenting the situation (that would be me, for the record).

A closing note here: I have real reason to be sore at GM. There was a time, early in my engineering career. I was still a student, looking for work in Warren Ohio so that I could support my family. GM didn't hire people back then at the Packard engineering facility -- it used a contractor work situation. I had to take a job at close to minimum wage working as a long term contract employee. They had a system worked out where the contract middle-men took a big portion of your salary while you worked over many years getting next to no benefits and crappy pay. All of this was eventually cleared up with a settlement for a class action lawsuit (long after I had moved on in disgust). I got to drive my 1966 Ford falcon into work and hear crap about how I should be driving a brand new GM product to help support the company (I was biting the hand that feeds, according to a couple of people, driving a 20 year old rat-bag of a car). Oh yeah, I also drove a 1974 Nova -- it was my wife's car at the time, upon occasion. When it ran.

If you wanted to switch contractors to get a raise in pay there were all kinds of "unwritten rules" to prevent true marketplace competition in the compensation department. This kept the contract suppliers happy and was in effect a reverse union situation -- workers, unable to compete for a fair wage, were kept making really crappy pay while their contract bosses made out like bandits.

I still get angry when I look back. I had a 2 year old son and we had to make seriously hard choices between food and medical care at times. All the while, the cleaning people (GM employees) were making several orders of magnitude more than we were. I sat it out, learned some valuable skills -- and left for a company that would hire me as an employee. I left for a large raise and never looked back.

I vowed at that time, never to support the company that had been so callous as to treat me the way that Packard (A GM subsidiary at the time) had treated me. The situation was compounded by the way that the employees walked around in a manufactured feudal system -- looking down their noses at the contract help like a second tier of society. They had GM car discounts, real medical benefits and a host of other reasons to feel so much better than the "contract help".

Years later, as I write this, real memories of disgust come to mind. The inefficiencies back then were obvious. My guess is that what we're witnessing these days is simply the result of a disease running its course.
-=FeriCyde=-

Public Service Annoyance.

2009-04-10T08:37:00.003-05:00

What are the police from Brecksville doing on Route 77 North, around Mile Marker 149 doing to help make the world a safer place? Catching speeders? Sure! But what about other forms of helping the community...
View Larger Map

That's probably what the people paying their salary (the dear folks living in Brecksville, namely) like to think. Too bad they're not making the world a safer place. Too bad that's not the image that they were projecting this morning. This morning, they appeared to be simply pulling people over for speeding on the Interstate to pump up the money for Brecksville township.

Call me an idealist -- but I think of Police fulfilling the roles that my Father-in-Law, a sheriffs deputy for many years in the 70's, used to fill. In that role, he gave out tickets, sure, but most of the time he was looking to make the world a safer place. That meant helping people in need -- not just cutting tickets for passing motorists.

I don't see the Brecksville cops in that light for a simple reason. On or about 9:06 AM, Good Friday April 10th of 2009, I witnessed them (2 cars) sitting in wait for passing speeders. Oh, and there was that elderly couple, with a flat tire, within eye-shot of both of the patrol cars, broken down on the side of the road.

Yeah, it's hard to have a conversation with them -- but not at all impossible. I did manage to locate a nice email address for Brecksville. I took a couple of minutes to write a nice message to them (repeated below, for your entertainment).

Hello,

   Just wanted to say that this morning, around mile marker 
149 on 77, I saw an elderly couple fixing a flat on their 
car in the Southbound lane while I was driving on the north-bound 
lanes.  I'm writing you because two of your Police vehicles were 
in obvious eye-shot of the situation -- and obviously doing 
their usual duty (my guess: gathering speeding ticket revenue 
for your township).


   While I appreciate the safety that this regulatory 
function of your constabulary brings to the table, I would 
expect them, in situations such as this, to add some value 
in the form of community service.  Specifically, I was 
kind of saddened to see them sitting nearby and doing 
nothing.  I see the highway patrol upon occasion, helping 
others in times such as this.  Why not the Brecksville 
Police?


Awaiting your response,

Sincerely,

--Paul Ferris

I don't expect a response -- if I get surprised, I'll post it here.

Any of my readers in the Brecksville area care to comment on this? How does it make you feel, knowing that representatives of your government (I count the police in this category) are projecting this image for your beautiful township?
-=FeriCyde=-

Mister Rogers, the Epitome of Evil (to Fox and "Friends")

2009-04-06T22:07:00.003-05:00

It's amazing how stupid you can look, when you simplify reality down to a few basic, incorrect statements, string them all together and attempt to make sense of your own nonsense. Then, to make up some air time, you sit around with some other people, who, like yourself, clearly have brains the size of a walnut. This "stupidity as a sounding board" tactic is part of what's going wrong with media today.

Seriously guys -- Mister Rogers?!? Can't you find some other villain to peg here? Mother Theresa is wide open -- why not her too? The basic gist of their argument is that Mister Rogers taught children to feel entitled. Backing it all up, some lame college study.

This is more of the same, simplistic thinking that's at the core of what's wrong with something I call "Partisan Logic" -- it's the kind of Logic whereby you can justify going after one president that blew a secretary whilst in office and lied about it, all the while thinking that invading another country while borrowing money from a hostile Communist state is just fine. Or, for contrast (I'm an equal party offender), you can rail against a gender or race inequitable system, and make arguments that sexual harassment by a President wasn't all that bad at the end of the day.

Can they seriously think that the this kind of lame, half-baked logic is a substitute for thought or basic reality? Have any of these people raised children?

Here's something to think about -- maybe turn the TV off -- that's what we did, by the way. I can't claim huge success but if crap like this Fox TV program was my Kid's only choice, I would have bought a signal jamming device in case he turned the set on one day when I wasn't home.
-=FeriCyde=-

I Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

2009-03-27T03:37:00.003-05:00

It's a sad day when you think you're reading satire or some piece of phony humor, and it turns out that it's really an article from ten years ago in the New York Times that contains the following quote:

'I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

The article is worth reading for a host of reasons. For one, it exposes our political system and highlights that some legislators do, in fact, understand our complex economy -- even if they're unable to stop the train of stupidity that they're riding on.

Another quote from the article that's telling:

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

That sounds like a commercial, if there ever was one, for economic destruction. Of course, my rear-view mirrors are spotless, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Remember this when someone decries the role of government and casts them as regulators holding back innovation. Remember all of this because there are a lot of people that make loud noises as great pundits that think that "simple" answers to complex questions are substitutes for history and intelligence. Remember things like the events, documented for posterity, by this article for what they were.

Hopeless, stupid mistakes by people that had all of the facts, the history and the understanding to know better, and yet they still proceeded to enact legislation that would be our downfall.
-=FeriCyde=-

More Partisan Stupidity

2009-03-25T03:10:00.002-05:00

The latest Republican hopeful, Bobby Jindal, is going to continue a tradition:

"Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."

What tradition? The idea that simple rhetoric and posture are replacements for true leadership.

This was attempted by prior candidates for president (mainly vice), and make no mistake, there are people that are gearing up for the 2012 presidential race with bets on Jindal.

The problem is fundamentally bigger than the above: The president-buying-public as it is, is looking for someone who can solve problems. My view is that they want a president engaged in dialog. Someone who is inclusive. Talk like the above is not inclusive -- it's disastrous. It really is un-American to wish that your president will fail.

The issue at heart that is not being addressed is that this was a game created by people like Bill O'reilly when he pontificated that people should "Shut Up" in regards to (name that tune, you un-American moron). Bill and people like him started and pushed the idea that to speak anything negative at a crucial time -- that's un-American. This is exclusive dialog -- it separates, rather than unites. At its core is a fundamental problem -- we as a nation are allowed to disagree sometimes. At the end of the day, however, we're supposed to work as a cohesive whole for the greater good. We're not supposed to wish for failure, in other words.

On the other side, Rush Limbaugh comes out after the Dems win the election and says he wants Barak to fail.

Out of control Republican pundits, in other words, have brought the biggest hope for success for the Republican party into the spotlight -- and his first order of business is to attempt to reconcile the moronic rhetoric of their pundits and talk-show egotists. He has to do this because if he doesn't, Rush and Bill are not going to support him.

What's really wrong with this picture? Rhetoric, exclusive dialog and simplistic thinking (in my not-so-humble opinion), have lost the conservatives a lot of ground lately.

Bobby Jindal, if he hopes to win the hearts and minds of the people that are going to elect him, is going to have to address the real problems in America with real solutions. He's going to have to find a way to include more people in his party. He's going to have to distance himself from the stupidity of what's running the party today -- Bill, Ann, Shawn and Rush. These people are doing real damage to the party that they supposedly want to win the presidential race.

I don't think Jindal is up to this, for what its worth. I think that there are far better conservatives up to the task -- but they're not going to get Rush and Bills support.

There is a guy right now who's engaged in real dialog with the nation. That guy obviously doesn't want to fail -- at least, that's what he's saying (and it sure looks real to me). He's an obvious problem solver. That guy has been working hard to be inclusive -- it's really obvious on a lot of fronts. That guy is our President. We have him for another 4 years.

I don't want him to fail because I don't think we've had problems this big for quite some time as a nation. I think we do need some Partisan balance to solve the problems that Barak wants to solve. I think we need more than simplistic thinking and negative, exclusive discourse to fix what we're up against. More to the point -- I think that the American people are smart enough to tell the difference, at the end of the day, between simple rhetoric and complex solutions to tough problems.

And now I'm going to do something I rarely do -- I'm going to take Bill O'Reilly's advice. I'm going to shut up.
-=FeriCyde=-

Spitzers' Latest Column -- Read It

2009-03-18T05:58:00.002-05:00

Eliot Spitzer's latest column, entitled "The Real AIG Scandal" is about more than the shameless bonus money -- it's about what's really wrong with the bail-out cash. It's about transparency (rather, the lack of it), corporate courtship (or affairs between corporations -- collusion and the potential thereof) and it's about how everyone but us (you and I, the taxpayers that are funding this charade) is getting paid in full.

In short, it's news that for some reason, is not making its way to the front page or onto the main screen of CNN and FOX.

Eliot -- glad to see you back doing what you do best -- exposing criminal behavior.

And if it isn't criminal today, you can bet someday it will be soon if enough people figure out how we've been robbed.
-=FeriCyde=-

The Problem With American Media

2009-03-13T06:57:00.002-05:00

Over the course of the past few years in various posts I've talked from time to time about freedom-related issues. In various cases I've alluded to a problem with our so-called "free" press. I've talked about astroturf (phony grass roots) campaigns by companies trying to obscure the truth (there's a fine line between that and positive, generated buzz).

The issue is this: News is not, and never should be, a profit center. News is news -- it might be bad news about the very corporation that owns the media. In case you've been living under a rock or on some other planet, these days, there's been quite a lot of consolation of media. Large swatches of what used to be lots of independent media outlets have been gobbled up by conglomerates. As this has happened, our press in various forms has been impacted -- in my not-so-humble opinion, negatively.

I have very intimate experience (at a microscopic level) of this phenomenon in action, having done some time in the on-line news arena. The issue was advertising, and the general tendency to pander to a sponsor. If it was happening in the smallest sense, then I can only imagine the pressures of large corporations to do similar, much more damaging (to the news overall) actions.

Today, illustrating this concept, is the following sound-byte, taken from an extremely interesting article on the dirty-bomb plot surrounding Barak Obama's inauguration. What's that you say? You didn't hear about it? Oh, well, read the sound byte in the article (link provided):

But the Belfast dirty bomber is just one drop from an ocean of truth that is unreported, not repeated, and does not enter into civil discourse, because it is not perceived to be profitable to talk about, regardless of how profitable it may be to hear.

How do you like them apples? Granted, this may not be the real reason we're not hearing about this attempt -- maybe there's some other reason.

Maybe people aren't interested in the topic -- or it was somehow censored by the regular news media by the government (highly doubtful).

Before I shout Occum's Razor or attempt to speculate some other explanation, simply ask yourself:

If there was a story like this in the press, wouldn't you have been interested?
If a story like this didn't make it to the press, wouldn't you also be interested in hearing why?
Why didn't it make it -- why haven't we heard about this one on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the New York Times and so on?

I know I have my own opinions -- I'd be interested in hearing yours.
-=FeriCyde=-

Why Social Networking?

2009-03-06T05:43:00.002-05:00

A lot of people don't use facebook but do have an email address.

This posting started as a reply to a facebook wall posting by a family member. It's only fitting. The particular family member is not on facebook. The wall posting was by another facebook network contact who was wishing me happy birthday and relaying news from a relative who was not on facebook. I pass messages through them instead of via email. I started thinking "Why don't I just email that relative who's not on facebook?".

Out of those thoughts the relevance of what's happening today surrounding social networking worked their way to the surface. This posting describes what I see as a paradigm shift in communication. Things are changing and as usual lots of people are not completely sold on the "new" way of doing something.

In this particular case, I explained to my family member (through the other family member) that they could only avoid facebook for a while -- but that it's now like an email address was in the past. I can remember this easily -- there was a time when I was one of a only few people on the planet that had a working email address. I would say to people:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "What's an email address?"

---- A year or so Later:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "I don't do that yet. My wife/son/brother/boss/co-worker/strangers-on-the-street keeps saying I need to do that, but I don't see-the-value/have-the-time/want-to-etc"

--- A year or so later:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "Oh, hey, I'm getting AOL soon. I send you a post card with it!"

--- And so on.

Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter -- social networking -- is like that today. The conversations are very similar. The time-frame, however, is compressed (see the book "Future Shock", written in 1970 for what it's worth, on the subject of time compression).

It sounds funny to debate needing something like email in your life until you realize how much we can't get by without it. Some people argue with me here -- social networking is still somewhat optional in their eyes and will be pretty much forever.

My perspective forces me to disagree. I was an early adopter of the Internet. I was managing high volume web sites in 1999 -- interactive news where the readers were posting comments on stories (I had to write a lot of that code -- very hairy stuff). I witnessed the birth of google -- no one searches the internet these days -- they "Google".

Yeah, Google is optional -- you can still search the internet other ways -- Microsoft's new search engine is going to kill Google! And we're all going to be driving flying cars in hell through a snowstorm at that time...

Social networking is to email what Google is to the old search engines (the ones that returned a thousand unusable hits). They (the old engines) simply matched strings of text with their results. The results were mildly relevant and there was a lot of time wasted slogging through pages of stuff that was often utter garbage. Along came Google, which ranked the page by relevance -- it added a value to the hit ranking that was based upon how many times a page was referenced by another page.

The thing that Google added was context. Pages being searched prior to Google were not valuable because context was not factored into the results equation. Similar value is added when you post a message on FaceBook -- sure, you could send an email message to a friend, but posting a status update on facebook adds context. It's now a message in the context of your network, instead of spam.

I know some of you are laughing disagreeably with me here, but bear with me...

Like those old search engines, email is pretty much single-threaded. It has one or two targets, unless its one of those annoying forwards, which is a separate subject altogether. Email tends to arrive in your inbox, and get processed for whatever its worth, and then archived. Social networking posts (like wall postings on facebook) are very similar to email to a group email listing. Except that the context is managed by the interface. Your social group of friends can opt to read what you're up to (or ignore it). And thanks to the way that the networking algorithms work, it's amazingly easy to find people that want to be in your circle of friends (or have been in the past -- again, another subject altogether).

Social networking has supplanted email. By bringing others into the conversation things have a completely different relevance. We all feel a lot more connected than we used to be (Because we are).

The ability to post photos, to send little gifts and so on, that's all icing on the cake -- or cruft -- I'm not into turning facebook into a gaming interface anytime soon, for example. The core functionality that facebook has brought to the table is the ability to easily add social context to conversation. Email can't easily do this. Blog postings can't easily do this.

On a similar front, Linkedin is doing the same for professional networking. It's not quite there yet, but I'd argue that Linkedin is the new resume. The old resume just told people what you had done. The new one says "Oh, and hey, I did it with these people." And because you did it with "those people", the odds of a recruiter finding your talents because they were looking at one of those people's networks -- those odds are much higher than before Linkedin. Before, a recruiter had your resume and it was -- like a dead-ended email -- just your resume, targeted at just you, with no social context.

And it helps, even if you're not looking for a job (another subject for another day). Suffice to say that I pay a lot of heed to my LinkedIn profile, because it helps attract talented people to work where I work and solve the kind of cool, impossible, fun stuff that I get to solve. I can't do it alone, just like NASA can't build the space shuttle with one brilliant engineer, the stuff I'm into these days is far beyond anything I can hope to accomplish as a single-threaded human on this planet.

I'll leave this subject here for now -- I'm sure I'll be back again though.

Social networking is changing everything. It's adding relevance and bringing people together. I suspect that the economic down-turn will push even more people into this space, more out of need than out of want. I can see it pretty clearly; There will come a point where a facebook profile is as ubiquitous as an email address.
-=FeriCyde=-

Germans and Electronic Voting

2009-03-03T11:29:00.002-05:00

Slashdot has a link to an article on a German court that has banned certain e-voting machines for a lack of transparency.

I find the lack of coverage of our own (American) voting problems, with similar issues, to be quite disheartening. Read the babelfish translation on the Slashdot page if you're interested in the specifics. As it sits, a host of similar issues troubles me about American voting devices. What is known about some of them was to be proprietary -- until it got accidentally leaked via an insecure FTP site.

I've blogged about this in the past. The Germans are doing the right thing here -- they're going back to paper and pencil until the technology requirements are clearly documented and the results transparently reportable. Too bad our media doesn't see this as news. Only a few states in our country see this as the vulnerability that it truly is.
-=FeriCyde=-

Start up the Risk Takers

2009-02-23T10:43:00.002-05:00

The New York Times today has a interesting OP-ED by Thomas Friedman: Start Up the Risk-Takers. If it sounds familiar to you, after reading it, you probably read something similar in my blog posting: "America: Land of the Lost" here a few weeks back. The article is making its way around a bit -- it will be published in Naturally Good Magazine soon.
-=FeriCyde=-

A Positive Sign: Facebook Listening

2009-02-18T07:23:00.002-05:00

Facebook appears to have listened to their user base. In the past I've blogged about Toxic Social Media. This is the opposite -- or maybe it's more like the user base on FaceBook has gotten to be a democracy of sorts.

Regardless, I'm glad to see this. I use facebook a lot these days -- it's become something of a community gathering spot for the world.

Good to see that Facebook, unlike other Toxic Social Media gathering spots, is listening.
-=FeriCyde=-

Creativity is Universal and a Resource

2009-02-07T15:43:00.003-05:00

Sir Ken Robinson: A New View of Human Capacity

I encourage you to watch the above video snippet. It details Sir Ken Robinson's thoughts and experiences with the natural resource of human creativity. It's also quite funny for some sad reasons. Pay attention to the fact that a lot of humans don't value creativity when it comes to them from the outside.

Around the same time I found the above I came across this piece by Elisabeth Gilbert:

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity.

Elisabeth Gilbert's piece is saying something different about creativity, but it is no less fascinating. Both of these videos are about something very elusive that I wager is what makes us most like gods -- the ability to make new things. Invention. Music Composition. Writing. All of the above -- you can argue that the lower lifeforms are creative, but the scale is obviously different. Mankind's creative endeavors are wildly complex, almost life forms of their own (think of things like operating systems and compilers).

In the past the most frightening thing about creativity, speaking from my own experiences, is the lack of ability to control it. It comes in the most inopportune times -- when I'm seriously supposed to be paying attention at a meeting the most hilarious (and often unsharable) observations will fly into my head. Things that make me laugh uncontrollably. When I need it sometimes it's not there (recent experience this past week, sadly). When it comes it emerges like an uncontrollable river torrent of thought. I paddle like a mad-man trying to get it all out in the short expanse of the boat that I call "this lifetime".

And so it was this morning when I woke up and realized that a lot of the bi-partisan thoughts I've been having over the past few weeks were creatively expressed by none other than Martin-Luther King. I know this, because my parents used to have it up on a poster in the dining room in our house in Jamestown Missouri.

We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.

When he wrote this I have no doubts that he was addressing the racial divide in this country and hoping for a day much closer to the one we're currently experiencing. No doubt we still have a long way to go on the racial divide, but it's definitely closing.

The fact is that this statement is more pressing on the front of the partisan divide. The Republicans are in fact saying something important when they talk about fiscal responsibility. We're going to go much more deeply in debt at a time when we can ill afford it. The problem is that they are one side of a two-sided partisan coin -- and that this past 8 years or so they didn't seem all that concerned about balancing the budget if it served their needs.

The problem wouldn't be so hard to address if they hadn't spent so much time discounting the wishes of the other side. Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way and they're yelling about fiscal responsibility -- and few people are listening to this warning. It's a real problem -- two wrongs don't indeed make a right. The short term gain of power unfortunately is alluring and the Republicans are now tasting what it's like to be on the short end of the stick.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for them -- the people to feel sorry for are our grandkids who are going to spend the next few decades (if they pull this off) paying off the mountain of debt -- debt brought on by both sides of the same United States Coin.

We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.

I'm sure my Mom and Dad had that up on the wall for my brothers and I (we used to fight like cats and dogs). Or maybe Dad was simply trying to make me think (he was good at that).

In any case, we're not going to partisan our way out of our problems -- we need to work together as a cohesive country of problem solvers. Creative problem solvers. There's always going to be some moron who doesn't get what the creative types in our world are doing (the first video illustrates this), or worse, they do understand and simply want the power that is inevitably generated by the act of creation.

Barak is obviously a creative president. He's also very funny at times (in a very dry and intellectual way). He's being nit-picked at this point by different people for all kinds of oblique, inconsequential things. Keep that in mind in the next few years (maybe longer). Any moron can come along after the act of creation and say something about how they would have solved the problem of the day.

I've seen this a lot over my career -- both regarding things I've created and the work of others. As I've gotten more attuned, I've developed different responses for this kind of destruction. I'll leave the sharing of those responses for another time. Suffice to say that today (as usual) I'm involved in some seriously fun creative insanity. I work to protect those around me that are involved in the act of creation for obvious reasons if you get the thoughts on this page.

For similar reasons, I ask the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to think about the long term health of our country -- to get engaged in dialog and to put aside their bickering, whining attitudes. Get more creative and listen to the people creating, rather than the people who are obviously wanting our new president to fail because it serves their partisan interests. We have work -- creative work, to do as a nation, and it's not going to be solved by a bunch of divisive partisan fools.
-=FeriCyde=-

Golden Handcuffs

2009-02-04T11:23:00.003-05:00

The Fox newscaster in this context obviously wants to argue the point "The government should not interfere with Business" -- there's just one small problem; The Banks being discussed in this interview are now a part of the U.S. government. The dialog in this interview is priceless. Kucinich is a Dem and Fox is known for doing anything but "fair and balanced" reporting (and more or less bashing anything not part of the RNC mantra) -- but I have to give the interviewer credit here -- he engaged in dialog (there was no "mike-cutting" going on, one of Bill's tactics, for example) and at the end of the day, couldn't really argue with the points that Dennis was making.

What points? That the government shouldn't be bailing out failed institutions. That now that they are, people are enraged knowing that their tax dollars are being spent on lavish bonuses and stadium branding. Feel free to argue (like the interviewer in this context), that the government doesn't know anything about branding. Side note: Kucinich has a marketing background, and it makes for some hilarious "What do you know about marketing?" correction. Anyway, so the government doesn't know about branding -- they shouldn't interfere with business. Kucinich's point: he agrees, and says more or less if they don't want interference, they shouldn't be asking for corporate welfare cash from the government.

Say what you like about Dennis Kucinich -- it's at times like this I'm proud he's an Ohioan.
-=FeriCyde=-

Democracy 101

2009-02-02T11:42:00.004-05:00

How to write your congressman:
Start by going to this link:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Select your state from the drop-down.
Enter the zip code for your home address
Select the button "Contact my Representative

This should take you to a page like the one for my district, which includes a host of methods for contacting my local congressman.

Chose email if possible (it should be), if not, write and print your letter and snail-mail it to the address shown.

Be polite and as objective as possible. Here's an example:

Dear Mr. Boccieri,

Recent economic events, the banking crisis and the bail-out have put our country in obvious jeopardy. I wanted to weigh in with my observations and opinions here because I'm deeply troubled. I take primary issue with the bailing out of financial institutions. I am troubled to read that the money has gone partially to bonuses for the executives of these institutions. I take issue with the fact that they don't feel that they're accountable for the money. I also don't think that our government should function as an owner of these kinds of institutions (it's a bit too late for that, I understand).

I'd appreciate some attention to these matters, mainly in the area of better regulations for the people at the top of these organizations. If we're going to hand them cash to fix some issue then:

1) The heads of these organizations have failed -- part of the rules of engagement should dictate that the board governing the organization choose new leadership -- leadership approved by some government regulatory committee.

2) Bonuses in this context are out. If the leadership of these organizations are not happy with their pay and don't have faith that they can create long-term wealth with their position (future bonuses based upon performance), then they should find some other line of work. Bonus in this context: any pay beyond base. This means any kind of perk, including travel perks, housing -- anything beyond their documented pay.

3) We should have a direct, obvious window into where the money is going -- we, being the American citizens that have provided a safety blanket. This could be done by some kind of Internet-based reporting that would be transparent to everyone.

4) As long as the company (or bank) is receiving welfare like this, the board and the executive leadership of the company should be agreeable to scrutiny and governance. Pay levels should be set at some citizen-approved level. Excess of this level should not be allowed until the organization has gotten off Congressional welfare.

5) People that do not comply should expect jail-time. We jail people that sell drugs in this country -- these people are doing arguably similar damage. Why they should not expect jail time for obvious immorality is beyond me.

Please understand that I usually write my representatives only when I feel a matter is of utmost importance. If you wish to contact me via phone, I'm available to talk about this subject at any time. Mobile: [my mobile number] . Email: [my email address]

I'm not involved in Banking industry at this time (I've worked in IT for a bank a few years back), but these recent developments are troubling and at this moment in time I am happy to report that I'm in a different industry -- and I'm saddened to see our great country projecting the image of immoral behavior at this point in history.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
--Paul Ferris

Your letter should be to the point as much as possible and as professional as possible. Swearing is bad. Jargon is bad. Anything not diplomatic -- bad. You want to address issues objectively and express opinions where possible as such (in other words, you're free to put in an opinion -- just make it obvious).

It's fun, it's easy -- it's Democracy. Let's make it work!
-=FeriCyde=-

Art Imitates Life

2009-02-01T13:54:00.002-05:00

Scott Adams has probably captured the back-end conversation behind the Belkin Astroturfing Fiasco that I commented upon a few weeks ago. You should read it (and laugh) here. Scott's definitely got a way of exposing the ethical issues in a rather comical fashion -- the sad thing is that a lot of people view ethics in an optional (rather than mandatory) light.

Smart -- The New Cool?

2009-01-29T06:25:00.003-05:00

I woke up this morning and did something I usually don't do -- I turned on a TV set. This is unusual for a host of reasons; I don't watch TV as a rule, I was in a hotel room, and I had access to cable.

Bryant Gumbel was on talking sports and I stopped channel flipping for a second. He was talking a bit of hope on his program from the bully pulpit -- but it was interesting and it caught me a bit off guard. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I was captivated to hear some things about his view of hope from the perspective of someone viewing Barack Obama as a positive influence.

He was saying that a lot of today's athletes were identifying with Barack and that some of the influences he was hoping to see from our president were extremely positive from a role model perspective. He was talking about how Barak was a basketball player and the unspoken target was obviously the young African American male. Things like Barack's respect for his wife, his obvious morality were topics that he quickly touched on. His not speaking like a Gansta Rapper. His ability to articulate issues and engage in intelligent dialog.

Bryants' speech was well done from my point of view. It was extremely to the point and diplomatic -- the kind of stuff that might have an impact on someone. Hate speech doesn't work well when you're attempting to affect a target audience -- this is why the pundits gain a lot of my ire -- they're making the people that have already made up their minds happy and at the same time, intentionally or otherwise creating a rift in our country over important issues.

I liked what Bryant had to say but I caught myself wishing he'd have selected a broader audience. My own son could benefit from his words and he's not African American. The general young male population, speaking from my own observations, could benefit. We've had a couple of decades of culture focused upon young males and extreme ignorance as cool. Beavis and Butthead, Dumb and Dumber, Bill and Ted -- Hannity and Colmes. Rap music culture has components that are in part an obvious worship of the immoral but I'd argue that Jackass did similar damage.

Barack has obvious mental clout. Standing next to our prior president, he makes "W" look like a degenerate frat boy when he talks about anything. This isn't because George was a Republican -- it's because George thought ignorant speech was cool. I'm told that George W Bush wasn't a dumb guy behind the scenes -- that the talk was an act and the cowboy swagger part of what he thought was a cool image.

I hope Bryant Gumbel is right about this one, but I'd like to hope that the Barack effect here hits all American kids -- male and female. I hope that they learn to articulate problems and be a part of a general positive, intelligent discourse.

Yeah, I'm reaching for a lot -- I'm hoping for some rather impossible ideal conditions -- but we've had such a downturn in culture. Stupid used to be cool.

Maybe Barak's image will set a new trend. Maybe Smart will be the new Cool.
-=FeriCyde=-

It's Not That Simple

2009-01-25T07:04:00.005-05:00

It's easy to get press if you simplify a problem so that any idiot can join a side and cheer for his ideology. In the Wall Street Journal video piece here, author Steve Moore is inteviewed about a book, which I won't read, purposely, about Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. You can argue that this is ignorant of me but I have my reasons. I would push back that having actually read Atlas shrugged, having understood and liked portions of it myself kind of gives me some leeway.

I agree with Steve Moore on some rather key points -- I think the bailouts were wrong (I've said it here many times). I think big government is bad. But I feel compelled to point something out that is far more dire -- Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction. I don't need to read some authors lame posturing based upon a work of fiction to understand the problems we face today -- and I certainly don't need to read some book by someone who wants to superimpose a fantasy on top of our reality. Especially a fantasy written 50-some odd years ago.

Look, it's simple -- Ayn was trying to prevent the United States from turning into a socialist, communist or dictatorial state. The more government you get, the more dangerously close to this line we get. I'd argue that we're already partially there, what with buying into the banking and auto industries. We have a huge government, despite the professed belief in less government by the prior administration. We owe a huge debt to the Chinese, in part to help fund a war -- but also due to huge trade imbalances and a lack of manufacturing in the US.

Steve Moore, the author of the book, doesn't realize a major problem he's creating -- or possibly he does realize it and is part of some vast conspiracy of people that I would classify as ideological idiots. These are the people that, if the world ends sometime soon will be still doing the same thing. Picture them sitting among the ruin, shouting at shell-shocked passers-by saying "You liberals did this!". Just as stupid, sitting on top of some other pile of debris, will be some other idiot shouting something similar back about conservatives or big business.

And the truth will be far more painful to accept: if the world ends, it will be a mass of stupid human beings that allowed it to happen. Possibly part of the problem will be that they didn't figure out that problems are not liberal or conservative in nature -- the ability to classify things as someone else fault, instead of working through the issue as a cohesive society -- I believe that this is a big part of this problem. People want to adopt an ideology much like a brand. They want to believe in something. It's human nature.

For a great example of this, watch the video segment. Steve, in the interview over his book about a hypothetical book states clearly "Liberal's are going to say it was Free Markets that cause the collapse, and people like me and Ayn Rand would say 'No it's government programs' that created the crisis in the first place." During this time he's all smug and smiling -- he's reduced our current crisis to a "debate". I have a shocking concept for ya Steve: How about it was not quite that simple. Possibly the economic problems we're facing today can't be simplified into two sides of a debate that third-graders would have on a playground. Maybe it wasn't something quite so simple as the failure of "Free Markets" or "Government Programs" that got us here.

No, it's possible that what's caused the collapse of our present system is a multitude of variables. Rampant immorality by some corporate executives. Deregulated derivatives. Legislation that allowed sub-prime (and worse) mortgages. Banking executives that should have tempered their zest to make more money by not embracing things that they knew were high risk. People that wanted to own things that they could not afford. A contrived war in the Middle east that was funded by borrowing money from a Communist state. A lack of accountability by people in the executive wing -- of our country and businesses. People voting for politicians for the wrong reasons. People not caring about government. People not caring, period. Rampant lobbying. A lack of trust in government overall -- for really good reasons in some case.

In other words, I'm not objecting to Steve's embracing of the concepts in Atlas Shrugged -- I'm objecting to his desire to simplify the debate. To make a bold, callous, and stupid statement like the one above is counter-constructive. Has Steve missed the fact that all of the things I've mentioned here were spread across the at least the past 16 years of "Liberal and Conservative" leadership? No, I don't want to debate Steve on his view that all of the problem we're facing would go away if we could just get our government to not interfere. It's a nice fantasy, and it makes a good read. But it is, at the end of the day, a fantasy.

I have my own opinions: I think we need our government to interfere -- the right way. We need them to step in and tighten the rules for financial institutions, for example. We need to stimulate new ideas around reducing our energy dependence on foreign oil. We need to re-evaluate the wars we've taken on, how we're funding them, and our image on the global stage. We need some action, in other words, that's going to take unity of purpose and general cooperation. Do I think we need more people using the word liberal or conservative as hate speech? Get a clue here: No, I think I've seen enough idiotic ideology to last me a few decades, if not a lifetime.

None of the above items are liberal or conservative agenda items. All of them are pressing problems. To make some sort of lame debate around them at this hour might feel good, but haven't we had enough of this kind of stupidity? Atlas Shrugged is a wonderful read -- I loved the book, for what it's worth. It's view of the world and the weights that government add to productive business paint a terrific canvas for Ayn's philosophy.

Coming from Russia, Ayn obvious was obviously motivated to write something that would warn people away from totalitarian communistic society, and I can't blame her at all.

It isn't going to be a liberal or conservative point of view or stupid one-sided debate that gets us out of our present jam. It is going to be some smart politicians working together on solutions. Note the shift in my language here -- a point of view is an observers stance. A one-sided debate is something that Bill and Rush do for (sad) entertainment. Solutions are things that solve problems -- dialog is something you do to hold a constructive conversation. You can post comments to my blog and I will respond to them. That's dialog. You want to simplify reality and back it with a fantasy and say "You disagree with me because you're on one or the other side of a contrived debate" -- I'm not going to be involved.

Here's a thought -- maybe I disagree with simplification of extremely complex problems. Possibly I view this kind of simplification itself is a worse problem than the oil crisis. It's worse, in my opinion, than the economic crisis. It's worse than a lot of the things we face right now. Oversimplification is worse because it keeps people from working together on solving the obviously hard problems of the day.

Steve Moore feels good reading Ayn's book. Good for him! Give the man a lime sucker and have him join the 3rd-grade debate team that's probably already forming on the playground. I'd like to say this to Steve: It's fiction, man -- get over it. We're living in a real world with lots of complex problems. We don't need you to simplify these problems -- we need you to work with the rest of us who are trying to solve them. It's time for you to stop feeling smug about your fictionalized view of the world. Let's try something new -- let's try looking at problems as they exist in our complex society, free of the prism of liberalism or conservatism. Possibly then, after dropping this filter, people can truly understand what things like our government are for at the end of the day.

We don't need liberals and conservatives heaving rocks at each other over stupid ideology. I am not going to be blowing my time in stupid debates (cast from fictional work no less) -- look where it's taken our country these days. I sincerely believe that rabid, rampant partisanship has taken us here. I worry that more of the same is going to be what brings about the end of the world as we know it. I also sincerely believe that its going to be unity that gets us out of the mud at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Bad Belkin Bayard Business ...

2009-01-19T23:20:00.004-05:00

Seems a Belkin employee was caught red-handed looking for people to write positive reviews of one of their products.

Speaking as a person who's seen his fair share of AstroTurf (In this context -- AstroTurf refers to the practice of generating "phony grass roots"), I can only say I'm not surprised. It points to one of the darker sides of social media -- the ability for a corporation to quietly influence the blog-o-sphere or other social media with misleading content.

And the sad thing is, there really isn't much we can do about it. Social media wouldn't work very well if there were "social media police" that checked each and every blog or facebook post for authenticity or even more difficult, intent. There is the occasional story posted like this one that serves to highlight the problem.

Is this a new phenomena? Not really. For years companies have paid writers to create authentic-looking story content for magazines, for example. It's just something that's likely to increase as social media's incredible power manifests in the digital ecosystem that is the new generation of marketing.

I should take a second to mention that I work for an interactive marketing firm and that my job is IT-related -- I'm more of a user than a mover and shaker. This post is more about my experienced observations in the space, being involved as the editor for a rather popular news site in the late 1990's that featured a lot of user-contributed feedback to news stories. Issues arose that made these ethical issues apparent and caused me to reflect upon them early in the game.

Marketing campaigns are interwoven into youtube "viral marketing" videos. These videos are more than tolerated by the users for one obvious reason; they're blatant advertisements. People know, after the smoke clears, that they've been watching something created to drive traffic toward a vendor. I've enjoyed almost all of these kinds of intrusions -- they're viral for a reason -- they market and entertain at the same time.

Things go bad, however, when a company exhibits this kind of behavior posting to technical message boards or worse, staging phony letters to the legislative bodies of our government (both real-world examples from the same company -- and not one I would ever be associated with). Things like this have a way of dampening community enthusiasm, to say the least. They make people wonder what kind of noise is being generated at the community level. The long term effects of sowing this kind of distrust in the potential customer base of a product can only be bad.

All of this is part of a general break-down of our society. Ethical matters matter. Societies have to have ethical foundations or they will ultimately crumble. Treating the social ecosystem as something that can be AstroTurfed will ultimately ruin the value. Transactions are ultimately more than financial events, after all -- they are fulfilled value propositions. Taint the perceived value and you're likely, as a vendor, not to win the business.

Pushing against this obvious motivation to build marketplace trust is the lure of the quick win in the marketplace. What did Bayard expect out of this? Maybe he was surprised when this news story broke, but it's hard to imagine that he didn't know somewhere in the back of his mind that he wouldn't get caught. Possibly he was focused on the short-term gain of shoring up an inferior product. If so, it was a rather dubious gamble -- one that cost not just the trust of Belkin, but potentially the social media marketplace as a whole.

In this particular example, we can only be thankful that Bayard was so blatant about what he was trying to accomplish. Possibly he didn't see anything wrong with it at all. Belkin's management has since apologized for the misstep and although a positive sign, they're going to have a hard time gaining the respect of their market.

Is stuff like this illegal? No -- but it's far more damaging than something that's illegal. You can serve your time for something illegal. You can be fined or correct the problem and your market will probably forget about it or not notice at all.

But trust -- trust can't be bought, and as this example illustrates, it can very easily be lost.
-=FeriCyde=-

GM and Brand Name Deletion

2009-01-14T21:10:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have never had the privilege of working behind the walls of something as massive as General Motors have no idea what kind of politics are present. All of this blog focuses upon my perception of GM from my (somewhat limited, but probably correct -- from the mid eighties) view of their internal politics, and how they apply to their present (somewhat dubious) plans to delete brands like Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer.

My view: GMs politics were similar to the ones in our government -- only with several political parties instead of just 2 major ones.

From reading the news, GM will likely sell Saab and Hummer (though that's also speculation) and simply blow away Saturn and Pontiac like they did the Oldsmobile brand.

A disclaimer here: GM -- I'm not a fan. I don't purchase your products. Although my father was a big fan of your Buick products, I didn't find the excitement there at all. But I feel compelled to weigh in (albeit, briefly here, given my time constraints) on the obvious coming shortage of GM brands.

Likely, there's some huge internal power struggle going on inside of GM, with VPs and other executive types acting upon the current crisis with all of the surgical precision of say, cluster bombing.

I can almost read the politics from remote: "My division is more profitable -- yours is not." and so on. Somethings gotta give -- why not a bunch of brands? Isn't this required to show that GM wants to pare down to some kind of lean, mean fightin' machine?

Well, in my not so humble opinion -- tactically, maybe, but strategically, no.

Brands can't easily be created (look at all the work that went into the creation of Saturn, for example). Brands have an emotional impact upon buyers. People are very brand-centric when it comes to a purchase. Getting people to switch to another GM brand if they're a loyal Saturn buyer -- and its gone, for example, isn't exactly a sure thing.

If GM wants to get serious, they should seriously rethink this thing from the perspective of the customer, in other words. Here's what comes to mind, when I quickly think of GM brands that exist today:

Cadillac: Sport Luxury.
Saturn: Import fighter.
Pontiac: Sporty. Younger crowd.
Chevy: Mom and Pops reliable shop.
GMC: Rebranded products from the other lines. Redundant.
Buick: Family cars for Sophisticated people that .. no.. crap. I hate the whole idea of this car segment -- ask someone else.
Hummer: SUVs for people that want to pretend they're fighting some kind of war -- or for people that want people to see them in a Hummer... I have a queue of Hummer jokes here that I'm omitting.

This is a lame assessment of their brand status-quo from my perspective. It's probably about 80% accurate though. GM needs to do this kind of assessment with some teeth, and then re-cast the vehicles they produce to match the brands. They need to merge all of the control of the brands and engineering into one spot and keep the names and the products. They need to consolidate the management of the stuff in other words -- but don't blow away the brands.

Want to piss off your buyer base GM? Try being a Pontiac-lover and finding out that your favorite vehicle is no longer available. Maybe you (the customer, in this context), will just have to find a new favorite -- say over there at Toyota. Toyota: remember those guys? They went out of their way a few years back to create a whole new brand. Probably took them some time... Creating the Pontiac brand over again after pissing off a huge group of people isn't a snap. Moving buyers isn't going to be easy, and maybe they'll try some other game if this one has been canceled due to rain (or tactical stupidity).

Consolidate the management, and clearly do some surgery on the brands that exist today. Does Cadillac need a corvette? Does Cadillac or Buick need an SUV? These kinds of things, floating around your brand-space, tend to be somewhat confusing in my humble opinion. Do you need to make stuff exclusive? Can you sell the missing components from all the brands from all of the dealers, in other words? For example, you're at Pontiac -- they don't have a Corvette equivalent -- can't GM relax the rules a bit so that the dealer is allowed in this context to sell a Chevy Corvette?

All of these items probably seem crazy, so I'll shut up now. I just feel compelled to point out that the deletion of Oldsmobile was extremely short-sighted. It was short-term thinking to address a short-term problem of profitability. Rather than do the easy brand-delete, GM should have taken stock of what they were doing wrong to chase off potential customers to that brand.

My guess is that all of this deletion contemplation is a way for some executives with power to out people they don't want to work with at the end of the day. Rather than do the hard thing -- re-organize into a single power structure that makes sense, they're probably killing off brands (and all of the redundant people that manage them).

All speculation, on my part, I know.

Regardless -- making brands make sense is still the hard task at the end of the day. Blowing away time-honored brands (and loyal customers), is the easy part.

GM, think strategy here. Think about your customers. Think about a lean GM with all of the brand names of today. I know it can be done.
-=FeriCyde=-

Stewart Nails The Issue to the Wall

2009-01-14T05:19:00.004-05:00

Jon Stewart's recent piece on "Pundits" has pretty much nailed the issue right on the head.

The issue is the confusing practice of news organizations that mix "news" with "commentary". The general population wants commentary but needs, at the end of the day, the news. People like Bill O'Reily, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage all have similar attack profiles -- they call people names, attack people from their bully pulpits, scream over dialog and are overly emotionally angry while not really making a whole lot of sense.

Or rather, they make sense by appealing to people's emotions while not addressing the world from an objective point of view. This is where it gets hairy. I've got some good friends that seem to otherwise function well (they have logic circuits, in other words), but cannot get "un-fixated" by people in the aforementioned list.

They somehow have missed the fact that regardless of the opinions these people are expressing -- for one, they're not telling the news (but are parading around as journalists) and for two -- they're doing it in a way that doesn't help build consensus. Sure, they maintain consensus among their target demographic (conservatives in the cases mentioned here -- but I could have just as easily mentioned Keith Oberman), but they don't convey new information to people that don't understand the issues from their (albeit obviously) slanted point of view.

Our country is not united right now. It has a big rift in it between "left and right". Pundits mentioned here, in my not-so-humble (pundit-like) opinion, are doing serious damage by preaching loudly and emotionally to the choir. For sure there are times to rally the troops against issues that need support. The people that take this role should make it clear that they're not being journalists. The people that do this kind of rallying should be attacking problems -- not spreading descent. The deficit is a problem. Terrorism is a problem. The financial crisis is a problem.

Liberals or Conservatives: These are points of view. They are not "problems". Pick up (and then put down, quickly) the kind of tripe Ann Coulter prints in her books (or Savage -- similar work) -- you will see that you can barely find a page where she doesn't schpew liberal hate-speech like a Nazi at a war rally.

You read a lot of print about the recent loss by the RNC. To me it's obvious. They lost their centrist (read: non-polarizing) base when they embraced people like Rush and Ann. By accepting this kind of crap as OK "dialog", they lost a lot of people. When you listen to Colin Powell's breakdown of what drove him to endorse Barak Obama, he mentions listening to Sarah Palin talk about "Small Town Values". He then, not so casually, mentions that he didn't grow up in that kind of a neighborhood.

I know a lot of people probably think that Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter are not related entities. I urge you to imagine a universe where the kind of hate speech that Ann, O'Reily and Savage talk is not toleraged by the RNC. With that missing in the backdrop, possibly Colin Powell would have felt just a bit more comfortable in his own party.

This is an obvious simplification, but overall I think Fox has unwittingly helped the Democrats by polarizing the right so clearly with "Pundits" that shout ideas rather than hold clear dialog. This in turn scared people into action. It caused a clear break for some and earned the disgust and disrespect of the intellectual base in our country. The shouting down of ideas and opinions, in my opinion, bled over into the McCain/Palin campaign.

Near the end of the McCain campaign I think he got the message. There was an obvious attempt to stop the anti-Obama train and go for the pro-McCain message of conservative change. Unfortunately for the RNC, this came way too late in the game to make a difference. People are tired of negative shouting -- they want positive dialog. In the long run, any constructive aspect of their party will demand constructive dialog as a base.

Look the popularity of Mike Huckabee in this context. This isn't an accident -- Mike, love him or hate him, actually listens to people and does this thing called "dialog" that is sadly missing in the Pundit space these days. It's a sad commentary on the Republican party that he didn't fare well in the race for the Presidential nominee. It's a sadder commentary that he has better interviewing skills than any of the Pundits listed in this article so far.

You have to give Jon Stewart credit -- the Pundit problem is clarified by the piece (linked above). As a clear "non-journalist" too, he does a remarkable job of illustrating the facts. Another piece of irony in this context. Gotta love it.

When the RNC finally picks up on this they will finally be able to rebuild the backbone of their base and we will possibly see the balance of power restored in America.
-=FeriCyde=-

America: The Land of The Lost

2009-01-06T05:32:00.004-05:00

Sacrilege Warning

Warning dear readers, I'm about to piss all over something you may hold dear -- especially if you were raised around the time I was, a time when watching schlock Saturday Morning TV was the only thing to do. For the younger FeriCyde chat readers: there was a time when you couldn't use a game system or surf the web to shed some spare time as a wasted youth. Oh, and the "wasted" here isn't referring to any drugs, it's more a concept of wasting time.

The hallowed ground I'm about to piss upon is the old Saturday morning TV show, The Land of the Lost. Like disco (sorry, there's another demographic that's probably going to be sore), some things about the 70's were really, really bad, but for whatever reason, a whole generation embraced them and they became embedded as memes in our subconscious. Like bad subroutines in the collective minds of the mainframe that runs the zeitgeist, every once and a while you stumble upon a whole batch of things that don't add up -- or rather shouldn't, but there they are.

Hollywood, in its infinite lack of creativity, has decided that it's time, in 2009 to do a remake of the "Land of the Lost" as a full-length feature film. You read a lot of fan complaints from people that are upset with Hollywood for making a favorite book into a film, or for pissing on hallowed ground doing a remake and getting some obscure fact wrong, or for in some cases, driving all over the plot of the original material so badly that no one can even recognize the connection (see the latest remake, God forbid, of the Planet of the Apes, for example -- if you can sit through it, that is).

This isn't one of those posts -- this is pretty much the opposite.

I'm sitting here thinking "Some things were meant to die." Land of the Lost was a seriously bad piece of television. It was so bad that my brothers and I would watch it only if all other vectors for entertainment were lost. Like we had checked all other channels -- the count is 2 other channels on TV in mid-Missouri, by the way -- and say, pro wrestling was on one (don't think today's Pro Wrestling -- think something much more local and much more pathetic), and say, a farm report was on the other.

But I digress: Land of the Lost was horrid. The acting was bad, the props were bad, the writing was bad, heck, even the opening sequence effects looked like they were shot by a 3rd grader in his garage. Remaking this is on the order of, say, a remake of Starksy and Hutch (crap, there goes another demographic). Yeah, I know, they remade that too. Complicating this badness, and gut-reflex, "remake" mentality, they "updated" the series in all of it's sad, pathetic glory -- and made new episodes. Now my own son has bad memories of the show in his subconscious, to match the ones in mine.

That's my point: Hollywood can't seem to embrace any kind of creative new idea. They have to revisit crappy old ones for a few reasons. For one, there's a certain amount of nostalgia that will drive people into a theater to say, waste 10 good dollars and 2 hours of their time to be mind-numbingly insulted at an intellectual level. For another, it's such a safe bet to do this that the cash for the venture is easier to raise than say for some new film idea or plot that no one else has ever tried.

Which brings me to part of our present situation -- you knew I was going somewhere with all of this toward the automotive industry and our government, didn't you? You didn't? Sorry.

The Land of the Lost is fractal image of what's wrong with our culture as a whole. We have become more enamored with backing schlock things that have a marginal success ratio than to try new things that haven't been tried, have much higher payout if they succeed, but are somewhat risky as a venture.

Let's revisit the recent "bail-out" request to congress. Here you have the big three, appearing in front of congress, hands outstretched, saying "Help! A bunch of jobs are going to be lost if we go down!" What's wrong with this picture? How about the fact that GM ispaying their CEO in excess of 14 million dollars. Even assuming worse than reported conditions -- say an average line worker taking home 140k a year, the guy is in front of congress, asking for an allowance, all the while making 100 times (possibly more like 150 times) what his line workers make.

Yeah, lots of things are wrong with this picture. For one -- GM is a manufacturing company -- 100 to 150 line workers in this day and age with some decent automation can likely produce quite a lot of product. Oh, and where were you guys for the past 20 years, worried about jobs and local economies all the while shipping local jobs to other countries and giving yourselves bonus for the transaction?

I'm not going to say they were doing anything illegal. Heck, our government has even gone as far as to make the climate balmy for such things and encourage people to move their stuff out of this country. No, I'm going to say it was, however, immoral. The people that built GM were more than the executives -- the workers, at the end of the day, good or bad, working on good or bad cars -- those people are (or were) owed something when it comes to the success of the company.

By the way, in case you think I'm a one-sided person here -- I'm not a big fan of what the Unions were doing in this transaction either. I do think, however, that if a company is successful the workers should share in that success. They shouldn't find their jobs gone one day to another country where the pollution controls, compensation and treatment of people don't align with what counts as acceptable here. The workers that helped GM be a success should share in that success. Similarly, in bad times, they should willing take a pay cut -- all the way up to the CEO, who should recognize that he's not worth 100 to 150 line workers. Can he get paid this amount? Sure! Is it legal? Sure.

Is it ethical? No, it's obviously not.

I'd love to say that the answer is regulation, but in this case I'm not sure what to do about it. Like the way our news system is fundamentally broken, the auto industry is facing a multitude of crisis. In this dimension, the guys at the top (all ready to work for just one buck now that they've been caught with their pants down), obviously aren't all that accountable for their failures. Some people want to compare the automotive bailout to the banking bailout as a justification -- two wrongs in this case, definitely don't make a right.

Speaking of accountability, we need to revisit the SEC. These people were supposed to be watching out for things like Ponzi schemes, and have supposedly audited Madoff's company 8 times in the past 16 years. It's time for some people to go to jail. Time for Congress to recognize this for what it is -- it's a moral crisis of Biblical proportion. These people (the SEC) were obviously not doing their job.

Bail-outs? Some victims of this thing want the government to bail them out. Banks are going down, charities are going down -- all kinds of things are going down in the face of the Madoff scandal -- but let's not have our government go down with it. The more I see of bailouts, the less I see value. In these trying times we shouldn't be bailing out banks or auto companies. The mentality seems to be along similar lines to breathing life into things that are dying. I think this is flawed thinking and corporate welfare -- worse, they're taking money from the taxpayers at the bottom to fund the bad ideas in a big, bad way. Like a remake of the Land of the Lost, it's cash being spent on a bad idea.

Maybe, like all bad ideas, some things were meant to die. Let's not remake America as the Land of the Lost. If we're gonna put some investment into something, we need to take some risks on some creative new ideas.
-=FeriCyde=-

Toxic Social Media

2009-01-01T13:02:00.005-05:00

You'd hardly think that spam would be the first input toward popularity, but here it is. Recently, I made what I thought was more of a whining complaint about reunion.com (and classmates.com), thinking that if I just got the thought out of my head about how annoying these two sites are (mainly reunion.com, though), that it would settle my mind a bit and I could go back to my usual facebook perusal and joy. My reunion.com profile had been viewed exactly two times in history -- and I'm honestly proud of this fact -- or I was. Now my profile on reunion.com is extremely popular. Why? Because I used their lame blogging feature (lemme tell ya, it's really lame) to post the complaint. Knowing what I know about shiftless ethics and sites that edit your postings to remove "offensive" URLs, I posted the "real" blog entry here. Oh, and reunion.com's auto-editor chopped all references to facebook and classmates out horribly -- it left my article reading like a picket fence.

So far it's stayed. I have no idea why it's popular, because finding my own damn blog posting on their site is tricky -- how other reunion.com people found it is honestly beyond me. There is one clue, however -- the people that found it and commented upon it have all signed up for their service. Actually, I'm very hesitant to call what they're offering "service" in this context.

Let's look at some of the responses, so far:

Very well said.
I too am one of the lonely saps who got suckered in... I'm in a wheelchair now, not able to get out much. The net is the link to the outside world for folks like me. .Going to Facebook. The only way these predatory sites can be stopped, (or at least thinned out) is to boycott.

That's one example. Google a bit on reunion.com and boycott and some really disturbing things come up. Recent complaints come up:

There are many rip off companies like this on the web. I was also led to believe my card would be charged $3 a month instead of the full $120. The "agreement" that says the fee is non-refundable has a window field of 3-4 lines and fails the legal contract prerequisites.

This is something lending me to believe that the problem is far worse than I had imagined. I, luckily, did not sign up for their "service". I find stuff like this, and I can only imagine how pissed off I'd be if I had been tempted to do so.

Reunion.com is example of Toxic Social Media -- media that isn't leveraging social connections to enhance the social experience one might have in real life. Instead, it's using aspects of human nature to trick end-users into choices that turn out to be more or less a dead-end street.

Here's another post on my blog entry:

wow couldnt have said it better myself paul.
i agree 100 percent,well lessoned learned for me,i just payed yesterday and i am counciling any future payments taken out of my account,amanda in louisiana!

And another one:

I totally agree, unfortunately I am one of the poor saps that got robbed for $60.00 (their premium feature). This site is preying upon people searching for family members and it does not live up to what it blatantly advertises. If you enter a name and see there is a possible match-they want "MORE" money to get that information. I can see now why they say their service is non refundable, it stinks.....spread the word........

Well, that's as good a set of marching orders as I can imagine. I think I will be glad to do just that.
-=FeriCyde=-

Reunion.com and Classmates.com

2008-12-29T06:45:00.002-05:00

Reunion.com and classmates.com are both examples of social networking gone horribly wrong. Here's a Tip for future business -- stop asking for free things and giving nothing in return. Worse, stop doing that and then expecting to charge people on top of it all.

The general reason social networking sites exist in my humble opinion is to connect people and be as un-intrusive into that connection as possible. The Reunion.com site spams my email in-box every so many days trying to make me believe that someone is searching for me, or viewing my profile -- only two people have ever viewed my profile, yet I've gotten countless messages letting me know this fact as if it's news -- it's not every time -- the count is two and will likely remain two for quite some time.

I suppose lonely people wanting to believe that there are people out there looking for them fall for this feature. It's possible it gets them revenue at these moments of weakness. So far, however, it's had an effect quite the opposite from me. It's clogged my in-box with garbage and I see hardly anyone on there that I know. I don't see the site taking off anytime soon.

Why is this? Why isn't reunion.com taking off?

Because they want to charge for me to use the site while I build my network. It's that simple. To get the most basic functionality out of the site I've got to pay -- to view people's profile, I have to pay. To "find out who" has been searching or viewing I have to pay.

Another obvious complaint about this site is the amount of personal data they're collecting along the way -- If I search for someone in a prior search the site then tries to notify me that this person has shown up in searches ... later.

All I can say is creepy.

I don't want people knowing that I'm looking for them. I may just be testing the search engine waters (it's partly how I determined that the site is under-populated) -- and honestly if I have to pay to look at their profile I could give a rat's butt at the end of the day.

All of my personal information they want for free -- they don't want to reciprocate in the social transaction by giving me anything in return.

I can only imagine what a premium service from this site is like.

All of this is moot, however, as there's something that's going to take the place of both classmates and reunion.com at the end of the day -- it's called 'facebook.com' and it's already won. All of the features in comparison are better, you don't have to pay a dime and they have a classmate finder at faceebook.com that's extremely easy to use. I'm writing all of the classmates that I've located on classmates.com and reunion.com and telling them to join me on facebook. There they will be able to view my profile, look at my photo albums and find out, truly, what I'm up to from a social perspective. Oh, and they won't blow away posts with external links - like say, classmates.com -- nice feature guys! It took about 30 minutes for me to help my wife connect her on-line photo album with a reunion event.

At the end of the day, using facebook, we'll all be able to connect to and view the profiles, pictures and posts of people that we care about -- all in exchange for providing our personal information. Sound like a deal?

My strategy for reunion.com? For incoming reunion.com email I'm hitting the spam button from here on out.

Enjoy, guys.

-=FeriCyde=-

The Coming Gasoline Crisis Isn't Liberal or Conservative

2008-12-10T13:44:00.005-05:00

I recently joined the Facebook group: 1 Million Americans for a $1/1 Gallon Gas Tax ... Save The World, NOW!

And immediately earned the scorn of a couple of friends.

This blog posting is about two problems:

1.: We're hooked on fossil fuel.
2.: Americans are hung-up with partisan idiocy, so much so that simple, good ideas get a bad rap.

Where we are: Americans as a nation are addicted to fossil fuels. Disclaimer: I'm addicted just as badly as everyone else (Man I love horsepower!)

But I'd have to be an idiot not to see that whomever controls the oil-supply has this nation by the balls.

So I did what I thought was a good thing -- I joined a group on Facebook that deals directly with the issue in a good way -- add a dollar tax to gas that will be used to stimulate the business of alternative fuel. Why would I, a rabid capitalist, do something like this?

Because I think this is exactly the kind of function that I think a government should be executing. They shouldn't be running around bailing out auto makers and bankers, essentially socializing our country and rewarding bad behavior -- they should be working on matters of national security in the best way possible. When it comes to fossil fuel, it's come down to an obvious matter of national security. Adding a buck to the cost of a gallon of gas in this context is the opposite of a bail-out -- it's about penalizing energy consumption of fossil fuels to make way for something safer, and in our national interest. What remains to be discussed (other than the idea of the input of the funds) is how long this tax should be in place, and who would get the cash. More on that later.

I've been for this idea for years -- I've said it many times. It's not a popular idea -- no one wants to pay more for gas -- it's going to be somewhat painful. But if you think about it, the alternative to the situation is one where someday down the road we have our productivity grind to a halt because lots of people want cheap gas in the short term.

Do I have any partisan motivations for this behavior? Let's make this official: I'm not a democrat or a republican. I find partisan politics where two sides line up and yell at each other like they're right and everyone else is wrong, stupid and distasteful. I think it's exactly this kind of stupidity that has brought our nation to the brink of disaster over the past few years. It has kept us focused upon fighting two sides of a losing struggle when we, as a collective unit, could have been solving some real problems.

I urge people that think of things like gasoline running out as a liberal or conservative issue to step away from the partisan bong for a couple of minutes, let the smoke clear, and think about what kind of situation their son or daughter is going to be in come the near future. In this near future they're very likely going to be attempting to find gas for their car to get to work -- and it will simply be gone or so ridiculously expensive that they cannot afford it.

Now, some people might want to say "Market Correction" here, and just expect things to work themselves out -- new fuels will emerge at that time, in other words, or possibly there will be an abundance of cheap electric vehicles or hydrogen available. But far more likely, if we don't do some preventative and strategic work to get in the right place, energy-consumption-wise, there will be a huge problem where lots of people are stranded, can't get to work and the economy (worse than now) will land further in the crapper than anyone can imagine.

That's not a fear -- it's a reality with a very highly potential. It's not too late right now to do something smart -- something like raise the tax on gas and stimulate alternative forms of energy distribution as it pertains to automotive transportation.

So, back to the situation where you or your kids can't get to work -- the present excuse "Hey, it was a lot of fun yelling "Liberal", "Tree-Hugger", "Stop helping Big Corporations" and "Redistribute the Wealth" back then -- that excuse isn't likely going to mean a lot to your wife or your kids at the future date and time.

Is the excuse of today going to work, 5, 10, 20 years from now, in other words -- the excuse: "Hey, don't worry about your life coming essentially to a grinding halt -- I did it for the fun of yelling the party line!".

They're going to look at you like an idiot -- because you were listening to people like Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken and Anne Coulter, rather than using your brain to solve problems -- like how the heck are we going to get 'un-addicted' to fossil fuel?

I've had the idea long before this stupid Facebook group (which is worth joining in my not so humble opinion) that we should raise the tax on gas and get with the alternative energy program. Hydrogen, electric cars, solar cars, bio-diesel -- all of these things are potential realities. None of them are going to be cheap when it comes to switching over.

It'd be nice to imagine that these alternative business models are simply going to get traction and come into existence due to the usual market forces. The fact is that in a solution-centric way, oil has a virtual monopoly. It makes it too hard for something competitive to emerge to replace it, in other words. Sure, you are free to chose -- you can always chose not to use gas -- if you rule out the fact that you already own a gasoline consuming car, that most of the fueling stations sell gas, that most of the mechanics know how to work on gasoline-powered vehicles and so on.

I'm simply skeptical given the scale of say, adding a few hundred thousand fueling stations, for starters, that the usual speed of market response will be there when we need it.

Is taxing gas and creating new potentials such as this "re-distributing the wealth" as one person suggests? Not in my opinion -- the item being used, gasoline, is part of the scale of the problem. If we tax the rich people that made huge bucks on the last oil speculation run, and then in turn created these new alternative fuel interests (effectively giving that money to someone else) -- then, yes, I'd agree with the "re-distribution" description of the situation.

But even more to the point -- "Joe the Plumber" is more of a fictional idea around something stupid people want to believe in, than he is real. I know he's a real person -- but the fact is that all of the yelling about what Joe believes is pointless if we run out of oil. The oil isn't going to be on the side of the democrats or republicans -- it's simply a complex chain of polymers, after all, and will have no partisan feelings about being or not being in the conversation.

This is the bottom line -- Being energy secure as a nation is a good idea.

The money for making new business of this magnitude is hard to find -- but we have just been through a huge run-up where people were paying 4 bucks a gallon for fuel. Now it's dropping toward a dollar a gallon and I hear SUV sales are on the rise. Great -- just what the doctor ordered -- more people thinking about the next 10 minutes of joy ride instead of the next 20 years of potential insecurity.

This, in my humble opinion, is exactly why things like government exist -- it's what I'd expect them to do in our national security interest -- find some way to make a dis-incentive for the masses to make the place just a little less dependent (that's sarcasm) on the whims of the folks that control the oil supply (that's mostly people outside of our country these days, in case you've been in a coma for the past 10 or so years).

I urge people to stop looking at everything with stupid, partisan glasses. Resist the urge to say "no way!" because it's a tax, for example. I'm not for a permanent tax here, by the way -- just until a certain level of security is reached. Also, the cash should be carefully controlled by non-partisan interests (read: some kind of democratic, scientific and objective controls for passing out the cash -- not some pork-barrel reward or dole). So, how to determine this threshold? Say when we're 80% dependent upon energy generated inside of the borders of this country. At that point the tax would be repealed.

Back to the partisan end of things -- for example, this idea would potentially create new industry and that's also good for our present situation -- as a rabid capitalist, I think this is a great idea -- more competition in the energy market. That slant on this issue, by me, however, could be cast in a partisan light -- so you don't hear me focus upon it as a reason. Rather, the dire needs of our present energy situation put this in an entirely different light -- one that has to do with our security over the long haul.
-=FeriCyde=-

Elliot Spitzer Gets A Column on Slate

2008-12-05T08:22:00.003-05:00

See: Too Big Not To Fail. Forget any scandal about the man, please -- his opinion, in my opinion, is dead-on. I remember Elliot's work in shutting down organized crime (otherwise known as monopolies) among other shining moments.

His comments about the banking industry bailout is work worth reading.
-=FeriCyde=-

Death, The Universe, and ... Nothing.

2008-12-03T09:12:00.004-05:00

A few years back, right after my grandfather died after a months-long struggle in the hospital, I was sitting at a family reunion in attendance of two of my aunts as they spoke about death. They were talking about how they wanted to go, very much in the same manner as someone picking out the kind of car they would like to own.

One Aunt was talking about how she'd like to have a quick heart attack and get it over with. The other one said she'd rather pass in the night in her sleep.

The conversation was going back and forth as I remember it for about 10 minutes as I sat mortified that they would talk about death so casually. I finally said "I want to be dropped from a plane."

That pretty much ended the conversation.

As funny as this sounds, I'm realizing that I missed an opportunity to have a good solid discussion about the subject with two people that cared. Death, it seems, makes us all uncomfortable. Often bandied about by political parties as agenda items, death is not an easy subject, even today, to converse about. I'm a good 10 years older now, and after witnessing two more deaths in the family (my Mother in-law and my Father in-law) I realize that the people with the most experience with it are closer to it. As children we're not typically roped into any real discussions on the subject both out of respect and fear -- no one wants their kids to be mortified and it's understandable.

You would think that adults would be more prepared for it than they are. As usual, the people with the most valuable input now for me and the recent experiences I've had are the ones in retirement. They've seen the most death, they're closer to it and they've obviously given it more thought.

All of this is clear in my mind as my wife's mom passed yesterday at noon. It was a long struggle -- she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure last year in the spring and they gave her (at that time) no more than a month or so. Hospice came, made her comfortable and we all said our long goodbyes. Months passed. The hospice people aren't really setup for engagements that last for that length of time -- so they eventually had to pack up and go.

Speaking of hospice: I honestly can't imagine going through death without these people. The hospice in our case was Hospice of the Valley in Youngstown -- and they're angels in my humble opinion. The nurse on point for both deaths is an amazing person who was there for both deaths -- a caring soul who has a heart of gold. People can have an impact on your life that words cannot describe.

Back to this last situation -- as my wife's Mom came near to death the hospice people were called back. They arrived, did what they could to make her comfortable, and finally, yesterday, she passed on. Death was a release and I honestly cannot imagine how painful it would have been without the aid and comfort brought by hospice.

We spend a lot of time thinking about Life -- we spend very little time as a society thinking about or preparing for Death. It's a difficult subject and it's made complicated by right-to-life agenda, the medical and legal establishments. I understand more now why Kevorkian is so passionate about this subject. Face it: Quality of Life (er, Quality of death? -- not in our vocabulary.) doesn't quite have the ease of conversational value (in the context of our media) that it should. Things like Britney Spears underwear, for example, get a lot more attention.

Don't believe me? Google search on the word "Kevorkian", and you get about 890 thousand hits. Google search "Britney Spears Underwear" and you're at about 3.5 million hits.

Don't get me wrong: I understand the aversion to death and all things death related. I'm merely pointing out human nature. A lot of people are probably saying "Thank you Captain Obvious", in other words, to this observation.

Back to the recent situation and why I'm writing this entry. The person in question had multiple (about 3) opportunities to die. At each of these moments, there was too much ambiguity and not enough preparation. This isn't a criticism of the people on point (my wife and related family) -- it's an observation of the circumstance. It's hard to have a conversation with someone near death about what to do when they're close to dying and unconscious.

I know what some people are thinking: "Living Will" -- and my wife's Mom has a living will that clearly says not to resuscitate. No, it's a bit more complicated than that due to the situation. If, for example, she was having a heart attack, it was next to impossible to sit down and say "We're just going to sit by and watch you die". Possibly if they (the family) could have had a conversation about what to do in that circumstance, things might have been different, in other words. The situation is complicated by an obvious problem: Someone wishing to be left to die of a heart attack, comfortably, can't really get a hospice-like service engaged that quickly. So, when that occurred, the ambulance was called, she was rushed to the hospital and of course, the doctors in those situations will do what they're trained to do -- keep people alive.

All of this is hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's hard to watch a slow painful death when it takes hours -- it's even harder to watch when it takes years. I don't see an easy fix for this. Death is heard to gauge, hard to talk about and even harder to legislate. You're out of control of the situation and normal problem-solving skills, while handy for dealing with the side-effects, don't help much in this context as we're geared (wired, so it seems) to keep people alive by default.

The living will is a good device to make sure people don't keep bringing you back into a bad situation -- it's unfortunately, in my humble opinion, not enough to ensure comfort and quality of life. Complicating matters is the simple fact that no one wants to converse about death. Worse, the conversation, if possible, would need to be documented and take place while you're able to think clearly. Finally, even if there were controls that could document your full wishes when you're near death, our society isn't geared to help people die quickly if they want that as an option.

All of these points trouble me. I return to the punch line from the beginning of this post -- the more I think about it, the more it sounds like the best option for me. Quick and full of acceleration -- not a bad way to go, actually.
-=FeriCyde=-

Fun with TypeAnalyzer

2008-11-30T13:06:00.003-05:00

Ok, two references to something really cool has piqued my interest. Essentially, there's a web service in beta called "TypeAnalyzer", which aims to analyze your personality based upon the text from the URL you pass into it.

Using my blog as input produced the following synopsis as to who I am:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

I have to comment here -- "Yep, that's me ;)"

It's interesting to me that I've gravitated to Rosetta (Formerly Brulant). Rosetta has the highest genius quotient of any place I've ever been. I haven't done the policeman / firefighter gig, but I do own 2 rather fun vehicles and have upon occasion found myself having to use the cruise control on them more as an override than for the purpose of eliminating the manual "chore" of regulating speed. The reason for this is related to a phenomena of a dawning recognition, as hard as you might find this to believe (but trust me, I'm not making it up), whereby I look down and have a cow at the numbers that the little needle on the dash are indicating at that moment in time. The last one was in excess of 110...

In other words, TypeAnalyzer seems to have a pretty good lock on a lot of my personality traits. It's interesting that it does this from analyzing my text and that it can pull it off in a rather short amount of time. I'm sure this thing could be useful for all kinds of insanity -- you're interviewing a person and want to understand them, or maybe on your present or potential boss.

It's a fun gadget. I aimed it at my resume to see what came up:

ENTJ - The Executives

The Executives are happy when their work let them learn and improve themselves and how things work around them. Not being (sic) very shy about expressing their ideas and often very outgoing they often make excellent public speakers.

Hmm.

Well, I have done a lot of public speaking events and it's rather obvious that I do have lofty career aspirations. This is potentially another view of me. I decided to aim the thing at all of the articles I've written for LXer.com:

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Maybe that's a reflection of my abject terror of making factual errors in my stories that I publish in my role as a journalist for the site.

For the fun of it, I took it down to just one of my stories (FeriCyde Chat: The Linux Virus Threat List for 2005), a joking number in which I pretty much lambaste facets of the industry under the guise of warning the readership about viral threats. I need to do a current one, it's always a popular format. Anyway, the cool thing is that it came back with the same analysis as the first pass at my blog, so I was happy.

Regardless, it's a lot of fun. If you've done a lot of writing on the web, it's probably not a bad idea to do some introspective snooping on your work for the heck of it.

Many thanks to Doc Searls who as usual wrote something to get the ole brain in gear. His article on TypeAnalyzer can be found here.

Happy ThanksGiving Everyone!
-=FeriCyde=-

Muscle-Car Melt-Down

2008-11-25T19:06:00.002-05:00

I find it totally ironic as a follower and lover of all things Pony-car that Chevy is about to ship the new Camaro right around the time that Chrysler is releasing the charger for the masses. Here we are, approaching 2010, and the big three are about to get the pony-car formula right!

Horsepower, engineering, look and feel -- it's all good. The Mustang tweaks have been kinda lame, actually, in comparison. But the irony is this -- they're all about to go belly-up. Ford stands the best chance of survival of the three, but it hardly matters -- all these cool pony cars may not survive the next round of hybrid-mania.

I'm really kind of torn about it too. Honestly the whole fossil-fuel thing is getting kind of old. Congress should be bailing out -- of the bail-out game. It's ironic, and unfortunate that the big three are here, but honestly you can't say that it hasn't been a long time coming.

Fuel prices are at an amazing low too -- but everyone pretty much knows that this isn't a long-term gambit we're testing here. We need to be looking at getting out of the combustion-engine game. The sooner the better for national security. The problem is that with low fuel prices come throngs of people that want to be driving the family (or just themselves) around in a 5000-6000lb monstrosity. The prediction that this was a short-lived game to be playing isn't exactly rocket-science. Sure, there's demand -- for the next 10 minutes to the next ten months -- heck even the next ten years. But sooner or later you'd have to be an idiot to not see the end of the cheap-gas era.

Ford has, for example, been for years dumping out lots of cool SUV-like things. Honda just started a couple of years ago shipping the Fit. Nissan has the Versa. Toyota has the Yaris. All of these vehicles appeared at roughly the same time. Why? Were the Japanese auto manufacturers some kind of sage gurus with magic Chrystal balls in the closet?

Hardly.

Obviously they were doing something proactive about the coming crunch. They're all playing the hybrid space. It's not like all of this is outside of the realm of Detroits' manufacturing prowess either. GM even shipped some electric vehicles a while back (leased them to buyers who loved them).

The reason Detroit is on the rocks, in other words, is related to the really cool Muscle cars they've just shipped.

Don't get me wrong -- I love em all!

(But I don't think I'm going to be alone in avoiding the purchase of them like the plague.)
-=FeriCyde=-

Social Media as a Marketing Vector

2008-11-17T13:04:00.002-05:00

You might want to weigh in on this poll. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with Social networking. Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin are all the rage for a lot of people. I for one have Linkedin as one of my multiple home pages -- if you don't have this setup with Firefox or the latest version of Internet Explorer, you're really missing out -- basically when I pop a new browser window, 7 or so pages load at once, so I can check all the things I care about in my life simultaneously. Linkedin is one of those pages.

I check facebook probably once a day (it's not a default page) -- from a work perspective it's just not as valuable. Great for distractions though.

What's budding is the value of using this technology to market products. It reminds me of the old interactive TV idea. Remember this? There was once going to be a time when TV had like an attached keyboard and you were going to be able to do cool stuff to supposedly interact with what was going on. I won't go off track here much -- things like the Cue Cat, for example, prove that getting traditional marketing channels to be more interactive are difficult at best.

WebTV was, from what I could tell, an attempt to kind of go that direction. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense at the end of the day. Why? Mostly because TV infected the Web first, and I would add that as a second vector, the Web is far more interactive and entertaining than any set of "channels" with interactive componentry. The concept isn't exactly dead -- it's just not exactly something all that effective -- the reasons why will become more clear as the concept of Social Media in the context of interactive marketing are exploited going forward.

Microsoft is supposedly reworking the WebTV concept for Version two (due to ship sometime soon).

Don't hold your breath on that one...

Social media as a marketing concept is different in a lot of ways. Social media itself is basically another set of nebulous vectors aimed at connecting people. When you look at the potential to harness it to get the word out for new products and ideas, the differences (in my opinion) stand out:

Less centralized control.
More motivation by the target audience to use the service to their ends.
It's more or less a free service to the people that use it.
No hard-wired anything (hardware, software etc -- you just need an internet connection and a web browser to join the party).
It's basically a blank canvas from a format perspective -- anything goes.
People are more emotionally connected to it.

I think this has a lot more potential to work, for all of the above reasons. I think traditional marketing people may be totally frightened by some of the vectors mentioned above -- mainly the decentralization of the beast. In the old days of TV, magazines and traditional marketing this wasn't the case so much.

Sure, you were free as a public citizen to create your own radio, TV station or magazine -- but that's not quite the same thing as creating a facebook page or updating some information on Linkedin.com -- and yes, I think this analogy applies.

It's very much the same kind of decentralization that Linux has brought to the operating system world (see, I knew there was a way to drag Free Software into the conversation). That world is better (in my humble opinion) and I think this kind of marketing is going to be better for all the same vectors.
-=FeriCyde=-

2008-11-13T12:38:00.003-05:00

Time asks: Is GM worth Saving?, which I think is a leading headline. Like "Aren't these puppies cute?", it leads the reader to a conclusion before they begin to read.

Where's the headline like this: "Is Tesla, the innovative electric car maker worth saving?" No where to be found on there. GM has for years had tons of cash and potential. They, along with other US automakers, have had opportunities to focus upon continuous improvement of their products. They have potential -- but it's going to be a bumpy road for them.

Handing them cash to fix the problem may sound like a great idea -- after some banking bail-outs by the government, why not major automakers?

This is the "logic" being applied.

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I've not been a huge fan of GM products. I've owned exactly one GM product in my life -- a 1974 Nova that my wife had when we got married. I didn't purchase the car. It never let me down but when I sold it there was an amazing list of things that had broken on the car.

The interior lighting.
The door latches inside the car.
The hinges.
The speedometer.
One of the rear leaf springs.
The fuel gauge.
The body (lots of rust).
The rear brakes, including the parking brake.
The ventilation system.

And that's the short list. I joked at the time that the only thing that worked was the engine, transmission and rear end. It was a road hazzard. At the time I lived in Niles Ohio, the epicenter of General Motors loyal buyer-base. Surrounded by Lordstown employees (a plant that made cars) and Packard Employees (At the time, the place where the wiring for most GM cars was manufactured), I had an easy time unloading it for a few hundred bucks. Some kid came along with stars in his eyes and drove off happily in the thing.

And, short of a Corvette, the GTO and the new Camaro, there hasn't been much they've made that even came near drawing my attention. They talk a lot about making electric vehicles (and did at one time pilot a few in California), but honestly for the size of the company and the amount of engineering talent on tap, the sad fact is that they haven't been all that innovative.

Now we're talking about cutting them a check. For what? A reward for not being innovative? That's my call.

We're starting to find more and more reasons to reward executives for a lack of sound leadership (that's my concern) by doing things like this. And I think the long-term health of our economy is being jeopardized by actions like this.

Of course, it's going to take some serious examples of why bailouts are bad for the health of the country before anyone will totally understand this -- honestly I think we're (America) being too protective of things like GM and as a country we should be more protective of new innovative things. Tesla, for example, is far harder to get going, and in the long run, far more likely to truly be innovative.

What we're experiencing is the antithesis to the dot com era -- instead of a lot of people hyping stuff that will never pay off and sucking down massive amounts of VC, we're seeing the government putting things that are failing on life support. Wild speculation here: Both ventures, despite living at opposite ends of the funding, political and lifecycle spectrum, are huge wastes of capital.

Will GM survive? Why not let the market decide that one?

Let's hope I'm wrong about the cash, but experience tells me otherwise.
-=FeriCyde=-

Social Media Zeitgeist

2008-11-12T15:18:00.002-05:00

Several years ago, one of my friends, Brian Thompson, sent me an invite for this thing, called "linkedin.com". I remember seeing the invitation in my email and thinking, what the heck is this?

Fast forward to today. I'm over at over 400 connections and Linkedin.com has pretty much become a lot of things for me -- my resume is obsolete -- oh, yeah, I still update it pretty frequently -- but it's almost irrelevant. Why? Because my resume is to LinkedIn what the old search engines are to Google's search algorithm. That is, obsolete. Why again? Because my resume says nothing about who I know or who I did what with way back when.

Linked-in has become a lot of things to me. It's a way for me to stay connected and to know at a glance who's doing what, where and with whom. It's a digital extension to my (pretty outgoing) geek personality. It's a Rolodex of sorts. It's a nifty spamming tool as well...

Blogging came about a different way. I used to write a lot for technical publications (Linux Today, LXer, Linux Planet) and that was a creative outlet. As I became somewhat less connected to Linux as a focal point (some might use the words "less obsessed") I began to find myself wanting to write about things that were completely unrelated to anything technical. I realized that I needed to blog the stuff and started doing that as a natural progression.

FaceBook was something different. I came across FaceBook like this, looking over a co-workers shoulder one day: "Oh, hey, that's like linked-in, but for friends." Yes, this is intended to be funny. I decided to create a FaceBook page at that point, after realizing that there was indeed value in being digitally connected on the friendlier side of things.

And now something similar is happening with Twitter. I'm assimilating it today. I'm not going to try an sell you on it (although if you want a good reason to start using it, with some idea of the kind of banter you're going to be exposed to, here's a good article by Adam Cohen -- DISCLAIMER: Adam is one of the partners at my firm, a marketing company, who's really into social media.)

Of course, no good technology gets swallowed by me with out it being complicated (improved?) by more technology -- so I also recommend reading this article on how to update Twitter using a shell script. For those of you non-Linux/Unix geeks out there, just ignore this portion of the article. You'll sleep better not knowing what you're missing out on, being able to type command-line-level things to update your cool web gadgetry.

So, now I'm able to update my blog, facebook and tweet -- all at once. If only I could get this thing to update the status message on my corporate messaging/mail client at the same time.

Joy...

If you're really bored feel free to twitter @fericyde -- bonus points if you can pull it off from a shell prompt ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

Driving Down The Ole' Punch-Card Trail

2008-10-30T16:13:00.002-05:00

Maryland and Virginia are switching back to paper ballots. (see 2 States Plan to Ditch Electronic Machines, Part of a Rapid National Reversal)

I've talked about this before in a different context. We're about 4-5 days out now from the 2008 elections. We have all of this technology surrounding all kinds of important infrastructure -- and yet when it comes to voting we seem to lose all sense of the gravity, complexity and competency needed to make for transparent, trustworthy results.

Sad to say, but as a rabid technologist I must once again say that it's time to have the U.N. monitor our election process. Oh, and toss the electronic voting machines until an open, secure and verifiable framework can be established to right this situation.

The reasons for this are many:

The people running the election booths are simply not technologists in their day to day lives (on average) and the process by definition isn't a day to day process. It would be different if this were something done every day by people who understood all of the moving parts.
Given the above scenario, it's not all that hard to argue that if there is a flaw in the technology, it wouldn't be all that hard to imagine someone with nebulous intention getting into the system and skewing things -- it wouldn't be all that hard for them to get away with it, given their audience.
The technology is flawed and opaque -- it needs to be verifiable and transparent. Having proprietary vendors making something as important as voting machines is completely unacceptable.
The process is one of the most important processes we (as Americans participating as democratic citizens) undertake.
We've had to many dubious failures in recent history -- if we don't clean this act up people are going to stop believing in the process and the government in general. This is already happening to a great extent -- but the damage, I would wager, is reversible.

It might be something ludicrous, looking at Maryland and Virginia as examples -- one of my co-workers laughed at it, for example -- but a small bit of research will more than open your eyes. I'm not a gloom and doom kind of guy -- I am, however, very willing to look at a flawed system and suggest improvements. Oh, and I'm fairly pragmatic. Punch cards work, they're hard to reverse and they represent a paper trail (visions of me jamming my old WATFIV and WATFOR Fortran programs through a card reader run through my mind -- ahhhh, the terrible old days of IBM mainframe computing and JCL!).

We, as a budding Democracy of 200+ years (yes, that's sarcasm) have to be better than this.

Maryland, Virginia -- kudos for stepping out there for all the right reasons.
-=FeriCyde=-

What Would Darwin Do?

2008-10-18T03:54:00.003-05:00

He'd read Ron Laneve's blog.

http://ronlaneve.blogspot.com/2008/10/three-months-in-future-looks-bright-at.html

My company (Rosetta) is a crazy fun place to work -- Ron is the reason I'm there. The company is crazy busy too -- we recently started a merger and the work has kept Ron from sharing a lot of thoughts, but I'm sure it won't be that way forever.

Ron's blog is about evolution and talent acquisition. As I get more involved in recruiting, I see that the challenges of growing an organization and keeping it in one piece are formidable -- and that it's an evolution of a third order. Our brains making conscious decisions where trial and error made the original decisions (that's the first order of difference). But the working pieces of the collective "we" that make up Rosetta, or any company for that matter, fit together to solve problems in ways that often just make sense. This is a lot of what evolution does as well -- it's just that the things that end up working together in our realm have metrics and sentient thought to reward the final outcome (and that's a second order of difference from evolution).

To speed things along, we're out for the best and brightest evolutionary components. The conscious choice to pick really good evolutionary material, is, in my opinion, the third order of difference -- it's one the reasons it's tough to work here (you're being compared to some really brilliant people at the end of the day) -- but it's also more than enough to make up for any and all hardships. Smart people laugh their way out of problems that mire others in years of confusion.

Read Ron's blog. He's doing more than cooking up text -- the company is evolving into something new. The view from that dashboard has to be exciting.
-=FeriCyde=-

Tesla on the Rocks -- but we'll bail out Fanny Mae

2008-10-17T08:26:00.002-05:00

Tesla is on the rocks.

Maybe you don't know about the company -- it's goal is to make electric car -- something we kind of need in this day and age. Due to financial problems and marketplace concerns, it's now in trouble and shedding employees.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but our energy future is more precarious than the funny money and legal issues of the financial system in the United States (and I'd argue, the world as a whole).

How can our government take a passive interest in this while they get all active and socialistic about stuff like the financial market? This is something obvious to me -- find a way to prop this company up for a while -- new things like this are hard to start. They can't easily be reconstituted if the company dies.

They bailed out Chrysler corporation when it was on the rocks. They want to help a bunch of bankers continue their party. Where are they when our energy future and innovation are dying at the same time?

Answer: No where to be found.

This country is supposed to be about freedom, capitalism and innovation -- we're not going to have the freedom until we break free of fossil fuels. We have to back the innovation of Tesla -- the choice is that or watch it die. Talk about money in the bank -- their idea is amazing and the fact that they got as far as they did with as little as they have is amazing to me.

I hope somewhere in the coffers of bail-out cash there's room for Tesla to have a little slack as well.

-=FeriCyde=-

Someone commenting on Resumes ...

2008-10-16T15:35:00.003-05:00

Agrees with me. Sort of.

http://thecodist.com/article/resumes_are_mostly_useless

The perspective is one of a technology professional lamenting that people can't understand him from his resume. I've recently commented upon this in a talk I did at Ohio Linux Fest -- there's too much technology and complexity for a typical recruiter to sift through when looking for specific qualifications. I'd wager that the issue is only going to get worse by orders of magnitude every couple of years or so. There's so much change in the technological space that keeping up is pretty much worthless.

Enter Linked-in. The issue is that it helps people understand context along with qualifications and experience -- and that makes a huge difference. Is your resume obsolete? Yes and No (My apologies to Rob F. for this reference). You need a resume if you're going on a job interview. You don't necessarily need one to get found on-line (the most important place).

-=FeriCyde=-

Deconstructing the current recruiting problem...

2008-10-12T18:15:00.002-05:00

I just returned from Ohio Linux Fest (OLF).

My talk this year was aimed at Linux (Free Software) and Open Source types -- and how to manage a career in that context. My brother, for the first time in his life, got to see me doing a public speaking gig. His comment was that most of my talk was universal. I was glad to hear this, as I meant to give, basically, a high level overview of what most people (tech, and he's one of those, just not with Linux), miss, in the context of what their job really is.

Which is to say, it's not just a job -- it's way more than that. Most tech people, however, treat their career and where they're at with it, with all of the thought of what they're wearing that day. If you were at OLF, you would know how funny this truly is -- everyone was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt.

(Oh, except for me -- what do you expect)

Anyway, the problem is that a lot of them wake up one day after 10-20 years and ask questions with answers that all sound a lot like "too late". My talk was meant to do a couple of things:

Wake these people up, and give them a lot of good advice in as short a time as possible.
Get some of them to think about working with me at Rosetta.

The first thing above is truly alt altruistic of me. The second one is very selfish, and I admit it. They both exist in the same reality.

Honestly, the present recruiting problem I'm up against is a first for me. In the past, when I've needed talented people to come work with me it's been pretty easy to find them. Things lately have gone pretty crazy at work and now all of a sudden I'm in a space where I'm looking for more people and it's not all that easy.

And it turns out, I'm not alone. At Ohio Linux Fest this year there were a couple of vendor tables that were purchased by people that were strictly there to do something similar to what I was doing -- they were there looking for talent.

Talent, it seems, is the real new currency. I predict that it won't go down in value anytime soon.

Lots of things are contributing to the problem:

More technological and functional breadth: there's, every day, more stuff being added to the collective unconscious of the typical organization. More technology, sure, but also stuff like ITSM methodology, for example, which isn't a technology, but a functional requirement. As more and more "stuff" gets added, and more organizations attempt to figure out what to do to find people that know how to do this "stuff", the typical recruiter has a harder and harder time finding people that meet the requirements of the moment.
More churn: People are simply bouncing around more. I think this is good, because honestly some people don't belong, for example, in IT these days. It's pretty grueling, and if you're not cut out for it, or not passionate about it, you honestly need to find something else that fits the bill.
The same amount of talent: Let's put this another way -- a general rule is that talented people are born, not made. You can help talented people learn new stuff, but for certain types of work, it's more about finding talented people to train -- a "generic" resource, with no talent at all, is not going to be an item that can be ramped up into the job at hand.

All in all, these things are causing some serious choke points for me (and obviously lots of other people as well).

All in all, the show was awesome. If you haven't made it to Ohio Linux Fest and are into Linux, man are you missing out. The event was pretty eclectic and chock full of good reasons to be there. I learned a lot about new things by listening to buzz and as usual, met a lot of really good people that were great contacts.

I learned that I wasn't alone on the talent acquisition front as well.
-=FeriCyde=-

There is no Shortage of Clueless Tech Journalists

2008-09-23T02:22:00.003-05:00

How Linux lost the battle for your desktop

Every few minutes it seems (ok, I read one of these about 2-3 times a year, linked from either Slashdot or Digg), some clueless journalist spouts about how Linux has "lost the battle" or (my favorite) -- the Linux Desktop, R.I.P.

And every year, Linux penetration gets a bit deeper -- sure some serious penetration on the server side, but honestly, the "desktop" hasn't been "won" or "lost" and saying something stupid like this begs the question:

Is the Windows desktop even relevant anymore?

I think the answer can be had all around us. In hand held devices (not just embedded Linux ones -- Blackberry, heck even Windows CE devices count here) that are not standard Windows desktops. Macs. Embedded web browsers found in devices that aren't running Intel chip-sets. The ASUS Eee PC, which has been selling (with embedded Linux) like hotcakes -- oh, wait, it's not a "desktop" either. It's a long list.

Vista

Yeah, Vista. Vista is a smoldering failure and an example of Microsoft group think. Heck, they think it was a failure of marketing even. It's not a failure of marketing -- it's being branded by faithful Windows supporters as "Millennium Edition II" -- in other words, lots of people are rolling back to XP in droves.

The failure of the Windows desktop is always eminent -- just ask Bill Gates who will tell you in previous interviews that they're always worried about this. When they lose this battle (it's not an "if", in other words) it will be because of a failure inside of Microsoft to recognize the severity of the situation.

For what it's worth, I don't quite think that Microsoft desktop management people are all that stupid. I do think they're going to have to do something about Vista.

And I hardly think the "battle" for the desktop is far, far from over.
-=FeriCyde=-

Pony Car Depression Coming to a Dealer Near You

2008-09-15T10:32:00.005-05:00

I remember the 70's muscle/pony car depression with a clarity that most teenagers of this era cannot fathom. We're, like it or not, entering a similar age at this time, brought on, strangely enough, by almost similar pressures. To understand, one must go back -- way back -- to the year 1971. In that time, gasoline prices were going up, and cars were getting bigger and smaller at the same time. Ford had just introduced the Pinto (ugh) and, like a lot of Detroit auto makers, they were extending the sheet metal on their larger lines all the while adding things at the bottom that were whiny boxes of crap (this is the abridged version of what I have to say -- I'm deliberately leaving out a lot, thankfully).

Bear in mind that I'm viewing a lot of this through Mustang-colored-glasses. The deal is that a lot of this extends to cover all of the pony car space. Everyone was worried about the rising cost of insurance prices and the increasing demands that pollution control systems were placing on the industry in general. Between these two forces, anything of joy from a pure muscle perspective was somehow losing its soul. The Corvette became a shell of its prior self -- but it was at least somewhat true to the original formula.

In 1974, Ford made the Mustang into a Pinto derivative. In general, all of the auto makers added so much in the way of wheezing pollution controls and de-tuned a lot of the engines (lowering compression, for example) to the point where nothing seemed all that exciting. The R&D dollars were being spent on priories (lobbying, for example, was a priority).

And then the gas crunch hit (1975 or 1976 -- it's a blur to me, I was younger then). Things began to look really bad for someone who remembered the Muscle cars of the 60's. My dad and I are very much car guys, and we talked a lot about it at the time. As Detroit entered the Boxy era (Citation, Fairmont, K-cars -- remember these "appliance on wheels" products?), I lamented that the good old days were mostly behind us.

And my Dad assured me that one day they would get back to doing things with style, that had power and so on. And he was (as usual) right.

The Mustang returned with a vengeance. The Chevy Camaro, though lacking a usable back seat (key to being a good pony car, I'd argue), was a rockin' ride. Chrysler produced a bunch of things that were weird, fast and sporty (but no pony cars).

And then everyone but Ford quit. The Mustang remained the lone pony car competitor. You can argue that Ford has a heck of a product with the current gen Mustang -- I honestly think that they're not facing enough competition these days. There are some cool products -- the GT500, Shelby GT, California, Bullit -- but without some good competition, they are mainly competing with themselves. When you look at the line-up of product this year, it's not really all that changed from the stuff they were producing in 05.

So, I'm actually contemplating something that will surprise quite a few people. I'm going to seriously consider buying a new Camaro. The damn thing is gorgeous. It will all depend upon price and usable back-seat space, though. Quality is in there somewhere too.

What about the Challenger? The new Challenger is beautiful. It looks like a modernized version of true muscle -- until you get up on the thing and realize that it's *huge*. And no Automatic transmission. And 8k of dealer markup (where I was looking in PA). And that brings me to my final point.

Chevy gets it. The recipe for a Pony car includes just a few simple rules:

Front Engine -- 6 banger or a V8 -- both options -- in that order.
Seating for 4.
Rear-wheel-drive.
Two, and only two, doors.
A long hood, and a short trunk.
Some noise would help... [note: the car doesn't have to be all that sophisticated]

The Challenger fails because there's not going to be a low-buck version. Say what you want, but one of the reasons that the Mustang is so popular is because a lot of people can afford the 6 banger. They may want a GT or a Cobra, but sensibility creeps in or their budget (and possibly their insurance costs if they're young). This is important -- every one of these cars is a rolling advertisement for the automaker and the product. People see them and want them for that reason, I'd argue.

I'll wager that you're probably going to see a few new Challengers -- they'll be on dealer lots or at auto shows (likely trailered in, in that case). You're rarely going to spot someone driving it down the street to work, because they're so expensive and there are so few of them. They will become the auto equivalent to rare collector coins. Pulled out in shiny cases, shown off for a few minutes of glory, and put away for next time.

My Mustangs are not these objects -- I drive them to work. I enjoy them (both are V8's, a Mach 1 and a GT). I smile every time -- they're practical fun. They are just barely practical in many respects, but surprisingly, the Mach 1 gets better than 25 miles to the gallon during the summer.

All of this is being written, though, like we're seeing a new era emerge (new Camaro, for example, new Challenger). What we're seeing is the death of the latest generation of the Pony car wars. There will be few, if any, hybrid versions of these babies (it would disqualify them anyway). R&D costs are not going the way of the Mustang or Camaro like they are the hybrid competitor space. There will be a ton of innovations in that realm and in the alternative fuel space in general. What we're likely witnessing is a time very similar to my retrospective of 1971.

Chevy and Chrysler are arriving pretty late to the party, in other words. The Pony car era -- the latest round -- is about to morph. We're going to see a lot of change, and some of it won't be quite as pretty and elegant as this past round (that's my fear, anyway).

Here's to hoping that I'm really wrong...
-=FeriCyde=-

Rosetta

2008-07-29T10:00:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I no longer work for Brulant -- no, I didn't change jobs again (still in consulting, and probably will be for a long, long time). My company, Brulant, has been merged with a really cool Marketing company called Rosetta. The name changes, but a lot of other things remain the same.

Check out Ron Laneve's blog post on the subject.

The Rosetta / Brulant merger is a good thing in a lot of strategic ways. It brings us to a wider marketplace and it gives me more reasons to smile these days (and there were already quite a few of those). Look for more news as time permits -- but things just got even more intesting ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

Running 150 MPH...

2008-07-22T08:47:00.003-05:00

Dear diary,

It's been too long. So sorry, just too much going on.

For starters, the whole work-work balance is out of control these days. I'm simply over-run by work. Striking while the iron is hot may be a good strategy, but my blog, my Mustangs, my wife and most importantly, my poor dog have suffered. The blog -- it's an electronic thing, so it doesn't care. My wife, she can understand my career being in a heightened state. The Mustangs -- they will always be there. But Sammy (my 4 year old Samoyed) -- he won't understand.

So I'm finally getting some of my life back (this is, however, the calm before the storm). I've been taking the dog (and /dev/wife) for more walks in the park, and we've had some really fun weekends of late. Sammy is a joy -- too bad he doesn't understand English, but it hardly matters. He's the most communicative dog I've ever had.

The Mustangs -- the Yellow GT convertible is starting to show some of its age. Various issues abound. The GEM (Generic Electronic Module) is leaking electrical juice to the point that if it sits for more than 4 days, the thing is deader than a doornail, power-wise. I've spent some time diagnosing it and don't exactly know where to go next, but know that replacing the GEM is not a trivial task. "Why don't you pay someone to fix it?" you might ask? Well, I did, and they didn't. Instead they replaced the battery, a coil-over pack (likely malfunctioning due to a bad battery, not exactly needing replacement, in other words), charged me $300.00 bucks and assured me that they had fixed the problem. This despite me explaining the issue and assuring them that the battery was not the culprit.

What do I know? A lot, actually. Not just my intuition told me they were full of crap. I spent some time narrowing the scope of the drain with the help of my dear friend Joe Romayo (Thanks Joe!) And -- I've found a work around -- I pull the GEM fuse in the engine bay when ole' Yaller is going to sit for more than a day or so. Works for now. One day I'll find whatever short or blown component is the culprit and this too will go away.

Somehow the car has survived 150k+ miles of wild roller-coaster fun. I haven't exactly babied this thing either, but people are astounded that it's got that many miles. Other annoying things -- the throw-out bearing is going to die someday -- but since it's been making noise since it was new (just not this loudly), I'm not going to worry about it too much. The air conditioning is now only partially functional (probably a $300 dealer trip), but for the most part the car is holding up amazingly well. The latest mods, however, make it only good for short trips with /dev/wife. Things like louder exhaust, Richmond gears (man do those things howl), lowering kits, suspension kits, KYB shocks etc -- all of these things make it less hospitable on anything but short bursts.

The Orange Mach 1 is another story. It was leaking radiator fluid and I discovered that the culprit was something that had made some kind of trip through the inside of the engine compartment. Whatever it was, it tore a bunch of small holes in the radiator on its way. Again, I could take it somewhere and have a garage mechanic do the work -- but I don't trust mechanics anymore. If it was under warranty this might be a different story, but essentially I had visions of them telling me that the motor was a molten pile of slag. Let's not forget, the Mach has a full aluminum composure -- block and heads are made of the stuff. It was running fine other than leaking fluid like a sieve. Take it somewhere in that state, however, and I run the risk of some moron running it dry, melting it down and then accusing me of bringing it in, in that state. It's not something to leave unattended, running, whilst one tries to figure out what's causing it to overheat, in other words. And yes, I'm saying I can easily see a mechanic doing this in this day and age. Rather than risk it, I "simply" got a new radiator, and over the course of a few precious weekend days, replaced everything that needed replaced in that area. I also swapped out the stock rubber for some offset 18" rims and tires -- black.

We're living in an age of personal irresponsibility. Too many times I'm paying for work that's simply not being done. Stuff is too complex for the average Joe -- and it's not getting any simpler, I'm afraid.

And yet, somehow, I'm not doing so bad -- so why really complain?

I guess I'm not complaining -- just observing. I'm a lucky guy -- I may be over-run by work, but I chose this route and it's a heck of a ride. Sorry I haven't written more often. I plan on attending (and not speaking) at Ohio Linux Fest this year -- simply no time to add anything, anytime soon. Hope to see you there (register at http://ohiolinux.org/ ).

Joe Barr and Dwight Johnson

Some closing thoughts. The Linux community lost two souls recently. Joe Barr, a dear friend and a terrific author is gone. He died just a few days ago. Dwight Johnson, an avid enthusiast and one of the two founders of LinuxToday.com died earlier this year of cancer. Both people are sorely missed. If I have any regrets it is not spending more time cherishing the people who have helped make the world a better place. I'm running 150 MPH (but not with the Mustangs -- just with life). Things scream by at times. Only upon reflection does the magnitude of change manifest itself.

I'll try and slow down more often. I will promise to write more often too. Talk soon,
-=FeriCyde=-

Bill Gates, Socially Clueless again...

2008-04-24T22:16:00.002-05:00

Ok, can't resist pointing out just how stupid this quote is:

"There's free software and then there’s open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with." Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."

Love it. Comparing Microsoft software to the pharmaceutical industry.

Hmm, how do I love this quote? Let me count the ways.

Microsoft software truly is in many ways like a drug. An addictive drug. You buy it once, and find yourself needing to shell out extra money every so often to buy the exact same thing again (albeit with a new label and very few additional features, but of course, for more cash).
Microsoft, as much as it's like the drug industry (see above), it's not innovative. As a matter of fact, the whole idea that Microsoft is an inventive company is truly a misdirected concept. Rarely does Microsoft make something innovative -- they bundle a lot of innovative concepts -- ones that other companies and individuals have created. The sad fact is that they haven't really delivered a truly innovative new product in a long time on the operating system front.
Software isn't like a drug in a very fundamental sense -- the distribution model is completely different (or it can be, rather) and unlike drugs, it is composed of tons of interlocking parts that as a whole expand upon the other interlocking parts.
If you could step into your local wal-mart, purchase a few thousand "bundled" drugs to create a completely new drug that fixed just your symptoms, this analogy might hold. Sadly, if it were a Microsoft model, this drug would promise to cure the common cold on the box as a feature. When taken, the patient (let's label them "the victim" here) would find themselves with dozens of new viruses instead.
The GPL-licensed products that come bundled with Linux are constantly getting new features that come from all over the planet. There are tons of people making money from their use (just not people holding others at gun-point at the point of "sale" of the Linux "product"). Lot's of people are employed as systems administrators, for example. Those people haven't lost their jobs and there's very little danger of this as the infusion of new technology from the implementation side of the fence just doesn't seem to be slowing down.
If you follow the argument above, you can see that the real "loss" is just Microsoft's -- companies like RedHat, IBM and Novell and others are making cash just fine from Linux. Apple has also seen benefit using Free Software (non-GPL, but it's a point that they're making out just fine and adding features like crazy). What Gates is bemoaning is the fact that GPL software forces a down-stream effect of not being able to charge monopolistic prices for software. Gee, we're all feeling sorry for you there Bill.

I am resisting the urge to counter that Microsoft is like Big Oil or some other industry. The truth is that Software is a different industry and that the GPL is here to stay. Get used to it Bill -- think about this for a while -- why don't you turn the Windows API into something usable that bolts on top of any operating system? -- Linux or Apple, and leave the OS-driving to the professionals. Please don't jokingly suggest that Vista is an OS -- it seems more like a badly written memory-tester with the ability to launch a few programs. Give up on the whole world-domination thing and just go with the flow.

You're doing some cool things on the charity front -- give the public a break on the monopoly front (they can use it -- fuel is getting expensive). Gas is not cheap, in other words, but the hot air you generate sure makes it seem that way.

Cheers!
-=FeriCyde=-

Having friends along for the ride...

2008-04-18T05:15:00.002-05:00

Recently it occurred to me that I'm having the time of my life.

It's hard to put things in perspective, but I'll do my best to summarize it. About a year and a half ago, I was coming out of a depressive funk (real depression, by the way) and dealing with several life issues.

One of them was relating to a family issue that has (for the moment) resolved itself -- out of my control, the problem required a lot of prayer and diligence. I had to hold the line on some things and to exercise "tough love" on a scale most mortal parents would not be comfortable with.

A second item was the depression itself -- I've said it and blogged it in the past but it bears repeating that yes, even something as painful as depression can end up being good for you.

A third item that really threw me for a loop kind of revealed itself yesterday to be something that was put there to help me understand what would happen to me today. You have to trust in a higher power -- things like this cannot be planned or predicted. Everything I went through in context more or less helped me understand something that a friend and coworker was experiencing. As I said to them later, it's nice to know you're not alone. I might not have understood had I not ridden the same storm.

And finally there was this nagging problem of a simple broken promise. You see, a few years back some rather basic contractual obligations were made to me that through a bit of complex fault and blame transfer, were broken. I spent the better part of a year trying to resolve the inequity (so to speak) and near as I can tell, the party involved simply didn't want to acknowledge his or her duties in this context. When I would bring up the facts of the matter, they would make statements about how I was making them feel "uncomfortable" or holding them hostage.

It was a simple matter, but yet somehow, through some seriously slow (and ineptly executed) process, the party that should have been accountable for delivery simply delivered to someone else. In the end I honestly have to admit that I was a bit insulted.

Well, I'm not anymore. If I were a vengeful sort (I'm not by the way), I could not have planned what has happened since then. Words fail me.

I think I've expressed enough here for the parties in question to know who they are and I'd like to officially state that they were indeed doing Gods work (Albeit, in a rather shifty, backstabbing and morally suspect way, but, heh, at the end of the day even that's something that's brought comic value to my life).

I'm officially saying that I honestly don't care anymore.

Why would I say this? A multitude of reasons, but let's start with the fact that I love what I do. I'm surrounded by creative, successful and fun-loving people and I'm glad they're along for the ride. And I'm right here, right now, thanks to where I've been and quite honestly even the down side of everything I've mentioned above wasn't all that bad so I have a lot to be thankful for. My own creative abilities have enabled this ride -- the fact that I've created space for others to be creative and enjoy their work is huge icing on this cake.

Finally, and even higher on the irony scale, some of my favorite people have followed me here (dare I use the word "lead" somehow?). This makes me understand that regardless of meaningless charts (and really stupid certification-clogged signatures), at the end of the day reality has bestowed upon me the goods that others though were theirs to deliver. I think I like it better this way -- and I really don't have a choice in the matter, so why not love it for what it is?

Gratitude is under-rated. I'm grateful to be here and to have such cool friends in my life. I'm even more happy to see those around me growing and being rewarded for their success.

One of my best friends is starting a really cool blog -- look for some posts in the near future outlining talent acquisition and even more importantly, how to keep talented people in the game.

Talk soon!
-=FeriCyde=-

Ten Dollar CDs

2008-03-25T16:46:00.002-05:00

Walmart is at it again.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6558540/walmart_wants_10_cds

They want the Music cartel to lower their prices so they can move more product and not lose money on the products on the shelves. Normally I have a hard time with some of the high-pressure tactics that big businesses take pushing each other around -- but in this case, I gotta ask a few questions that have rather difficult answers. Maybe I just don't understand.

If I walk into about a half dozen retail shops, I can usually find a decent DVD for 10 bucks or less (no, we're not talking a recent release here -- but we're not talking old Andy Griffith Show re-runs either). In other words, I can find a Movie, on DVD, for 10 bucks easily.

But go for a similar vintage CD and it's going to be 12-14 bucks -- sometimes higher.

So...

A movie arguably has creative staff several orders of magnitude higher from a production stand-point.
The soundtrack -- the derivative work from the Movie for the background noise to accompany the moving pictures, has to take similar effort to the production of most CDs.
The format: DVDs have to have higher production costs. The amount of data from a binary perspective on a DVD is typically 4 gigabytes, versus the theoretical 700 megabytes or so on a typical CD.
The editing: Editing video chapters and movie scenes, the work to create the DVD package and so on for a movie -- all of this from my perspective is a lot harder than the sound divisions found on a typical CD.

So the bottom line from my perspective is clear -- why, if every indicator from my perspective shows that the movie production houses are not losing money shipping a CD at 10 bucks, can the record industry not do something at least at a similar rate? Maybe they need to have a movie produced about every album that an artist puts out, showing live footage as the artist performs the work. Then have the movie houses ship the product and pay the artist similar to movie stars (something I hear isn't really happening these days).

Someone out there has to have some idea why this is all out of kilter -- or, like I said, maybe there's some hidden production cost for a CD or some huge donation facility for the movie houses that's funding their DVDs on the shelf today.

Walmart is arguably the 900 lb gorilla in this game -- but maybe they're on to something with this one. And I do agree with the gist of the article -- Apple makes money with the i-Tunes store because consumers sense value paying a buck a song. The value equation seems really tilted when you compare movies versus CDs. Consumers are pushing back and saying "I don't see 14 bucks a CD as a value."

One thing for sure, though, Walmart, the 900lb Gorilla is shoving another 900lb gorilla around. Look for some serious stomping here in the days to come.
-=FeriCyde=-

Another voting scandal in Ohio

2008-03-19T02:33:00.002-05:00

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-ohio-seizes-voting-machines-in-criminal-investigation.html

The people that make voting machines are in my back yard, almost literally. I drive past them every day to work in Canton Ohio (Diebold). As a fervent believer in automation and almost all things technical as progress I have to vote here (and I don't just mean in the elections) -- I have to say I'm completely and totally against Voting machines being used in our elections.

I'm completely serious.

It's time to go back to paper ballots and I'd even go so far as to say we need the U.N. to monitor our elections. Ken Blackwell, the chief of elections for Ohio recently (at least the 04 elections) -- and a republican (he ran as a republican candidate for governor last year, and lost) -- Ken Blackwell was in charge of our voting processes last round. Really sound question here -- how can we trust a voting process in a "two-party" system (some people call it a democracy, but they need to do some research here)? Answer: We can't these days if the machines are as complex as they are, the voting is done with machines made by people with dubious goals, and the people in charge of the voting at the polls don't understand the technology. For these and obvious other reasons, I say it's time we stopped using technology, as there's simply too much at stake, namely our future as a society where we have some choice in our government.

Toss the machines, bring in U.N. Inspectors and then let's architect a system that works -- process and technology -- and one that's transparent, auditable and owned by the people, and not some "party" -- democratic or republican -- the temptation to skew the results is simply too high and near as I can tell it's become something similar to the "re-district" game, whereby some new elected power shift occurs, and the latest party in power tries to move the district boundaries in a state around so that the voting goes more favorably next time. Again, a statistical approach that makes it seam like the real election process is working, but in reality, it's been titled on the board in someone's favor.

Voting machines and new technologies at the booth provide, near as I can tell, an infinite number of new possibilities in this arena. Paper ballots at least would remove the latest round.

The latest scandal involves candidates names dropping off the machine in question (and in many counties from the article). This is compounded by the fact that there's no paper trail on the Diebold machines -- this from a company that makes ATM machines that print a continuous log when you use them. So, let's get this straight -- the cash in an ATM is important enough to audit, but we're going to take away this capability for a process that effectively hands the keys to the world (and the buttons to destroy it as well) over to someone, a process *that* important, it handles *that* and it doesn't log a thing? Oh and we're going to trust a dedicated party member to oversee the usage of such a thing in a non-partisan manner.

Get real -- get rid of this insanity now. We can salvage the technology later if we can come up with a way to make it idiot and fool proof -- for now we have some serious election needs and yes, we probably need the U.N. to watch it all. Sad day...
-=FeriCyde=-

Elliot Spitzer

2008-03-13T12:27:00.002-05:00

The scandal is all over the news. Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer is a user of prostitutes and he's resigned.

It's always rough to watch something like this in flight. Bill Clinton being caught with an intern, for example, gripped our nation and lots of people made huge news of it (Even talk of impeachment).

I'm caught, though, with mixed feelings here. As bad as his behavior is in this context, the really sad news is that no one is looking back at everything that guy did to fight corruption -- it's all about his cheatin' ways these days.

Elliot Spitzer took on many things -- one of them was Microsoft. He did what a lot of law enforcement people wouldn't do and he did it well.

He's going to get run through the ringer for being a John -- but I will forever remember the crusader that fought for the right thing at the right time. I'm sorry to see this as an end. I hope for his sake that he's able to come to some kind of terms with this and in some way get back to what he used to do. Maybe this is an unrecoverable set-back, in other words, but I hope not.

Elliot Spitzer was and is, for what he did as a crime-fighter, still an admirable person in my eyes. No, I don't think prostitution is admirable or acceptable behavior. His personal problems aside, though, the good he did as an Attorney General was massive good compared to what amounts to a serious character flaw.

Unfortunately for our society we are hell-bent on feeding a media frenzy around things like this. Britney Spears, Anna Nichole-Smith or the latest celebrity train-wreck of the day all take the public eye off of real problems. Real heroes are forgotten in the backwash of mud and flame.

Elliot Spitzer is the latest train-wreck and the media will run this story for all its worth.

He's still a hero in my eyes. Elliot, you'll be in my prayers.
-=FeriCyde=-

The Creation and Destruction of Inspirational Power

2008-02-06T06:10:00.000-05:00

A recent conversation with a friend makes me aware of something dark I'm carrying that simply should not be there. It's there due to my nature, I'm sure, as a sensitive person who likes to think that everyone in the world is on their own path toward being something creative.

Let's face it -- not everyone is. Not everyone is on a path to grow. Not everyone is on a path toward any kind of enlightenment. Not everyone can create. Not everyone is inspirational. Inspirational Power is something a lot of people desire in their lives, though. I strive for it in my life.

When you can't, there's the alluring fall-back toward something else. Maybe theft is the wrong word but I can't help but suggest it.

In the past, when I've been troubled by something I've attacked it on multiple fronts. I talk with my wife and friends. Whatever. Often I'll blog about it. My next few posts will deal with this subject.

Linux is doing well these days. I'd love to talk about my recent experiences watching my wife use her ubuntu laptop (and load software all without dear old me in the picture). Not that that's all that boring -- it's just not news.

I'll try to keep this light and not involve any faces and names. Inevitably though I'm sure some people will be drawn to events in my life and go away sure that I'm talking about a particular individual. Trust me, this happens to everyone in some capacity. I plan to put a name on the face of the problem, but I will not be putting any names on human faces.

For over time I've discovered that inspirational power simply can't be stolen for any length of time and I've alway somehow come out as the winner in the game (there's that male paradigm rearing its ugly head again). I will also explore just why this would depress me.

Thanks for listening,
-=FeriCyde=-

Astroturf in Vogue as it has been for years...

2007-11-14T09:01:00.001-05:00

The Clinton campaign has kicked off an outrage over some planted questions. The crime: it appears that the campaign staff planted some questions with the people in the audience. The worry: That Hillary Clinton is dishonest and that we're not hearing the real conversation because of all of this fake banter.

This crap unfortunately goes on all the time.

Recently FEMA was caught hosting an entire phony news conference, for example. The public by now must be getting suspicious. You would hope. They're asleep from my experience.

Looking back at some of the things I've seen first hand, the core of the outrage stems from the phony glow that comes from a staged conversation as opposed to real dialog. This is the core issue, actually. People want to be able to engage in actual conversation -- it makes for more honest dialog and more accountability.

And a lot of people's bullshit meter goes off when they witness the phony stuff in action. The problem is that a good portion of the population simply can't tell the difference. Worse, a good portion of people out there simply see no problem with stuff like the above two examples. A good friends daughter is involved in writing phony articles for a magazine for companies that want that hallowed glow. What's the difference between an article like that, and an actual product review by someone independent?

The difference is everything, but you as an honest listener will never know. The daughter saw no problem with it. Her mother seemed somewhat more troubled, but was unable to see exactly what I saw as a problem; If the article had the words "advertisement" over the top of it, I would not have seen the problem either.

Or maybe the appropriate words "astroturf" would have been better -- phony grass roots, in other words. A shill. Someone posing as an honest observer but in reality paid by the party receiving the goods. Whatever it is, it's wrong.

I'm certain that the main problem with the Clintons in this case is that their campaign staff has been caught. This is probably a rampant issue in the political space -- in a democracy there's no place for it. My experience was with the news, Joe Barr, a long time ago, experienced it with an OS/2 message board -- Microsoft staff posing as "helpful" people, supposedly were there to help people with OS/2 problems, and yet somehow they ended up steering people to Windows every time.

The practice goes back a long way, actually. Bogus letters to the editor in colonial times, for example, were cited as defense for some of the stupidity I observed on an on-line chat forum. "This is common practice in the industry" the people attempting to sweep in under the rug hissed.

I'll never forget what I said in response to that at the time: "Common practice? -- by whom?"

Funny, I never got that last question answered...
-=FeriCyde=-

2007-10-20T18:37:00.000-05:00

TV Links has been shut down.

What a sad day. It certainly was possible to find new movies on the aforementioned website -- but mostly I used it to watch old MASH reruns and a host of documentaries and TV shows I had never heard of.

The implications are rather stark: Help people pirate content, and you will be shut down.

Worse, though, is that someone in the UK is now in the slammer for more or less helping aggregate pirate links -- for being a middle-man in the game of piracy.

I found TVlinks from Digg.com about a year ago, and was simply amazed at the list of shows and documentaries and everything in-between. I thought it was just my geekyness that brought me there, until my next-door neighbor had a network outage -- and the first site his son of 20+ years pulled up to "test" connectivity was none other than TVlinks.

We talked a bit about the content on there and I realized that it had become more than a TV Guide -- it had hit a hallowed space -- almost a "google" for everything video.

At the heart of all of this is the question of illegal activity -- was he really breaking the law? (TVlinks only pointed at people that were breaking copyright). Can't you go to just about any search engine and find copyrighted content in a matter of seconds?

I guess the real question is whether or not Google, Yahoo and MSN are next. If you can cart away a guy who ran something like this in his living room what can you do to people who actually have pockets of cash?

Google, MSN and Yahoo should do more than watch the outcome of this one -- they should pool their resources and pay this guy's legal fees. If he was pointing to copyrighted content wouldn't that make it extremely easy for the copyright holders to always find people breaking the law? Isn't that a useful function of the site? Is that illegal, in other words?

These are hard questions, but I think you can all read what I'm saying -- they have arrested the wrong thief in this equation. All of the search engine and other types of aggregators of content should sit up and pay serious attention. Google cannot possibly know (without serious cost) the true holders of the copyright to the endpoint content they aggregate (arguably, this is only slightly different than what TVlinks was doing). Suing or arresting people that run search engines for pointing to copyrighted content is not the answer, in my not-so-humble opinion.
-=FeriCyde=-

Post Ohio Linux Fest

2007-10-02T08:33:00.000-05:00

Pictures are filtering into my inbox:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slarz5/sets/72157602227832706

It was a great time. I'll write more about it later. It wasn't much bigger but it was definitely well-attended and the speaker content was top-notch -- Kudo's to Joe Xonker Brockmeier for the way the talks were arranged -- I found myself easily attending a lot of the talks in the Linux International room.

Talk soon!
-=FeriCyde=-

Russian Schools Convert to Linux by 2009

2007-09-24T14:36:00.000-05:00

Let's hope our own educational system follows suit. The article on LXer.com: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/92822/index.html

-=FeriCyde=-

Linux Freedom

2007-09-17T14:10:00.000-05:00

Never cries. I've been pondering a lot about things to be thankful for lately. I have a lot -- I'm a grandfather as of last Wednesday. I have a fun job. My depression has long since ceased being something more than a nuisance in my life. Amazing stuff. Freedom Never cries:

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/92822/index.html.

The title reference is to a Five-For-Fighting tune that honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense the first time I listened to it. It has a way of growing on you, however. The album (Two Lights) is truly a work of art. It doesn't hurt that the guy is a fan of Mustangs -- He's even got a song on the album about his 65 mustang.

Probably my favorite song on the album, however, is a song about life called "The Riddle". It's a very complicated tune (reminds me of the song 100 years, if you've ever heard it). The riddle, "there's a reason for the world", is about life -- about why this world exists (for us to be together) and why love and community are so important.

So we're full circle ;) Back to Linux. The community is getting together soon in Ohio.

See ya there! -=FeriCyde=-

Ohio Linux Fest, 2007

2007-08-13T16:06:00.000-05:00

Well, it gets crazier.

We've selected the keynotes, and the planning is in full swing. This will be year 5 -- and my Dad is even involved.

What other stuff, you say? How about -- classes the day before. Affectionately called "OLFU" (rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it!), this broadens the event considerably. What else? Google sponsoring the after-party? Free beer? Who knows what kind of madness lurks in the hearts of the planners (FeriCyde knows!).

Get Registered Now -- that's all I can say. If the event shapes up to be anything like the last couple of years, it's going to be extremely hard to come down from. I'm bracing myself now.

Other stuff going on in my life... Work Work Work. Brulant is the right place for me -- it's creative, high speed and for the Love of Linux, so much what I need to be about these days. There will be Brulant people at OLF -- ask me in person if you make it to the event.

More blogging between now and then.
Talk Soon!
-=FeriCyde=-

Join the Digg Club and Recieve the Following Links, Absolutely Free!

2007-07-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

(My almost-apologies to George Carlin -- he wouldn't want me to really apologize for this, I just know it).

The sad thing is, I reviewed some of these headline names and found an almost identical Digg link -- that appeared after I started writing this. Be careful what you wish for, I guess ;)

Enjoy!
--FeriCyde

Paris Hilton was Strip Searched!

2007-06-28T05:02:00.000-05:00

I know what you're thinking -- this post has nothing to do with Ohio Linux Fest and / or Mustangs, and you'd be right. Almost. Ohio Linux Fest is about to announce it's Key note speaker list, and it won't involve Paris Hilton -- or Mustangs for that matter.

It will be something positive, enlightening and very party-oriented, but no, sorry, no strip searching of hotel error-ists (Pun_mode=1, sorry).

Yeah, that was a cheap way of getting your attention. I just finished reading CNN -- is there some other news besides Paris Hilton and gory car-crash stories going on? Maybe something positive about people doing something besides making a train-wreck out of their own and other peoples lives? I could bop over to Fox news and get the fair and balanced look at the latest Republican agenda, for some kind of weird balance.

Except, it's not -- it's two different, Network-oriented views that somehow seem to leave out good news. What abot the millions of kids in life that are doing something non-Paris oriented? Like the two young guys I met last night (one loves tennis, the other golf, both going to business school)? Somehow they've failed to make the headlines. In order to be famous, they need to drive on suspended licenses and [do I really need to mention all the crap Paris has done here that falls outside of the bounds of positive social behavior? Do I? It might increase my Google page rank, but I just can't bring myself to it in this context].

Ohio Linux Fest is not going to be a Paris Hilton event -- it's going to be something positive and deep (deep, Paris, just in case you're somehow reading my blog, is a term referring to things that tax the intellectual aspects of being human.) FWIW, I doubt Paris reads my blog. For one, it's about things (as mentioned) that are constructive and intellectual, but for another, she's probably too busy right now reading the bible and enriching her life planning new reality-TV episodes.

OLF is, however, going to happen September 29th of this year, in a large hotel (Sadly, not the Hilton) in Columbus. Expect somewhere between 1200 to 2500 people to attend. We're not sure, it looks like this year it may be wildly more popular than last, so hold onto your hats ;)

As for the hotel being strip-search, I'm happy to report that the likely-hood is probably very low. Most of us are likely to party after the event (the after-event party at OLF is legendary, for those of us sober enough to remember it). We try not to drink and drive on suspended licenses too. The wild OLF-goer partying involves spouting near-religious views on the GPL, vi-vs-emacs and all the other Linux-hacker-culture type stuff -- in other words, just exactly not the kind of stuff you'd find in Paris or even the news media's limited attention-span.

All-in-all, I'm pumped. We're in the final 100 days of registration and I have all of summer to enjoy till the event, so I'm a happy guy. See you all there!
(PS: don't forget to register if you haven't already -- it's free!).
((PS: Shameless_plug_mode=1);)
-=FeriCyde=-

No I haven't died...

2007-06-20T04:58:00.000-05:00

You know a blog post is late when it begins with a title like this.

I have been extremely maxxed on the work/work side. I've achieved a sort of work-life "balance" that is so tipped to the work side that the phrase "work-a-holic" doesn't quite get the dimensions of the beast. Part of it is my emergence from the battle with depression (I think I can proclaim victory, but it's not over -- just beaten into submission).

I'm who I am, and I can live with that; I guess the biggest issues I've faced have been my own haunting fears (things that will get you in the end if you don't face them). Some have been rather hard to face, others just plain funny.

I think the biggest issues have been dealing with my creative side and the fact that I have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to making people laugh, or making something that didn't exist before. When it comes to creativity, my basic thoughts are that most people have it inside of them, but its mystery and connection to the almighty scare them away from using it. When it comes to creativity and being accepted as a male, a third fear is added.

Whatever.

I had a good, creative day, yesterday. Some things I had been pressing against finally broke like they should have (barriers) and something came into being. I worked a dozen different directions -- and a long day. Brulant is a different place. It's hard to explain, but from what I can tell, I'm here for all of the right reasons and it makes me smile.

Driving home after a thunderstorm (I drove the Orange Mach 1 -- the weather report indicated a "bad convertible day"), I rolled through 271 and Cuyahoga national forest. Mist covered about 1/3 of the view and I felt an unusual mystical connection -- alive, human -- the gentle sound of rolling V8 thunder behind me. I know this doesn't probably sound like it all goes together but I guess you had to be there.

In the mirrors I spot a white GT convertible rolling up slowly behind me. As the car pulls alongside, I see the driver. Smiles -- thumbs up. Mustangs are crude animals. They have suspension issues, fit and finish problems and for the most part are "just barely practical (see prior posts). But they're also something else. And it's not just me. Suddenly, for just a couple of seconds I feel that I'm not the only one who understands this.

Some things have died inside of me over the past few months. I'm letting go of some of my bewilderment at the stupidity of the world. I'm not saying I'm ready to forget it -- just that I understand that it happens and that some people are destined to simply be thieves and liars -- and that they have to live with their choices. Those choices inevitably change their worlds in subtle ways that everyone around can sense, but not necessarily see in an overt sense of the word "perception". As tiny as that sounds, the fact is that its enough.

I'm not dead, and neither are they, in the sense that they're still walking the planet. Still, it's a death of a kind that brings not a sense of anger, but simply pity.
--FeriCyde

A stupid Question: Where Are The Microsoft Fanboys

2007-05-15T05:09:00.000-05:00

"Why doesn't Microsoft have a cult religion?" The answer is simple: cults don't form in the mainstream. Should Microsoft be concerned, though?

This is such a treasury of poorly misunderstood ideas (the article, the headline, and the article that spawned the discussion). First, there's the premise: That there aren't people that are outside of employment at Microsoft that are "fanboys". Tons of them exist. I run into them from time to time in my work and hobby life.

They're not all that organized, from what I see, but they're there. The lack of organization isn't "simple", though. I think a multitude of vectors contribute to the situation. Microsoft software itself is typically copied, joined and sometimes (upon rare occasion) created. Since it's often last to the game, the enthusiasm is often found in people that are last to the party (and don't mind being in that space). In other words, while the "coolness" factor of the technology is at its peak, the fan-base forms there -- then Microsoft gets into the game, and the stuff becomes more or less an appliance. About as exciting as a refrigerator.

In a business setting, for some people, a refrigerator is very exciting, however. These people don't necessarily get their jollies blogging about it, though. They're probably not going to form a user group to gain knowledge and network. In short, by the time Microsoft gets into the game, the technology is often boring as paint.

Then there is the open factor; Think of a typical car club -- imagine the "stock Ford 500 fan club". These people drive their (completely stock, maybe some racing stripes added for flair) Ford 500s to some nearby event to talk about how nicely the air condition and all-wheel drive features work. Yeah, even the visual is boring, sorry. I'm sure it will fade with time.

Already faded? Yes, I'm sure it is -- the fact is that, though the Ford 500 may be a decent piece of equipment, it's a late arriver to a rather saturated game of family sedans -- and the mostly stock part? Well, most people that buy a 500 don't buy it to mod it in any way shape or form. That might void the warranty, after all. It might cost more (it's an appliance, more or less, to them).

This is another reason why no one cares about Microsoft enough to get passionate about it -- they won't open their main product-base up to the enthusiast crowd. With the hood solidly welded shut, no one cares.

Face it, their latest operating system (or is an innovative program to help memory companies sell chips? You decide) is a veritable pig in a land of pure-bred stallions -- most of the people I see talking about it treat it with all of the enthusiasm of a root-canal at the dentist. "Oh yeah, I might switch to it later this year after I get more memory for my home computer."

Sure, some of it is the underdog effect, but these factors greatly outweigh that issue -- I look to my Ford Mustang for inspiration here. I have two of the beasts. One of them, a Mach 1, is very stock. It won't be forever. The other, a GT, has barely any stock parts left on it. I take it to shows -- I'm thinking of joining a local club for the hell of it (and because I love the things -- they're a blast). Part of the reason I love em' is that you never know what someone is going to do to trick theirs out. Mustangs are definitely not the underdog.

The reason so is not because there are so many of them (there are) -- the reason is more related to the dimensions of open source. In 1996, Ford stuffed a new motor in the Mustang GT that was very proprietary, for example -- you couldn't change the heads without changing the computer, and they weren't very helpful with the companies that wanted to sell after market parts.

It took em' a while, but they learned from it. They're back to helping these companies so that there will be a healthy after-market. They realized that not playing this game wasn't going to bring them the after-market -- it was going to kill the fan base.

Microsoft might possibly learn from Linux (and Sun) -- to get that needed enthusiasm in the community they need to open the hood of their products. They need a bit more than that (and maybe I'll talk about that later). For now, the fans are going to rally around things that give them a reason (and the freedom) to be passionate.
-=FeriCyde=-

It's happening in my own back-yard...

2007-05-13T05:44:00.000-05:00

Einstein once said "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

In my own back-yard, you have an overworked, under appreciated school network admin, getting ousted from his job for switching his school district to Linux. Besides the inevitable security bonus, lowering of costs and so on, obvious to anyone that's used Linux, the fact that Linux and education simply makes sense is being tossed out.

They aren't just tossing out the idea -- they're tossing out a human being who was attempting to take them to a higher level. I'd suspect (haven't seen everything behind the scenes here -- just been following from the news headlines, which can be tricky) -- I'd suspect that this administrators choice to switch to Linux made people (teachers) in the school district second-guess a decision.

Faced with ditching the warm, comfortable world of windows, someone commissioned a "survey" by an "outside technology firm" to get results to make a new decision -- hire someone who will do what I can only imagine is this school superintendents (and probably a lot of powerful teaching staff's) "no-brainer" choice; Switch to Mac or Windows Vista (I have no idea, but I've seen a lot of stupidity in my day about what Linux can do -- this is my speculation, I'll freely admit).

Why is Linux in education so valuable, important, and likely frightening the piss out of Microsoft and Apple? Because unlike proprietary offerings by these companies -- this operating system comes with the source code (the instructions behind how to make *everything* about it happen). With the source code, some industrious students -- 12-18 years of age, could possibly do more than run the stuff given them -- they might get involved with learning about how the computer operating system works, and not only improve Linux -- they would improve their own aptitude and lives.

What I'm saying is that this guy was making more than an obvious choice for saving the district money -- he was potentially opening up a whole new world of choices to some children that would never get exposed first-hand to Linux any other way.

And that, my friends, is a crying shame. Someone who's superintendent Michael Johnson's boss needs to commission a study into *his* aptitude -- it looks to me like possibly he's micro-managing a network admin -- one who was about to change the world in a town in Ohio. Maybe with some good results, a descision about the superintendents' job shed some light on the situation. In the mean time, I'd go along with Mr Einsteins' evaluation of the universe and stupidity.

I'm not totally sure about the universe either, but I do know that Linux is changing the world -- the only thing holding it back right now is stupidity.
-=FeriCyde=-

Creativity and Destruction

2007-04-19T22:11:00.000-05:00

Look no further than the recent headlines and you can see that it's much easier to destroy than to create.

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of years here on my blog, exploring what it's like to be an American creative male. Some of what I'm talking about, what I'm about, is universal and not grounded in our culture -- it's everyone, not even limited by gender.

I strive for creativity in my life. The word is not necessarily appreciated -- creativity is what we know of God. We can feel his love if we're lucky, but it's hard not to see the world around us as a creation. When I'm in the zone -- writing shell code, putting in a blog entry (like this one), I'm creating.

Something is there -- a thought, a piece of my mind, that wasn't there prior. It's an amazing feeling.

It's not always there. I've blogged about that too. It can be terrifying when the spigot of creativity shuts down for whatever reason -- I think I have to be balanced for it to happen the right way. Balanced in life, in happiness, in my marriage, in my career. When it's all balanced, amazing things flow from my mind and fingertips and I look back and think "man, where did that come from?" I think it's one of the reasons people are put on earth. We're here to imitate the creator. To make, not destroy.

All of the recent events remind me of how precious a gift life and creativity are. That destruction is for the fools in this world. From the people blowing up tanker trucks in Baghdad, to the small minds like the guy that shot 30+ classmates -- destruction simply doesn't prove much to me.

It isn't limited to twisted sheet metal and bullet-ridden bodies. The small, petty, political ways that people use negativity against each other to take someone down. I'm weary of it all. Over my career, I'm simply amazed at the stupidity. The "friend" that spends all of his time complaining behind your back whilst you busily solve the problems of the day. "I'd have done it like *this*" he brags to a co-worker or worse, a boss. Often they miss the fact that the target audience is fully aware that they're not being anywhere near creative. Still, it never ceases to amaze me how much critical commentary can be confused with creative production.

Something to bear in mind. Listen to critical feedback with a careful ear. Never miss an opportunity to share with people like this. I'm all about improving what's there. For what it's worth, the people that want to join your creative endeavors are themselves, often the creative type. The ones that always seem to have commentary, but never quite seem to get to that point where they themselves create or contribute -- these are most often the ones that are doing the most pretending. The creative poser, so to speak.

And they can be destructive. Their words become the bullets. The dead bodies are the lost opportunity to make the world a better place. Been there, done that. A word to the wise: Find people that understand, respect and protect your creativity. It's far to easy to work with people that are just as quickly tearing down the hard work you're producing.

And as the news so easily illustrates through black and red -- it's far easier to destroy than it ever is to create.
-=FeriCyde=-

Shfting Gears

2007-03-20T04:17:00.000-05:00

Spoiler: This post is not about cars...

Some people would argue that there is a fine line between insanity and creativity. I take issue with that statement -- there is no line.

Speaking directly to the creativity part, I'm about to unleash a series of articles (two series, actually). One series is technical and all about what I've been all about for the past couple of years -- Package Management Framework (PMF). PMF speaks directly to the way that enterprise-class environments are managed. It's a philosophy that embraces automation and aligns it with Change Management procedures that inevitably exist in large-scale environments. It speaks directly to the work and I'll be providing articles and coding examples to back it up.

The second series will be on Ohio Linux Fest -- specifically how to roll your own. This series will likely make its way to LXer.com (editors of LXer, you've had your warning! ;).

Yes, I'm enjoying my new job. Some of my most creative moments are coming online, let me tell you.

Till then!
-=FeriCyde=-

Good Signs!

2007-03-05T14:26:00.000-05:00

Dad and I went to the Cleveland auto show Saturday, and determined that the show has turned about as droll as we've seen it in a long time. But we still had a good time, some steak, some ice cream and some wine. Good signs -- Dad, if you're reading, we're on for as many years of this as you can stand ;)

I just started my new job -- and it's my birthday (yippee). I consider this a good sign -- and a hell of good birthday gift. 44th year on the planet, I'm more me today than I was last year, thanks to some really difficult waters and some unexpected (and unwanted) learning experiences. Regardless of this, I have to say I have few regrets in life.

Life...

Life has dealt me some seriously weird blows lately. Besides the usual FeriCyde insanity, that is ... If you could ever use the word "usual" and my persona in the same sentence ... Getting some things off my chest, which, as cathartic as you might hope it would be, turned out to be extremely difficult on the execution front. I am truly blessed with some really good friends. I wish I understood the context for why things happen the way they do -- all I can say is that someday, all of this will make sense.

All of this, as disjointed as it may seem, is not complaining. It's mostly good, in other words.

To my dear friends and the angels in my life: Thank you for the most awesome birthday gifts...
-=FeriCyde=-

Exciting Developments!

2007-02-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

I've just accepted a new position, Technical Architect for Brulant.com. The new job expands my possibilities and I'm grateful for opportunity. Life in general has dealt me new cards every so often -- rarely does it deal me aces like this. Work is a huge part of life. In general, you spend more time at work than at just about any other activity short of family -- and I tend to put a lot of passion and creativity into my work.

The new role is more of a consulting bend than prior roles, although I've been in and out of several companies in North East Ohio -- and the word "permanent" as a job description continues to baffle me. If the company is out of business (like, say, Redicon corporation -- 1992-1996) was the job "permanent"? Is any technologically focused discipline "permanent"? Our language has not kept up with the times. I strive for permanence in my life, but continue to see the technological landscape as such an ever-changing thing that none of our usual constructs can apply.

I start on my birthday (I consider this to be a good sign). Stuff like this used to stress me out quite a bit -- now I view it as a gift -- so the stress, comparatively so, is very minimal. Other things take their place. Family issues, my wife's Mom in the hospital, for example, are far larger items.

The message here is that everything has perspective. Getting through complex things in the past, such as chaning jobs, has prepared me for this moment. I look back over the past 2 years with gratitude for all that has transpired. Remember this when the crazy-ness of your life overwhelms you. You're here for a reason -- and although that reason may not be apparent to you in the present, you have to know that sooner or later you'll have the explanation.
-=FeriCyde=-

Stability

2007-02-05T13:59:00.000-05:00

Control

You get the feeling that cars are just so unsafe these days, and the magic bullet is technology. Here's a nice quote from our Friends at CNN/Money:

A study performed last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety indicated that crash deaths on American roads could be reduced by one third if all vehicles were equipped with electronic stability control.

Great. Let's augment cars to have features to make up for insipidly lame drivers. I see all the gadgets coming -- soon cars will brake when they see you tailgating (some cars have this already), slow you down when you're speeding (Bonus points to the first manufacturer who integrates the cruise control with a radar detector) and automatically stop when you fall asleep at the wheel.

Speaking of which: Are we going to be allowed to drive in the future?

Let's put some of my sarcasm in perspective. I drive a Mustang GT in the snow around Ohio. Think it's dangerous? Possibly, but no more so than an unloaded 60's era pickup truck (Yeah, I know I'm reaching pretty low for comparison there, but bear with me). It makes up for it on the 99% of other days when the pavement is dry, or marginally wet in the summertime (I'm sure it's still dangerous for morons that forget they're pushing over 300 ft-lbs of torque).

What I'm driving at (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) is driver responsibility. We're packing cars with a ton of electronics, safety controls and the like and I'm sure that in the future some deaths *will* be avoided thanks to these devices. And that I suppose is worth something (We are, after all, talking about human life here). But I can't shake the feeling that a part of the drive to push this crap into vehicles wasn't manifested by people of the passive generation learning to drive. These people think of the steering wheel of their car like the remote on their TV, or worse, the game controller on their PS3 -- they can't imagine that the SUV they've been driving just might have its origins in heavy duty trucking hardware. Stuff like that had all of the precise handling characteristics of decent Lowe's handcart whilst giving you the ability to drive over logs in a forest. It was a decent trade off in the beginning of SUV-land.

Yeah, I know it didn't have to be that way, but there is a root in what I'm saying here: Heavy hardware comes at a price. So one solution is simple; Make the future generations of SUVs off of car chassis and let the buying public imagine themselves to be the off-road types in safer hardware (before you get outraged at this bait and switch, this happened already, just in case somehow you missed the news over the past, say, 5 years).

Face it -- 99% of these puppies will never see mud in their lifetimes, which is just as well, given the payload. No, I'm not talking about hauling golf clubs or computer hardware or some other fragile payload -- I'm talking to any parent of 3 that has ever done time cleaning the back seat of a station wagon (er, sorry, cross-over-SUV!) that has seen items like jelly sandwiches and soda pop smeared over 80% of the area -- and we're talking smooth freeway driving here. Take that same trip and payload off-road for a few minutes and we'll see the backseat *painted* in jelly with a soda-pop veneer. The coverage will likely be closer to 100% and if you've leased the thing you'll need an extra clause in your insurance to cover cleanup.

What I'm really saying is that it's too bad it has to come to this. The solution for some of this could be had with a bit more emphasis on good driving techniques. Let's try not tailgating people, for example. Maybe slow down in heavy traffic situations -- get off the damn cell phone while we're at it.

I do a lot of driving and it's amazing to me how many drivers are on a cell phone around me on the freeway. I have a bright yellow Mustang GT -- the 3 times it was almost smacked all had one thing in common -- a driver on a cell phone. The thing is so obvious its like driving a warning beacon with stripes, yet people are oblivious when they're talking away.

I gotta wonder, too, what the road conditions are going to be like with all of this safety hardware. Maybe this is the only way. Possibly when the machines take over driving to and from destinations, things will in fact be better.

We inch closer every day. Remember life without cell phones? Neither do I. Driving without traction control, anti-lock brakes (yeah, these things are good) -- a lot of things are quickly popping into existence, and soon we'll see a point where the amount of computer hardware in a car will rival that of a data-center today. We've already crossed that line a few times in the past, so this isn't all that hard to predict.

I don't know where I was headed here, except to whiners'-ville. Maybe I'm just wondering out loud if a bit more common sense could be shoveled into the equation where it belongs, and less of this computers-know-best interference and demand could be avoided. Maybe I just like the crudeness of my pony-car, and worry that someday it'll shut down on me when I'm trying to enjoy myself. Whatever the fear, it's getting more real by the year.

Please Ford, keep stuff like this out of the Mustang Experience -- I'll take a bit of crudeness and joy, any day.

Ohio Linux Fest 2007!

2007-01-21T16:30:00.000-05:00

You read that right, we're planning the OLF, and it's gonna be the best Linux Fest ever, near as I can tell.

I think we've hit critical mass, as far as an event can go. If it's anything like last year, and you're a Linux Geek, you're gonna be sorely disappointed if you don't get to go. Watch this space for announcements (and of course, ohiolinux.org!).

What is Ohio Linux Fest? The best Linux geek party you can imagine. Imagine a community event that makes trade shows look droll and boring. Mainly because most trade shows are droll and boring, that's not all that hard. It's got trade show like stuff going on, but mostly it's got stuff going on that focuses on things only a Linux geek could love -- talks about technology, tech celebrities, parties. You can't imagine, so don't -- just go to the event.

It's a ways off (don't panic!) -- September 29th, mark the day!
-=FeriCyde=-

Brand Deletion Continues...

2007-01-09T07:44:00.000-05:00

Looks like Ford is dropping out of the minivan market (See http://www.wvva.com/News/index.php?ID=9823) and focusing their efforts on the Station-wagon market.

Did I say Station Wagon? oops. I mean, Cross-over SUV market. Yeah, that's what they're called -- God forbid you should do something boring, even if it might work to keep your customer base coming back next year.

For what it's worth, I'm not a minivan kinda guy. I understand the need though -- and recently after driving my Dads' Honda Odyssey came decided that in my eyes they hadn't gotten the appreciation they deserved. I was stuck in one for about 16 hours with 5 howling nieces and nephews over the course of about 4 days. The trip made me appreciate the utilitarian value of the beasts all that much more. Birth control is also under-rated (just kidding guys -- your constant replaying of Spice World will never be forgiven, though).

Anyway, Ford deleted the FreeStyle brand. Poof! You want a boring ole Minivan, ya gotta shop somewhere else. If you're sensitive to domestic brand, that's likely Chrysler, which makes some of the most boring sheet metal this side of Detroit.

Ford probably just moved a host of customers over there, actually. The Edge thing is really cool -- it does look a lot cooler than a Minivan -- and I can see why they might sense a change in the wind. But honestly, why take the risk? Maybe they feel there is no risk. I haven't driven nor owned a recent FreeStyle, so i have no idea how pissed off the customer base is going to be.

The point is this: Ford is big enough to rob a minivan from somewhere else in its vast expanse of sister companies and related partners. They could have *something* on the lots to at least call a FreeStyle. Nope, you're gonna have to adjust to the crossover station wagon SUV mentality real quick or pound salt.

What about next year when some market sensitive clod decides that station wagon/crossover SUVs are going out? What brand name will you concoct/delete to make that market switch? Maybe all this fretting is for not. Maybe by then all Ford will make are F150s and Mustangs.
--FeriCyde

The Ford Mustang ... STATION WAGON?!?

2007-01-01T14:30:00.001-05:00

What? Did you read right? A station wagon Mustang?

In case you haven't heard, Ford is considering a Mustang station wagon and 4 door "coupe" version of it's Mustang.

Hey, I can understand the temptation -- the folks over at Chysler have been doing something similar with the awesome Magnum wagon, and new Challenger.

A couple of thoughts -- the Challenger thing is a nifty ride, but I've always thought that Chrysler polluted the original recipe by doing what they did -- and I'm not alone.

The Magnum is a different story -- if I was going to ever own a wagon, that'd be the ride. It simply looks like something so bad-ass that, well, it gets a nod of approval -- but it's its own brand, after all. It's not a Challenger Magnum station wagon, it's a Magnum in its own right.

Circling back to the Stang. Ford needs to do something similar -- call it what they want, make a Mustang-like wagon or 4-door, but please Ford, listen closely -- Don't pollute the Mustang brand with 4-doors and Wagons.

For starters, the V6 version of the Mustang already comes close do doing this. The only reason I'm somewhat forgiving of the V6 version is that they've done such a wonderful job of making it have some power and economy -- and not all kiddies should be roaming the country-side with 300 horsepower, after all. My nephew owns one -- it's sounds awesome.

But all kids, from 10 to 60 love the Mustang -- the present brand wealth has provided Ford with a much-needed shining star in a sea of bland brand neutrality and at a much-needed time. Ford, where Trucks have been job one for the past decade, has done so well with the Mustang and done it right for quite a long time. It would be such a shame for them to blow it by making something so ordinary as a wagon out of the thing.

What could they do instead (besides watch Chrysler dealers continue to suck away future family-oriented sporty car buyers with stuff like the Magnum and Challenger)? Well, I'm all about suggestion...

The Ranchero

What ever happened to this vehicle? Remember the days when Ford made a two-door car-based truck? Well, they likely still own the trademark to the name, so why not do some retro exploitation. It can use Mustang parts -- even the sheet-metal (say, look just like the Mustang concept stuff they're throwing around, even). But have it use a different name, that's all.

People will say stuff like "Look, it's just like a Mustang in the front" -- but enthusiasts will gleefully say "Yeah, but I own a real Mustang. And mean it too.

Some other parts-bin suggestions: Take the automated side-doors off of a mini-van and create a two-door Wagon that has long-ass doors that automatically open (on track-like rails) so that the front and back seats are instantly accessible. The thing will look like a Mustang-like Nomad, in other words, and use the hardware parts used to make a mini-van work. Make a 4-door version, a truck-like version and a station wagon. All of them can use similar parts, the Stang chasis and front end -- for sure the engines -- and the Ranchero brand. Yes, even the 4 door. The Ranchero is dead, but breath some life into it and see what happens.

That way someone gets the coolness of 2-doors, the utility of mini-van and the sporty-ness of a Mustang all in one shot -- but please, if you do this, Don't call it a Mustang -- you'll blow the brand and the entire idea of what the Mustang stands for, completely.

While We're On The Subject of BRAND

Listen closely Ford : Please stop tossing out brands like yesterdays trash. Why, oh why, the 500? Why not the Taurus again? What's with you people? People go back to dealerships years later to buy the same car they had last time if it worked for them. If you spent time managing a brand, all the time it takes to create one and so on, why the hell do you toss it out like this?

Honda still makes the Civic, Toyota still makes the Camry, and so on -- the people that buy these cars like to believe that they're going to be able to get another one in a couple of years.

Let's take a real-world example, very close to home. My wife loved her Ford Probe (yes, at one time, that was going to be the Mustang, so it belongs in this conversation). The Probe was a Mazda 626 re-branded. It was a damn good car for a lot of reasons -- sporty, with a hatchback, good utility, gas mileage and so on. Ford and Mazda got into some kind of stupid pissing match or whatever, and *poof* it's gone one day.

And we were looking to buy one, at just that time. Luckily for us (or possibly not) Mercury was re-branding the Ford Contour as a 2-door. It had a hatch, some other probe-like features -- it was the same formula for the car as the Probe, in other words. That car (the *new* Cougar) was really cool at the time. By the way, Ford, I distinctly remember riding on a Ferry at Put-in-Bay with my wife, the proud owner of a 1999 Cougar in the summer of 1998 (We were among the first to buy the car). Riding right next to the car was a fairly new, last generation Cougar owner and his wife. Man was he pissed about what Mercury had done to his Cougar -- but my wife fell in love with the car. Among the reasons was the color, Melina Blue -- purple, which they quickly quit making available, mostly due to the country's aversion to variety.

Anyway, the Cougar was well designed but so poorly manufactured that within 75,000 miles I was about ready to scream -- every trip to the dealer was a $500 bill. That is, if you don't count the sunroof track, which was a 1500 dollar bill, and a joke.

Why make something so good, so bad, you ask? It wasn't a truck, is only my guess. It's all academic, because when we went to replace the Cougar I decided to step in and limit my wifes' options -- we were going to look at Honda, Toyota and Acura (Honda, again). She chose an Acura RSX -- but lets suppose, Ford, you had done your job, and kept quality at Job #1? She might have been in the market for another Cougar.

Except, you decided, in your infinite brand-killing wisdom, to simply stop making them.

Now, some people might point at lack-luster sales figures and say that was justified. Maybe the sales were related to quality problems -- I'd say that would be partially true, but even more likely would be the fact that not all Probe buyers found their way to Mercury dealerships -- two wrongs, in other words, likely lead to something far worse than one.

Let's suppose instead that Ford still made a quality vehicle, called the Probe. My wife might still own one -- a new one, and not an Acura. By the way, she loves the Acura. It's very dependable, handles like a dream and it's got the exact same formula -- it's one of the few two-door hatchbacks on the market. Oh, and Honda isn't perfect -- Acura is dropping the RSX this year. Great idea Acura...

The lesson here is real-world. People are brand focused, and it's hard to focus on targets that are constantly disappearing in the night like so many blurry road-signs. Ford, please look at Mustang sales as a stunning, stark example (similar to the F150) where you are doing everything right.

So, what else, besides the brand, is right about the Mustang?

Let me count the ways:

It's sporty, truly: The V8 works, the V6 is good enough for most people and there's no suppressing the "grin-factor" of opening the throttle on a Mustang.
It's Fun (see the above).
The Mustang has a truly usable back seat. Some people might argue with this statement. These people are forgetting that mostly kids will be riding back there. Most reasonably-sized people can fit back there, I'd argue. People that don't agree with this statement need to try and sit in the back seat of the last generation Firebird/Camaro (and, yes, I've attempted to do *exactly* that, and failed -- that is if don't count putting your feet across the seats, making it into a '3-seater'). I'd argue that this factor alone cost GM the customers that were looking at the cars in any realistic sense near the end of its last run.
It's personal. There's something about the Mustang that's more than a car, in other words. Like a coat that you've fallen in love with, there's something more about the Mustang that makes you forgive it for all of its other faults. Extremely impractical tires, scary winter driving (I live in Ohio and yes, I've driven many, many miles in the Snow in my Mustang GT), piss-poor trunk space -- it's got a list of things that make it, um, have character. We're willing to forgive all this, because it's more than a car to us.
It's recognizable as a Mustang. You never mistake it for something else. If it has 4 doors or looks like a wagon sometime in the future, all of this could change.
It's practical, after all (just barely). You can drive it work, you can still haul a set of golf clubs in the thing. It can carry 4 people -- it's not a Corvette, in other words. It's not a Honda S2000 (Despite being a short guy, when I sit in an S2000 I feel like I'm riding in glove-box with wheels. I have no idea how tall people perceive the thing). It's still usable as a vehicle and so, arguing that it's truly impractical depends upon what you want to do with it. For a lot of people, it's a very usable car.

Are you listening Ford? Your executive summary may include stuff like the Magnum or the Challenger, but please don't go out there and start shooting holes in the Mustang brand by making variations that water the brand down to nothing-ness. People still haven't forgotten the Pinto-based Mustangs of the mid-70s (1974-78) -- some Mustang enthusiasts will even go so far as to say that those were really "Mustang IIs" -- not real Mustangs because they were so far off. I'd argue otherwise -- they were close enough to the formula.

In other words, please, please make more sporty family-friendly vehicles, but brand them with names that will make people recognize them as non-Mustangs. People aren't stupid -- if you make a Mustang-based wagon and it has Mustang parts on it, they'll still proudly point at them and feel the inclusion -- but the lack of Mustang name will make the Mustang owners have just enough exclusion so as not to be offended.

That's my suggestion. That, and stop killing off your brands. People need to come back for stuff and have that feeling that something good will be there year after year -- not necessarily unchanged, but the formula for success should be incorporated each time. That's really why the brand mention is in this article -- keep the formula the same, but change the ingredients that vary often enough to make it all fresh.

And yes, I do so love my Mustangs. Good job there.

Paul Ferris has been writing on-line for the past 8 years or so, mostly about computer software He's had several Mustangs, his first, in high-school, a 1969 coupe, his present fold includes a 2004 Mach 1 and a 2000 GT convertible.

Too many days since the last post...

2006-12-29T11:44:00.000-05:00

And life hasn't been all that bad -- my creativity has mostly been soaked up by work, actually.

So let's talk about life. It's not all that bad. My 2000 Mustang GT is back on the road and better than ever. Energy suspension bushings, KYB adjustable shocks/struts, lower springs, louder pipes (BBK X-pipe, American Thunder flowmasters, it's a beautiful sound).

Family -- the usual issues, but mostly better. Lisa and I just celebrated 20 years of marriage. I got a new wedding band (White gold) and so did Lisa.

I haven't written much this year because I've been catching my breath, mostly. If 2007 is anything like 2006 I might be in for some really good times. Time will tell.

I have a rant directed at Ford's marketing people and plans for a station-wagon Mustang. That will go up here in the next couple of weeks.

Cheers, and happy new year!
-=FeriCyde=-

The post-OLF Blues return (sort of)

2006-10-02T10:51:00.000-05:00

Okay,

This year was way more fun than last year. I think I was prepared as much as possible, I didn't have to speak, and that meant I could just attend and have a good time.

Except I got volunteered to do the A/V coordination and announce ballroom 3 speakers (fine by me, I'm a ham ;) -- didn't slow me down or limit me at all, actually. I had to say that Rich Bowen still somehow manages to 'learn' me more about apache, every time I see him talk.

Second one was the Novell desktop guy -- but I'm being somewhat opinionated here -- almost all of the talks were extremely good.

Go next year if you didn't get to do this one -- it's going to be bigger and better if history is any kind of indicator. More about this as time permits (work work work;)

-=FeriCyde=-

Ohio LinuxFest 2006: Plans, presentations, and penguins

2006-09-13T14:10:00.000-05:00

We're mentioned on Linux.com! "Linux and open source software users in the Buckeye State who want to network with several hundred of their colleagues will get the chance when Ohio LinuxFest 2006 gets underway later this month. The one-day conference, to be held on Saturday, September 30, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, features presentations ... " Rock on!

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Ohio Linux Fest 2006!

2006-09-11T21:59:00.001-05:00

Ohio Linux Fest -- The name says it all. Don't miss out if you live near Ohio, because the biggest Linux event in the area is about to go down September 30.

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Ohio Linux Fest 2006!

2006-09-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

If you're into Linux, and haven't been living under a rock, you would have heard of Ohio Linux Fest. Go and register (follow the link to the article) now or you'll miss out on the biggest Linux geek fest this side of the Mississippi river ;) -=Fericyde=-

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Gratitude

2006-09-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

September 11, 2001 was a nodal point in history. Everything changed. It's not like the delta on the curve wasn't already pretty high -- it's just that suddenly, we hit an inflection point, and the graph that marks change in our society suddenly took a drastic, upward bend there.

Like it or not, we're facing a point in history where mankind might do itself in with a pretty bad virus -- not AIDs, not the bird flu -- we're talking pure thought. I use the word 'pure' here in the strictest sense. Killing people, whether to stamp out Terrorism, or to justify your Islamic right to world domination -- either case is obviously not going to make the world a better place. Need examples? Go to CNN and FOX news and look at the stupid crap going on in the name of God and Country. No, I'm not just talking the idiocy of Osama, I'm also talking about the tendency of the far right and left to use what's going on as a political lever. Don't forget, we're on the side of God (yes, that's sarcasm).

Our society is changing. We're not really equipped to fight thought viruses. We're more about news coverage, heavy armor, nuclear threats and chemical warfare. The hard questions aren't being asked. How do you deal with people who think that God justifies their right to kill others? How do you end this without nuclear holocaust?

It's been too long since the nuclear scares of the 50's -- I'm too young to remember them, but I saw enough fear in the eyes of my mentors as a kid. I remember seeing the video about what to do when a bomb hits (by the way, if it's close, there ain't much to do).

I think as a society one of the sad after effects of technology is that you grow used to the idea that there's not much that can't be solved by more technology. Sadly, there isn't much that technology can do if a nuke hits. We have to learn to respect the bomb -- and it's a genie that very few view in a positive light. My biggest fear is in our retaliatory second moves if the idiot extremists get one on the shores of this country.

Enough of that. September 11 makes me aware that despite all of the violence and insanity in this world, I have much to be grateful for. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that some of what has happened has made us more introspective as a whole. Yes, there are people who will never be that way, but a large majority of the population I feel has taken the punch on the chin and decided to look inward.

We need to be grateful that we're still standing and stand together. We need to continue to make this country something that protects freedom and shines like there's no tomorrow. I'm grateful to have a job, a spouse I love, a healthy family -- isn't that all anyone could ever ask for?

It's hard to remember the good things sometimes, even when they're staring you in the face. I haven't been looking hard enough, that's all I'm saying.

Thanks for listening.
-=FeriCyde=-

Life is truly complex...

2006-09-05T12:58:00.000-05:00

Time flies when you're having fun, and I am indeed, having fun.

There are moments, though, where the depression of last year haunts me. All I can say is that all of the pain aside, it's not a truly bad thing to have to adjust to in your life -- at least if you attack it the way I did.

I've developed an exercise strategy that involves about 10 hours a week of cardio, and about 2 hours a week of upper body exercise. In all, I've dropped about two inches at my waste -- but mainly, when I keep up with it, my sanity is fairly good. I'm able to weather some seriously hard emotional turbulence this way.

It's not like I haven't had a lot of that lately, but that's another story and it's very personal. What I can tell you is that I'm very blessed. I have a lot of friends who care about me and it shows in so many big and little ways that I'd have to be blind not to know I'm loved on this planet.

My time is split between work, working out, automotive work (it's a thing I like to believe is cathartic, but the jury is still out there for the moment) and my family. Between all of the insanity, it's easy to miss what a lucky guy I am to be here, in other words.

Thanks for your prayers,
-=FeriCyde=-

Okay, so May kicked my butt hard...

2006-06-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

I awoke, sometime in late April to a bolt of thunder (I know this sounds bogus, but I swear it's true) -- staring straight at my alarm clock, which was reading precisely 5:04 -- and for some strange reason I read this as a warning. I thought "That's may 4th, I'll have to watch that day closely."

May 4th, it turns out, was to be a serious problem. It started out OK -- had a going away party in Cleveland for a Tech friend, and got to hang with some Key people I've missed for a while. I didn't drink -- I haven't had but a handful of drinks since the onset of depression, which I'm fighting and winning, thanks to not drinking and working out like a fiend. I figured that the day was mostly over at 11:00 PM when I got home, and decided to move a sofa back into my living room, which had been recently re-carpeted.

And accidentally dropped the sofa onto my right knee, which it turns out was worthy of a warning. The bottom edge of the sofa had a blunt edge, which cut into my right knee so deeply that I could see my tendon and down into the ... well, it was grizzly, let's just say. It made the most horrible sucking sound as I stood up.

And I realized that my life was about to change. The emergency room people told me that I was "lucky". This was a new definition of the word, one that I hadn't been previously acquainted with (apologies to Scott Adams). The tendon across my knee-cap had been lightly grazed, and would not need surgery. 12 stitches, some local anesthetic, and I was on my way home. Later, after I began howling, my wife would take a trip to the drug store at 3:00 AM in the morning, to get the heavy duty pain killers that I would need to make it through the night. My last sentence that night (morning) went (according to Lisa) "I think it's working *smile*".

I had planned a trip to Missouri for my 25th class reunion. I was going to drive -- 700 miles or so. It was looking like I was going to be bedridden, possibly. The month was already complicated by other relatives in the hospital, and then this, and then two days later I found myself seriously worried about my son. There were two highlights and one more downer.

The two highlights -- one being an incredible 25th class reunion, which went off about as well as could be imagined (I got to see 17 of 25 class members, which is pretty damn good percentage-wise), and one of my kick-ass coworkers joining my team at work.

Now for the big bummer -- kitchen fire. Yeah, smoke damage, the whole nine yards. May kicked my ass, in other words. And, believe it or not, it was fairly minor on the scale of life (which, after the recent depression thing, has been expanded greatly). In other words, it was a suck month, mostly, but compared to recent events, thanks to me dealing with my life changes, it was a mere speed-bump on the road of life.

Life tosses you these things, and the aftermath hasn't been pleasant for either Lisa or myself -- construction people here at all hours, my knee waking me up in the middle of the night -- but it's still manageable. I'm hoping for some slowdown soon. That would be really nice.

My Mustang is almost ready for summer -- two bent rims are being straightened and I decided (thanks to the knee) to pass the torch of the next level of modifications to some neighborhood kids who, near as I can tell, live to work on Mustangs. They were like kids in a candy store with the boxes of parts (Another blog entry there).

Oh, let's hope the ride will be bumpy in the car, and not so much in life. Thanks for listening!
--FeriCyde

Punking Matt Smith

2006-03-30T08:28:00.000-05:00

Time: March 29, 2006. Location: the AppleBees' in Brunswick, OH The poor guy, all he wanted to do is to meet for dinner so we could shoot the usual shit -- and what happens? Some waitress insults him.

So, who is Matt? Matt is a friend that for years, I've insulted with the same running gag. It all began innocently -- well, not exactly -- one of the Matt Smith-ism's is "You're such a tool!"

This he would say to me on most occasions when I was simply trying to communicate some fact or other about work. Okay, so maybe at times I can be just as obnoxious, but everyone needs a signature style...

Anyway, Smith kept calling me a tool, so I started responding different ways, all more or less categorically placing the "tool-ness" squarely back in Smith's court.

Then I began a campaign: I began to "find" documents that "proved" that Smith was the _real_ tool. Artifacts began to appear on his cubicle wall, including (but not limited to) the following:

A 24-inch long wrench, with Matt Smiths' name on it
A print-out from a google search for the word "tool", which begins with the usual google "did you mean Matt Smith" and where all of the entries had his name in them.
A screen-shot of Internet Explorers' tool menu, pulled down, and right under the "Mail and News" menu option, clearly, is the "Matt Smith" option.
The man page for "Tool", which clearly had Matt Smith-ism's all over it.

You get the drift -- soon, other people were joining the party, and by the time Matt left the company (I know what you're thinking -- but seriously we're friends and it didn't have anything to do with me), his wall was almost covered with this crap.

So, back to last night.

For some reason, Matt is ultra-paranoid about me getting him with these kinds of practical jokes when we eat out. I'm sure it's not related to a while back when the door greeting people seemed to know he was a tool.

He comes in, all paranoid-like, and sits down. We have a good meal and we're talking (it's been like an hour and a half now, since he sat down -- his defenses are completely down). We're talking about recognition as a hacker, and I (totally casually) grab one of the waitresses who's simply vacuuming the floor.

"Do you recognize this guy?" I ask.

Short pause, and she says "Wait, yeah! The web. I saw a picture of you!" Matt's face lights up. "Weren't you on the tool section of the Craftsman web site?"

God, I wish I could have had this on video. It was a solid 5 minutes before I stopped laughing and Matt stopped threatening to slash my tires.

It's the little things in life that make it all worth while...
-=FeriCyde=-

On the Cover of the Rollin' Stone...

2006-03-18T16:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's happened to me. I've had a few articles posted to slashdot -- this is even bigger for me -- I'm up on Digg.com as of about an hour before this posting:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Mocking_Bill_Gates_Mockery_of_the_Mockup_$100_Laptop

I guess it's time to re-evaluate my priorities (mabye I'm just returning to normal, or rather, "FeriCyde normal").
-=FeriCyde=-

Linux Disney Land Returns

2006-03-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

Hopefully, not momentarily.

I might just be seeing balance return to my life -- what an amazing thing. When creative Linux writing returns (Ok, it's a stretch here, gotcha), you know I'm getting better.

The article can be found here.

Linux Disney land is back -- pray for me and that it's for good.
-=FeriCyde=-

Winning Over The Male Psyche

2006-03-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

Winning is baked into you if you're a guy in our culture. From the moment you're brought into this world, the social programming begins. Everything is about Winners and Losers. Think about all of the social contexts -- even the women are bought in the stupidity -- what's a guy in a bar scenario that no one wants to approach? "Loser!".

Losers abound.

Wasn't Jesus the ultimate Loser? Didn't the guy have an entire one-up on society and mankind (he was, after all, the Son of God, imbibed with immortal powers, and don't forget, perfect). Yet, he didn't chose to win -- he chose to lose -- the most important thing (we're led to believe) that a human can be given -- his life. He gave it away for us.

We didn't, after all, win it.

Jesus, What a loser.

Yes, this is on my mind today, as I laugh about an incident that illustrates just how stupid this mentality is. I was working out at the local Y yesterday, and bumped into an old friend. We got into a discussion about churches and I explained that I still hadn't exactly found one that would suit me. On that topic, I explained that one of the tiring aspects of my going to church usually boils down to the fact that the Sunday school classes are inevitably taught by 'coach' guy types -- these people, in my not so humble opinion, have more than lost out on spiritual growth. Why? Because they've bought into the entire sports paradigm as a way to run their spiritual lives.

This is a reflex, mostly -- it's something ingrained at such a fundamental level, it tosses them off the mark early. I think possibly I was lucky -- my father was not a big sports fanatic, and often spent time trying to make me think about social situations in a different way.

Back to the YMCA...

I was talking loudly, because I was winded, and on a treadmill at the time. I explained that I found very little about spiritual growth in sports, and that the male mentality of trying to paste life into these contexts was something that made me weary when it happened.

As if on Gods' queue, this guy, lifting weights, who had overheard me, chimed in:

guy: "Well, that's what it's all about, after all, isn't it?"

Me: "What?" (clearly, he'd only heard part of my conversation)

guy: "Winning -- life -- it's about winning."

Me: "No, it's not." I said. "That's what I'm trying to get across. Very little in life is about winning and losing."

This disturbed him somewhat.

guy: "No, think about it!" , he said, grinning.

Me: "I have, trust me." I countered. "What was the last thing you won? Did you win you paycheck, or was it a compromise?" More examples like this were being shouted out by me at this time. I'll skip them for brevity. I ended my quest to get him to think by pointing out that we get our salvation by Gods' graces -- not by winning it.

That made him think. He mumbled some bible verse that he was fond of and walked off. Still grinning, because he thought he'd "won" the argument.

Later I ran into my friend in the hallway -- she'd mercifully walked out in the middle of the "discussion".

"Well, how did that end?" She asked. Clearly I'd made more people than myself uncomfortable in this situation.

I explained that I wasn't trying to win or lose the "argument" -- but that clearly he was exactly the kind of thing I was fighting. I mean, how much better can you get -- his view was so slanted, he couldn't even step outside of the bounds of the small fence in his head. Possibly, he might have stopped and thought "Hey, maybe here's a chance to think about something outside of the bounds of what I've been taught. Maybe it's not time to win an argument -- maybe it's just time to discuss something."

My friend and I talked for about 10 minutes on various subjects related to this. I'm beginning to see that it's more than just an irritant -- this thing I've stumbled into is within myself, and it's going to be removed, or at least altered for comic effect. I'm certainly not going to sit back quietly and watch this kind of stupidity like a good spectator -- it's time to join the "game".

I do plan on going to church today (one of the side effects -- someone invited me to their church).

I'll keep an open mind -- that's probably going to be the first problem I face in church, by the way -- and enjoy myself.

Someone's gotta do it, might as well be me.

-=FeriCyde=-

The Freedom to let loose...

2006-02-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

Talking to a friend recently about the ability to be childish, or rather, the freedom to be so. One of the things I've missed in my ranting about all things creative and male is the fact that guys are allowed to be childish in certain dimensions that aren't allowed on the feminine side.

Specifically, if you're a guy, you can, if you wish:

Act like you've recently just discovered puberty.
Drive a monster truck.
Play soldier, football or any other contact sport.
Get all muddy.
Shoot things (don't tell me all you hunters are seriously doing this because it's work, I'll laugh).
Do things that are dangerous, without regard to your well being (stuff like drinking games, wild off-roading, skydiving and high mountain climbing fall into this category)

Society allows men to be "boys". Women are expected to "grow up" at some point -- although this is showing signs of change, it's generally more frowned upon still. For example, people tend to shrug their shoulders when a man drops his fatherly duties and runs out on his wife. If the wife does it to the man, there's a lot of character questioning and eyebrow raising. The guy just wasn't ready to settle down, while the woman clearly has issues -- I mean, what kind of mother leaves her kids for crying out loud?

Yeah, it's one-sided, that's my point.

Guys are allowed to be childish, but only within similar confines of what I've outlined above.

Remember how Rosie Greer (he was a famous football player) loved needlepoint? Much noise was made about his hobby -- not because he was good at it (who knows, I never saw an example), but because he was a guy. God forbid he be creative with his hands here. Probably some people would question his sexual orientation -- outside of the room. Rosie looks like you don't really want to piss him off in this photo of the cover of his book.

Now, if Rosie's hobby had been lobbing sticks of dynamite at small animals, there would have been no story at all. That's a story about a real man there, not some pansy with needles that's probably making a scarf for his pet poodle.

But my friend had a point -- guys are really allowed more freedom to cut loose in our society. If you're female, you're allowed to cut loose along a reciprocating set of lines. You're allowed such things as:

Ability to dress creatively, within limits.
Make-up (see the hunting reference above).
Do Crafts and cooking (See Rosie, you crossed the line here).
The freedom to have a bubbly personality.
Artistic expression (What -- guys are allowed to do this?)
The ability to dance unimpeded by social norm. Don't tell me you recently saw a guy doing creative dance outside of a musical somewhere.

The lines get blurry when any of the above are crossed. Find a woman that likes to hunt deer or enjoys a good game of football, and you've probably got a gal that can chew tobacco with the best of em' -- it's simply frowned upon.

And what's so bad about a gal who does dip anyway? I have a neighbor who's daughter-in-law dips. It seriously bums her out. Her son dips too, but she's never mentioned it to me being an issue. Why? Because as a guy, you're allowed to spit all you want. It's "un-lady-like" for her daughter-in-law to spit, so she crossed the line.

Why I'm blathering on about all of this, I'll never know ;)

Okay, I know why, and if you've been reading here, so do you. You know that I'm making a point of some of the gender lines in our society. More to this point, my issues isn't with what I'm allowed to do -- it's with the constraints. There are too many constraints on what you're allowed to do for one gender or another -- and it makes for friction at times.

Closing this argument with a small story.

About 15 years ago we had some friends with a son and daughter who were within a year or so of age. The son was in a baseball league, as was the daughter. Turns out that the daughter was a better ball player (and she was younger, to boot), so the parents were forced to act quickly to resolve the issue.

What they did fixed the problem, although the daughter wasn't too happy about it, hearing my wife describe all of the problems that were created as part of the solution. The motivations described here are not inferred at all -- the parents were blatant about their reasons for doing all of it, and completely missed the obvious sense of inequity they were creating.

They didn't want little Johnny to have an inferiority complex, so, you guessed it, they pulled the daughter out of the league -- and put her on the junior cheerleader team.

Yeah, I'm sure that didn't affect the daughters' sense of self at all.

Just for thoughts,
-=FeriCyde=-

Suits

2006-02-25T05:29:00.000-05:00

Funny thing, even the word "suit" has a series of connotations that I can't totally explain. I used to use it a lot in articles to refer to business-types (often the enemy of geek-types, BTW). That is, until I realized one day, recently, that I had become a "suit".

And even more to the point, enjoyed wearing them.

But why, I had to ask myself, do I enjoy suits? I mean, I didn't used to like the damn things. They were a serious pain to wear -- and I'm kind of a rough and tumble guy in real life (honest). Yet, here I was, enjoying something that by my own admission, is kind of bland when you look at it.

Then it struck me last week, after I was trying on a nice suit in a department store -- I realized why, suddenly, I liked them.

They're one of the few things about masculine culture that doesn't make me wretch, or want to hide under a rock. I mean, I simply get embarrassed watching James Bond movies -- it's not that I don't like the action -- it's the stupid phony reaction shots from the female-models-posed-as-secret-agents. The stupid setups where James Bond has some really cool gadget -- they're playing on the juvenile testosterone responses of the typical male 14-year-old mindset -- and it bugs me.

Sports bugs me for similar reasons. Watch a football game, and who's getting paid the most? (Answer -- the jock-strap wearing loons damaging their bodies in the name of the game). Who's getting paid far less to wear far less, do far less and act far stupider? (Answer -- the cheerleaders). It reinforces the male "bread winner while the wife watches" stereotype. Odd, you never much get to see interviews where they highlight this or that cheerleader on their cheering prowess. It doesn't seem quite as important as the dude that broke his leg on that last touchdown run, or the guy that turned the direction of the game for the winning team.

That's because there's another game altogether going on here: It's called gender discrimination.

Think I'm some kind of militant feminist? Guess the fuck what, I'm not -- I'm a militant masculinist (there's a word not in the dictionary) -- I want to advance the general perception of masculinity as something that I can identify with and not feel like I'm out of place because my arms aren't dragging on the floor whilst I walk.

I'd simply like to see something going on in society that reinforces intelligence over this inherent stupidity. Monster garage is far more challenging, so maybe something will give here someday -- but I'm not holding my breath.

Actually, lots of intellectual coolness goes on every day on the tube, it's just that the most popular crap reinforces the things I hate, so really I'm just whining about that.

Back to the suits.

I like them because they're one of the few things masculine that I can identify with without shame.

And there's a (very small) amount of room for some creativity -- color, fit coordination and so on. It's kind of sad (that aspect). I was trolling the discount racks at another store in the mall, and found this display. "What's in style" read this huge sign, and it points to the lack of pleats on the pants, the "side vents" on the jacket and some other completely lame feature that I seriously could give a rats ass about, no self-respecting person would honestly care about -- except some weird "suit Nazi", which I'm sure exists somewhere, yet I haven't met.

So maybe there is some silly stuff about them, but hey, I'm willing to have fun with it, regardless.

Fun. Suits?

...

Yeah, Fun! Cheers!

-=FeriCyde=-

The word for today: Acceptance

2006-02-19T13:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, the ride has been a bit bumpy lately, but for some good reasons -- some discovery on my part. I'm dumping some of my thoughts here, so bear with me.

Let's talk about a basic human need: acceptance. It appears that one of my issues in my life has centered around feelings of being a fish out of water. Not just because I'm a creative male (see a few dozen prior blog entries), but because I grew up in a small Mid-Western farming community as a ministers' kid with a bi-racial heritage. The community was mostly made up of farmers and their kids -- almost all from the same German heritage (and all related to each other, but I digress). My parents were anomalies -- they both had master's degrees in social work, and white collar jobs -- Dad was a minister, Mom a social worker.

We moved in in 1969 -- I was 5 years old at the time -- and right away we didn't fit. Three boys, all with long hair in a conservative community that had (even at that date) not seen boys that didn't have buzz-cuts. I was the only kid in class that wore Guayabera shirts to school (It's a Cuban shirt -- very popular in Puerto Rico, but unfortunately for me, never seen before by any of my classmates). To say I felt that I never fit in much is a huge understatement.

One of the more surprising things I've learned to date was that I was still a likable guy. My favorite grade school teacher and my friends that I kept contact with have related this to me countless times -- but it doesn't sink in at my gut. More on this as we go along.

One of the benefits I love about living in Ohio is the diversity. If I say something like "My Mom is Puerto-Rican." people respond with "My dad is Italian.", or "I'm 25 percent native American.", or "I'm Irish." It's never the same answer and I love it. I can't say I felt that way growing up, and it made me feel much like a stranger in a strange land (no, I'm going off on the inevitable Robert Heinlein tangent here).

If I had to pick a heavier impact, though, it would be from the former difference -- the fact that I never felt that I was accepted for being who I was. Besides the creative direction, there's a devilishly deviant part of my personality that bends me toward a social personality trait that I call "Center of the Room".

Not that the motivation for this trait is all that rare -- it's not really all that rare to find someone who wants attention -- the rare part is where everyone else in the room is actually wishing for it at the same time. That's because humor is involved, a lot of sarcastic whit, rowdiness and inevitable self-deprecating insanity. As one of my high school friends pointed out (yes, this has been going on for quite some time), if it was boring, and I came along, it wasn't boring for long.

People that know me fairly well know that there's a mischievous side to my personality that manifests itself heavily in social situations. I can't stand things being dry for long, so I tend to be the guy that steps in and says "Let's have a party." Actually, I don't say it -- I just start the mayhem without any kind of announcement.

This works really well at most social events, like parties for example. It makes for some interesting meetings at work. It's definitely not the kind of thing you do a funeral (no, I'm more socially grounded than that, although some funerals could have been spiced up a bit more, I've always resisted the temptation).

But often, even after the laughter has died down (okay, right after the laughter dies down) I feel, or at times have felt, pretty much the same feeling I've always felt. It's an uneasy feeling that there was something not quite right about this aspect of my personality -- usually this depends upon how I'm feeling that day. If I'm having a bad day, it's bad, on good days, it's awesome. It was hard to understand.

That is, until about a year ago, when I by chance I ran into someone with extremely similar personality traits, and realized that they definitely made my day go faster and that the laughter was just as good for everyone else as it was for me. The other thing I discovered is that, like me, they could be laughing on the outside, and not doing so well on the inside. It's a very lonely feeling because you're the only one in the room who knows just how bad you really feel.

Mistakenly, they, at times, felt phony, just like I had. What they did teach me, however, was that it's a defense mechanism -- something that had never occurred to me at all. Thinking back, sometimes it is. But what a way to defend yourself. Recently I've found myself taking a back seat to this person -- a decidedly good seat -- in the audience. There can only be one center anyway for the best effect, so this isn't a bad thing. What's really good is the fact that for once I don't feel quite so lonely -- it's OK to make everyone feel good, even if you yourself aren't doing so well. Plus I get to watch, learn new techniques and so on, from a vantage point that simply wasn't available before.

Is it phony if it helps people get along, and you enjoy yourself just for a bit? I know enough now to say that when I've been the center of the room, one of the reasons that a lot of the stuff comes off so funny is because I've done self-deprecating things, sarcastic jokes that people know are grounded in how I really feel and so on -- I'm simply too truthful to myself and my audience to be deceitful (the exception is practical jokes, which is another really, really long blog entry, lemme tell ya).

The reason it feels phony at times is grounded in the moments when you're laughing on the outside and crying on the inside. This is not because you're being fake -- it's because you're two people -- one is social, and the other is personal. Just because they don't line up doesn't always mean that either of them is a fake. For a lot of people, these two beings always coincide, and that's a simple way to go through life -- they don't often coincide for me because I've been this way a long, long time.

In this case, the reason I'm lonely has very little to do with the number of people in the room with me -- it has to do with the fact that for some alien reason, no one seems to see how fucked up things are -- or worse, they seem to know but just don't seem to care to do anything about it.

And I've been the kind of guy that does care and have my share of scars from battles where I did in fact do something about it when no one else was lifting a proverbial finger. As some people know, I've taken on Microsoft and other corporations, lobbied the government and through my work with Linux, worked world-wide to change perceptions of things that were simply not right. I tend to side with the underdog if I perceive that something is wrong.

This can be good when you win -- but can I win if the underdog is the creative American male? Just who is the enemy in this context? The enemy in this case is society. This is a fight that I can't win, unfortunately -- I can only hope to voice some opinions and look for some change (inevitable) over the course of my lifetime.

And so we arrive at my particular malady. I'm fighting a ghost. I cannot win this battle -- I will not surrender, but I must admit that the change I'm fighting for is simply impossible to effect anytime soon.

Does this sound like a stupid reason to be depressed? Sometimes depression is brought on by the fact that some part of your life sucks. In other words, maybe I'm seriously depressed for a worthy cause. In my case, the reason may seem stupid to a lot of people. It's no longer trivial to me, ever since I lost a childhood friend with a remarkably creative personality to what can only be described as social stupidity.

I think that's one of the reasons that I've fallen into such a funk lately (not all of it, but a sizable chunk of the problem). I simply can't stand some of the stupidity around me embedded in the read only memory of our society -- The social instructions for how people raise their kids for failure in life, or worse, a life as a man where you're allowed to be functional, successful and so on -- but not allowed to be creative, funny, bubbly or anything else outside of the realm of the stock male persona of bare-chested action super-hero. For sure you shouldn't cry at a movies, hug your best friend if he's male, or sing to yourself and get caught (all big social no-nos if you're a guy).

TANGENT_MODE=1

Whatever you do, don't enjoy playing dress-up -- wait, that might be changing, thanks to "Queer eye for the straight guy".

-or is it?

I mean, do straight guys really have to sit around and get gay people to show them how to let go of social stupidity? It's nothing against the gay community -- it's aimed squarely at the fact that society says I'm not supposed to be this way. Yes, by the way, I've recently decided that I like dressing up (no -- not in my wife's cloths, either -- mine). I like it a lot. Oddly enough, no homosexual tendencies have manifested themselves in my personality, despite this known non-heterosexual male trait. Okay, I need to cut down on the sarcasm a bit here, but you get the point -- and I could seriously care less about this one. The main point I'm driving to here revolves around being able to be yourself, and not some unemotional automaton.

TANGENT_MODE=0

Getting back to the basic human need of acceptance here.

I haven't felt totally accepted by society. Not even my wife at times understands me, and she's been around me for over 2 decades -- although she's been working on it, lately a lot more than ever. At the core of my frustration is a basic indignity -- I know I'm not a bad person. I care, I show I care, and I have feedback that tells me that people know I care. I'm a productive member of society. I may be a bit on the non-standard side, but so the fuck what? I shouldn't have these feelings but for the want of some dark things that happened in the past at times when I was vulnerable.

Somehow I, unlike some of my friends, got past the issues -- but I'm here on the other side looking at the damage and at what could be better for want of a little less stupidity and social constraint. Maybe more guys like me would be around or there might be just a bit more joy in my day. In any case, I'm simply not satisfied to watch from the sidelines anymore.

Or it may be that I want something impossible: I want society to hug me back and say "You're OK just the way you are, Paul".

And that's simply never going to happen.

See -- I can't fight society. I can't "win" this battle -- it's a loss before I get started. There's no one listening or fighting back. I'm swinging at air. It's a reflexive action on my part (part of my personality) to fight something that's wrong -- but in this case, my gut reflex is to do something extremely depressive and pointless.

In order to overcome this, I've seriously got to lighten up on this one.

It might be kind of funny to at least talk through the problems. I'm thinking maybe a book about it would be nice. I need to set the boundary conditions a bit here, but it's a start.

In any case, thanks for listening in the mean time.
-=FeriCyde=-

Tremble your way to fitness

2006-02-09T05:03:00.000-05:00

The reference is to a George Carlin routine where he announces a whole slew of bogus book titles in a row, like:

Cooking with heat.
Marriage for one!
How to kill a rat with an oboe.
I gave up, died and it worked!

But I digress. Recently having breakfast with a friend, she said "Wow! You look great! What have you been doing?"

My response: "It's called neurosis. Be thankful it hasn't happened to you."

Funny thing is, I've been working out very regularly for the past 3-4 months. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because I, for the first time in my life, need the stress relief that a good workout brings to the table.

I've found that it's the only way I can easily make it through the day, and that for all of the positives that a workout brings, one of the biggest and more consistent benefits is longer sleeping patterns (still work to do there, trust me).

But slowly I find my self in more and more grounded states of mind.

The thing is, I wouldn't be so damn healthy if it weren't for the stress and recent life challenges I've faced. I never thought I'd get into fitness by being overly stressed -- I've always had to work hard at a regular workout regimen.

Up to now, that is. Prior, it's always been like "Oh God, another trip to the dentist" kind of mentality. Now it's like "How many minutes left before I can leave to go work out?!?! Are we there yet?"

Okay, it might be more of an obsessive/compulsive thing too. If so, it would be one of those rare moments where OCD actually has helped my cause.

And I'm also convinced that somehow it's affected my persona -- no idea how I know this, I just feel it from time to time. Maybe I'm becoming more fit, but I honestly feel that at times the whole "wear your heart on your sleeve" thing, coupled with the recent events I've experienced are somehow meshing into a condition that has changed the way either people react to me, or vise versa.

Or maybe I'm just going nuts. Oh well. At least I'll look good while I'm staring at the walls in the asylum.

Cheers!
-=FeriCyde=-

PS: I found the complete list of Carlin's "Join the book-club" monologue here.

The word for today is deliverance.

2006-02-09T04:41:00.000-05:00

I've recently experienced the phenomena, but the word can mean different things to different people. So what does it mean in FeriCyde context?

This is my definition (okay, some of it is derived from work by Scott Peck).

Several thoughts together. The Lords prayer clearly states:

".. and deliver us from evil ..."

This on the surface may seem a trivial thought, but like a lot of simple things in Christianity, I've found that there are deeper, multi-layer meanings and more powerful implications.

And then there's the whole exorcism process, which although it might sound like it has limited application, in fact can be applied to a host of ills. I applied it to my recent thought-related problems, for example, and it worked fine.

Of course, I might really have been possessed too, but who the heck knows?

More importantly -- did it matter? Seriously?

There are several stages to an exorcism -- one of the first stages is identification of the pretext, and one of the final stages is deliverance. For more on these things, if you're curious (not everyone should be curious, by the way), please read Scott Pecks The people of the Lie. If that's not enough, he has later work on exercism, which will really turn your head (okay, I couldn't resist the pun).

Deliverance...

Until the day dawn, and the shadows flee away.
Songs of Solomon, 2-17

Deliverance is the end result of the process of delivery, of being carried through the rough to the point of relief. I sincerely believe that at some of the roughest points of my life, I was carried by some external force through the rough waters. I simply have had experiences that were larger than my life and experience could have tolerated.

Higher powers, in other words, do the heavy lifting. I chose the identifier of angels, but your religious paradigm may provide other names.

Rough points. In my most recent experience, I simply could not sleep. I went to bed and woke with the same thoughts (imagine an endless loop of the same thought patterns that simply would not go away). My sleep patterns were approaching less than an hour a night and showing no signs of getting better.

This had the rather drowning effect of making my waking moments even more depressing. It also makes for extreme emotional instability, but I digress.

There were other life complications, which I can't share here. I asked as many spiritual friends as I could to pray for me -- all at around the same time, and I carefully asked certain ones for a specific result: deliverance.

And for the first time in months, I awoke with something like 5-6 hours of sleep, and a clear mind.

I had been delivered.

I didn't know if it was permanent then (I think it is now, by the way). I was not totally cured of the problems, but in control of my head. This was the good part.

The bad part was that I felt like I had been spiritually run through a meat grinder. My emotions were raw, but in check. It was as if someone had found the volume button for my emotional/creative side and turned it up a few notches. This was different than what I had been experiencing, which was mostly depressive, destructive, unwelcome thoughts and pain, so it was OK. Stuff that was good was so amazingly good (feeling-wise) that it's hard to describe. Bad stuff hurt like hell, but I knew I was going to be OK.

My head hurt like crazy. This went away after a week, so it points to some sort of chemical shift. For this reason I've been cutting out as many unnecessary chemicals as I can(*).

Deliverance implies being carried. It implies external forces in your life. It points to divine powers interacting or interceding in your life -- their finest moments applied to your most dire needs. It may also imply something a bit less obvious: You need to turn the wheel over to God for a bit, because clearly it's in his hands for the duration. This "letting go" can be a bit humbling. I know it was for me.

If you are in the rough waters of your life, I pray for your deliverance.

I pray that you will be carried to that point when you emerge from the rapids into the calmness of the still waters -- when you can look back at the mayhem and the insanity of it all and breath a sigh of relief.

I pray for your delivery. Godspeed.
--FeriCyde

Unnecessary Chemicals I've tossed out, and why... I've taken the attitude that alcohol is not my friend for a few reasons:

On the spiritual plane, Alcohol is recognized as something that opens your soul (supposedly it lowers your "vibration" in metaphysical speak), --something I simply don't want to risk.
Physically/Emotionally, it's supposed to lower inhibitions. Try not to laugh at this if you know me personally.
It's a depressant. The warming effects of the moment that I might get drinking the stuff just isn't worth the higher depression I'm going to feel later.
The situations where I drink are just the kind of events where I simply don't want to risk or feel negativity. I need all of the control I can muster.

Reading up on artificial sweeteners, it looks like things like Splenda and NutraSweet aren't so hot either. I've taken to avoiding them more.

I gave up caffeine. This has helped me sleep in some situations (not all of them good, like driving to work and meetings, for example).

Atkins diet and McDonalds

2006-01-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

I keep forgetting to blog this, so here it is.

I'm on the Atkins diet plan (have been, since October of 2002 -- for the most part). It's worked well for me, I've taken off at least 50 lbs of fat, and with a good solid workout program it's helped quite a bit for me toward reaching my goals.

One of the problems with Atkins is finding food, and one of the small secrets I've discovered is that it's really not all that hard -- if you know the right questions to ask.

For example, at McDonalds, the menu is arguably anti-Atkins. Just about everything comes with a bun, and stuff that doesn't is coated in sugar in some form. Or so it would seem.

In reality, it's pretty easy to not only eat Atkins-ready food, but on a much lighter budget than you would imagine.

Eggs: You can simply order the eggs like this at the counter: "I'll have 3 round eggs, please." (cost -- in my area, $1.20)
Alternatively, you can get a burrito meal and ditch the hash brown -- it's still usually less than 4 bucks. Arguably, the eggs are a better deal.
You can also simply order what you want: "I'll have two eggs, scrambled and two sausage (patties or links). They'll get em for you. I recommend the round eggs -- this insures that they're real eggs and I find them convenient to eat. They're the same eggs they put in the sandwitches, so they usually have a ready supply.

On the Lunch/Dinner front, I can't emphasize enough that they actually have salads.
If you really want to go cheap, however, you can get a big piece of lettuce and a couple of hamburger patties (at least in my area) for a buck by simply saying "I'll have a double-cheeseburger without a bun." -- the double cheeseburger is on the dollar menu, and I usually get two of them (for a whopping 2 bucks, I'm full). It's a bargain. You may have to wait just a tad, but it works just fine for the diet.

It's possible to eat Atkins just about anywhere but a pretzel stand -- that's what I'm trying to say. Enjoy!
-=FeriCyde=-

The bad boss blog

2006-01-24T15:03:00.000-05:00

I've got a good boss. It's not something to be taken lightly (it happens far less than often in IT).

Reading this article reminded me of the the fact: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/23/1831237 You can't help but come away (if you have experience in IT) by nodding your head in agreement. I think I've had every example they point to in this article. The thing is, most weren't all that bad, with the exception of a moron that used to quote from a sci-fi movie every time I wrote automation.

I'm not going to blog about that, because I'm afraid some other management moron might take that as a good example of management, as opposed to what it was (comical stupidity in action). No, rather, I'd like to share some of my own insight.

If you have a bad manager, you have to look away from your relationship with them and focus instead upon what you're at work for -- solutions to problems. You have to find ways to provide those solutions in the framework that you've been given -- and that might include working with someone who's difficult.

Unless you get fired for doing the right thing (longer story there -- let's avoid that one) you should be ok. I found that having a good relationship with everyone else was a sure way to gain the traction needed with someone who's troublesome. Worked for me the 2 or 3 times that the problems were there.

Anyway, it's a good article -- read it and laugh.
-=FeriCyde=-

FeriCyde Chat

Want more Free / Open Source Software in Your Work Life?

Time for Linux on the Door Stop

Obama back speaking to the kids!

How to report an unauthorized call to the FTC ...

Android Fragmentation

Google Goggles

My Letter to my Congressman May 10, 2010

Hardware for the Holidays

The old Kodak DC215

Broken Digital Picture Frame

Flight of the Penguin, er, Phoenix

Linux on Netbooks

Ebert Discusses Discussion

Paul Krugman and Staying the Course

A Glimmer of Hope for GM

The Beginning or the End of the Republican Party

Let's Regulate Corporate Banking Welfare

Pontiac, the mark of Dead Car

Public Service Annoyance.

Mister Rogers, the Epitome of Evil (to Fox and "Friends")

I Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

More Partisan Stupidity

Spitzers' Latest Column -- Read It

More of the Same Problem With Our Media

The Problem With American Media

Why Social Networking?

Germans and Electronic Voting

Start up the Risk Takers

A Positive Sign: Facebook Listening

Creativity is Universal and a Resource

Sir Ken Robinson: A New View of Human Capacity

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity.

Golden Handcuffs

Democracy 101

Art Imitates Life

Smart -- The New Cool?

It's Not That Simple

Bad Belkin Bayard Business ...

GM and Brand Name Deletion

Stewart Nails The Issue to the Wall

America: The Land of The Lost

Toxic Social Media

Reunion.com and Classmates.com

The Coming Gasoline Crisis Isn't Liberal or Conservative

Elliot Spitzer Gets A Column on Slate

Death, The Universe, and ... Nothing.

Fun with TypeAnalyzer

Muscle-Car Melt-Down

Social Media as a Marketing Vector

Social Media Zeitgeist

Driving Down The Ole' Punch-Card Trail

What Would Darwin Do?

Tesla on the Rocks -- but we'll bail out Fanny Mae

Someone commenting on Resumes ...

Deconstructing the current recruiting problem...

There is no Shortage of Clueless Tech Journalists

Pony Car Depression Coming to a Dealer Near You

Rosetta

Running 150 MPH...

Joe Barr and Dwight Johnson

Bill Gates, Socially Clueless again...

Having friends along for the ride...

Ten Dollar CDs

Another voting scandal in Ohio

Elliot Spitzer

The Creation and Destruction of Inspirational Power

Astroturf in Vogue as it has been for years...

Post Ohio Linux Fest

Russian Schools Convert to Linux by 2009

Linux Freedom

Ohio Linux Fest, 2007

Join the Digg Club and Recieve the Following Links, Absolutely Free!

Paris Hilton was Strip Searched!

No I haven't died...

A stupid Question: Where Are The Microsoft Fanboys

It's happening in my own back-yard...

Creativity and Destruction

Shfting Gears

Good Signs!