Orcmid's Lair

The February Frights Begin

2010-02-02T11:35:00.000-08:00

Technorati Tags: Blogger, computer upgrades, web development, blog authoring, Tablet PC, Windows 7, mobile working, Windows Home Server

My computer infrastructure seems to be falling apart. February is going to be the month in which I have to fix it. I always fear infrastructure changes and computer upgrades and conversions. And the price of procrastination is that pay-me-later comes due, with interest. Here’s what it looks like:

The invalid, my web-development server, the vintage-1998 Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop, Compagno, is on its last legs. I need to offload everything to the Windows Home Server, including Visual Source Safe (VSS) integrated with Internet Information Server (IIS) via FrontPage Extensions. I have been avoiding that. I can’t any longer. (Hmm, I mean that my laptop is an invalid, not that it is invalid. Tricky that.)
I need to migrate Vicki off her Dell desktop onto her new Inspiron 15 Laptop with docking for printer, LAN, keyboard+mouse, audio, and 24” widescreen monitor. This also means moving Office 2003 from her XP SP3 configuration to the Laptop’s Windows 7, finding counterparts for the applications that currently work for her, including FrontPage 2002 (see 1, above).
My Tablet PC has been running Windows 7 RC1 and that is about to expire. There is no reason to use one of my Windows 7 upgrades on that machine because the manufacturer stopped providing the needed drivers before Vista. I could reinstall Vista (and play 3D chess again) maybe, or go back to Windows Tablet PC Edition 2005. This is all a holding action until I figure out what is a decent Tablet PC upgrade path that doesn’t cost a fortune.
I have ambitions to replace my Desktop system with a hot multi-core Windows 7 64-bit kit. I want to use virtual machines for other operating systems and multiple versions of office productivity software for exercising ODF and OOXML implementations and their inter-conversions. I can also do better at development of software for multiple platforms this way. This is not something I’m in a hurry for, because I have to deal with my critical peripherals (HP Scanjet 7400C and E-MU 1820m) being supported. This should be on the end of the list.
TODAY, after not noticing all this time, I received this happy e-mail from Blogger:

“[W]e will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible.”

Of course, all of the transitions are to Google hosting of one kind or another. These all involve changing the domain name. I use FTP publishing in Blogger because I already have the domain names for my blogs, and far more, and changing domain name and/or hosting is not the kind of transition that works for me. What I need to do is disintermediate from Blogger.

I desire a way to bring up some sort of blog publishing function, still usable with Windows Live Writer, alongside my existing blog directories on the servers where my blogs are now published via FTP from Blogger. I can then make a side-by-side transition from using Blogger as the intermediary for publishing to using a more-or-less direct self-hosted publishing mechanism.

That is probably workable, and something I had always meant to do. Now I have an incentive I can’t ignore.

Of course, I have no idea what I am going to do about comments on those blogs. I think about Disqus, but not real hard. We’ll see.

And I still use Technorati tags despite every indication they are absolutely useless.

But hey, I am driving out yet-another change to my Blogger template with this post.

Microsoft Office 2010 Coming to Our House

2010-01-06T14:16:00.001-08:00

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Office, Office 2010, Tablet PC, SOHO Computing, Dekstop PC, Windows 7, Microsoft Works, FrontPage, OneNote

I just noticed the reaction to the new Microsoft Office 2010 packaging and price structures in posts by Mary Jo Foley and Ed Bott. Although I despair over being a Microsoft outlier-customer with the disappearance of some of my favorite products, the moves in Microsoft Office packaging and availability may be just the ticket for our household. The announcement is particularly interesting because our Office 2003 installations are a little long in the tooth and it would be good to upgrade, especially as we move to Windows 7 64-bit configurations over the next several months. (Our first Windows 7 64-bit machine is Vicki’s new laptop and it is clear that is the migration path throughout the household SOHO network, despite the need for at least two more hardware replacements.)

Our Long Microsoft Office Romance

I operate a Small-Office, Home-Office (SOHO) wired network. Both Vicki and I are devoted to Office 2003 on our individual business desktop and laptop machines. I obtained the two requisite Office 2003 Professional copies by adroitly paying $99 each with one-day workshops included. (Actually, the software was given out as premiums for attendance at the two $99 workshops. I doubt there will be such an opportunity again although I am on alert.)

I happily install OO.o on family-member machines where there is limited need for Microsoft Office capability beyond occasional import/export of simple documents in the big-three formats, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. That doesn’t work here because of personal preferences and, most of all, because of Outlook. (We each rely on FrontPage too, and that is a more-difficult problem.)

Office 2010 Seductiveness

We are devoted users of Outlook and have no desire to change that. There are Outlook 2007 features that I want and I’m sure Outlook 2010 will improve on that. I was despairing of what it would take to have us both move up to a current Outlook, with or without upgrading the rest of Office. (I also have technical reasons, in my work on the OOXML and ODF standards, to have multiple versions and beta releases of Microsoft Office and ODF-based office-productivity suites lying around, a challenge that is leading me to put a heavy-duty virtual-machine configuration in my near future. That outlier requirement will also improve my ability to develop for multiple platforms.)

If there is reasonable $199 download-pricing for download editions of Office 2010 Home & Business, our SOHO computing needs will be satisfied by two copies, one for Vicki's business use, another for mine. (I may have to go the $249 package route to have it on my laptop plus desktop, while Vicki consolidates into a laptop-only-plus-network computing life, something I should be considering as well, now that I look more closely.) This will also go well with our finally upgrading to Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium (Windows 7 Ultimate for my technical needs) on all non-server machines.

An Appealing Starter Case for All

Although I probably won't run into it myself, the Microsoft Office 2010 Starter edition via OEM installations would also eliminate the need to install OO.o on new machines for relatives, except to the degree they prefer to have it for whatever reasons that matters to them. It should now become unnecessary to purchase a richer version of Microsoft Office simply to handle occasional Word and Excel interchange plus ~~and~~ PowerPoint ~~document interchange~~ viewing. Likewise, nothing more may be needed for modest ODF interchange needs down the road.

Goodbye Microsoft Works

It looks like the Microsoft Works and Office Home and Student trial-edition crapware can be gone for good. (I am wistful about the disappearance of Works, because it was all I needed on MS-DOS and early versions of Windows. I gave up on Microsoft Works when it became more important to have what employers and clients used along with some peculiar outlier importance of Microsoft Office in my support of document-management technology.)

Meanwhile, Vicki has no tolerance for Microsoft Works (and may be unhappy adjusting to the Office 2007-introduced user interface too). I still have some old archives in Microsoft Works documents that I had better find out how to upgrade before they are no longer readable anywhere, too.

Hello OneNote

And finally, I note the prevalence of OneNote in the Office 2010 packaging. I have withheld my use of OneNote on other than Tablet PC applications because of its narrower availability and the absence of a public standard for the format.

I stopped using OneNote on the Tablet PC on realizing that I don't go through the extra effort of transferring OneNote-authored material to non-OneNote machines and the material I have is now locked-in on the Tablet. Later Tablet PC note-taking was done with Windows Live Writer instead. With OneNote now a stock component of Microsoft Office, I can reconsider my use along with the SOHO upgrade to Office 2010 (perhaps including a Windows 7 Tablet PC if I can find a reliable and economical OEM source).

Update 2010-01-06T22:30: I was over-eagerly expecting the Office 2010 Starter to include some form of PowePoint. That is not the case, but I presume viewers will still be available for download.

New Issues to Contemplate: It seems that affordable laptops don’t have provisions for easy swapping in as desktop machine by using an external monitor, closed cover, and external keyboard and mouse. However, a tablet PC can operate flattened out in tablet mode while slide out of the way in an appropriate “docked” arrangement. I must look into that. Until I started writing this post, I hadn’t looked at having a laptop rather than desktop as my all-purpose machine. This is really about having Outlook running in only one place and being able to travel with it.

In non-Outlook work, server-mediated replication and synchronization is workable. I need to explore that much more carefully. Figuring in an eventual upgrade to a 30” monitor for desktop work may also create some conflicts with the most external monitor that a laptop/tablet is likely to support. I will still need a desktop system so smooth choreography of any dance between desktop and laptop needs to be understood better.

2010: You Say Two Thousand Ten, I Say Twenty Ten

2010-01-02T11:53:00.001-08:00

del.icio.us Tags: Blogger, Orcmid's_Lair, blog_maintenance, 2010, system_incoherence

We all say Happy New Year!

This first post for 2010 brings more blog-template cleanup. I need to post something to confirm that the template is working, and here it is.

I moved the change history of the template, a long comment, to the end of the template page so that it should not interfere with blog-page loading (so much). You should not observe any evidence of this unless you View Source on the blog page.
The sidebar Atom Feed link stopped being filled in correctly by Blogger. I have no idea how long that has been going on, although there are ways to check by looking at old posts. I simply replaced the special template codes with the correct absolute links.
I added an Associated Sites list of links as a companion to the Associated Blogs list. I removed Associated Blogs that I do not author. I am not sure what to do for links to blogs of friends now. Something else is called for.
I don’t know what happened with Technorati and I don’t know how to fix it. But using Technorati tags doesn’t seem to be useful. The Technorati insert on the blog sidebar has gone invisible and I have no idea if it has any function. I am going to attempt to use de.licio.us tags and see what that accomplishes.

I am making these adjustments to this, my longest-standing blog, so that I can then ripple the same adjustments to other blogs. That will induce my priming the pump with a new post on each of those as I proceed.

Update 2010-01-02T12:47: Well, I have no idea how making del.icio.us tags accomplishes anything. Perhaps I need a place to “ping.” What I do know is that although Windows Live Writer things comma-separated tag lists are sufficient, del.icio.us doesn’t deal with spaces or “+” as space at all. That’s why you see the wonderful use of “_” characters in this repost. I think I still don’t have it figured out. I’ll settle for this serving as an example of system incoherence, for now.

Annual Dusting and Cleaning

2009-12-19T17:49:00.001-08:00

Technorati Tags: Blogger, NetworkedBlogs, Facebook

I am working at having everything of mine present on Facebook, but without Facebook having sole custody.

This is part of my desire to be present and reachable via Facebook without having my attention on Facebook. Since everything I maintain outside of Facebook is entirely public, I don’t mind Facebook exposing that same materials. I won’t be giving Facebook applications any way to modify any of my content (e.g., on my Flickr account), so I am not to nervous about this.

I am more nervous about my Facebook presence simply not working the way I would like.

Today I am tidying up the Orcmid’s Lair blog with some links to additional blogs recently added to the stable.

I am also experimenting with a widget for Networked Blogs on Facebook. I am not all that confident that it will provide an in-profile presence for my blogs. That is why it is an experiment.

Here goes …

On Facebook: Just a Little Bit Pregnant

2009-12-06T17:22:00.001-08:00

Technorati Tags: Facebook, social networking, Kyte.tv, Pandora, Flickr, orcmid, Linked-In, Twitter, social grid, presence, attention, Windows Live, Skype, Fishbowl

Grudging and Limited Acceptance of Facebook

I still don't like Facebook.

I don't like how it works. For example, I just typed an 1883-character message that it didn’t tell me was over the 420-character limit until I had typed all of it and then attempted to “share” it. Clearly, Windows LiveWriter, where I am now, is affordance for me, just as MediaWiki is my preferred vehicle for wiki-organized material.
I don't like the way the Facebook organization stumbles blissfully into iffy business practices and remains indifferent to the uproar each new excess provokes.
I don't like how I can't organize my attention very well. I don’t want to keep my eye on Facebook. I find the river incoherent and discordant. (I am learning that Disqus comment streaming is more distracting but I solve that by shutting off e-mail tracking. It is unfortunate that they make it an all-or-nothing choice. OK, nothing it is.)

I first reactivated my account because I wanted to lock up “orcmid” as my name there. Lately I have begun maintenance on the account because I have acquaintances who are devoted to Facebook as their social-connection point. If I want to see their pictures, find a way to contact them, etc., I need to maintain a Facebook logon. That is part of the viral nature of Facebook, of course. I'm trying to stay just a little bit pregnant here and it is very awkward.

Having Presence Without Attention

Today I noticed that if I want to be social-network-visible the Facebook devotees among my acquaintances, I must maintain a Facebook presence by which folks can at least find where my attention really is. I want to offer them Facebook presence and connection to where my attention and efforts are placed, without demanding that I also put much attention on Facebook itself. Ideally, Facebook friends can see into my public world without leaving Facebook.

I started by figuring out how to disengage from Facebook applications and then look for ones that make my preferred locations available on Facebook too. (That’s how I found out that I must de-authorize applications that I no longer care about, not just remove them from my Facebook page. Another “there they go again” moment.)

My Twitter stream now appears on my Facebook stream. My Pandora profile has been there all along. Reviewing Pandora showed me how seldom I listen to Pandora these days: I didn’t realize the desktop Pandora fixture was an Adobe AIR application until it asked to update when I checked it just now. It works better than my large random play list in Windows Media Player and I’m back. Windows Media Player is still my favorite for album play and all of my AmazonMP3 downloads.

My Flickr Photostream, Photosets, and new Flickr Posts now show up on my Facebook profile page. I used the My Flickr application because it works well enough with only read-access authorization to my Flickr account. I had wanted to use Flickr Photosets but that one required authorization to updated Flickr; I am not prepared to risk so much.

I wanted to have my blogs appear on Facebook too. I thought they had in the past, but I can’t find how I might have done it. The most appealing application, NetworkedBlogs, has a complex authorization process requiring me to add a script to my blog-page template (just as Technorati does). I wouldn’t mind updating the templates, but that immediately moved having blog presence to a back burner.

I suppose that I might want to find a connection between Facebook and LinkedIn as well, just to complete the picture.

FriendFeed is so far lost in my history that it’s of no interest whether I can have it visible on Facebook. And now that not only I but Microsoft itself have abandoned Soapbox, I have some blog pages that deserve to be updated. Orcmid’s Flying Kyte is still operating and available on my Facebook profile and I should make better use of it.

I have nothing on Windows Live to connect to Facebook. My Windows Live usage is entirely on the desktop applications. I have abandoned Windows Live as a social presence and I should decommission Orcmid’s Live Hideout at some point. The sharing of contacts is not something I want to do, probably because Microsoft Outlook remains my hub for connectivity with contacts and it is not a list I would share into the cloud.

That’s the status of my effort so far.

Oh yes, then there’s FishBowl client as an alternative interface (thanks to Wendy White). Not sure I need an easier way to root around in Facebook, but I will check if it make my presence maintenance better. Or is this indeed the road to perdition? Stay tuned.

Dealing with Expectations of Facebook Friends

I have 11 friend requests and I don't want to connect them and establish an expectation that this is a place where my attention can be obtained.

I haven't found a good way to explain that, and I must remember to put whatever explanation I do use in a computer note that I can copy and paste instead of recreate each time. For the form letter part. Then I can add just whatever personal part I want.

In case you are wondering: If someone wants my attention or would like to be more connected, I recommend Twitter direct messages to orcmid. Directs arrive in Twitter (if I'm online), in my e-mail (whether I am or not), and on my cellular phone (likewise). E-mail is my preferred medium because of the asynchrony and absence of message-size limit. Also, I am not paced by my inbox. I check for new mail only when I am ready for it.

For folks who want to chat, Skype works best for me (and I am orcmid there too). I can also do audio and video (see, I really am in my robe and pajamas) over Skype. If you are the linked-in sort, you can find me there too. I don’t multi-task all that well, and paying attention to open chat windows is not a strength for me. I find asynchronous connectivity and the written word preferable, with Twitter being expedient, not immediate, for me.

Mornings in the Temple of Perpetual Reconsideration

2009-10-31T12:18:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: civil society and democracy, Seattle, Washington State, King County

In a fit of governmental economy and limelight avoidance, King County in Washington State has gone to mail balloting exclusively. For this election day, Tuesday, November 3, 2009, Vicki and I have already mailed in our ballots. We waited for the televised debates for Seattle City Mayor and King County Executive to be held, considered that we then knew enough, and submitted our ballots.

Waiting for Election Day is Different Now

An odd peculiarity of mailing in our ballots is, now that we’ve voted, it doesn’t matter what happens between our mailing and the official end of voting on November 3 (although ballots with acceptable postmarks will continue to be accepted and processed). What’s missing beside the ceremony of voting is the ceremony of knowing what the results are. We have to wait. We are lame-duck voters and there is no value in paying attention to the still-continuing campaigns for the various contested seats.

What’s not missing is the continued arrival of robocalls telling us how important our votes are and what scoundrels the opponents are. There is also no letup in the delivered mail pieces that continue the bickering. I assume this is all targeted to the large undecided numbers that are sufficient to sway the election one way or the other. A just-arrived attack piece was surprising to me and I almost wanted to reconsider a vote already cast. Anti-candidate material tends to lower my stock in the attacker, not the victim. In this particular case, I rationalized that the attack piece was appropriate.

Stamping out the Party Line

The current election is the first one under a spanking new primary and election approach. All of the positions up for election are supposed to be non-partisan. However, there are certainly party endorsements, and the Governor, a Democrat, has made her preferences known in the election for Seattle Mayor and King County Executive.

The way the new system works here, until overturned by a court appeal as had our previous efforts at electoral reform, is that when there are fewer than three candidates at the primary election, they automatically advance to the general election. If there are three or more candidates, the top two at the primary advance to the general election. There is no party registration in Washington State, and any primary voter selects among all of the candidates. This led to the incumbent Seattle Mayor failing to advance to the general election, the final contest being between two candidates who have never held public office. As a referendum on the mayor, this does say something.

This system can lead to a general election where the two candidates are aligned with the same political party. That happened in one district here.

Reconsider This!

As part of our shared Western-States distrust in government, we have an initiative and referendum system that is designed to hamstring government as much as we want. Fortunately, the legislature does have the power to declare a fiscal emergency and ignore some of the contradictory stuff that gets passed this way until it can be thrown out in the courts.

This election, we have an example of a way that the people can preempt the legislator without throwing the rascals out. It is possible to petition that a passed legislative act be submitted to the voters for approval. In the past legislature, a comprehensive civil union law was passed that provides all of the benefits accorded to married folks to civil unions among unmarried seniors, gays, lesbians, and other flavors. This grants everything that civil law can grant short of calling it marriage. The legislation is quite extensive in terms of all of the various laws that are adjusted.

Referendum R-71 to have the electorate affirm (or disapprove) this legislation was placed on the ballot by petition. Although it is in the nature of this kind of referendum that it follow the wording of the law, so a yes vote will affirm the law, an no vote will repeal it. The petitioners were interested in the repeal, but unlike Proposition 8 in California, it takes a win by the No Votes to accomplish that. It will be close.

An interesting sidelight is that people in favor of the legislation demanded that the names of the petitioners be released to the public, with the clear intent of outing the signers of the petition as bigots. This request and the refusal of authorities to comply has made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court which has issued a stay on the release of the names. I didn’t need R-71; I am happy to vote to affirm it. However, I am not at all keen about releasing the names of petition signers. To do this in the name of freedom-of-information is an indirect assault on the secrecy of the ballot, considering the chilling effect it can have on the petitioning for referendums and initiatives on controversial matters. We do not have to account for how and why we vote a particular way on some measure, and it is frightening that we would have to do so as signers of petitions. And the automatic presumption that the signers are bigots and they are to be hounded is itself a despicable act. I’m against it.

One of the more common use of initiatives is the constant attempt to throttle government spending by denying the ability to raise taxes except in very difficult ways. These are often passed concurrent with other initiatives that require additional spending for something people want, usually more bigger better highways in support of an unrepentent suburban lifestyle. It would appear that the public is tiring of this game, since the tax-restriction measures haven’t been doing very well and at the local and regional level, Seattle voters seem quite willing to tax themselves for initiatives that are important to them. This election will let us know if that is a sustained ~~train~~ trend despite the current economic difficulties.

The Institution of Reconsideration Reconsiderations Reconsidered

One problem with initiatives is the constant reconsideration of legislative action and of previously-approved initiatives. There’s seemingly no bound on the number of times one can go to the polls to stop something that has been approved and re-affirmed any number of times before. This happened with the Seattle Monorail Project where the voters had to constantly reapprove that which they’d approved before, over the same entrenched objectors. The nay-sayers finally prevailed, and I confess the Monorail Project authority did break faith with the public in what allowed for its undoing. In some sense, that was a victory for this process, but I fear it is simply institutionalized and we are unable to deal with major development issues because of it.

In many ways, the Seattle City Council and Mayor elections are a referendum on the now-funded and approved tunnel project for replacing the decrepit Alaskan Way Viaduct running above the Seattle waterfront area. It is true that, when a preference poll was placed on the ballot, the voters indicated that they wanted a less-expensive non-tunnel solution and there were State funds in hand for that. That was before the economy tanked last year. Now we have an agreed tunnel replacement for the viaduct, and funds are committed for this too. There are complicated arrangements between the State, with its responsibility for the tunnel as part of a State arterial highway, and the City and its responsibilities for surface and breakwater improvements related to the seismic vulnerability of the area.

We are, of course, nervous about the prospects of this project costing far more than the allowances provided for it, and that was made an election issue. Here the Governor also stepped in, endorsing the candidate who favors getting on with it and making it work, not going into our pattern of never-decided decisions that have needed infrastructure development impeded at every turn.

From my perspective, the nervous opposition is too strident and pays no heed to the strides made, within Washington State, in having major transportation projects come in on time and under budget, with the right scrutiny for intervening when a project seems headed off the rails.

Since it is the issue that some campaigner have staked their election on, I have obliged them. No one who is negative about the current tunnel project has my vote.

Friday Cat Photo: Flying Cats

2009-10-30T22:11:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: cats, Friday cat photo, paper bag, rubber stamp

This image of flying cats came into our house on a paper bag from a local produce market. We have no idea what’s behind this.

Friday Cat Picture: The Return of Shmoo Cat

2009-09-05T13:03:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: cat, cats, Friday Cat pictures, West Seattle

I started calling a neighborhood cat the Shmoo Cat based on this encounter back in April, 2005. She wanders through the yard from time to time, moving furtively when she sees me. That is not the case for Vicki.

Sometimes the cat sits on our back steps, provoking a small amount of excitement from our indoor cats. The cat will move away if anyone comes out, but she will return to Vicki’s call. She’ll also accept a dish of water from Vicki as a neighborly offering.

Productivity: This Is Not a Kanban

2009-08-23T21:23:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: productivity, personal kanban, kanban, agile Jim Benson, David Anderson, GTD, TRO

Since I cleaned up my work space somewhat last March, my attention to productivity techniques and management of my commitments has spiraled into nothingness. My open loops are more prevalent and more open than ever. I stopped working through the startup for Totally Relaxed Organization and I haven’t opened my TROG Bar in months. My only Getting Things Done practice is to empty my in box (except there are 56 orphan items there right now). It’s been so long, I completely forgot that I was ever participating in a Zen Habits Monthly Challenge.

Here Comes the New Methodology, Just Like the Old Methodology

I’m going through self-help productivity techniques the way others go through weight-loss programs. And with no better results.

My devolutions is so complete that my entire structure for managing commitments has degenerated into pages in a notebook (#63 in the current series) and an accumulation of Post-It notes of random incomplete tasks.

The small white note with the checkmarks was created on a hotel-room notepad in London last May. I’m still carrying it around along with my morass of open loops.

There are other places where I keep commitments tucked away on my computer. They are also shuffled around and ignored.

I Will Be Fooled Again

I rarely examine any of these items with critical concern for how the tasks are actually to be accomplished. I’d have to face up to their not being done while I am busily not doing them instead.

And now there’s Personal Kanban. I’m a fan of David Anderson, although I have no opportunity to apply any of the agile management methodologies. Although I appreciate that kanban methodology has been a powerful instrument in the work of teams, I mostly just glance at the various accounts. The lingo is mysterious and the application seems even more out of reach in my personal situation.

That changed when I saw twitter updates from David Anderson and then Jim Benson on the possibilities of a Personal Kanban. I began to follow along and browse through Benson’s series of blog posts on the topic. My buddy Bill Anderson and I created weekly (weakly) checkpoints on taking steps to understanding the kanban methodology from a personal perspective.

The Essential Reality Check

I see appealing features after an initial look at Personal Kanban. I want those features in raising the bar (now so low) on my personal productivity and effectiveness.

I also realize that my application of Personal Kanban is doomed to the dustbin of forgotten methodologies. The common factor in the recurring result of my experience is me. Not the methodologies.

To have a different result, I must work differently.

Where I Stop

After a few hours and days of mixed success, I stop looking at the structure that holds my current commitments. I just don’t look there to true myself up. I indulge distractions and eventually the new methodology has disappeared. Lately, I seem to end up in worse shape than before I began.

But before that point, I stop in another way. All of the recent methodologies I have examined start with housecleaning followed by housekeeping. I take out some trash, but never all of it. I cling to it and don’t let it go. Or, I don’t want it but cleaning it out is overwhelming and I never create an occasion for accomplishing that. Or I clean up piece-meal, insisting to myself that when I get things organized, I can then be organized. Mostly, I get distracted from all of this and eventually forget to clean up the mess, which remains in its piles around my office and elsewhere in the house.

Being Slimy

I was in a conversation on how I am the poster-child for methodology failure. Here are my other indulgences:

I’m lazy and fearful
My ambitions are greater than my capacities and my stamina, but I hold onto too much anyhow; I take on more faster than I complete what I already have on my plate.
I procrastinate and lie to myself and others about it.
I make commitments and create no structure whatsoever for fulfilling on them.

OK, Where From Here?

It was suggested that someone needs to take a kanban board down and hit me over the head with it. I need to be the one to do that. Plus empower others to be ruthless with me when I go off the track.

I am going to apply Personal Kanban in my life. It will be fun to deal with the details of the techniques. But the real accomplishment will not be in messing around in the technical and conceptual nuts and bolts. It will be my stepping beyond my automatic approach and having Personal Kanban win for me.

If I fall down, I will get up and keep dancing.

Sympathy Strike: Don’t Gag the Net

2009-07-14T16:04:00.001-07:00

OK, considering the usual loud silence on this blog, posting an image calling for a blogging strike today is a touch contradictory. I will say just a litle more. The badge calls for an Italian blogging strike today. Posting the badge instead of a normal post declares a raising of the blog’s voice against the alleged gag law being proposed in Italy. I won’t go into the details, or consider how much this might be an over-reaction. Hey, it’s a sympathy strike.

Back to the usual tomorrow.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

2009-06-19T17:43:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Orcmid's Lair, Professor von Clueless in the BlunderDome, Numbering Peano, Pursuing Harmony, Spanner Wiingnut's Muddleware Lab, Orcmid's Live Hideout, blog themes

This is different than my main blogs. I wanted to experiment with Windows Live and have a blog that employed the features and organization of Windows Live blogs. I have since become disenchanted with having a blog that is not on a server that I manage. Thanks to the capabilities of Windows Live Writer, I can successfully lift the posts from the Hideout and repost them in the place that is more-appropriate for me.
This is different also. This is a sandbox blog that I use only for trying things out. It is different in style but it serves me as a way to try out various changes before introducing them on one of my current blogs. My four main blogs have the following descriptions:

I have six blogs to my name, where I set the purpose and content of the blogs. These are various expressions of me.

There’s one other blog that is an expression of my partnership with Vicki and her vocation as a potter, Millennia Antica: The Kiln Sitter’s Diary. My presence is as web master and technical support, along with contribution of my perspective on some of the activities that I participate in. But the purpose of that blog is to be part of Vicki’s expression of her vocation and love for pottery.

Amma Vicki and the Monks

2009-06-19T14:20:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Amma Vicki, Victoria E. Hamilton, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, Sadhaka Tejadevanatha, Bothell WA

On Wednesday, June 17, 2009, Bodhinatha came from the Kauai Hindu Monastery to the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center in Bothell, Washington. The visit (pdf) is part of travels that will end up in Edmonton, Canada.

It is a rare treat for Amma Vicki, as she is known (scroll to the bottom), to visit with members of the monastery family at times other than her annual visit to Kauai. She is always hopeful to learn whether son Senthilnathaswami is along on the journey. She was delighted to be able to see Bodinatha and Tehadevanatha on this particular visit.

Although I have met Bodinatha, I had not heard him speak to a Hindu gathering until Wednesday. The subject, “Passing On Our Hindu Tradition” dealt with the challenges of Hindu grandparents and parents living in the West and raising children in the midst of Western cultures and schools. For a non-Hindu, I found the explanations and suggestions direct and remarkably gentle.

Let It Rain, Let It Rain …

2009-06-18T14:27:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Seattle, weather, rain, drought, Summer

[Update 2009-06-19-08:47 –0700 (pdt) Let this be the end of silliness about rain-free-days records. There was a steady though light rain overnight. This morning at 07:15 the streets and grounds were wet except inside the drip line of some heavily foliaged trees. The rain has changed from light sprinkle to mist now, with the morning temperature just crossing 60F (15C). The forecast is for occasional light rain through Sunday, 06-21. This may not assuage the agricultural concerns.]

[Update 2009-06-19-01:54Z I got it all wrong. The first paragraph has been corrected based on information from King5.com for 2009-06-18.]

As of some time overnight on June 17-18, we had officially gone 29 consecutive days without rain, ~~breaking~~ tying the May-June ~~1951~~ 1982 record for such events. [The longest dry spell is the 51 July-August days in 1951.] For some reason, a local television station news team thinks that is exciting. Not at summer water rates and what it costs to sprinkle a lawn to keep it from going dormant, the dry-weather response here. Of course, in brushlands and forests there is even more to be concerned about.

The rainfall that we drove through yesterday afternoon did not count. The test is weather or not a sensor at the Seattle-Tacoma airport detects measurable rainfall. This shower we ran into was while driving on the I-90 floating bridge toward its connection with I-405 and our continuation North to Bothell, Washington. The rain did manage to make drivers nervous, apparently because most knew the roadway can be dangerously slippery when wetted for the first time after a long dry period and accumulation of surface oils and greases.

Cloudbursts and lightning strikes in the mountains to our West and East also don’t count as an end to our dry spell. (Can you say “forest fire?” Sure you can.)

Now, how the heck will we convince tourists and other visitors to stay away because they think the sun never shines in Seattle?

The Fate of Microsoft Outlier Customers

2009-06-14T12:42:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Encarta, OneCare, Money, software longevity, trustworthiness, Maps, Works, MSN

I recently noticed that three of my favorite Microsoft products are to be no more: Windows OneCare (why are they still selling it?) , Microsoft Encarta, and Microsoft Money. That was striking for me and I have created a contingency plan for each of those products.

On reflection, it is not a new thing for various Microsoft applications to transmogrify and eventually disappear. Although I have never had an interest in Flight Simulator, I am still a devoted user of Microsoft FrontPage. If Microsoft Works were as clean and simple as the MS-DOS version, I would still use it. I have also used a variety of picture editors and photo editors that were bundled in various Microsoft products and that seem to come and go with each new computer system and occasional Microsoft Office upgrade. Some day, I suppose I will have to do without Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, especially as future versions/replacements demand hardware capabilities I don’t possess.

Now, Microsoft is not making a fortune for me as an occasional upgrader of these products (though I quietly paid my OneCare subscription renewal each year). It is interesting that not until the abandonment of FrontPage was announced did I begin to feel the squeeze and the lack of an appropriate replacement for abandoned Microsoft products. (E.g., Expression Web is both more and less than what suits my current web-development practices.) Now I now need to look for three more substitutions and also look at long-term measures for protecting my systems and my electronic financial records as well as maintaining my web sites. For the three latest-discontinued products, I find that I have three different contingency measures in place.

Wait, I Like Encarta

When I read that Encarta was to be no more, I resolved to go find a copy of the latest version. I have a version completely installed on my hard drive and it is a handy reference. I confess that I mainly use the dictionary (the default setting for the Encarta Search Bar kept handy in my Windows XP task bar). The encyclopedia is handy but it doesn’t get searched by Windows Desktop Search (a little incoherence there) and I find myself on the web (and Wikipedia) more often than in Encarta because that’s where Windows Desktop Search (and now bing) lead me best.

I’m currently running version 14 (Encarta 2005) and I actually had one monthly update that I didn’t install until last week. The reluctance to update has to do with needing to be administrator when I do it, and I usually forget Encarta updates when I am running as administrator for other maintenance purposes. It is a demonstration of my unnoticed waning interest that I didn’t know I had one update left from 2005.

Nevertheless, I wanted to have the latest and greatest if there were to be no more. Unfortunately, the latest version seems to be Encarta Premium 2007 and it is still pricey, even though pro-rated refunds were cut off on April 30.

I settled for the less-expensive Britannica 2009 Deluxe with the hope that the included dictionary and thesaurus is as easy to use as the one I am abandoning from Encarta.

Not Money Too. No, Not Money!

The shocker for me is last week’s announcement that Microsoft Money will also be no more. I checked, and my oldest Microsoft Money backup is dated 1999 and it has entries from 1998-01-01. I tended to hold onto versions of Microsoft Money. I didn’t switch to Money Plus 2007 until the version I was running under Windows 98 couldn’t be installed on Windows XP as I was off-loading the Windows 98 machine at the end of 2007.

I don’t like Money Plus 2007 as much as the older pure-desktop versions. The change of the user experience to one with integrated web features is mostly a nuisance. The software performs more slowly and I don’t do those on-line things. But I like the reports and the extensive history of purchases (and depreciation records) is important for me. I prepare my tax returns from records maintained in Microsoft Money, and I have had some success balancing my bank accounts using downloads that Money will rely on. (The experience is rather variable and I often simply balance statements manually instead rather than deal with what it takes to correct for a failed automatic account update.)

I discovered that my version of Money Plus “expires” ~~in September~~ at the end of November. Ones activated this summer will have support extended through January, 2011.

It seems like a no-brainer that what I want to do is install another downloaded version and continue to use it until I have a satisfactory replacement. I will also want to keep a copy around as long as possible to enable my use of existing records. I will need to discover how to export some of those for use in other products, or as spreadsheets that I can preserve in OOXML/ODF.

So I have another Money Plus Home and Business download and a product key for it. I will install it at a point this summer when I am carefully backed up, exported, and ready to risk an upgrade.

Goodbye OneCare, It’s Been Good to Know Ye

Microsoft OneCare arrived at just the right time for me. I had tired of Norton Antivirus upgrades and a growing drift from what worked just right for me starting before Norton/Symantec Systemworks and going back to a time when there really were Norton Utilities. I valued the simplicity all-in-oneness of OneCare for the following provisions:

Annual support on up to three SOHO computer systems (exactly what I had that needed the protection around here)
Constant nagging and support for regular backups
Outgoing firewall protection

It wasn’t the most wonderful product, but it was also steadily improved over the time I used it, right from the beginning of its availability. It did deal with my dominant computer security concerns.

OneCare also provided me with a great source of system-incoherence anecdotes, and I must recount some of those while I can still capture screen shots of the experience.

Actually doing backups onto DVDs was not the most exciting experience, as much as OneCare made that possible. Once backup functions were taken over by WHS, the cleverly-named HP Mediasmart Server (with its Windows Home Server version of Windows Server 2003) now on the network, that difficulty was mitigated and there are now automatic, incremental backups every night.

Still, OneCare works well and effortlessly for us, even if it reports that backups are woefully out of date (a new little incoherence on how OneCare has forgotten WHS is on the job).

It was also great that Microsoft announced that all OneCare support agreements will continue until their expiration. That means mid-September 2009 here.

On the other hand, the promised Microsoft replacements for OneCare are not in sight. I believe the last promise was for around August. I am beginning to squirm.

There appears time to find an adequate substitute, taking into consideration that Microsoft will offer some sort of solutions for some unknown degree of protection where I find it the most valuable for the computers here. Unfortunately, it is not clear that there is a decent non-Microsoft product that works here, regardless of the high reputation a number of Antivirus producers have achieved. The low reputation that is Microsoft’s automatic prize is apparently more myth than reality in my experience. On balance, OneCare works better than anything I have attempted to replace it with.

Here’s how my search is working out so far.

Since OneCare is to be no more, Windows 7 beta and Windows 7 RC not only had no provision for it, those releases were actually hostile to OneCare. So on Quadro7 I have been going through trials of other Antivirus products, partly to determine a good candidate to be installed uniformly on all of the systems here. None of the products tried so far seem to integrate well with Windows 7, which has apparently changed the rules enough that AV producers are having some difficulty. In particular, I have not found an AV product (even the Windows 7 directed beta releases) where Windows 7 reports that it is protected and the Windows Home Server concurs in reporting that my systems are protected.

Having tired of Symantec (and enjoying the liberation that OneCare provided), I haven’t gone back. My latest experience with McAfee was on WHS and that led me to prefer no AV there instead. (That experience also led me to be more cautious about the judgment of folks at Hewlett-Packard and the trial installations they chose to push to WHS.)

Meanwhile, on Quadro 7 I have gone through one trial of Kapersky and another of Trend Micro. I actually bought a retail copy of Trend Micro but Windows 7 chokes on that. Instead, I now possess an useless license since the Trend Micro beta for Windows 7 won’t accept the older-product registration code except when it installs as an update, and that doesn’t work on Windows 7. I’m moving on to F-Secure’s beta for Windows 7 right now and the trial lasts out past August. With luck, I might have a consistent Microsoft solution to deploy across all of the computers here. And if not, I will need to find a product that has an affordable multiple-machine license (as Trend does) and that doesn’t require me to use a web site to know my status (as McAfee Total Protection does).

There are clearly interoperability issues here, and the level of coherent integration is a challenge. It is a challenge for Microsoft too, but as one might expect, OneCare integrates more cleanly and, apart from an apparently-inescapable level of Microsoft paternalism, works most consistently and coherently than anything else I have attempted to use in its place.

Update 2009-06-15-04:06Z Correcting an expiration date for Microsoft Money.

Just a Little Bit Facebooked

2009-06-13T21:13:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Facebook, social computing, social grid, social silos, orcmid, internet surveillance, privacy

When I said “I will Facebook no more Forever” in December 2007, I meant it. I really meant it.

On the other hand, I knew that Facebook actually maintained my account and all I needed to do was log back into it to have it operating again. There is evidently a full nuclear destruction available, but I didn’t go that option. I also didn’t discard my Facebook account password.

I recall being given a similar reassurance by an AOL telephone representative as I was cancelling my long-standing CompuServe account, the first place “orcmid” was ever seen in public. (The AOL-ized webified CompuServe was not the CompuServe that I devoted so much time to at the end of the 70s. It seems I am constantly ending up in the demographic that is no longer the one of a long-time vendor’s keen interest.)

At 10:00 this morning, I was noticing all of the folks on Twitter going on about having gotten their user-friendly Facebook name, or about someone else getting it first.

Oh oh, “What about Orcmid?” I say to myself at least ten hours after the name-claiming frenzy began. Well of course “orcmid” was available. I now have it.

I am not back on Facebook. Yes, my account is active again, but I am not back.

All this means is that when others talk about their Facebook page, or photos on Facebook, or anything-else Facebook, I can go look, because I have an account.

I am not attending to my Facebook page, I am not posting on folk’s walls, I am not friending anyone and I am ignoring mail that comes in saying so-and-so has friended me.

This is entirely an account of convenience. I am only a little bit Facebooked. Honest. I caught it from a toilet seat.

By Your Start Bars Shall Ye Be Known

2009-06-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Windows, Golden Geek, computer setups

Wouter van Vugt and Jesper Lund Stocholm have unwittingly (?) started a new geek Friday pastime: Comparing computer Start Bars (or their equivalent among non-Windows users). Well, let’s see how many personality revelations I make here:

Scampo (main desktop)	Quadro7 (Tablet PC)	Compagno (web site dev host)

Senator, I have to the best of my recollection never opened Getting Started, Calculator, Sticky Notes, Snipping Tool, and Paint on Windows 7. That must have been someone else. (This must show how little my start bar has been auto-customized yet, and I have been using other applications. Hmm, gremlins perhaps?)

Now, the Start Bar is not the whole story. As you can see, what I might or might not have arranged in my Quick Launch area of the Task Bar is also revealing.

And, if you don’t find enough tea leaves to read into my psychological profile from the above clips, there is always the system tray for delving deep into the geek psyche:

Scampo:
Quadro7:
Compagno:

Excluding Vicki’s office desktop system, there is still one more machine in the Centrale workgroup. The fact that I actually had to learn how to use Remote Desktop reveals how much my arrangement is a maverick with respect to Windows Home Server design assumptions. I didn’t want to be a network systems administrator, but now I am one.

Well, that was boring. What can we come up with next week I wonder?

Golden Geek: Sibling Memories Revisited

2009-05-30T13:41:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Golden Geek, growing up, siblings

In the 2009-02-02 post, Golden Geek: Sibling Memories, I suggested that the next time the three of us got together, we should restage the 1951 group portrait. Luckily, youngest sister Carol is vacationing in the Pacific Northwest this year. On May 23, we all met at Judy’s and recreated the photograph as we are now, 58 years later. Vicki, our superb photographer assistant, made it possible. Here we are in the same order: Carol, Dennis, and Judy. Carol is now taller than Judy and this is apparently a matter of sibling banter between the two of them.

Carol and Judy provided additional recollections on the original staging. It was dad who arranged for us to sit for this picture. We think it was around Spring 1951, when we were in the 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades, all in Horace Mann school in Tacoma, Washington. This was the last time that all three of us would be in the same school together.

The photo portrait was hand retouched, and that is evident on the black-and-white print I am holding. The version that was presented to mom, and hung prominently in our home, was hand-colored.

Carol remembers that dad did not like obligatory occasions and preferred to operate spontaneously. We think the portrait was a surprise gift not associated with any particular occasion. I recall being that way as well. Living in New York State and Pennsylvania, I would arrive for holiday visits unannounced, meeting dad at his work and then riding home with him. The only problem with that is mom knew I might do such a thing and was left in anticipation whether I was coming or not. When dad warned me about that, I made my intentions known in advance from then on. I also learned to shop for occasions, even in advance rather than immediately before, after observing an acquaintance do that and seeing how much enjoyment she got out of it. I don’t resist an opportunity for a good surprise, but these days the simpler pleasures are available more consistently.

Concerning photo-realism, I believe that I was already wearing glasses in 1951. However, I was near-sighted and often did not wear glasses indoors. (That was true until around 1980 when I needed my first bifocals.) These days, we all wear glasses and some of us cannot see very far in front of our face without them.

Monday Morning NaN: Confirmable Experience with my Coffee

2009-05-11T08:05:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: confirmable experience, system incoherence, trustworthiness, dependable systems

Darren Rowse tweeted about Threaded Tweets, and I went for a look. I can’t remember the last time I saw a NaN delivered up by a web page, and this may be a first. I’m not sure whether 14996 replies is a very successful number, but I guess any thread that lives that long deserves some respect [;<).

There are three interdependent themes that I see around the development and sustenance of dependable systems: system coherence, confirmable experience, and trustworthiness. These and dependability itself are not independent notions.

I think this one is about confirmable experience

Something odd is happening. Thanks to screen-capture software, I can show you (and the producers of ThreadedTweets) what happened. In fact, I will tweet about this and if the cycle of learning and improvement is operating, the Threaded Tweets folk will pick up on it, if they aren’t aware of the glitch already.

It would be fun to create a threaded tweet about this as well, but I am not about to provide my Twitter credentials to ThreadedTweets in order to do that (and you can see the reason for distrustfulness here even though they claim to be using OAuth to protect me, yes?).

There is a part of the confirmable-experience cycle that figure in trustworthiness that I can’t account for. I have no idea how to the tweet threading folks are able to identify the specific difficulty, although it appears to be a stand-out no-brainer, so long as they can see the data on which the failed time-lapse calculation is being done. Smells like there is a division by zero or a failed data conversion in there somewhere too.

But as an end-user, I don’t know about any of that and my speculation is not the same as having visibility on the process for confirming what is happening, as opposed to confirming how users experience it. That’s the part I provide. Also, I notice that the NaN message has disappeared in the past few minutes, possibly because the defect has been noticed, possibly because it is transient and difficult to find.

The tie-in to trustworthiness

ThreadedTweets has a feedback and a support link that I could use to communicate what I noticed to them. Now that it the NaN is gone, I’m not sure whether that will help. They want an e-mail to the support address. I’ll send them a link to this post.

The tie-in to trustworthiness has to do with the demonstration of care for the adopters (a.k.a. users) by the producers of ThreadedTweets. In this case, it is how friction is removed from the ability of adopters to communicate their experience to the producers. The back half is how the producers demonstrate remedies or other solutions in a reliable way.

Since I am very much into identification of confirmable experiences and occasions where system incoherence show up, I have a screen capture utility at the ready at all times. This is necessary but not ordinary behavior required to to demonstrate what my experience is.

An interesting problem for an organization that wants to be trustworthy in delivering a dependable web-based service is this: what can be done that would allow ordinary, casual adopters to convey their experience to the producers in a way that is confirmable? That’s the question to consider.

And your assignment, if you choose to accept it …

That’s the bigger point of this tiny object lesson. Look for more to come. Notice ones in your own experience. Collect the full set. Entertain your friends.

Most of all, begin to notice those little moments of truth where your experience of products raises “uh oh” and “ick” experiences for you. What do you do about them?

This is not a trick question. I don’t do much about many that I experience. It is valuable to notice and even question that, though. What is it you are putting up with?

I arose at 5:30 am to be prepared for the 7:00 am Monday morning conference call of the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) TC. The cancellation notice went out about 2:00 am, my time, from Germany, and I had the opportunity to crawl back in bed after a poor night’s sleep or start my day early. Oh wait, I can post on my much-neglected blog. Aren’t you the lucky ones.

Saturday Geek Photo: A Back-to-the-Future Moment

2009-05-03T18:02:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Commodore 64, computer store, Quidnunc, Golden Geek

When I happened to glance into this window of the neighborhood computer store, I had a sudden back-to-the-future moment. I had to check my surroundings to ensure that I hadn’t step through a time warp.

I don’t have any explanation for this being here, and I didn’t step inside to ask. I did have my camera along.

As I look around me today, it is difficult to recall how exciting these machines and their brethren were for us. Despite their considerable limitations, they inspired the imagination in ways that won’t occur in that way again.

The original Commodore Business Machine (CBM) was an all-in-one unit that resembled some sort of Aztec pyramid with its monitor on top. I remember checking them out around 1977. I was concerned enough about the cost of service and maintenance for those and similar units that I spent the months before my first microcomputer going through the Heathkit courses on DC and AC Electronics while building my own instruments, starting with a multi-meter and culminating with an oscilloscope. Having done that, I ordered my first H8 computer and rapidly assembled that, the matching floppy-disk units, the H19 terminal, and then an H89 all-in-one computer, starting in 1978.

Although I was a Z80 Assembler and CP/M-80 hold-out, the microcomputer era ended for me when I purchased an assembled Heath-Zenith Z158 PC XT clone. Although the Z158 sported the original MS-DOS 64k RAM and Intel 8088 processor, I recall adding a memory-expansion board, additional hard disk (on an add-in board), and Microsoft Windows 1.03. I managed to keep Windows on it all the way through 3.0. My use of Windows was primarily as a shell for the basic Windows utilities and MS-DOS programs, including Microsoft Works, and Turbo Pascal. Nothing stressed Windows much and the result was tolerable performance on my underpowered system.

I had an early version of the Windows SDK as well. My favorite text editor was the Microsoft Editor that was packaged with Microsoft development tools at that time. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the command-line C compiler, having far more affection for Borland’s Turbo C and, later, Turbo C++.

And, in a side room, there was also an Atari 800. Although the 8-bit Atari was kept mainly as a recreational machine with limited floppy-disk capacity, I was inspired to publish an article on fractal dragon curves [Compute! October 1986, pp. 78-89] that exploited the relationship of dragon curve-walking to carry propagation in a binary counter.

Friday Cat Picture: Hide-and-Seek Fail

2009-04-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: cats, Friday cat pictures, Orcmid's Lair

Fourteen-year-old Teh Amor is inclined to sit on the edge of the bath tub in solitude between the decorative shower-curtain and the internal liner. Even then there can be evidence of his tail, and he’s not always very quiet about his presence.

The other day he demonstrated another version, simply parking on the floor behind the shower curtain in front of the bath tub. He appears to be waiting to be discovered.

We have no idea what this is about and what it provides, if anything, in the ordinary life of a cat, or of those cats who have never lived anywhere but in a human household.

This reminds me of the other curious behavior of our cats, especially Askani, who will crouch nosed into a corner with their back to everything happening in the room.

At the moment, Teh is running up and down the stairs and around my office as if he is chasing something. He just jumped onto my office chair, ran across my shoulders, and climbed onto my computer tower where he can look out the window. He lept onto the narrow window sill and is looking outside as if he is expecting something to appear.

Now he’s sitting on top of the open spiral notebook on my desk surface watching my fingers typing down at the keyboard tray. Oh, he put his paw down on the space bar and I had to back out that text.

I have no idea if this is anything like entertaining for the cat. It certainly is for me. Just so long as Teh doesn’t decide to take a bite out of my wrist as I move the computer mouse on the desk surface.

Friday Cat Picture: Household Territory-Sharing

2009-04-17T17:00:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: cats, Friday cat pictures, Orcmid's Lair

I just stumbled over the book “Do Cats Hear with their Feet?” in the local public library. It’s a quick read and, while I may have been reading faster than necessary, I don’t think the book answers that particular question.

What I did learn were some facts of cat territoriality that I had witnessed in an anecdotal fashion when Askani (pictured on the right) came into the life of our twins, litter mates Teh Amor and Princess Psyche (looking like a two-headed cat on the left, with Teh in front).

Since Teh and Princess came into my household as tiny kittens, they have been constant companions. They still nap and sleep together curled in a ball.

Askani had a hard time being accepted into that companionship, although there are moments of quiet truce.

The first problem was that the original female, Princess was so disturbed about the arriving stranger that she hissed and agitated when anything black was nearby. This created a problem for Teh, who didn’t understand what this had to do with him. Teh spent a great deal of time flopping on his side and being submissive to Princess. (On occasion, when Teh would be agitated over another cat seen or scented outside our windows, he also was aggressive to all other cats in sight, including his sister.)

Askani was mostly a scaredy-cat during those early times, spending a great deal of time under furniture. She still tends to do that, although she also has some off-the-floor places where she will curl up and sleep undisturbed by the other cats.

The first signs of a truce came in the first years in Sunnyvale, California, when all three cats decided it was all right to sleep together on the bed with Vicki and I, so long as the twins (also known as the kids and the teen-agers) were on one side of our sleeping bodies and Askani found a spot on the opposite side.

For the ten years we have been together in Seattle, there’s been a new pattern. Teh is agressive with Askani and the fur flies from time to time, far more than when he scraps with his sister. On other occasions, Askani will take a paw-swipe at either of them passing too close to her, and she is the one with the growling and hissing over intrusions too far into her personal space.

Lately, they have found a common hang-out on the comforter-covered sofa in my office where there is the only day-time human presence. Askani is the regular, with an occasional appearance of the twins. At night, they all spend their time here and I am sleeping on the sofa so that my phenomenal snoring does not disturb the peace of the household upstairs. They arrange themselves around my body atop the comforter with Askani at one end, usually along my flank, and with the twins curled up at my feet.

They have also become comfortable being together alone on the sofa, with or without the teddy bear as a barrier. But it is clear that the twins are family and Askani is not of that clan. I also think my presence in the room influences their good behavior with each other.

The teddy bear came with the twins. I recently unearthed it while going through some boxes in the storage room adjacent to my basement office. I have been putting it on the sofa just for fun. It doesn’t seem to mean anything to any of the cats, except for Teh. He will use the poor teddy for kneading his claws in some sort of tactile frenzy. I supposed that is better than his usual attacks on arms of the sofa, but not by much.

The village-of-the-damned-cats eyes are a consequence of using on-camera flash. I used this photograph anyway, since here Askani has her eyes open while being wary about the goings-on, but not wary enough to rouse herself and move.

Software: Rust Never Sleeps

2009-03-28T13:50:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Office 2003, Windows XP, end of support, software obsolescence, Document Freedom, interoperability, open standards

[My favorite track from that album has always been Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black). Now I can replace that long-lost LP track here, but the MP3 resampling seems to lose the beauty that I found in the carefully-crafted overdrive and tonalities of the original.]

When it comes to technology, I tend to be a late adopter, despite the Tablet PC running Windows 7 beta just off to the right on my desk. Or maybe I am a sporadic adopter.

Old Software Never Dies, It Just Quietly Rusts Away

In September 2008, I retired my last desktop machine still running Windows 98. It had Office 2000 also. The biggest concern was moving all of its peripherals and exotic software to my Media Center PC with Windows XP SP3. With that accomplished, I managed to rearrange my systems and introduce a Windows Home Server. The WHS (an HP MediaSmart Server) had been sitting in its box for over a year while I nerved up for those changes. The WHS is based on Windows Server 2003, not anything more recent.

My oldest machine is still the 1998-vintage Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop that, shipped with Windows 98, now runs Windows XP SP3 and remains a faithful little web-site development machine with its local IIS, FrontPage extensions, and Visual SourceSafe. I am looking into a progression by which I incrementally move and confirm those functions on the Windows Home Server. Then I can retire the Inspiron before it finally succumbs to entropy death.

Since every production desktop machine in this 4-computer + server SOHO operation is running Windows XP SP3 and, if used for e-mail and documents, Microsoft Office 2003, I am moderately concerned that those software products are now at their end-of-support time limits in April, 2009. (The Tablet PC normally runs Vista and even has Office 2007, but for now it is running Windows 7 beta for my evaluation purposes. I expect to restore Vista at some point after the Windows 7 Release Candidate arrives and then expires.)

I am not overly concerned. As indicated here, security updates (including Outlook junk-mail filter updates) will continue to be available for Office 2003. In general, there will be security fixes and on-line self-help available out another five years here in the United States.

I have no plans to update production work off of Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003. That can change, but I have another five years to sort it all out. A great deal will depend on future support for peripheral equipment and compatibility with the Windows Home Server and the way I develop and maintain web sites.

While my frugality around upgrading is not heartening for PC manufacturers, software companies, or the automobile industry (having kept my last vehicle for 18 years), I think it is representative of the general tendency to not fix things that are not broken. It is also an useful reminder that a system lifecycle for its users is quite different than it is for its suppliers.

Freedom for Rusty Documents?

At the same time, I know that I need to look at the degree to which my documents and digital materials are preserved beyond the life of Office 2003, FrontPage 2003 (RIP), Visio whatever, OpenOffice 2.4, Nikon Capture, etc. How “free” are my documents, and how much are they truly mine?

I already have the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and its support for the OOXML formats as an Office 2003 add-on. I suspect that OOXML will be supported for a very long time. I am not so sanguine about the ODF documents that I have, especially the ones in OpenOffice.org Calc format. I am going to be more cautious about that, at least until I have an useful set of tools for ensuring the preservation of recoverability of documents in both original OOXML and ODF 1.0/1.1 formats.

But eventually, I will run out of gas on my Windows XP SP3 systems, and I’ll probably be looking at hardware and software of the Windows 7 (or later) vintage. Having all of the ducks lined up will involve the hardware (scanners, audio gear, displays, and printers) that I want to preserve and also figuring out how to upgrade/replace application software with products that still let me do what works and also use the formats and documents that I am invested in. I have to gulp when I think of all of the photographic images that are in today’s version of Nikon NEF format, all of the web pages authored and maintained via the now-obsolete FrontPage extensions, and the many documents of one format and another stashed in today’s version of Zip files (and some in old ARC files, remember ARC?).

That I will leave documents of one form or another behind like so many dried leaves is not confidence-inspiring. An additional concern is that I don’t see the champions of open document formats (not to mention “Free Documents”) doing what it takes to make me more confident than I am in Microsoft’s assurance that upgrading is safe for our documents and software (though, ultimately, upgrade we must).

I will soldier on, wondering what is in my power to alleviate my concern.

Stimulate This! Sustaining Life in the Slow Lane

2009-03-28T10:49:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: James Galbraith, economic crisis, economic recovery, civil society and democracy, Barack Obama

Thanks to Tim O’Reilly, my attention has been captured by the lengthy cautionary analysis of James Galbraith, “This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts.”

This is a lengthy analysis with much to consider. Here is the worrisome bit about the current approach [with all emphasis mine]:

“That chance [of bad assets recovering value] can be assessed, of course, only by doing what any reasonable private investor would do: due diligence, meaning a close inspection of the loan tapes. On the face of it, such inspections will reveal a very high proportion of missing documentation, inflated appraisals, and other evidence of fraud. (In late 2007 the ratings agency Fitch conducted this exercise on a small sample of loan files, and found indications of misrepresentation or fraud present in practically every one.) The reasonable inference would be that many more of the loans will default. Geithner's plan to guarantee these so-called assets, therefore, is almost sure to overstate their value; it is only a way of delaying the ultimate public recognition of loss, while keeping the perpetrators afloat.

“Delay is not innocuous. When a bank's insolvency is ignored, the incentives for normal prudent banking collapse. Management has nothing to lose. It may take big new risks, in volatile markets like commodities, in the hope of salvation before the regulators close in. Or it may loot the institution -- nomenklatura privatization, as the Russians would say -- through unjustified bonuses, dividends, and options. It will never fully disclose the extent of insolvency on its own.

“The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured. … ”

There is a part that reflects my own experience, begun in early 2008 well before the year-end crash but not sufficient to endure it unscathed:

“A brief reflection on this history and present circumstances drives a plain conclusion: the full restoration of private credit will take a long time. It will follow, not precede, the restoration of sound private household finances. There is no way the project of resurrecting the economy by stuffing the banks with cash will work. Effective policy can only work the other way around.”

I don’t know what you are doing but I am looking at ways to save. If I am looking for credit, it is for something that is secured, inexpensive, and protects me from having to dig into my nest egg. And the use of credit is essentially for a bridge that allows my continued saving to create a cushion against unexpected expenses such as automobile maintenance, health problems, and rising costs of insurance, utilities, and current rents. I am not keen to spend cash on anything inessential. If I have discretionary funds, they are to be saved.

For this next worrisome part, some disclosure: We are working at living entirely on Social Security benefits, the payments from an annuity, and the limited earnings of our two small businesses. Those earnings, along with seriously-curtailed spending, are indispensible in improving and building a financial cushion outside of my 401k which is too devalued to touch, especially because withdrawals are taxed and subject to withholding (the appropriate payback for allowing the contributions and their appreciation to be untaxed, but economically terrible if touched now). Here is my worst nightmare, since any reduction in benefits (Medicare or Social Security) would put us on the street. And, hey, do you really want me competing for your job, which I would do cheaper and smarter although certainly not faster?

“ … We should offset the violent drop in the wealth of the elderly population as a whole. The squeeze on the elderly has been little noted so far, but it hits in three separate ways: through the fall in the stock market; through the collapse of home values; and through the drop in interest rates, which reduces interest income on accumulated cash. For an increasing number of the elderly, Social Security and Medicare wealth are all they have.
“That means that the entitlement reformers have it backward: instead of cutting Social Security benefits, we should increase them, especially for those at the bottom of the benefit scale. Indeed, in this crisis, precisely because it is universal and efficient, Social Security is an economic recovery ace in the hole. Increasing benefits is a simple, direct, progressive, and highly efficient way to prevent poverty and sustain purchasing power for this vulnerable population. I would also argue for lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to (say) fifty-five, to permit workers to retire earlier and to free firms from the burden of managing health plans for older workers.”

It is interesting that the European Union resistance to stimulus of financial institutions is reported to be because their social-welfare systems are actually providing softer responses and security for the public and workers during the economic retrenchment. In particular, instead of lay-offs, there are work reduction strategies in which the social system compensates for the wage reductions. Galbraith continues,

“This suggestion is meant, in part, to call attention to the madness of talk about Social Security and Medicare cuts. The prospect of future cuts in this modest but vital source of retirement security can only prompt worried prime-age workers to spend less and save more today. And that will make the present economic crisis deeper. In reality, there is no Social Security "financing problem" at all. There is a health care problem, but that can be dealt with only by deciding what health services to provide, and how to pay for them, for the whole population. It cannot be dealt with, responsibly or ethically, by cutting care for the old.”

I obviously have a self-interest that finds reassurance in these statements. There is much more to the analysis and I encourage thoughtful reading of the entire piece. It may be necessary to read it more than once to overcome ones initial rejecting reactions, to the extent those are aroused.

Meanwhile, two bits from the concluding passages:

“ … The government must take control of insolvent banks, however large, and get on with the business of reorganizing, re-regulating, decapitating, and recapitalizing them. Depositors should be insured fully to prevent runs, and private risk capital (common and preferred equity and subordinated debt) should take the first loss. Effective compensation limits should be enforced -- it is a good thing that they will encourage those at the top to retire. As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut correctly stated in the brouhaha following the discovery that Senate Democrats had put tough limits into the recovery bill, there are many competent replacements for those who leave.

“Ultimately the big banks can be resold as smaller private institutions, run on a scale that permits prudent credit assessment and risk management by people close enough to their client communities to foster an effective revival, among other things, of household credit and of independent small business -- another lost hallmark of the 1950s. No one should imagine that the swaggering, bank-driven world of high finance and credit bubbles should be made to reappear. Big banks should be run largely by men and women with the long-term perspective, outlook, and temperament of middle managers, and not by the transient, self-regarding plutocrats who run them now.”

…

“… What is required are careful, sustained planning, consistent policy, and the recognition now that there are no quick fixes, no easy return to "normal," no going back to a world run by bankers -- and no alternative to taking the long view.

“A paradox of the long view is that the time to embrace it is right now. We need to start down that path before disastrous policy errors, including fatal banker bailouts and cuts in Social Security and Medicare, are put into effect. It is therefore especially important that thought and learning move quickly. Does the Geithner team, forged and trained in normal times, have the range and the flexibility required? If not, everything finally will depend, as it did with Roosevelt, on the imagination and character of President Obama.”

2009-03-24: Finding Ada

2009-03-24T22:51:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Finding Ada, Ada Lovelace Day, Women in technology, Linda Bergsteinsson

Months ago, I pledged to write something in honor of Finding Ada and post about it when today arrived.

I now have three thoughts about this, and I need to figure out where to start.

First, I am impressed by young women entering technology, and how much that entry seems to be in Asia and other parts of the world where information technology is seen as an inviting vocation. There is something instructive in that.
Secondly, I notice how many women in technology I have known and worked with. Despite whatever change is happening with newcomers, I notice that there remain places where women are active and do well. I continue to encounter younger women technology professionals at places like Microsoft.
Then there is the prospect of recording some personal reminiscence of Grace Hopper, starting with when I first met her.

Singling out a particular woman who I have known and admire is a great way to focus. A few come to mind. I just ran across Linda’s photograph while looking around for women in technology of my direct acquaintance, and here is what I have to say about that.

Linda Bergsteinsson: Pioneering Woman in Technology

I first met Linda in 1989 when she visited the Xerox advanced-development team I was a member of in Rochester, New York. She’d flown in from the California-based Xerox Office Systems business unit, home of Ethernet, the Xerox work stations, and publishing-system software. Linda was taking on a crash project for development of a document-imaging system. The product was required to work with the soon-to-be-announced Xerox Docutech system and it was required to be demonstrable at the launch event.

I joined her new team. Not prepared to move to California, I remained in Rochester as part of a satellite operation. I commuted to El Segundo and Palo Alto until the project and its staff were scooped up under a Rochester-based organization. I lost touch with Linda until the Spring of 1992 when, knowing that I was finally looking for a way to move to California, she informed me of an urgent need for a software architect on XSoft document-management products.

I arrived in Silicon Valley in August 1992. Although I didn’t work with Linda again, we remained colleagues and friends until neither of us were in Silicon Valley any longer.

I learned, as part of our acquaintance, that Linda and I were the same age. She graduated from UCLA in 1960 as a mechanical engineer, a very unusual choice at that time. She had worked in Germany and at Ford Aeronutronics. She was solidly into computers on joining Planning Research Corporation, in Los Angeles, around the same time in the 60s when they were contracting support to some Univac software in arrangements I was tangentially on the far end of.

At Xerox, she was involved in the original Xerox Workstation software effort and was working at the descendant of that PARC-associated organization when our paths finally crossed.

Although I would learn of her history as our acquaintance grew, there was something pronounced that I learned from Linda early on. She just accepted people. And she liked people that I had quite different snap-judgments about. Struck by her generosity, I began to question and revise my existing snap impressions of the same people. She seemed to have a decisive practical nature, and the usual changes of organizations and directions did not distress her so much that it showed. When she was deposed as part of the document-imaging team being scooped up by another organization, what seemed most unsettling for her was that the principle actors in that play were personally mean about it. When I later introduced Vicki to Linda, Vicki’s experience was of immediate acceptance and of interest in what was important to Vicki.

Although her career was in technology, Linda also managed a Palo Alto home that always had housemates or visitors. She collected and displayed art all over her home. She loved to cook and held wonderful dinners. I had the opportunity to meet members of her family in town for a little reunion at her home. Her relatives were struck by the fact that I had worked for and with Linda. They would confide to me how much they were still somewhat mystified by Linda’s connection to engineering and technology and her taking what seemed such an alien path through life.

As the XSoft organization dwindled and shed senior management team, Linda retired from Xerox Corporation a few years before I did. Too young to fully retire, I remember how pleased she was to obtain her own PC at home and train herself to work on the Internet. Freed from management responsibilities and the concerns of senior staff, she found work as a web developer for a local firm. It was one of the most satisfying experiences she’d had in a long time.

In January 2001, Linda moved from her Palo Alto home to Southern California. On February 10 she married Tom Criswell, a long-time friend and companion. They were preparing to move together into a home in Rancho Palos Verdes. On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, Linda Bergsteinsson Criswell died of cancer. She was 63.

It was a gift to know her. Looking back, I see all the ways that I didn’t know her very well. And, today, I miss her and her calm steadiness.

Friday Cat Pictures: More Heat Please!

2009-03-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: cats, Friday cat pictures, Orcmid's Lair

Now that I have rearranged my work area, the heat-seeking obsessions of cats are more evident.

Her Highness, the Dowager Empress, Askani, is rarely photographed. She sleeps a lot, often next to a heat vent where the gentle warm breeze warms her face and flank.

On visiting my office, Askani will find one of the two flat warm surfaces. If I am somewhere napping, she will find me and pin down one of my shoulders and snore in my ear (the two younger cats having already claimed other parts of my anatomy).

Not seeing her preferred spot available available, she parks atop her second choice, my LAN expansion hub.

Wherever there is warmth, Askani will find it.

I first noticed this when I was recovering from having my gall bladder removed. In the first days of recovery, Askani would lie on my comforter along my healing flank. I credited some mystic Florence Nightingale instinct of cats for ailing humans. Once I stopped taking the Vicodin, it dawned on me that this was a warmer part of my body and the cat sought out the heat. I am sticking to that hypothesis.

If, on the other hand, she is attempting to park on my Wi-Fi access point, the imagined scowl is probably because I don’t know the WPA key, even under telepathic interrogation.

Princess Psyche, Askani’s young cousin (they were born a continent apart), claims the newly-popular primary warm spot atop my audio dock. Askani, when she gets here first, covers it completely and finds my clever headset-hanger arrangement a bit annoying.

Askani has not shown any tendency to gnaw on the headset, although I have numerous pairs of glasses with pitted earpads. It is a greater risk that this 14-year-old kitten will decide to attack the cord and sever or short the connection.

I recently thought the cats had murdered the USB adapter-cable that I keep attached to my computer for synchronizing my camera and my Mobile PC phone. I thought my phone was dead because the cord had been messed up. I forgot that I had powered-down the phone while at the movies and hadn’t powered it back up.

The remaining hot spot is atop my battery-backup UPS unit next to my desktop tower. This is the haunt of Prince Teh Amor although the other two have been sighted there. Teh normally faces the window instead of into the room, and he’ll hop up onto the computer tower, and even the window frame, if he senses something compelling outside.