Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Good people abound

My neighbor fell this morning while I was ordering two sausage biscuits at the Rocky Hill McDonald’s. After getting the call, I rushed home leaving the food I’d paid for on the grill. My wife was already attending to my neighbor. She had a broken rib and was feeling very bad. When the paramedics arrived, without slowing down, they smiled and waved to Evan. The postman took a moment to inquire about her condition showing sympathy. I returned to McDonald’s assuming I’d have to settle for getting Cathy some fries instead of biscuits. As I walked in, the manager hollered, "He’s back!" An employee said she was cooking me some fresh biscuits even though breakfast hours were clearly over. Another employee offered me coffee and everyone asked about the neighbor. I can only assume they overheard my phone conversation. No one asked about political parties, believe systems, or views on health care reform. Everyone showed genuine concern. When we have differences with people, or experience a "bad" person, I think we should not let that person taint our view into believing all people or the majority of people are the same; acknowledge that we don’t fully understand that person and should strive to know them better; and know that ultimately, all things aside, it takes a community, and we will look after one another.

Update: Good news! They are back from the hospital and nothing is broken. My wife feels guilty for calling 911.

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We have a new baby in the house!

Dear Knox County Schools, If I beat your fancy $500 electronic baby, does my son lose points because abusive granddad was raised in the 70s? Sincerely, I have 5 children I know what a baby crying all night sounds like and so does my son I thought I was done when Cathy said we couldn’t have a 6th

Yes, we have an electronic baby in the house this weekend. The irony is that Noah has probably changed more diapers and spent more baby time than many of his schoolmates ever will. If this is demented sex education lesson on abstinence, I give the schools an F because we don’t educate through fear and making the wonder of life a thing to dread. If the lesson is truly about the responsibility of caring for a child, I give this gadget an A+. This is a cool toy and Mattel had better step up because my 7 and 4 year old children are loving it! The diapers even have to be changed! Oh, I like the fact that there are no Caucasian electronic babies because I’m sure my son’s absentee interracial girlfriend is going to be quite the buzz at the inlaw’s church. I wonder if Noah will have the wherewithal to actually turn electrobabe into the daycare instead of carrying he/she/it into the teenager’s sanctuary.

Update: I just learned that the baby and Noah are more than a certain distance apart that the baby’s head explodes because Noah has an electronic wrist band secured to his wrist. Side note, you really should secure the bands a little tighter because I’m quite certain that I could slip it off Noah’s wrist so that he could help Evan get to sleep but no, we will be honest and I will take over for Noah tonight. Of course, I could get Evan to sleep easier if your do dad had a mute button! I must say that it is amusing watching Noah try to put electrobabe down long enough to play his video game only to have crying drag him away from the keyboard with a grin and an eyeroll.

Update: Electrobabe turned off about midnight. I have the sneaky suspicion the program was set up wrong and we’ll be seeing this child again.

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From the mouths of babes

Teenager 1, after walking through the mud, cracks joke: "We’re lucky. In Tibet they’d pay thousands of dollars for this treatment."
Me: "You really don’t know what Tibet is, do you?"
Teenager 1: "No. Well, it has something to do with religion."
Teenager 2: "Yes, it’s in Jerusalem."
Me: "Uh, no."
Teenager 1: "I think it borders China."
Teenager 2: "Well it has something to do with the Jews."
Teenager 1: "It’s mostly a tourist attraction right now."
Teenager 2: "Yup. A tourist trap."

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Yes, I’m a geek that works on computers

I primarily work with people who have clients that need digital magic to happen. The tag line on my business card is "I solve problems". For the longest time, I was drawn to projects that started off with descriptions like "We’ve had 3 other developers fail to get this done" or "That expert in Florida says this can’t be done." I liked these projects. I liked the challenge and I could usually get it done. However, they are high risk and often not very profitable. Usually the reason three other developers fail to accomplish the task has less to do with a programming problem and more to do with a management problem. It is hard to pay the mortgage with "man that felt good!"

I still work with people who have clients that need things done. Effectively I build web applications for businesses but I usually go through a middle (wo)man. In the past this middle person has been a venture capitalist trying to launch his clients with the greatest of success. It has been other developers with too much on their plates. Most often, designers/artists that need functionality programmed into the website. Imagine you had a bookstore and wanted to sell your books online. I’d be the person who writes the shopping system that allows your customers to browse books online, add them to a shopping cart, and make the purchase online. The part of a website like that which most people never see is the inventory control part. That’s where the employees log in to add or remove books from the system. It’s just a big a project as the front end where the shoppers go but instead of thousands of people seeing it, 2, 3 or 10 people use it. Of course, you cannot sell books online without a tracking system for shipping so I would write the code that generates shipping labels, ties into UPS or Fedex or the post office, and tracks the packages. Then if your bookstore decided that it wanted to manage it’s human resources through the web with a punchcard system for managing when employees clocked in and clocked out, scheduling of employees, and payroll (tying the system into Quickbooks), I’d write that. Next if you decided the punchcard system wasn’t efficient enough and you wanted the employees to wear RFID id badges and used those for clocking in and clocking out, I’d write that.

Now there isn’t a computer person alive before the time of the Geek Squad who didn’t say, "wow! I need to create a business repairing people’s computers." The Geek Squad was not an original idea. I know I had the vision of teams of nerds running to people’s homes fixing computers. I did it for awhile. I know I have friends who had the same vision. But Best Buy had the resources that we lacked to launch. Tthere is not profit in repairing computers. Computers have become disposable. What holds value is data. If people would move their work primarily to The Cloud or create and understand a backup system that removed the dependence upon a particular machine, then instead of paying a geek to repair your computer, you could just buy a new one! The Geek Squad doesn’t make money on repairs. It makes money on upsales. When you get a repair and they sell you an Antivirus program or a new hard drive or another memory stick then they make money.

I do fix computers for friends and family. I charge a flat rate of $135 which is less than what you will pay the Geek Squad. I don’t know if it is true but I’ve read that the Geek Squad will also put in a limited number of hours and then declare that the computer needs reformatting. I won’t do that. Usually I put 5 hours into a machine plus I run some diagnostic software overnight and dust out the computer. It’s a nice thing to do on a weekend. My effort amounts to substantially less than I charge hourly for programming but there is a good karma to making sure someone’s computer is functioning correctly.

However, sometimes I get bitten. I took in a friend’s laptop because it was hanging/locking up. I was thinking some malware had a hold of it. A week later the computer is still with me and starting to get in the way of my real work and my friend is becoming frustrated. It may have some defective hardware but the diagnostics I have run have not found any physical problems. It might be a driver problem but downloading the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website didn’t help. This is a Dell Inspiron 1525 running Vista with service pack 1. Any attempt to install service pack 2 takes an hour to install and at the very end of the process, the installer announces "failed" and reverts back to sp1. Right now I’m sitting on a BSOD:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

If this is the first time you’ve seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or sofware manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or sofware. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000000A (0x00000018, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x81C590FC)

This screams bad hardware or a bad driver. However, I’ve read that this goes away by installing service pack 2. That would be the thing that installs 100% then reverts back to service pack 1. Oh the irony!