Greenbush was a very cool organization that worked with special and adult education, as we as acting as a resource for schools throughout eastern Kansas.  I was  doing field service maintaining computer and networks at several small education centers in NE Kansas, including a few prisons.  They worked on a tight budget, and there was always more that needed done than there was time and money to accomplish, but it was a very fulfilling job even though technically it was not near the level of what I had been doing.   I worked with lots of great people and really felt like I was making a difference, even though I did feel like I was being run a bit ragged.

Shortly after I started, the guy that hired me and was my boss was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away a couple of months later.   That led to some changes in the chain of command that were a bit different, not bad just different.  I was really trying to make some headway against the workload so I could find the time to really try to make some improvements instead of just putting out fires and was slowly but surely making headway.  Unfortunately, my wife lost her job during this time which put us in a real financial crunch since I had taken a considerable pay cut for the job.  Even so I wanted to stick with it.  I had a fair degree of autonomy and got to work with some really dedicated educators.

Even though I hadn’t been looking for a job, I was still getting a couple of calls a week from recruiters from my earlier job hunting and someone called with an offer that I just couldn’t refuse.  It was a contract position with the USDA, and it came with over a 50% pay increase.  So with a bit of sadness I resigned from Greenbush and went to work for the USDA.

That was quite an experience.  It was everything bad you would think of a stereotypical large government bureaucracy, but worse.  I worked with some great people, but it was almost impossible to get anything accomplished and everyone seemed to work under a cloud.  Over and over I was told by people that if you did something you weren’t supposed to that they would fire you on the spot.  Everyone seemed so afraid of taking responsibility for anything or doing anything without express written instruction from above that it was really frustrating and depressing.  I had hired on as a temp contractor, with the hope that it would turn into a more permanent contract position in three months.  The timing was bad though and a major reorg and contract renegotiation hit at that time and everything ended up in the air with no idea of if I would get a permanent position or where it would be.  The money was good, but with no benefits, no stability, and no desire to work there long term, I started looking again.

I did a phone interview with the University of Kansas and thought it went well, but then didn’t hear back from them for a couple of months, so I figured it wasn’t going to happen.  I had been trying to get a position there for about eight years, and had one job offer that I had turn down because I couldn’t take the pay cut, and another situation where they said they were going to make an offer, then the funding for the position fell through and I didn’t make it.  A month or so later KU called me back for a face to face interview.  Once again I thought the interview went really well, but I didn’t hear back from them, and after another month I reluctantly decided that I just wasn’t going to get the call.

Things settled down at work a bit and I did finally get a “permanent” contract position with another company working in a different division at USDA.  It wasn’t really what I wanted, but I needed to have an income and the pay was good.  Two weeks later KU called me with an offer, and it was a good one.  I felt kind of bad about leaving the job so soon after getting hired into it, but the overwhelming sense of relief at not having to go back to work at the USDA made my decision clear.  There was no way I was going to turn down a good position at KU.

So now I work at KU where I’ve wanted to be for several years.  It is a beautiful campus in a nice town, full of all the energy of young adults getting out on their own and starting to find their way in the world.  I have a great boss and my co-workers seem like good folk.  I am doing IT in a major university, which was my career goal when I went for my Master’s a few years ago.  Things are looking pretty good at the moment.

1. Pointless post to let everyone know what someone was doing, even if it wasn’t that newsworthy.

2. A post to let me know how much cooler and more interesting somebody’s life was than mine.

3. Religious/Political/Dogmatic statement that someone felt the need to shout to the world.

My ankle has continued to hurt and cause me problems.  Cold weather, snow, and ice have left me in a lot of pain and really reduced my mobility.  The new bike developed some kind of a starting problem and ended up being in the shop for 5 months.  And today put the icing on the cake when I discovered that a cargo trailer we had stored at the house of a friend of my wife’s got stolen, along with all our SCA camp gear and my SCA armor.  All told probably about an $8000 loss.

All of that sucks, but life goes on.

Things have been improving at work, I actually like being there again.  I also have a job interview coming up for something that I think I might like even more, so that is kind of exciting.

The Triumph may or may not be fixed.  The starting problem seemed to be temperature related and weather is getting warmer.  The shop says they found and fixed the problem and it is indeed starting more reliably than it had been.  There were a couple of times when it was in the 30’s that it still didn’t start, but I don’t really want to ride when it is that cold.  Either way, it is running well at the moment and I’ve been enjoying getting some riding time in.

My ankle still hurts, but it is improving.  I’m taking longer walks and keeping it moving.  I still have hopes that I can regain most of the use of it.

And to keep myself occupied this summer, I’ve started a new hobby, beekeeping.  I built a Kenyan Top Bar Hive and introduced a colony to it a couple of weeks ago.  They seem to be doing well.  For those that are interested I started another blog detailing my experiences with the bees at http://beltanebees.com

That is all for now.

McGuillicutty was a creation of mine, a reluctant half human / half leprechaun superhero that I wrote a short story about that a friend was going to publish in a comic project he was working on.  Well, the project never saw fruition, but I liked the character so much that he became the basis for one of my NaNoWriMo novels.  Of course, like most of my writing, I never finished that story.  So when NaNoWriMo next came around I wrote a story about an aspiring writer that never finished his stories.  Through the influence of a magical artifact many characters from his works came to life in the modern world and caused considerable problems for him.  In the midst of this his favorite creation McGuillicutty appeared and became his ally and mentor.

Through the story it became clear that he had created the character of McGuillicutty to become the person that he wished he was, an escape from his boring mundane life.  By the end of the story the writer has come into his own, not becoming McGuillicutty, but becoming the person he always wished he had been.  This isn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it was a fun little story I enjoyed writing.  It is also notable because it is only the second one of my stories I ever finished.  And finished is only applicable to the fact that I wrapped it up and reached a conclusion.  It still remains an unedited mess that would need a lot of work to become a good tale.

Now that all the background is out of the way, the real point here is that maybe I’m becoming McGuillicutty a bit myself.  I find myself asking the question WWMD?  (What Would McGuillicutty Do).   And while I will never drink as much whiskey or be quite as blunt as he, I find his confidence and intolerance of BS creeping more and more into my personality.  I’ve become a lot more comfortable in my own skin.  I seem to have reclaimed a bit of the fire in my belly, and it’s a good feeling.   There won’t be any great life altering events coming from this, but a more subtle change in how I live my life.   I look back over my life and realize that I’ve seen and done quite a bit.  I’ve been locked up, beaten, stabbed, and broken.  Each time I survived and came out swinging.  It gives me a certain perspective on life, so many things are too minor to get worked up over, and life is too short to put up with negativity.

So raise I’ll raise a glass of the craythur to life, here’s to whatever it throws at me.  I can take it.

Despite what happened to get me into this mess, I’ve decided that I still want to keep on riding motorcycles.  I’ve gone back and forth a little on this, but I think I always knew that I wasn’t going to give it up.  I almost bought a bike a friend had for sale, then decided it was too soon and that I should wait.  My resolve lasted a couple of weeks, when I fell in love with the Triumph Rocket III.

Previously I have been riding a Suzuki Boulevard M90 (1500cc), and I really thought the only thing I would like more was a bigger Boulevard.  The M109 (1800cc) is a pretty cool looking cruiser and I was toying with the idea of waiting for the 2011 models to arrive and get one.  On a whim though I decided to check out the local Triumph dealer, and found a new 2008 Triumph Rocket III they still had in stock (this link goes to the 2010 model, but it is very similar).  It has to be one of the most audacious bikes I’ve seen, a 2300cc three cylinder beast with a very unique look.  At first I was worried that it would be too big for me, I mean it has a bigger engine than my car (literally).  After checking the specs I found that it weighs 20lbs less than did my Suzuki, and had a seat that was less than an inch higher.  I read a ton of reviews where everyone marveled at how well such a monstrous bike handled.  And to be honest, I’m kind of an Anglophile (don’t tell my friends down at the Irish Pub). So, I decided to take the plunge and am in the process of buying this thing.  The dealer is going to hold it for a month for me, by which time I hope to be able to ride again.

I’m hoping to still be able to enjoy the fall riding season, and not be killed or maimed in a crash.

So, wish me luck, I’ll likely need it.

Luckily, I still have 20/20 vision, so I can read a relatively small text size comfortably on the screen.  If I needed to use larger text, I would be flipping the pages at an annoying pace, but as it is, it isn’t too bad.  The text size is of course adjustable, so most people should be able to find a comfortable setting.  You can also change the color scheme to be black text on white background, a sepia toned display with brown on tan, or white text on black.  Combine that with easily accessible brightness controls and the display is quite readable under most conditions.

When I first checked this out, B&N had not yet released their Android version of nook yet, though they had support for the iPhone and iPad.  They eventually got around to it and released an app, but it initially lacked the display options the Kindle had.  A recent update added several features and it is now on a par with the competition.  Of course, the recent announcement that B&N has put itself up for sell puts the future of the nook in question and pushes me a bit towards Amazon as my eBook store of choice.

Either way, my cell phone will likely be my reader of choice for the foreseeable future.  While I still like the larger eInk display on the nook and Kindle better, I don’t like it enough to deal with the hassle of hauling around another bulky piece of technology that I have to worry about damaging and remember to keep charged all the time.  I have to carry my cell phone, and it’s easy to keep charged at work, at home, or in the car, so unless I’m out camping or something, I rarely run out of juice.  It can also be read in the dark, and is much lighter to hold up while reading in bed.

I’m guessing that the eReaders marketed by these companies were not meant to be major sources of profits, but were intended to increase the market for eBooks.  If that is the case the companies have not hurt themselves terribly by competing with their own products.  Anybody with an Android Phone or iPhone should really check out these Apps, they are free and both bookstores have a large library of free eBooks to choose from.

A few posts (and many months ago) I wrote about getting a motorcycle and rediscovering my love of riding.  Since then, I actually bought a new motorcycle, a shiny blue 2009 Suzuki Boulevard M90, and I have been loving the hell out of riding all over the place.

On Tuesday June 1^st, I was on my way into to work on I-435 in KS.  It was a nice morning, a little on the warm side, but I decided at highway speeds it would be cool enough to warrant wearing my leather jacket.  A few miles after I set out someone a couple of cars ahead of me made an aggressive lane change to get out behind a trash truck.  This caused a chain reaction of people slamming on breaks, myself included.    The car behind me however, was not paying enough attention and did not slow down.  I caught just a glimpse of it in my side mirror before the impact.  I’m not completely sure what happened, but I know I flew through the air a ways then rolled down the highway a bit.   I looked up to see a car almost on top of me, but the lady driving it managed to swerve around me, as did the next car behind her.   I was in pain, panicked, and disoriented, but I manage to drag myself off the pavement onto the side of the road.

I pulled my helmet off and started to look around.  There were cars stopped everywhere, but I didn’t take in too many details.  My right ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle, and everything hurt.  I made sure I could move everything but my right foot, and was a bit relieved that I could.  Several people were already running to check on me, including one that was a retired Oklahoma Sheriff.   He made me lay on my back and held my head and neck still in case there were any spinal injuries.

I asked someone to get my phone from my saddlebag, and I called my wife to let her know that I had been in an accident and didn’t seem to be in danger of imminent death.   The ambulance arrived and took me to the hospital which was quite an experience in itself.  It started with a nurse in the ER telling me I should have told her that I had been in a bicycle wreck instead of a motorcycle accident since motorcycle riders deserved what they got.  Either the pain and trauma from the accident, or the painkillers they gave me made me very sick, and I guess my heart rate dropped dangerously low while they were resetting my ankle.  I remember screaming during that, but not much else.

I had to have surgery to put a screw in my ankle.  I continued to have nausea and vomiting from the pain meds, so it was a pretty miserable couple of days in the hospital.  It wasn’t helped by the fact I was sharing the room with a young, good-looking guy who happened to be in the half of the room closest to the door.   While I could hear the female nurses talking to him at length, they didn’t make it past the curtain to see me very often.   In fact, by the time I went home Wednesday evening, they still hadn’t even bothered to clean the road rash on my arm and hand.

So now I’m home with my screwed up ankle, and bruised and battered body.  My shiny new bike with about $1000 worth of aftermarket accessories is trashed.  I’m waiting to hear back from the insurance company as to what payment I will get on all of that.  The big challenge ahead is maintaining the positive momentum I’ve had going for awhile.  I had been dieting and working out over the last few months.  I had lost 30 lbs and was up to running a couple of miles, which was quite an accomplishment for me.  I had some big plans for road trips other activities this year, and now all of that is put on hold for 3-4 months, at least.

My normal workouts are out of the question, and I can do no weight bearing on the ankle for 2-3 months, then I will be in a walking cast for awhile.  Of course the crutches are a workout on their own, and I may be able to manage some upper body workouts once things straighten out a bit, but I imagine I will not be able to achieve the same intensity of exercise again for some time, if ever.  There is no guarantee I will be able to run, or even walk without considerable pain once all is said and done.  That coupled with being homebound for a lot of the summer sounds like an invitation for weight gain; I’m going to of course try not to go off the deep end, but who knows.

All my vacation and road trip plans are pretty well wiped out as well.  I’m not sure at this point if the bike is salvageable, and if it is, I’m not sure if I will want to ride again.  I hope I do, but it was the most frightening and painful experience of my life, one that will continue to pain me for many months.

So, that’s where things stand now.  I came out very lucky considering; my injuries could have been a lot worse.  I will just have to see how things progress as I heal and find out what my options are as the joyful experience of wrangling with insurance companies continues.

When Barnes & Noble entered the market with the nook, I viewed it with mixed feelings.  From a technical standpoint it was very similar to the Kindle, same basic technology and stats.  The Kindle offered a few more features, such as a web browser, and it also sported a keyboard instead of a touchscreen for navigation.  It seemed likely that B&N would be able to match Amazon for selection, or at least come close.  The nook also supported more formats, including the popular ePub format, and you could load documents to directly via a usb cable just like a usb drive, no special software or convoluted processes involved.  Of course the content purchased from B&N was DRM protected, and I still had concerns about price and durability.

Eventually I decided to forgo my concerns and purchase one.  Or actually two, since my wife is also a voracious reader and wanted one as well.  So after a trip to the local B&N to try one out, I ordered two of them and anxiously waited for their arrival.  There were a couple of main factors that led to me deciding to buy eReaders for us.  The first was simple portability.  I often take books with me to dinner, to the doctors, to the park, etc.  Anywhere where I might have a bit of downtime and a chance to read.  I also tend to read multiple books at a time, switching between them as the mood takes me.  With the nook I could easily carry five or six novels with me so I would always have a variety of books available.  And if I ran out, I could just buy another one and download it immediately from just about anywhere.  The other issue was that of space.  With both myself and my wife reading several books a month, and our reluctance to get rid of books, the house was really filling up.  We have books everywhere and have pretty much run out of shelf space, and there isn’t a whole lot of room left in storage either.   A few years ago I made the shift from buying physical CDs to buying electronic downloads of MP3s whenever possible and really like the fact that I don’t have to figure out where to store the discs anymore.  It is more environmentally friendly, and creates less clutter.  Moving to eBooks would save a lot of space and mess.

The nooks arrived in a few days and we got them charged up and eagerly went about purchasing our first eBooks to read.  This is the first annoyance I have with the system.  Since the eBooks are DRM’d you cannot share them between devices if those devices belong to different users.  The nook does have a share function, but it is limited in how long you may lend a book, and only allows you to lend a book once.  This feature is also not available on all books.   So, to allow my wife and me to share books between us, both nooks had to be registered under the same B&N account.  Not a huge problem, but it does somewhat impair the usefulness of the B&N account.  All the targeted marketing that makes suggestions on which books you may be interested in effective, now is muddled by the fact that two different people’s tastes and preferences are being represented on one account.  Now whenever I log on it has a list of romance books I may want to check out, great.  More importantly, it makes sorting through the books on the nook, or in my account history more difficult, as it will contain a lot of titles I’m not interested in.   It also means that if we are both reading the same book at the same time, it makes keeping track of where you left off.  The nook will sync your bookmarks and last page read amongst the devices registered to the same account.

You can browse the B&N book store right from the nook, but I found it easier to just do it on the computer.  Once you buy a book online it becomes available to the nook for download, or can be set to auto download if you prefer.  So getting a book was easy.  The price wasn’t bad, cheaper than buying the new release of a book in hardcover, generally around the cost of a paperback for most titles.   I chose Stephen King’s Under the Dome for my first download.  I figured that I might as well throw in for the long haul with one of King’s traditional doorstop novels.  Of course, since it was electronic the size of the book doesn’t really hit you.  You can see the page counter which gives you an idea, but you don’t have this huge thick book intimidate you.

I really liked the eInk screen on the nook.  It is pretty much identical to the one on the Kindle.   It allows you to read under just about any lighting conditions that you could read a normal book and is very easy on the eyes (though I would like to see a built in book light for reading in the dark).  Couple that with the ability to change fonts and text sizes it makes reading a comfortable experience.   My wife particularly liked being able to switch everything to large print.  Pages could be turned with either navigation buttons on either side of the screen, or by sliding your finger (or more often your thumb) along the small LCD touchscreen below the eInk display.  I’ve heard many people complain about the slowness of page turning on both the nook and the Kindle, but I did not find it to be much of a problem.  There is a bit of lag from when you initiate a page turn and when the new page displays, however it was not really long enough to disrupt my reading.  I also got into a bit of rhythm while reading and would start the page turn a line or to from the bottom of the page.  Timed right, the new page displays shortly after you finish the last line on the previous page.  The size of the nook and the location of the navigation buttons made it feasible to use the nook one handed, which was a bit of an advantage over normal books.

Overall, the process of getting a book and reading it on the nook was easy, and I enjoyed reading books on the device.  This is important as it is the primary function of the device, and if it did not perform well in this category, it would be destined for failure.  There were a few glitches here an there, but overall they were minor and not frequent enough to be much of problem.

One of the reasons I had opted for the nook over Kindle was that it came with native support for PDF files.  I have a lot of content (mostly game books and newsletters) on PDF, and I was looking  forward to being able to read them somewhere besides my computer screen.  This turned out to be a bit of a problem.  It was very easy to connect the nook to a usb port and drag the files to it.  The problem though,  is that while it will display the PDFs, it does not give you the ability to change font sizes or zoom.  It displays them page per page, so if you have a PDF formatted with two columns, then it displays this way on the nook, making the text nearly too small to read.  This was something of a disappointment.  The Kindle added PDF support after release, but appears to have the same problem from what I have been able to determine.   So my plans for taking a bookcase full of game books along on one slim device did not pan out.

Like the Kindle, the nook also has the ability to take notes.  I did not find this particularly useful, it is not something I do outside of school, and my main use of the nook was reading novels for enjoyment.  That being said, I think the Kindle probably comes out ahead in this aspect.  The nook uses a soft keyboard on the small navigation LCD screen, while the Kindle has more of a physical keyboard.  For trying to type out anything beyond a few words I think the soft keys would get a bit frustrating.

The Kindle has a web browser, though from what I hear it is slow and not particularly pleasant to use.  The nook added this functionality after release, though I never tried it out.  The eInk display is not well suited for displaying anything much beyond text, and does not refresh quickly.  I have a phone that I can browse the web or check email with, so this is not functionality I desired in an eReader.  There were a number of other minor features that I’m not going to get into.  I bought the nook for reading books, and it worked very well for that purpose, the other abilities seemed to be just things tacked on for the hell of it.

The great problem with the nook goes back to one of my initial concerns, durability.  Around a month after getting the devices, my wife’s nook slipped from her purse and fell about a foot onto the desk.  There was no visible damage to the nook, but part of the screen simply stopped working, making it unreadable.  There are no repair options for the nook, Barnes & Noble does not repair them, only replaces them.  Of course this was accidental damage, not covered by warranty (and I’m ok with that, I don’t expect them to pay for our mistakes).  So basically we have a $259 dollar device that lasted a month.  When you purchase it, you can pay an additional $70 for a two year protection plan that would have covered it, but that brings the price up to $329.  For me, this is a bit of a deal breaker.  I understand that electronics are delicate, but I also know that accidents happen.  I can’t just casually throw the nook in my gym bag or the seat of my car.  I don’t feel comfortable putting it in my motorcycle saddle bags, taking it on a canoe trip, or placing it anywhere were it might get something spilled on it, sat on it, or knocked over.  It is a very expensive device that wants to be a book, but cannot be treated like a book.  I’m almost afraid to take it out of the house, which greatly reduces the value.  I decided at that point not to buy a new one.  I gave mine to my wife and figured I would just go back to reading dead tree versions of books for the time being.

A side not here, I bought the nooks with a platinum MasterCard which supposedly has purchase assurance, insuring your purchases against accidental damage.  Well, this turns out to be a joke.  I went through a lengthy process of submitting documentation for the purchase and the damage, to have them time and time again find minor reasons to reject my documentation.  The final hang up was that I have t to submit a repair estimate from an authorized repair center for the device.  Since there is no authorized repair center for nooks, this is impossible.  I submitted letters from B&N stating that they do not repair them and any other repairs would void the devices warranty, but MasterCard still demanded a repair estimate.  I found one place online that sold screen for the nook for $199 and had a flat repair rate of $59, meaning that it would cost $258 to repair a $259 device, plus shipping and handling.  I submitted this to B&N and they rejected it because I had not shipped the nook to them for evaluation.  I finally gave up as it was apparent they had no intention of honoring the claim and I was just wasting my time.

This brings up the second problem, DRM.  At the point I gave my nook to my wife, I still had a couple of unread books on it.  So now, if I want to read them, I have to sit in front of my PC and read them with the B&N software.  I am in the process of getting an Android phone, but there is no nook software for that yet.  They do have it for the iPod and iPad, but of course, that doesn’t help me.  I don’t particularly like reading books on a LCD screen, but to get through the books I have that is what I will have to do.  However I have no portability.  I can’t read them on my netbook, since that runs linux at the moment and I’m only allowed to read the books I bought on Windows and Mac.  This problem will continue with any new books my wife gets for the nook that I may be interested in reading.  And if at some point she breaks this one, or it just outlives its life expectancy (2-3 years I would guess), then all the books bought for it will still only be available on whatever platform B&N deigns to allow.  I have heard that there are more open ePub readers that will read these books, but you have to input the credit card number you used to purchase the book originally since this is what is used by the DRM.  So if I want to be able to re-read a book in the future, I will have to keep track of what credit card I used to buy each book, a patently absurd idea.

So, what can I say.  I greatly enjoyed the nook for the short time I had it, and I really do miss having it now.  I’m still jealous when my wife reads hers in bed at night.  It performed its primary function admirably and was a convenient, pleasant way to read books.  Outside of that primary function, it was pretty limited, but that was never a major concern for me.  I don’t want a multi-function device that can kind of do everything, I want a device that does what it was designed to do, and does it well.  In the end though, paying hundreds of dollars for a device with such a short life expectancy, and buying books in a format that I can’t be assured of being able to read when and where I want to just seems like a bad investment.  I hope that eventually eBooks will go the way of mp3s and become freely available.  I also hope that the technology gets to the point where it is a little less fragile.  Until then, keep cutting down those trees to make my books.

Even so, I still enjoy the trappings associated with many religions and supernatural beliefs, observing holidays and festivals, even giving a nod towards certain superstitious practices.  These things add a bit of color to our lives, and hopefully make us think of things a little beyond our ourselves once in a while.

It also seems that there is something deep inside me that just does not want to stop believing.  Every so often I see something that just should not be there; a gnarled little man crouching by the side of the road, a great beast slumbering on a hillside, the glowing eyes of some creature watching me from the shadows.  Of course a double take always reveals the mundane explanation for such things.  That dwarf of a man was just an old stump, the slumbering beast a fallen log overgrown with moss, and the watching eyes nothing more than a stray reflection off a wet leaf.  There is an easy explanation for this.  Hundreds of thousands of years worth of evolution have produced brains that are very adept at recognizing patterns, even where none exist.  We see faces in the gnarled trunk of a tree, a sleeping dragon in a pile of stones, and the Virgin Mary in a pastrami on rye because we are programmed to recognize elements of our surroundings that might have an effect on our ability to survive.  A few false positives are less detrimental to our survival than missing the cougar waiting in a tree to pounce, or the thief hiding in the shadows with a knife.

This tendency for our brains to fill in the details and make us see things that are not there is likely where many myths and beliefs came from.  Even in our world of scientific understanding, many people still believe in things that there exists no scientific explanation for.  How would people with no understanding of science react to such tricks of the mind.  My guess would be by literal acceptance of what they saw.

I see something that does not exist and after a brief moment of surprise, my rational mind kicks in and gives me the explanation.  In fact, this ability to explain away the unexplainable has become a standard trope in many modern fantasy tales as a way to explain why most people never notice all the supernatural happenings going on around us.  And while I place my faith in reason, I still enjoy those brief moments when my conscious mind bypasses rationality and lets me walk with the spirits.

Tonight is Halloween, and as the parade of trick-or-treaters tapers off I will head out into the night to hike some dark trail through the woods.  Gnarled branches will twist and dance in the fey light of the watching moon, stirred by the chill breath of winter’s approach.  I will know that there is nothing to fear in the darkness, no dark spirits waiting to prey on the living.  Yet I will still feel their ominous presence, and see their faces in the dancing shadows.  And for that, I will be glad.

]]> http://www.whiskeydreams.net/?feed=rss2&p=51 0 http://www.whiskeydreams.net/?p=47 http://www.whiskeydreams.net/?p=47#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:25:15 +0000 Tully http://www.whiskeydreams.net/?p=47 Today my Windows 7 House Party kit was delivered.  It included a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate signed by Steve Ballmer, a poster, puzzle, deck of cards, balloons, streamers, 10 WIndows 7 Art tote bags, and various special offers for Windows related products.  Windows 7 is officially released October 22nd, and Microsoft has launched a grassroots marketing campaign to get the word out.   They are working with a company called HouseParty.com to sponsor small parties across the nation for people to get together and see Windows 7 in action.  As with most Microsoft Marketing Campaigns, it seems they kind of missed the mark.  They have a series of videos giving advice on how to host the party, and they are laughably bad.

Even so, I think it is cool, in its way, that they are doing this.  No matter what Microsoft tries, they will never be given credit for doing anything right or for being as cool as Apple.  Hating Microsoft has become so fashionable that people pretty much do it reflexively nowadays.  I can understand.  I’ve been a Linux/Open Source proponent for years, and an avid Microsoft hater for a long time.  They’ve given people lots of reasons to dislike them over time.

A bout three years ago though, I had to come to terms with my own dirty little secret.  For all my MS bashing and love of Linux, I still used Windows XP around 75% of time for my own personal use.  The simple truth was, that when it came to playing games, viewing media, and dozens of other simple little tasks, it was just easier to do it on XP than on Linux.  I do not say this to put down Linux, I still love it.  But due to licensing issues, lack of program support, proprietary drivers and codecs that Linux cannot legally use, etc, Linux is just having a heck of a time competing on the desktop.  None of this is Linux’s fault, it’s just a fact of life.  And the truth be told, XP has been a pretty solid OS since SP2.  So rather than coming home from a long day of working in IT to spend hours trying to get something to work for me on Linux, it seemed a lot more efficient to just use Windows and be done with it.  I am not giving up on Linux, but I also am not using it for my main home desktop.

About the time I was coming to grips with the fact that I was a closet Windows user,  I was also working for a company that had a Microsoft based network, which was a first for me.  And you know what, despite everything I had heard, it worked pretty smoothly.   The email functioned, it integrated with messenger nicely, and the network seemed as stable as anyplace else I had worked.

So, I decided to quit hating Microsoft just because.  I now try to judge tech a little more fairly (accept of course Apple) and be more reasonable.   I gave Vista a try, and found it a mixed bag.  Lots of nice features, but some big flaws and annoyances as well.  I think it got treated a bit harshly in the tech press, but in the end, it really wasn’t an improvement over XP.

Now Windows 7 is coming out.  I’ve been running betas and RCs of it for the last year, and overall I’m pretty impressed.  Lots of cosmetic improvements, but a fair number of more substantial changes as well.  The new taskbar is the probably the biggest thing people will notice, but there are some other innovations in there too.  Microsoft is going out on a limb, putting itself out there for people to see, and encouraging folks to get together and have a good time while they do it.  It’s all a bit corny, but it is also something they don’t have to do.  They could drop support for XP, start putting Windows 7 on all new computers, and just pretty much let things take their course.  Even if a lot of people got upset and jumped ship for Mac or Linux, they would still dominate the market.  Instead, they are rewarding a number of people willing to give them a chance with free versions of the Ultimate Version of their OS and some cool swag.  They are inviting people to come check out what they have to offer and make up their mind for themselves.

Ironically Microsoft may end up being their own greatest enemy.  People may laugh at their current marketing campaign, but even if they came out with the coolest product and event ever, the true Mac and Linux devotees would still find some reason to ridicule them.  The people they need to convince are the XP users.  XP has been a solid, stable OS since SP2, and many people simply do not see any reason to change.  It is time to change though.  XP has been around for 8 years now, and while it has matured well, it is now getting a little long in the tooth.  Computers have changed a lot in those 8 years, and the transition to 64 bit, multi-core computers require operating systems designed to take advantage of these features.  XP has served well, but it is not ready for the modern state of computing.  And while Linux and even Mac got to the party a lot earlier than Microsoft, sometimes it’s ok to be fashionably late.