Year: 2012 Page 11 of 14

Mysteries Within

On May 8, 2012

Upgrade. Buy something new. There’s a better one. There’s a newer one. There’s something slightly better out there that you could own.

Stop using Last Year’s Model. Line up for the new model!

Read the Self Repair Manifesto and get one of your own.

The Manifesto

Stop throwing away something perfectly good with a small problem. Stop giving up on something that can be easily repaired. Stop buying something completely new because of a small issue.

Reading Stephen Hackett’s turning screws resonated with me. He writes,

But there’s something about having a screwdriver in hand that I just can’t get over.
I don’t think I ever will.

Repair work is stressful. There’s no doubt. Every time I unscrew a case and crack it open there is a mystery waiting inside.

The stories accompanying the mysteries are usually as good as the mysteries itself. Mysteries like I found in Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius which chronicled Mr. Hackett’s experiences working as a pre-iPhone Apple Genius. My favorite story ended with,

I guess the moral of his story is that you should always check whether you’re peeing in a bathroom or on an open MacBook.

Whether it be a laptop, desktop, gaming console or mp3 player there is mystery hidden beneath its plastic and metal shell.

I have no idea what I am going to find when I get inside of it. Whether I am repairing something at work for a customer, or repairing a device I own the mystery is always there.

I enjoy repairing things. I enjoy getting inside something and figuring out why it doesn’t work. I like to repair technology and nurse it back to health. I like to take old discarded things and make them new and useful again.

I enjoy the mystery and the accompanying stories.

Justin Bieber Wants to Be Friends With You: Stranger Danger in the 21st Century

By Carl

On May 2, 2012

In Observations

As I was reading Ars Technica this morning, I came across two stories that disturbed me. How pedophiles use Craigslist and sextortion over Facebook and it scares me. I don’t mean to single these two sites out. Nor are they the only places where danger can lurk on the internet. There is danger online as well as off. Just as children of the 80’s were taught about stranger danger, children of the 00’s need to be educated about online danger.

Telephones for the 21st Century

The internet is first and foremost a communications medium. We use it to talk to our friends. We use it to plan events. We use it to buy goods and services. We use it to find our way from point A to point B. We use it to get messages, check our bank accounts and get the news.

The internet has become as much as part of life as the television or the radio. This is why it scares me because so many people are ignorant to it and its dangers.

Before I go any further, I am not trying to say there is stranger danger lurking behind every corner. There are not pedophiles and rapists behind every sign post and in every dark alley.

But they do exist. Can you go through your entire life without being mugged or assaulted? Absolutely, you can. But all it takes is one bad decision to lead you to other bad decisions to end up somewhere you don’t want to be.

Bad choices come in sets

For instance, let’s take the guy extorting pictures of young girls through Facebook. The choice was made to talk to him. This is not a bad choice at the beginning. If we never talked to new people, we’d never make any new friends.

The bad choices started when the girls started messaging, which again, can be innocent enough. Sexuality and curiosity are a part of everyone’s lives. Asking questions and talking, again, is not in itself harmful.

Should they have talked to a stranger over the internet about it? Maybe, maybe not? The decision-making process could have gotten started for any number of reasons.

Once the conversations were in the hands of the extortionist, then the bad choices began. The girls wanted to keep their dignity and not be humiliated and not get in trouble.

Misery loves company

To avoid this, they made bad choices. They took photos of themselves (bad choice but if kept private or immediately deleted not damaging), they sent the photos (even worse choice because once something is out in the digital world, it never truly goes away) and they sent naked photos (of course, this is the worst choice).

Now, there are naked photos outside the control of those who sent them. They are out in the world. Maybe only on the hard drive or email account/messaging account of the recipient. Maybe he sent them to friends or posted them elsewhere. Once those photos left their phones, they are out of their control.

Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back

What you say online, stays online. There is no taking it back. Once something is created and sent out into the world, it can be duplicated countless times. It never really disappears.

Google is caching millions of pages and files per day for searching. The Wayback Machine is a living digital archive of the internet. The Library of Congress is going to archive every tweet sent using Twitter. These are just a few examples of archiving efforts going on in various forms to capture and store the billions of messages and files created everyday.

Ignorance is no longer bliss

My fear in all of this is because of my job I work with people and technology every day. I work with people who don’t get computers or don’t use the internet. This isn’t something they feel the need to know anything about or be able to use beyond the scope of their job.

This scares me because these are the people with children at home relying on them to help navigate the digital landscape. There are real dangers online just as there are in the physical world.

Just as a child can be taken from a shopping mall, they can be lured to a meeting with a friend online. Parents owe it to themselves to be able to teach their children how to spot danger and what to do about it.

If you don’t know how or where to start, ask your computer guy or gal. Turn to the person you go to for advice on what to buy or how to fix something. They may not be well-versed in the dangers of the online world but they can offer a few tips and send you in the right direction which is what I hope to do.

How to start

It is not enough to ban children from the internet. The internet is at home, on mobile phones and digital devices. It’s at friend’s houses and at school. It’s in community centers and public libraries.

It is not enough to ban or block usage, children will find a way around blocks or bans. Remember, they are most likely far more savvy than you are. They need to be educated about the dangers online.

Protect Kids is a great starting point. There is tons of information about internet dangers, safety rules and tools, social networking tips and reporting cyber crime. It’s a good starting point if you need to educate yourself or know someone who needs to educate their kids.

Enough is another fantastic resource for education about dangers online. I recommend everyone to take the short three question quiz. I got 3/3 correct but the answers may surprise you.

At the end of the quiz there is a pledge to sign recognizing that:

Kids have free and easy access to pornography, either intentionally or accidentally;
Predators and cyberbullies have easy and anonymous access to vulnerable kids;
Kids are engaging in risky behavior via computers, cell phones, gaming systems and social networks; and
Adults are often uninformed, ill-equipped and overwhelmed about how to deal with Internet dangers.

How well did you do?

Take some time to explore the site and think about the quiz and the pledge. Talk to your children about the dangers online and have them take the youth pledge.

Most importantly, make sure they know they can always come to you for anything. I know kids don’t always turn to their parents, even when they should. I sure didn’t all the time growing up.

But make sure your kids know they can come to you with things and they won’t get in trouble.

If the girls in the sextortion story had come to their parents, all of this could have been avoided. Did their parents do a great job raising them? Yes, they most likely did. Education can only take you so far. The rest is in the hands of your children to make those good decisions.

Kids are going to make mistakes. I did growing up. So did my parents and their parents and I know my kids will when I have them one day. Everyone makes mistakes, especially growing up. Help educate your children so they’re mistakes stay small and don’t turn into dangerous mistakes.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help or point you in the right direction.

Photo courtesy of Capture Queen.

Ze Frank Thinks Like Me

By Carl

On April 24, 2012

In Links and Quotes

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSzWGPyacag

An amazing reminder that we’re not alone. We are not as isolated as we feel.
Pay special attention to the part about the voicemail, left by a woman, who swears she left it…
But do did two other women.

1 woman.
1 thought.
1 recording.

3 people all thinking the same thing.
1 voicemail. 1 caller.
2 other people. Didn’t call. Confused how their voices and thoughts got into a recording.

It’s because we’re not alone.
We are not isolated.
There are people out there who think and feel as we do.

The difficulty is finding those people.
Look for them. They are out there.

Less of Me

By Carl

On April 17, 2012

In Introspection

I stepped on the scale this morning as I have done nearly every morning to gauge how my hard work has paid off. I was shocked. I have hit a major milestone in my weight loss. I have moved in a slow and steady downward trajectory for months now. Today I passed below 350 pounds. Yes, I used to weigh more than 350 pounds, at my heaviest quite a bit more. ¹

Today, I stepped on the scale expecting a small change from my previous 353 pounds where I was last week. However, I looked down past my ever-shrinking tummy to see 349 staring back at me.

Weight going down.

I was elated. I have hit and passed a major milestone on my path to a more healthy me. I don’t mind sharing that I weigh 349 pounds today because it shows movement in the right direction and sustained movement. This is not just a sudden dip balanced by an equally large gain. I am losing the weight and it is staying off.

I am not doing anything fancy. I am using two tools, Fitbit and Lose It. Fitbit ($99 Amazon) is a small pedometer on steroids that tracks my steps for the day and I have a daily goal to take 10,000 steps. It also measures the approximate distance I walk, based on my stride length and approximate calories I burn based on gender, height and weight.

A day in the eyes of Fitbit.

It also keeps tracks of the number of floors I climb based on a 1 floor being 10 feet in height. It’s a simple little tool that has a screen read out that I can cycle through. It lists all the information above as well as a clock, a little random motivational message and a flower which grows taller the more active I am. It’s surprisingly motivating to have something keeping tabs on you day in and day out and a way to measure how much you’ve moved or exercised in a given day.

Fitbit wirelessly syncs to a base station which double as a charger which is needed about every 7-10 days. The syncing allows you to view your progress, history and more in lovely graphs on the Fitbit website. The device also tracks sleep by tracking your movement in the night, which is not 100% accurate but provides a good picture of your overall sleep.

Sleep according to Fitbit.

About a month after I got mine, my wife also got one so she could measure her progress and to keep her motivated as well. I have just surpassed 2 months of Fitbit ownership and I love it just as much today as I did the day I got it.

Lose It! is even easier. It is a website that syncs to an iPhone or Android app that counts calories by default, and other nutrients if you enable it. The beauty of this app is it’s free and allows you to use your phone’s camera to scan the bar codes on most packages and get the nutritional information from there.

It makes preparing recipes super simple, and since you’re tracking calories, not a convoluted points system, there’s no more math to do. I tried Weight Watchers and I disliked their app because I had to enter 4 or 5 different items from the label then convert them into their Points System. It made tracking food overly complicated. And if I am going to track my food and keep doing it, there needs to be as little friction as possible.

Lose It is simple and it works. I can scan my food, search their huge database of foods from grocery stores, restaurants, and other manufacturers or add food in manually in the rare occasion I can’t find it. It also allows the making and sharing of recipes so when I prepare dinner, I can scan and add ingredients then share it with my wife so she can add it into her food for the day. It has made calorie counting as painless as possible.

The best part about these two tools is they work together. You can sync your Fitbit to your Lose It account and have it track your steps and actually award you extra calories for the days you exercise enough to burn more calories than normal. If you run or take a long walk and get 15,000 steps in a day, you will see the extra calories in Lose It to help keep you under your caloric goal for the day and lose weight.

These two tools have made it easy for me to lose weight and continue losing weight without hitting a treadmill or killing myself at the gym. I am not dieting. I am not changing my food other than to make smarter choices. I am still eating ice cream, just Skinny Cow or Weight Watchers brands at 150 calories a pop instead of a 500 calorie bowl of ice cream.

I am still eating pizza and burgers and everything I love. But when I do decide to splurge, I either need to calorically plan for it in my day, or I need to exercise enough to account for it. There are some times where I take the hit and go over my calories for the day. But those days are few and far between and at the end of each week, Lose-It shows me how many calories I’m under or over and I am still well under where I need to be and I am still losing weight.

Thankfully, never made it to 400 pounds. ↩

Turning the corner

By Carl

On April 11, 2012

In Introspection

I know my hard work has paid off. I went to the grocery store tonight. I went to pick up a few items for a couple different recipes my wife and I intended to make before the next pay check came in. For dinner, we decided to pick up something cheap and simple since we were tired and didn’t have the ingredients we needed for the meal we had planned last week.

I went to the frozen food section and relished the thought of some delicious meal I used to live on nearly exclusively. I wanted to visit my old friend Marie Calendar. We had so many good times in the past. I was curious what the Hungry Man was up to chilling in the freezer section. I was even curious what the good people of Stouffer’s might have cooked up for me. They all do such good work and I had enjoyed many of their meals in the past.

But when I got there, my old friends had changed. No longer did their meals look irresistible and delicious as they had. No longer was I salivating at the thought of opening that package, popping it into the microwave, waiting a few minutes and having a hot, cooked meal ready to eat. I thought my old friends had abandoned me now that I had come back to them, even if it was just for a one-night stand.

Then I realized, it was not they who had changed, but it was me. I had changed. I have changed. I am no longer a slave to the microwave and to the plastic-wrapped delicacies. I am a changed man. I looked upon those glossy covers not with anticipation but with disdain.

How did I once salivate over these pictures? How did these foods once seem to appealing to me? They looked processed and bland. They were dull. It took me forever to make a choice. I eventually decided on pasta of some sort. I don’t even remember what it was. It was ok. Nothing like the memories I had of such cuisine. It was a meal but there was no joy in it.

It was at that point I realized what a changed man I had become. I look forward to making dinner or at least helping out at night. I love the smell of fresh herbs and cooking with real ingredients. I like to know where my food comes from and what it looks like before it turns into dinner.

Last night, I made a Chicken Tamale Casserole with help from my wife, including her finding of the recipe which she stashed in an ever-growing Evernote notebook which is up to 242 recipes.

Often times when I am in the middle of a long road it is hard to see changes until they smack you in the face. Tonight was one of those times. I thought it would be easy to select something quick for dinner but it turned out to be much harder than I suspected.