Parting shot...

This is the last and final posting here at "Falling into it..."

It is time to give myself a permanent home on the internet and ask you to join me at www.jeffreytharp.com.

Site Admin...

One of the great regrets I have in terms of education is that I never learned the nuts and bolts side of computing. I can generally make them do what I want, but don’t have a clue when it comes to explaining why it actually happened. To be honest, the in depth details of why it works isn’t as important to me as knowing that it’s going to do what I expect each and every time. That said, I would like to know more about designing and managing my own website. I have photos hosted on one site, a blog hosted on another, email on a third, and a Facebook account that can take on a life of its own when I let it. I’ve integrated with Google for most of those services, but that doesn’t quite make it a seamless experience. In a perfect world I’d like to have all of my “outward facing” web presence integrated into a single space. I’ve been sitting on a handful of domain names for the last few years without really doing anything with them (of course the one I really want is already owned… and has been static since 2006… grrr). In the vast amount of free time that I have, maybe it’s time to teach myself a little about site development.

As always, if anyone has any suggestions as far as reading material for a complete noob, I’m all ears. It’s going to be a good, long while before anyone sees any results, but everything has to start somewhere.

Where there's smoke...

I’ve been knocking around with my e-cig for the better part of three weeks now and it’s probably time for an update on where it stands in my pantheon of gadgets. In the interest of putting the bottom line up front, I think it’s important to note that it’s still in use. At the three week mark, I’ll say that some of the newness has warn off and that it seems to be in the process of becoming more an appliance than an accessory. The learning curve is a nice gentle slope because the simplicity of the Vapor King model makes it mostly idiotproof. So far, it seems that it is exactly what is advertised… a substitute nicotine delivery system imitating the look and feel of actual cigarettes. What has really been a surprise is how much I would like the multitude of flavor options.

With that said, it’s not a 1:1 correspondence… While it imitates, it does not emulate. Even at the highest available nicotine level available the e-cig doesn’t pack the same punch as the real thing… and I very much still find myself looking for that punch at specific times of day; mainly following lunch and in the afternoon when I get home from work. Many of the e-cig bloggers talk about cutting out analogs completely on their first day. I’ll admit that analog consumption basically fell off a cliff with a 2/3 daily reduction, but after that it has held steady at between six and nine per day. Consumption is lowest on weekdays and climb slightly on weekends, which I didn’t expect. I initially assumed the desire for an analog would be driven by a stress response to work, but that hasn’t proved out in my own experiences to date.

I didn’t order an e-cig with quitting smoking in mind. I bought it because it seemed to be a better financial means of getting the fix that I needed and wanted… and if it had any health benefits from reducing exposure to the chemicals in cigarettes, I’d write that up as a bonus. Of course the thought has obviously crossed my mind that maybe it would be possible to kick the analogs completely, but I’m not there yet in my own head space. Maybe it’s a matter of finding just the right mix of flavor, nicotine, battery, and some x-factor – everything, ultimately, is a matter of having the proper motivation. For the moment, I’m going to continue to tinker with the mix and trying to find my own sweet spot. Even with buying a metric crapload of supplies to get started, I’m already closing in on the “break even” cost for this little experiment. Now that’s definitely a motivating factor.

Nails on a chalkboard...

I was just listening to a rehash of Governor Palin’s keynote address at the Nashville Tea Party Convention and was struck absolutely dumb by one of her applause lines… that the United States needs “a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law.” I’ve got a degree in political science and have watched candidates and elected officials since well before I could vote for any of them… and I have no idea what phrase actually means. I’m not sure anyone does. But to my horror the audience went wildly anyway.

As an aside, the sitting president, by definition, is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States (see Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution for reference purposes). In Article 2, Section 3, the Constitution also provides that the president will “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” For those of us who aren’t professors of law, that means that the president is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, among his other duties as assigned.

My point is simply this… Maybe knowing something about the law isn’t a bad thing if you want to be in charge of carrying them out. Having an education, whether it’s from Harvard, Frostburg, or Berkeley shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of or try to hide by dumbing down your vocabulary. What I basically heard a former governor say on television was that you shouldn’t be allowed to hold office if you’re too smart because you can’t understand the “common” man and woman. I don’t know about you, but personally, I’m not comfortable with Joe Sixpack or Jane Hamburgerhelper setting foreign policy.

I think the thing that I find most troublesome about politics is the tendency of the masses to blame whoever happens to be in office for everything that happens. The reality is that the world we have today was built on a million small decisions by elected (and unelected) leaders who were Republicans and Democrats, Federalists, Whigs, Jeffersonian-Republicans, and others who had no party. The world is too complex to be effectively distilled into a 5 second sound bite. It’s nuanced and complicated… and it’s going to take more than “common sense” to correct the issues we face nationally and abroad.

If you want to disagree on issues, that’s a great and good thing. If you want to see change in government policy, that’s fine too. But don’t insult my intelligence by saying that because someone bothered to get an education they’re not qualified to lead. Pick a real argument, present it logically and appeal to my reason… Then maybe I can get behind it… until you do, it’s all just nails on a chalkboard.

Pedal to the metal…

Toyota has recalled 2.3 million vehicles for a problem reported, as close as I can gather, in somewhere around 12 actual cars and trucks. That’s a problem reported in .00005% of the eight vehicle types impacted by the recall; or one in every 191,667. The problem, according to reports, is that the accelerator is “sticky” and people may go faster than they intended to. Of course I’m not making light of this terrible, terrible situation, but as best I can recall, my Tundra already comes with a component that compensates for unwanted acceleration… it’s the brake pedal… That’s hooked to the very large disk brakes, that can drag my very large truck to a stop in short order from even speeds in excess of those posted for highway traffic.

I’m only going to say this once: A car or truck is a machine. Machines are, from time to time, prone to breakdown or the need for maintenance. The fact that these requirements come up occasionally does not constitute a “crisis” nor does it signal the impending collapse of a major manufacturer. It does, however, remind me that the media loves a good story more than any three people I know and that whipping the motoring public into a frenzy about Toyota’s Accelerator Pedal of Doom or Floor Mat of Chaos generates interest, fills column-inches and air minutes, and more importantly, increases revenue. How ‘bout we all start reading, watching, and critiquing the news of the day with a critical eye, kay? Yeah, that would be helpful.

A fading Constellation...

When his fleet reached Mexico in 1519, Cortes disembarked and promptly burned the ships under his command to the waterline, thus cementing his position in the New World and ensuring that his men had the proper motivation – no available avenue for retreat. That’s a profound statement of confidence… if you don’t get yourself killed in the process. Of course if you fail, you do it brazenly and become just another crackpot who sailed “off the edge of the world” so to speak.

I worry that the Administration’s de-funding of the Constellation Program today effectively burns our collective ships; perhaps before we’ve managed to unload the supplies we’ll need for the next step in exploration. Rather than a great enterprise of exploration (say, something like taking over a continent or putting American astronauts back on the moon), our modern Captain-General is casting his men to the wind and expecting each to find their own way. Shutting down Constellation ensures that the critical mass of intuitional knowledge left at NASA will dissipate across dozens of companies and that none of them will have the capability to replicate what Constellation could have been.

I’ve been a champion of the free market my entire adult life and there’s no doubt that the private sector can “do” space flight. NASA is well stocked now with contractors working for United Space Alliance in the twilight of the shuttle program, but government has always been the driver of space exploration, with its massive contracts and goals of shooting the moon. Outsourcing exploration is abdicating the role that governments have filled since men sailed wooden ships to the undiscovered coast of the New World on behalf of the Old World’s royal houses. Such exploration was subsidized by governments until there was a viable economic reason for the private sector to take over – reasons like Virginia tobacco, South American gold, and Caribbean sugar.

I don’t see how we’re there yet. Apollo gave us the first glimpse of how computing power would change the world. Three generations of rockets and the shuttle have given us communications satellites that tie the world together and telescopes that can see nearly to the moment of creation. Until the private sector has a profit motive in space exploration other than government largess, I worry that today could be the real end of the age of exploration.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Hot and cold...

After a day to consume the hands on reports, read as much as I could get my hands on, and look at the iPad from every possible angle I have to admit that my initial “must have” lust has run from hot to cold ever hour or so. I’m looking for a device that will let me eliminate the 8’’x10’’ folio I tote around from meeting to meeting to take notes on; something that will let me do basic Office editing, view pdf files, check in on Facebook, maybe drop a quick post to the blog, and keep my calendar and email at the tip of my fingers while doing those other things… and optimally, I wanted to be able to do more than one of those tasks at once.

As the iPhone has evolved over the last three years, many of the original missing features (read: cut-and-paste, mms, etc) have been added, but multi-tasking has remained elusive. Seeing the released details of the iPad seems to indicate that it remains a function that will be missing in action on this device as well. Working in a word document and having to close it in order to open the web browser or messenger is annoying on a phone… and it might just be a deal breaker in something I’m going to want to use as a quasi-laptop replacement.

Specs and details aside, the iPad is one sexy beast in terms of design and I can see how it could be a must-have device for pure consumption of media content. I won’t even complain (too much) about another Apple device tied to the anchor that is AT&T Mobility’s 3G network. Of course release day is still a long time off and that leaves a lot of time for more details, and updated iPhone OS, and for Steve to make an appearance to announce “one more thing…” So for now, I’m withholding judgment while leaning towards wanting the new toy despite its apparent limitations. Check back with me in April and I’m sure my lust will know no bounds.