Category Archives: Issues

Family

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As a general rule there are some things you don’t discuss because they are inappropriate, bad form, tacky and or tasteless. Pinless grenades dangling from a flak jacket. Don’t discuss politics, religion, the weather (which always kind of mystified me, I mean, it’s right out there, but whatever) and I today was a clear call for the last thing that really shouldn’t come up in pleasant conversation and that is airing family laundry. Especially when family happens to be reading! Saying something you feel in the moment just sits there and expands and before you know it you have (or are) Godzilla facing an island full of screaming fleeing citizenry. Does Godzilla ever feel awkward? Hmmm… (the real question should be, does Godzilla call his mother? NO HE DOES NOT. He sets Tokyo on fire. I suspect it’s all about the guilt.)

It’s not that the issues that come up are wrong, but the medium isn’t right. So there are some things that I won’t ever bring up in this blog again. “Dear, we don’t talk about those sorts of things…” mostly because no matter how you try to explain what you feel the written word never really works well. It always comes out as an excuse or a cop-out or any one of a million other miswritten things. Some of these things are best reserved for highly paid therapists who have easy access to recreational pharmaceuticals. And before anyone throws a fit, all pharmaceuticals are recreational. So there…

So I pledge to keep things all light and fuzzy around here from now on. I’m quite a number of things, mostly related to being one or many aspects of monstrous, as anyone who meets me for the first time can immediately attest, just ask any of our foreign students, if you can keep them from squeaking and trying to flee at the merest mention of my name. If you are going to aspect Kali, you might as well go all out is what I say!

Family will keep to itself and life will go on. Love them, or hate them, chat them up incessantly or check-in sparingly, no proclamation ever really is lasting or serious and no, nobody really feels that badly about someone else in their family. Unless they happen to be conservatives, in that case, they are dead to us. Yes, us. Sybil, Sybil, *twitch twitch* 😉

And this will be the last time I use the F word on this blog! So there!

Say Goodbye Gracie

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Got this little marvel in the mail:

Employees using University owned cell phone/PDAs will be taxed on the fair market value, (in this case the cost to WMU), of the phone and plan.  All applicable payroll taxes will be applied.  For phones and devices already in use, we will tax the value of the plan only.  In order to properly account for University monies used to pay for dual use cell phones and ensure the fringe benefits are taxed properly, the voucher given to accounts payable to pay for such phone service must include or have attached a detail of the names and employee numbers of the employees and the respective amounts being paid for their phone/device.  For plans where the cost isn’t already broken down by phone, you will need to allocate the total cost to the phones if you are not already doing so for general ledger posting purposes.  Accounts payable will submit the cost information to the payroll department after they review to make sure all the cost is being accounted for.    Departments that are paying for University owned cell phones with a procurement card should submit the same information to the payroll department on a monthly basis.  No department should be paying for a non-University owned cell phone plan with a procurement card.

So on February 1st I will be surrendering my line at 269-599-7798. This will conclude my mobile telephony reach as well. I will most likely not be having any other phone as I cannot afford one. As a practical upshot to this, after February 1st I will be unavailable to telephone traffic for quite some time. There won’t be a replacement number as I don’t have the funds available to afford to replace such technology. If I am not at my office, I won’t be reachable. In the case of emergencies, they will have to be queued and held for me until I reach a place where I can access telephony equipment. Likewise, if I have an emergency I will be unable to call 911. Lets hope we don’t run into any of that sort of thing. This is 21st Century progress at it’s finest, folks. Let us rejoice.

As for our business mobile infrastructure?

Say Goodbye Gracie.

Verizon iPhone 4

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Everyone is weighing in on a device that hasn’t been released yet, and everyone already has formed opinions based on rumors and suppositions. Since this is the way it is going, I’ll just toss my unrequested three-cents in with the rest of the noise and babble.

Key Differences between AT&T and Verizon on the iPhone 4:

  1. No 4G Service – Who cares to have broadband speeds in your pocket? Eventually there is a good-enough-speed that people reach, with 3G and WiFi pretty much available everywhere this claim is only going to make the really geeky miffed. If you need such speeds in your pocket, what exactly are you doing IN YOUR POCKET? At some point extra speed only benefits BitTorrent users. The only exception to this is media streaming, but frankly my dear, if you are sitting back and enjoying a movie, chances are you are doing so in the comfort of some place that has WiFi. Just like FaceTime Chat…
  2. iPhone 4 Antennagate – CDMA doesn’t have the same antenna as a GSM phone has, so physical attenuation isn’t a problem. The Verizon phone won’t have the grip-of-death, while the AT&T phone will.
  3. CDMA-GSM Simultaneous Data and Voice – I have to admit to living without this as such a thing is by the design of CDMA very unlikely if not impossible to bring off. I’ve never needed both data and voice services at the same time. My logic is that people smush the phone against their face to talk, they aren’t going to smush-tap-tap-smush-tap. The fact that AT&T can do this is pretty much a cute empty little extra. People who have been using CDMA won’t notice at all.
  4. Network Size – AT&T has done NOTHING to address signal quality in key markets that I find important. Really it comes down to Kalamazoo. AT&T bought out Centennial, along with all their 3G towers in the area. The fact that AT&T hasn’t enabled those towers speaks volumes to me. They don’t care. They claim that their network reaches 97% of Americans, and it does, some are graced with 3G service like the people in Grand Rapids or Chicago, while the rest of us have to contend with their EDGE network. So, what about Verizon? They’ve got a giant network and they have 3G in Kalamazoo. I live in Kalamazoo, it is an important market. I would argue that Kalamazoo is more important than Grand Rapids. So, when it comes to 3G network traffic, who wins? Verizon.
  5. Finally, It’s AT&T PEOPLE! – AT&T, which lets face it is just a shelled out mask that Cingular wears to ritzy dinner parties (yes, it wears another’s tanned hide) is still CINGULAR. Just because it’s wearing AT&T’s dead face and animating it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow got a new soul. Both Cingular and AT&T were as I regard them, abhorrent companies. Cingular for their lameness before trapping and gutting AT&T, and AT&T for being inherently EVIL. Many people don’t recall, and it’s understandable, that AT&T used to be Ma Bell. The giant monster company that abused it’s customers, ran a monopoly, and retarded real technological innovation for decades! This is less of an argument based in reality as it is a name-game since Verizon also was a shard of Ma Bell’s evil empire. It’s not that somehow Verizon is good, of course they aren’t, they are just as evil as AT&T is, but AT&T is stupid and evil. Verizon is clever and evil. It’s a very fine difference.
  6. Waiting around for iPhone 5 – Great, so Verizon is going to get iPhone 4, but Consumer Reports goes on at length about how they are going to wait until iPhone 5 before they’ll look at it again. What exactly are people waiting for? Isn’t the iPhone 4 “Good Enough”? What can Apple do to make the iPhone 5 compelling enough for everyone to suddenly acquire buyers remorse regarding the iPhone 4? They could make the device thinner, perhaps make it transparent, change the shape perhaps but in every other instance the iPhone 4 can be field-upgraded to whatever iOS revision is coming down the pike unless Apple is serious about enabling things like BitTorrent on the iPhone. For this class of device, how much can change? Is it enough to continue to suffer with AT&T? In my case, is it enough to continue to suffer with Sprint? My answer is no. I don’t care what is or is not coming out in June or July. I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4, without the grip-of-death, on a competent 3G network FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Who cares if you are locked into an iPhone4 for two years? It’s not like an immense base of other iPhone 4’s out there are suddenly going to just vanish. Just because there is something new doesn’t mean it’s needful. Sometimes what you need is right in your hand all along, or in this case, in the traveling roadshow that is Verizon.

For me, this entire release of a CDMA iPhone is mana from heaven. I’m willing to give up data+voice simultaneously for fewer dropped calls (in AT&T’s case) and way fewer impossible-to-make calls (in Sprint’s case). My professional recommendation is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is exactly what people need and they should pounce on it immediately. If you are beyond your ETF-barrier on your contract with AT&T or Sprint, you owe it to yourself to leave them behind and hop on. Even if a few months down the line iPhone 5 comes out, it’s not going to be revolutionary, it’ll be evolutionary. The same way the iPad 2 is not going to make me love my iPad 1 any less. A device is still a device and if it works well, isn’t that enough?

Being Sick

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With my iPad and my MacBook I have to say that the classical lines of distinction of “The Workday” have blurred completely away. I find myself doing my best work at 1:30am or 3:30am, or even when inspiration strikes. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of how technology is changing our lives for the better. I don’t have to write a flurry of ideas down to process at some later time when I can do them RIGHT NOW. Then again, my work style is built on speed. Think fast, act fast, do it right the first time.

Even when I’m sick and hacking up a lung, I can create new blogs and assemble rights for users, and thanks to Apple and all the infrastructure I’ve combined around my work life and my private life I can do all of this pretty much from anywhere, even while driving 70MPH (as a passenger, of course! SCANDAL! :))

I think it’s something that the classical structure of business life will eventually have to address. The idea that if you have a salaried employee who is as mobile as I am and as technologically connected as I am, that we can really do our jobs competently from a rest stop as much as we can do it at work desktop. To that end I have to admit that I encourage my coworkers to heed the wisdom of non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications. I no longer really use a telephone and I don’t really value face to face communications. I prefer my communications to be of the type of Email, SMS, or Instant Message. I think these forms of communication are far more respectful than the intrusive nature of blocking/interrupt based forms of communication. Writing me an email means your message was received and understood and will get the attention it deserves, the same with the other non-blocking/non-interrupt forms, such as SMS and IM’ing. If more people would adopt these forms I know I’d be a far happier person.

I think a good portion of why people elect to use the blocking/interrupt model is because they believe there is a value in the personal approach. They are afraid of the non-blocking/non-interrupt forms to lead to alienation and depersonalization. I get enough personal interaction in my life and the last thing I need is “expensive context switches” where my task flow is interrupted by someone calling me on the telephone or knocking on my door. I often wish I could tell these people that I understand their need for human contact, I don’t require it of them myself and would vastly prefer the non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications styles. The only time I want to see someone in the flesh is if something has become an emergency, then fine. But here again, I make an exception that must be tempered – not everything is an emergency. Even when “emergencies” come up seven out of ten times those emergencies aren’t, they’re just wearing the garb of an emergency to provide an excuse to block/interrupt.

I think eventually more professional people will see the wisdom of this and finally understand that in an average workday the time-wasting emergency-based “humanizing” approach is just wasting money and time. This approach is just as good for the sources of these blocking/interrupt based issues as they are for us victims of their blocking/interrupt driven behaviors. By not having to get up, not having to pick up the phone, you save yourself so much time, to say nothing about the clarity of what you want to convey. You just can’t beat the low signal to noise ratio of text over voice.

Great Quote about eBook Piracy

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Saw this on Librarian.net:

From a transcript of a talk between Paul Krugman and Charlie Stross, from WorldCon

“As for the intellectual property, I try not to get too worked up about it. There’s a lot of people angsting about piracy and copying of stuff on the Internet, publishers who are very, very worried about the whole idea of ebook piracy. I like to get a little bit of perspective on it by remembering that back before the Internet came along, we had a very special term for the people who buy a single copy of a book and then allow all their friends to read it for free. We called them librarians.” [thanks karl]

Thanks Librarian.net! What a great point! 🙂

Security Theater

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Just passed through the TSA checkpoint about ten minutes
ago and went through with flying colors. MSP didn’t stop and ask a
batch of impertinent questions and poke around my bag-o-tech one
little bit. Of course I am fully aware that the TSA is purely
“Security Theater” evidenced by me forgetting to take off my belt
which has a big fat stainless steel buckle. The magnetometer didn’t
even flinch at that. I suspect that it’s all smoke and mirrors,
that the theater is totally fake and transparent and that we’re
flying just as insecure as we were back in 2000 except now we’ve
spent an intolerable amount of money on shazam security that
doesn’t really protect us at all. We can thank the GOP for the
massive expansion of government in our lives thanks to Homeland
Security. That’s a government program that if it was devoted to
healthcare instead of campy theater would make every
dyed-in-the-wool liberal wet their pants. Technology of course is
facilitated by Delta, who saw fit to grace the local waiting area
with easy to reach electrical sockets. It’s an olive branch to
offset the notion that they are raping us over bag fees. So Scott
and I are plugged in, and because MSP’s wireless infrastructure is
pay-as-you-go, I’ve got my handy-dandy Zoom travel router happily
blinking away, converting my 3G access card into a WiFi hotspot.
I’m happily slurping down electricity charging my iPad, which I’m
using to write this blog entry, and my iPod Nano. The Zoom router
and its battery are happily soaking up the free juice as well. So,
for personal liberty 2011 is rather sucky, but for technology,
especially bullshit technological barriers, it’s pretty good so
far. Being able to establish my own WiFi hotspot at-will is a
really neat “sticking-it-to-the-man” kind of feeling. Now on with
the waiting!

All Too Shocking

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I’m pursuing a new passion at work, advocating for increased use of social networking at Western. As I see it there are three phases to what I have to do in order to bring about change around here:

  • Identify the organic condition of WMU’s position in the social networking sphere.
  • Identify and recommend avenues of future development and arguments for increased activity in social networking spheres.
  • Educate and encourage management to see the value in the arguments and endorse pursuit of our goal of increased social networking involvement.

So far I’ve looked at a batch of social networking services and one thing is crystal clear to me. WMU has as an organization done very little to take ownership of its social networking “Voice”. The current Voice is being controlled by students, a mish-mash of staff and faculty, and various organizations in Kalamazoo such as the Kalamazoo Gazette. I myself was contributing to the not-WMU Voice wrangling before I clenched up my privacy and online security, so that my Facebook and Twitter streams are private now. The only still-public wrangling I give the Voice is here on my WordPress blog.

I would like to say I was shocked, but I am not. I’ve known for a very long time and I’ve been agitated with the knowledge that everyone else but WMU is actually in control of the “social message” of this University. This “social message” should be firmly in-hand here at WMU. We should be leading the discourse, guiding the “social message”. It’s not only that we don’t control our “social message” but we are also inexplicably ignoring a vast and ripe market space by treating social networking as a passing fad. It is very much not a passing fad.

I’ve often times used the metaphor of a herd when discussing market cohort groups. In case of “young alumni” I see them composed of Generation X and Generation Y members, people in my age bracket who graduated from University from 1995 into the current year. These people are easy for people like me to understand, as I am in the group. If it appeals to my model of what my cohort finds attractive and compelling then I know it will succeed. In many ways I imagine Western to be much like other institutions out there, we’re all competing for various scarce resources, such as money, students, legislative power, and finally, social relevance. Currently WMU and Kalamazoo are “on-the-map” because of a Glen Miller song, Teaching, Aviation, and Paper Technology. Outside of those sharp niches we’re just another public state school. Because we don’t actually inject any controlled content into the social networking sphere currently, our most powerful method of advertising and promoting our institution is in the hands of everyone else but us.

I have to admit that when I look around the sense I get is one of shy victimhood. Because we are never in control of the social message we are perpetually defending ourselves against every critic and because we are mute when it comes to our social message we cannot hope to make any progress on the sort of initiatives that matter the most to our organization. I think what is most telling to me is the nearly universal response I have seen from recent graduates and young alumni. The expressions they share are not of indifference but rather of belligerence, derision, and hatred. WMU didn’t do anything for them while they were students, and it continues to do nothing for them as Alumni, yet WMU calls with their hats in their hands asking for money. I’ve personally witnessed at least a handful of  times being the message-mule to inform WMU that certain alumni want absolutely no contact whatsoever from their alma mater.

This points to another argument I made years ago when I brought this concern up to some paid consultants. I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I shouldn’t worry myself over these concerns. I have stated before that there is a huge social shift when you compare alumni who graduated in the 70’s versus alumni who graduated in the 00’s and later. In the great long ago it was a prideful privilege to attend a University, it was a mark of intelligence and was a source of pride and honor. The market, society, perhaps western culture itself changed in the 80’s and the 90’s and there was this shift towards a clear preference for higher education graduates and a dearth of employment for those without higher education. Suddenly a basic education was not sufficient, if you wanted a family and to be successful and happy you needed a degree of higher education added to your name. Higher education catered to this shift by admitting more people, but when they did it, they also became more insular and grew more callous, bureaucratic, and monolithic. What was previously something very special became exceptionally banal in just a few short years. Higher education changed from “University” to “K-16”. As this change was happening I was attending SUNY Buffalo and I immediately was confronted with something I was not expecting. Instead of an organization built on mutual respect, a passion for learning, and earned obedience and loyalty these institutions converted into featureless service and content providers. What was a chance to pursue difficult questions with like-minded adults and develop a higher intellect devolved into a high school sequel. This change has set both groups apart from each other, on one side the University with its staff and faculty and on the other side, the Student. What possible affection can be raised when your University is fundamentally indistinguishable from a Supermarket?

It is this shift that I brought up, that people graduating in my social cohort group are not enamored with higher education. It’s just another thing we felt forced into by society, we didn’t attend because we were passionate about it, we attended because there was no choice. These people are not going to give money to their University as much as they would write a check to a supermarket just because they happened to shop their once or twice. As I’ve moved along in my life and witnessed things, I have this sense that this shift was actually quite traumatic and there is profound scarring for both groups. I don’t know if modern Universities are ready to face a future where their better angels care not a jot for them and meet with closed doors, dial tones, and a profound lack of opportunities to raise money. All I can go on is what I have witnessed and that is summed up by this: “WMU didn’t do shit for me, I have a worthless degree and a lifetime of crushing debt. If they want money, they’ll have to find it somewhere else.”

So we return back to where we started. Will Higher Education embrace social networks? Can they? Is there sufficient scarring to make all of these arguments mute and this last sliver of opportunity, this last gasp of future relevance just so much pissing in the wind? At least for this place, I have hope that it is, I have hope that my arguments find some traction. Along with all of my hope comes my fear that a change-averse monolith simply hasn’t the capacity to move forward and that all this is just hot air being blown over a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead yet and hasn’t quite gotten around to laying down in its grave. I suppose only time will tell, as it does with everything else.

Federal Budgets

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Watching bloggers go bonkers reporting that Social Security may be cut to balance the government’s budget has me laughing all the way to Apocalypse. What is it that people thought? Social Security is a time-shifting Ponzi Scheme that isn’t illegal because the government runs it. It gratifies the liberal in me and makes absolutely no sense economically especially when we have an upside-down-triangle shaped population as ranked by age (thanks WW2 baby boom!).

When people catch wind that an entitlement as big as Social Security or one as fundamental as Medicare is threatened everyone instantly closes their eyes and power-stuffs their head into the sand – wham wham thhhwap plork!

I tweeted a while back that it would be an interesting time when the government was faced with Social Programs vs. Military Spending. This particular versus is an insidious one, because if either side wins it’s an economic apocalypse. It’s a Catch-22 as well, since you can’t keep this kind of spending going forever, eventually China will go apeshit and demand that we take the borrowing we’re fleecing them for seriously. In many regards, USA(SSI vs. DoD) Vs. China. If we cut Social Security we’ll have outrage, panic, and most likely a spike in heart attacks. If we cut Medicare we’ll have a lot of dead elderly as medical care will become catastrophically unaffordable. If we touch military spending then we’ll harm the military-industrial complex and the massive flow of cash out of the DoD and back into the general economy will squelch and then we’ll have another economic collapse. So, if we all play a very good game of pretend, we can ignore that problem as long as none of us do any kind of simple mathematics. That is until China can’t stand the Catch-22 they are in with us and stop lending us money. They know that it’s disaster if they stop, but eventually they’ll have to, and then we’ll stop buying all that cheap chinese plastic crap and their economy will tumble as well.

This is epic level drama whore material. “May you live in interesting times!” Indeed a blessing and a curse! Afghanistan nearly broke the Soviets, and it’s going to break us. What’s the practical upshot? Massive hyperinflation as the US Treasury prints billions of worthless dollars in a last-ditch effort to keep the mighty US economy from total collapse. Those of us who are filthy debtors are going to be the only ones dancing in the streets as our debt, which is not keyed to inflation quickly pay off the numbers, and then we’ll follow the rest of you down the whirling economic toilet hole that is our collective future.

All it takes is time. In the meantime it will be interesting to see how the Federal Government responds to these ever-mounting pressures. Which will buckle first? Entitlements or Defense? Anyone care to toss the dice?

Letter to Levin

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Dear Senator Levin,

I just read on the Wall Street Journal that you and Senator McCain have made moves to strip the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” from the defense spending bill. I would be enraged, I would declare that the democrats have effectively turned their campaign promises to us inside-out and displayed the lies that they are. I would claim these things if I were really an American.

I can’t serve in the military, I can’t donate blood despite the need, and I cannot marry. I am not equal under the law and by evidence because I am robbed of my 14th Amendment rights I am easily written off, easily ignored, and issues that matter the most to people like me matter not one jot to those in the Federal Government.

On November 2nd I voted. I went to the polls and I cast my party ticket for the Democrats. The idea that people like me have to find someone to be our champion, to secure our basic rights before the law, and then to have them trample us, to use us via glittering campaign promises which are barefaced lies hurts the most. We have no party to turn to except the Democrats, despite our apparent leprosy.

The problem isn’t just with your decision to strip DADT from the military spending bill, but rather with all the democrats including our President whom I pleaded with when he was just a senator from Illinois to please run for the presidency. I would have never thought it possible that a man and party I idolized would betray us.

In the end I’m just another ignorable voice, one of millions who just fade into the woodwork and don’t really matter. When I go to vote next, I don’t know what I am going to do. Vote for someone who can’t possibly win or for someone who doesn’t really care about people like me. It’s a horrible thing. The only thing that comforts me is that nobody lives forever and with new representation perhaps someday we’ll have someone who thinks that equality is something more than just something to put on a bumper sticker.

You’ve more friends with Senator McCain than with your gay constituents.

Thanks.

Eggs

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The recent news of the Salmonella-tainted Eggs is bouncing around the 24 hour news cycle. My mom told me about Davidson’s Pasteurized Eggs, they are still raw, but rendered completely safe to consume because they’ve been treated with heat, not enough to coagulate the yolks and set the whites but enough to kill any potential infections of Salmonella that might be lurking within the egg. I am of course wanting to explore the MAFC, and a good portion of that is mastering the Sauces section, for which under-temperature eggs are a fundamental component.

I discovered that I could pasteurize my own eggs by raising an amount of water to 150 degrees and holding eggs suspended in this water for 5 minutes. To overcome this annoying inconvenience I thought I would write to my local supermarket chain, Meijers. I suggested that they carry Davidson’s Pasteurized Eggs and basically got a rebuff throwaway message from a Meijers representative who claimed that none of the eggs that Meijers sells was involved in the recall. As it may be, Meijers, that your eggs weren’t recalled does not necessarily mean that they are safe. Pasteurized eggs are safe. I would pay more for eggs that I knew were safe so I could feel okay with exploring the Sauce section of the MAFC. I can’t really just target Meijers, as WalMart, D&W, and Hardings, all the markets in our area do not carry pasteurized eggs. This isn’t the first time that I’ve contacted Meijers, so far it’s the third request I’ve made over the years for products that would do very well in our area. I’ve decided that contacting Meijers is a fool’s errand.

I suppose that if enough young and elderly die of Salmonella poisoning then Michigan will legislate to force egg pasteurization and Meijers will turn a tidy 180 and then aggressively pursue and market it to their customers. What bothers me deep down is that expanding customers choice for truly safe foods isn’t on the radar for any of the local food marketers in our region. Then again, I’ve said time and time again that restaurants and food markets have no interest in public health or safety – filthy food from monstrous sources is perfectly fine as long as the balance sheet remains in the black. Because I don’t trust anything I buy from Meijers, D&W, Hardings or WalMart it is important to cook everything thoroughly, select against raw foods, and when there is no choice but to buy raw foods from these providers, make a weak bleach solution to sanitize what you bought because nobody is going to care for your health but you, yourself. I couldn’t imagine having a live-in elderly family member or an infant, that we don’t have more of a body-count from tainted and monstrously sourced foods is an absolute blessing.