craigmcn

I'll Boycott If I Want To

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:02:06 -0600

On the way back to the office after lunch, we began talking about coffee as we passed the Tim Hortons. Somebody asked if I planned to try the new lattes that are on offer. I answered in the negative, not because I’m some sort of coffee snob (I drink Tim’s coffee every now and again), but because I prefer the handcrafted beverages at Starbucks.

While on the topic, someone else asked if I had tried a particular coffee house and bakery in my neighbourhood, to which I replied in the negative again, with clarification. This particular coffee house and bakery is closed Sundays and Mondays, “to maintain family values”. Okay. Whatever. Be closed, but don’t preach to me at the same time. I feel I’m being judged on my own family values, just because I showed up on a Sunday.

I was told that I shouldn’t boycott the place just for that reason; the coffee and baking is really excellent. Unfortunately, I’ll never find out whether the products are good, because I’ll never go there.

What if my religion dictated that I not work on Tuesday, would someone accept that my store’s closed on Tuesday? Maybe. But would they care that I’m closed for religious or “family values” reasons? Probably not. You want to be closed, be closed. You want to be closed to attend church, be closed. You want to attend church and still be open, hire someone who doesn’t attend church. You don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t go church, I think there may be a human rights issue, but whatever, be closed. But I don’t care why, and I don’t need you to tell me.

I can hold a grudge and I will. They can change the sign and change the policy, but I’m soured. And I’ll stay that way and I’ll like it.

My First Complaint - Do Your Job

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:06 -0600

Indeed, my first complaint is about people who don’t do their job and then whine when something isn’t right and needs to be fixed (by someone else) immediately.

The other day at work, it was imperative that a change be made at the last minute. Admittedly, the problem was not really caused by the person making the request, but by a bug in the system, but that’s not really an excuse. The person responsible for the work in the first place should have been diligent enough to make sure that everything was functioning properly and raised the issue earlier.

Had the problem been noticed earlier, the workaround could have been implemented, and the issue avoided. But the person responsible did not confirm that the changes were successful when they were originally made and so did not, until the last possible moment, notice that they were not successful.

In my opinion, that’s not doing the job.

This Blog is Now About Complaining

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:35:24 -0600

Yes, seriously. I’ve decided that I don’t understand people, and I’m not qualified to engage in debates on topics that relate to how people feel and act.

The other night, at family dinner, I was discussing how I don’t bother saving for things that I want. If I want to do or buy something and know that I can afford it (immediately or over time, using credit), I’ll do or buy it. Why not? To which I was told that some people (in fact, a lot of people) have already used their maximum credit.

Understood. I guess.

But it also revealed to me that what makes sense to me doesn’t always make sense to others, or that it’s not the default for others. I admit that sometimes I don’t think all the way through my thought or opinion before I voice it, leaving open to debate from people who perhaps have thought over it longer.

In any case, I will try to vent more of my complaints here, allowing for feedback from my audience, which should give me some opportunity to think further about my thought or opinion.

Two Spaces

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:23:02 -0600

A grammar blog I read the other day reminded me of a Slate post from a couple of weeks ago about the practice of adding two spaces after a period when typing. Farhad Manjoo, the Slate author, has very strong opinions on the subject, and even consulted typographers for clarification. I checked with the Modern Language Association (MLA) website, which provides a non-prescriptive answer.

I’m not sure I have any strong opinions on the subject. The standard in my English class last year was two spaces, and I did what I was told. Although, personally, I tend to follow the web standard, which solves the problem for me. The HTML specification is to collapse all white space when rendering inter-word spacing; meaning that spaces between words (e.g., from a period to the next word) will be collapsed to one space. Easy.

Generally, modern typography and technology resolve issues that arose from monospaced text on typewriters, allowing for a return to the original rules of typeset typography.

I don’t usually solicit feedback on my thoughts, but this time I will. What do you guys think about spaces after periods?

Slash, forward slash, and backslash

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:05:06 -0600

Something that bugs me is the specific use of “backslash” (“\”) when people mean forward slash (“/”, which is commonly referred to as slash). There is only one place I know that you need a backslash and that’s in DOS file structures (C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe). And, yes, that means Windows, too. Everywhere else, only slashes are needed.

“Uhh, no, websites are h-t-t-p-colon-backslash-backslash-w-w-w….” Actually, that’s not true. “Well, then the address is twitter.com-backslash-ICHCheezburger.” Nope, forward slash.

Or just slash. And not Slash.

What Is the Internet?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:00:06 -0600

Indeed. What is the internet? Most simply, it is information shared between two computers. Emails are the internet. Facebook is the internet. This post is the internet. And quite probably your telephone and television at home are the internet.

“Well, sure, but that window that opens when I clicked that blue underlined text in my email, that’s not the internet.” Yes, yes it is. “Okay, but that picture gallery of my uncle’s vacation to Machu Picchu can’t be the internet.” And yet it is.

If it has anything to do with you viewing on your computer files, photos, video, or information of any kind that aren’t actually on your computer, that’s the internet.

“Well, then, my television at home isn’t the internet.” Wrong. Unless you use rabbit ears or have an antenna on your roof. That digital signal is a series of ones and zeros coming from a computer at the cable company, and your television (or more specifically, your cable box) is another computer that figures out how to make those ones and zeros into Two and a Half Men. “Oh, is that what it’s for?” Yes, that’s what it’s for.

Your internet browser, on the other hand, is not the internet. The little blue e is not the internet. The curled up fox and the compass are not the internet. They are internet browsers, specially-produced software for navigating the World Wide Web, which is a [very large and growing exponentially] group of inter-linked documents.

I think that’s all I have in me to say about the internet. I will leave you with a funny, and quite false, discussion of the internet: This, Jen, is the internet.

Getting It Wrong

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:03:05 -0600

Seth Godin, again! Apparently, Seth Godin got the Web wrong in 1993. Not a surprise. I don’t think too many people could have envisioned a world of Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, or Google back in 1993.

What I love about his post is the notion of getting better about announcing being wrong and learning from it.

Politicians, of course, are terrible at this. They are never wrong, apparently, and when they are, spin instead of admitting it. Which not only hurts their trustworthiness, it prevents them from learning anything.

It’s so true and it drives me crazy! “My [heartfelt, racist] comments, or [deliberate, ill-timed, and inappropriate] actions, were misinterpreted ….” Why not just admit you screwed up and hope people forgive and forget?

Dvorak Keyboard

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:00:05 -0600

On How-To Geek a few days ago, I read an article about the Dvorak keyboard that reminded me of why I was learning touch-typing. I had hoped to learn to type quickly and without looking at the keyboard. I had also thought that once I had the fundamentals worked out, I might find a more appropriate keyboard to use.

I had learned that the Dvorak keyboard layout was better suited to modern typing, now that we’ve moved away from mechanical typewriters. I was interested to try to use it and see for myself whether it was any easier or faster.

Now that I think about it, though, I’m not the only one who uses any of my computers, so it may be more of an irritant to others, if I change the keyboard layout. Also, I would need to relabel the keys, so even if I could switch the computer keyboard settings quickly, changing the key labels would not be so easy.

So, while I still think that the Dvorak keyboard layout would be interesting and valuable to learn, I won’t be doing it any time soon.

Trading in Your Pain

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:00:05 -0600

I read Seth Godin’s blog fairly regularly and even bought one of his most recent books, Poke the Box (an excellent book, by the way). He had a post a few days ago called Trading in Your Pain. It’s about the perception that whatever pain you feel in your current job, there’s a way past it.

“If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer—then the pain will go away.”

He also suggests that are two ways out: leave and find something else, or stay and suffer and be unrewarded. Given these choices, he suggests taking the third option.

But what is the third option? This is something that took me several tries to figure out. For a while, I would follow the second option, then a while later, I would be forced into the first option. And in choosing the first option, I would move across the country. These were expensive, time-consuming choices.

Over the last few years, I’ve chosen to learn everything I can about the job I’m doing, suggest and implement improvements, and generally improve myself. I have been rewarded in my efforts, having recently moved into a job that gives me more autonomy to suggest and implement real changes and generally to be the expert.

The third option is to work through it. That may mean suffering for a while and probably means leaving and finding something else, but only in order to learn what you need to know and then get a chance to do it.

Administer v. Administrate

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:05 -0600

This is another post in my correction and clarification series. This case, in particular, drives me crazy, because not only is it wrong, it sounds wrong.

I hear or read often about someone who administrates a system or process. I fully understand the reason why people might use the term, and I know they’ll find it in the dictionary. But it’s not correct.

An administrator must administrate, no? No. And administrator administers, or is responsible for administration. I think people prefer something shorter than the latter, but don’t like the sound of the former. A nurse or a doctor administers treatment for a patient, but a systems analyst doesn’t administer the database.

So the systems analyst must administrate the database. Wrong. The systems analyst is responsible for database administration, or simply is responsible for the database, or even manages the database.

I realize the temptation to use similar words to describe ideas (administrator, administration, administrate), but other, simpler words exist that do as good a job.

This comes from a Facebook game: Discover the #1 single in your...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:08:34 -0600

This comes from a Facebook game:

Discover the #1 single in your country of origin in the week you were born.
Find it on YouTube.
Post it on your Facebook page without shame.

I thought I’d post here, too. For fun.

New Year's Resolution

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:29:25 -0600

One New Year’s resolution for me. Not a huge list of things that are going to make my life infinitely better, nor make me a phenomenally better person. But kind of a huge list nonetheless.

My New Year’s resolution is to use a To Do list. And a calendar, I suppose. Keep track of the things that I want to do and set up a schedule to get it all done. Not done today or tomorrow, but eventually. And I fully expect that even as things get crossed off the list more things will be added, but all in all things will get done.

I’m going to try to use Evernote more to keep track of things. I’m going to try to use Remember the Milk more to remind me of the things I’ve decided to do. I’m going to try to use Dropbox more to keep my files synchronized and accessible. I’m going to try to use Google Docs more for quick, accessible documents, and my Google Calendar more to make sure I know what’s going on and when.

I think that should cover it, but I may find some other tools to help me along the way.

Dragonriders of Pern

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:00:05 -0600

I just finished reading the first part of Dragonriders of Pern, Dragonflight. I’d forgotten what I had purchased from Amazon for my Kindle was in fact all of the first trilogy of the books, so I was actually a little surprised that I came to a significant section ending. The Dragonriders of Pern is a trilogy and Dragonflight is the first book. There may be some spoilers in this post, I’ll warn you now.

The original settlers of Pern are Earth people who arrive by spaceship. They use up all of the resources of the ships to build their settlements and so they don’t have technology. They start from scratch and we’re introduced to what seems to be somewhat medieval sort of civilization. In fact, over the course of a few thousand years, the civilization has lost the ability to do a large number of things because the knowledge wasn’t needed or the tools weren’t available and so the knowledge disappeared.

Pern is threatened by the Red Star, an oddly-orbiting planet that somehow moves close to and then far from Pern. When it is close, it releases Thread; the threads burrow into the ground and kill all the vegetation. The people of Pern have trained dragons to fly out and burn the threads in the sky before they can reach the ground.

There are some interesting lessons about oral history and the risks of forgetting the lessons of the past. As well, as the risks of information silos, and having only a few specialists who know the secrets.

Illicit v. Elicit

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:00:05 -0600

As I was writing my Muppets post, I used the word illicit and realized that it means something very different from what I intended, elicit. I quickly corrected the word, but not before writing it and potentially looking the fool.

For your own reference:

illicit (il·lic·it [ih-lis-it]) adjective
1. not legally permitted or authorized; unlicensed; unlawful.
2. disapproved of or not permitted for moral or ethical reasons.

elicit (e·lic·it [ih-lis-it]) verb (used with object)
to draw or bring out or forth; educe; evoke: to elicit the truth; to elicit a response with a question.

I think I may try to come up with some short lesson like this once a week. Not exactly a word-of-the-day or -week, but more of a correction or clarification of the week.

Review: The Muppets

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:27:33 -0600

As you might imagine from the title, I went to see The Muppets last night. What a terrific movie. It was funny and nostalgic and had great celebrity cameos, as expected from a Muppet movie.

The story was perfect. The Muppets are all but forgotten entertainers, their theatre falling down, and the cast members all off on their own; some successful, others not so much. But with a young muppet hero who has adored the Muppets all his life, whose enthusiasm brings them back together.

My sister said it’s the first time in a long time that a movie has made her snort with laughter. And if not Fozzie’s fart shoes, Dave Grohl’s Animool impersonator, Jack Black’s unwilling and unwitting celebrity host, or Alan Arkin’s disaffected tour guide, there was definitely something to elicit a snort.

If you haven’t already, go see it, and take the kids. 9 out 10!

Clients From Hell: Client: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner. Me:...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:29:01 -0600

Clients From Hell: Client: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner. Me:...:

clientsfromhell:

Client: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner.

Me: It was only just made available to me to launch. As soon as I saw the problem, I flagged it.

Client: But you should have looked for a problem sooner.

Me: I just saw it for the first time. I wasn’t involved with the project…

Huckleberry Finn with Robots

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:00:05 -0600

I’m in the process of reading my new copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [Robotic Edition] by Mark Twain, edited by Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine. The book is the successful culmination of a Kickstarter project where Diani and Devine planned to re-issue Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the N-word replaced by robots. And I have to say they did a phenomenal job.

I’ve only gotten through the first couple of chapters and I almost missed the first instance where the word robots was used because it was so perfect.

Ms. Watson she kept picking at me and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the robots in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed.

Around the same time I heard about the Kickstarter, I read an article about a publisher who planned simply to replace the N-word with the word “slave.” To me, that evades the issue of “the word”. The word slave doesn’t evoke the same hate or prejudice that the N-word really evokes. In the preface to the robotic edition, Diani and Devine use R2-D2 and C-3PO as examples of robots who are, in essence, slaves. They call Luke “Master” and they are purchased by his uncle.

I don’t know that this more than replacing the N-word with slave, but it certainly seems more current, while adding a certain tongue-in-cheek political commentary.

Postscript: It’s a little funny that the Brewster Rockit cartoon for this morning is very apropos.

Voice Recognition Software

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:06:00 -0600

I’m writing this post using only the voice recognition software that I just installed. I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11 and giving this a bit of a test drive. I’m hoping that by being able to just speak some of my thoughts that I might be able to write a little bit more and a little bit faster. I think this will take me a little bit of getting used to. I have to talk much more slowly and clearly than I’m accustomed to, and I have to think about punctuation at the same time.

It’s funny, I thought that by being able to speak and not have to type that it would be faster but now I find I have to have all of my thoughts ready to be spoken before actually “writing.”

But all in all there is very little that this has gotten wrong. I have had to capitalize a little bit and punctuate a little bit, but it got most of the words right. And I can even use commands like “select all” to select all the text. I could even select backwards two words and bold. That didn’t work out quite so well, but pretty close.

I will try to use this software for the next little while and do most of my writing just by voice. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Update (2011-12-11 11:25): Yes, the next day. I’m in the process of uninstalling and reinstalling the software. It came up with some kind of “process is locked” error that came with no help and no Google solutions worked. I’ll keep you posted.

Update (2011-12-13 19:23): A couple days later. I’ve reinstalled the software and tried it now three or four times after restarting the computer and everything seems to be fine. I’m going to stick with this voice recognition software that I’m in fact using to write this update.

Social Media Connections

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:00:06 -0600

I read an article about social media connections and brain size that indicated that people with a large number of social media connections (e.g., Facebook friends) have a larger volume of grey matter in the amygdala than average.

I found it very interesting because I recently unfriended a number of friends on Facebook and stopped following a number of people on Twitter. I wondered what the correlation meant for me, having had a large number of connections and consciously choosing to have fewer.

I’m not sure if it was because of this, or because I missed the updates from friends, or for some other reason entirely, but I’ve chosen to reconnect with many of the unfriended, and I’m beginning to follow Twitter users again. I’d like to believe that I will be more selective about the connections I make, so I won’t be inflating the number just for the sake of a large number. But I also think there’s something comforting about having a large number of friends. I also like having even that tenuous connection so that when something comes up and I want that connection, it’s there.

In Your Eyes

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:31:32 -0600

I happened to hear Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes on CBC Radio 2 this morning, and of course it reminded me of the 1989 John Cusack classic Say Anything…. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually watched the movie all the way through from start to finish, but I’ll always remember one of the best movie quotes:

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

As a career, I’m glad I don’t do any of those things. But as a regular person in society, I don’t think I can get away from it. And considering Lloyd Dobler has a boombox and a car, I’m sure he has a few sold, bought, or processed items.