My poor little neglected Tosocnet. I have moved to a more appropriate Domain. See my latest work at:
http://www.lordandrei.com/blog
You will also be able to read there what happened to Tosocnet and why I moved.
-A
I’ve always wanted to be in Times Square at midnight on New Years Eve. Still do. I’ve hit most of the major US events you can list. Mummers Parade, Macy’s Parade, Rose Bowl Parade, and yes… Halloween at Ohio University. I’ve camped for Kiss tickets.
So this year I decided to listen to the local rumours (that I’d been spreading) and go out to the WWDC Keynote line at 3:15 in the morning. I sit here 18th in line.
It’s been an interesting 24 hours since registering. The crowd is for the most part very new at the the conference. I believe well over 65% are at the conference for the first time. This will be my 10th year at the conference. I started attending in 1997 and took the last 3 years off.
As I mulled through the pre-registration yesterday I contemplated if I’d run into anyone that I knew from previous years. Ironically my mulling was interrupted very quickly by running into a friend I made my first year.
This will be a fairly short entry… There are likely to be several short entries over the next week. I find my interest, knowledge and interest in Online Social Networking gets an interesting boost when I take it offline.
When I was a kid (and I finally feel just about justified to refer to my childhood that way), I was fortunate enough to have been given a computer. I was eleven years old. The computer was mine, not my parents. They gave me free reign with the system. I could put anything I wanted on it. I could use it on my own schedule. This was absolutely unheard of.
This may not sound exactly out of the ordinary. Many eleven year olds have computers today. I should point out that I was eleven in 1979 and the computer was an Apple ][. (To those other old-school über geeks; it was a ][ (pre-rev 7 board) not a plus or an e… just a ][) It had a whopping 48K of memory. At the time this was possibly enough to put a man on the moon. The computer cost about $2,000.
To put this in perspective compensating for inflation and memory size increases. You can now buy a one-half terabyte drive for $200. $2,000 in 1979 is about $6,000 in today’s money. So for about 3% the cost you can get 11.2 MILLION times the storage. Did I mention the drive is about 1% the size?
So, what did I do with my joyous little cream-coloured box? Well, for the first few weeks I taught myself Basic. Applesoft Basic. Oh, right. The computer actually couldn’t handle Applesoft Basic. We had to buy a card for it. This hardware card was designed from the main chips of the Apple ][ Plus. It was interesting, the computer had 6 big Rom chips and so did the card. And the ROM chips were labeled the same way. So I did what any normal 11 year old with a Masters in Electrical Engineering would do. I swapped the ROMS from the card with the ones in the computer. (Note: No, I didn’t have a degree. No, I had no clue how ridiculously stupid this stunt was. No, I wasn’t surprised when it worked just fine)
Now I had a Mock Apple ][ Plus with an Integer Basic card. And let me tell you the software that this let me [redacted] around in. If you ever saw software [redacted] “The Doctor”; let me confide now that this was in fact [redacted]. One of the next things I learnt how to do from a guy who worked at the local computer shop was installing a button on my disk drive that overrode the write protect switch. During this time people were actually using single-hole punches on 5 ¼” floppies so that they could write on the backsides. This would often damage the disc if not done right. My double-sided discs were never notched.
Then came that fateful day. I was curious. I got my dad’s tools. Especially his ratchet screwdriver set. I removed every screw that I could from my trusty Apple ][. I utterly disassembled it. Any part that could be taken out, I did. It was a fateful day because as I removed about the 40th piece, my mother walked into my bedroom. On my desk, she saw what appeared to be the mythical electronic graveyard. She let out a screech that would make a banshee and a siren play “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who was scared more. She pointed at me and said something that I think was too dirty for Carlin’s list of 7 words. She turned around and slammed my bedroom door ordering me to stay.
I believe during this time, she called my father at the hospital and demanded that he come home and kill me in cold blood. I could hear her crying downstairs. I felt badly… Personally, I’d hoped she’d be proud of me for keeping things as arranged as I did. I figured there was only one thing to do.
About 15 minutes later I heard my father pull up. My mother yelled at him for about 10 minutes. I believe most of his lineage was insulted in this onslaught. There may have even been the insinuation that she wasn’t really my mother. After the yelling I heard him plod his way up the steps. We didn’t believe in corporal punishment; so at most I was in for a good guilting. The door opened and my parents stood there, my mother pointing accusingly like a jury foreman.
My latest basic program was running and the screen filled up with an ASCII banner, which read, “Hi Dad! Welcome home!” My mother’s jaw hit the floor. I’m talking complete “Tex Avery” here. She stammered like Bob Newhart. She then let out another screech and for the first of two times in my life, looked at me and said, “F*&K you.” And stormed downstairs. My father looked at me and said, “That wasn’t nice. Unbelievably clever and funny, But not nice.”
He looked at the computer for a moment and asked, “And it’s back exactly the way it was?” I reached into my desk drawer. “All except these two things. I couldn’t remember exactly where they went, and they really don’t seem to be necessary.” He shrugged.
On my kitchen table at home this evening is a piece of a 17” Mac Book Pro laptop. The good news is, I know what part it is and why I didn’t replace it.
About 2 weeks ago, my laptop’s DVD super drive ‘went south.’ It decided it was very attached to the DVD inside of it and was hell bent on not giving it back to me. Diagnosing problems like this is very easy. You can hear the eject process starting every time you press the eject button. You can hear the disk lift up, not eject and drop back in again. Hardware problem.
About 5 weeks ago my three-year hardware coverage came to an end. (My all time favourite quote on this is from a Laurel and Hardy short where their car falls apart and Hardy says to Laurel, “I told you not to make that final payment!”) Now, I completely respect Apple service. They have bent over backwards for me over the past years and even done some hardware repairs out of warranty that I will not complain about. But this repair was unlikely to happen in either a timely fashion (I am off to Apple’s developer conference in about 30 hours) or at a cost that won’t hurt.
So, I bit the bullet. I ordered a replacement part on my own and looked online for information how to replace the part. And let me say quite assuredly that PowerBookMedic (http://www.powerbookmedic.com) is a HUGE win in my world. They got me the part within 24 hours. They had a nice set of computer tools (small mildly magnatised phillips-head screwdrivers and torx), and most importantly, step-by-step QuickTime videos.
The new DVD player is a slightly newer model. It reads and writes faster than the old one. It’s quieter than the old one. And the icing on the cake… it gives me my disks back. I only dropped one of the femto-screws. My housemate has eyes like a hawk. Which is impressive as she was explaining her far-sightedness to me while she was locating the errant screw.
I suppose in a sort of tarot-like progression I have moved from the Fool who happily walks off the cliff with no idea of what dangers lay before them. I’m not sure how far I am. Perhaps in Temperance with the obscene amount of care I took. I know I’m probably not in Death… because I’m typing on the computer now.
So now, I wonder… The computer is out of warranty. There’s nothing Apple will support if I do or don’t total it. The 11 yr old is scratching in my mind. Could I mod the case? Could I update the hard drive or the RAM? Could I improve the wifi’s antenna?
I am fortunate to have my own computer. And I can do anything I want with it.
(I really don’t have time for a new hobby)
Last week, in a whirlwind of optimism we announced an intended return of Tosocnet. It felt like the right time and the right approach. However, dark clouds were rumbling to give the site quite a bit of challenge. I admittedly missed the warning signs.
About 3 weeks after our move, my main workstation’s power supply took a dive. The workstation was old and out of all warranties for service. Some $300 later, the power supply was replaced and I had a working computer again in my office. I of course assumed my server next to it (which was older) was just fine.
I’m guessing that both machines got a bit roughed up in the 5-day drive across the country. On Thursday evening my server ate itself as well. This, sadly wasn’t the power supply (as far as I can tell.) This was a full blown out logic board immolation. (Well, okay. no fire or smoke)
In the non-online world, I actually run a web serving service. Currently, the service is quite no-frills. The income I get as a result reflects this level of service. But I do pride myself on minimal downtime for my customers. Granted my IT staff consists of myself and anyone else I think I am while I’m fixing problems.
To be honest, I’m not an IT person at heart. It’s more of a fantasy-pipe dream. I’m a software developer, which in most companies is an IT person’s worst nightmare. But to be fair, IT people are also developers’ worst nightmare. I came to the realization that the two jobs can be described thusly:
But to let both professions off the hook; getting to an experienced stage in those fields requires a great sense of detente, debate, and ability to work to a middle ground. As always, I digress.
Having web services as something I offer to customers, I can of course give myself web services for projects, this blog for example.
Thursday the server ate itself. Today the server and the blog are back up. This post was started about 5 minutes after I got the PHP backup loaded and the blog serving again.
But, I am experienced and diligent. All my customers’ data was in a remote volume and backed up. All I needed was a machine to put the server back onto. This however was a bit of a financial pinch, as I wasn’t budgeted to buy new hardware for about 6 months.
Nevertheless, my customers have services I have promised and I have readers I intend to continue to talk at.
The new post “Who are you? Who-who? Who-who?” is underway but delayed 2 days due to mad scramble to reconfigure the server. (Which for the record is now at 70%. We’re serving our customers’ data but reassembling their access to the server. This is actually a good thing as it was a project I was going to redo this month.)
Such is my ramble and explanation. More soon.
How long has it been? This is, of course, a rhetorical question because all one has to do is look at the syndicated feed for this blog, and it is painfully obvious. It has been 3 ½ months since the last substantive post on Tosocnet. Sadly, right after a commitment to bring the blog back up to speed after a week off.
So, today we’re going to answer the following questions:
The latter will be answered with a new relevant post tomorrow.
As was mentioned closer to four months ago; I was one of the allegedly five thousand victims of Microsoft’s 2009 layoffs. In general; this tends to put a bit of a damper on your day… week… year. My original perception was that this would give me more time to blog. However, in a weakened economy and with a family to feed, you pull back on the lighter needs in favour of the things that will eventually put cash in your wallet such as employment. As much as I may have dreams of being paid to speak around the world on the concepts of social-networking (and I can hear Dave Winer laughing at my impudence already) No one so far has offered me any cash for working on the topic.
The good news is that I am a software engineer who specialises on the Macintosh platform. As long as I’m willing to move, there are jobs to be had. Within a week of the announced layoffs, the interviews rolled in. First interviews were done by phone, later in person. Microsoft layoffs at main campus were done as a two-month shift. “You will be terminated in two months, so pack your office today, give us your ID Badge and go find a new job.” Now, you were off your team and unable to get into buildings on campus; but you were still on the payroll. I started my new job in the metropolitan St. Louis region on April 6. With the economy as it is… I did the entire move through the kindness of friends (and MANY boxes of pizza) entirely out of my own pocket without professional movers.
If I haven’t made this clear. March consisted of an interview halfway across the country, a job offer, a flight back to find a place to live, packing a 4-bedroom house into a truck, and driving cross-country. If you’re wondering why April didn’t see my return to the online blogging world, I’ll be happy to explain the pneumonia I had for a week from the adrenaline crash. My unemployment was officially 11 days. And that was to allow me to be able to move.
But now, I am settled back into a work schedule; seeing my boy off to daycare; not eating off paper plates on a drop cloth in the living room; and sleeping in my own bed. (Okay, the queen sized box spring had to be sacrifised to the moving gods of, “Won’t fit up the stairs.”)
Lest you believe that I have spent no time at all doing social networking… I will now comment about how that went.
While I haven’t utterly dropped off LiveJournal, I’ve become beyond neglectful of it. I also seem to have passed through my Facebook phase, as the flurry of well-timed, nostalgic interest in my childhood friends seems to have waned during the move. I’ve been using twitter excessively of late. It’s easy to track and cache even if I can’t check it in a few days. I will admit that I am (like many users) disappointed at the decision to remove replies to people you don’t follow from people you do.
Mostly what I’ve had time to do is to honour my exhaustion by reading Twitter, watching TV (Thank you Fox for renewing Dollhouse), and sleeping.
So where do we go from here?
I wish I’d retained the posting; but, someone noted that if you want to be fabulously wealthy blogging on a topic; you need to do it non-stop for about 9-18 months. I made it for two months and then had life intervene. Therefore, it is assuredly my intention to start contributing to this blog again. I will however be reducing the amount I put on the blog as at this point… life is not going to allow me a 2000 word per day regimen. At least… not yet.
Posts throughout the week will be smaller and sometimes just consist of links and maybe a few comments. My plan is to work on a full post during the week and publish it going into the weekend. We’ll see how well this does as my last declaration of return I must admit was pretty much a failure.
I’m also looking into how to better organise the material that I post. I want to improve the content of the post as well as the categories and topics. This, I will hope, will come in time.
This leads to the other confession. While apparent to my wife, every other pedant I’ve dated, and every other pedant who lives on the net; writing and composition are not my forte. (If you are gasping it is either from the painful obviousness of the observation or the confusion over the time that it took me to get over the obliviousness about the observation.
I was one of those kids in High School who’d lose a letter grade on my papers due to the grammar and spelling. In retrospect, I blame the school systems. I remember receiving papers with comments like, “Passive Voice” and “Misplaced Modifier”… But I honestly can’t remember ever being taught what the difference is between active and passive voice; how to recognize when you’re committing the heinous crime; and techniques to remedy it. I just got marked wrong a lot for it. It’s sort of like handing back a math test in Calculus when you’re in Algebra with all the wrong answers marked and no explanation of what you did wrong.
As a result, I love my content and am perpetually self-conscious about my writing.
Next post up tomorrow. Who are you? Who-who… Who-who?
