Archive for January, 2008

I first encountered Microsoft in terms of buying their products in about 1981. I bought a game for my Apple II- Adventure (aka “Colossal Cave”, the original Crowther and Woods text based adventure) from them. I followed Bill Gates’ career from about that time, and always felt like, in a weird way, he and I were twins separated at birth… even though he’s older than me and I’m far, far sexier.

In about 1990, I had a beer (several, actually- I think it was a post-training course social thing) with a fellow in Seattle who told me I looked just like Bill. He then proceeded to tell me how his family used to have a summer cottage near the Gates’ clan when Bill was a kid. He described summers sharing BBQs and swimming with the Gates’ family, and turning down a job offer from Bill in the early 1980’s. My momentary pride at being described as “like Bill Gates” was quashed when the guy described the young Bill Gates as a pain in the neck smartass geek, and how he once nearly drowned Bill while swimming because he was so irritating.

In later life, I realized that the “pain in the neck smartass” was a lot more like me than I was probably willing to admit.

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more funny pictures
Good night

I’m 44 years old today. I can’t complain about the day so far: my lovely wife gave me two (2!) XBox games for my annual “I’m older but still alive” celebration- Mass Effect and the Half Life 2 Orange Box collection, both of which were at the top of my list of “want” games. How cool is it to be married to someone who will give you games this good for your birthday? And my Mom gave me a very snazzy shirt as a gift- I’m feeling pretty spoiled.

And apropos of nothing…isn’t it neat that an online encyclopedia (Wikipedia) has first-rate information on computer games that were released within the last couple of months? Both of those links above are from Wikipedia, if you didn’t notice. The world is a wonderful place!

My brother Dennis and his kids Dustin and Jhillion dropped by yesterday and we had a good visit for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. I guess calling Jhillion and Dustin “kids” is becoming increasingly inaccurate: both of them are old enough to vote now. Bizarre: it is becoming increasingly obvious that I’m getting old when my younger nieces and nephews are in university and working for a living.

What will I do today? Well, most likely I’ll power on my work laptop sometime today and see what horrors await me there. Maybe I’ll have a celebratory beer later… or possibly something stronger

I have l a problem with social networking sites. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and so on all encourage me to trust them with all of the data regarding myself and my friends/associates. In return, they provide a service to me for “free”.

I don’t like letting *my* data out of my hands. Some of the most important pieces of information in my life are my emails, my email address books, my blog, and my online photos. If I upload that data to Facebook, GMail, or Flikr I enter into some sort of contract with that provider. The “free” service they offer me is actually paid for by the data I upload: read the fine print in your usage agreement, and you’ll see that they claim more rights to your data than you think they do. I’ve often been told I’m not “with it” or “cool” for choosing to distance myself from these services, and I can’t really argue that- I’ve never been one of the “cool kids”. But to me, the data Facebook, GMail and others want me to give them access to in order to use their services is just too precious to me to mess around with. That’s why I pay for email services, run my own blog, and store my network based photo album on my own servers. Free sounds really good until you realize you are trading your data for that low cost.

Earlier this week, Robert Scoble encountered the “dark” side of the social networking phenomena. Robert was running a script to extract his list of “friends” from Facebook so he could use that information for his own purposes. One might think that this would be quite acceptable: the data belongs to Robert, right? Wrong. It belongs to Facebook. They choose how and if he can access his own data because, quite frankly, it isn’t his any more. It now belongs to them. His friends and acquaintances are a commodity they sell, and as such the data is a valuable resource that they don’t want to make easily accessible to competitors. To be honest, the data you hand over to Facebook and GMail is the only thing they have to sell/leverage to make money, and believe me that these companies are not running their service out of the goodness of their heart. Monetizing your personal data is Job #1 for these social networking services, and we are only beginning to see how this will be accomplished.

Facebook has reinstated Scoble’s account, but that doesn’t change the reality: the data is *theirs*. If you think the emails you send via Google Mail, or the friends you invite via Facebook or MySpace are “yours”… you are fooling only yourself. I don’t think this kind of occurrence will actually change the way people use these services, but I do feel increasingly concerned regarding where this is leading. Will everything I do, say, or store online via a social networking site eventually be used to sell things to me and everyone I know? That certainly seems to be the dream of many of these services. I’m not completely comfortable with data I think of as “personal” and valuable becoming fodder for a massive marketing effort to all my friends and acquaintances.

But then I’m not one of the “cool” kids

First, I should explain the above reference. Moe, the bartender in the Simpsons, once referred to Homer as being “fancy” for calling his garage a … garage. When asked what it should be called, Moe responded “A car hole”. My closet has been the place I throw clothes I’m not currently wearing for the last several years, so calling it a “clothes hole” seemed appropriate.

The basic organization of my side of the closet hasn’t changed since we moved from Alberta. To be honest, there really wasn’t much organization to begin with: one small section for “work” clothes, one section for sweaters and shirts, and one section for “other”. Unfortunately, much of the space in this closet had become cluttered, confused, and generally unhelpful for the purpose of actually locating anything to wear. Golf shirts that I wear at work were mixed in on the shelf with T-Shirts I wear at home and not hanging on hangers where they belonged, because the hangers were all occupied by pants that hadn’t been worn in years. It was like someone had taken all the clothes from a Salvation Army drop box and thrown them willy-nilly onto various hangers, and then pushed me into the room and said “get dressed- you’ll look marvelous”.

There was one other set of factors that led me to the conclusion something needed to be done: much of the clothing in my closet was no longer something I would wear. “Stuff I wouldn’t wear” fell into two basic categories:

• pants with waist sizes that mocked my now portly midsection
• other clothes that I was keeping more because of fond memories than out of any expectation I was going to wear the item again

It was time to take action.

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It is now 2008. In two more years the Winter Olympics will almost be open here in the Vancouver area. Irene and I will hopefully have a trip away from the area planned so we can avoid the traffic and endless “Olympic this” and “Olympic that” nonsense.

But what about now? Let me tell you about the incredibly fast-paced, party a minute life Irene and I live. Irene got off work early yesterday afternoon. She came home, complaining of a sore throat and feeling tired. We went to have a nap. I woke up at around 8:30 PM and watched TV, then went up stairs at midnight to wake her up and say “Happy New Year, honey”. She got up and had a snack, and we chatted for half an hour before she went back to sleep. I puttered on the computer until 3:00 am and went to sleep as well.

Yep, party a minute here at Casa del Adams

Happy New Year, everyone!