This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

When I say we are having a baby – I don’t mean in the abstract sense that it’s happening soon.  Literally we are having a baby right now.  This post like most of them I am writing ahead of time, so there will be some details missing.   The one most important is what day is this going to publish?   I’m not sure – the baby is due any day now, I have to be ready to rush out the door.  I am hoping to run by the blog for five seconds to get this alert published.  By the time you are reading this (depending on how quick you do) we should be either on the way to or at the hospital.  When we get home I’ll be putting up a new article with pictures and the whole nine yards.

The signs have started that we are going to be having our child in our arms very soon.  I don’t yet know the weight or length of him.  I don’t know what the time or day of his birth.   He is very close to appearing.  Some part of this since I’m writing this ahead of time reminds me of Linus telling Charlie Brown about the Great Pumpkin, in theory the Great Pumpkin is going to show up, but yet there is no proof.     We are hoping everything goes well, that there is no complications.   Wish us well.

I’ll be giving updates on my twitter feed, so watch that for the latest information.

The picture is going with “love is with your family” motif.   That’s my father with my brother and myself (I don’t think he is really asleep).   Happy birthday dad.   Happy Valentine’s day to everyone else.

A long long time ago I ran a Yahoo Group entitled Marcon Drinkers it was started in 2001.   Before this group was started my circle of friends had another message board we were using.   One of the administrators went off the deep end started banning people and deleting posts.  He eventually found it funny just to delete the message board all together.  This is where I came into the picture.

Since I enjoyed the camaraderie of the group, and I had the technical know-how, I started a new Yahoo Group, the previously mentioned Marcon Drinkers.   The concept of the group and where the people came in, was that once a year our circle would descend upon a fantasy and science fiction convention in Columbus, OH called Marcon.  While we we there, there was mass amounts of alcohol consumed, except for just a small handful of occasions outside of there I don’t normally drink at all.  I’m not opposed to it, I just normally do not have a taste for it.    Moving on.

I managed to contact and grab people moving them to the message board.   For a time (2001-2004) it was quite active, I think I started dropping out more when I hung out on the SWG message boards most of the time.   I would say around (2006-2007) it really died, which is disheartening but people move on, friendships change, and people grow apart.   Our community wasn’t large enough to be self sustaining since there wasn’t any new blood.   People from the board attempted to start other groups, but none were as successful for the amount of time this one was.

Last year I was at a crossroads, I didn’t want to just delete the forum – since some people may actually still read it, so for them I continued and left it up.   Since nothing new was being posted I decided I was going to just crosspost my blog posts.  I originally hoped to stimulate conversation, but it seems the posts are standing alone in an echo chamber.  I did close membership to start spammers from popping up (since I always hated cleaning those out anyways).   So our peak was over 100 members, now it’s down to 46.   I slowly watch people drop off.   When I am the last one still standing I’ll take the group offline for good.

I do have backups of the groups since I don’t want the digital history to be gone, but it will last solely in my hands.  In a way it’s sad to watch a community die off.  First I did it with this group, then I relived it with Star Wars Galaxies.  Anytime a community is lost for any reasons there should be a sadness; a moment of reflection.   I think the main reason it is completely dead these days beyond dynamics changing is the advent of social networking.  I’m friends with many of these same people on different social networks like Myspace and Facebook.   This has given them more tools to empower themselves in the delivery of information to their friends.   A static mailing list scenario like Yahoo Groups  doesn’t fit into their world anymore.  Times, technology, and friendships change – but looking at the past will show us the journey on how we got to where we are today.

Someone I know came to me the other day about a consulting project that may or may not happen.   What essentially he wants done is an overhaul of IT infrastructure.   They want more automation to their operation and they deal with physical goods.  So from receiving to shipping, to everything in between they are looking to streamline.    They want to do more with less, less equipment if possible, less people if possible, less stress if possible.   In other words they want what every other company in the world wants.

Currently they have a software package that does some of this, but it doesn’t do everything they want it to be able to do.   I don’t have implicit knowledge of the package, other then I’ve created firewall rules when I was consulting with Symantec to pass the traffic.   So my first question is the scope of the project.   The person I was talking to didn’t exactly no what I meant by that.   They were more worried about the big picture ideal instead of what a consultant would need to work with.  A vision of the end goal is great, but without specific tasks to get there it definitely puts an implementer at a disadvantage.   He stated that we would have to do a sit down and discuss the issue and layout of the business process.   This is a good step, but part of why I’m writing this is to help others know the answer they should have when going into something of this magnitude.

Easy, Hard and Correct

The first question is why do you want to do this?  There are easy answers, there are hard answers, and there is correct answers to this question.    Some of the easy answers include – I want everything to work together better, we want to build to the future, and I have to spend my budget before the end of the fiscal cycle and want to try out this product.    Hard answers include we want something more manageable for our IT staff, we want it to run faster in our environment, we want something we can understand.

There are reasons that these are the easy answers and hard answers.  The first and foremost thought is to remember to sit down with a consultant or someone who understands the technology thoroughly enough before ever sitting down with a salesperson.   To sales people, these are all easy and correct answers.   They will tell you your toast can be used to transport computer network traffic with the right purchase, they are there to get your money.  It’s the one reason I can never be a salesperson.  I like people using the correct solution, not necessarily the solution that I am selling.   Even when I worked at Symantec, I knew Symantec products were not the best products for all customers.   Some customers only changed products because they had money to spend and ended up worse off for it.    Salespeople are tricky creatures that guard their bonuses like Disney guards it’s copyrights.

Easy answers are normally very vague,  they tell a salesperson of consultant that you haven’t really though to much about the problem.  You have a basic idea of what you want, but you don’t know any specifics.  The problem with the easy answers is that they are also the most expensive answers – this allows those that are implementing something to sell you what they think is best, regardless of how it will fit into your business six months down the road when they are gone.  You will have to make some decisions on your own, and this should not be listening to the best sales pitch from two competing vendors.  The best sales pitch does not necessarily equate into the best product.

Why are the hard answers difficult?  What that’s because everything is relative.   Going back to my examples can show you this.  We want something more manageable by our IT staff, well how trained is your IT staff?   Do your employees know alternative operating systems?  Does your staff only run Microsoft products?  Is this faster for your environment?  What about a year down the road and the nightmare efficient system breaks because of infrastructure changes you were forced to make?  Everything comes down to you knowing your environment and your plans for the future.   A consultant only gets a glimpse of time into your configuration and is not going to be the full time employee running this stuff.   They won’t know how your future plans could be effected if you don’t tell them your future plans.

The correct answer?  That include being as specific as possible.  Let’s say this is to implement an Exchange Server migrating from a Lotus Notes architecture.   Why would I want to do this?   Lotus Notes has been long in the process of being a headache for us.   The administrator that runs it is retiring in six months and we have other employees that could scale up quicker to learn  Exchange then Lotus Notes.   The collaborative features in exchange work in Outlook, which our company already loads on all the desktop since we have a full Microsoft Office License on all of the desktops.  About 30% of our users already use outlook to retrieve their e-mail, even though they all have the Notes client installed on their desktops also.   Being able to consolidate this would save us thousands a year since we would no longer need a support contract or license fees paid to IBM to support the old Lotus infrastructure.    The more complete and specific the answer, the better the consultant can answer your questions.

Do You Listen To Alternatives?

Even in the Exchange scenario seems complete.  How rigid are you to suggestions?  What if the consultant offers up other alternatives such as a web based e-mail solution that would still allow Exchange to connect and retrieve e-mail? While a Linux/Apache approach may be cheaper, you could also implement it on top of IIS.   Building with some other technologies you could gain all the collaborative powers of Exchange for thousands of dollars less.   Those who didn’t want to use Outlook could use a browser.  If you combine this with a secure remote access solution this would allow for a possible quicker and less bandwidth connection for telecommuters if that is where your company is going.

Knowing what your plans and how rigid they need to be help a consultant decide what avenues may be the best approach for you.  While I offered up a free solution, another consultant may offer ways to augment your current Notes infrastructure to fit your needs.  The best consultants will offer alternatives to your current line of thinking.   You do not have to listen to them, you can stay focused, but hearing how open you are is important.

Timeline

A timeline is something you should have in mind sitting down with the consultant.  He needs to know deadlines and what your expectations are.   Does this need to be done in a week or a year?  How are your current employees going to ramp up on the new solution?  While a consultant may reset your timelines to something more realistic, knowing what type of time frame you are trying to achieve is important to the success of the project.   It also tells the consultant if they are going ot need to bring in more outside help.

Breakdown of Tasks

Have you compartmentalized your tasks?  The person that contacted me was looking for a complete end to end solution, is this what best?   In a solution like that how are you going to handle the transition time?   You don’t want to migrate the whole solution at the touch of a button, since any big architecture change can effect your business continuity.  For some businesses any downtime at all is lost revenue.   A consultant wants to make this impact as minimal as possible.   Even when you do the best planning and compartmentalizing sometimes you will get stuck on a twenty-three hour conference call working through the issues of down time.   When this happens I can tell you it’s not fun.  That was also with a staged migration.

What segments of your business can be down for hours at a time?   When you can answer that you can start staging your tasks.  The tasks that can be down the longest generally should be the first ones migrated, since they should give you expectations for later tasks, and allow you to plan accordingly.   Do not re-architect the design so the whole system (no matter how small) to be done in one night if there are multiple groups effected in the transition.   Design the impact to be as small as possible.   Yes, this may increase time – which in turn increases expense, but without proper planning it may cost you more in the long run.

Cost

The question that no likes asking or giving, what is your budget for this task.  You can wait for the consultant to make a cost estimate pitch first if you like – but at some point in the conversation cost is going to come up.   Do your homework ahead of time to see how much you expect it to cost and budget accordingly.   What are you going to do if things go over budget?  If your three quarters way through a project and haev no more money to finish it, how is that going to impact you?

In Closing

This may seem like a list of things that I want as a consultant.   These are however fairly common truths on what a consultant needs to start a project properly instead of spinning their wheels.   In the next week or so I’m going to follow this up with how to spot a good consultant versus a bad one.

]]> http://creeva.com/2009/02/10/things-you-should-be-able-before-to-answer-contacting-a-consultant/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2009/02/06/how-will-we-explain-to-our-children-what-newspapers-were/ http://creeva.com/2009/02/06/how-will-we-explain-to-our-children-what-newspapers-were/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:58:31 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3814

Picture from here

We hear time and time again about all the newspapers and magazines going out of business.   How much longer will they survive in the same sense that we have seen during our lifetime?  More importantly how are we going to explain them.  In one sense we can it would be easy to explain them since we’ll still have them in libraries aging the perfect yellow gracefully, surviving on microfiche since the companies and libraries don’t seem too interested in digitally converting them, and being used as padding in boxes in the dark reaches of the attic.   So there will be some visual styling and physical copies that they can examine.   What was there purpose though?

We will explain to them it was to deliver news to the general public so they could be informed about the world around them.  It was in the pre digital era (which may as well be prehistoric to them) so these papers were printed out by the millions on a daily basis so there was a communal knowledge shared amongst the populace.   That on Sunday’s we got full colored comics to entertain the kids and full color coupons to entertain the families.   That we got our daily stock quotes from it.   If we wanted to sell something in the town next to ours we used the classified system.   If someone died we would be alerted.

Let’s look at this though – I’m thirty-two years old, so we are going to speak of this in the context of my lifetime.   Why did we have newspapers, except because we didn’t want to read a chapter of a book.   News was piped into our lives via the nightly news on TV and all day via radio.   It would have been simple for towns to start a local (by local I mean town level) radio station for news, classifieds, and obituaries.   Most municipalities already do that though through the local cable company. I remember people buying “classified” ads on it.   Obituaries were missing from that system.   So what have we left, stock quotes and obituaries?  This transition could have been done literally decades ago.   How about an all stock quote radio station?

Let’s look as some other aspects of this picture – in theory most of us are evil human beings since we don’t utilize public transportation  and drive our oil guzzling vehicles around the country daily.   What about all the trees and wilderness decimated by using wood pulp to supply the newspapers (millions a day) for the little bit of news that we couldn’t get somewhere else?  This was rampant going well into the age of recycling, if it wasn’t for the ubiquity of the Internet we would still be doing it today.  What example does this set.   We could have used hemp as paper, since hemp is infinitely more renewable then wood pulp paper, but we didn’t.   Some people didn’t like that idea and wanted to increase their own wealth.  This is also not to forget all the oil trucks used for transporting, the coal and oil used to power these places that printed them.

The other thing I can see my child asking when he becomes aware, doesn’t it give too much power to one entity?  Some towns managed to have two newspapers that provided coverage for their area, but what we are stuck with is just two viewpoints.   What if there was a story that neither wanted to print, in that era it may has well never have happened if it didn’t make TV, radio, or newsprint.   History and stories have been lost for decades since the story wouldn’t get more readers, so these companies could not sell more advertising.  Then I would also have to explain the theory of Yellow Journalism.

Now I’m sure in the age of digital living that these children and grand-children will understand advertising sponsorship to the news.  What they will have a harder time is news that was set typographically so that it couldn’t be manipulated.  A system where you had to buy the paper just to know the news (a news tax as such).   A system where if you wanted to sell something you were lucky if you had the audience of a fifty-mile radius.  That we gave the control of so much to so few and enjoyed it….  That we were so wasteful in our resources, when looking back it was just pure gluttony.   I’m not sure how they will ever understand.

I can say I used wrestle the comics from my grandfather as he read the paper so I could enjoy them, and that is a fond family memory.  I can’t say looking back that even I understood their purpose.      This story is coming from someone who was a newspaper boy, yet has never had a newspaper subscription in my life.

Image from here

Why are MSRP’s so far off of the real price of an item?  Even non-internet shoppers are quite aware that you almost never pay the MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) for anything.   It’s not even their fault 99% of everything in life is priced below MSRP.   Let’s look at the big things first, with the exception of the buy one get one free deals that seem to be in vogue with Kia there is almost no one on the planet that expects to pay the sticker price on a new car.  There are times that in retail companies have been caught trying to control the price of their wares, but in normal scenarios it doesn’t work out.

My problem however is when they say for example a 2 GB flash memory card has an MSRP of $20.00.   Now almost everywhere in the planet you can get this same card for $9.99.    Most stores will advertise that the price is fifty percent off the MSRP and it’s a huge discount off.   Unfortunately they are merely price matching.   In some scenarios the vendors themselves  try this tactic.  Now if a vendor is selling something (full time mind you not a once in awhile sale) for $9.99, how can they say their MSRP is $20.00.   Sorry just another advertisement about MSRP and comparing the “low price” you can get it for (standard price) bragging about the sale set me off.

Sorry for the rant.

Image from here

The stupid mile long pier.    It’s located in Huron, Ohio and at the end of the pier is the Huron Lighthouse.   Growing up in Vermilion, Ohio there wasn’t much to do that we didn’t do on a regular basis.  One of the odd-ball things we did was go out to the mile long pier.   The official name wasn’t the mile long pier, but it is supposedly a mile long – so the local nickname stuck.  For some reason the trips were a bit more frequent once I managed to get the woman who would one day be my wife.

My wife always enjoyed the mile long pier, except when she managed to get to the end of it she had to use the restroom.  This almost always made it a pain since as soon as we made to the end of the end of the pier we immediately had to turn around and head back in most occasions.   When a group of us wanted to head out there we started making her use the restroom at the Riverview Bowling alley just up the street from the pier.

It was one of those places that youth go and hang out in groups.   Usually the minimum number of people we took was three, but I can think of a couple times it was almost a dozen of us.   Climbing from rock to rock to make it to the end of the pier.  Since most the time it was in the evening or close to it, we watched the sunset down.   Otherwise we just headed out and stared into the darkness that was the water of Lake Erie at night time.

Was it a fantastic experience, not in anything that I say that you must do.  It was a time period where the friends and the memories make it important.   Too many times the pier started off as a springboard for other activities.   Whether it was friends in high school or friends from my early twenties.   It was a gathering spot of sorts.  Eventually I’ll get around to heading back and taking some pictures – for now it has to exist solely in memories.

The above picture was from the VCMA’s performance of the Christmas tree arrival.  I don’t have a video of that performance, what I do have is a video of the VCMA Concert Band’s performance at Kingston of Vermilion which took place on Dec. 11. 2008.   Enjoy!

Picture from here

For all those Trekkies out there (or do you really prefer Trekkers?) Brent Spiner just joined Twitter today.  I looked at who he was following, and there we get Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton.  So now you can get your Trek on with Twitter.   Go forth and follow – and while you are there you can give a little follow to me also.   Please let me know if you find any other Star Trek performers on twitter and I’ll update this post as necesssary.

I look at my data on Flickr and I get overwhelmed.  I’m missing meta data, missing tags, missing proper titles.   Though when you are looking at organizing and maintaining  over 3000 images anything you can do to start to organize them can get a little overwhelming.

I’m assuming the number of pictures I’m going to upload to Flickr this year to my account is going to at least double.   That means if I do not get a handle it on it soon, I’m going to be looking at 6000 photos to edit by this time next year, and I think that is being selective.

How do the rest of you handle problems of this magnitude?

Every once in a while I actually do one of the stupid chain letter things – this one seemed right up my alley – so let’s look at the results.  Further discussion at the end.

SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease – own it
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean – own it
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest – own it
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club – own it
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story – own it
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total: 10

(x) The Princess Bride – own it
(x) Anchorman
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) The Dark Crystal -  own it
(x ) Saw
(x) Saw II
(x) White Noise
(x) Vanilla Sky – own it
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates -  own it
(x) Fletch
(x) Fletch Lives
Total so far: 22

(x) Scream -  own it
(x) Scream 2 – own it
(x) Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
(x) Scary Movie 2  - own it
(x) Scary Movie 3
(x) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
(x) American Wedding
(x) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 33

(x) Harry Potter 1 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 2 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 3 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Top Gun -  own it
(x) Can’t Hardly Wait
(x) The Wedding Singer
() Little Black Book
(x) Happy Gilmore -  own it
(x) Mr. Magorum’s Emporium
Total so far: 42

(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland -  own it
(x) The Dark Knight
(x) The Grinch -  own it
(x) Monster Squad
(X) The Gate -  own it
(x) White Men Can’t Jump
(x) The Butterfly Effect
(X) Bubba HoTep -  own it
(X) I am Legend
(x) Money Train
Total so far: 53

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) National Lampoons Vacation
(x) National Lampoons European Vacation
(x) National Lampoons Christmas Vacation -  own it
(x) Caddyshack
(x) Caddyshack 2
(x) The Hudsucker Proxy
(x) Fast Times at Ridegmont High
(x) Clueless -  own it
() 9 Months
(x) Death to Smoochy
(x) The Sting
Total so far: 64

(x) SpaceBalls
(x) The Terminal
(x) Robin Hood: Men in Tights -  own it
(x) Forget Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x) Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Final Destination
(x) Final Destination 2
(x) Final Destination 3
(x) Halloween
(x) Pulp Fiction -  own it
(x) Dirty Dancing -  own it
(x) Eurotrip
(x) Roadtrip
Total so far: 78

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
(x) Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay
(x) That Thing You Do
(x) The Jerk
(x) From Hell – own it
(x) Hellboy
() 2 Girls and a Guy
(x) Rear Window
(x) The Whole Nine Yards -  own it
(x) The Whole Ten Yards -  own it
Total so far: 87

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
(x) Liar Liar
(x) War Games -  own it
(x) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off -  own it
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
(x) Iron Man
(x) Gothika
(x) Howard The Duck-  own it
(x) Sixteen Candles
(x) Just One of The Guys
(x) Breakin’
() Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo
(x) Ski Party
(x) The Mask -  own it
(x) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 101

(x) Bad Boys
(x) Bad Boys 2
(x) Joy Ride
(x) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean’s Eleven
(x) Ocean’s Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
(x) Bourne Ultimatum
(x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I – own it
(x) Predator II
() Kicking and Screaming
(x) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
(x) Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory -  own it
Total so far: 116

(x) Independence Day -  own it
(x) Casino
(x) Resevior Dogs
(x) Back to School
(x) Christine
(x) ET
(x) Children of the Corn
(x) Summer Rental
(x) Batteries not included – own it
(x) Catch and Release
(x) Rush Hour -  own it
(x) Rush Hour 2 -  own it
Total so far: 128

(x) The Crow -  own it
(x) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(x) She’s All That
() Calendar Girls
(x) Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
(x) Smokey and The Bandit -  own it
(x) Smokey and The Bandit 2 -  own it
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump – own it
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator – own it
(x) The Terminator 2-  own it
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 141

(x) X-Men – own it
(x) X-2 -  own it
(x) X-Men: The Last Stand
(x) Spider-Man -  own it
(x) Spider-Man 2 – own it
(x) Tango and Cash
(x) Jeepers Creepers
(x) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday
(x) American Psycho -  own it
(x) Jumper
(x) Cruel Intentions
(x) Cruel Intentions 2
(x) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 159

(x) Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
(x) Old School
() The Notebook
(x) K-Pax
() Little Big League
() A Walk to Remember
(x) Tropic Thunder
(x) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 166

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring -  own it
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers -  own it
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King -  own it
(x) Raiders of the Lost Ark -  own it
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -  own it
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -  own it
Total so far: 172

(x) Baseketball
(x) Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
(x) House of 1000 Corpses
(x) The Devil’s Rejects
(x) Elf
(x) The Big Lebowski
(x) Mothman Prophecies
(x) American History X
() Threesome
Total so Far: 180

() The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
(x) It -  own it
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic -  own it
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail -  own it
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
(x) Hot Fuzz
Total so far: 188

() High Tension
(x) Club Dread
(x) Nick Fury : Agent of Shield
(x) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook -  own it
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
(x) 28 Days Later
(x) Orgazmo
(x) Super Troopers
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 197

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
(x) Mortal Kombat
() Wolf Creek
(x) Suburban Commando
() Mr Nanny
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
() The Last House on the Left
() Re-Animator
(x) Army of Darkness -  own it
Total so far: 202

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi -  own it
( x) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage -  own it
(x ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor -  own it
Total so far: 210

(x) Point Break -  own it
(x) Dogma
(x) Animatrix – -  own it
(x) Evil Dead -  own it
(x) Evil Dead 2 -  own it
(x) Team America: World Police
(x) Mallrats -  own it
(x) Silence of the Lambs -  own it
(x) Hannibal

Total 219

You see I already knew I had no life, so now you can see my movie choices – I think a bit of it is unfair since I’ve seen the original and remakes of a few movies on that list.  In that scenario should I count them twice.   I guess 219 out of 239 isn’t too bad, it’s also only the tip of the ice berg of what I’ve seen.   Heck tonight in the hotel room I’m in three movies have played so far while I’ve been catching up on blog articles.

]]> http://creeva.com/2009/01/13/stupid-facebook-chain-letter-ive-seen-a-bunch-of-movies-but-i-swear-i-have-a-life/feed/ 6 http://creeva.com/2009/01/13/days-inn-or-no-tell-motel-you-decide-what-my-stay-really-is/ http://creeva.com/2009/01/13/days-inn-or-no-tell-motel-you-decide-what-my-stay-really-is/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:43:17 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=4035

Tonight the weather was bad so instead of taking what would be an unsafe over three hour commute home I decided I was going to get a hotel room.   My wife had called and warned me before I was really aware of the weather so she was aware with no surprises.   I managed to get a room that in a clear day would take me less then eight minutes to get to the office.   Tonight it took me over twenty to get here.  The last three minutes was getting into the snow entrenched parking lot that was on a slight incline and had about 5 inches of unplowed snow – I spun the car sideways getting in.

When I was consulting I stayed in many hotels.  I also learned before you went anywhere in bad weather to get a reservation.   So at this hotel close to work I had reserved my room, it came to around forty dollars before tax.    Let’s have a tour through the room and see if it it’s worth it.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone so please excuse the quality.

This is my coffee table – seems someone didn’t like it very much.

Bathroom shot one – somewhat normal right?

Still somewhat normal – not great by any means though…

OMG – WTF IS THAT????   First here we have the MELTED hair dryer plug  then you have that round knob next to it.   Did you know it took me a good five minutes to get the light on in the bathroom because of that damn knob.   You see you have to turn it, and then the light is on a timer, when the timer runs out the light goes off.   Maybe this is a green initiative by Days Inn.

Another standard Bathroom shot.

Well I at least have tissues I can cry into.

I’m glad it wasn’t hot – I don’t really want to touch the air conditioning knob.

Mobile blogging station / Bed shot.

Another bed shot.

Such neat and orderly hangars they have around here.

Ah – I can iron my clothes with this conveniently placed ironing board.

On closer examination – maybe I don’t want to use this ironing board.

Look a TV, The Bucket List is playing – I don’t think this hotel was on their list of stops in the movie.   Also if you adjusted the location of the TV – the picture goes bad.  It’s not a wiring connection either – it’s just retarded.

My mother had that lamp – she got it over twenty years ago.

My heater that doesn’t fully heat the room

I call this area the west wing.

I think this coffee maker would make a lot of people cry – and those styrofoam cups are the only cups in the room.

My alarm clock, it would be my jelly bean station, but I don’t have any jelly beans.

Cross advertising – I’m not sure which name is getting dragged through the mud on this deal….

This is where the air conditioning would have come out with if it was below freezing outside.

Well at least I have a smoke detector, I’ll be safe for the night.  Something looks a little wrong though.

Yes this is the way I found it.  So if I die in a fire tonight – you all know who is to blame.

I’ve stayed at bad places, but this may be one of the worst.  It does look nice on the outside though.

BTW – I think I know what happened to the iron and why it’s gone.   There seems to be a melted carpet spot in just the shape of an iron on the floor – it didn’t quite come out though – pity.

Recently I started contributing to the International Music Score Library Project and I’ve ran into a small snag.   Currently I’ve only uploaded two pieces ( I did say I was going to contribute more to the public domain going forward) and I received the following message the day after I uploaded the pieces:

Dear Creeva,

IMSLP is located in Canada and therefore operates under Canadian copyright law. A very important difference between Canada’s law and that of the USA is that the term is determined by the death date of the composer or author of the work in question (term is life-plus-50 years). I was able to find out that George Hendricks Rosenkrans died in 1955 and is therefore public domain in Canada. Gus W. Bernard is a different matter.

I was not able to find anything on the date of Gus W. Bernard, so I have to estimate his approximate lifetime. Please be advised that should info surface that he died later than 1959, the item you posted may well have to be deleted. Also, please try to include complete information on composers when you add a new name. You can often find out things quickly by means of a simple Google search.

Thanks,

[NAME REDACTED BY CREEVA]

Now I wrote yesterday that just because something is online it isn’t in the public domain.    Let’s look at the other side of the coin just because something is in the public domain, it doesn’t mean it is in the public domain.   In my normal mode of thinking, I think in US copyright law.     When we are dealing with other countries in our global economy and global communications infrastructure we need to be aware of their laws as well when interacting with other services.

Now the project above could get in trouble if the work is copyrighted in Canada and they display it.   I however uploaded it from the US so I broke no US law since both works were in the public domain here.   Did I break a Canadian law though?  I don’t know.   This is one of the problems when dealing with the public domain.   The question over the Canadian law comes to light when you consider while the service is in Canada, I physically performed the actions legally from a US computer.   Very fuzzy and gray in many aspects when you look at the big picture.

So when contributing ot the public domain – be aware where the servers are physically located in the world, be aware of the copywrite law in that physical location.   Now if only we could get a US Mirror to work off of for that project……..

The above picture has nothing to do with this article.

A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with one of my family members about web site design and blogging.   He stated that he was going to be starting some sort of manga/anime fan site based on a certain character.  I stated that he should be a bit wary about the images he used that he may have to worry about copyright issues since the images were trademarked and copyrighted.   Keep in mind this was the same brother that wanted to setup a website for a girl so you couldn’t download the images (and I called him out on the futile nature of that).    Kind of ironic when he wants to control it, he thinks one way – but when he wants to use it he thinks another.

Another family member piped in that they thought if it was online it was public domain and free to use.   Now I corrected them, but so everyone else knows – just because something is published online doesn’t mean it’s free to use.   When I don’t use my own pictures I always use creative common licensed images and put an attribution link beneath the image (sometimes I do use public domain images and don’t attribute).   I even had an online scuffle with someone who licensed her work via creative commons and didn’t know what it meant.

I gave my family the two minute off the top of the head review of current copyright law and how creator’s rights worked under our borked legal system.   Essentially if you are in the US anything made 1923 or earlier is free game – anything after that is the life of the creator plus seventy years.   Unless the page it’s on states otherwise you have to assume the work is copywritten.   Then we get into fair use, which is a whole other ball of wax entirely that I’m not going to touch right now.

Image from here

I’m the crossposting whore – I write once and I have everything designed to publish everywhere (well at least when things aren’t broken like Ping.fm to Myspace blogs).   This however is not syncing, it’s distribution and publishing.     A true sync across all platforms would be amazing.

The example I would love is I make an edit to a blog post, then every place and profile that I’ve published that post on would update with no manual intervention.   Since I can’t do that, Creeva.com is considered my authorative location for all blog posts.  If I wanted to edit those other sites I would have to do each one manually.  Granted I’m sure without using syncing it saves on bandwidth.

Things that I can sync?   Well my contacts and calendars with Plaxo, but that kind of is just the tip of the iceberg.   My biggest issue write now is syncing Flickr photos to Facebook.  I am aware of Flickurbook, but this still uses your local machine – there is no reason this can’t be done “in the cloud”.    It’s all soooo sloooooow.   Seriously at the speed it moves I could just reupload all the pictures to Facebook faster then this thing goes.  It’s free, it’s the developers fault, it’s great what he did; but it’s not the solution I’m looking for.

Finally using my distribution chain I chase all over the web to answer comments.  I don’t mind doing that.   However, wouldn’t it be better if across all platforms and services these comments were kept in sync?   Then I could use the spam filters I wanted to from a central location.  I could reply to comments from a central location.

I’m just pipedreaming again…..

Picture from here

I could pick on a few things actually, once again I didn’t vote for the guy, but I don’t absolutely detest him.   I’m in wait and see mode.  Ars Technica is reporting about Obama’s plead to push back the transition to digital TV.   If we look at the digital TV migration timeline, we can see the originally scheduled date was Dec. 31 2006.   Because of multiple issues it was pushed back and brings us to this upcoming Feb. 17th as the transition time.

We can argue that the government hasn’t done enough to inform the public or make it easy for the public, but I would argue otherwise.   I was well aware of this migration when it was first discussed over 10 years ago.   All in all the government has pushed out this transition longer then necessary.   You can say that’s it’s a good cautious thing they are doing by waiting and delaying, but every delay costs the tax payers more money.

If we truly want to get through this we need to pull the bandage off as quickly as possible.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

Picture from here

I really want to contribute to the public domain this year.   A short while back I wrote about how I thought the general public and the Internet was failing at actively giving back to the public domain.   To try to counteract this I’m going to make sure that I give something back.  I’m sure that I have at least a few books that can be scanned to submit to Project Gutenberg.   I would like to work on a sheet music archive.   I will still be releasing most of my images and video to the creative commons, so I’ll be submitting free to use and share work, I’ll just maintain control over it enough to make sure no one else is making money off my work, unless of course it’s me.

So what are you going to do this year to help out the public domain?

Picture from here

A couple news sources are reporting today (here, here, and here) that the LA Times is suspending their program of using a wiki for editorials.   Now in a controlled environment like Wikipedia where they have the volunteers to handle un-authorized edits, wiki’s can be a great thing.   In the hands of exposing your edits to the audience of a major newspaper – I wouldn’t have gone that route.

What they were finding is that people would make their own slant on the editorials – such as changing the word abortion ot the word murder.  They also were inundated with spam and porn ads.   Sounds like they didn’t have the best idea on the onset of setting up a wiki or properly staffing what would be a high profile use of the technology.   This is technology that is meant to be changed and updated.   That ability alone has made some people suspect of Wikipedia.   Newspapers are dying out in America – but this example shows why such high profile companies can not hand the keys to the car to just everyone asking.   Citizen media has it’s place, but old media shouldn’t be attempting to tag it on without understanding hte consequences or the work involved in maintaining it.

I wonder if anyone got fired?