Scribblings and Geekery

I don’t care how good you are at programming, finding bugs, whatever. If you’re rude, or if you speak poorly to people who don’t understand your... quirks... you will wind up being shunted to the side. No one wants to work with someone who makes them feel beat down all the time, or someone who they simply can’t understand, or someone whose reaction to every issue is to start wailing about the end of the world.

Via SvN

This is such a great concept to keep at the front of one's mind. Everyone, from your customers to your co-workers, family and friends, deserve your niceness. Their concerns and questions are real. Your attitude can go a long way toward keeping the peace! Her follow-up post defining What Really Is Nice? also hits home for me.

Hat tip to @brainopera.

It's been a while since I had baffles to clear, but nonetheless:

• Software For A New Laptop (categories: geek life, how-to, software notes, windows)
• Choosing Between Good and Good (categories: management)
• Finding Notebook Zen (categories: geek life, geek habits)¹

I completely forgot how easy it is to breeze through non-fiction books. There are no characters. No intertwining plot-lines. Just facts and opinions (read: numbers and bs). Were I keeping track, this book's 4-5 hours sure offsets the dozens of hours I spent reading The Confusion over the past four months.

I set my expectations a bit high for this book, for some reason. The jacket text leads off with a flu epidemic example, and so I thought that there would be a decent amount of text devoted to pandemics (e.g. plague, influenza, etc.). Instead, a fleeting reference to the flu gave way to a syphilis outbreak in Baltimore. Not quite as interesting, but poorly-conceived expectations will do that to you. The book reminded me of Psychology 101 and my courses in human factors research. There wasn't a whole lot of new, substantive information. However, the examples and case studies were mostly new to me, so they did their jobs. Gladwell presents Three Rules of Epidemics:

1. The Law of the Few
2. The Stickiness Factor
3. The Power of Context

Each of these has a varying degree of no-brainer-ness to it. The first rule has to do with the type of person carrying information. Gladwell uses the example of why Paul Revere's midnight ride was successful in contrast to the same ride through different Boston suburbs by William Dawes, which had almost no success. The second is about what hooks people, and though it wasn't the author's point, my conclusion is that "someone's lucky guess" is what defines success by this factor. The final rule is basically the Fundamental Attribution Error in practice.

It's one of the examples from the last rule, however, that made me think the most and therefore kept me from being completely negative in my assessment of the book. Gladwell points to a seminary experiment conducted by two Princeton University researchers. The experiment has a simple premise: Put seminarians in the position of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and see how they'll act based on their background and whether or not they were in a hurry. The conclusions support the FAE in that, regardless of background (and even if the seminarians were recently studying the parable of the Good Samaritan), the factor which determined how helpful they'd be to someone in distress was how late they felt.

This kills me. I mean, I understand why it happens that way. Humans are humans and no matter how hard we try to imitate Christ, we're going to behave like humans a good majority of the time no matter how hard we try to be better than our nature. It still bothers me a little. I'd like to think that in that situation, I would be an exception and not the hypothesis-proving rule, but the truth is that I know I react poorly to time-pressure also. I would probably get a 2 or 3 on their helpfulness scale, thinking that my academic success was super important and that I could call 911 or tell someone else that the person needed help. I could rationalizing passing the buck. It's humbling.

Anyway, I also have a sense of humor about it: The only possible conclusion to this post is this VeggieTales clip from Are You My Neighbor, from their take on the Parable of the Good Samaritan because it's just that silly.

Conservation Win « FAIL Blog

Last November, as an anniversary gift to ourselves, my wife and I got matching phones: the Samsung SCH-i760. We went whole-hog with unlimited bandwidth and SMS, synchronized email accounts, etc. I fully integrated mine with my company's exchange server, notifying me of meetings and tasks, and pushing my email. It was excellent. I could check email anywhere, use Google Maps for directions, tweet, etc. It was great.

Then the mysterious, aging Windows installation syndrome crept in. The phone would randomly freeze, crash or restart, sometimes in the middle of a call. When composing a text message, the phone would jump into the dialing application and start dialing numbers. I would go from three bars' of battery life to none in a few minutes. As an internet device, it performed fairly well. As a phone, it was flat out annoying. I installed the Windows Mobile 6.1 update to see if it would resolve any of the quirkiness to no avail. Then, after taking a hard look at our budget, we decided to nix the internet service. This saved about $100 a month, but left us with two phones we otherwise hate.

At the same time, we switched to a family plan to save a bit more money, but this had the undesired effect of canceling my wife's NE2 subscription (since her line effectively costs $10 per month, and the minimum is $50). Verizon's NE2 plan isn't really every two years, it's every twenty months, meaning I can get $100 towards a new phone next month.

Yay! But what to do? I want to go simple, but I also want a few key features:

• Bluetooth Support – I'm in the market for a good headset as well, and like to sync stuff with my computers.
• A camera that doesn't suck – 2MP would be nice, but 1.3 is sufficient.
• microSD port – I have a 2GB card, I might as well use it!

Disclaimer: I would love an iPhone. I covet every single one I see. I can't, however, rationalize the expense of $400 up front for two phones and $150+ each month for service. It's not economically sound, and I don't need one. I also don't want to leave Verizon. Their service is more than adequate and so far, from a customer service perspective, I've been fairly happy. Our entire extended family is on the VZW network, and I have FIOS at home which puts all of my communication utilities on one bill.

Sadly, I don't love any of their phones, but if I'm not going to jump ship I'll have to suck it up. Thus, I'm down to five from the current lineup:

1. Motorola Rapture – $30 (3.5/5): Pros: Cost!, Size, Looks Pretty, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: It's made by Motorola, so the software sucks and I already have bad software.
2. Samsung Trance – $70 (4/5): Pros: Cost to some extent, Size!, killer speakerphone; Cons: Slider (never had one before, so maybe it doesn't matter), You have to open the slide to use the camera, camera is only 1.3MP, Reviews say that the touch screen is kinda wonky
3. LG Chocolate 3 – $70 (3.5/5): Pros: Cost to some extent, built-in FM Transmitter for music, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: Size, Kinda ugly
4. Nokia 7205 – $80 or $130? (3.5/5): Pros: It's super pretty, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: Cost, semi-odd button layout, reviews indicate poor T9 support/battery life
5. LG Dare – $130 (4/5): Pros: Pretty, 3.0MP Camera, Outstanding battery life, Tons of positive reviews; Cons: No keys!, Cost!!

To make a final decision, I'm going to need to play with a few of these hands-on at either Best Buy or a Verizon store. I'm leaning toward the Trance, mostly because of the size and my non-smartphone experiences with Samsung have all been stellar. I had an LG a few phones ago and it was terrible, so that doesn't bode well for the Chocolate. (I'm really only considering it for the FM transmitter.) The Dare, while shiny, is just too costly and I'd be making the same mistake that I did with my current phone: buying features I don't really need. Some field experience is going to make the final decision.

I started reading Quicksilver, the first volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, in 2005. I put it down after about 30 or 40 pages — it was too dense for me to get into quickly. I had read so many others of his books and loved them that it was more than a little disheartening that I would encounter this novel by my favorite author that was undesirable to continue reading. Every so often, I’d pick it back up and chug along, ending up around the 100-page mark. I took it on every camping trip and vacation, always putting in some modicum of effort to move forward, trying to remember the important details from my previous attempts.

This set of instructions exists more or less on more than one site, usually completed by a few follow-up comments. For my own sanity and future reference, these are the 100% reproducible set of installation instructions, which prevent a nasty BSOD when trying to use the Cisco VPN Client:

1. If you tried previously to install the Cisco VPN client, uninstall it and reboot.
2. Run the Citrix Deterministic Networks Update (DNEUpdate) that is appropriate for your architecture.
3. Reboot.
4. Take Ownership of and then delete c:\Windows\System32\drivers\ndis.sys
5. Take Ownership of and then delete c:\Windows\System32\drivers\en-us\ndis.sys.mui
6. Install the VPN Client. I used version 5.0.05.0290, but I have heard that 5.0.04.0300 works as well.
7. Reboot. Allow Windows to repair itself. This takes about 30 seconds.
8. Your PC will complete a final reboot itself.

This worked like a charm for me and, from what the rest of the interwebs are saying, works for most everyone else.

Update: As noted in the comments below, this only works for 32-bit installations of Windows 7.

• farkmain: Swine flu death toll: 150. Regular flu death toll: 13,000. But don't let that stop the fearmongering panic http://tinyurl.com/c8z42f View Tweet
• seany85: They say you can't get #swineflu from eating pork, but I just heard a sneeze from the fridge, and there's mucus on my bacons. =/ View Tweet
• colinbendell: Israel minister wants #swineflu renamed MexicanFlu to be religiously sensitive. Mexico says: too busy with ppl sensitive to dying. View Tweet
• iJeffry: dumb, dumb, dumb RT @BreakingNews: BULLETIN -- EGYPT ORDERS TO SLAUGHTER ALL PIGS IN THE COUNTRY. #swineflu View Tweet

I've been unsure as to the right response to the Swine Flu "epidemic" that has recently caught the world by storm.

Ok, really only twitter. And France. Other than that, it's just been mildly irrational fear and big red letters at drudgereport, so then I guess I've found the right response: skepticism.

"Seasonal flu each year causes tens of thousands of deaths in this country -- on average, about 36,000 deaths," Besser said. "And so this flu virus in the United States, as we're looking at it, is not acting very differently from what we saw during the flu season."

This really brings me back. Remember when there were cases of SARS in Canada, and everyone in the bordering states thought they were going to die because the jet stream was going to blow SARS southward and then there would be pestilence and famine and death and...

Yeah, it didn't happen. Just like with the swine flu on that AirTran flight from Cancun which actually turned out to be a case of Tequila. With SARS, the "pandemic" affected about 8,000 people worldwide in 2003, and of that ~8,000, only 27 were in the U.S. None of them died.

Look, it's the flu. It's a fairly nasty variety of the flu, to be sure, but it's still the flu. Stay hydrated, get lots of rest and wash your hands often. Kids are more susceptible to complications from illnesses like this, so keep your kids hydrated and wash their hands. It's right to be safety-conscious, but it's not right to be irrational. That Hispanic guy you work with is not going to give you the Swine flu so stop being a moron.

Ok, he might, but so might any other co-worker, and still, you're as likely to get the regular flu, so just wash your hands, mkay?

I can HIT the rattle with my HAND! Whoopee!
10:15 a.m. from bouncy chair

I have never been so bored in my life.
10:16 a.m. from bouncy chair

I don't want to take a nap! I don't want to take a nap! I don't want to take a nap! I don't wa - asdl;jeklr aeriouaiew
11:12 a.m. from crib

@Mommy AWAKE!
12:03 p.m. from crib

Diaper change. Fresh air feels good. Clean feels good. Why is Mommy making that face?
12:17 p.m. from changing table

This might be the funniest thing I've ever read on boston.com, period.