Postcards From Myself

Americans do not take vacations. That is what I was told last night by ABC News as I sat watching TV on the couch with my family. What they also said was that when we do take our vacations we take shorter ones and we tend to do work, such as check email, while we are away. With that all members of my family turned and looked at me. Of course I let out the expected, “What?!” But they were right. That is me. They were also right when they told me that perhaps I wouldn’t need blood pressure medication and such if I would take more time off and learn to relax.

Interestingly enough I have a consultant from Canada at my work right now. He was telling me about this thing called “Family Day“. Basically it sounds like the powers-that-be in Canada came to the same conclusion so they established this holiday called Family Day so that people would be forced to spend some time with their family. Great idea, but isn’t it a shame that the government has to mandate it? Do we, and I am including you people up in Vancouver and Alberta here, do we really prefer our work to our families?

On that note I am proud to say that I did take last Friday off and spend it with my wife. You can see her with a puppy in the picture. And I spent the rest of the weekend in various activities with my kids and other members of the family. What I am not proud to say is that I also spent a large amount of that time on the phone with my office or using my cell phone to email. In some ways the ability to stay in touch has freed me from the office, but in many other ways it has just tethered me back to it.

What I would ask you is this, are you sacrificing your life and your time with family and friends for work? And when you do take time with them, are you lessening the quality? Are you at your kid’s game, but on the cell phone the entire time? Are you on vacation, but sneaking off to check your email on your phone.  If you can commit like that to your work, why can’t you commit like that to your family and yourself?

Have you ever seen a flying dock dog? Take a look at the picture and you will. These are dogs of all types, all sizes, and all ages that are trained (and I use that term lightly) to run down a dock and then sail into the air. They land in the water anywhere from five feet to about twenty-one feet away in a huge splash.

Now for some explanation. The South Eastern Wildlife Exposition is in town here in Charleston this weekend, and I played hooky on Friday to attend. We also took the kids down today, and I may go back down for a while tomorrow. The Expo is an annual event that has been going on 26 years. It is a huge get together of artists, hunters, conservation groups, fisherman, vendors, and just about every one else involved with wildlife. While there is a large emphasis on hunting and fishing, there is also a huge push in conservation and education. This year Jack Hannah did two different free presentations. In past years there have been other guest presenters such as Jeff Corwin and Mutual of Omaha’s Jim Fowler.

The part that my family and I enjoy the most is the dogs. Not only are there dogs doing various things such as retriever exhibitions and the above mentioned “dock dogs”, but everyone who can brings there dogs and puppies out to walk in the parks and visit the various venues. I saw spaniels, poodles, basset hounds, retrievers, mastiffs, dachshunds, German shepherds, hounds, and many more. From five pounds to a hundred and five pounds, they were all there.

But the most fun this year was had around the dock dog pool. These dogs, even the ones who more fell in the water than dove, just really seemed to be having a good time. This is a competition, but a very friendly and light hearted one. And the crowds loved it. I am really not sure who were grinning more, the dogs or the children watching them. And if the response from everyone gathered round was any indication, there will be at least a few more dogs in the water next year. I can’t wait.

The Pentagon is planning on shooting down one of our own satellites. Does this make anybody else nervous? According to Reuters, “President George W. Bush opted for a plan to have the Navy shoot the 5,000-pound minivan-sized satellite with a modified tactical missile, after security advisers suggested its reentry could lead to a loss of life.”

OK, all of that is fine and well, but what makes me nervous is the next statement. Note, the emphasis on a certain word is mine. “Military officials hope to strike the satellite just before it reaches the atmosphere and drive it into ocean waters.” That doesn’t sounds like the voice of confidence to me.

They “hope” to strike the satellite. Well what happens if they miss? Sure they can have a second shot, but where is the first shot going? Does it just continue to journey on into outer space to finally hit some poor unsuspecting planet or inter-space traveler? Isn’t that like shooting your guns in the air without reasoning out where the bullets will fall? And if it does hit someone else out there, might that not piss them off? Are we now declaring war on unknown species out in the galaxy?

OK, so it doesn’t go to outer space, it falls back down. Great, now we have both a dying satellite and a rogue missile to deal with. Sounds just great. How much you want to make a bet that the wayward missile is set to fall back to earth somewhere harmless - like the Democratic convention or a Hillary Clinton rally? OK, maybe not. I really am not a conspiracy theory guy. It will probably just hit a school or nursery. Or Darfur. Bush would love that to be off of his doorstep.

Where is Will Smith or Bruce Willis when you need them? I bet one of those guys could go up in a fighter jet and shoot this thing down. This has all the makings of next seasons best reality show. Kind of a combination of the classic Battleship game and ballistic lawn darts.

How come I didn’t know about this extremely cool website before? I am talking about Last.fm. Last.fm is an social music platform. Using a music recommendation system known as “Audioscrobbler“, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (”scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favorites.

This thing is seriously cool. Not only do I get to stream music that I really like but have never heard of, but I also get to find out about new music by finding out about the preferences of friends or people I admire. For instance, you can list to author Neil Gaiman’s station here. Or mine, that I am still building, here.

Very cool stuff especially since it can look at the history of what you played in iTunes or on your iPod. Also, I have been running it and monitoring the behavior. It really doesn’t seem to take a huge amount of bandwidth in streaming mode, so it really doesn’t slow everything else down when it runs. Give it a try and let me know what you think. I have no vested interest, and no affiliate link, I would just like to know your opinion!

Since I first started using Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac and wrote about it, I have noticed two things. First, one or more of the programs locks up and crashes at least once a day. That means Excel, Word, or Entourage goes toes up and dies. This doesn’t happen to me with Office 2004. I should note here that I am using Office 2008 on a Mac Book with Leopard. At home, I am still using Office 2004 on a G4 iBook with Tiger. But back to the lock-ups. I cannot find any correlation between the occurrences. I have had them when I am just typing along, but also when I go to insert an attachment or save a document. Truly random.

The second thing I have discovered, and this is really evident because I switch back and forth, there is nothing in the new version that I miss when using the older version. The single thing that is really missing is the better group calendaring in the new Entourage, but since I don’t use that at home it means nothing. At the office, being able to check other people’s Exchange based calendars has been great. It is also nice to be able to directly open and save to the new Office format, but I think I have done that exactly once in the past few weeks. Not something worth paying for a new upgrade for. And certainly not something worth putting up with the program crashes for. And I have actually need the Excel macros that now won’t run twice. So feature deletion beats feature addition 2-1.

So, all-in-all after almost a month’s use I would say that unless you need that Entourage calendaring, then the new upgrade is more of a “proceed cautiously” than a “must have.” In fact, the thing I am most excited about is the supposed new version of OpenOffice.org that will be native Mac Aqua application instead of having to run through the X11 system. When and if that hits the wires, I may just switch entirely.