Farewell to Great Lakes

I would like to acknowledge all the people I have met over my 11 years at Great Lakes.   It has been a pleasure knowing you all.

Waiting with Evander

When returning from a work rotation one day, I spotted who appeared to be Evander Holyfield.  He was sitting a few rows up from me and he had disappeared by the time I made it off of the airplane.  As chance would have it, he was waiting in the airport lobby for the same flight I was taking.  I was given an conversation opportunity when he asked me to keep an eye on his things for a minute.  Once he returned, and in between requests for signatures and photos, I had a conversation with “The Real Deal”.

During our conversation, I feel that I learned a small amount about what makes Evander the person that he is.  He informed me that he was in town to train for his upcoming fight.  When  I asked him why he traveled to another town to train, I received a little taste of what it is like to be a celebrity athlete.  He told me that he has to get away from home to focus on his training.  When he is at home, he is constantly harassed by the business side of his profession.  He feels that the people around him do not understand the importance of his physical training.  He said that they tell him that he does not need to focus on training so much because he is a natural athlete.  Mr. Holyfield feels that they cannot comprehend that the reason he has excelled in is field is the hard work he has put into his training.  He thinks that they are too busy trying to figure out how to get their pound of flesh from him to care about nurturing his talent.

The conversation then moved to his experience of coming from a poor community and achieving the level of notoriety that he has.  I got the impression that his mother played an important role in the development of Evander’s work ethic and the nurturing of his natural physical ability.  In high school, he played all sports, but he feels that he only excelled at football.  However, he had no passion for football.  He completed the season but did not return the next year so that he could focus his energy and passion on boxing.  His mother always supported him and told him that she did not expect him to play football if he did not want to.

Evander pointed out to me that when he was first getting noticed for his boxing ability, everyone was very supportive.  He had nothing, so no one tried to to get anything from him.  The people that he dealt with were simply admirers of his boxing.  Once he started making money, it was difficult for him to know what to do with it.  He did not receive any financial training from his parents as they never had enough money to worry about.  He quickly realized that he did not have the skills to manage the amount of income he was generating.  He also knew that he would have a problem finding people that he could trust to not take advantage of him.  Evander has been taken advantage of by lawyers and financial advisers in his past and was disappointed by the lack of legal recourse he found when seeking justice.  He said that he had questioned Senator John McCain about this when visiting the White House one day.  He made the argument to Mr. McCain that a lawyer’s ability with words and the laws of the land were the same as his own abilities with his fists.  Both he and the lawyer spend their lives developing there skills to achieve an advantage over others.  The difference, in Evander’s experiences, is that if one man hits another with his fists, he will be legally prosecuted whereas if a man uses his knowledge of the law to exploit another man, there is little chance of recourse.  When posed this question, McCain replied that the problem was that the people that are knowledgeable about law are the ones that write the laws by which they could be prosecuted.

Evander is somewhat worried that the wealth that he has provided for his family has effected the work ethic of his children.  He thinks that they will not have the same problems of being taken advantage of financially that he had, however, he can see that they do not have the same drive to follow their passion like he did.  I got the feeling that he thinks that wealth can cause the children of wealthy parents to lack focus when making choices about their careers.  He feels that they are prone to just go through the motions of school, choosing their degree by the “path of least resistance” method instead of following their passion.

At this point, the flight started boarding so, after some tool gave him a business card, I told him that it was a pleasure to meet him and wished him a good Thanksgiving.  The impression I got from our short conversation is that Mr. Holyfield is an athlete with the desire to be the best in his field.  The money, notoriety and wealth come from a combination natural ability, strong work ethic, focus, passion, and luck.

On a side note, you can still see where Tyson bit his ear off.

Evander on Wikipedia

iPhone Music Center

Just when I thought all of the developers for the hacked iPhones had jumped ship to start working on apps for the legitimate iPhone 2.0s, I find the iPhone Music Center in the receient apps section. Personally, this is one of the apps that I have been waiting for. It is a storefront for the Amazon MP3 online store. Navigation is very intuitive if you have used the iTunes store on your iPhone. You can search be album, artist, and song. You can even hear a preview of any song that is available and all of the pricing is the same as you would find on the Amazon website.

Now for the bad news. I was never able to sucessfully download a song. I fear that this may have to do with still running firmware 1.1.1. When I checked the software website, the only supported firmwares listed were 1.1.2, 1.1.3, and 1.1.4. This has caused me to think about my future choices for my phone. I was planning on upgrading to the 2.0 firmware when I get back to my MacBook Pro, but now I am thinking about taking the shorter step up to 1.1.4 now. I have to decide if the new App Store is more important than the iPhone Music Center. I will update you when I make my choice.

Music store in use:

Low-tech iPhone/iPod Touch Airline Viewing Stand

On my last flight I was watching a video on my iPhone. After a while I grew weary of holding it with my hand to watch my show. As necessity is the mother of invention, I began looking around for a solution. I found my answer in the much overlooked vomit bag found snuggling with my in-flight magazines. After 4 folds, my problem was solved. I have attached pictures in lieu of a lengthy description:

The Left-handed Mouse Technique

My friends laugh at me, my coworkers pity me, my family just will not discuss it with me, but I will defend the left-handed mouse technique ’till the day I die. Sure…when a mouse looked like the ones in this picture, it was alright to use your right hand. No one had figured out how a mouse was going to be used and most people were right handed, so it naturally followed that the right hand was used. I guess it is more correct to say that people used their dominant hand but less than 10% of the population is left handed. Due to the low percentage of lefties and the fact that they are probably already using the correct (left) hand, they will not be discussed here. For the other 90%+ people who use the incorrect (right) hand, WAKE UP! The only reason to use your right hand for your mouse from this point on is sheer laziness.

Ergonomics–

The ergonomics are better with the mouse on the left side of the keyboard. Take a look at the diagram below:

Left Handed Mouse Layout

As you can see from the layout, when the mouse is on the left side, it will be much closer to the center of your body. It will also be directly in front of your shoulder so that you can reach straight out to grab it. On the right side of the keyboard you have to reach way out past the number pad to use it. This moves your arm off center and increases stress on your shoulder.

Beyond the ergonomic aspects of using your mouse with your left hand, there are a few practical advantages as well.

Data Entry–

If you do data entry or if you work with spreadsheets often, you are able to input data with the number pad while navigating the sheets and clicking what ever buttons you need to simultaneously. No need to switch back and forth after entering data in each cell.

Multi-tasking–

Using your left hand to mouse with frees your right hand to type with, take notes with, or look through reference material with.

Here is a picture of my work station:

Dave's Computer Work Station

Notice symmetry and the notepad and writing utensils next to the number pad.

Some people may feel that it is to complicated to try to mouse with your left hand. This does not make any sense though. Think about a guitarist or pianist. both hands are used equally to accomplish complex movements. You type as well with your left hand as you do with your right hand, right? It will take about a week to get accustom to it, but after that you will never know the difference. I can switch seamlessly between using ether hand to mouse with at this point.

Some of you may argue that if you know the keyboard shortcuts you would not have to use your mouse at all while using whatever software you are using. True, but in that case you do not need a mouse at all so it does not matter anyway.

All that I am asking is that you give it a try for a week and make your judgment then.

Guilty Pleasure: Miami Vice

I have been watching Miami Vice on-line lately through my Netflix account. I had forgotten how bad the acting was but I still love it. As I was watching, I was struck with the realization of what a good representation of pre-internet culture this show is. The show aired from 1984 to 1989. I think that I started using GOPHER in 1992 and Netscape in 1994, so this show takes place well before regular citizens were introduced to the Internet. For that matter, few people even had a computer in their home when this show first aired. The US census showed that only 8.2% of homes contained a personal computer in 1984 compared to current estimates of over 90%. This is made apparent when looking at the desks in the police office. Not a single computer! No one is looking up anything on a fingerprint database or any of the other conveniences we have all grown accustomed to seeing on CSI. This applies to any show from the 80’s of course. The next time you are watching a rerun of some 80’s sitcom, take a little time to think about the technological differences that have grown up around you since that show first aired and what life was like just on the cusp of the new age of computers and the Internet.

No more Netflix profiles

How annoying! This was a great feature. I cannot imagine what financial gain this could provide the company. Perhaps just less database support will be needed. This sucks for me because now my wife will be able to shift that cool subtitled Akira Kurosawa flick that I added down the list and replace it with who knows what. I don’t think I am alone either. At least Greg Albrecht agrees with me as well.

[UPDATE]

After the loud outcry of their subscribers, Netflix has ceased their plans to discontinue the profiles program.

Bandwidth Throttling and Prioritization

You may have noticed mentions of bandwidth throttling and prioritization in the news lately. That is because these two things could profoundly effect your internet experience in the future. Bandwidth throttling has already been put in place by some ISPs to try to curb the download of large files using Bittorrent clients. Granted, most of this traffic consists of pirated material, but it is also used for legitimate distribution. I have personally downloaded OpenOffice.org ISOs via Bittorrent and Revision 3 uses Bittorrent to distribute their shows. If this is allowed to happen, little companies that do not have the funding to pay for hosting to distribute there files will perish. As discussed in the video I posted earlier, this is what happened with printing and radio. Throttling could also be used to influence your internet service choices in the future. For example, Comcast offers an internet phone service for $40 a month compared to Vonage’s $25 a month or Skype’s unlimited plan that works out to $5.50 a month. Comcast’s plan is already way more expensive than the competitors. I wonder if their rate would stay at $40 a month if they were allowed to prohibit all other VOIP companies from using their network. These issues can be applied to any company that conducts it’s business over the internet.

The ISPs are also are also considering going back to an a’la carte plan where those that use more pay more. This is basically how the internet started. All of the early ISP’s built their business plan up around this and all was good for a while. Then AOL introduced and all-you-can-eat plan and everyone had to follow their lead. If they do decide to charge per byte again, I am sure the market will demand that someone offer an unlimited plan. Personally, I would rather have a lower bandwidth (~700kbs) unlimited plan than have to pay for every byte over the fastest lines. We should not complain too much though. There are many countries that have it worse than us. I think that in New Zealand you are only allowed 500MB of traffic a month before you get hit with overages. I burn through that in a regular day.

~~Related Links~~

• Charging by the Byte
• Google ISP Throttling Detector
• Another Perspective

Homemade UAVs

This is the kind of shit I should be doing instead of watching the fucking idiot box:

• Homemade Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

An Interesting Way to Make Music