Life of Dave

new tech and blogging

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 12:12:03 GMT

It's not me, it's the evolution of technology:

In 2006, 28% of teens wrote on blogs and 76% regularly commented on their friends' blogs. Within three years, those numbers had dropped precipitously: In 2009, only 14% of teens were writing blogs and only 52% were regularly commenting.

And yes, I too was embarrassed by the title of the article. BTW - for this analogy to work, I have to count myself as a teen. Which in some ways I do - my work / hobby of keeping as close to the cutting edge as possible means I'm often aware of new trends before 'adults' (and one presumes that the article associates 'adults' with digital immigrants). And in some cases, teens. But against two-year-olds, I don't stand a chance!

RAID

Sat, 6 Feb 2010 16:53:49 GMT

I spent pretty much the whole day today fiddling with a new home storage server I picked up. The idea was to have a backup of my new 2TB drive (or rather, have 2TB of storage available so I could make a backup). That did not succeed - it seems I know less about high level storage than I thought. But I had fun doing it, at least the first six hours or so, which hopefully counts for something!

winter storm

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:48:35 GMT

We had a giant winter storm here this weekend - Thursday night it started raining, and temps dropped below freezing, and then it snowed all evening on Friday. We ended up with about a half inch of ice and two inches of snow. Work was closed on Friday, for both Sasha and me, and the grocery stores even closed on Friday night, leading to a wild run around town looking for drink mixers (given that everyone was off work, many social events occurred instead). By Saturday things had cleared up to some degree, though the drivers around here were still going mighty slowly. Over the weekend we mostly stayed in the house, with the exclusion of a couple runs to the store, once for little items, once for artwork and curtains (we decided to pretty up the music room, making it a bit more livable). Lisa and her David (to keep the confusion to a minimum, we usually identify to whom the David belongs) came over for dinner this evening, which helped to round out a pleasantly social weekend spent mostly indoors.

weekend of local fun

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:41:57 GMT

Lots of random times out and about - dinner with a friend and her (recently returned from deployment) husband, a charity concert at the local bar where friends (and random people I'd never seen before) rocked the house, a tasty alcohol-laden brunch followed by, of all things, furniture repair. It looks like the table we bought with the intention of having big dinner parties may someday (soon!) be able to host big dinner parties. All I need to do is a little carpentry. Which I am feeling more and more comfortable with every day. Crazy stuff!

Long Weekend!

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:31:51 GMT

Had a crazy 3-day weekend last weekend, including a night out to the Oxford American party in Little Rock, which was some of the best live music I've seen in quite a while. The next day we headed down to Hot Springs for some honest-to-goodness horse racing at Oaklawn. The betting was fast and furious (and in our case, quite small, as were the winnings). Now it's back-to-work week for Sasha, and busy as all get-out for me. I'm still trying to get the local pedestrian's association off the ground in a meaningful way, and we have our first meeting of the new year this week. It's also getting towards time to sign up for Spring language classes, or to decide whether I'm going to. Overall just busy!

My Google phone adventure

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:47:28 GMT

I have spent the last few days fighting with my cell phone. I ran right out after the Nexus One (the Google phone) was announced and bought one. It arrived Monday, courtesy of T-Mobile, who in exchange for a two-year contract subsidized the incredibly expensive phone. By Tuesday morning I knew it wasn't going to work - I had no internet anywhere, and most of the time wasn't even able to connect to T-Mobile's phone network. So I decided to return the phone. But as I had gotten my name engraved on it, they wouldn't take it back. And there was the well-publicized three company cross finger pointing. Then, suddenly, a guy at T-Mobile simply ended my contract. Boom! Ten minutes later my number had been disconnected. Which wasn't really how I had hoped things would turn out, but would do (amusingly, another Google service, Google Voice, makes it OK that I lost my phone number). Now I'm waiting for any of the other shoes to drop. Like a bill from (somebody) for the phone that they won't take back. Which I'm frankly not really willing to do - selling me a non-working, non-returnable phone with a $350 surprise penalty is not acceptable. In the meantime, I bought a cheap pay-as-you-go sim card so I would have some phone service. In under five minutes it spent ten percent of the initial balance I had put on the phone, doing whatever internetty things smart phones do when you aren't looking. I have since managed to turn that part off, so the card should last longer than an hour....

2010 is cold!

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 23:14:45 GMT

Back from my New Year's trip home to Michigan. Drove through a blizzard going and coming, along with flights on United, the airline that not only breaks guitars, it also randomly decides to take your gate checked bags and stuff them in with all the actually checked bags, then understaff the luggage people so you have to wait a half hour or more for your frickin' carry on. But I'm not bitter.

We seem to have brought serious winter weather with us, as Arkansas is in the grip of a winter storm the likes of which have never been seen before. Well, lately, anyway. Around here. I'm holding out for a snow day. If we only have an inclement weather day, where we can go in two hours late (if need be), I'll miss out as I'm scheduled to have a tooth put in tomorrow - a legacy of the Christmas trip.

Holidays Part One

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:55:22 GMT

Christmas came and went, and so Sasha and I headed up to upstate New York to see her family. The first day I was there I managed to break a tooth, so the trip was somewhat marred, as I would usually be intent on the food and drink, but eating, at least, required a bit too much concentration. Hopefully this will all be fixed tomorrow.

Outside of that, it was a fun trip. We went sledding, something I've not done in years, and I don't know why, although, to be fair, Sasha's parents have the best sledding hill I've ever encountered, so that may have some influence on how much fun was had.

Now I'm playing bachelor for a few days, and I have a rather extensive list of things to do, including fixing various and sundry items about the house (our food disposal unit, for example, died) and, of course, fixing various and sundry items about me (the tooth). And there's the squirrels, who have returned with a vengeance. Argh!

education

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:27:57 GMT

OK - so now schools in the US will be evaluated on how many kids they send to college and how well they do. And at the same time we have a problem with colleges that have lower and lower quality programs. By my reckoning either (a) the improved results from increased oversight will lead to more well prepared students who then raise the quality of the colleges they attend, or (b) some clever duck will realize that if the students go to the lowest of low quality schools and get good results (honestly or not) it will look like the school is doing its job when it isn't. Now, I'm an optimist, so I assume (a). Right.

local news

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:23:24 GMT

Local fun: a few days ago I was driving, and I heard a report on the radio about a local school district. It so happened I had heard folks talking about this district earlier in the day, so I paid attention to the story, which was about how a local school district had chosen to cease their recognition of the teachers' union. Obviously, a strike was called in response. Today I saw a friend had joined the facebook group supporting the teachers' union, so I went digging a little deeper (my instinct is always to support the union, but the facts need to be investigated). Digging in, I found a letter sent by the president of the board of education for Pulaski County special School District, and a counter-letter from the head of the union (the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, or PACT). This blog post, clearly biased in favor of the union, links to the letter (which is worth reading - it's really something of a joke, propaganda-wise), and also indicates how complicated the issue is - in the comments, it seems clear no one quite knows what happened. Needless to say, lawsuits have now been filed.

The one thing I have learned from all this, which I can say with certainty, is that substitute teaching in Arkansas is a fast road to poverty: "Regular substitute pay is $55 a day for non-certified and $75 a day for certified teachers. At a special meeting Friday, the board raised pay for substitutes working strikes to $100 a day." And if you read the letter, they're actually proud of that $100 figure.

training and plans

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:04:21 GMT

I spent the last two days being trained by the state of Arkansas on how to be a better manager. Needless to say, I am happy to see Friday arrive (and the Friday before Christmas, no less, which means next week is a short work week!)

The holidays themselves are going to be punctuated by massive amounts of air travel for both Sasha and I, which should be a laugh riot. I'm flying out of and into Little Rock twice over the next two weeks. What could possibly go wrong?

I am looking quite forward to the holidays, though, despite my utter lack in (consumer) holiday spirit - I have purchased exactly zero presents so far - it doesn't really seem like a year for giving people stuff they don't need. I expect cash might be the gift of choice this year. Many smart people are insisting that next year the economy will pick up and start creating jobs. We'll see. Regardless, it won't happen before the new year.