Geek Wisdom

In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of not taking life too seriously , one of the more interesting occurrences I have found in in life is when their is a 'mismatch' on the volume level of seriousness. In this article, I talk about the 'flipside' of that volume meter. "Getting along with others", in conversation or otherwise requires all of the involved parties to hold some level of trust between one another. That trust is easily misplaced, when one or more parties have the seriousness dial turned way up, and others have it way down. In a recent episode  of Seth Godin' s"Akimbo" - The Hedonic Treadmill , the start of the episode is an interview where the interviewee talks about an amplifier that has a dial of "11" ? Why - because if they want it to be louder they can go 'past 10' all the way up to '11'. The interviewer asks, well 'Why don't you just make the "10" louder?" and the awkwa

  Some bugs are harder to find then others.  To successfully find and repair a bug in the code requires it to be re-producible, the easier to reproduce the faster it can be troubleshooted and fixed. Some bugs however are really hard to find, yet alone re-produce.  Take for example the mysterious keyboard driver 'bug'.  You may have noticed it yourself. Suddenly pushing keys doesn't seem to do anything or strangely typing a key opens your menu instead of typing that 'F'..has your machine got a virus? ..become possessed by daemons? or every feel you are sure you pressed CTRL-C only to not be able to now PASTE it into your document? There is a BUG in the Windows keyboard driver, it has been there at least since Windows 95..perhaps even longer. No it is not 'sticky keys', but it has a sort of similar effect. The keyboard maintains a 'state' flag for certain keys, like 'caps lock' or 'num lock' or 'scroll lock', when you press a ke

In the beginning, the internet was void and mostly barron, except for a few nerds/geeks, and university professors sending electronic mail - Then came  the browser, it was called 'Mosiac' and it was a good browser.  Later as the internet grew, it became more and more apparent that browsing the web was what would bring the 'Internet' out of the realm of only universities, geeks and nerds..and into the world of the mainstream 'regular joe'  Netscape started creating an selling it's own web browser 'Netscape navigator', and had a few years (months?) of glory, but with the release of Windows 95 and 'Internet Explorer'.  A free web browser built into Windows, who would want to pay for one instead..and thus began the 'browser wars' Although the browser wars were primarily a fight against market share, the method used was to create 'special' features for programmers that would make the browser do 'cool things' that the other

  The first time I ever saw a Pizza in my life, I was like 'You want me to eat that?", Come On...It looks like someone vomited on a piece of dough..that is disgusting ! No - this isn't another post about judging a book by its cover , it is about the idea of 'mindset', and the ability to change it. I was so sure - without tasting it - that the pizza had to be disgusting, I put my foot down 'NO WAY - AM I EATING THAT THING!!'.  Of course this came with the age old parent adage 'Try it..you'll never know if you like it until you try it'. But I was sure, I would not "like it", and my mind was made up - It wasn't going to happen, no way - 'No Way - Nuh Uh' Growth requires the possibility of admitting, just maybe, perhaps - You could be  wrong. Influence is what happens when we slow down - push aside our own mindset, listen to another perspective and think (even for a microsecond) - you know what - maybe you are right! ..and in t

 In May of 1993, I took my first adventure - class trip. Below are excerpts of my journal entries and photographs from that time.  May 17 - 20 - 1993 Of course May 16th was awesome too - being my 17th birthday and all that, but the trip is something I don't want to forget On May 17th we left the school at 8:30am. Our bus driver who we called 'Frankie', although I never was really sure if that was his real name or not, took us towards Halifax. The 5-6 hour trip was fun too filled with music, talk, and other gossip. (The Rankin's song Tell My Ma - seemed to play a lot).  Our Bus - Driven by 'Frankie?' We got to Keddy's Motor Inn in Halifax around 2-2:30 to check in. Then started our 'tour' of Halifax. Monday evening we went to the MicMac mall, I didn't buy anything but I did have fun riding the escalators.   On Tuesday, May 18th - we were really moving. By 11am we were out of Halifax and on our trip to Middleton. While there we visited an old scho

  Some days it seems like everyone has a "side" and everyone believes his/her side is the 'right' side.  The smallest consequence of this leads to a lot of un-necessary rudeness, at the worst, down right fights, and wars. In the middle of all this people exclaim like "they are just being honest" and "it's just how I feel"  What happens next? - we get a world wide pandemic - a crisis that forces everyone to put aside their differences and work together. In a not so recent Lifehacker podcast episode ( How to Deal with Rude People ), I loved the way comedian Danny Wallace put it... if you are speaking out and telling yourself that "You are just saying what everyone else is thinking" - if that is your excuse for being rude, perhaps take a minute and ask why it is that those who are thinking it have made the choice, to keep it just as a thought, and not speak it out loud. ? Commitment vs Being Committed Many people will tell you commitment