E.J. Svoboda

When you’re stuck just do something.  Anything.  Even something small.  It might just get you moving.

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The spouting back of another’s ideas is nothing more than mindless plagiarism.  Getting inside the ideas, challenging them, and eventually being either inspired to new ideas or finally making these ideas a part of you are hallmarks of a curious and fertile mind.

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Did my taxes last night.  Love Turbo Tax still.  Hate the fact that I owe.  It’s time to adjust the withholding!

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In my reading this weekend I came across the following stats:

Americans teoday spend 40 percent less time with their children thean they did in the the 1960’s.

On average, 72 minutes are spent driving daily.

A typical business executive loses 68 hours a year on hold while on the phone.

I found the first stat staggering and almost unbelievable.  One of the things that I have seen develop is that people of my generation (now near 40) put a lot more importance on being involved in the lives of their children.  Being involved and spending time with them might be where the disconnect is at with this stat.

As the country becomes more and more urban the cold reality is that commuting becomes more of a pain.  I have done the hour to hour and half commute (one way) thing and I vastly prefer the 30 minute or so commute (sometimes slightly less).  I have also had the 15 minute commute.  Guess which one I preferred.  To use my time better in the car I tend to listen to podcasts on subjects that interest me or talk radio.  If I just need to unwind then it will be jazz, classical, or classic rock.  I also think there’s a lot of power in just letting go of the frustration of commuting.  When you are stuck in traffic there’s nothing you can do about it.  I also highly recommend leveraging a traffic service if available.  Knowing what you are in for might cause you to adjust your route.

Being stuck on hold is a major time drain.  I like to use that time to either read email or do R&D on my various projects.  I may also use that time to read an article that caught my eye.

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I have been working with the Firefox Beta’s and installed the latest one (Beta 5) on Monday.  I have had more crashes than I had in Beta 4 but I determined that it was due to me “taking the safeties off” and using some add-ons that were probably incompatible.  I disabled “Resurrect Pages” and the “RealPlayer Browser Download” add-ons and I’ve been rocksolid ever since.

The pros to Firefox 3 is that the memory leaks that plagued V2 are gone.  The interface has minor improvements and like any version change there are a host of little changes.  I’m not sure that I really like the “Home” link on the links bar instead of having it on my main toolbar but if it really bothered me that much I’m sure I would have changed it by now.  I like how the tabbed windows automatically scroll when you have a large number of them open.  The effect is quite nice.  The other noticeable change has been to the password saving feature which has moved to the upper part of the browser window and is less instrusive now since it will go away if you ignore it.

You can find the beta at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html I think it’s worth checking out for those of you brave enough to work with beta software.

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This quote comes from a passage from an interview with Mel Leventhal in the Studs Terkel book “Hope Dies Last”.

“Everything meaningful that’s ever happened in the world, any change, any improvement comes about because of optimism.  The pessimists don’t get anything done.  They’re naysayers.  You have to see the potenial for change.  And you’ve got to see it not in terms of the moment but in terms of the long view, the long haul.”

- Mel Leventhal

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The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance.

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His father, Dave, a civil engineer, says: “I knew when Jon was three and could boot up my laptop, sign in and open Paint, that he had a knack for computers. But I never dreamed he’d be a network administrator at the age of 11.”

Not bad for a three year old.  My son was able to correctly shut down Windows XP before the age of three.  By the time he was four I was told by his daycare teachers that he could fix the computer.  When I asked him how he fixed it he told me “I turn it off and then on like you do”.  He’s now six and can log on to the computer, open a web browser, and type the address of his favorite websites.  He’s also figured out that a number of these sites have streaming video so he can watch his favorite shows.  The kicker is that yesterday my wife and I were talking about something and we said that we needed to find the answer and he told us to “google it”.

The rest of the article on the eleven year old network guy is at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/032708-netkid.html?page=2

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One of the things that I find to be most frustrating is when quotes are taken out of context.  Here’s a great example, “Our country right or wrong”.  I’ve heard this particular quote or variants of it quite a bit over the years.  The problem with the quote is that when taken in the full context as said by the author it actually is counter to how most people use it.

Here’s the complete quote from Carl Schurz (U.S. General and U.S. Senator) from 1872:

“Our country right or wrong.
When right, to be kept right.
When wrong, to be put right.”

I can’t think of a more instructive lesson on taking the time to think twice about a five second snippet heard on the news or read in the newspaper.

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I’m back in the office after a week off.  It’s great to take time away and to somewhat unhook from the digital world.  My only regret is that I didn’t get more reading done while on vacation.

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