mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Many, Many Happy Returns of the Day, Dave!
Something Random
- Thread starter ddrueding
- Start date
ddrueding
Fixture
Thanks for all the birthday wishes!
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I'm supposed to move tomorrow's evening, but I still haven't rent the truck. I was supposed to pack all my stuff today, but I've only packed about half of it. I hate packing. I hate washing walls, floors, removing dust and about anything else related to cleaning and during a move, you have to clean plenty. I simply hate moving.
What will happen is that I'll still rent the truck tomorrow, but I won't have the time to pack everything so I'll leave stuff behind, but too much to fit in my car when I'll come back next week to take it back. So I'll have to do two 300Km trips, back and forth and it will ruin my next week-end too. Oh the joy of moving.
Hopefully, this will only be a bad memory in two weeks.
What will happen is that I'll still rent the truck tomorrow, but I won't have the time to pack everything so I'll leave stuff behind, but too much to fit in my car when I'll come back next week to take it back. So I'll have to do two 300Km trips, back and forth and it will ruin my next week-end too. Oh the joy of moving.
Hopefully, this will only be a bad memory in two weeks.
ddrueding
Fixture
Once I dreaded packing so much I told them to keep the stuff and my deposit. It was massively liberating. Took a while to re-build my collection of stuff, but no regrets.
I never moved everything myself. Move your valuables and hire movers for everything else. Hire someone else TO clean up too.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Last time I moved, the box that had all my actually-valuable comic books and my DSLR both magically did not make it to my new place. I can only hope the mover who took them is enjoying what he got.
I have shit-tons of moving people karma though. I joke about it how often I help other people with moving. Somehow I doubt the favor will come back to me but I like to think that when it's my turn again at least I'll be in a better place than Coug clearly is today.
I have shit-tons of moving people karma though. I joke about it how often I help other people with moving. Somehow I doubt the favor will come back to me but I like to think that when it's my turn again at least I'll be in a better place than Coug clearly is today.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
My last move was 35 years ago. I hated it and I had 1/10th the stuff I had now (not surprising because I was 15 at the time). Honestly, if I have any choice in the matter the next move will be to the grave. Moving is a major PITA any way you slice it. Unless the neighborhood changes for the worse, or I get married (probably near zero chance of that), I'm staying put. Heck, even if I got married if it as OK with whoever I married I would add one or two extra floors to this house, and live upstairs. I can stomach a move up a flight or two of stairs, but that's about it.
paugie
Storage is cool
When one packs, It's so hard to unpack. I still have lots of stuff in boxes and we moved back to the house 5 years ago.
(we have a house and we rented it out for a while because the kids found it too difficult to commute to school. when they graduated from college we finally had a reason to come back home, but that was a real long time ago.
Good luck on the move, Coug.
(we have a house and we rented it out for a while because the kids found it too difficult to commute to school. when they graduated from college we finally had a reason to come back home, but that was a real long time ago.
Good luck on the move, Coug.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
I try to think of the good part of moving, getting rid of stuff that you don't need anymore.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
And there's been plenty of that. About three wheeled-garbage containers worth and I'd still have another one to fill. I have internet at home since ~11am, but I still haven't plug a single computer. The house is full of boxes and it might be a few days before I'm fully operational again. What's important for me this evening, much more than plugging computers, is to get as much rest as possible because I didn't have much these past three days.
ddrueding
Fixture
Nice work cranking it out. Did you manage to get it all in the truck?
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
All but my old computer desk. I planned to replace it anyway. Now I don't have enough desk-space to plug all my computers. I have more urgent things to attend to for now, but I'll buy another desk in the upcoming few weeks. I'll almost certainly buy a used one.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I have a two hour meeting scheduled this morning wherein I get to explain to managers at a fairly large company that the IT project they're trying to bid out is in fact 100% part of Windows and has been since 1993.
yay
yay
ddrueding
Fixture
Heh. The number of people that approach me with "amazing" business ideas that are part of the OS (or Office) is amazing. "So, you want to create a spreadsheet that does x?" "You want to be able to search the contents of word files? You want to create an index of your documents?
Sigh.
Sigh.
Fits in with this article, except for adults:
Kids Can't Use Computers... And This Is Why It Should Worry You
Kids Can't Use Computers... And This Is Why It Should Worry You
ddrueding
Fixture
Yup. Those are my users. I'm fairly certain that there will be (already is?) a massive divide in the success of individuals who can "use a computer" (by his definition) vs. those who can't.
I, like many here, pride myself in knowing how to do stuff. Some skills are over-valued and some not. Driving, computers, and general literacy are probably the least-appreciated skills out there.
Sigh.
I'm not sigh'ing. Sure, outwardly it's frustrating to see these things happen and socially people become comfortable in using devices like basic appliances. The easier they are to use the more they're accepted (and purchased) by the masses (aka lowest common denominator problem once again). This may help us to stay employed for the longer-term by helping the other "95%" of people who own a computer or device that don't know how to use it (by his definition). Mercutio's current situation is yet another example of staying employed. He's hopefully employed (or being payed) to help those who can't help themselves.
ddrueding
Fixture
I occasionally think about automation and the replacement of jobs with computers/robots/tech. If I look into the jobs around me, there aren't many that won't be able to be automated sooner or later. The only job I see as secure is managing the automated systems. And of course as the automation becomes better even those last workers will be chased further and further up the management ladder as these systems gain the ability to maintain and program themselves.
This is one of the reasons why I am scrambling up the management side while maintaining experience with niche design/implementation challenges.
This is one of the reasons why I am scrambling up the management side while maintaining experience with niche design/implementation challenges.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I've written about this elsewhere. Right now, society is on the verge of facing a huge problem which hardly anyone acknowledges even exists. Automation is poised to drastically decrease the number of manhours needed for society to function. It's also poised to make many people totally unemployable unless we set aside make-work projects for them like cleaning parks (and those are amenable to being replaced by machines as well). The bottom line is a large segment of society will have nothing worthwhile to contribute economically. There won't be enough work to keep most of the rest employed full-time.
Because machines will be responsible for a large and growing amount of economic output, the primary issue which needs to be faced will be how to divide that output. The idea of letting those who own the means of production keep the output will no longer be feasible. Indeed, it will no longer even make much sense because the concept of money at its heart is a means to ration goods and services. Someone who owns robots can in theory make as much of a good as they need, either directly, or by trading away goods their robots make for goods other robots make. Therefore, the only system which makes sense is to give everyone a fixed allowance to buy a certain quantity of goods and services, preferably at least enough to approximate a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. This allowance can be supplemented with work, provided of course one has a skill which is in demand.
Long term I'm certain no other kind of system is feasible. We need to acknowledge the problem, and then start phasing in the new system. For the time being there are still reasonable levels of employment, so we don't need to make the guaranteed income enough to support yourself. Instead, we might start off with a small amount, perhaps $1000 annually, which everyone gets as a refundable tax credit (hence it would be politically popular). As jobs become scarcer, you increase this. Perhaps in two generations the annual amount might be equivalent to $40K or $50K. Remember ultimately this concept doesn't require obtaining these funds via taxation. Rather, they'll simply be a credit which can be used to purchase goods which robots create from either raw or recycled materials. I'm not even going to attempt to evaluate the "fairness" of this system in the current context of our capitalist society. It could however be argued that automation greatly increased the productivity of workers in the last 50 years, but few saw much of those gains translated into higher purchasing power. Indeed, 50 years ago an average salary was enough to raise a family. Now many people barely scrape by on two salaries despite greater worker productivity. If salaries had matched productivity gains, you would be able to live a 1960s lifestyle by working about 10 hours per week.
ddrueding
Fixture
This I agree with, the rest I find unlikely and a bit distasteful. I do believe in more of a raw capitalist system, because I believe humans need scarcity to thrive. I have no idea what this looks like.
What I suspect will happen is not much. The people making decisions are content with the way things work now, and it is up to the rest of us individually to find a place for ourselves. The biggest problem is how many sheep there are out there doing the same job they've always done assuming that it will feed them and their family forever. Each person needs to be proactive to secure their own future. Of course, since so many aren't, when large enough numbers find themselves unemployable there will be riots. This will suck.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
What I'm seeing at this point is very little interest in actual computer classes that I need to TEACH but instead a great deal of interest in projects that happen to involve a computer. People for the most part have just given up on the idea that they should know how to work a computer because they know they can start "The Internet" and go to Google and then things happen from there. On one hand yes, it's great that knowledge of that sort has finally seeped in, but don't ask them to do the magic that makes things come out of a different printer than usual or how to make a folder or how to change the order that things are shown in that folder because that is what squirrely computer nerds are for.
The organization that is our primary client got a lot of feedback over the last couple years that more-or-less said "We don't want classes on Windows or computer fixing but we do want classes on twelve zillion unique things that we individually want to know how to do on a computer." So my company upped its rates and now I do a lot of long and extremely customized sessions where I might mentor someone through fixing a problem or walk them through what I'm doing as I do it for them, but where six or eight years ago I might've had a room with 10 people in it, now I might have two or three people and talk about hyper-customized things that can range from configuring Wordpress to building a multiply-redundant system for safety monitoring.
A lot of my job is just being ahead of everyone else's needs, which includes the needs of the other people in my office. They're all pretty much helpless as far as I'm concerned, too.
Today I had a meeting to explain to someone's CORPORATE IT STAFF how File and Folder permissions and Encryption work in NTFS. Turns out that while the company was big enough to have six IT people on staff, their break/fix tech was the only person there who didn't have a title like "Project Manager" or "Business Analyst" and that guy had been hired away from a Best Buy. They were so unaware of these concepts that they hadn't even realized that this was something they could look up online. Since the people in question had essentially put out a RFQ on a project they thought would have a five-figure budget and require three months to implement and there was a check-signing PHB in the room I could tell some heads would be rolling after I left.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
That's exactly the problem. What you say is nice in theory if there really is a place for everyone to secure their own future. The hard fact is there won't be. Indeed, many of the jobs lost to the recession just aren't coming back. They were either outsourced or eliminated by automation. Riots are what usually happens when people can't eat. In the end the haves are probably going to face two choices-either part with some of the productivity of their factories via a system similar to what I described, or have it forcibly taken in riots (and possibly have much of society's infrastructure destroyed in the process). That's the short term solution. The long term solution might be better education so most people will have something to contribute to society (or at least so they can make productive use of their ample leisure time), albeit via increasingly shorter work weeks due to increasing productivity. We also may need to just keep people who are hopelessly inept from reproducing so the problem will largely go away within a few generations. Then again, we may find ways to enhance intelligence.
In the end you're right-we'll probably ignore the problem until it becomes big enough to bite us in the behind.
It depends upon your description of thrive. Most people go to jobs they hate doing something they could do with a grade school education. That's the reality of it. I'm not sure I consider this fulfilling their human potential. It's very American to be repulsed by a society largely based on leisure, but I suspect it's exactly that, coupled with a well-rounded education, which enables the human spirit to grow. Most people nowadays don't seem happy to me. They lack fulfillment, they lack the time to really be all they can be. They're basically carbon-based androids fulfilling very narrowly defined roles in a big economic machine whose purpose is largely to extract as much as possible from raw materials and human capital for the benefit of the few who own the means of production. Capitalism at its heart only works when the people under it have well-rounded educations. Without that, everyone becomes mindless automatons pursuing wealth for its own sake, without acknowledging that in the end this is harmful for everyone. Or put more colloquially, raw capitalism is a virus which in the end destroys everything around it solely for the sake of reproducing more capitalist entities.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
There's really no way to get around this conundrum other than to selectively breed a more intelligent populace. If you think about it, throughout history there have always been specialists. The average person went to the blacksmith when his horse needed shoes, to the candlestick maker to get candles, to the baker to get bread. Some people had several of these skills, but few had all of them. In the end, exactly how much about computers can the average person realistically be expected to learn? Certainly simple things like printing to a different printer are within reason. Does the average person really need to be able to work with a command line interface? I agree we should be teaching more of the nuts and bolts of computing to everyone, but only those skills which most people have the capability to reasonably become competent at. It's sort of like teaching math. Just about everyone can learn basic arithmetic, most people can learn algebra and geometry. Beyond that you start running into issues where people just don't have the innate ability to comprehend the concepts. A large subset can learn basic calculus. You start losing a lot of people when you get into multivariable calculus, tensors, etc. It's much the same with computer skills. Some of them are just too arcane and difficult for most people to learn.
I think a larger problem is when we try to take a task which is inherently difficult, indeed beyond most people, and then dumb it down enough to make most people think they can master it. It's even worse when the consequences of failing to do that task well result in death or injury. That's exactly what we did with driving. We probably should give tests starting in early grade school which measure things like hand-eye coordination, reaction time, spatial awareness, 3D problem solving, etc. precisely to determine who would qualify to even start driver training. Arguably, Google's self-driven cars are a good thing precisely because they use machines to do a task which arguably most people just can't innately do. The author of the piece you linked to rightly moans the fact that the majority of computer users nowadays are unskilled compared to 30 years ago when few owned computers, but most who did were quite competent with them. However, he's off base when he mentions the same thing may well occur with driving once self-driven cars become the norm. The sad fact is once the majority owned cars and drove, few had anything remotely resembling driving skills.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
I watched today's final race of the America's Cup. ( It is yacht racing. ) With the computer generated graphic's in real time it was exciting to watch. I actually understood what was going on.
Even the announcers seem to have a brain ( Unlike most of the talking bobble heads these days ) and some experience sailing.
These weren't the yachts that we normally think of either. They were catamarans with hydro foils and plastic (?) sails. Very high tech.
Cool stuff!
Even the announcers seem to have a brain ( Unlike most of the talking bobble heads these days ) and some experience sailing.
These weren't the yachts that we normally think of either. They were catamarans with hydro foils and plastic (?) sails. Very high tech.
Cool stuff!
ddrueding
Fixture
I've been watching the whole series for weeks now, and even got to see them practicing in person in SF. Awesome boats. The main "sail" is actually a rigid carbon-fiber wing 130'+ tall (larger than the wing on a 747). The whole boat is basically 7 tons of carbon on the verge of self-destruction, and have been clocked in excess of 55mph. They regularly sail at three times the speed of the wind.
Stereodude
Not really a
But can they go faster than the wind downwind? :-D
ddrueding
Fixture
Stereodude
Not really a
I see you caught my reference.
ddrueding
Fixture
Indeed. That particular debate meant a lot to me, as I learned the question long before the answer. So I had plenty of time to think about it.
ddrueding
Fixture
Stereodude
Not really a
Well that's pretty darn neat!
ddrueding
Fixture
From the feedback I've heard, the frosting they have put on the dog droppings is quite tasty.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Stereodude
Not really a
That was pretty much my reaction...
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
+1. Partying too much, Dave ? ;-)
ddrueding
Fixture
The Windows8 UI was a turd. 8.1 does not change that, but adds some bling that would be neat, were it not on a turd.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm just glad that Technet provided an entirely different set of product keys for it; they only gave me 15 activations of Windows 8 on my sub (compared to 30 for any Windows 7 SKU) and I legitimately burned through all of them except the one that resides on my personal laptop with actual test installs.
I had more interest in test installs of Windows 8 than with any other version of Windows I can think of, but the results of testing all resulted in "OK, we're sticking with 7" or "OK, we're sticking with XP" or in one particular case "OK, we'll make do with Vista."
Those who use windows 8...are any of you using it with the Start8 tool? If so, do you still find it unusable? I've been using it with the Start8 and have little complaints with this setup. I haven't had to go into the metro UI for anything and find many of the other performance improvements worth keeping Win8.
ddrueding
Fixture
Windows 8 with Start8 or the free Classic Start is my preferred OS at the moment. Faster than 7 (or maybe even XP), supporting all the latest stuff, and I can pretend Metro never existed.