Category Archives: Personal History

8-point-9.

Posted on by

From Reuters report: “The tsunami — a menacing wall of water — caused death, chaos and devastation across southern Asia. The tsunami, up to 30 feet high, was triggered by an 8.9 magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.”

My brother Blane and his family live in Bandar Lampung, about 1,000 miles to the southeast of the quake’s center. I sure hope that’s far enough. If you check out the Reuters story above, take 90 seconds to watch some scary video. The link is about half-way down the page on the left. Still waiting for a “we’re okay” email from my baby brother.

List making

Posted on by

I don’t make lists the way I used to. Many years ago I became a voracious list-maker. I attended lots of time management seminars and read lots of self-improvement books and was very much into being effecient and effective. It occurred to me last week that I no longer do very good job of making lists. I’m much more likely to scrawl something on a Post-It not. Or enter a new Task in Outlook. As a charter member of Anal-Retentives of America, I started wondering why. Here’s the best I could come up with:

For most of my 35 years as a working adult, I was responsible for “managing” others. Now, I’m pretty much responsible only for my own work. I can still appreciate the need for organizing and prioritizing my work but I just don’t seem to take the time make those nice, neat, numbered lists (with the A, B or C designations). It would be easy enough to check (15 years of Day-Timers in the upstairs closet) but I’ll bet most of those list items involved telling someone else to do something or checking to see if someone did what I told them to do. Only now, in retrospect, do I see how much I hated those little “nag lists.”

Maybe it’s like a bunch of people that all want to reach a common destination. They can get there much faster, and more comfortably, if they get on a bus. Everyone can shout out the best route but, in the end, only one person can drive. For some, the slave galley is a better analogy.

A few years ago I decided I didn’t want to drive the bus, even if it wasn’t headed in the direction I wanted to go. For now, I’m enjoying the ride… but I don’t mind walking.

Fiber to the home.

Posted on by

Brother-in-law Chris reports that Verizon is installing fiber-to-the-home in his neighborhood of South Lake, Texas. According to this Yahoo! story, the company expects to market video services on the new FTTP network next year. DSL? Cable? Shhiiiiitttt. Fiber will deliver “download speeds of up to 5 Mbps, 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps, with upstream speeds of up to 2 Mbps for the first two products and 5 Mbps for the third. The 5 Mbps service sells for $34.95 per month, when purchased with a package of Verizon services, and $39.95 when purchased separately.” Hard to believe I’ll live to see that kind of speed to our home but I’m happy for him. Sort of.

Photo journal.

Posted on by

Some friends of ours are making a quick holiday trip to see family in Florida and will be travelling at the peak. It gave me a wonderful idea. Take a photo every hour, on the hour, for the duration of the trip. Start with a shot of the alarm clock on day-one. Then, at the top of each hour, look around and take one picture. Nothing posed. Just shoot the first thing that catches your eye. And then go one with your holiday. If you’re awake 15 hours each day, for a fast 3-day trip… you have 45 images without having to think much about what you’re doing. If anybody tries this, let me know how it works. And I’d love to see the photos. If you don’t have a Fotki account, here’s a good reason to set one up.

MSN Music Store

Posted on by

I just purchased my first song online. I downloaded a few songs back in the early days of Napster and KaZaA but never really got into it and –later– hated the way KaZaA scewed with your system. While I love the look of the iPod, I don’t have one and probably won’t buy one, again, just because I’m not into walking around with ear-buds. While the new MSN Music Store might be inferior in every way to iTunes, I found it very easy to use. My Net Passport info was already on file so it took about 15 seconds to agree to let them bill me for music downloads (which will play on just about any device). Jackson Browne’s Stay was my choice for first legal download. MS made this pretty easy and I suspect I’ll buy more music online than I ever have (or would) at the music store.

DSL Death March

Posted on by

I can’t decide if it was really great customer service or really poor customer service. 10 days ago thunderstorm/lightening knocked out voice/net access. Four or five days later, Sprint got the voice up but no DSL. They told me a tech would arrive today between 10:30 and 12:30. After a couple of calls he got there at 1:00 p.m. Nice kid but admitted right up front that he didn’t know much about “this computer stuff” and called in the DSL guy. Five hours later, the DSL guy admitts he’s stumped and call Monica (not her real name). Monica doesn’t even do tech support anymore more is really the only one for a hundred miles that knows how to trouble-shoot the Tough Ones. She was amazing. I lost track of how many IP addresses she could remember. She got me back online and made it look easy. After six hours. If DSL guy hadn’t known Monica and been willing to call her, I still would not have DSL. You could pull my fingernails out and I wouldn’t give you Monica’s name. She’s mine.

Worst day. Best day.

Posted on by

What –if anything– does it say about you if you can instantly recall the worst day of your life but have to think a while to come up with a few contenders for the best day? One would hope this is because you’ve had a lot more really good days than bad. Or, maybe it’s because it’s easier to peg the misery-meter than to get a good reading on the happyometer. Or, does joy fade quickly while pain lingers like the smell of burned popcorn? What we need is a way to record every day, sort of like the security camera at the convenience store. Just recycle the tapes every few days unless you get one so good (we’re only interested in the good ones) it’s a keeper. I’m still wrestling with whether or not I’d take that little pill that would erase the past 12 or 24 hours. For those that might be wondering, I do have enough empathy and imagination to understand that my Worst Day would be a walk in the park for someone else. Or for some future me. Just a little navel-gazing on a beautiful summer day.

Transistor radio

Posted on by

Most of my in-car radio listening is XM these days. But at home I still tune in to a couple of the local stations. And it dawned on me this week that the little transistor radio I listen to is more than 20 years old. We brought it with us when we moved to Jefferson City in 1984. And it could have easily been 10 years old then. I love this little radio (made in Hong Kong for General Electric). On the front it proudly announces “Integrated Circuit” and, on the back, there’s a little plasic clip for attaching to your belt. I’m trying to think of other things in my life that have worked as well or as long as this little transistor (when did we drop that adjective?) radio. I so clearly remember when a small, portable radio like this was the ONLY way to listen to music or news away from your home, car or office.

If/when this one breaks or dies, with what sort of device will I replace it? I’m sure they still make them but for how much longer. Will they become integrated with some kind of mobile device (cell phone)? That doesn’t seem practical. I’m not going anywhere with this. Just a small ode to a long-time companion.

smays.com Not for sale

Posted on by

No way to know if it’s legit or just a way to get my email address but I received an email offering a $1,000 for the smays.com domain. While there’s no shortage of people named Steve Mays out there, it’s hard to imagine any of them being willing to cough up a grand for smays.com. I wrote back saying this little corner of cyber space is not for sale. Given the hassle of moving, I don’t think I’d sell for $10K.

We’ve moved our call centers to Elbonia

Posted on by

Needed some help with a Linksys router last week and wound up talking to a lady in Punjab or Kandahar or some such place. I could live with the 5 second delay on the satellite/phone hook-up but her English was just slightly better than my Punjabie.

Gave up on the Linksys router and purchased one by Netgear. I found myself reading the back of the box to see if there was any mention of where their tech support folks are located. I think that would be a strong selling feature. I’d pay more for a product if I knew I’d be speaking to someone in the U.S.A.