Just finished watching the last lecture by Randy Pausch titled Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.  Randy was an inspiring lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University.  In addition to teaching Computer Science curriculum, he is also widely known for leading the team of researchers that created Alice, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming.  This lecture is not about computer science, virtual reality, or any other high tech topics.  It's about things that matter to every one of us.  If you have 70 minutes, it's well worth watching.  Given the impact it had on me in only 70 minutes, I can only imagine the impact he has had on his students.  

So this blog has been basically dead for a couple years.  I was average at adding new content when I wore the hat of a software developer.  I used it as a place to collect my thoughts and archive interesting tidbits about what I was doing for future reference(by me or others via google).  If you plug in "Spring Hibernate" without quotes into google you will still find my write ups ranking in a page or two.  Since then, I've moved into managing the folks that do the things I used to write about.  Part of me thinks this is a standard path for many but I see other "coders", as managers like to call them, that I have great respect for still plugging away in their IDE of choice.  From time to time, I sit back and wonder if the path I've taken is the right one.  Their are many perks to each path but how do you know which one is right?  Unfortunately I don't think this kind of decision is black and white.  I'm pretty sure that I fall into a pseudo gray gradient somewhere between light and darkness.  Wow, that's pretty deep for me.  I'll assume that came from being on PTO, sitting in front the 80's music channel(And we danced by The Hooters is currently playing), and just having downed my 5th cup a joe since 8am.  Enough with this unruly rambling, I'll move on to the topic I wanted to write about today.  I may be gone for another two years after this post :)

What added value do you all get from the cornucopia of social networking avenues?  A week or two ago I joined facebook and twitter.  I don't have many buds yet, but I find both very interesting.  The problem is that I don't know why.  I've been a linkedin person for several years collecting acquaintances. I've added every tom, dick, and harry that I've worked with over the years.  I've also added friends of friends, user group people that I recognize, and many others that I probably wouldn't even talk to if I saw them at the mall.  This collection seems to have as much intrinsic value as the rounded edged baseball cards from years past.  Maybe they solve a problem I have stumbled on to yet, maybe they are just a way for people to feel better about themselves since they have 499 friends.  I don't really know but it's quite interesting to me. Hit me with your best shot(it just started playing) in the comments of this entry. I'd love to hear why I'm wrong. 

Here is my one(or 2 or 3) liner on each app.

LinkedIn - A recruiters dream.  Maybe it's useful if you are looking for a job.
Facebook - Myspace for adults.  A more professional place to promote your electronic personality. 
Twitter - Addicting way to keep tabs on what interesting people around you are up to.  Not sure I'll continue updating but I'm loving the iPhone app. 

Gotta run, Air Supply just came on and the channel must be turned NOW!!!!!

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The Dip is a sub 100 page book by Seth Godin that offers tremendous insight into challenges that we all face every day. It is not a "How To" book or a book offering a specific recipe for success. Instead this book offers a healthy dose of motivation and some foundational concepts that are applicable to everyday life. It doesn't matter if you live by day in corporate america or spend your nights tending bar, you should be able to relate to the content in this book.

To get things started, it is paramount to set the terminology straight. There are basically two kinds of curves present in almost everything we do.

The Cul-de-sac
This is a type of curve where no matter how hard you try to push forward, you keep hitting a dead end. A situation or job that will not get better regardless of the amount of effort expended.

The Dip
This is a type of curve where near term satisfaction and accomplishments are present shortly after embarking on the journey. Once this initial high has plateaued, the participant is in store for a sizable dip that takes a significant amount of effort and perseverance to fight through. This dip is long enough that the vast majority of people in it will quit before making it out on the other side. Society depends on this. If everyone made it out, there would be no scarcity on the other side. For the scarce few that make it out on the other side, tremendous rewards await them.

While describing these types of curves, Seth mentions that it's important to identify which type of curve you are facing. If you are facing a cul-dec-sac, quitting is not only a good idea, it is the right thing to do. Every minute spent in a cul-de-sac situation is a minute that can't be spent elsewhere. If you find yourself in a dip situation, it is clear that there is light at the end of the tunnel and your perseverance will likely pay off in a big way. It's your job to see through on this. Quitting at the bottom of the dip is a waste of your time and effort.

This book challenges conventional wisdom, especially ideas like "Quitters never win, winners never quit". According to Seth, winners quit all the time, they just quit the right things. This is an important concept and one with concrete examples that occur frequently. If you find something that is a cul-de-sac or a dip that you are not willing to see through, the best action is to not start.

Finally, the book is filled with witty one liners and ideas that spark the imagination. A couple of my favorites are listed below.

Being the best in the world is seriously under rated

The Problem with Infinity is that there is just too much of it

The Wrongest Advice: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
If you had a life threatening illness, would you be seeking a well rounded doctor or one that is highly skilled in the one area you care about? Almost no one would be looking for a doctor that was good at golf, martial arts, and restoring antique cars.

For the one or two of you that are still subscribed to this recently stagnate blog, sit tight because I will be injecting life into it again. Instead of the technical topics of years past, I plan to write about the current topics that are the most important to me. More specifically, information management, organizational processes and productivity enhancing routines. Much of the content will be based on things I've read from top selling books intersected with my own twisted interpretation and experience. Stay tuned.

Like all the other Apple nerds in the world on Friday, my brain didn't wander far from the 6pm release of Mac OS X Leopard. I arrived at the local West County Apple Retail Store promptly at 5:50pm. As I walked in, I saw a line that started near the entrance of the store and went down about 60 yards. As I got closer to the "end of the line", I noticed that instead of ending it made a 90 degree turn and went across the mall to the other walkway. That walkway wrapped 90 degrees as well and stacked up back towards the apple store(although on the other side of the mall). This section of the line actually went past the apple store. The line was basically U shaped and I was at the top right tip of the U. The store opened a bit late, probably 6:05 or so but the line moved immediately. For as many people that were there, it was pretty efficient. After 30 minutes of waiting, I entered the Apple Store and was greeted with a Leopard handout and a black t-shirt celebrating it's launch. While I'm not a big fan of black t-shirts, I accepted the gift with gratitude. I plan to wear it whenever I want to annoy my non-geek friends.

After entering the store, I walked directly back to the counter and stood in a very short line of two. I checked out minutes later. Bottom line is that I went from last in line at 5:50pm to exiting the mall before 7pm. Not to shabby if you ask me. My expectations were that I'd be there a minimum of 2 hours so I was pretty happy about saving the time. One thing that struck me as odd about the whole event was the number of people that were in line and didn't buy the new operating system. I saw many people walk in, get their t-shirt, look around a bit, and leave. This seemed very weird to me then and still does now.

So now for my day and a half assessment of Leopard.

The Good

• The archive and install feature worked flawlessly and seemed faster than every other OS X install that i've done in the past.
• The eye candy is very nice, it seems like the LCD on my 17" MacBook Pro got detailed with high gloss polish. Seriously, everything seems more vivid.
• Spaces has a very fluid feel just like Expose.
• System Preference Cleanup. Sharing and Network are more clear and concise now.
• Finder Updates make the finder feel more like the iLife apps.
• Mail's new features ToDo's and Notes are long over due but I'll be sticking with RememberTheMilk.com for now
• Tabbed Terminals may allow me to say so long to iTerm. This remains to be seen though, I've been pretty happy with iTerm.

The Bad

• iCal didn't maintain my calendars and I had to sync my iPhone to get them back
• Time Machine, Time Machine, Time Machine(See next paragraph)

Let's just say that the idea of time machine was the main driver behind my upgrading. I probably would have bought the OS anyway, but this was the number one feature that I wanted. The implementation of time machine is not quite what I had expected. All along I had been expecting to hook an external hard drive up to my Airport and have time machine backup wirelessly. After all, the main machines at my house are my MacBook Pro and my wife's MacBook. Time machine was suppose to save me the idle time hooking up external hard drives and copying data for hours on end. After booting up leopard for the first time, I was prompted to connect to my AirDisk without doing anything. Now that I could access the drive, I headed straight for Time Machine in System Preferences. Upon arriving, I could not find my air disk. Hmmm, I thought. I went back to the find and made sure I could copy a file there, which I could. After years of being abused my Microsoft, I wrote it off to needing a reboot. I rebooted and only received more of the same. I found the answers I was looking for, but not the ones I wanted. It seems somewhere along the way Apple removed the Air Disk feature from Time Machine. Google cache can retrieve an older version of the page where it exists, but the current features do not include this. Now I'm right back to hooking up external hard drives again only to use a new backup tool. Not exactly the experience I had hoped for. After reading more on this, it seems there is a work around for time machine. Not supported I'm sure. The work around involves pluggin the drive directly into the mac and letting time machine run once. While it's doing this, you need to execute a few unix commands to create a hidden file with appropriate permissions and ownership on the external drive. Once time machine completes it's first run, you hook it back up to the Airport and it will then be used by time machine. The fact that I have to do this work around tells me that the AirDisk is probably not to stable. Only time will tell.

My next rant on Time Machine is about this pesky window that is present when it is running. Is this really necessary? I have it minimized but I wish I could hide it all together and never see it again.

My last rant on Time Machine is around configuration. I personally don't need hourly backups. I'd be fine if time machine ran int he middle of the night every night. Hey Apple, where is the configuration? Your assumptions that I need hourly are not accurate!!!