Category Archives: GeekWorld

GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics

Meeting on the Phone

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Imbolc            Waxing Wild Moon

The environmental groups with whom I have begun to work more and more do something I really like.  A lot of the committee meetings happen over the phone.

At first I thought, how impersonal.  I need body language, facial expressions.  Won’t work.

Then, I thought.  Wait a minute.  I don’t have to drive into the city for a one-hour meeting, at least a 2.5 to 3 hour overall time commitment.  Both groups with whom I’m working closely meet once a week since the legislature is in session.  That means I save 3-4 hours a week in both drive time and fuel expenditure.

There is still, though, the personal factor.  I think of Alvin Toffler, high tech-high touch.  At some point I’m going to want to see the people I’m meeting with over the phone, if for nothing else than to  match face to voice.

Now if we could just get those video conference deals set up I might never have to leave home.   What this does free me up to do is to spend an afternoon or so at the capitol, covering hearings live.  Much more direct benefit to my work than the meetings themselves.

GeekWorld

A Computer Mini

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Imbolc     Waning Wild Moon

I bought a netbook computer, an HP-mini.  It’s a small thing that fits in the bag I used as a daypack during my Southeast Asia trip.  This mini is the first portable computer I’ve had that really fits the name.

It comes with easy access to wireless networks and, best of all for me, has a keyboard 92% the same size as a normal keyboard.  As a touch typist since the age of seventeen, small keyboards screw up my rhythm and make the whole process uncomfortable.  This one works fine.

The 3-cell battery that comes with it has 3 hours worth of life to it, a fact I checked on Saturday at the museum.  I ran it the entire class without a plug-in.

This is a yippee moment for me, a way of staying connected without pulling my shoulder out of socket or feeling like a pack mule in service to my computer.

Aging, GeekWorld, Politics

Liverish Lips, Gray Hair, Needs Naps, Vertiginous OMG!

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

The stomach has begun to return to normal.  Vertigo much less.

Got some pictures back from the retreat and noticed that my lips have taken on that old man’s coloring, a sort of liverish brownish red.  Goes great with the gray hair.

Off to the capitol for a noon lunch with the Sierra Club lobbyist and the chair of the Legislative Committee.  We’ll discuss my role as the guy in charge of legislative communications.  I also plan to sit in on a committee hearing at 3pm if my need for a nap doesn’t over power me.  (Let’s see.  Liverish lips, gray hair, needs naps, vertiginous. OMG!)

Gonna take my new netbook with me and join the crowds of under 40’s I see with their laptops everywhere.  When I went to the Jasmine last night for the Woolly meeting, the evening dinner crowd had gathered in the booths at the Bad Waitress.  5 booths along the window out of six had couples with food and a laptop each.  Most had their laptops on and were busy doing something.

It reminded me of the Arlo and Janis cartoon a couple of weeks ago.  Arlo and Janis both have cellphones to their ears and their land line rings.  Arlo says, “This is ridiculous.”  Yep.

GeekWorld, General

The Wonders of Cable

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Winter      New Moon (Wild)     Weather now available at 3 sites under Andover Weather + on the right side of this page.

“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen but understanding it for the first time.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

I read an article in the latest Wired about Comcast.  The article identified Comcast as one of the five most hated companies in the us.  It was number 56.  Number 58?  Our very own Northwest Airlines. That’s a twofer for those of us in the gopher state.

Comcast frustrates the living bejesus out of me sometimes, but ever since they finally got the fiber-optic laid to the highway about a thousand feet from our house, both TV and broadband signals have been steady.  They don’t make working with them easy though.

I got a new DVR box, hoping to increase the volume and the picture on our downstairs TV which both Kate and I use while exercising.  They wanted me to go over to their company store and pick up the new one.  I’m ordering a product that will make money for them and I have to drive all the way over to Brooklyn Park?  Nope. Deliver it.  Ok. 10.95 charge.  Maddening, but OK.  Will they take my old box?  Oh, Sure.

Last Wednesday the delivery guy shows up.  Oh, no.  I don’t work for Comcast.  I put the box in  his hands and said, take it anyway.  He did.

Then.  Power up the box and…  Nothing.  Sigh.  Calling Comcast has the same desirability as dragging chalk slowly across a black board (for those of you old enough to know what a black board is.).  Still.  I did it.  The guy sent me a signal.  Nothing happened.  He sent it again.  We powered down the box and powered it up.  Nothing. It might take a half hour to an hour, he said.  Right. OK.  If it doesn’t work after an hour, what then?  Well, service calls are running 3-5 days so you need to go—wait for it—to the nearest store and exchange it.

Good news?  By god it did come on in an hour and I was able to adjust the box using the handy guide delivered along with it.  A feat amazing in and of itself.  So, the volumes up and the picture is better.

No harm, no…  Nope. I’m within an inch of switching to the dish.  Still, inertia will set in as long as it works this time.

GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics

Research and the Stars

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Winter     New Moon (Wild)

This morning I redid the research documents I create each afternoon for the Sierra Club.  I divided them into Minnesota news and Other news.  Since I had 6 documents, this means I now have 12.   It will make them more useful, I hope, since the national and international clips cluttered up easy access to the Minnesota bits.  Dividing the pages and moving the Other news out of the existing document (now MN…) took a while.

I also gave myself an early birthday present by ordering Starry Night 6.2 Plus.  I had Starry Night 3 which I purchased in 2000.  The upgrade has substantial new features including a searchable map of the whole sky.  The whole sky!  Geez.  On my computer.  Can you imagine?

Art and Culture, GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Out of the House. At Last.

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7  steep fall 30.38  ENE2  windchill 7  Winter

Waning Wolf Moon

Spent a morning at the museum.  The first time I got out of the house since Monday. Thanks to telecommuting I did committee work for the Sierra Club on Monday and Wednesday, research each day.  So this cold snap came and went with my outside experiences limited to snow blowing, shoveling, paper and mail retrieving.  It got cold.  -28 this morning at 8AM.

Starting Monday on the Star-Tribune Weatherblog page you will find me under Twin Cities Metro.  I got a sneak peek at the site today and it looks very professional.  This will be in addition to the Citizen Weather Observer Program webpage and the Davis Weatherlink webpage that take live-feed from my station.  I think I do have some instrument adjustment issues to iron out and come connectivity with the CWOP folks, but otherwise we pump info out into the public datastream every five minutes or less 24/7.  Another techno advantage.

The second graders I had today at the museum were bright, engaged kids.  But.  They recognized George Washington but did not know who he was.  One girl wondered if George Washington was G. W. Bush’s father.  The three African-American kids did not know where Africa was.  I sat with them and tried to get a few facts installed, but I had so little time with them.  I love second graders though, they were so eager.  So willing.  If only the world would not beat up on them, they could overcome this knowledge deficit.

GeekWorld, Travel, Weather +Climate

After the New Year, Backup

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orchard-inwinter300.jpg-3  bar rises 30.00  SW0  windchill -3  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Orchard in Winter

2009 has well and truly begun.  The new year crept in on snow shoes, covered in a snowmobile suit and holding a cup of hot cocoa.  This was a Minnesota new year.

We’ve had a cold winter so far and it looks like it’s going to continue for a while.  Somewhere around the end of January most of us begin to have fantasies of being somewhere else.  Many fantasize someplace warm, but I tend to go with just another location.  My escape this year may be to the UP or Ashland, Wisconsin.  Still gathering information for that Lake Superior book.

Bill Schimdt suggested I back up this website onto my own computer since it hangs out in the cloud most of the time. I did that.  It was an interesting excursion into the bowels of the system.  It comes out in a form determined by mysql, the open source data base used by many servers.  The format is strange, made up of tables with columns of numbers.  They all make sense, once you begin to read carefully.  Anyhow, this is a once a month operation Bill suggests.  After I do it, then the regular backup I do every day will collect it and convey to my external hard disk.  I actually have two, but I still have to configure them the way I want.

Today I start writing Homecomer.  Look for it to be posted on the Liberal Faith page sometime after January 11th.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

And A Happy…

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7oaks250.jpg9  bar steep fall 30.12  ENE9  windchill 9   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Friend and cyberwizard Bill Schimdt reminded me of a wonderful show the sky put on tonight to celebrate the New Year.  The moon with Venus in its arms.  This is the waxing Wolf Moon, a sliver facing up toward the east with Venus just above and centered over it.  The moon has an immediate tug on my memories, often creating a flood tide of associations from Islam to nursery rhymes to Neil Armstrong and Jules Verne.  It also fires my love of the night, creating a light in the darkness, a light that does not cause the darkness to flee, but makes it more accessible.  And they say lunacy is a bad thing.

This new year’s I plan to celebrate in dreamland.  My new habit of a 10:30 bedtime is too fragile to wreck watching Dick Clark’s face-lift as the ball descends in Time Square.  Windy and -1 there.  Ouch.

The new year comes this time with genuine opportunity for change, change that matters.  I plan to be part of it and hope you do, too.

Sometimes I refer to our property as 7 oaks.  This is a photograph of those seven oaks, white and red.  They grow on a small hill, visible from where I write. They are a grove, a fine companion in all seasons.

-30-  until 2009

GeekWorld, Great Work, permaculture, Politics

Tech in the Service of Political Change

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17  bar steady 30.19  0mph NE  windchill 17 Samhain

Last Quarter Moon of Long Nights

The best way to predict the future is to create it.   Peter Drucker

Quick note.  No, I’ve not gone away.  Just had a busy day.  Picked up the red car and drove it without incident into the Sierra Club and back.  Yeah.  Meetings at Sierra Club with Margaret and Michelle on anti-racism training and communications work during the upcoming legislative session.  I will have a lot to do:  research, weekly updates, action alerts, perhaps co-ordinating some op-ed and letter to the editor material.

Home.  Nap.

Just spent an hour compiling research into usable slots.  Handy with Google.  Technology in the service of political change.

An invitation to do some modest work in the Permaculture arena, too.  Helping Reed Aubin put together some material for a talk on Permaculture and ethics.  Should be fun.

Gotta hit the treadmill.

GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics

Home Work

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8  bar steady  30.27  0mph NW  windchill 6   Samhain

Last Quarter Moon of Long Nights

A busy morning here at the homestead.  I played around with various formats and methods of research for the Sierra Club legislative committee.  One setup uses Google News Alerts and Google Docs to create a real time log of news articles, web entries and video feeds on the five issues the LegCom will target during this years legislature.  This much I can do at home.

My new datalogger for my weather station has not yet succumbed to my troubleshooting, but I imagine I’ll wrestle it to the ground sometime soon.  Something about ports seems to be hanging it up right now.  Requires detailed attention and I have to set aside time for that.

Kate and I had our business meeting.  In spite of the negative financial weather swirling around we’re fine; not as wealthy as we were in, say, August, but fine nonetheless.

Good news on the car front.  It was only a blown tire as far as they can see.  Everything else looks fine.  Under $400 bucks and I’d imagined multiple thousands.  Quite a relief.  We decided we’ll keep this one running until the plug-ins make sense.