Tag Archives: technology

Today’s Forecast: There Is A 100% Chance Of Weather

It is the third week of April in mid-Michigan and we are being “blessed” with congealed precipitation this morning. Making my way to my car to commute to the bi-weekly writing session with John, I noticed there were small chunks of icy crud on the wiper blades and in a crevice at the edge of the windshield. The sky was about half overcast and half deep blue, deceptive in it’s partially jovial appearance. Clear areas were breathtakingly beautiful, hinting at the delight of sunshine and short sleeved outerwear. The cloud covered segments of the sky were ominous, dreadfully reminiscent of the darkness of November, falling leaves guiding temperatures down to the cold, barren ground. Starting the car it was not apparent which segment of the sky would prevail.

Two hours have passed, It is time to declare the winner: ick. Either I overslept last night by about seven and a half months, or daylight saving time has expanded to move the clocks by seasons rather than hours. The sky is a mottled grey, darker where the daemons of despair have determined to drop daggers of dismay. Doh!

Somewhere there is a climatologist that will claim the late spring snow is a direct result of man-made global warming. Right…. Listening to the NOAA weather radio while in the shower, I could possibly accept some correlation for the lower than normal precipitation for the year (we are about 2.5 inches below the “average” for this year) but our local area is apparently not any warmer than usual. The accumulation of Cooling Degree Days (a measure of when the daily average temperature exceeds 65 degrees Fahrenheit) from the daily broadcast suggests we are 1 unit below the normal for this date. So we are actually cooler than “normal” this year.

The local TV stations compete for my attention when it comes to the weather forecast. There are two to choose from (there are about 6 local stations, but for some reason most of them piggyback on the two main reports), channel 6 and channel 10. Each has a staff including a senior forecaster and others to provide additional faces for the remainder of the broadcast day. Both stations claim to have the latest in Doppler radar and fancy doohickeys to help them provide the “most accurate forecast” ever. They are always similar, but hardly ever identical.

We have a weather station at the airport that reports to the national weather service. I can go to the National Weather Service web site and (in theory) get the same information available to the pros. There is radar, satellite images, hourly and daily forecast discussions and charts, and more data to download than I have storage space to hold.

So, if we are all playing with the same cards, why is there a difference in the information provided? One station might show the expected low tonight to be a couple of degrees warmer that the competitor while the other gives a slightly greater precipitation chance. Even the “current” temperature is often different. If they are using their local station sensors for the numbers a difference would be understandable (the stations are a couple of miles apart). But, when they show the values for around the state, they should both be showing the same data from the same sites, so they should match.

I have been to the airport in Charlotte (a small village south of Lansing and not the similar location several states away) and know exactly where the NWS station is collecting the data. So they should show the temp at the airport and it should match. Usually it does, but occasionally not.

Perhaps the weavers of the modern fiction that is the news broadcast really DO participate in the global conspiracy of spin, to present information filtered through the demands of the shadow government so we see the world as it is supposed to be rather than how it actually is. If this voice suddenly disappears you will understand why.

Newspeak declares rain to be white and crystalline in structure during certain months of the year. Welcome to Spring in [REDACTED].

Phred

post 52 of n

Fear And Loathing In The Driver’s Seat

OK, just to be clear: I am NOT a Luddite. I happen to like a lot of what passes as technology these days. I had a picture of an “etch-a-stone” with the caption “to show the grand-kids what we played with when we were young. It was a piece of granite with a chisel and hammer in a plastic frame. I enjoy having electricity (less so on the 21st of the month when the bill is due) and eating food that is caught and cleaned for me. And (perhaps the most important element of all time ) PLEASE don’t take my spell checker away (although the grammar checker is over rated). But there are limits to my credibility and tolerance for making life “easier” unnecessarily.

My most vehement protest involves the movement to make driving a car “safer” by making it (the car, that is) more intelligent. Frankly, I think this will ultimately prove to be a bad idea, because there will be the inevitable corollary that the driver will become more stupid. I am not sure how this is possible in many (perhaps most) cases but I continue to be amazed at human ingenuity, so I’m pretty sure people will figure something out. I am convinced that global intelligence is a constant…

A perfect example is the movement by car makers to include high(er) tech gadgets to “improve the driving experience.” In Michigan, it is against the law to text on your phone or tablet while driving. So why does the car designers think installing a tablet as the primary device controller will be a good idea? In every single car I have ever owned I could control the radio, heater and air-conditioner, lights and wipers by feel (usually within a couple of hours of driving). I never had to take my eyes from the road to turn the radio to another station after turning the defrosters on. Each device has its own knob or slider switch that was in a fixed position and had a specific shape. I worked by feel. “Advanced” cars have a single interactive touch display to handle navigation, entertainment, climate control, and personal communication. All at the touch/swipe of the screen. In the dark without looking, ALL controls feel exactly the same…like the surface of the mirror over my bathroom sink. I must look at the dashboard to see which icon I need to touch to bring up another screen with additional controls. Will someone please tell me HOW (and WHY) this is a good idea?

Even more scary in the long run is the intrinsic intelligence that is being added to high-end vehicles (and will eventually trickle down to the rest of the market). The cars of tomorrow (later today, actually) have sensors that look out for and announce if there is a car in your blind spot, if you are drifting out of your lane, even apply the brakes automatically if you don’t react in time to avoid an accident with an obstruction in front of your car. (In fairness, the rear-view camera is a pretty good idea as even with the best of mirrors it can be hard to see directly behind your vehicle, and the self-parallel parking car feature in a couple of models is a feature I would engage in a heart beat…I haven’t parallel parked by car in several years unless I could pull in at either end. I would rather walk several blocks than risk a stress-induced heart attack.)

Ultimately, the end result of making the car safer and easier to drive is for drivers to become less attentive and more distracted than they already are. The last thing we need is drivers paying less attention to their surroundings and other vehicles than are out here already. As a former biker and truck driver you come to realize that you need to drive every car on the road, not just yours. You really have to exercise defensive driving when you are either driving a bomb (propane truck) or are surrounded by nature rather than several thousand pounds of metal (motorcycle and bicycle). You have to anticipate the actions of everyone else around you and prepare to take evasive actions at a moments notice. (From experience, I would rather drive behind a drunk driver than one possessing a cell phone. At least I can predict what the reaction of the drunk will be…a distracted phone user is totally random.)

Now the last and ultimate direction this will go is the vehicle that you don’t have to drive at all. Google is working on self-driving cars that will be able (?) to compete with human-directed missiles. I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this as I currently live in one of the most dangerous locales on the planet. I have seen more vehicles run red lights here in [REDACTED] than driving in vastly larger metropolitan cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco/Oakland. Waiting less than 5 seconds after the light changes to green in your direction is a modern form of Russian Roulette. To place enough computational power in a car to safely transit our roads without an organic brain in control seems highly unlikely anytime soon (say, in MY lifetime…or what is left of it). And besides, Google is too late, anyway. They already make vehicles you don’t have to drive.

They are called taxi’s.

Phred

post 35 of n

The Horror Of (Self) Servitude

I am possessing limited mobility. For the most part, I use the electric Amigo style carts when I go shopping. It is really hard for me to enjoy a spending adventure that starts with a ten-minute hobble from the parking lot, especially when I  push a cart the rest of my journey. I don’t do a lot of binge-shopping, preferring rather to go to a mega-store (like WalMart) where I can get everything I need in one trip, and deal with the problems of transferring the junk from my car to the apartment later. But it was not always the case.

Last millennium, shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct there were no 50 acre establishment providing every conceivable product a household might need (these days some stores have banks, restaurants, hair and nail salons, and even tax preparation services under the same roof). If you wanted meat for dinner, you went to the butcher. Fruit and vegetables came from the grocery store. If you needed oil for the car you went to the gas station (which, strangely enough today, only sold automotive things – oil, lamps and fuses, belts – and possibly candy bars, gum, and soda pop). Depending on who owned the store, you might be able to get beer and wine from the grocery, but liquor was definitely out of the question. The liquor store was your only choice there. Shoes from a shoe store, clothes at a clothing store (if you were near a Sears & Roebuck you could get both together but it was dependent on how large a town you were near). Drugs came from the drug store (who would have thought…). Bread, rolls, and cakes from the bakery, and so on.

Then the ice age ended and something called a Supermarket was created. This incorporated a meat counter, produce, vegetables, fruit, and pantry staples like canned goods and baking supplies. Suddenly grocery shopping became a manageable single trip rather than an all afternoon adventure. By going to the bigger store, you gained the ability to gather a larger selection of goods at the cost of a close relationship with the people behind the counter. At the meat market it was likely you knew the name of the person working since his name was on the sign. And quite likely he knew your name and how large a family you had, what your preferences were, and would be willing, nay happy, to provide you with a special cut of meat should you mention such a need. The shoe seller likely sold your parents shoes (and you when you were little) and was likely a cobbler as well, so he could resole your dress shoes to make them last another year or two. For a special occation, the pharmacy was likely the possessor of a soda fountain, so you could go in and get a cherry phosphate or chocolate soda in a paper cone glass. (No soft serve ice cream then, nor fast food anything.)

When you needed to refuel your car, you drove to the gas station and a bell rang as you pulled into the drive. Stopping beside the pump, a man would come up to your car and ask how he could help you. He would pump your fuel, wash your windows, check the oil level in you car (and offer to add a quart if you were low), and would make change for your purchase should you not have the right amount of money (no credit cards, ever…they didn’t exist!). All done with a smile, rain or snow, hot or cold. You never had to leave your car for all this service.

Time passes. I spend a year in California in the mid 1970’s and was exposed to Self-Serve gasoline for the first time. Funny, but the incentive for pumping your own gas was a seven cent per gallon discount (doesn’t sound like much today, but then it was about a twenty percent discount…say 60-70 cents today). It didn’t matter if you went to the cheapest off-brand station or the biggest conglomerate oil company’s brand. Get out of your car and you knocked off that discount. The explanation I heard at the time was the company could offer the reduced price because they didn’t have to pay the wages of an attendant to work the pumps like at a full-serve island. When returning to Michigan, I found there was NO price difference between full and self service stations. Guess who pumped my gas (especially in inclement weather)?

Today? I can only think of one (1) full serve station and that’s nearly 40 miles from here. In theory there are stations that will send an attendant out to assist people with handicaps, but there is a couple of things with these programs that trouble me. First, there is a button on the pump that calls for help. So, you still have to get out of the vehicle and go to the pump to call for someone to come and run the pump you are standing next to. Huh? Secondly (and more ominous) I have been told by clerks in several different stations that the buttons don’t do anything… no bells, whistles, klaxon horns, nothing. So mashing the “Call for Help” button only serves to remove the thin layer of dust from that small part of the pump. (And raises the effective blood pressure, aggravation level, and stress of the person struggling to get in and out of his or her car in the first place.)

But I can live with pumping my own gas. At least (most) stations have roofed over the pump islands so you are (mostly) out of the rain and snow while working on your car. Vastly more irritating are the mega-stores that have chosen to make checkout a do-it-yourself adventure. In the old days a store might have two or three checkout lanes, staffed by cheery clerks and baggers to haul your groceries to your car and to help load them into the trunk. Some of the larger stores I have wandered through might have thirty lanes or more, presumably to allow for efficient processing during holiday rushes. In the last ten years a third of these lanes have been converted to self-service or “fast lane” checkout centers.

The principle reason is cost reduction. A single clerk can stand at a kiosk standing at the end of a dozen of these robot tellers and attend to errors as needed. this results in eleven less clerks working than if a warm-bodied person filled each slot.  And the savings is greater during times of slack, where two or three isles are needed continuously but the other eight might not do enough business to cover a clerk’s expenses for the entire shift. So for the business it makes cents sense.

Not so much for the purchaser. For my part, I refuse to use these abominations for two reasons. The typical store is decidedly not user-friendly for shoppers using these Amigo contraptions supplied. The top two or three shelves are not reachable while seated, and frozen foods, canned beverages, and dairy products stored behind glass-fronted doors are a wistful dream away. Occasionally a kind stranger will fetch a product from the distant lands, but many a traveler has returned sadder and poorer for the lack of a carton of MooseTracks. Once my trip is nearly finished I am confronted by the design failure of these conveyor belt driven product scattering machines. They are too high to use easily (it’s hard enough to just haul a 4 kilo bag of potatoes from over the steering handles at the front of the cart and swinging it onto the standard lane: bend, lift, twist actions of the back are OK in singular, doing all at once is the prescription for serious injury). They are simply not fun to use.

A more important reason for me to decline to use these lanes is the one mentioned above in gas stations: no employee wages being spent. In essence, by using these devices you agree to become an unpaid employee of the store for the ten minutes you are ringing and bagging your own purchases. If you assume a wage of twelve dollars an hour, you have effectively saved the company two dollars they would have had to pay someone (actually, considerably more than $2 when you factor in all the added expenses like payroll taxes and unemployment insurance, probably closer to $3 when it’s all said and done). Most of my working life I feel I’ve been underpaid for the amount of work I’ve done, but to volunteer to be giving my wages directly to my “employer” seems wrong on so many levels.

So I end up waiting in the line that sells cigarettes for 45 minutes to checkout my ten items…

Phred

post 23 of n

Eulogy For A Fiend

I have a love/loath relationship with technology. As an edge baby-boomer (born late in the category) I grew up in a time slightly before miniaturization. People walking by with the original cell phones (slightly smaller than a walkie-talkie and just about as nice looking) were viewed as totally off the rocker. Today to be a person without a cell phone at all is a chargeable offense. (Truth be known, I miss phones with cords. They were greatly more convenient to pinch between ear and shoulder…and, yes, I know you can get Bluetooth headsets to eliminate even this level of neck strain.) My education and training has allowed me to stay reasonably adept in new technology, but daily I find my level of usefulness is getting smaller as pertaining to new devices and tech. I can program my VCR (and even set the clock, lest the …12:00…12:00…12:00… blinking cause seizures) but don’t own a DVR at all, so programming TV to watch upon demand in digital format is outside of my wheelhouse.

I am currently away from home, having returned from my road trip earlier this week to Indiana and checked into my home (apartment) for about 45 minutes before dragging back into the car to spend time with my kids (son, DIL, and granddaughter), requiring another two hour drive towards Detroit. As a result, I am required to borrow and share technology I am somewhat unfamiliar with. The computer I am working on is a HP laptop running Windows 7. This is awkward for a couple of reasons: it’s a laptop, and it’s running Windows 7.

I am uncomfortable typing on most laptops (and this one is no exception) because the keyboard is (1) smaller than my Microsoft Natural keyboard at home, and (2) the keys are flat, planar, and have a small travel when pressed.I am a largish guy (I carry a lot of weight in this organization) so the smaller profile causes my hands to drift away from the “home” location. Typing by touch works only 30% of the time (added challenge is I type Dvorak layout, thus requiring a half hour to setup the computer configuration every time I start working on a foreign computer). In addition, the mouse-substitute pad is located exactly where my hands want to rest after 10-15 seconds, causing the cursor to move erratically to various locations on the screen. With a USB mouse and another 10 minute configuration change, i have been able to disable the blasted thing altogether. I hope it works when Samantha tries to use her profile…

More disturbing is that I am now required to ask to use the kid’s Kindle to check my e-mail and WP stats because my I-Pad has died. I was gifted with a first generation apple device when friends upgraded all the technology in their house. I lived in a state of abject isolation (no internet or cable TV in my apartment) so it was difficult (to say the least) to keep in touch with friends and family through e-mail. (Facebook is completely out of the question). My friend Ryan provided me with his old device so I would be able to use WIFI to check mail from the lobby (by connecting to the office’s link). It was quite a change from finding out events of interest and importance only a few days after the fact rather than weeks or months later. (Rumor control suggests it is possible to stay connected with modern cell phones, but I have a whole other rant about owning the WORST CELL PHONE EVER DESIGNED AND CREATED BY THE FOULEST DEMONS FROM THE LOWEST PITS OF HADES! I will post more about it some other time when my blood pressure drops to an acceptable level).

While traveling to the south earlier this week, it stopped working sometime in the very early hours of Thursday morning. This was not exactly unexpected, as for about the last year the device was temperature sensitive. When used or stored in ambient air temperatures below about 68F it would indicate a dead battery and would shut off. Showing love to the pad by cuddling or holding it close to my heart until it was warm (or using an equivalent, like a heating pad or furnace register) would bring my friend back from the icy wastelands of near-death. I found myself sleeping with the thing beside me in bed (singing me to sleep and providing ambient background noises throughout the night).

This time, however, things have become more serious. After almost an hour of attempting CPR (compress against chest) and defibrillator use (plugging into charger) there was still no signs of life, just the slim red bar on an empty battery appearing for a few seconds after pushing the on button, then fading to dark. Several times a day since, I have tried (again and again and again and …) to revive my fallen friend without any success.

A couple of people have suggested it is time to set it aside and move on with my life. While in my more lucid moments, I can acknowledge intellectually the wisdom of this action, I am not able to accept this as the end of our relationship. I had a couple of week period where it was in a similar coma around Thanksgiving last year, and I think maybe it will come back if I just show enough care and affection. I know it is just a matter of time (the device has no camera and is unable to understand O/S beyond 5.1.1 so it is incapable of learning new tricks). And I have enough invested in our relationship not to even broach the thought of moving to Android or another system.

I have not lost hope, regardless of the seemingly inevitable result. Just a couple of weeks more to see if it will come back. I know it will…

My heart just couldn’t take having to go back to my Palm Pilot III…

Phred

post 16 of n

Information Overload, Confidence Underload

I was thinking about the amount of information anyone has access to today compared to when I was a kid. Doing a quick Google search for “information increase rate” led to this link http://www.emc.com/leadership/programs/digital-universe.htm which states information doubles every two (2) years. While I have absolutely NO way to prove or disprove this claim, experience since the last millennium suggests it could be valid. In any case, it meets or exceeds CEFGW standards (Close Enough For Government Work). In fact, even if it’s ten years for the double point, there is clearly more information today than there was yesterday.

Back when I was in school, THE go-to for information was the massive, 24 volume Encyclopedia Britannica (henceforth referred to as EB). Taking nearly 4 feet of linear space on the library shelf, it was the gold standard for writing papers or doing science projects. Listed as a resource in your bibliography, you were never questioned about the validity of the information in your documents. [Sadly, my family never owned the EB, rather the lesser valued Funk and Wagnalls version. The scars while not visible on the outside never the less reside deep within my psyche to this day.] Along with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, equipped with it’s own table to support the sheer weight of the tomb and the required magnifying glass to read its micro-font print), the library was the hub and home of all the information you could ever need or imagine.

Today, it appears most libraries are storehouses for DVDs and sources for off-line music. It is much more likely (and “convenient”) to grab your device and “smurf the web” for whatever information you need. And more than you need…or want. Since you are (as far as I know) reading this by means of the internet, you already know what I am talking about.  Easy, right?

But… there is a proverb that says “the man with one watch knows what time it is; the man with two is never sure.” The issue is not information, but rather confidence. There is so much information available (and, inevitably, not all in agreement), the problem is that of determining which information to believe. As a kid, when I got an answer, I KNEW it was right. Today, not so much. That Google search above resulted in “About 1,010,000,000 results (0.41 seconds)” and I only looked at the first page of results. I don’t mind using the info listed above regarding doubling rates but I would certainly hesitate if I had to risk my job on its accuracy.

And many people (my hand is up on this one, too) use the web as a source for making  medical or financial decisions, perhaps without fully understanding the potential dangers of accessing too much information. In essence, you are “trusting” the search engine to be wise enough to provide you with the relevant information you need to make rational, reasonable choices. I suspect real lives and money lies in the cross-hairs of this technology. And I, for one, am at least a little frightened at this thought.

Now, I am NOT a Luddite, nor would I suggest going back to the EB as the only fount of wisdom, knowledge, and minor hernias for little kids. I still use (and intend to do so) the WWW as a source for data prior to making critical (and not so important) decisions. I would suggest, then, using another ancient source that is available and nearly as effective for obtaining information: the librarian!

Well, maybe that is too specific an answer, but seeking input from other people (average ones as well as experts) to help make decisions is both wise and farsighted. Other people have access to experience and knowledge that you don’t. They also know people that have additional experience and knowledge (remember that “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” thing that went around years ago?) and in a short time you can have a vast source of additional input to help you make decisions. (In fairness, most of these other resources will also go on the web to get their knowledge…so maybe it’s not quite as effective as it was a decade ago, but you get the drift.)

In any case, my point is the more you look, the more you find, the more choices you can make, the more uncertainty develops about making the optimal choice. My suggestion is to pause a moment before you take action based on bulk information from the world. A sanity check is always a good idea and often a sanity saver before leaping off a tall building. Maybe gravity won’t apply to you this time after all, but…

Good hunting. One thing I am certain of… I now have a headache thinking about all this. Perhaps a nap is in order?

Phred

Post 2 of n