I bailed on facebook today. I’ve been thinking about doing it for awhile and I’m sure some of you have heard me talking about it. I’ve already have a few people send me email and texts as if I had died which is kind of funny. I also had a few congratulatory emails, as if I had started recovering from some kind of addiction. I am not dead. I am not mad. I am not insane. There is no one particular issue that made me do it, it’s just been going on in my mind for awhile. I’m not angry with anyone or anything, I just don’t feel like it is enhancing my life. I’ve been trying to get rid of things in my life that don’t make me happy and facebook is a distraction at best and stressful at worst. I like seeing people’s pictures and knowing what they are up to, but when it really comes down to it, I’m not sure I actually feel more connected to anyone. There are a handful of people that I am in regular touch with via phone, text, etc and that really is enough for me. I’m happy with a few meaningful connections rather than hundreds of random updates and farmville stats. I guess I like my interpersonal relationships to remain interpersonal rather than being community friendships where things are constantly taken out of context or viewed differently than intended. It’s a lot of drama that doesn’t need to exist in my world. I also like having a feeling of at least a little control of what about me is out in the world. I’ve recently started paying cash for almost everything I can which has both made my monthly statement easier to read and made me realize how much money I spend on really dumb shit. Technology is a wonderful thing, but the goal of technology should be to automate and simplify tasks in order to make things easier for people or make it so they have more time to do the things they love doing. It should enhance your life in a positive way. I found myself almost manically checking facebook for updates. I checked it yesterday during a softball game with my nephew. That’s fucked up. Anyway, there are lots of reasons for doing it and almost all of them are positive. I’m not saying everyone should do it, but I feel good about it.

I have made very few friends in the time I have lived in Oregon. I am kind of an introvert and have always been socially awkward around people I don’t know. That being said, the few friends I have made are good ones. One in particular I met through my wife. He is incredibly clever, very funny, and just generally fun to be around. He has some really interesting views of the world and when I hear them the always get my brain going off on some tangents. This one is inspired by the fact that he doesn’t believe in stem cel research and genetic engineering…

Show me the downside of stem cel research and genetic engineering that outweighs the benefits. Any conversation prompted by that challenge will end up being hypothetical; however, if you really dig in and think about it, there won’t be any. The worst things that they will bring is perfect and unethical test-tube super humans, bio-weapons, and unintentional/intentional super-plague. Those suck, no doubt about it. The problem is that those are minor problems in the grand scheme of things. If all of those things happened right now, the human race would be wiped out. If they don’t happen right now then something else (sun consuming the earth, whatever) wipes out the human race. The difference is that one of them has so many possible benefits that it completely outweighs the risks. The very technology that could cause those problems could also be the solution to the problems caused if you think long-term.

Let me put it a different way. If you could go back in time and stop the invention of the car, then you could theoretically save every person that died in a car accident. That is millions of lives saved. The problem with that is that the mobility that cars allow itself likely allowed those people to exist in the first place. If cars didn’t exist, than most of those people you might have saved would likely never had existed. Technology always introduces problems, but it also solves them eventually too.

My wife made a comment that I am pessimistic the other day. I really took offense to it. I am the definition of an optimist. I always hope that things will work in my favor. What I don’t do is pretend that life is fair. I try to think of all of the things that can go wrong and I plan for those things. When they don’t happen (which is almost all the time) I have a great time. When they do, I clean it up and move along. Technology works the way I do. It plans for the worst, hopes for the best, and addresses unseen problems as they arrise.

When I think about the future I look forward to the day when diseases will be cured and life extended through technology whether it be stem-cel research, genetic engineering, or any other sci-fi kind of stuff you can think of. I love Ray Kurzweil’s view of the future because it is so optimistic. I look forward to those days. They are coming and they will be here faster than anyone can imagine. There will be people that try to screw it up or use it for evil purposes; however, for every one of them there are more people who will shore it up and make it work the way it was intended. For every person that tries to genetically engineer the perfect human or the perfect virus there are more people who will question the ethics and engineer the cure. For every robot built for military purposes there will be more built to help the elderly get up the stairs or better yet, research to make it so people don’t have to fall apart physically.

You really have to take a step back and think longer term than a few years or even your lifetime. Everyone gets scared when you talk about robots being humanlike. The always think of the Terminator movies. The problem with that is that the Terminator movies are completely one-sided as far as thinking of the future. They talk about building robots that decide to attack humans as if the technology to develop the robots would be limited to the robots. It works both ways. The technology that allows the robots to play the human games would also allow humans to play the robot ones. While Terminators are trying to infiltrate human bases, the humans wouldn’t be shitting their pants trying to detect them with dogs, they would be injecting themselves into the robot infrastructure. It eventually ends in stalemate and moves on in a way that benefits everyone. Enslavement of the human race by robots is pretty unlikely and it is a dumb reason to be scared of the future. Anyway, Back to reality…

My point is this. You have to think past the first problem that technology will cause and think about all of the solutions that it is ultimately capable of. Humankind is intolerant of abuse of power which is why revolutions happen when power is abused. That will always be the case. Refuse to be scared of what a few bad apples might do with technology and embrace the direction that millions will move with it, forward.

Okay, so have any of you seen the new ad campaign for Vista? It shows a bunch of people using Vista only Microsoft tells the people using it that it is a new OS called Mojave. Sure enough, everyone likes it. It’s faster, it has cool features, gadgets are cool, blah blah blah. Then Microsoft tells them it is Vista and no one can believe it. I was going to write a blog about that very thing but then Microsoft beat me to it.

I’ll come out and say that I am not a big fan of Microsoft on a lot of things; however, Vista does kick ass. The people whining about how it is slow and doesn’t run on their ancient computer need to suck it up. It wasn’t built for old computers. If you have an old computer then stick with XP. XP is solid. Run Ubuntu if you want, it’s cool too (if you don’t need exchange and don’t mind spending time getting it set up to do what you need to do). If you have the means though, Vista kicks ass. It runs fast as hell on my laptop. It’s snappy. It looks good. Gadgets are way cooler than I thought they would be. It’s just good.

I do a lot of development in Python using PyQt for Gui design and Eclipse as an IDE and I have not had a single problem with any of it. It all runs great, it looks good (a testament to Qt as well). I don’t know what else to say. I am pretty critical of software and gadgets that make big promises and then punk out on them and so far Vista hasn’t pissed me off. People complain about it always asking permission to do things; however, that only happens when an app is doing something it probably shouldn’t be. Well written apps behave. If I could talk Microsoft into changing anything it would be the way the networking configuration is set up. Opening 5 windows to change my IP is a drag; however, how often do I really need to do that?

Anyway, since Microsoft is building an entire ad campaign on this idea I am not going to go into tons of detail as to why I am happy with Vista. I suppose I have been so busy getting things done that I haven’t had time to write up anything on Vista. That is a good sign. Microsoft seems to be on track and lately they are coming around to the open source community (ironpython actually works, they are throwing money at apache, etc). Microsoft out from under Bill Gates might be a company that people get can excited about without feeling dirty.

Linda Dahlstrom is a health editor at MSNBC.  She has reviewed the hula chair and the article is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time.  It has everything an article needs to be funny: veiled sarcasm and engrish examples.

These is the first of two examples:

Promotional materials that come with the Hula Chair say that a “fat waist and belly are caused by the lack of sports and accumulation of fat on these parts.” That is exactly my problem: No sports and fat on my waist have resulted in, well, a fat waist.

This one is pretty good too:

But working your muscles isn’t supposed to be comfortable, right? That’s the point. No pain, no gain.

I’m just not sure a diaper rash is the right kind of pain. One of the days I tested the Hula Chair I wore a skirt with a rough texture. Add the friction of an hour’s worth of gyrating movement on the chair’s seat and a little sweat and the next morning I was digging through a cupboard for an old jug of baby powder. Clothing wasn’t on the manufacturer’s list of 27 “safety points for attention,” but it did warn away those with “serious bleeding wounds,” people with “equipment trapped inside” and “persons that need a rest cure” from using it. Also, stay off it when you’re wet. Word to that.

Awesome article with the icing on the cake being the sweet video of this poor girl getting her ass kicked by the chair.

Radiohead’s nude performed by printers, hard drives, etc.

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.