Tralfaz

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  • More hand suckage – Cortisone shot

    Ugh. My 6 weeks with a brace on my thumb didn’t help. I guess I am not surprised, at best it was going to help ease the bone on bone rubbing.

    Today, I went back to the hand specialist. He wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t improving. The degeneration of cartilage is not really reversible. Just controllable.

    Today I got a cortisone shot. The needle was much smaller than the one when I got a shot for my plantar fasciitis. Woo hoo. But it hurt a lot more than the shot in my heel. Hmm, I guess there are a lot more nerves in the hand.

    The doctor was surprised that he got most of the cortisone shot in. Most of the time he can only get about half. Of course, he is usually giving them to little old ladies though.

    It felt OK after. A little stiff, not surprising since 3cc of cortisone was injected. But the doctor warned me that the anesthetic would wear off and it would hurt bad this afternoon. Also that it might be a good idea to take some ibuprofen.

    No shit. it is 1:00PM, and it hurts like hell. I took 800mg, and will take 800mg more this evening.

    As I was leaving I asked the doctor how often I would need shots. He said that you get two. Total. So the goal is to go as long as possible until the second one.

    Gulp. I will keep taking my glucosamine, I will take ibuprofen. I will nurse this as long as I can.

    Sadly, I am certain that my days of playing guitar are coming to a close.

    Next steps

    When it gets worse, there is surgery, but it is not pleasant. It will be a fusing of the bones in the wrist to prevent out of plane motion. Typically not done until people are much older. I know that will be a bad bad day when that is the only option.

  • My online history

    My blogging/online history

    I started blogging late, in 2009. I was stuck in a bad job, that had gotten much worse due to some serious political wrangling by the executive suite.

    At first I just grabbed a wordpress.com site, and made a couple of posts that were really not meant to be read by anybody. Venting about the stupid crap that I saw every day.

    Very quickly, I wanted more. I had been spending time reading some of the major blogs about product managment at the time and wanted to get my own voice out there.

    A friend of mine, a photographer, was interested in improving her online presence, so I dove into hosting.

    the wordpress days

    I had my own domain that I bought back in 1998, and used for my main email. So I used that domain and found a web host.

    My first blog was based on WordPress, and it was easy to setup. I bought a commercial theme, did some simple customization, and I was up. I focused on product management, and a few personal items.

    WordPress served me well, but the ubiquity of the platform, and the spectrum of add ons was fun. I hooked my twitter handle to it, and a lot of other cool things.

    But, that era, WordPress was a common target of hackers. The first time I got hacked, my host helped me clean up. The second time, I got whacked really good. I had to wipe and start from scratch.

    When a few months later I got hit a third time, it was time for a change.

    enter Joomla!

    I had been playing with some of the more industrial strength CMS’s, starting with Drupal. While it was easy to setup, and very well appointed with features, it was a bit beyond what a novice needed. It does power the Economist, so it is a professional strength solution.

    At the start of 2012, I got involved with a local non-profit. A group that rescues retired Greyhounds, they were just getting started, and I got drafted to build their web presence.

    One of the other “communications” people, who would be helping with content creation and maintenance had experience with Joomla! so we decided to go that route. (Unfortunately, she quickly vanished, and I do virtually all the maintenance and content creation) The other option was WordPress, but by then, with the exploits I had to deal with, it wasn’t worth entertaining.

    A crash course in Joomla, creation of a custom theme, and the site went live in June (there was a quick and dirty WordPress site that just tided us over.)

    Joomla was a good intermediary between WordPress which while very flexible, is at its core a blog environment, and Drupal, a heavyweigh. A lot of moving parts, but there was a method to the madness. And, importantly, it had a pretty solid ecosystem of add ons, with mostly professional coders who would support, and take care on security. I was able to get the site up and running, build a front end access system that allowed the adoption people to maintain the “available” dogs list without needing to do any HTML coding.

    When I became comfortable with Joomla, I moved my wordpress site, tralfaz, home of product management to the Joomla platform. It wasn’t a seamless transition, but there were tools available to smoothe the transition.

    Joomla has a good balance between extensibility, flexibility, and performance.

    Hosting goes to hell

    One of the hazards of running your own website, especially if you don’t have a machine in a rack in some data center, is the hosting company you select can turn out to suck.

    I didn’t know who was good or bad at the time in late 2009, but I figured out that the rating sites were pretty rigged. The highly rated hosts surprisngly had lots of people trash talking them.

    I selected Media Temple. They seemed to be very professional, and had a really solid platform. I gave it a try, but quickly converted my trial into a paying service. They were expensive, but they had awesome performance, great flexibility, and support was fast and responsive. A win, win situation.

    When I was setting up the non-profit’s website, they had registered their domains with GoDaddy. I decided to go with GoDaddy’s linux based shared hosting. At $6 a month, it was less than 1/3 the cost of Media Temple. It was far more restrictive, and “idiot proof” than Media Temple. But it worked, and it was easy to setup the site.

    However, GoDaddy is a slimy company. They use every point of contact to try to sell you more useless stuff. More emails, more domains, etc. Every time I log into them I am barraged with their marketing. As a marketer, I understand the desire to use your opportunities to place product and ads.

    But I deal with it for this organization. The things I do for the hounds…

    In September 2013, I got the cheery email from Media Temple announcing that they were purchased by GoDaddy. Ugh. Regardless of the professions of it being a good thing, and that GoDaddy wouldn’t interfere, I knew that I needed to move my web properties.

    VPS, more control, and scary too

    A while before that I had contemplating going to the next level in hosting. Instead of being on a shared linux box with other users, who at times would consume all of the resources, I wanted to go to a VPS. Not quite dedicated hardware, but my own instance of linux, and a guaranteed IO and bandwidth. This was the nudge that put me over the edge.

    I did a bit of searching before I focused in on a new provider. A Small Orange had good reviews, and their site and product offerings were pretty solid I took the plunge, and signed up for a 2 core system with 1.5G ram, and 40 gigs of SSD storage. Getting it setup was trivial, and within 30 minutes I was up and running.

    The truth is I am a bit of a novice in linux. I have used it at various times in the past, but never connected to the world. But the standard configuration of the system offered by A Small Orange was solid and well configured.

    It took a while to move all my properties from Media Temple to A Small Orange, and ensure that they were properly setup, but it went smoothly.

    Coda

    I started as a complete babe in the woods. I knew enough unix CLI to be dangerous, but the awesome support of Media Temple kept me out of trouble.

    I started heavily reliant on the WYSIWYG editors built into WordPress, then Joomla. They worked well, but after editing and re-editing posts, things got pretty hosed. Particulary with the greyhound site, where I was constantly updating the main page.

    Add to that the fact that I would often get articles to post in Microsoft Word format, it was a real chore to import that text, and strip out the stupid shit Microsoft embeds into their files.

    So, I started using a text editor and hand coding a lot of HTML to get things the way I like. This worked well, but it was a chore, particularly for things with lots of formatting.

    Then I discovered markdown. I was unsure of the use of it at first, so while i learnt the basics, I never did anything with it. Then I figured out how to convert to plain HTML, and it has become a godsend.

    Now I do most of my work in markdown, and it is a snap to format, and make the text look just how I want it.

    There are a couple of good markdown editors on the Mac (I am currently using Mou) and an industrial strength one on the PC (markdownpad).

    Summary

    I am currently hosting my sites, my wife’s business site words by barbara, my friend’s photography site, and a few others.

    I still have the original wordpress.com site gander2112 where you are reading this now. My old posterous postings moved over, and this is my personal, for friends and acquaintences blog.

    I have learned a lot in the past 4 years, and I am sure I will learn much more.

  • Big Changes in 2014 for Casa Gander

    In 2012, I joined a great company, a cool place to work, and a true leader in Scientific instrumentation. Not quite a dream come true but a good move, particularly at this stage of my career.

    Things had been going well, then the Friday before the Thanksgiving week, the bombshell fell. All manufacturing of our products will move to Malaysia (where we have been manufacturing since 1974), and thus the operation as we know it in Arizona will be closed.

    Those of us in marketing and engineering were given an option. We could relocate to the home office in Santa Clara California, or we would be managed out by the end of April.

    Gulp. Flashback. I moved to Arizona in 2003 to take a job at Veeco Instruments. Prior to that I was in the San Jose area. I gladly left because I realized that my 1,093 Sq Ft condo would be all I could ever hope to afford.

    Moving back to that nutty housing and traffic area was something that I contemplated a couple of times, but the finances were never attractive. I even had a couple of good job offers in 2007/2008 to go back, but again the economics didn’t make sense.

    This time is different.

    1. The company put together a kick-ass relocation package. Truly top notch, with mortgage assistance, tax assistance, and as painless of a move as possible.
    2. Realizing that the cost of living is pretty out of whack there, mainly due to housing costs, the company is giving a generous salary increase. Enough to help me afford a $600K mortgage (my generous house here in Chandler was $245K in a great neighborhood, 12 minutes from the office)
    3. I am rapidly approaching 50. A decade ago that wouldn’t have been a huge deal, the fact is that becoming unemployed at 50 would be a serious risk in this economy. Far too many people never find meaningful work again. While I fully expect to be a greeter at Walmart after I “retire” I don’t want that to start today.
    4. I really like the company, and believe in the products, the leadership, and the ethos of the company. At this point in my career, and I have worked for some really slimy operators, this is a big deal. I know that I have a lot to offer, and as much as I grumble about my profession, I am quite good at it.

    So we are going to suck it up and move. I have until January 31st to officially accept or decline the relocation offer. In a week and a half we get a preview trip, which we will use extensively to scope out neighborhoods.

    I am terrified, but if we are ever to relocate back to the Bay Area, this is the only way we will be able to do it.

    This blog will be a useful outlet for my sojourn, so I hope you don’t get bored and leave.

  • My history with e-Readers

    I am a gadget person. I have always loved tech, and have often been on the leading edge of trends and an early adopter.

    One category that I dove into head first was the e-Reader trend. I first stumbled across them in 2006, when Sony launched the PRS 500. I didn’t jumped then, but I had my eye on them.

    At the time, I was traveling the better part of 50% of the time. Being a life long reader, and a SciFi junky, I was always hitting the used book stores and carrying 10#’s of book with me on my 2 week international trips. A definite burden.

    Of course, the idea of an electronic book with a large number of books stored on it was a dream.

    The first touchscreen reader, the Sony PRS 700
    The first touchscreen reader, the Sony PRS 700

    When Sony launched their second generation reader with the first “touch screen” reader, I pounced. I bought one of the first PRS 700’s, and loved it. I bought lots of books, and even found a fair number of public domain free books (the Doc Savage series was a good, quick read).

    I probably put 500K miles of traveling with that reader, a constant companion. I probably had 500 books on it at any one time. It allowed me to have a wide selection of titles, including my favorite Science Fiction, some contemporary fiction, some technical references, and some classics. My tastes range widely.

    Then one day in 2010, somebody decided they wanted it more than me. So I found myself without a reader.

    In the interim, Amazon launched the Kindle line of readers, and a pretty wide selection of ebooks. The first Kindles were toy like, and pretty cheesy feeling (I had many friends with them). However all my books were in ePub format (the “standard” ebook format), whereas the Kindle used a proprietary format, based on the common “Mobi” format.

    So I really didn’t consider the Kindle a suitable replacement.

    Off to Best Buy and I went home with the successor to the PRS 700, the PRS 600. Still touch screen, and my library transfered over smoothly. One of the nice things about the Sony readers is that they allow expansion of the onboard storage with the Sony memory stick pro, and SD cards.

    THe PRS 600 was a bit of a disappointment. The eInk display was fine, but the resistive touch screen made it full of glare. It also missed the built in LED light to read after dark, something that I did enjoy on the PRS 700.

    I used the PRS 600 for a long time, until I picked up my iPad in 2011. It was a far better reading experience, and since all my library was ePub, it was trivial to use it.

    It did have one other weakness. The battery sucked. It never gave me the expected lifetime for reading. I probably needed to charge it after 12 hours of reading. And it died early. By the end of the first year, the battery stopped holding a charge.

    Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to find one, online, and it was easy to replace. But like the original battery, its life wasn’t great out of the box. Whether Sony had to compromise on the battery capacity, or whether there was some constant draw, it was a bummer to have the battery expire as quickly as it did.

    Fortunately the arrival of the iPad, it pretty much was relegated to a drawer.

    Enter the tablet for reading

    In 2011, for my birthday, I splurged ang bought an iPad. While it didn’t have an e-ink display, it did have a great display, and I had no trouble reading on it. All my library moved easily, and I had tons of storage space.

    Of course, the iPad lasts for 12 hours of reading easily, so long plane flights are not a problem.

    But the display wasn’t as satisfying as the e-ink display. That and the constant distraction of email notifications, facebook, or even a quick hand of solitaire.

    The iPad still is in my stable, but I have augmented it with a first generation Google Nexus 7 tablet. Excellent display on a 7″ tablet, and good book reader applications. As well, a really good integration with the Google Play store books. I have bought many books from there, so it was really convenient.

    But its battery sucks really bad. I can get about 4 – 5 hours of reading before it shuts itself down. Ok if you can charge it every night, and don’t count on it for a long flight of reading. But that is a pretty big limitation.

    Back to a Reader

    As my travel schedule is going to ramp up this year, I know that I am going to want a reader for my books. I remain a voracious reader when I travel, so it is an easy choice.

    There are still a few options out there. Sony still has a full line. Kobo is a smaller, open option. And naturally the Kindle.

    A lot of players have come and gone. Barnes and Noble’s Nook line, while still available, is becoming a weak player.

    So, I started looking into the Kindle. I still have a huge library of ePubs, but that is less of a detriment than it used to be. The Calibre package makes it child’s play to convert to different formats.

    As I mentioned in my last post, the Amazon store has a great experience, and a large selection of books. And since I have been buying dead tree books from them for 14 years or so, they have a pretty good idea of my tastes.

    I started slowly, with the Kindle app on my Nexus and my iPad. A couple of free books to start with, and I think I can live with their eco system. My Paper White Kindle should arrive any day now. I expect it to have a great display, with a backlight, and a seamless ecosystem.

    Next up: a detailed review of the Kindle Paper White

    Once I get it, I plan on doing a thorough review. I will get it setup, connect it with my Calibre library, and try it in a variety of scenarios.

  • Mission Impossible (the series) Observations

    I love Netflix streaming. Now that I finally hooked it up to my XBox 360, and it is a much better integration than the Tivo series 3 box.

    One of the shows I have been watching is the original Mission Impossible series. I enjoyed it when I was growing up, and I still enjoy it.

    Although, there are some gaping holes in the plots, and miraculously, even when they are deep in eastern European communist countries, or communist countries in South America, everybody speaks english. The signs are all “readable”, and the sets are all hokey.

    But I still enjoy the shows. I can’t wait until I break into the Peter Graves episodes (still in the Stephen Hill episodes.) All cheese, but it is a tasty cheese.

  • e-Reader – Beginning to Cave

    I am an avid reader. I started in high school, voraciously reading science fiction. I can get through 3 or more Sci Fi novels in a week.

    I used to be a frequent visitor to the used book stores.

    E Readers, FTW!
    E Readers, FTW!

    The advent of eBooks was a godsend. Instead of raiding the used book stores, and carrying 6 or 7 books when I go on business trips, I use a reader.

    My first reader was a Sony. I got it before the launch of the Kindle, so it was the only real choice. I loved that thing. I could carry as many books as I wanted to carry, and always had fresh material.

    A couple years later, my Sony got stolen, and I replaced it. This was probably 2010 or so.

    In the mean time, the Amazon Kindle launched and pretty much took over the market. But I had a pretty large investment in ePub books, and they are not compatible with the Kindle. So the kindle was never a really an option.

    Fast forward to today. My sony has been through 3 batteries, and is feeling its age. I still have a shitload of ePub books (with and without DRM), and I read mostly on one of my tablets. Yes, it isn’t as satisfying as a good e-ink display in bright light, but it is convenient.

    But the tablet is not an ideal platform. The temptation to just drop to email, or do a quick check on Facebook is too great, and interrupts my reading.

    Kindle makes an appearance

    I was browsing Amazon a few weeks ago, and one of their free kindle books was tempting. I had known that there was an app for my iphone/ipad and android tablet. So I grabbed the free book, and the app and started reading. I reall liked it.

    The Kindle ecosystem has some great attributes:

    • The store is very well set up. It is easy to find what you are interested in. Plus, since I have been buying books and media from Amazon for 14 years or more, they know what I like. So their recommendations are on target.
    • The buying process is easy. No, I am not using whispernet, but it is real easy to buy a title and have it sent to one of my devices.
    • The selection on the store is amazing. Amazon truly does have the widest selection, and the prices are good. I mostly bought before from the Sony store, or the Google Play store. Rarely from the Apple itunes store.

    So, I am once again in the market for a dedicated reader. While the tablets are nice, and very servicable, a dedicated reader has some benefits, including the higher resolution e-ink screen, and vastly longer battery life.

    I could go back to Sony, but the quality and features have really degraded. Or rather they haven’t kept up. Kobo is another choice, but again, it is a distant 3rd place.

    Thus, it looks like I will be opening my wallet to buy a kindle. Probably a Paperwhite Wifi unit.

    I can use Calibre to convert my ePub library to kindle format. So I will be able to move over most of my collection seamlessly.

    I have held out against the Kindle for a long time. Early kindles seemed toylike and cheaply built, but it is clear that it has won the e-reader market.

  • Donut Shop Etiquette

    Since it is the last work day (and a half day at that) for the year, I stopped to get a couple dozen donuts for the gang. We have a great small chain of donut shops here in Phoenix, that I am happy to patronize.
    But there are some people that just don’t get it. Ordering is simple. You walk up to the counter, wait your turn, and order. Some friendly peddler of fat pills will be glad to put as many as you want in a bag or box, take your greenbacks and send you on your merry way.

     

     

    The rules:

    1. What is on display is what they have. If they have no boston cremes in the display, that is a pretty good indicator that they are out until more are made. No amount of telling the counter worker to “check again in the back” and exhortations of “are you really sure?” isn’t going to make it so.
    2. If you don’t hover around the counter, you won’t get served. It is assumed that they serve those browsing the glass cases in a first come first served fashion. If you walk directly up to the register, wishing to order from there, don’t be surprised when the staff doesn’t recognize your precedence. And don’t get uppity with the other people who are following the rules, and waiting their turn in front of the displays. (this is always an older, likely retired person)
    3. If you are ordering more than a few donuts, for the love of god, do not use the frigging drive through.
    4. Corollary to #3 above. If you are going to be rude enough to order two dozen donuts via the drive through, let the damn staff choose the ones to include. Don’t insist on picking them one by one.
    5. Don’t bitch about their coffee. Yep, it is standard, coffee service coffee, probably delivered by Sysco or Keystone. It isn’t some gourmet shit. You don’t go there for the coffee, you go there for the donuts.

    Seems simple, but I am astounded at how many ‘muricans fail to know the rules.

  • Back in the saddle – lunchtime exercise

    Today was the first time in almost a month that I was able to escape the office at lunch and work out. Heck, for that matter, it is probably the first time in more than 3 weeks that I was able to bring in my lunch.

    Launching a product, sales training, travel, and then having to run home at lunch to take care of the hounds, means that I have been severely curtailed in my lunchtime run/walk. Add to that brutally cold (for Phoenix) weekends, so I haven’t been able to cycle either.

    Today I got out for 4 miles at lunch. Felt good, but I am definitely out of shape.

    Next week we are shut down, so I will take that opportunity to get aggressive with both the exercise and diet.

  • The plug has been pulled – Canceled my MT hosting

    A couple of months ago, I awakened to a horrifying announcement. My web host, Media Temple, had been acquired by the sleaze peddlers at GoDaddy. Ugh.

    I had been hosting with MT since 2009, and had been very satisfied. Great performance, flexible, and when I needed it, awesome service. They were not an inexpensive solution at $20 a month, but I felt confident in paying the premium at the time.

    Fast forward to early 2012. I got drafted into putting up a website for a local non-profit that I volunteered at. They had registered their domain with GoDaddy, so I just sucked it up and got the mid tier GoDaddy hosting package, and set up their site.

    As a webhost, GoDaddy wasn’t terrible. The support was better than I thought, but the one thing that annoyed the fuck out of me was their constant blasting me with offers.

    Buy more domains! Really CHEEP domains!

    UPGRADE your email!

    Blah blah blah. Being a marketing person, I understand the power of promotion, and generating interest. But FFS, web domains are not an impulse buy. The same with hosting upgrades.

    Of course MT swore that they wouldn’t change one bit by being bought by GoDaddy. That changed in mid November when I got email blasts from MT offering a service to “Tune up my website in advance of the holiday rush”.

    Last weekend, I moved the last of my web properties to my new VPS, backed up all the files on my MT site, and put it all in a safe place.

    This AM, I started the process of canceling my account. I will technically have access to it until December 29, but I am done. The plug has been pulled.

    As my domains come up for renewal, I will be moving them to a different registrar. By the end of 2014, I will be completely out of MT and the taint of GoDaddy.

    I do wish the staff and team at MT luck, but I have had enough experience with GoDaddy to know that I want to have nothing to do with them, AT ALL.

  • Movie Review – Alien

    I remember when I first saw Alien. It was 1979, I was a freshman in high school, and our biology teacher (Fred Granger) took us on a field trip to see “Alien”. I recall his words: “This is far more likely what an extra-terrestrial encounter will be like…”

    The creature that bursts out of John Hurt's chest
    The creature that bursts out of John Hurt’s chest

    From the first suspense-filled moment when the Egg exploded on John Hurt’s character, to the chest burster scene, to the final scene where Sigourney Weaver finally finishes it off before heading for home, it is a roller coaster ride of epic proportions.

    I recall tossing my popcorn when the first encounter of the alien, and never stopped being on the edge of my seat.

    The cinematography is typical Ridley Scott, gritty, realistic, and engaging. Mr. Scott has an eye for detail and this movie is no exception. Unlike the contemporary “Star Wars”, where the characters were pristine, the ships were spotless, and the characters somewhat stiff and wooden, Scott brings a realism that makes the movie “pop”

    Part of the brilliance is the design of the stages of the alien, and the set of the alien ship where it all began were done by H. R. Giger. Mr Giger’s work is legendary, gracing the cover of the ELP album “Brain Salad Surgery”, his surrealistic style really fits the film.

    There were three sequels, all decent, but none of them matched the brilliance of the original for visceral reaction, suspense, and raw terror factor.

    Ironically, one of the contemporary critical reviews complained that Ridley Scott didn’t do enough character development of the cast. FFS, how much character development do you need? 7 people, one monster on a spaceship.

    A true tour de force, and a spectacular film, nearly 35 years on. I am glad I have a copy and I still get a thrill watching it.