Back to It

The community where I live, called Ka'imuki (literally, the ti plant oven, perhaps based on the heat) had a block party to celebrate the completion of renovations to the street and sidewalks. I'm not sure the celebration was for the ending of the months of traffic problems caused by the construction or the upgrade.

In either case, SWMBO and I spend almost three hours standing listening to music in the middle of the closed street on Saturday. On Sunday, I spent six back and neck straining hours painting the ceiling of our back house. I underestimated how much paint would be needed by half when I bought two gallons (actually, each can could hold one gallon but like many other things, you don't get a gallon anymore, you get about half-a-quart less). I did not think the "pop corn" type ceiling that we have would take up so much paint. But I guess since there is so much surface area that more paint is needed than a plain flat surface would. So I need to buy another two gallons and will spend some time after work this week completing the ceiling before the carpets go in on Friday and Saturday.

As mentioned earlier, Friday is Admissions Day, a state holiday. So there will be no post on Friday. In fact, posts this week may or may not be very long because I have so much to do at work and home.

Moving Modem

For the most part, I've been happy with my decision to go with Road Runner cable modem service rather the much more expensive, and slower, ADSL from Verizon. But recently, my Motorola CyperSURFR Wave Cable modem (see it here, now discontinued) began to have problems. Access would be lost and for awhile, cycling the power and removing and reinstalling the cable in seemed to help. But when I got home on Friday, the amber "test" LED was flashing.

I tried doing the regular things listed above but while I could get the power, PC, and cable LEDs to stay green, the test LED continued to blink. I called the service desk and left a message to call me back (waiting on hold is pretty much a waste of time as customer service has no meaning to a monopoly company, cable or ADSL). By lunch time on Saturday, having not received a call back, I called again and left a message. An hour later I got a phone call and we went through the same drill as listed above, to no effect.

I told the service person I would be willing to come in and exchange the modem but they insisted on setting up a service call. Unfortunately, the first one available was in two weeks. Not wanting to wait two weeks without service, I drove down to the nearest cable store and exchanged the Motorola for what Road Runner is currently installing, a Toshiba PCX-2500 (see it here). I kind of liked the Motorola but I guess I have to use whatever the cable company is now using.

In either case, I was back up and running in 30 minutes from the time I left the house to arriving back and powering up. So much for waiting two weeks.

Heavenly Bodies

No, not that kind. The celestial kind. I am continually delighted by images of objects in space. I'm not sure why, but I find them beautiful and awe inspiring. The Chandra X-ray observatory released one such image recently (see the story here from Cosmiverse). Enjoy.

Aloha!

Use This

Most people, who read the Daynotes sites, know of web usability guru Jakob Nielsen (see his site here). But he's not the only one out there reminding people to keep in mind what the purpose of a commercial site is: namely, to make it easy for people to buy your product, not admire your latest Flash enabled JAVA controlled splash screen.

InfoWorld's Brian Livingston (see the column here ) has a link that led to a 404 error. But I took a look around the site and found this interesting link here to an interview with Vincent Flanders - author of "Web Pages that Suck" and "Son of Web Pages that Suck" (see his site here). As you might guess from the titles, Flanders looks at usability from a little more flamboyant perspective than Nielsen. Nonetheless, the main point is the same: design your site so that your customers can easily buy your product.

What seems to be a major difference between Nielsen and Flanders (sounds like the name of a book publisher) is that Flanders is more pragmatic than Nielsen. As I understand Flanders, who comes from a marketing background, what is appropriate for one type of site may not be for another. For example, if you are in the movie/music industry, you may have to include a bit of Flash to attract the type of customer that would be interested in such a site.

Continuing on with the theme of knowing who your customers are, Flanders says to continuously check your logs to see what your customers are using in the way of browsers. If most of your customers are using older versions of Netscape, then maybe you don't want to use cascading style sheets, no matter how kwel they may be.

As a small digression, Flanders does a small rant:

What really bothers me -- and I hinted at it earlier in our conversation -- is that Web design is becoming almost irrelevant. It's all about programming now, which is good for me because I'm an author and almost all of the documentation for software just sucks. I'd put up a site called DocumentationThatSucks but we all know almost all documentation sucks. Especially the Open Source and Pseudo-Open Source software. You generally can't install the software if you follow the directions the authors provide.

In the end, Flanders reminds us that the bottom line is the bottom line. Therefore, a commercial site should always be focused on the customer, not the web designer. Good advice.

Aloha!

Clear Skies

I will understand if you want to avoid reading more about the events of September 11. So if you don't want to read one account of the unprecedented decision to clear the skies of all aircraft over the U.S. that day, then skip on down. For those that do, you can follow this link here to the USA Today article about the people who had to make difficult decisions while having only fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory information. Decisions that ran counter to all the training they had received up to that time, but in the end, was probably the right one given the situation - reduce the noise to capture the signal.

As an aside, the article closes with this chilling order from a United Airlines captain to his co-pilot as they fly high above the Pacific: "If someone tries to come in that door, I don't want you to hurt him," Hosking says. "Kill him."

Clear Sailing

I'm happy to see that fellow Daynoter Brian Bilbrey made it safely back to his new home. I know he is not of the believing persuasion but I'm sure a whole herd of angels went along for the ride. And yes, I am still with him in boycotting the evil entertainment empire by not going to movies or buying music from anyone except independents. Now if only I can remember he's now on East Coast time...

Clear and Simple

The MorningPaper(r) has an article on the most popular given names for dogs. As you may guess, the names here are a little different from other places in the US. For example, the top five female dog names are: 1. Hoku (Hawai'ian for star, as in the twinkling lights in the sky, not the people on American Idol), 2. Lady, 3. Coco, 4. Princess, and 5. Lani (beautiful). For male dogs the list is 1. Max, 2. Koa (a Hawai'ian tree revered for its strength), 3. Buddy, 4. Lucky, and 5. Rocky.

Some of the stranger ones are related to foods: Ahi Poke (tuna tartare), Tofu, and Shortribs. Then there's "Honey", as in Honey, I'm home. One of the funnier is Waaassssaaaabiiii. But the one I like the most is just plain old "Ralph".

Ralph is one syllable, is not harsh sounding, and has a comfortable connotation. When we get a dog I want to name him Ralph. Of course, SWMBO may have other thoughts on that <whack>. Yes dear. Whatever you say dear.

Aloha!

Coming of Age

Sometimes I get discouraged when I see people trying to control the flow of information. Whether it be the federal government trying to protect special interests like the movie or music industries or politicians lying to us on TV so they can be elected it is a sorry sight. But over and above that, it is a dangerous thing. Let me explain.

In the pre-Industrial age, craftsmen typically performed all of the discrete steps needed to create whatever they were making. From start to finish, they did it all. Hence, it was critical that they have knowledge of, and mastery of, many different skills.

Later, in the industrial age, the making of things, whether sewing pins or battleships, were broken down into their component processes. That is, if you were making a pin, a study was done to note all the individual steps required to manufacture said pin. Once that was done, people were assigned to one step of the process, and only that one step. And that's what they did, day in and day out. Their role was to take orders and do nothing else. Especially not think or act on their own. In other words, they were merely part of a large machine and they had no need to know anything else.

But with the coming of the information age, things suddenly changed. Individuals were now given what the desired end result was (i.e., a sewing pin), but were left to their own devices to come up with a method to make one. Instantaneously, the most important part of the process was the thinking individual (or workgroup in many cases).

But in order to reach their goal, workers need information. They need, among other things, cost projections, marketing surveys, and knowledge about the latest manufacturing techniques and materials. They also need to be able to understand and process the information so that it can best used in attaining the objective.

Yet, how can these people do their jobs if the very information they need is controlled or blocked by an elite class? What would our nation look like if we didn't have a free flow of information? How would you do your work if you couldn't get the data you need to make an informed decision? Who would you vote for if you knew nothing about the candidates except what they deigned to allow you to know?

To a great extent, our nation is where it is because of the free flow of information allows us to make smarter decisions than the other guys. This is a competitive advantage of tremendous importance. I for one, don't want to think about where we would be as a society that would control such information. But, I fear, that is where we are heading. Dark times ahead, indeed.

Aloha!

Admissions Day

Today is a state holiday commemorating admission as a state of the United States. Some people will celebrate, others will mourn. Which is which depends on as much on the color of your skin as how much money you have. In either case, Lord willing and crick don't rise, I'll see you folks back here on Monday.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!