DanG BloG: yet another DanG BloG

I just found out a former team mate passed away.  Irwin Feig of Buford, Georgia died Monday, June 23, 2008.  We'll miss you, Irwin.  Claudia's blog is here.

 

Somebody sent me a link to Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" TEDTalk.  Wow.  That's the best and most empassioned talk I've ever seen on the subject.  Definitely worth a watch:

Sometimes, there's a geek gadget that just screams out... "It's about time!"...
The Doctor Who T.A.R.D.I.S. USB Hub

I haven't verified it myself yet, but it does allegedly make... THE SOUND

Just reading through some presentations and found out about digital divide network. Pretty cool. From their front page, "The Digital Divide Network (DDN) is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN, you can build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles. You can also find the archived discussion lists of the DIGITAL DIVIDE listserv. Membership is free and open to all, so join today!" Excellent. Would seem to go nicely hand in hand with the Global Education & Learning Community Curriculum Wiki now dishing curriculum at a web terminal near you. Their mission, from their front page, "is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula, and it's all free!" Excellent times two. Or +1. Or something to that effect.

I'm still trying to decide if the Second Life report on fighting the Front National Party is for, umm... "real" or not. I've dabbled in Second Life and find it interesting. But, good grief... you'd think the whole "shoot anyone you don't agree with" mentality would be less active in an environment where you have to use a well heeled computer desktop to access the environment. Guess not... Taken from the SL blog posting above:

Amidst the comments like, "You can't talk to these guys, that's why I'm standing here shooting them..." I find it amusing that somebody had sense of humor in their attacks... "One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they'd explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel. A few native English speakers joined the fray, though at least one missed the point in either direction, unhelpfully shouting "The French stink! Get out of Second Life!" and the like amid the conflict."

This is a test blog entry.  Had this been an actual blog entry, you would have been informed where to tune your RSS aggregators in your area.  This is only a test blog entry.  8^)  OK, seriously, I am trying out the blogging capability of a browser called Flock.  It is a mozilla/gecko derivative and purports itself to be all about ... "

technorati tags:Flock

The kids and I planted a few caladiums earlier on in the season and they're doing quite well. Click on the pictures below if you want the bigger versions. The fun thing about these for me, is they were a freebie handout as we were leaving the garden center last time around. We were at a place called the Grass Pad here in the Kansas City area, checking out with some gardening odds & ends. The checkout lady handed us a bag and said, "Here, try these. They might work, and then again they might not. If they don't work, then at least they were free." Thank you, Grass Pad lady! They worked! 8^)

So, in order for me to grouse about my particular latest experience with tech support, I must first confess my work-from-home setup:

1. a home
2. SBC DSL connect to #1
3. various computers attached to #2 with an eye toward trying to stave off the virus-of-the-hour by running Linux and/or Solaris and/or something other than Windows.
4. A desire to spend "spare time" doing something besides computer admin

I was trying to display a remote X11 installer app to my home system. It's worked before. For some reason, it didn't work today. OK, with #4 firmly in hand, what the heck's going on?

• #2 provided me a little 2Wire gateway, which has a built-in firewall, etc.
• double-check there is indeed an entry in the firewall for X Windows / X11, yup, still there, check...
• double-check that the other than Windows desktop has X11 running and is authorizing the remote system to display locally, check...
• try to run again, and... no joy in Mudville, mighty X11 has struck out

So, time to find out how many levels of tech support this might cost me....

• login to #2's 24x7 help chat, which today only seems to want to work with Internet Explorer. Eeewww.
• #2 tech support advises to either login to 2Wire or call up SBC DSL Support line (thought that's where I was???) so, on to the next level
• SBC DSL Support has a nice enough young lady, to whom I was routed because I chose Macintosh SBC DSL tech support instead of Windows SBC DSL tech support (it was an either/or, there was no "or if you don't think your issue is related to your desktop at all but rather your DSL modem's karma rating" option)
• I had to explain several times, that, no, "X11 / X Windows" doesn't mean I should call the Windows SBC DSL tech support instead of the Macintosh SBC DSL tech support, but rather, this is DSL Modem Firewall question
• after about 45 minutes of her dissappearing to check with a supervisor (total time invested, about 90 minutes thus far), I get that I need to talk to firewall tech support, so please call 415-633-5400 (huh? No 800 number? Hmm...)
• upon using my corporate calling card (this was work related, after all), I'm informed that the number I'm dialing is unavailable, please hold to speak with a specialist (What? A specialist in explaining why I can't use my corporate calling card? OK...)
• the corporate calling card specialist eventually intimates that the number above is a restricted number, and where was I calling to, and what was it about? ("Well, gosh, 415-***-**** would seem to be California, and I'm told this is for SBC DSL Modem Firewall support...")
• I guess I didn't answer correctly, so I'm told, sorry, you can't get there from here
• I incurred the long distance charges to call the above number which turns out to be ZoneLabs (I'm going to guess they have something to do with the firewall built into 2Wire's gateway distributed to SBC DSL users, Macintosh Special Division)
• figured out from the phone menu which option tech support for ZoneLabs was supposed to be and...
• "ZoneLabs" does not accept tech support calls at this time, thank you for calling.

In summary, what used to work just fine now does not, and I'm several hours into the tech support dance, up the ZoneLabs creek without a tech support paddle. In retrospect, I think our SBC DSL person (Macintosh Division) heard "firewall" and automatically sent me over to an unrelated firewall product vendor. My question for the jury is, I'm a geek, what do normal people do? OK, OK, not display X Windows program from remote customer sites to their home office setup, apparently. Good point! 8^)

I Got asked by a friend the other day, "what's a blog?" I'm a computer guy so I should know these things. Well, quite. The interesting thing to me, though, was the context. It wasn't to track some groups wargaming campaign or a Nascar fan chat, but rather, as a forum for home schoolers to communicate about home schooling issues. Wargaming/NASCAR/etc. strike me as a luxury for those with (too much?) time on their hands, which is a great thing, and beats the heck out of, say, having to work 3 jobs to maintain an existence or hiding from an invading force's executioners. Some folks even try to entertain themselves and others in their spare time. It struck me, though, that given an internet connection among home schoolers (or any group wishing to communicate amongst themeselves without having to check a news group or a web page or e-mail...), the availability of blogging tools (readers & writers) seems to be very good (plug for my current favorite talking blog reader, Juicy News Network over at java.net). I wonder if the state of blog/wiki/rss/etc. is to a point where it's a different enough medium to enable folks communicating that previously wouldn't have bothered or weren't able to overcome the steep barriers most computer things tend throw up in the face of ease of use. (Hey, the thing you just downloaded (yes, you just downloaded something...) requires the .net framework which you need to go download first by clicking here... oops, that page has moved... welcome to the .net developer network, would you like to review a video of someone discussing collection framework design? What do you mean you just wanted to run a program? You see no simple user experience here. You are in a maze of shifty little web sites, all slightly different...)