Posts

There are four things that have become increasingly irritating to me: The increase in advertising in damn near everything; The expectation that everything requires an app; The increasing “connectedness” of the things we use; and, the shift to a subscription model for almost all software. Today I want to focus on the subscription model. The Issue The main issue is that so many software companies have shifted to a subscription model for their software. But it’s not just software. Certain “features” of appliances and cars, and it seems many other things that we use and depend on have increasingly starting requiring subscriptions for their use. Some of this parallels the increasing expectation that we will be online and connected and a shift toward connected services which basically means that unless you are connected you don’t have access to those services. ...

My wife and I have been on the road for ten days. Starting in Atlanta, we flew to Portland, ME where we spent three days. Portland was an interesting experience. We live a suburban life, so going to a city that is alive with people, tourists and locals, was quite a change. At the same time, it was actually a lot fun. I wasn’t sure what I expected. The weather was awesome and actually a bit warmer than we expected. The town itself had a good feel to it and it’s actually one that I might want to revisit at some point. There were several things that surprised me, though. ...

For the last year or so I’ve been running a Proxmox server that hosts several virtual machines (VM) one of which, itself, hosts multiple docker images for services on which I rely. In addition to the VMs, I also run several LXC containers on the Proxmox server that provide some additional resources I frequently use. While watching some videos a few days ago I ran across a video where the presenter was demonstrating the use of XCP-ng. If you’re not familiar, XCP-ng is similar to Proxmox in that it is a type 1 hypervisor. A type 1 hypervisor is the operating system that allows one to run multiple VMs as if they were on the bare metal. ...

Years ago I worked as an RN in a physical rehab hospital. Patients would come to the hospital for one to several weeks following health events that impaired their function in some way. That is, they would come following a stroke, a cardiac event e.g. MI or heart surgery, orthopedic surgery on their knee or leg, or following an accident in which their mobility was impaired. There were other reasons why they came, but all came with the intent and expectation of receiving rehabilitation therapy to help them return to a level of activity and function similar to, if not the same as, what they were doing prior to the event. ...

Back around 2005 I started an on-line masters program with a well-known and highly promoted online university. In one of my classes I had written what I thought was a well-done treatise1 in order to fulfill some course requirement. I did not score well on that paper. When I asked why, I was told that it did not meet the page requirements. I pointed out to the instructor that as a communications major in business school I was taught that you should write succinctly in order to clearly communicate your thoughts without burdening the reader with undue verbiage. I was taught not to fill your writing with fluff – say what you need to say then get out. ...

The ultimate goal of all education is, or at least ought to be, to teach the individual how to learn. In my mind, what they learn is less important than that they learn how to learn. why? Because if you know how to learn, there is no limit to what you can learn! Not only is there no limit to what you can learn, but you will have the skills to teach yourself what you need to know. Part of that process, at least in my mind, is learning how to question what you see or hear, to challenge your own assumptions, and to have a desire to seek out answers to the questions you have. ...

As I’ve noted in several prior posts I self-host a fair number of services on my local devices. Now, there are any number of reasons why someone would choose to self host. For some people it is the challenge of learning new skills. For others it’s about having a sense of control over your data. For others, still, it’s about ensuring the future availability of services as it’s well known that many services fall to the wayside overtime and nothing is more frustrating than to become accustomed to using a particular service only to have it disappear one day. ...

Periodically I pause and wonder at the changes that have taken place over the last 30 years and how much the internet has infiltrated our lives. And, like many others, I wonder whether the ubiquity of the internet is a good or bad thing. I started my own internet journey in the late 1980’s with a dial up connection to Prodigy. Over time I moved through AOL, then Compuserve, then to a local provider, Homnet, in Warner Robins, GA. It would be several more years before I was connected full-time. ...

As the owner of an ADHD brain, one of the biggest challenges I face is balancing the need to build routines in order to be productive with the need for new and novel mental stimulation. You see, I know that I need to build routines. I also know that maintaining routines in the face of constant distraction is hard. And, to be honest, I find that conflict somewhat interesting. How it All Began Back well before I realized that I may have ADHD and before I sought out validation of that suspicion I recognized that about once a year, usually around February, I would become highly dissatisfied with my work environment and end up changing jobs. I initially attributed this to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD, of course, is the seasonal depression that supposedly comes from the lack of sunshine during the winter months. Given that during January and February of each year I usually went to work in the dark, worked inside a building with no natural light, and then drove home in the dark, that certainly seemed a reasonable conclusion. That conclusion was further supported when I took a job that had me driving around town all day, going in and out of buildings, to service computers. During that time I didn’t seem to be affected by the depression in the same way. ...

I write every day. Most days I need to lookup information so that I am providing support for my writing. To assure the reader that I’m not just making stuff up, I like to provide references for my comments. I am, after all, an academic and, as such, it is incumbent on me to provide accurate, valid information. References provide evidence of validity. Way back in the day doing a digital search required some fairly advanced skills in building a search query that would give you the results you needed. Today, thanks to advanced search engines like Google, even a sloppy, half defined search prompt will give you the results you’re looking for. The challenge, though, is determining whether the results are truly valid. That is, the search engine delivers links to websites and other resources that answer the question, but it is often not clear whether those resources are trustworthy. They could be bullshit. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a lot of that online. ...