ChaosEngine

Work signed off on the Master’s of Science in Instructional Technology Degree I’m considering pursuing. So at least that option is open to me. Of course I couldn’t let things be that simple. After submitting the paperwork for approval I continued researching degrees and schools and found a similar program at another University. This one is a Master’s of Art in Learning and Teaching with Technology. While this program is a little more expensive, it seems more interesting to me and perhaps a better fit for what I’m looking for. I’ve applied and been accepted into the program, but now I’m waiting to see if work will consider this one sufficiently related to my reasonable career path at the company. Since I am often involved in training staff, and work on a lot of the back end infrastructure that supports some of our educational initiatives, I think it does. Will just have to wait and see.

If work gives the approval, I will be starting school in September. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been spending way too much time doing nothing of late. Work has had me stressed out, and I come home and just veg. I can’t seem to find the motivation to do much. Having assignments and deadlines will be stressful to be sure, but it might also help break me out of my rut and give me something to focus on besides issues at work.

Of course the Bachelor’s Degree in some kind of Natural or Geologic Science is still an option I’m considering. In many ways it is what I really want to do, and I’ve found some programs that might make it possible. It just isn’t a terribly practical option right now. If I go to Ashford for the Master’s of Art in Learning and Teaching with Technology Program, I can probably finish it in less than a year and may consider pursuing some other coursework after that if I still want to delve into another field.

Went to a Microsoft Technet seminar today about Vista, Powershell, and Group Policy. Not the most exciting topics to cover, but the presenters were interesting and had a good sense of humor. They were surprisingly candid about many of the problems and shortcomings of Vista, why they had occurred, and what still wasn’t fixed. There was a fair amount of good natured heckling from the audience. There was a very funny moment when someone pointed out the Vista machine the demo was running on was displaying a “Not Windows Genuine Software” message, meaning that it had never been activated correctly and was tagged as a pirated version.

Of course it was part sales pitch. We heard all the wonderful things about Vista and how much it had been improved in SP1. A lot of this was true though. I’ve been running Vista on and off for a while, and it’s not a bad system if you have a sufficiently modern system to run it on. They also gave out free Vista Ultimate discs to everyone. Full licensed versions, which is around a $300 value. Not bad for listening to a sales pitch for four hours. And I learned a number of things that may be helpful to me at work since I’m now managing several Windows servers.

Vista may ultimately go down as one of Microsoft’s greatest failures. In my opinion it’s still too early to make that call, and not completely fair. I think a lot will depend on how soon the next version comes out and if it is a major improvement. Supposedly they are working on Windows 7, and it may even launch sometime next year. They aren’t planning on giving Vista as long of a run as XP had. XP has been around a long time. It was first released in 2001, and to be honest, it was a pretty lousy OS at that time. I didn’t start viewing it as a decent operating system until SP2 came out for it about two and a half years later. Over its seven years of life it has had a chance to mature and improve.

While there isn’t a good excuse for Microsoft to release a buggy, bloated OS to market before it was anywhere near ready, it wasn’t a huge surprise either. They’ve done it before. And is comparing a yearling OS to a seven year old veteran of the tech world that has been continuously patched and updated completely fair? My guess is that in a year’s time with another SP for Vista, we will be seeing it turn into a platform with performance and stability as good or better than XP. More patches and updates will be applied, better drivers will be written, and the baseline for system hardware will have risen.

I’m not trying to be a Microsoft apologist. There is still plenty about them that annoys me and I have yet to find an OS I consider perfect. Just trying to keep things in perspective.

A little over a year ago I completed my Bachelor’s Degree. I feel bad for saying it, but it wasn’t that big of an accomplishment for me. It was a Bachelor’s of Science in Technical Management from DeVry University. I worked at DeVry for several years and was able to take a couple of classes a term for free, so I took advantage of it. I chose the Technical Management Degree, not because I had any real interest in technical management, but because it was the path of least resistance. It was a Bachelor’s completion program, and as such gave me the most transfer credit for my Associate’s and didn’t have any particularly difficult courses. It was the quickest easiest path to a degree and all I wanted was that piece of paper since several jobs I had been considering required it.

It wasn’t a total waste. I did learn some, but I wasn’t very interested In business and management courses and didn’t put forth much effort.

Now I’ve decided to go back to school. My first impulse was to do as I had before and simply go for a Master’s Degree by the quickest, easiest route possible. As such I started looking into an online program at Grantham University. They have an online MS in Information Technology which is self paced and from what I can see, quite easy to complete. I could easily have my Master’s in about two years, possibly opening further career opportunities for me.

Is it really the right way to go through? Sometimes I think the emphasis on degrees for certain positions is ludicrous. I know plenty of people without degrees that are brilliant, and plenty with degrees that are idiots. From that point of view, taking shortcuts to get a piece of paper to validate my experience makes sense.

However another part of me, one that seems to be growing stronger, believes that education should mean something. When I originally went to college to get my Associate’s I loved it. I enjoyed learning, I worked hard and took pride in my accomplishments. When I worked at DeVry I believed in what they were doing, I felt like I was doing something important. Ever since I’ve left I’ve wanted to find a job in the academic world again where I could feel like I was doing something worthwhile.

So, I’m starting to look around at options, even ones that may not be easy. My current employer will pay a certain amount towards a graduate degree, as long as they deem it to be work related or useful within my likely career path. That presents a bit of a problem, because I’m really looking to branch out a bit. Not get completely away from IT, but maybe working towards a different career path than simply being a techie, or a manager over techies. Right now I’m trying to get them to sign off on a degree in Instructional Technology. It focuses on using technology in an educational setting. Not directly related to my job, but not totally outside of it either. Has lots of possible applications in the world of corporate training and technology presentation.

My employer will also pay some for pursuing an undergraduate degree, even if it doesn’t relate to my job. This gives me another option of pursuing a completely different Bachelor’s degree. A much longer path and one that isn’t quite as likely to advance my career as it is give me options to find another one. It would however give me the opportunity to study something I’m really interested in. That is if I can find a school to go to. There are tons of online programs out there, but the vast majority of them are business and management related. The same goes for most of the evening programs for working adults. There are only a few Universities physically close enough for me to attend, and most of them don’t have courses that I can realistically fit around my work schedule.

Hopefully work will sign off on the Instructional Technology degree, and I can go the expedient route, and study something I’m actually interested in. If not, well I may have to back up and punt. Probably better go figure out how to pay for it myself and have the freedom to pursue whatever path I choose rather than be indebted to my employer for something I don’t really want.

Started out listening to Tullamore perform at J, Murphy’s in Shawnee Friday night. J. Murphy’s was the RockRose Cafe,/Bar, but evidently couldn’t turn a profit o they filled it with TV’s, painted it green and put up a few Guinness signs and called it an Irish pub. It was only my second time there, and as before the service was good, but the food was mediocre and overpriced for what it was. Luckily, I was not there for the food. Tullamore was did a fantastic job as always. It was a little odd though. The sound system was not very good, it was using a wireless link from the stage to hit the sound system and there was lots of static and buzzing. I was fortunate to be sitting directly by the stage, and while it somewhat limited my view, I was able to hear quite well despite the problems from the electronics.

The stranger part had to do with the TVs in the place.  I don’t like TVs in a pub, they distract you from the people and the music.   J. Murphy’s has a TV at every table and plastered over all the walls, and even one directly over the stage.  I had thought it would really distract the audience from the band, but the girls in the band kept watching the Olympics playing on several of the screens.  Of course it was Male Volleyball and Swimming.  It didn’t seem to hurt their playing at all, but was amusing watching them staring at a screen rather than their instruments or the audience.  A huge cheer also went up in the middle of a song when Phelps won his 7th gold.

As so often happens I show up at one of these gigs feeling tired and thinking maybe I would have been better off staying at home. That feeling never lasts more than a couple of minutes past when they start playing though and I had a great time.

Sunday I took my first real Canoe trip in about four years. It was a spur of a moment thing, and my wife Sueann was so disturbed by the idea of me canoeing on the Missouri River alone that she decided to go with me. I was a bit worried about that at first, since we haven’t canoed together in about 9 years since we lived in Maine and took a couple of trips on the Kennebec. Those trips didn’t go particularly well and we didn’t repeat it for a long time.

Things went really well though. We put in around Farley, MO on the Platte River and took it to the Missouri and then on to Parkville, a total distance of around 17 miles or so. It was actually a little farther than I had planned, but we got a long well and it was nice to do something besides sit in front of the computer all day for a change. SueAnn went into mom mode several time, relating stories of how many people die on the Missouri River and how dangerous sand bars and everything else along the river can be. Even so, we had a good time and manage to avoid the horrible death awaiting us around every bend.

Growing up my imagination was captured by the technological future that was prophesied to come. Books like Neuromancer, movies such as Tron and WarGames, and the games Shadowrun and Cyberpunk all spoke to a dystopian future where computer networks would pervade our world, our culture, and even our very bodies and minds.

In this dark future information was the new currency, communication was instantaneous and boundless. Your online persona was more important than who you actually were and corporations battled with shadowy anarchists over the electronic landscape.

It was a dark world, oppressive, frightening, and cool as hell.

Now nearly two decades later I wonder what happened to it. The Internet is the fulfillment of those visions of the sprawling network. Communication is instantaneous and boundless. Mobile devices and wireless connectivity extend the network everywhere. Corporations do hold as much power as the government, if not more and there is a seedy criminal underbelly out there that makes a stir once in a while.

But somewhere things took a turn. There isn’t much in the way of a man machine interface yet. No virtual reality that makes the cyber world as real as that of the flesh. The serious bad guys that unleash trojans and botnets usually do it to make money and market to us, not to bring down the “man”. The dark brooding world of Bladerunner is dotted with upscale coffee shops, yuppie temples of commerce, and adds for Viagra.

Realistically, we’re better off. The common theme of those other futures is grim despair and hopelessness. Poverty, crime, corruption. Sure, we have plenty of those, but not to the same level. We have a happier more comfortable world and that is a good thing.

But damn it would be nice if it had some style.

Bradley Robertson, someone I follow on Brightkite had posted to their blog asking “What kind of Geek Are You?”   They referenced the 56 Geeks Project, where Scott Johnson has done a series of drawings of 56 different types of geeks.  A wrote a response to the question, but after reading it, decided it sounded a little over the top, so I mocked myself in anohter comment.

Since I’ve been too unmotivated to write any new entries here, I figured I would just post my answer here as well.  So, What type of Geek am I?

A while back I sent a comment into a podcast I listen too asking what some of their favorite whiskey’s were and telling them a few of mine. The people on the show are really into good expensive Scotch, and I wanted to hear their opinions on some other spirits. I was kind of surprised that instead of hearing what they liked, they instead put their effort into ridiculing my tastes in whiskey and commenting that I evidently didn’t know what good whiskey was.

May be. I’ve been drinking whiskey (and whisky) for less than a decade, the ability to relax and enjoy a good drink is something I came to rather late in my life. I can’t claim to have a sophisticated palette, I can’t taste 47 separate flavors in a swig of Scotch. I also don’t believe that spending $100 on a bottle of liquor makes me a better, more refined person.

The people on the podcast are good folks. They are fun and intelligent and when I’ve met them they’ve been nice and friendly. Why my choice of spirits should turn them into obnoxious snobs is a little hard to grasp. I really feel that in their search for the perfect drink they’ve lost sight of the real point. The magic in a bottle of whiskey isn’t in the exotic location it was distilled or the years it has sat in aged barrels.

The magic in whiskey is in the friends that raise a glass with you and the simple pleasure of shared experience. It’s sad that some lose sight of that. I do not intend to.

Sláinte

Ahh, food. If there is any good side to being a fat guy, it is the ability to enjoy good food without worrying about what it will do to your health or figure. Those times do come, but generally a long time after a meal, like the next day when getting dressed for work. So any feelings of guilt or remorse are sufficiently removed from the time of eating that it doesn’t interfere with the enjoyment of it.

Today I made a couple of batches of a simple but tasty desert called Grunt. Grunt is a dessert, supposedly from New England. Though I never encountered or even heard of it during my three years in Maine. I discovered it at an unlikely place, a podcasting panel at DragonCon where the Firefly fan podcast, The Signal, presented it as a possible recipe for the Firefly Verse.

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For a long time I have been a minimalist when it came to cell phones.  I just wanted a phone you could make a call on.  I didn’t need to browse the web, take pictures, play games, or any of the other dozens of things you can do on phones nowadays.  In fact I was quite frustrated by several phones I’ve had that seemed to do all of these other things at the expense of actually being able to easily make a decent quality phone call.  My frustration reached its pique when I got a Verizon XV6700 for work.  It was a Windows Mobile Smartphone, and one of the most useless pieces of technology I’ve ever encountered.  Of course this may have been because it was forced to sync up with Novell Groupwise.  Novell seems to screw up every Windows PC it touches, no reason for Windows Mobile to be spared.  Nonetheless, there were many glaring design flaws outside of its contamination by Novell.  At the first opportunity I ditched it and went back to just a plain old cell phone.

Enter Brightkite.  I’ve spoken of Brightkite before.  It made me actually want to participate in one of these silly social network Twitterish experiences.  Problem, Verizon doesn’t support it.  Now I’ve run into this before.  When I had the XV6700 there were several mobile apps I tried to install but couldn’t, because Verizon didn’t allow it.  Even with my old LG8300 there were many features that I had to use a program called bitpim to access since Verizon locks their phones down to such a ridiculous level.  The final straw came when I actually tried to forward my phone to another number, a feature that is included on my service.  It didn’t work.  I talked to a Verizon Rep, they told me it should work, maybe I wasn’t doing it right.  I verified I could do it on my wife’s phone, same model.  So I talked to Verizon again.  Once again I’m told it should work.  Once again I tell them it doesn’t.  Then I’m told that since it is a corporate account they can’t help me and I will need to go through my accounts corporate contact. To hell with that.

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Saturday night was a trip up to O’Malley’s In Weston. Hadn’t been there for a few months, and my brother wanted to go seeBob Walkenhorst. Bob was the lead singer in a local KC band called the Rainmakers back in the 80s, and since I had been a fan of them I figured what the hell. On the way to Weston I got a call from my friend Tony, who coincidentally, was calling to see if I wanted to go to O’Malley’s. So, I arrived at O’Malley’s with my brother and a bit later Tony showed up with Amanda (not sure what to call her since she objected to the label of girlfriend), and another old friend, Mark. Tony and Mark had both been interns for me in the electronics lab when I first worked at DeVry. Mark moved to Arizona yeas ago so it was cool to see him again. Though I’m not quite sure if he is right in the head. He kept talking about running, in Arizona. As Doz put it, “Skinny people do some weird shit”.

At any rate, the music was great. Jeff Porter, another local musician, Joined Bob Walknhorst on stage and they played some old Rainmakers tunes as well as lots of new stuff. It was cool hanging out with my brother which I haven’t done for awhile, and the addition of Tony, Amanda, and Mark to the mix just made it that much more fun.

Since I was the driver, I was taking it easy on the drink, but decided to try the signature drink at O’Malley’s, oddly enough called tThe O’Malley. The O’Malley consists of Guinness, Vodka, and Tabasco Sauce. Now I don’t care much for Guinness, blasphemy I know, but I’ve never found a beer I like. I figured though that if anything could kill the taste of Guinness, Vodka and Tabasco Sauce should do the trick. It actually wasn’t too bad. My lips burned a bit, but I definitely liked it better than straight Guinness, though it isn’t destined to be my favorite drink.
Doz snapped a few pictures on his camera:

May head to O’Malley’s again this weekend. Flannigan’s Right Hook is playing, and they should be worth the trip.