In this post, let’s talk about a good thing

It is impressive, the progress that has been made by Google and others in the realm of self-driving cars. I can certainly see the wins around having cars drive themselves while allowing the occupants to text, work or whatever else they might do. It reminds me of my own commute practices during the work week and how I am able to do other things while heading to work.Yup, I take a train, and then bike to my office from the train station. I think the Amtrak train and other services like it are called public transportation.

Public transportation i.e modes of transportation enabling folks to get around at a reasonable price.

It seems to me this latest wave of self driving vehicles and their attendant technologies are a great next step for us all. Imagine if this technology was deployed in support of public transportation on a large scale.

Who knows, in light of all the sercurity and privacy issues everyone is concerned about might at least catalyze  the transformation of Google’s assertion “Don’t be evil” into  “be fabulously good, and help others”.

Note, automated publishing did not happen last night (Dec 23) so much for trusting technology for important things:

No musical reference for this post and sssuming all goes well with my decision to use an automatic posting mechanism you will be reading this right at 9:00 pm December 2013 2014 California time.

The date and time are significant as it will have been 10 years to the moment my mother exhaled for the last time. It is also at that time which I believe my mothers spirit, on way out of the house.Stopped in our daughter’s room and gave her a kiss as she left us. With her passing, both of my parents were gone. My father having previously died about a week after I moved back to California in January of 1985.

When mom died, I was 43, our daughter was about 19 months old. Kat and I had been married for about 6 years and I was still figuring out my life as a married father.

I realize now that what my mom did for me was provide a sense of grounding and hope, though at times I do wonder what I am really doing. Lord knows if she hadn’t I might have through my own vices and such left as well not all that soon after she did.

And here I am , still bumping along, grateful to be here. And with all of that, I still feel the same slight feeling of being adrift. That sense was much stronger in me right after her death, today, well, I am still not sure of where I am headed, however I am sure that her last maternal push in the right direction that last night of her life is still present within me though so sometimes I really have to be “still” to get a sense of it.

Thanks mom, ,miss you immensely. Still hanging in there

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Yup yup, another musical reference convolved with a blog post. This time it’s Siouxsie and the Banshees. I have always felt this song to capture and express a subtle “I am better than you” attitude. The perfect accompaniment to John Naughton’s recent article in the guardian a few days back about guber… ooops I mean uber.

Don’t get me wrong, as a business entity, who can argue with what they have managed to do so far. Per the popular narrative that the app industry, the have of course  abided by nothing but the purist of free market paradigms.

For the record, here’s an excerpt from the Guardian article:

“The problem with this is that Uber is no more a tech company than is UPS or M&S. It’s a company that uses technology in order to intervene/operate in the offline world. It has, however, borrowed two ideas from the pure internet operators. First, it takes the standard tech business model of being a “platform” (translation: intermediary) – putting buyers in touch with sellers, taking a cut, harvesting the data and taking no responsibility for anything.”

Mr Naughton is onto something. Those of use who have had careers in tech (and even those who haven’t or won’t) need to step back, take a deep breath, and begin to recognize the difference between good businesses, and good technology businesses. Uber may be an example of the former,kudos to them.There is nothing all that wrong about the monetary success they have realized.However, like Mr Naughton, I see far fewer of the latter and I am not all that sure Uber qualifies either. But then what do I know ? Maybe I just don’t get it.

I don’t intend for this little bit of almost insightful paradise to always be about my personal life. There are times and events however, that do merit mention. Today, and this time of year qualify.

Nov 18, 2014, it is my late mother’s birthday.She would have been 75 years old today. I wonder what things would have been like for us all if she were still alive.I do know she would have continued to be that awesome grandmother to our daughter and most likely continued to side with my wife in those moments where a mother recognizes her son for what he is; both the good and the not-so-good at times. It’s those wuthering looks which say “seriously you’re going to carry on that line of thinking here” which helped to keep me grounded while she was with us.

I am happy she got to spend some time with her granddaughter.Since her passing, we have taken to calling her grandma Angel. For me, though I am not a particularly religious or spiritual person, it helps to secure my belief that someone who knows me better than all others, is still watching over me.

In keeping with my tradition of providing a tune somehow aligning with the blog entries topic. Check out this gem. And just for good measure some Plumbum extraction music.

Yes, after damn near a year, I am working again. I even managed to move away from design/design verification. This was by and away , one of the biggest (and most desirable) career changes. for me  After nearly 30 years, I desperately wanted to get out of mainstream engineering. That’s not to say there weren’t good times and projects in my role as a DV engineer. To the contrary, there are designs I have learned the internals of which truly amazed me. Early 80’s RISC processor design a-la Dec’s Titan, ECL RISC at MIPS, weighted RED queue management at Cisco, spread spectrum clocking at Sun. Scaring up a bug in an IO block at NeXT. A failed server attempt at Apple. I remember a set of schematics for a processor someone from DEC’s Western Research Lab produced which was a master class in cpu design, and clarity. As an aside, Titan, the discrete 100K el CPU was the fastest uniprocessor inside DEC from 85 to 89 (and maybe beyond).I even took a spin at evangelism at Microsoft of all places.

I was pretty fortunate back then, I got to rub elbows with some pretty smart (even for me) people. Notable and in no particular order, Anita Borg, Mike Nielsen, Jeremy Dion, Neil Willhem, Loretta and Brian Reid (at the time), Smokey Wallace, Forrest Baskett, Russel Kao, Jeff Prisner, Mike Powell, Norm Jouppi, Bill Hamburgen, Judson Leonard, Carol Peters, Bob Stewart  and on and on

The new gig with the multi-syllabic title is “IT Applications Analyst” meaning that I am now a professional agent of change,  working to move groups from one IT related paradigm to the next. The current project ? A new way to track bugs.

IT is a funny space, similar in some ways to DV in that if you do your job well, no one knows you exist. It’s only when a server crashes or the network goes away that you get any sort of notice. I’ve plenty of experience with that under-the-radar existence.

Being officially on the outside of core (HW) engineering product development, I get to see how engineering orgs are perceived. I have to admit, sometimes, we ARE the stereotypes we see in the media. Nonetheless, I’ll miss some parts there was something rather sublime about having singular stimulating focus on solving a single large problem or two.

Given the desire to commodtize the pschidt out of all things hardware  I am glad to be moving on though I hope that my former industry sector struggles through and begins to take up it’s role in leading innovation once again. I am pretty tired of 3rd and 4th order derivatives for Facebook, Google, and Instagram. And lord knows, I am looking forward to seeing people actually sell things again as opposed to being a “tax” on the internet.

Nowdays, things are much more about developing trust, understanding roles, and building relationships. A far cry in a lot of ways, from straight-ahead development.

Release the hounds…

At the end of Q2 2014, I recall reading here and here  that while iPad sales were off , MBP and iPhone sales were up a little, or at least enough to cover the shortfall in iPad sales. A similar phenomenon was reported across the industry in general,i.e. laptop sales were up. This got me to thinking about tablets in general , and why they are brilliant devices  and at the same time being cast as the square peg destined for the elliptical hole by a lot of consumers.

As we collectively watch successively more  powerful tablets surface; yes, pun intended.I have  to wonder if people aren’t missing the point of these devices. Tablets are great devices for consuming.They aren’t designed to be real good at  producing. At least based on current tablet OS capabilities.OK,you can add an external keyboard and voila, a netbook-lite emerges. I offer that that tablets, as originally envisioned are just fine.They’re great for reading, simple message response, purchases;you know all the stuff that most of us do with them presently. They are NOT, however, great for writing the next great American novels, or any other long form content production.That’s ok.

I am not worried about tablets in their current incarnation, and you’ll never see an external keyboard attached to mine. That’s what my laptop is for.

Those early tablet producers (Microsoft included) had it right and Apple’s entry into market reinforced the notion. Tablets are great, portable , computing devices fulfilling a particular need. They are not however, a singular solution for all of ones computing. So let’s move on, it’s ok to whip out that laptop when you commence writing that great epic tome you’ve been ruminating on. I promise, I’ll download the e-version and read it on my tablet when you’re done.

Goodnight moon

Within the last few weeks an app entitled “Yo” has become fodder for both the tech and lay media alike. Here’s Steve Colbert’s take on it.

Yo! really s a silly app. With that being said, I have to wonder if maybe there isn’t a little unintentional (or maybe intentional) hypocrisy at play here. For the developers of Yo! Are their aspirations any more trivial than those  aspirations of more “serious” apps or other tech endeavors?

As a mental exercise,allow me to offer some other spaces where our newly re-invigorated critical analysis skills might be brought to bear:

1. The “New Economy”: Really ?, you mean to me tell there  has never been another attempt at providing free content to consumers underwritten by advertisers.Hmmm, ok, if you say so
2. The solution for both gender and ethnic diversity in hi-tech: This is a new problem ?, one unique to hi-tech and therefore immune to other best practices in other industries ? Shut the front door!
3. MOOCS and online education in general: I recently saw a report indicating that the so-called “under served” communities who were supposed benefit most from MOOCS and other on-line courseware actually have a lower completion rate than was originally expected. Why is that ? I also wonder if after taking all these online course folks at Google, Apple, Facebook etc.. will actually hire them. Last I checked, these three were still trolling the halls of Stanford and other elite universities for their candidates.
4. The need for more “coders”: Coders to do what, and at what price point. If I waved my magic wand and made everyone a coder, what would that really do for the labor rate of these folks ?
5. The proven “meritocracy” of the tech sector: Do you really want me to comment here ?

Finally, the funniest thing in all of this is that by all popular accounts, tech is a bastion of market forces. If we are to REALLT hold that as a fundamental truth then let the market decide the fate of Yo!. I mean, what are we afraid of ? That some completely ridiculous “product” might end up proving to be incredibly commercially successful ?

I have an idea, let’s try a little honesty in characterizing the motivations of our industry; “If it makes money, and doesn’t do significant harm, we’re all good right”

P.S. There’s a sister at Emory, examine online college/courseware critically. You can check her here