Getting one to go.

Radio prep

Show prep

Radio show prep

Ibm work stuff

St. Patrick’s Ale!

But a few years back, a friend told me that while she does not do “resolutions,” she does “themes” for the year. I think this is a powerful idea and I immediately adopted it. What’s the difference between a “resolution” and a “theme.” Resolutions are commitments to specific actions, which you may or may not have time and energy to deal with. On the other hand, themes represent an approach, a set of values, a overriding concept that guides your actions as the inevitable Stuff Happens.

My theme for 2010 was “Calvin: The Reboot.” It was a play on “rebooting” movie franchises like Star Trek. The idea was to get rid of a bunch of cruft activities that had built up over time and focusing on some core topics, notably my relationship with Pat and my interest in media production. 2011′s theme was ”All In The Family,” Kinda obvious because that’s the year Pat and I got married and two families were coming together. But it was more than just getting married. It was about recognizing extended family and starting to build bonds between the multiple families that exist in our lives. To borrow a concept from Google, it was about multiple overlapping circles of people and highlighting the important overlaps and making them important.  Looking back, I can see all kinds of thins I did (or made a conscious choice NOT to do) that were consistent with the theme of the year and I can look back on these years and be satisfied with the theme.

So what about 2012?  My theme for 2012 is “Taking Care of Business,” Credit to Pat for coming up with the actual name based on my ramblings. But I like it. It’s perfect. Basically, it means focusing on the Stuff That Must Be Done Even If You Don’t Particularly Like It.

This is hugely applicable to my day job. Somewhere over years, I’ve gotten too much into getting involved in work efforts, teams, this and that, that is not part of my core responsibilities. The nature of some of my assignments in past years has given me the very good opportunity to meet and get to work with lots of folks across the company and develop relationships with them. But the downside is I get invited to informally participate in this or that all the time. My core work responsibilities have suffered. Badly. So “Taking Care Of Business” is a reminder to ask myself, “Is this work consistent with my team’s work and with what my funding execs want me to be working on?” I know. I know. That’s a blindingly obvious question to ask, and yet I’ve fallen out of the habit of asking it.

“Taking Care of Business” also relates to my “hobby.” It’s amazing to me how much of my discretionary time is spent on new media, audio production, podcasting, blogging, etc. I deliberately chose to do this. It’s something I’ve been enjoying since 2005 or so and Ireally started devoting time and effort to it in 2010 and 2011. But I am at my limit. I cannot devote more time to it. But what I can do is start focusing on the aspects of this “hobby” that can be turned into actual work and even an actual career path. This means doing all the not-so-fun parts of the hobby that would enable me to convert it to a business. As luck would have it, I ran across an opportunity to help someone do sound engineering work for a comedy podcast he wants to develop. And so January kicked off with an actual paying gig related to my “hobby.” That’s a great start. Again, to state the blindingly obvious, it’s amazing how much a client focuses your attention. I need to apply that back to my day job as well.

“Talking Care Of Business” also applies on the home front. Being married feels good. Satisfying. Happy. Secure. Nothing would make me go back to my pre-married life. But I’ve been putting off some of the responsibilities that come from combining households. Lots of legal stuff like putting Pat on the deed of the house, getting her house ready to put on the market. Updating beneficiaries on retirement accounts, insurance plans. etc. etc. None of it is that hard, but it’s also very easy to keep putting it off to tomorrow. So “Taking Care Of Business” helps me focus on these things and make them a priority.

So “Taking Care Of Business” is my theme for 2012. And it doesn’t hurt that there is great theme music to go with it.

Podcast work

Show prep

Ethics in SF Panel at Illogicon 2012

Had a great time at the inaugural Illogicon this weekend. Plenty of good vibes and interesting, friendly folks. I never heard on official attendance count. But I’m guessing in the neighborhood of 200-300 people.

I’d registered many months ago, practically as soon as registration opened and so I was a little afraid they’d lose my registration. But no. Not only did they have my registration, I knew the guy running the registration table. That’s a very good feeling at a con.

Con suite was a friendly, relaxing place with equal amounts of comfort food and healthy food. The folks running it were diligent about keeping things picked up and clean without being overbearing about it. Truly a nice place to hang out.

Dealer room didn’t have many companies / organizations. But you did have good opportunity to browse and talk to folks. I particularly enjoyed talking to the ConTemporal folks who are putting on a steampunk con event in Chapel Hill Later this year.

The programming had several highlights, notable the guests of honor Joe and Gay Haldeman. They were the epitome of good guests of honor. In addition to doing multiple panels and making thoughtful contributions, they mixed and mingled with the fen in the con suite and other areas.

There were several panels I really enjoyed. Probably my favorite was theSciene Fiction and Ethics panel with moderated by  Bull Spec‘s Sam Montgomery-Blinn featuring Joe Haldeman, Kij Johnson, NCSU’s John Kessel, and Gray Rinehart.

I also really enjoyed the Baen traveling roadshow. Not only because I won a David Drake book, but because they did a really good job of getting the audience involved in the discussion.

I sat in on several panels that had John Kessel and he’s always got something interesting to say. But the John Kessel highlight was a reading he did on Saturday Afternoon, an amusing time-travel-commercialization-of-the-past story.

Being a podcaster, I was happy to discover that Rich Sigfrit of Geek Radio Daily is a local guy and was on several panels. I was glad to get the chance to shake his hand and make plans to touch base with him later.

Another programming highlight for me was the e-publishing talk by James Maxey. It was very interesting to hear from someone who’d actually jumped through all the hoops necessary to get a book on the various platforms. Complicated, but not impossible and the business possibilities are very interesting.

Kudos to Con Chair Chris Hensley, Vice Con Chair Brandon Ulick, Operations Director Chris Ross, Con Suite Director Reesa Robie, and Programming Director Warren Buff for givng us a great weekend of fun and fandom. I look forward to many more years of Illogicon.

The Raleigh Institution!

At Illogicon!,

This is James Maxey at the Kindle publishing panel

Show oreo

Hanging out

And then I match up lids to containers to find the orphans. This years result:

Two orphaned containers and two orphaned lids. About par for the course.

Their fate is sealed.

Getting ready for 2012

If you have any thoughts or insights, please post a comment!

With pat. Prepping show

One last picture from Ayr Mount. I call this one my southern gothic shot.

Christmas Eve 2011

Nice walk on a winter(ish) Day.

Blogging

Working on getting work
.

Podcast work

My entry Into the cookie decorating contest. "Top Gun" (The theme is "movie
references "

.

There’s a shocker.

Show prep

In the broken green chair. That’s all that’s left! Don’t they know I’m the Duke?

The Really Terrible Orchestra of the Triangle (RTOOT)  occupied the Chapel Hill Bible Church on Saturday, December 10th to bring awareness of their “Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy” show to Chapel Hill. Their radical notion of time, meter, and tuning, not to mention their elastic approach to musical phrasing, raised eyebrows among the crowd of musical enthusiasts. The conductor who goes under the nome de guerre, My Strow Hobgood assembled his collective of occupiers from throughout the Triangle area.

RTOOT’s initial musical salvo was a manfiesto of Leroy Anderson Favorites, “Blue Tango,” “Belle of the Ball,” “The Syncopated Clock,” and Serenata” that left the audience stunned by its use of enhanced syncopation. While the audience was still reeling, RTOOT lit into Johann and Josef  Strauss’ Pizzicato Polka. It’s unclear of the piece was a joint composition of if each man blamed the other brother for it. RTOOT’s last number in their first set as the Prelude to Act 1 of Hansel and Gretel interpreted through the eyes of political correctness.

After intermission, RTOOT assaulted the holidays with a medley of excerpts from The Nutcracker, including the RTOOT dancers whose movements appeared more like a brewing riot than a dance troupe. That was followed by a subversive interpretation of  three parts of Handel’s Messiah. Finally  RTOOT engaged and  confronted the audience in a series of holiday carols in which the audience singalong sounded like bullhorns directing RTOOT to stand down.

The Chapel Hill Police Department was unavailable for comment. No one was arrested.

Waiting for the start of "Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy" performed
by the Really Terrible Orchestra of the Triangle, My Stro Hobgood,
conducting.

Podcast editing.

Collard greens omelet!

Podcast work.

Show prep

They really don’t want you to get lost.

Yeah we’re radicals

Show Prep

Blogging and shopping

Podcast production tonight

Show prep

Getting a cup to go

My grandfather on my mother’s side made this for me by hand and gave it to me for a Birthday present. Can’t remember exactly when, but it was about second grade. I remember he told me we could mount it on a pole and the wind would make the propeller go around and the tail would swing around to to point show the direction the wind was blowing.  I thought that was a very cool thing indeed.

I can’t remember for sure if my dad ever did actually mount it on a pole in the yard or not. I think he did. But it could also be that the image my grandfather planted in my head was so vivid that I only remember the visions. Doesn’t matter, really.

My grandfather did a lot of things, he was a highway surveyor, a farmer, and a cowboy. Well, sorta. He raised black angus cattle on the land he and my grandmother inherited. I remember going with him to “the farm” and watching him feed the cattle. He claimed that the cows knew the sound of his truck and they would head toward the gate when they heard him coming down the highway. I believed him. I was about 6 or 7.

But he also worked in a lumber yard for many years. The “cowboy” gig being, a part time job/hobby. I don’t know where he picked up his woodworking skills. But he made that plane by hand out of cheap plywood from the lumber yard. The wheels are made out of tinker toys. It’s funny in a way. It’s not at all an example of fine wood working. It’s toy made out of cheap parts cut out with a jig saw and glued and stapled together. But even so it is well made. I was always sure it could fly if the wind was strong enough.

It’s not the sturdiest thing in the world. The wood is very light and thin. It is a tribute to my parents that it has survived, by my count, 5 different house moves. And it has survived 3 moves since I’ve left the house and been in charge of it. It’s big. It’s bulky. It’s fragile. But it survived without a single bit of damage.

But it was time to say good bye to it. With Pat moving in and the two of us combining households. I decided that I was ready to let it go. But what do you do with an artifact like that. I figured no antique shop would take it. It’s just not that sort of relic. But I couldn’t just throw it in the garbage either. So I took it to the orange county salvage shed. This is the place were you take stuff that’s still serviceable but not wanted anymore. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I am a big fan of getting stuff Out Of The House by way of the The Salvage Shed.  I can’t imagine what anyone would see in it or what they would do with it. I kinda doubt anyone would think of it as a weather vane. But next time I went to the dump, it wasn’t at the Salvage Shed any more. So someone did something with it. And the burden of taking care of it and storing has been lifted and I get to keep the happy memories.

photo credit

Getting a cup to go

Alley Cat Amber has been ordered!

I voted in Orange County today. Mostly showed up to vote against the increase in the County Sales tax.

I’ve seen hundreds of yard signs urging me to “vote for schools and jobs” around the area. And what do you know. The “Campaign for Schools and Jobs” yard signs are funded by, The Orange County Government. So of course they are going to be for anything that increases their revenue. But are any actual citizens who are NOT county government employees actually in favor of the increase? Not that I can tell.

Problem is, despite all their promises to dedicate 50% of the funds to schools by setting up special revenue accounts etc. I don’t believe it. This is the oldest trick in the book that governments like to play.

They promise to dedicate the additional revenue to a specific purpose, set up all the special accounting etc. And it lasts for maybe one year or two. Then they reduce the funding for the special project from the general fund so that the spending from the general fund plus the special fund actually goes down.

Or they can simply renege on their promises. Case in point The North Carolina Education Lottery which was promised to us to be an additional revenue fund dedicated just for funding schools. But now that revenue fund has been raided by the state for a bunch of different uses. Thanks Bev Perdue! We really appreciate that. Not. Trust me, I’ll be remembering this next time someone asks me to vote to raise taxes “for schools.” Trust me. I’ll be remembering this next time Bev Perdue comes up for reelection.

So forgive me if I don’t trust the word of the Orange County Board of Commissioners’ promises. Like I say, this is the oldest con game in the book for state and local governments.

And don’t even get me started about the other 50% of the funds which are supposed to be devoted to “economic development”. Yeah. Right.

Show prep

Podcasting stuff today.

Gettin one to go

Doing IBM work this afternoon.

Show prep

Gettin a cup to go

Waiting for the 8:00 show.

Coffee before show at DSI.

Blogging

Show prep.

With pat and F-L

Morning cup before work

Show prep

Blogging, editing podcasts

Cup to go

I don’t think I’ll ever become one of those minimalists who take pride in owning as little as possible. Their faux-ascetic lifestyle is not for me. But yeah, I can see the point.

I’ve been taking a first few steps toward ridding myself of stuff over the past few months. Clothes, dishes, appliances, books, etc etc. I’ve become a semi-expert on how to get rid of stuff in Orange County. I know the hours of all the recycling centers in the area. I know where the salvage sheds are where you can drop off functional items that you don’t need anymore. I know which thrift stores will take what. The Habitat ReStore number is on my phone. I know where you can drop off scrap metal, scrap wood, scrap electronics. I know the proper places to dispose of household hazardous waste like old cleaning supplies, paint, pesticides.

There was one thing I was having trouble with. Music CDs. Say hello to 294 Gigabytes of “stuff”.

Yes, that’s seven full bins of CDs. I get a lot of CDs sent to my by record labels due to my Taproot Radio show and podcast. At first it was such a joy. Every single one was precious. But as they started piling up, the mental weight started piling up as well. After a while I started to slowly realize, that at some point I would run out of space for them all and I’d _have_ to start getting rid of them. But that moment came inconveniently too late.

What to do? What’s the proper way to get these out of my house? You would think used book stores would take them, even for free. But they won’t. They’ll pick through a stack you take them and maybe take one or two. If you insist they might give you a couple of bucks for them. But at the end, you are going to leave with almost as many as you walked in with. Hardly worth the effort.

For a while, I’d make anonymous donations of stacks of CDs to various libraries in the area. That worked, sorta. Well they were out of my life, but I felt like I’d dumped a bunch of CDs on to someone who didn’t want them. Guilt Guilt Guilt ove making them someone else’s problem.

I could just take them to the dump and take them to he household waste bins and dump them en masse. But not only do I want to get them out of my life, I want to Do The Right Thing.

A quick internet search did yield too much information. There were a few pages suggesting that CDs could be recycled or at least destroyed in an appropriate way. But they didn’t talk about anything specific I could do locally. Emails to the Orange County Recycling center went unanswered.

BUT, I asked the guy working the household hazardous waste center one weekend morning when I was dropping off 10 cans of old used paint. I’d gotten to the point where I was asking anyone who would listen.

Turns out, he knew what to do. Orange county residents can take CDs, doesn’t matter if they are data CDs or music CDs, to the Orange County recycling center and put them in the electroncs recycling bins and they will, in his words, “recycle the discs and as much of the packaging as they can.”  SCORE!

Now I finally have a method, to get CDs out of the house. I’m slowly ripping them all to iTunes. My best guess is that I am going to just about fill my 300Gb USB drive.

It’s not completely getting rid of stuff. But a single external hard drive takes up a hell of a lot less space than 7 bins of CDs. (And counting.) Now I just have to make sure I’m ripping the CDs and taking them to the recycling center at a faster rate than they are arriving in the mailbox.

Kinda like bailing water.

Show prep

I know I made a similar post about this last week, but it makes me so
mad I have to post again.

Saw this at the Chapel Hill Lowe’s on Oct 1.

Shame on Lowe’s!

The amusing part is, I have to present at a conference at 3:30. Do I dare………..

I have to say it’s the nicest such facility I have ever been to. They are very well set up for letting people look at animals and get acquainted with them and adopt them. They pretty much require you to spay/neuter the pets and they are all set up to provide those services as part of the adoption fee.

And the result, well, say hello to Roslin (front/left) and Ripley (rear/right), two female kittens. Currently 7 weeks old. Yes, we have an overload of cute in the house right now!

They are all skin and bones right now and according the the OCASC people, they are strays. But we have the cadillac of cat food dispensers and running water fountains and they are making very good use of them.

We are already impressed by their jumping and climbing ability.

The names? Ripley is named after Ripley in the Alien movies and Roslin is the President from Battle Star Galactica. Two bad-ass women and I know the kitties will live up to their names.

Cuppa Joe to go

Blogging Tonight……

Getting a cup to go.

As in last years, I spent most of my time in the podcasting track, the EFF track, and skeptics track, and the science tracks. But I also went to several panels in the film track on the basics of producing and the basics of directing. I did not make it to any of the Robot Battles this year, but I did go to an interesting panel on how to get started developing for the Arduino. My wife Pat and I enjoyed watching the Battlestar Galactica documentary and we joined thousands of our closets friends to watch an early screening of a Doctor Who episode. And by the way, Sylvester McCoy sat down next to us at the Gonzo Quiz show, which would have been even cooler if we’d realized who he was before he left.

I didn’t make it to any of the late night bands this year, but I did go see a live taping of George Hrab’s Geologic podcast, which is always good fun.

Some other highlights:

The Marriott is where all the hanging out happens and where everyone goes to show off their costumes. But one new thing this year was this fish swimming through the lobby. Mondo cool. That’s going on my Christmas wishlist!

In terms of costumes, there were all the usual, Star Trek, Star Wars, comic book, Firefly, costumers out in force. Lots of zombies this year and on Saturday night there was a huge “Zombie Shamble” through the streets of downtown  Atlanta. There were also a fair number of Robots on site including this 40′s era version of a Dalek:

Captain Americawas a very popular costume this year. The lucky ones had dancing girls in tow:

But this year my favorite costumes at Dragon Con were women dressed up like “Abs” from the TV show NCIS. I saw at least three different versions of her at DragonCon. But this woman was my favorite because she had her very own “Caff-Pow.”

As always, The Atlanta Radio Theater Company was one of my favorite acts. They did several original shows this year including a new episode of their Rory Rammer, Space Marshall show and an amusing drama about an engineer that devises an email spam filter that uses an evil demon that feeds on the spam. You can imagine how well that turns out. But the best story they did was a Lovecraftian/Steam Punkish story about a clockwork robot in the 1800′s that seem’s strangely self-motivated that rescues a condemned man for it’s own purposes.

Here’s ARTC warming up:

I always enjoy the semi-pro folks putting on performances and I got to see plenty of that this year. I got to see  the guys who produce Bob and Carl, Sci-Fi Janitorsput on a demonstration of how they use Green Screen:

I got to attend a live taping of the Inside The Black Box radio show:

And I got to watch a live taping of the Frame Rate web show:

I also enjoyed the panel on producing web-based shows. They had the guys from Chad Vader and several folks, including Felica Day, from The Guild.

My brain is still kinda numb from all the inspiration. I really like to see people making stuff, whether it be costumes, or stories, or videos, or podcasts, or web shows, or whatever. Like I said, if I only had another 24 hours in the day…..

Live taping of the Frame Rate show at Dragon Con…

Only at Dragon Con….

But we did get a taste of it. We had plenty of wind and large areas of Chapel Hill and Carrboro were without power yesterday. At my place, the lights flickered a few times, but we never lost power for any length of time. I stayed inside with Pat most of the day. No sense in getting out in the turbulence if you didn’t have to.

This morning I ventured out over to Pat’s house to see what was up. Wow! What a mess. There were tree limbs down all over the yard and roof. Fortunately, nothing that fell on the roof was big enough to cause any damage. But it sure was a mess. Took half the morning just pick up the worst of it off the yard. Need to go back with a rake to get up the smaller stuff.

That is plenty of hurricane excitement for me. Just enough of a taste to take future hurricanes seriously, but not enough to cause enough damage to have to call the insurance agency.

Blogging this morning

With Pat

It is the most elaborate recycling center I’ve ever seen. They have a row of dumpsters for non-hazardous household waste. aka trash that doesn’t fit anywhere. But they have all kinds of different ways to dispose of stuff.  They have a special bin for phone books to be recycled. They have  a  dumpsters for junk mail. They have a special dumpster with multiple bins in it for different kinds of plastic and glass. They have a row of dumpsters just for corrugated cardboard. They have trailers for yard waste. They have trailers for scrap metal. They have trailers for appliances to get rid of. They have trailers for scrap tires. They have a trailer for electronics recycling so you can dump your old PC to have it recycled.

FWIW, they make no claims about physical security of the dumped off PCs and they don’t guarantee destruction. So it’s up to you to wipe the systems of sensitive data first.

But my favorite part is the salvage shed where you can take useable stuff you don’t want anymore and leave it on the shelves in there. Other people come by, see what’s in there and take stuff they need. Now I suspect, mostly it’s thirft store owners that come by and scoop stuff up for their shop. But that’s fine with me. I don’t care if people make a profit on the stuff I leave behind. I’m just glad to see stuff get some use.

I’m not even especially into the green movement. But I like the system they have in place to sort stuff and process it. And yeah, the reduce, reuse, recycle aspect is kinda cool too, I have to admit.

Working

Show prep

So three years ago I’d renewed taprootradio.com for three full years at the cost of, i dunno somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-12 per year. At the time I also put it on auto renew so there would be no danger of it lapsing.

A few weeks ago, I started getting renewal notices saying that the domain was going to get renewed. Fine. that’s what I wanted so I didn’t pay much attention. I should have. Today I got my bill and Network Solutions automatically renewed my domain registration and charged me $34 for ONE YEAR.

Bah! I just assumed that I’d get the same rate I’d been getting. But no. Apparently “automatic renewal” is only automatic if you are willing to let them charge whatever they want to charge.

I know I know. Buyer beware and all that. No doubt what they did was absolutely legal. But it still pisses me off and yes I will be moving all of my domain registrations elsewhere. Probably google/enom. I have several registrations through them already and so far every automatic renewal has been the same ten bucks (more or less) that I paid on my original registration. Plus, I’m kinda into Google Apps For Your Domain, which is free for the entry level offerings. So for $10 bucks per domain, I get the domains mail hosted by gmail, google docs, and google sites for the domain and (at least so far) the costs have been entirely predictable.

But I’m interested in hearing other recommendations for domain registrars. And don’t even THINK about recommending Go Daddy. But that’s a rant for a different day.