Technology and Junk

A few weeks back, my wife Kim was in Chicago for a couple days in the office.  I’m usually pretty stressed out when she heads out of town these days.  I’m a good Dad, but she’s the glue.  My role is mostly to improvise around the house and keep everybody happy.  Basically, I give zerberts and hand the kids upside down.  But when Kim is out of town I need to be the full-time parent which is a much more difficult job.  I get anxious leading up to those days.  How will I get our 1 year old to bed while also watching our 3 year old?  How will I shower in the morning?  More than anything, how will I sleep?  When Kim was in Chicago recently though, it was only one week after she had been in Toronto for 2 days.  So I was still recovering.  Things have also been really busy with work so there was some general exhaustion.

Now that I’ve laid down the excuses, here’s what happened.  I was backing the minivan out of the garage, throwing in a DVD, stressing about leaving our youngest at home with the nanny, and as always thinking about work.  At which point I backed straight into our nanny’s new car.  It was super loud but didn’t seem to bother my son.  I asked him to hang tight while I went to talk with the nanny.  She was visibly shaken (as was I) but was also super cool about it.  I told her not to worry and that we’d take care of everything.  I felt and still feel like such an ass.

Anyway, at first I thought I’d pay cash but then I did some googling and was reminded that simple little dents (which is what this was) can be up to a few grand to fix.  So then I thought, why pay for insurance if you aren’t going to use it.  I called my agent at Amica insurance and they were great.  Said our premiums wouldn’t go up if the total cost of repairs came in below $1,500.  We’re fortunate not to have any incidents on our record so that is helpful.  Then they went on to coordinate everything directly with our nanny and offered to call me and allow me to pay the difference if the costs went above $1,500.  I just received a call from the claims agent to inform me that the final costs look to be around $1,400.  The best part is, we don’t even have to pay a deductible because while I skimped out on our collision deductible ($1,000) there is no deductible at all for liability.  I guess I never really even understood how auto insurance worked.

I’m thinking about calling up my agent to see if she can sell me more parent dummy insurance.  I do stupid things all the time.  These days mostly related to having a demanding career and 2 little dudes at home.  Backing into cars is one thing, but what about all the other casualties of exhaustion and mental overload?

This isn’t a news flash, but athletes (particularly basketball players it seems) are really into tattoos.  Look at a typical NBA roster and most of the guys have a bunch of tattoos.  I’m not a big fan of tattoos in general, but I’m starting to get excited about the future for those NBA players.  Here’s why:

NBA players have always been known to take fashion risks.  Think back to the ABA days when Afros and short shorts ruled the court.  Not a good look as I’m sure we all agree today, but back in the day those guys had it going on.

Thing is, it’s really easy to buy longer pants and cut an Afro.  Not so much with the tattoos.  What if Dr. J still had to rock the Fro every single day of his life?  Would he still have that big new Dr. Pepper endorsement deal?

It’s becoming increasingly evident that the next time I’m ready to buy a car I’ll have a multitude of legitimate fully electric options. The next interesting possibility is from BMW Mini with their MINI E.  Looks like a great ride.  0 emissions and an 150 mile range.  Great little city car.

MINI E

I’m hoppin’ on it.  Some inexpensive and effective ideas on lowering energy consumption.

Albert Einstein:

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

And that’s what makes it so fun.  You don’t really know where you are going to end up, but if you keep moving forward you’ll make something great happen.  I’ve always said that when push comes to shove you just gotta GSD (Get Shit Done).

A thrilling video on the Good Experience blog illustrates housing prices from 1890 until now by putting you in the seat of a roller coaster.  Let’s hope housing can defy the laws of physics in a way that roller coasters cannot.

Has anybody noticed that you can now buy 1TB drives at your local electronics store for around $300?  Pretty amazing.  It’s a great tool for storing photo’s, video, and music.  But as storage gets cheaper, I’m starting to get really worried about all my eTrash and I’m just not sure how to clean it up.

Maybe my career developing e-discovery web applications is making me paranoid.  But I’m no longer comfortable with how many of my interactions are stored.  Everything I do and everthing I say seems to get retained in one way or another.  Searches on Google are stored on their servers and in the local history of the computer I’m using… probably on my internet connection providers server logs as well.  How many people store records of my data usage over my iPhone?  I can’t chat over any of my IM accounts without the transcripts being stored.  This list goes on and on, but the real key is that storage is cheap.  Too cheap to waste time cleaning up.

So I’m in the market for mafia technologies.  What would the mob use for IM… I want that.  Is anybody working on MobOS?  I want phone lines that don’t get logged.  Storage is too cheap, and with processing power getting cheaper by the day it won’t be long before people figure out meaningful ways to find and exploit all the excess eTrash.

I stumbled upon this post by Khoi Vinh in which he writes:

I no longer find the kind of satisfaction that I used to in laying the groundwork for better productivity, in acquiring complex tools and spending copious amounts of time learning them and setting them up in preparation for the productivity gains they promise to yield for me. I just want to get stuff done with simple, reliable tools and methods that are easily comprehended straight out of the box, and then go about my business.

So true.  What is it about the corporate environment that so strongly wants to defy this methodology?  The never ending drive to hyper-engineer things is progress enemy #1.

Yes, yes I am.  It’s been fun baseball.  Olympics you were great.  And Tiger golf, I’ll miss you most of all.  Bring on some football now please.

Last night as I watched the Republican National Convention, I was really shocked by the chanting of “Drill Baby Drill.”  I was angered.  It felt so wrong and shortsighted.  Very much like a crowd of teenagers chanting “drink drink drink” as they chug another pitcher of beer.  A great release for an hour… maybe two.  But in the end it’s a big bad hangover.  That’s what drilling is to me.  A very brief procrastition that only complicates the real problems that lie around the corner.  Are you for drilling?  Fine, we can discuss the merits.  But as soon as you start chanting, I’ll know your real motivation and encourage you to spare us all by replacing that drill with a pitcher of beer.