Smalltalk with James Robertson

Looks like the iTunes enabled post for the day will be delayed; the service I use to host the files seems to be having a problem. I can't really complain a whole lot; it's free after all :)

In the meantime, the daily screencast is up on YouTube

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This is just amazing - an 84 year old WWII vet, Ted Gundy, takes a modern weapon and shoots at a target 1000 yards down range. The results are just amazing:

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I encountered something today that demonstrated to me just how fragile the environment we've set up is. I went down to a Walgreens to buy some cold medicine. Just before I got there, the power blinked and came back - which forced all of their registers to reboot.

That brought sales to a screeching halt. I was thinking "why don't they just accept cash and keep paper records in the interim, and settle it all up later", but on the way home I realized the issue with that: I bet the registers were locked while they rebooted. So with the power out, they really were dead in the water.

Now, for a few minutes worth of downtime, that's nothing but a hassle. What if power went out for an extended period though? I wonder whether retail outfits have any kind of contingency plan for that kind of thing, or whether the plan is basically "pray that it doesn't happen"?

We ordered a single cup coffee brewer recently - it's a nice machine, but I found this amusing. Here's the machine:

And here's the packaging it came in - sort of like one of those Russian dolls :)

One of the things that's been a real revelation to me in this job is the whole "how the other half lives" thing. What do I mean by that?

Well, back when I worked at Cincom, it was pretty easy for me to push stuff out to the web,and to access whatever I wanted to see on the web. I worked from home, on a machine I had full access to. At this new job, I'm seeing how things are for software developers in big shops:

• Locked down, developer level access only Windows clients
• Firewalls that block everything - streaming media, tons of blog sites, anything related to video games, and so on

Now, the blockage makes sense to the IT department - after all, you don't want your proxy server taken down when everyone wants to watch the latest viral YouTube video. On the other hand, it makes it clear to me how some of what I was doing at Cincom didn't always reach the target audience. Tutorial videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook? Blocked. Public Store Repository? Blocked. Heck, the only reason that the audio and video I hosted on the Cincom servers is accessible is because that site isn't a "known" streaming service.

Fortunately, I still have my personal machine, and once I get to working at home more often I'll be back on the public net more continuously. For people working fulltime in a large organization's office though? The wider net really only exists before and after work, and that means in between family obligations.

That's why all of the social media outreach I'm so in favor of can't be the only thing you do. At this point in time, there are still a ton of people who won't ever see it - at least during working hours.

You might be wondering why I've disappeared from various places I normally show up during the day:

• The Smalltalk IRC Channel
• Google Chat
• Etc

Well, it has to do with the constrained internet connection I have here at work. Skype works, but no other IM clients I've tried do. I can't get to IRC at all, and much of the wider web (including all streaming video sites) is just blocked. So... I can only see the full net after hours. Since I try to work long hours while I'm here (I leave early Friday to fly home), that puts me out of pocket for a large part of the day.

Eventually, I'll be able to work remotely at least some of the time, and things will be back to normal that way. In the meantime, I get a pretty decent amount of Smalltalk done, since there's so little distraction. Upsides, downsides :)

There was an issue with the service I use overnight (I got a bunch of emails while I slept) - but it's all better now :)

I have two - count 'em, two - strings of lights across my doorway and the step railings outside:

As I was plugging them in, they went out. I thought one string had dropped a fuse, so I went looking for replacements - and found my battery backup in the basement (the one I use for the router) beeping. The ground fault on that plug had popped. How the heck are two lousy strings of lights an overload state?

It's the end of the year, so it's time to look at the schedule for the videos and podcasts. JS4U and ST4U will be on hold after Wednesday until the new year; there will be at lest one more "Independent Misinterpretations" before the end of the year, but then that will go on hiatus until January as well.

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and enjoy the archives until January rolls in!

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