92 posts tagged “qotd”

How have technology and the Internet changed the way your family spends time together?
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We've always been an online family--computers played a large part of my wife and I meeting/getting together, and we've had broadband almost as long as we've been married. The internet replaces our paper, reference materials, and, with Hulu, starting to take over TV.

One is amazing to me is how my daughter takes it for granted. She's amazed to learn some people, like her great grandmother, doesn't have a computer. If I forget my iPod, she doesn't quite understand I don't have all my music with me. These kids of the twenty-first century.

Perhaps the biggest change has been how we relate to our extended family--my wife's and my brothers, sisters, and parents. For instance, we will video-conference over Skype. With the younger set (like when my daughter was much younger), it beats a phone call hand down. It is perhaps one of the most SciFi things I do.

And my daughter takes it for granted.

What's the first exhibit you visit at the zoo?

Look! An excuse to post more pictures of cats from the Cincinnati Zoo! We have an excellent collection of cats. For starters, by popular demand, a Pallas cat:

Last summer, there was a Pallas cat kitten, who was hanging out with a regular kitten. I posted some of the better photos. This is less good, but they look cute.
Olga is our snow leopard.
"What big ears you have?" you might ask the serval.
I've started to follow the Geoffroy's cat, as he seems to be overshadowed of late.
Ocelots always looked, to me, like cats that were still wearing their pajamas.

We had a minor baby boom in Cincinnati this year. This includes Eurasian lynxes,
tigers,
and fishing cats.
...I think I left one out....who was it? Oh yes! Nia Faye, the cutest cheetah cub ever!
Cincinnati is not only home to the fastest cheetah in the world, but the most Web 2.0 enabled, with their own blog, a presence on Facebook, and a feed on Twitter. By following them day-to-day, I've become quite taken with these cats. The trainers, I think, try to give a sense of their personality. For some reason, I think Eddy would get along famously with them.
There are plenty of other cats at the zoo--white tigers, lions, sand cats, leopards, bobcats and more! This has become my personal first stop at the zoo!

While I had posted other pictures from these visits to the zoo, these are ones that didn't make the cut--usually some combination of a less-than-great photo and better options for a similar shot. But, I wanted to put up new ones.

What's the longest you've ever waited in line?

Last year, I stood in line to get my daughter into a school. That was about six hours, and it was in the thirties. While I was able to submit the paperwork, she missed a different cut-off.

Next week, they are doing the same thing, and I'll be there (this time, in the middle of the night). My daughter has cleared all the cut-offs, so, so long as I make it in time, she should get in.

If you were going to write a book, what would you write about?

I have several notions kicking around:

• A recent contender is a fictional book--an alternative history. Basically, imagine the Cold War continued to today, but remained cold. How would that impact and be impacted by the landscape we are in today (Internet, ubiquitous portable communication, off-shoring, etc.)
• An Information Technology book for non-technical consumers. "Non-technical" doesn't mean what it did 15 years ago. Most people have at least a basic understanding of how to work on a computer. This would explain some concepts (networking, etc.), as well as recommend some best practices (backups, e-mail management, network security, patching). It would include a chapter on "how big companies do it," discussing data centers, etc. 
• A history of the microcomputer, from the Apple 1 to the present, and the cycle of explosion and collapse
• One person suggested a memoir on being a disaffected white collar worker, and my perspective on the business world, might be interesting. I call this my twitter feed.
  

What computer accessories and peripherals can't you live without?
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At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, out of the box, my MacBook as pretty much everything I need. In contrast. I find the trackpad quite useful. In contrast, for the work-issued BlinkPad, an external mouse is pretty much a must. By definition, it gives my WiFi, a camera, etc.

That said, I pretty much take having a secondary monitor for a given. At work, I have once connected all the time, keeping data on both screens. At home, if I am doing work at my desk, I often have one running. This is handy when trying to refer to data on a web page while working with another program, dedicating a monitor to an e-mail client, or other task.

I find I'm quite fond of USB in general, and hard drives in particular. It's quite handy to be able to pop on a hard drive to do a back up prior to an OS upgrade, archive off some data, or otherwise grab extra space. I wish we had those back when I was doing desktop support for a living.

Do you save cards and letters or throw them away? Bonus points if you can show us one that you saved.

I have a box that has practically anything non-trivial my wife has ever written me (cards and letters, but not grocery lists). I don't throw that sort of stuff away.

I have another box that has many, but not all, of the cards I've received from other folks. I have a hard time throwing them away, but I do in some cases.

From the design to the features, what should the perfect kid-friendly laptop include? What would you leave out?

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This is a hard one. "Kid-friendly" could mean friendly to a toddler, or to a pre-teen. It's going to be something they will play on, communicate with the world on, and do school work. I suppose some common features to both would be:

• Intel-based, so it can run either Windows, UNIX, or a UNIX-based operating system.
  
• I would rather it be UNIX (specifically OS X), as it is generally less prone to malware, viruses, etc. Right now, however, compatibility with Windows is probably needed for a lot of things (from school work to games that come with Chick-Fil-A). An acceptable compromise, for me, would be dual-booting or virtualization. It should be a mostly-mainstream operating system, rather than something limited (i.e. LINUX rather than Plan 9). The fact is, while they will be using the computer to learn "reading and writing," they will become familiar with the practical application of a tool they will use when they get out into the real world.
  
• A fair degree of toughness. I would anticipate this beast to be dropped once or twice, or have something spilled on it, etc.
• Either a very low cost, or enough capacity to be viable for at least four years.
• To that end, components such as batteries, hard drives, and RAM that can be upgraded painlessly. Other components (such as screens) should be able to be replaced (for repairs) with relative ease and minimal unavailability.
  
• Plenty of USB ports (at least three)
• In an ideal world, all of these devices---regardless of manufacture--would have a common AC adapter. Odds are, someone is going to leave it at home.
• A good keyboard. The one on the ThinkPad I was just issued at work is aweful.
• Some degree of parental controls. While I would not want to be totally draconian*, I would want the ability to exercise controls as required. This can include ensuring the child is not playing when there is homework to be done, to keeping the kid safe online.
• Relative to the "last four years" notion, I could see multiple sizes, at least for things like keyboards. I bought my daughter a kid-specific keyboard. The spacing of the keys is smaller--I can't touch-type on it easily, but it is perfect for her.
• Make it look fun (cool colors!) but not branded (i.e. I would not buy a Disney Princess or Transformers laptop). I want this to last four years, so I don't want someone to object because they've fallen in love with a new character. Stickers can bridge the gap between a pink laptop and a pink Hello Kitty laptop.
  
• I want to pick it, and ideally determine some of the core software (operating system most notably). If it is going to be on my network at some point, I don't want the school district putting the network I communicate with the office at risk.
• There would need to be some way to hard-set some settings. For instance, I would want the ability to set some sort of volume limitation on the headphone jack. 
• The original iBook had a handle. This seems like a good idea.
• Perhaps I'm a bit of a retro-grouch, but I think it would need an optical drive.
• While I don't see it being a full-on tablet, the ability to flip the screen around (like the OLPC) strikes me as a good idea. Put a couple of buttons on the front, and it can be an eBook reader (think textbooks).
  
• Stupid little thing: my prior laptop for work had a slot on the bottom where I could slip a business card. This pleased me, as I could just flip over the laptop to see which one was mine. I would like to see this.
• Thoughtful arrangement of ports. I would rather the laptop not be prescriptive as to how I arrange my desk.
  
• Minimal use of dongles and pigtails (little cables that convert one port type to another (think the Mini-DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter I had to get for my MacBook). Most of the time, it should be good-to-go with only the laptop and the AC adapter in the bag. In other words, minimize the amount of things that can be lost.

Truth be told, most of this would be on my personal wish-list (or at least appreciated). Truth be told, I'd rather get a good laptop than a less-good-but-kid-optimized one. I'm a bit of a Mac zealot right now, and I would rather get that. In fact, of the things on my list that are truly important, a MacBook would fit quite nicely (fitting about half of what I list, and about 80% of what I would regard as key requirements). 

*My personal approach would be to block sites on an very limited and selective basis, and with good reason. I also would not trust some of the services that create a blocking list, but don't share the blocking list.

What life dream or goal have you given up on

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right  circumstances  he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I  moved to a  martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten  years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I  got  a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it  to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

What were your first words? If you have children, what were their first words?

I don't know what my first words were...I'll have to ask Mama Guilt.

One day, when she was about 9-10 months old, we spent a weekend visiting my in-laws in Indianapolis. If we saw a cat, she would light up. Once, she was getting upset at the grocery store, so I took her down a pet food aisle to cheer her up.

When we got home, my wife was carrying my daughter. As we stepped in, I scooped up Eddy (to prevent him from running out), and showed him to my daughter.

"Ed-dy-dy-dy-dy!"

Eddy's name was my daughter's first work.

Tomorrow's Tax Day. Have you done your taxes yet? 

As of this exact moment, my taxes are "mostly done." All the data is entered into TurboTax, and I've double checked with my wife on the one or two questions I had.

I am going to do one more review of it tonight, then click submit.