Category Archives: Observations

Rural development

Marcie and I alternate between a house in town (4 days a week) and our farm three days a week.

One of the things that bugs me about the farm is how difficult it is for people to make a living in rural America. It seems to me that just like there's a pretty strong tide running in the “outsourcing” trend, there's also a trend that ultimately leaves rural America empty — except for “gentleman farmers” like me.

Lots of people have observed this before me, but now I'm a part of a rural community, so I devote a little more of my time working on the problem. Here's a story that just ran about Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and some strategies that small rural towns are adopting in order to retain their younger generation.

I hate to be a grouch, but I don't think this kind of thing is going to work. The underlying economic forces are so strong that efforts like these strike me as wishful thinking.

I hope to be wrong on this one, but as I've poked around in my Western Wisconsin county, I have discovered that there's no business-starting infrastructure left. The local banks have all been sold to regionals, as have the bedrock main-street businesses (the phone company, electric company, grain elevator, etc.). Big-boxes are killing the local retailers.

More than just brains are fleeing — capital is too. Used to be that farmer-capital would get reinvested in local projects (a meat packing plant or a window manufacturing company). Now, when farmers sell their land (which they didn't used to do), the money winds up in a Fidelity account and invested in the usual-suspect portfolio.

As a tech guy, I've been involved in the rural development discussion for years, mostly focusing on the need for broadband Internet. Internet is often painted as the economic savior for rural America. Sorry kids, but this isn't going to cut it — any job you can do over the wire in Western Wisconsin can be outsourced to a place with much lower wages. Don't bet the ranch on that idea. Sure, you have to have Internet as a precondition for lots of other things, but it isn't going to float the boat.

Sorry to be such a grouch — but that article started this little cascade and I had to get it off my chest.

Blink – a cool "thin slicing" concept for intuitive managers like me

Malcome Gladwell (the guy that wrote The Tipping Point) has a new book out called “Blink.” The NYTimes just ran the first chapter of the book in their cunningly-named First Chapter section. Fersure hit this link to Blink on Gladwell's site where he outlines the broader themes of the book.

I like it. I've spent my whole career being accused of jumping to conclusions (so I've gotten better, although not great, at keeping my mouth shut until a little supporting data rolls in). I think a lot of us have run into the same problem. You know what the situation is, but if you blurt it out, you're likely to get beat up by people who need lots of supporting facts.

Maybe you've just got a really rich set of experiences that your subconscious is taking advantage of. Perhaps you're just good at “blink.” I like this book's premise because it reminds me to value those 2-second blinks, and gives me a way to rationalize those leaps of cognition to other people.

FreeVo — My home-brew Tivo, minus the monthly subscription fees

This is the latest geek project — reclaiming Robert’s old PC and transmogrifying it into a personal video recorder (PVR for short) with a Hauppauge PVR 350 and SageTV software.

Sure, I could have gone out and bought a Tivo or ReplayTV for about the same (or maybe a little less) money. But I see several advantages to doing it myself;

  • I get a glorious few weeks of primo geek tinkering/learning (in addition to the PVR stuff I found myself introduced to the “silent PC” geek sub-cult as I realized that the PC was making way too much noise to remain in the living room without modification)
  • I get a PVR that I can reconfigure (add disk, add more video cards, etc.) when I want to
  • I don’t have to pay a monthly fee to TiVo (I’m using SageTV software that sucks down the program guides off the web for free)
  • I can share/view the shows all over the home network
  • I can participate in EFF’s call to arms over the “broadcast flag” and be my own hardware vendor at the same time.

    This blog entry is my “notes to myself” to record the saga, and will serve as a reminder if I have to come back and retrace my steps at some point in the future. If you decide to do this, it might be a useful set of tips for you too. For the details… read on
    Continue reading →

    • "how to be creative" and other manifestos from ChangeThis.com

    I hang with a short-attention-span crowd — so we're always changing our job/direction/passion.

    I like this “How To Be Creative” manifesto a lot. It encapsulates many of the ideas that I share with folks when they are in that creative, unfrozen, floating period between gigs. This is kinda like Powdermilk Biscuits — gets you up and doing the things you need to do.

    I also like the whole Change This site — comprised mostly of “manifestos” by irascible opinionated curmudgeons like me.

    I came across a web-development manifesto – “One Minute Site” – which spoke loudly enough to get me up off my rusty dusty and plug some changes into my sister's web site. One Minute Site is a great rant against the overly-complex, overly graphical/technical sites that “web developers” foist off on their clients. I've been making the same rant for ages, as have many of my good web-dev friends, but One Minute Site does a great job of presenting the argument.

    I'm happily pecking my way through the rest of the site — I bet a few more manifestos make their way into this blog.

    Digital audio enhancement

    I've always liked to hang out with people who are REALLY into what they do, often to the point of being irascible and grouchy because there's nobody for them to talk to as a peer.

    One such fellow is Steve Emly, the founder/proprietor of Emcom. Steve is into network monitoring at a level that defies description and I love learning from him.

    Son Richard and I are embarking on the (probably ludicrous) project of converting my vinyl record collection to digital and I came across another fellow who's at the “guru level” during the process of looking for “de-click, de-pop” software to clean up my beat up old vinyl.

    I don't know what his name is, but I **know** that he's another person who's functioning at that supremo-geek level — I would love to meet him some day. BTW, I know it's a “him” because he's got to be the curmudgeon narrating the video on his web site. Bet the house.

    If you ever want to learn about digital audio recording or digital sound enhancement, head out to Enhanced Audio or the associated TracerTek (which seems to be down today, but is the bigger/better site). Download copies of his free demo software and the tutorial that goes with it. Spend an enjoyable half day narking around with his DC Six software and you will be a whole lot smarter than when you started.

    He's into cleaning up old records, but he's also really into forensic audio. You know, where the cops have bugged your office, you've used loud music to cover up your conversation about the big drug deal? He's got some killer software that will remove the music and leave the conversation behind. Very much reminded me of the old movie Blowup. Some of the demos are to die for. Definitely a great geek holiday that you can take from the comfort of your workstation.

    Rip Mix Burn Sue — a fantastic lecture by Edward Felton

    Ah. Every once in a while I come across a fantastic lecturer who illuminates a huge topic. Carl Sagan did that for me when i was at Cornell — I used to play hooky from classes and go sit in on his Astronomy 101 lectures (as did several hundred other folks).

    A less known example is Hubert Alyea who was a brilliant Princeton chemistry educator upon whom The Absent Minded Professor was modeled. He was a colleague of my Dad and I grew up listening to Professor Alyea's amazing chemistry lectures (from which the notion of Flubber emerged).

    Professor Felton (also at Princeton) is in this league in this lecture “Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue”. The stream's likely to be one of the best hours you can spend if you're interested in the digital media rights issue.

    Here are a few topics;

    – How Sandra Day O'Connor saved the fast forward button

    – A great explanation of how to digitize media

    – Technology convergence

    – The most important concept in Computer Science

    – The Celestial Jukebox and the Napster case

    – The Remix culture – Negativeland, the Grey album, Woody Guthrie

    – DVDJohn

    – The Fritz (Hollings) Chip

    And more. The whole stream is about an hour and a half, but I gave up at the Q&A session — the questions were long and badly recorded so I got tired of waiting. Same goes for the introductions — I skipped those as well. The lecture itself is an hour. Well worth every minute.

    Applying lessons learned during Y2k, I rediscover Peter de Jager

    I'm heading into a big project, and as part of preparing for it I revisited the site I maintained while participating in the Y2k preparations for my home town of St Paul, MN.

    Just about every single Y2k link on that site is busted now, although one is selling some strange kind of medical nostrum that's not likely to live up to it's claims of Improving My Life In Every Way.

    But one of the links led me to the new site run by Peter de Jager. For those of you who don't remember, Peter was considered by many to be the person who first voiced the Y2k problem in terms that were compelling enough to get people off the dime. Opinions vary — some think Peter was a nutcase, sounding the alarm for a non-problem — and I agree, Peter got a little shrill at times. But I also think he's a very good thinker and did us all a great service by sticking to his guns.

    I'm glad to see that Peter is still thinking, writing and active. I recommend his publications pages if you are interested in large-scale change management projects (like I am).

    Philadelphia wireless project — I can't make the numbers work

    Here's my daily dose of rants and puzzlements. Today's revolves around the recently-announced wireless project in Philadelphia. Like lots of folks, I'm hoping they'll make it go. Like lots of folks, I can't quite figure out how they're going to make the numbers work. Here's why.

    Get an envelope out, we gonna do some figuring on the back of it. Let's see here, the Philly folks say they're going to light up the whole town for free Internet access. Ok, great. Presume all the geek problems away and let's say they get it lit. Now, if they really finally run with “free” they've basically replaced all the ISPs in town. Well, maybe that's ok. After all maybe this is an amenity that cities should do, like roads and sewers and stuff. Here's where the numbers get hard…

    If residential Internet access is free, then most everybody will switch to it. Some significant percentage of 1,000,000 households. First “numbers” problem — how much is upstream access for all those folks going to cost??

    Get your envelope out. Let's say we give everybody up to 3 mBits (kinda like cable). And let's assume that people aren't all going to use it at the same time. That's called “oversubscription” and everybody does it – ISPs, phone companies, you name it. What oversubscription ratio? For the sake of the envelope, say 30-times. So for every megabit of upstream access, we can sell 30 mBits of “downstream” or customer access. Or 10 customers (remember? 3 mBits/customer). So for every 10 customers, we need another megabit of upstream access for those peak times (after supper).

    If most of our 1,000,000 households switch to our free service, we gonna need a *lot* of upstream access. Let's say 20% of the households sign up. 200,000 customers means we have to buy 20,000 MBits of upstream access. 20 GigaBits! Wow! A T1 line is 1.5 MBits, so that would be 13,000 T1's. That a lot. Ok, Internet access is overbuilt and getting really cheap, so maybe they've got a really good deal. Maybe $10/month per MBit (that's cheaper than anything I've heard of, but hey, benefit of the doubt that's my motto…). $200,000/month for upstream. $2,400,000 a year of taxpayer money…

    Once the customers have signed up for Internet, any time anything goes wrong with their computer that they can't understand, who they gonna call? The ISP, that's who. So now Philly's got to provide help-desk support for 200,000 customers. Let's say each customer calls once a year with a hard question that takes an hour to answer. 200,000 hours a year. People work 2000 hours a year, so that's 100 people answering help-desk calls at, say $50,000/year. Hmm, $5,000,000/year…

    See where this is heading? I could run through all the rest of the stuff that an ISP does — network maintenance, upgrades, fixing people's connections, paying the bills, etc. Roll all that up in a ball and it looks to me like you've got at least $10-15 million/year to keep it running.

    On the one hand, that's a lot of money. On the other hand, compared to losing money on ballparks and stadiums and roads and sewers and economic incentives for people to move in, maybe it's not. I'd love to see the numbers for that project.

    "IT doesn't matter" debate

    I missed this rumpus when it first happened. Nick Carr wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2002 called “IT Doesn't Matter” which triggered a heck of a debate.

    I ran into the debate yesterday when CNET published this summary and rebuttal on their site.

    I like the premise — that IT is becoming a commodity and needs to be managed that way. Lots of interesting parallels to other industries — electricity, railroads and (a new one for me) machine tools. There's been a very healthy debate over the article, which Nick has collected on this page for your reading enjoyment.

    This is another angle on my earlier rant about why tech startups are a dead end.

    The notion of "enough money"

    Marshall Goldsmith's got a good one in Fast Company this week… Here's the link to his article in which he says (correctly) that we should “stop obsessing about goals and focus on mission.”

    I thought the whole piece was good, but the part that spoke the most for me was the personal side of the story. Here's a good sample Quote:

    The canyons of Wall Street are littered with victims of goal obsession.

    I asked one hard-driving deal maker, “Mike, why do you work all of the time?”

    He replied, “Why do you think? Do you think I love this place? I am working so hard because I want to make a lot of money!”

    I continued my inquiry, “Do you really need this much money?”

    “I do now,” Mike grimaced. “I just got divorced for the third time. With three alimony checks every month, I am almost broke.”

    “Why do you keep getting divorced?” I asked.

    The answer came out as a sad sigh. “All three wives kept complaining that I worked all the time. They have no idea how hard it is to make this much money!”

    I've always felt that it's important to know how much is “enough money.” Keeping that “enough is enough” notion in mind has kept me out of a lot of trouble over the years, and left me a lot more time to mess around with my family, friends and quirky sideline interests.

    XP SP2, virus scanning and adware blocking software

    Everybody's hyperventilating about how SP2 “breaks stuff” today — here's a typical article that ran last night. I wish they'd describe this in less dramatic terms. 'Turns out they're talking about the impact of having the firewall turned on by default, instead of turned off (which is the default up until now). So a better version of the headline would be “XP SP2 needs to be reconfigured if you use certain apps” or some such…

    Which got me thinking — why doesn't Microsoft bundle anti virus and anti adware software in too? Sure, it'll annoy the companies that have made a business out of fixing MS flaws, but so what? 'Sure would make life easier…

    Assuming this will never happen, here are the (free – well, donations-accepted) packages I currently use.

    AVG Anti-Virus software

    Spybot Search and Destroy – anti adware/spyware software.

    I was pleased to see that Consumer Reports just gave Spybot the nod as a “good thing” in their latest issue.