Thursday, November 30, 2017
Going tubeless
A while back I wrote about how my wife finally decided to join the 21st century by getting her first smart phone. Not only had I been shocked by the fact that the woman who barely had a use for her old dumb-phone now wanted one because she realized the world had gone App-centric and she could no longer get by without using any “Apps,” but that it had taken her a full decade to realize this.
Well it seems my reaction might have been a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
You see while I – “Mr. IT guy” – may have poked fun at her Luddite views surrounding technology and cell phones in particular, I was harboring my own, deep, shameful technology secret.
I was still using a “Boob-Tube” as my primary TV.
Yup, that’s right.
The TV at the heart of our living room’s “home entertainment system” was 27-inch Sony Wega CRT model from the turn of the century!
It’s not that I haven’t wanted a spiffy-new HDTV with all the bells-and-whistles all this time.
I did!
It was just when our last TV died almost 20 years ago, flat screen models were just coming out and were outrageously expensive. And being the frugal (not cheap!) kind of guy I am, I just couldn’t see dropping a couple of grand on a TV set.
So instead, I opted for the biggest and best conventional TV we could afford. And I have to say that the $600-plus we paid back then was well spent. That Sony Wega’s served us flawlessly for almost 17 years. Even today its picture looks and sounds as great as it did back then, so I’ve never been able to justify going out and spending $1,000 or more on another TV when the one we had was still perfectly good.
My plan was to always to replace it with a huge, hi-def, flat screen TV the moment it started going bad.
The only problem was, our old Sony showed no signs of breaking down anytime soon.
But this year, I’ve finally given in and joined the HDTV crowd and ordered a 55” 4K TV from Amazon.com during their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale
.
So what caused me to literally up my TV-watching game?
Why, “Mrs. New Smart-Phone User” herself, that’s who!
You see she decided it was time we renovated our family room, replacing the worn carpeting, doing some painting and other minor repairs. And as anyone who has ever embarked on one of these DIY adventures knows, these types of projects have a tendency to snowball and start encompassing other things…
… like replacing the worn our couch…
…and our easy-chair…
.. and getting rid of some furniture we really didn’t need anymore…
…and finally coaxing (goading?) me into building that built-in bookcase I’ve been planning on doing ever since we moved in 20 years ago.
A bookcase that, coincidentally, was to be designed around housing a large flat-screen TV.
So with that project underway, I started looking at Black Friday sales on new TVs, just to “get some dimensions” so I could leave the proper space for the future TV.
I, of course, had absolutely no intention of buying one. I mean after all we still had a perfectly good TV. But after having to lug that 100-pound behemoth around the room while painting and to get it out of the way for the carpet guys, I began to have second thoughts.
“Out of curiosity,” I posted it on Craigslist to see if anyone would want it, because I sure as hell wasn’t about to just put it out on the curb. And to my surprise in less than a day, I got a response from a guy whose kid likes playing retro video games. According to him, those old games actually don’t look good on newer TVs and needed an old-style TV like mine.
So with a clear conscience that I wasn’t being wasteful, I gave our old TV to him and freed my inner-geek who has been wanting to revel in all the 4K, HD glory that most of the world has known for a while now.
And to think, it’ll have only taken me almost 20 years to have done it!
Monday, October 30, 2017
Now I know how Jon Snow felt…
It’s hard when you go from being the smartest guy in the room, to the guy who knows nothing.
That may seem obvious, but it’s something I’m learning the hard way with my recent job change.
At my old place, I knew the computer systems inside-and-out. I knew how almost all the applications we used worked as well as their quirks and common problems. Most importantly, I knew how to either work around those issues or fix them and do it fairly quickly. I also knew the competency level of just about all my users so I knew exactly how to guide each of them through their own little IT crisis.
That made me the proverbial “smartest guy in the room,” something my old users claimed I was quite a bit.
But like Jon Snow stranded among the Wildlings of Westeros on “Game of Thrones,” I find “I know nothing” at my new job.
I know this is to be expected. It took me over 20 years at my last place to gain all that knowledge, and I’ve only been at my new job little over a month now.
Still, it’s hard.
I feel as lost as a first-grader among high-school seniors, which is ironic, as I’m probably the oldest systems engineer in the office, and practically old enough to be most of their fathers. It’s like my 20 years in IT have meant nothing.
It’s also quite a blow to my ego and self-esteem. I really did try NOT let my former colleagues' complements, especially all their kind words during my final weeks there – go to my head. But apparently they did, because when I started, I thought I could just walk into this new job and within a week or two be totally up-to-speed.
I know that seems really egotistical, because the difference in supporting just one company in an internal IT department and being a “hired gun” working at a Managed Services Provider and having to deal with many diverse setups are light-years apart. But I don’t think I’m being an egotist.
I just hold myself to high standards.
Higher than my new bosses, I might add. They and my new and colleagues seem to think I’m coming along just fine and doing a good job. But I don’t. I feel like I should be doing better and feel guilty that I’m not, which I guess just goes to show you that I’d be a really horrible boss, who'd set expectations no one could probably meet.
I know I shouldn’t be listening to my inner critic, who is making me doubt my own competency. I know from experience that change is hard. I can remember when we adopted our current dog and how difficult that transition was. I doubted if we made the right decision and wondered how I was going to get through the next month with him, let alone the next year. And now four years on, I can’t image life without him.
So right now, I have to keep telling myself to relax and give it about a year, because I’m reasonably sure that 11 months from now, I’ll look back on this period and wonder what all the drama was about.
And hopefully by then, if I’m not the smartest guy in the room, at least I won’t be the dumbest anymore.
Friday, September 29, 2017
When one chapter ends, another begins
One of the side effects of being a story-teller is that you’re constantly looking at life as if it was a novel and trying to arrange the things that happen to you into neat little narrative threads as if you were a character in one of your own stories.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t always cooperate. It’s a messy affair, filled with disjointed and often unrelated scenes, unresolved themes and/or plot threads that wind up going nowhere.
But every once in a while, life seems to imitate art -- or is it art imitating life? -- and things happen in such a way that even the most oblivious English Lit major can’t help but see the theme a heavy-handed author is trying to get across to his or her reader.
Well one of those moments happened to me last week. After almost 21 years, I left -- or was kicked-out of (depending on your point of view) – the company I have spent a good portion of my adult life working for.
Losing a job is a dramatic event in and of itself. And being laid off with half of your colleagues because the company you’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into was sold only heightens the matter.
But that wasn’t solely the cause of my “living inside my own novel” moment.
My last day happened to coincide with the start of the Jewish high holy days.
For those not in the know, the period between Rosh Hashanah -- the Jewish New Year -- and Yom Kippur -- the day of atonement -- is a time of both endings and beginnings where Jews all over the world reflect back on the year that’s been and prepare for the year ahead. So the fact that I was leaving one job and starting another during this period seemed like a “happy” coincidence.
I put happy here in quotes, because leaving a job I’ve had for so long and having to say goodbye to one of the nicest groups of people I have ever worked with was certainly very sad. And like the closing of the old year we mark on Rosh Hashanah eve, it was certainly a very definite ending. It had me reflecting back on all the good – and sometimes not-so-good – times I had there.
To many, that event would mark the end of the story of their working life. For me however, it only marked the end of one (major) chapter of my life. Like turning the page in a book, a new chapter began for me the following Monday morning.
You see, I was lucky enough to get a three-month warning that the layoff was coming and I was even luckier to find what appears to be a better job before I was let go.
While thanking G-d, the ultimate author of all things, it dawned on me this was the perfect metaphor for Yom Kippur, which began the same week I started my new job. Because on Yom Kippur we Jews not only ask G-d to forgive all our sins, but also ask the Almighty to turn the page on our past and begin a new chapter for us in the Book of Life.
I’d like to believe the timing of this event was no accident. That it is a reminder that the “Great Author in the Sky” has a plan for all of us, even if -- like the characters in some of my stories -- we can’t always see where the plot is taking us from our limited perspective.
So to each and every one of you out there and to all my former colleagues who weren’t as lucky as me to immediately find a new job, may G-d inscribe you for nothing but blessings in the Book of Life for another year.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
When it comes to wireless technology, there’s nothing like a Dane
 |
Think you know who invented Bluetooth? It was this
guy, a Viking King named Harald Bluetooth who
unitedDenmark in the late 900s.
|
That happened to me this month when Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff and I were cruising on the Baltic Sea visiting the Viking homelands.
So what could this group of great explorers and warriors possibly have to do with my job working with computers and other high-tech gadgets more than a millennia after they began raiding their way across Europe, overrunning England and eventually making it to the shores of North America?
It turns out quite a lot, actually.
On our visit to the Copenhagen, the capital and most populous city in Denmark, we learned that their country’s first king “invented” Bluetooth – the short-range wireless technology that connects things like keyboards and mice to computers, headphones or speakers to your portable music player and even connects your smartphone, smartwatch and car together.
Okay, so maybe King Harald Bluetooth, the man who united Denmark and made it a Christian nation, didn’t actually invent that technology.
That was done by Dr. Jaap Haartsen, an engineer working at the Ericsson corporation, based out of Sweden.
But according to our tour guides, it was old King Harald who inspired it.
It seems this Viking king had a pretty good knack for getting people from different lands to work-together for the betterment of all, much the way the technology he inspired gets dissimilar devices to work together for our betterment. Legend also has it that he had a penchant for snacking on blueberries which would then make his mouth appear blue.
Oh and that now ubiquitous little blue, Bluetooth logo you see on everything these days?Well that’s not a symbol used to denote electronic circuits or something cool just dreamed up by a graphic designer. It’s actually a combination of the old Danish runes for “H” and “B,” the good king’s initials.
So the next time you’re pairing those fancy new wireless headphones you just got with your ultra-modern smartphone, thank the Vikings and lift a horn of ale and shout “Skål!” in their honor.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Change, my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon….
I never thought it would come to this.
But just days away from marking my 52nd year on this planet, I’ve come to the stunning and quite unexpected realization that I am old.
I don’t mean physically. I’ve been noticing those little age-related aches-and-pains for a while now. What I mean is mentally.
At first I thought it was just a nostalgia phase I was going through. I’d spend hours looking at old pictures of my home town and college in online archives and wishing I could go back to those times and places for a day or two.
Then I found myself noticing that time was flying by faster than I ever remember it doing in the past. Whole days now seem to disappear into the ether before I can even get to half the things I’d planned on getting done. It seems to me just a year or two ago, I could get multiple things done in a day while now I can’t seem to even accomplish one.
Even this summer has seemed to fly by. It feels like it has just gotten started and it’s already almost my birthday, which comes at the tail-end of the season. Where did those long, lazy, hazy days of summer go?
Then, just to cap things off, came the announcement of the new “Doctor Who.”
Okay, I know that sounds like a non sequitur, but stay with me for a moment.
You see, when I heard the announcement last week that Jodie Whittaker – a woman – would be playing the 13th incarnation of titular character in BBC’s long-running sci-fi series about a mysterious time-traveler and his – or should I now say her – oddly shaped time machine, I was upset.
 |
Jodie Whittaker as the latest
incarnation of The Doctor. |
My first thought was why do they have to go and change things! For its 54-year run, the part of The Doctor had always been played by a man!
Look, I’m not against gender equality and it’s not that I think that Jodie Whittaker won’t make a fine Doctor. I’m sure she will. Like all the other Doctors who came before her, I’m sure I’ll grow to like her and even miss her when it comes time to hand the role off to someone else.
It’s just that it was a huge and drastic change in my life which has recently been rocked with other unexpected and upsetting changes. And, as I’ve come to realize over this last week, I’m not as tolerant of change as I once was.
I only came to this realization when I found myself trying to justify my feelings by essentially saying: “but we’ve always done it this way!”
Have I mentioned to you that I hate that phrase?
It’s the been the bane of my existence as an IT guy, when trying to get people to adjust to updates and changes in technology. It aggravated me that people were so stuck in their ways that they couldn’t see that the new piece of equipment or software I was giving them would actually make their lives easier if they would just give it a chance.
And to my horror, I found myself being that cranky old-person who didn’t want to give up his “tried and true, old fashioned” way for something potentially better.
When the hell did this happen to me???
I remember as a kid being excited at the prospect of entering a whole new decade at the end of the 1970s and seeing what changes it would bring as we grew ever closer to the year 2000.
Even as an adult, I looked forward to living in “The Future” and getting to play with all the new sci-fi inspired gadgets we were sure to get in the new millennium. And with the exception of the flying car and robot maid, I haven’t been disappointed.
So why now, don’t I look forward to and accept change as readily as I did when I was younger?
The only answer, I can think of, is that I’m getting old.
And that depresses me because the last thing I want to become is that stereotypical cranky old man who complains about how things were always better “back in my day.” I still want to be that bright-eyed young man who still looks to the future with awe and is excited by all the wonderful changes it will bring.
So thank you BBC, Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker for rattling my world and making me aware of the road I was heading down before it was too late. I don’t want to become that old man. I want to stay young and it seems the only way I’ll truly ever be able to do that is by following the sage advice once uttered by another incarnation of your famous Time Lord:
“Change my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon.”
Friday, June 30, 2017
Being certifiable ain't all it's cracked up to be
 |
| Copyright: Scott Adams / "Dilbert" |
“I’m just hanging this,” I reply showing him a shiny new certificate, fresh off my color laser printer.
The Elder Geek squints as he takes the framed piece of paper from my hands and peruses it.
“VMware is proud to award the title of VMware Certified Professional 6 Data Center Virtualization to Blue Scream of Jeff,” he reads aloud. “You know in my day, being certifiable wasn’t something to be proud of….” he grumbles handing me back my hard-earned certificate.
“I wasn’t even aware computers had been invented back in your day,” I reply just as snarkily.
The Elder Geek frowns in the way only a curmudgeon like him can. “Well they were, Mr. Smartypants! They were just called abacuses back then, and you needed a lot more than some piece of paper to know how to use one! So just what exactly does being a whatever-it-is certified professional mean?”
I go on to explain to him about how this software allows you to run multiple computers and servers all on one piece of hardware instead of needing an individual piece of hardware for each server or computer and how it makes managing a modern datacenter much easier. Since servers or computers are no longer tied to a particular piece of hardware, they can be shifted around in the event of hardware failure, ensuring fault tolerance and keeping them almost always available to users.
The Elder Geek nods appreciatively. “Sounds complicated.”
“Oh it is!” I enthuse. “Conceptually it’s really simple. Just like picking up a poker chip off one table and moving it to another. But with all things IT, the devil is in the details, and it’s not an easy task to get the whole thing to work properly and efficiently.”
Again the Elder Geek nods. He may be old, but he’s been to the IT Rodeo before. He knows that nothing in IT is ever as easy as it sounds.
“So how many years did it take you to earn this certification?” he asks.
“Ummm…. A week,” I mumble into the floor.
“A week? A WEEK!” he asks incredulously.
“Yeah,” I say. “But it was a really long, intense week. Twelve to 14 hour days in class and studying…. And we had to pass two tests. And they were really hard!”
The Elder Geek just shakes his head. “So you spend a week – sorry, an INTENSE week – studying this stuff and then had to answer some 120 multiple choice questions and I’m supposed to believe that’s going to make you an expert on this stuff?”
“Well according to the industry, I am!” I say defending myself. “That’s all hiring managers want to see anymore. They think all those certifications mean you know what you’re doing! If you don’t got ’em, you can’t even get your foot in the door!”
“Phooey!” The Elder Geek snorts. “All that piece of paper means is that you know how to pass a test! It doesn’t prove you know how to make things work in the real word outside a lab environment! I don’t care how good their simulations are, but no programmer can replicate the kind of havoc and failures real users can cause! It also doesn’t prove you know how to solve those oddball problems that always seem to come at you from out of the blue! Only years of experience can teach you that! I’d rather have a dozen techs or engineers with years of problem solving experience under their belts and a proven ability to think their way out of problems than a single one of your “certified pros” who only knows how to do what they showed him or her in some class! I can teach them the other stuff,” he rants.
“Look kid, I don’t mean to rain on your parade. I’m sure you worked really hard to lean all that and pass those tests. But don’t believe all that industry hype. Getting that piece of paper doesn’t make you a pro. It just means you’re a journeyman. You’re now only just competent to work on that equipment with that software. Maybe in a few years after you’ve been through the ringer and problem solved your way out of a few near disasters, will you be able to call yourself a pro…
“Now, give me that hammer and nail, before you put anymore holes in my wall.”
DISCLAIMER: I want to make clear that I do NOT think that these certifications serve no value. They do. They help us IT folks learn new skills and keep up with the ever-changing nature of our business. But employers need to realize that there is no substitute for experience, and just because you don't have a piece of paper saying you're an expert in something, doesn't mean you aren't an expert. And for the record, while I only just earned my VMware certification this month, I have worked with VMware for the last few years in addition to have 20-plus years experience as a tech.
Monday, May 29, 2017
Looks like you really do NEED an app for that ...
Well, it finally had to happen. Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff was finally and most reluctantly dragged into the modern era.That’s right folks, over the recent holiday weekend, my beautiful bride of over 20 years, finally gave in and bought her FIRST smart phone. A decade after Apple turned the world upside-down with its iPhone, she’ll finally be getting one herself.
It’s not that she’s a luddite or anything. She appreciates modern technology and has her own collection of electronic gadgets: a laptop, e-reader and even a tablet computer. It’s just that all this high-tech stuff and she aren’t exactly on a first-name basis. In fact, I’ve often said she tends to have trouble with anything more complicated than a toaster oven! Of course her standard reply to this is, “That’s why I married you. Built-in tech support.”
So about a month or two ago, when she first broached the subject of replacing her old dumb-phone with a smart phone I was surprised. She never wanted a cell phone in the first place and only got one because she drives a lot for her job and the one time her car actually did breakdown, she had a hell of a time finding a payphone.
For years, she just had clamshell-style phones, which she only used from time-to-time. (They probably spent more of their lives switched off in her car or in her book bag than actually on). Then a few years ago, she reluctantly upgraded to a phone with a keyboard because her boss was getting pretty upset at her because she could not text her during their workday (or after hours, which my wife absolutely hates).
That’s why I was shocked when she asked me if I thought she should get one.
“You hate it when your boss texts you at all hours now. With a smartphone, she’ll know you’ll have e-mail access too, and will probably expect you to answer that even after work. I thought you didn’t want that,” I said confused.
She doesn’t. In fact she said she doesn’t plan on putting e-mail on it.
“Then why do you want a smartphone?” I asked her now very confused.
Her answer surprised me not because it was something I’d never thought of, but because of its shrewd critique of our modern society.
She wanted one because more and more she felt like she was missing out and being excluded from taking advantage of everyday things that only people with smartphones could participate in.
It really hit her when she was at a professional conference down in Philadelphia. She wanted a schedule and map of the venue and couldn’t find one. When she finally got a hold of one of the event organizers, and asked for the info, they told her it was on their app, and she should download it. When she told the person she didn’t have a smartphone, they looked at her like she had leprosy.
Then there is the fact that at more and more of the stores she frequents, there are special offers she can’t take advantage of because she doesn’t have a smartphone.
“You don’t know how many free teas I’ve missed out on at WaWa because I don’t have their app,” she told me. “Pretty soon,” she continued, “I’ll probably need one for the grocery store” as they ditch their customer loyalty swipe cards for digital apps.
The more I thought about it, the more I saw she was right. It’s kind of just assumed that every man, woman and child above a certain age (which seems to be getting lower and lower each year) has a cell phone, and companies, professional organizations and even government are catering to the smartphone carrying public and forgetting about the ever-shrinking few who don’t have such devices.
If things keep on going the way they are, a smartphone is going to have to be “standard issue” item if you want to participate in society. If you don’t have one, you’ll be like the Dickens-esque pauper with his or her face pressed against a glass window peering and envying all the rich-folks enjoying a holiday meal.
Back when I was a kid, I thought all you needed to participate in society was a driver’s license and job. Now it seems you need a smartphone and an app for that.
* This column was approved by Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff and she endorses its content!
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