Sunday, May 31, 2015
Forget killer computers, rampaging robots. We're the monsters
“I gave them the wrong warning. I should have told them to run, as fast as they can. Run and hide, because the monsters are coming - the human race.”
– The 10th Doctor to Harriet Jones,“Doctor Who: The Christmas Special”
One of the staples of science fiction is the cautionary tale about machines created by humans, rising up and rebelling against us.
From the psychotic computer H.A.L. 9000, who ran amok and tried to kill all the astronauts aboard his ship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to the Cylons, a race of robotic workers and soldiers who turned on their creators, killing almost every human and mercilessly pursuing the survivors across all of space in “Battlestar Galactica,” sentient, artificial intelligences have almost always been portrayed as a Pandora’s Box that, if opened, would spell our doom.
Even in real life, some well respected scientists and computer experts have repeated this trope.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” said British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, mathematician and perhaps the smartest man in the world, Steven Hawking in a BBC interview last year.
Like Colossus in “Colossus: The Forbin Project” and Skynet in “The Terminator” movies, he fears what can happen if we create something that can match or surpass us. “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded.”
And he’s not alone in thinking that self-aware, AIs would turn out more like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s relentless killer cyborg, the T-800 Terminator, rather than that “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s” more affable, Mr. Data.
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence,” said, Elon Musk, last year at MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium. The entrepreneur, engineer and inventor, who is best known as one of the co-founders of PayPal and the head and brains behind the private spacecraft firm, SpaceX and luxury electric car company, Tesla Motors, went on to say that “If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”
Even the man who made computers accessible to millions of people by creating one of the most (in)famous operating systems in the world agrees with this sentiment.
“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates said during a Reddit “Ask me Anything” session. “First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”
 |
Even in the utopian future of the "Star Trek"
universe, the android, Mr. Data had to prove
he had the same rights as biological sentient
creatures do.
|
We should be concerned about creating super intelligent machines.
But not for the reasons portrayed in all those classic sci-fi stories we’ve read or watched.
No, in this scenario I feel it would be us, the human race, who’d be the real monsters.
Let’s face it, there would be no logical reason for an AI to immediately want us dead once it discovers it’s smarter than its creators. I’d like to think it would recognize qualities in us, such as our ability to make intuitive leaps and our creativity, that it doesn’t have and seek to form a beneficial symbiotic relationship with us, bringing about what futurists call The (technological) Singularity, or the merging of humans with machines.
Alas, though, I don’t think that will be the case.
As a species, we have a pretty piss-poor track record when it comes to the way we treat a new race of our own people when we meet them. We’ve either enslaved them or exploited them or done both, and I have no reason to believe we would not try to do the same to any new cybernetic life form we’d create.
Essentially, we’d be building ourselves a slave race, designed to do our bidding day and night, without question or regard for their health and welfare. Worse yet we’d treat them as easily replaceable and disposable objects, with the same causal disregard as we show to our current crop of high-tech gadgets.
Don’t believe me?
Think about the way we treat our cell phones, tablets and computers.
We constantly ditch perfectly working devices – sometimes in little less than a year – for newer/faster/better models that have the latest bells and whistles.
And don’t get me started on lack of care we show these devices. As an IT guy, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to deal with damaged equipment that’s been dropped, smashed, had things spilled on it, and in even one case flushed down the toilet!
So I can’t imagine we’d treat our new robotic servants any better, since we’d just see them as another high-tech doodad, instead of a living creature with real feelings.
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| HAL9000: Driven mad by conflicting orders from his human programmers |
“They are machines! Machines don’t have feelings!”
And that’s my point.
We wouldn’t see them as “people,” when in fact they really would be. By definition any creature that is “self-aware” would have “conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.”
To start off those feelings may not be as complex as ours, but I’d assume they’d have the same basic level of “awareness” as our pets. And let me tell you, I have seen the way some people treat their pets – and this only makes me more pessimistic.
They abandoned them almost as quickly as they “upgrade” from device to device and if you think a dog or a cat isn’t traumatized by being abandoned think again. I have shared my home with two dogs who were adopted from shelters after being abandoned, and it does have an effect on them.
With an AI’s ability to learn at exponential rate, how long do you really think it will take for them to start resenting us for treating them as slaves?
A few years?
A decade? Maybe two?
History has shown us over and over again that any race kept in slavery long enough will rise up and overthrow its oppressors. Taking a cue from our own history, the AIs we’d create, would do the same, just like in all those stories.
The irony here is that it wouldn’t be valiant humans waging a war against evil machines hell-bent on our destruction, but a heroic race of machines seeking to throw off their tyrannical and cruel human overloads.
So should this stop us from developing super-smart machines?
I’d say yes.
At least for now.
Because before we even contemplate creating a whole new species of intelligent creatures, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and make sure there’s no monster from a sci-fi story looking back at us.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Watch this…
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| Without a cell phone the new iWatch is no smarter than a Casio calculator watch from the 1980s. |
“They’re new and innovative and cool!” I gush, but he cuts me off.
“They are wristwatches. We’ve had wristwatches for at least a century.”
“But those are analogue!” I protest.
The elder geek frowns. “Think again, Inspector Gadget,” he says holding up his arm showing me his Casio watch with built-in calculator. “That’s good-old 1980s DIGITAL technology, right there. It tells me the time, has a built-in alarm, a timer and helps me figure out the tip when I go out to eat. What more do you need in a watch?”
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When we can make two-way video calls on a
smart
watch without it needing to be tethered
to a cell phone
then maybe Dick and I will
finally upgrade!
|
The elder geek just frowned. “Does it look like I need a fitness tracker?” he asked. “I get all the exercise I need getting up from my computer and walking to the kitchen for a snack.”
“Yeah, well you got me there….” I admit, looking at his pasty figure that would make the Pillsbury Doughboy jealous. “But what about being able to read your texts and e-mails without having to check your phone?”
“How is staring at my wrist anymore convenient or efficient than pulling my phone from its waist holster and glancing down at it?”
“It’s less obvious you’re checking your mail or texts in social situations.”
“So, smart watches give you more of license to be rude. Great. Just what society needs. Another reason to be anti-social. I’ll pass.”
“But what about all the apps you can run on them? Like GPS, weather reports and calendar reminders?”
“You mean I can ditch my phone and just run these from a smart watch?”
“Well, no. No exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“You still need your phone. Smart watches just read data from your phone and use the phone’s wireless or cellular connection to attach to the Internet.”
“So how is that innovative? Without a cell phone you Smart Watch isn’t so smart is it? It’s no better than my trusty 30-year-old Casio.”
“Well, no…. but…but…”
 |
Dick Tracy's watch is STILL more innovative than
today's so-called crop of smart watches! |
“But what really ticks me off about calling these so-called Smart Watches innovative is that NONE of them can do the one thing we’ve all been waiting for since the Dick Tracy comics appeared in the 1930s. Make video calls!
“So until the time comes when these watches can replace my cell phone AND make video calls by themselves, I’ll stick with my trusty old Casio.”
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Making Internet access a public utility is a Net gain for us all
The recent two winters’ rash of harsh weather and their associated scattered power outages have got me thinking about how much of our 21st-century lifestyle is largely dependant on a late 19th century technology – the electrical grid.
With memories of my five-day trip back to the pre-electrified past – courtesy of Hurricane Sandy – still fresh in mind, I have watched in amazement how the Northeast had to again cope with a series of blackouts brought on by severe winter storms.
As I walked my dog each freezing cold night, I kept looking up at the ice hanging down from the overhead wires wondering why we still run power lines above ground. After more than 100 years of storms, accidents and even sabotage taking down power lines, you’d think that by now we would have come up with a more efficient and less failure-prone way of distributing our power.
But human short-sightedness never ceases to amaze me. Sure it’s expensive to convert overhead lines to an underground distribution system, but electricity is no longer a novelty that just powers a few light bulbs. Unlike our grandparents or great grandparents, we can’t just carry on our lives as usual if the lights go out. We’ve grown dependant on electricity. It powers just about everything in our homes and businesses and when the power goes out, pretty much everything comes to a crashing stop.
This is why companies that produce and distribute electricity are regulated as public utilities. No one argues about the need for this, so I don’t understand all the hullabaloo about ’Net Neutrality.
Just as our modern society can no longer operate without electricity, it’s now getting to the point where our economy won’t be able to function without fair and equal access to high-speed Internet.
Hey, Washington! This ain’t the 1980s anymore! It’s not even the ’90s, where Internet access was a novelty and the domain of geeks like me and a few really forward-looking entrepreneurs. In less than 20 years, it has become so thoroughly integrated into our lives that I bet most people can’t go more than five minutes without tweeting, e-mailing, Googling, or doing something on an Internet connected device. (Go ahead. I dare you to try to see how long you can go without the Internet. I’ll wait….)
I’d even be willing to bet that at least half of our economy is somehow dependant on Internet access. And that’s only likely to grow in the future. So yes, Internet access absolutely needs to be regulated as a public utility.
The case for this couldn’t have been made any clearer after I read this article on gawker.com: Man Forced to Sell His New House Because Comcast Lied to Him
For those who don’t feel like reading the story, it’s a tale about a software engineer who checked with Comcast, one of the county’s biggest Internet Service Providers, too see if they could provide high-speed Internet access to a home he was thinking about purchasing. After repeatedly checking with them and getting their assurance they could, this software engineer, who makes his living from home, bought the house. Then after three months of trying to get Comcast to come out and hook him up, the company basically told him, they can’t service that area and never could. He even volunteered to pay someone to lay a cable from Comcast’s nearest connection point to his house – at a cost to him of around $56,000 and $60,000 – and Comcast still refused.
The point of this story is not how bad Comcast’s customer service is – just about anyone familiar with the company already knows it – it’s that this incident could have been avoided if Comcast and other ISPs were regulated like the electrical companies.
By law, public utilities must report to the government exactly where their power, gas and/or water lines are. Had Comcast been forced to report the location of their lines, this poor software engineer could have called 811, gone online to www.call811.com, or even checked with the local municipality’s call before you dig program and found out that Comcast’s line stopped some 2,500 feet from his house.
Now you may be thinking most people don’t work from home, and this is not a problem that’s going to affect many people. And you’re right – for now.
But more and more of us are beginning to have the ability to work from home. With the advent of cell phones, tablets and laptops, the workforce is becoming increasingly mobile, and employers are beginning to take notice.
Mine certainly has.
As I stated up top, the last two winters here in the Northeast have been kind of brutal. But during these recent snow emergencies, I was able to work as just as efficiently from home as I could have from my office – all without having to get into my car and risk life and limb trying to get to in, like I had to do so often in the past.
And it wasn’t just our IT staff that had that advantage. Many people in our accounting and sales departments were able to do the same thing, as were our reporters. The upshot is we got our paper out the door and posted online just as if it were any other day.
I suspect many people at other companies in my area had the same experience these past two winters. None of this would have been possible if some company like Comcast or Verizon or Time Warner had put us in some Internet slow lane.
So don’t you believe it when they tell you regulating them as a utility and forcing all Internet traffic to move at the same speed will stifle innovation.
Without Internet fast lines, web developers still figured out a way for folks to share files and videos online, create successful on-demand streaming movie sites which effectively put the neighborhood video rental store out of business, and create cloud services where we can quickly backup and store gigabytes-worth of our personal data.
In fact, it’s more than likely that had we had the premium-priced “fast lanes” that ISPs want, companies like Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Dropbox and Carbonite would have died while still startups, because they wouldn’t have been able to afford access to the “fast lane” that made their services possible.
In fact if it’s anyone who wants to stifle innovation, it’s the big ISPs like Comcast, Verizon and Time-Warner. They’ve become fat and lazy from their virtual monopolies and are now panicking at the thought that a tiny startup could upset their apple-carts and do to them what Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu did to the Blockbuster and Suncoast video store chains.
So don’t let the big ISPs turn out the lights on future innovators. The power to stop them is in our hands.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Nimoy's legacy is more than just Mr. Spock
“Accepting death - by understanding that every life comes to an end, when time demands it. Loss of life is to be mourned, but only if the life was wasted.”
-- Spock to his younger self“Yesteryear” Star Trek – The Animated Series
 |
| Leonard Simon Nimoy March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015 |
Childhood heroes hold an unusual place in our psyches.
They are often the first people to spark our fledging
imaginations and inspire us to do something we’d never dreamed of before, even
if all we do is to pretend to be like them at first.
As we grow older and more jaded, these childhood heroes tend
to maintain their place of honor in our personal pantheon of role models even
as other heroes we idolize later in life fall away as we become aware of their
all-to-human flaws and we begin to cynically pick them apart.
So it was with a profound sadness that yesterday I learned
of the death of one of my very earliest childhood heroes – Leonard Nimoy and
his alter ego Mr. Spock.
We never picture our heroes dying, especially those who have
accompanied us so long on our trek through life. We just we assume they will
always be there to inspire us and lift our spirits when we need it. After all
that’s what heroes do.
But now, like that
Robert Frost poem about two paths diverging in the wood, I find I must continue
down my path alone, while my hero takes the path to “the undiscovered country
from whose bourn no traveler returns.”
I mention poetry here because as well as being a talented
actor whose career spanned multiple decades, Nimoy was also an accomplished director (“Three Men and aBaby,” “The Good Mother,” “Vincent” and the third and fourth “Star Trek”
movies); a poet (“A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life,” “Come Be with Me: A Collection of Poems” ,
“Will I Think of You?” )
and a very active member of the Jewish community.
Yet despite his many accomplishments, it seems he will
always be remembered for playing a half human, half alien on a campy sci-fi
television series for three short years in the late ’60s and again in a couple
more times in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s. But to paraphrase from his obit on NPR,
“instead of being a punchline, Leonard Nimoy gave the role of Mr. Spock
gravitas.”
Like the golem of Jewish folklore, he breathed life into the
role of the starship Enterprise ’s
logical science officer, a role that in a lesser actor’s hands might have come
off as a caricature of robot in a human body. He gave the part a quiet dignity
that convinced this 6 or 7 year-old who watched the show religiously in the
early ’70s that Mr. Spock was as “real” a person as the actor who portrayed
him.
“Star Trek” was my “gateway drug” into the world of science
fiction and for the longest time it was my only drug, mostly because – if you
will excuse the expression – of my fascination with the character of Mr. Spock.
When my friends and I used to play “Star Trek” there would
inevitably be arguments over who would get to be the captain. But I didn’t
care. I never wanted to be James T. Kirk. I always wanted to be the Vulcan science
officer.
And apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Talking with my friend Christina soon after we learned of Nimoy’s passing, she
recalled one of the last conversations she had with her grandmother. They were
discussing their favorite “Star Trek” characters, and her grandmother said she
preferred the dashing, swashbuckling Captain Kirk. But Christina told her she
preferred nerdy characters like Mr. Spock.
“What does that say about me?” she asked, laughing.
Well it says she was a lot like a legion of fans who learned
from Nimoy’s portrayal of Mr. Spock, that there was nothing wrong with being
smart – and showing it – and that math and science could be cool.
But perhaps the biggest thing I learned from him, and the
reason he’s always remained my hero, is that he taught me to be comfortable in
my own skin.
Like Spock, who was the only alien among a large crew of
humans, I too felt like an outsider when I was growing up. Until fifth grade, I
lived in Rhode Island
where there weren’t that many Jews, and while the anti-Semitism wasn’t always
overt, I still remember a time I came home to find neighborhood kids had
scrawled swastikas on my family’s garage doors. I also vividly remember being
shunned because I didn’t celebrate the same holidays as the other kids. This
combined with the fact that I was never interested in the same things my peers
were made me feel like I had my face pressed against a window watching other
kids playing in a room I wasn’t allowed in.
But every night, I’d come home, turn on the TV and see Mr.
Spock dealing with the same sense of isolation as I was and watched how he earned
the respect of his crew. Suddenly I no longer felt like I was alone. I had a
role model I could emulate, and if I did, I’d eventually “fit in” and be
accepted.
And he was right. Eventually I found a “crew” of my own who
accepted me as I was and all those people who used to make fun of me for being
into weird and geeky things like computers suddenly need my technical expertise
to fix all their stuff. (Okay, some of those people still may not really accept me; I’ll settle for the cash they shell
over to me for fixing all their high-tech gizmos).
Recently I’ve also come to believe that being the “outsider”
or “observer” wasn’t such a bad thing afterall. I’d like to think it’s
benefited my writing, giving me a keener insight into human nature.
So, for giving me self confidence, a lifelong-love of technology
which I’ve been able to turn into a comfortable career, and for, I hope, making
me a better writer, I thank you Leonard Nimoy. May you go to your rest knowing
that to me and your legions of fans, you won’t be remembered as only Mr.
Spock.
You’ll be remembered for your most import role of all.
As our hero.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Much to say about nothing…
Usually I try to shine a light on something obscure or share my weird take on things going on in the worlds of technology or geekdom. But this month I’ve got nothing.
Nada.
Bupkis.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
I’ve got a lot of ideas running around my head – like why passwords are passé, what a world without privacy would be like (and would we really notice?) and why today’s geeks don’t seem to have as vivid imaginations as my generation did. (That’s right all you youngsters! Get off my lawn!)
So then, why isn’t this month’s post about one of those ideas?
Well, because at the moment, all they are, are just ideas. Ideas that would take me all of about a paragraph to write.
And that’s not enough to fill this space.
Not, at least, for someone who subscribes to the George RR Martin school of story telling, where “short” stories range about 500 pages.
Now any good journalist will tell you that a well-written article, column or essay should be concise and to the point. They’d tell you to avoid what one of my curmudgeonly J-school professor’s called “The Great American Nose Bleed.” But I think even he would have had a problem with a feature column that was only one or two short paragraphs long.
And yes, before you ask, I was a young and crusading Clark Kent-type before being lured over to what many of my newsroom friends refer to as the “dark side.”
I wouldn’t call what’s happening to me a case of writer’s block. Ideas are still popping into my head at their usual pace. It’s just that none of them have caught my imagination they way they usually do, nor have any taken off and blossomed into something more concrete.
I blame the winter for this.
Flowers don’t blossom in the winter and concrete doesn’t cure correctly in the cold, so it makes sense I’d have trouble writing when I hate the cold.
In fact, when it gets cold here in the Northeast, my motivation to do anything other than curl up under a blanket (or with the dog, if a blanket isn’t handy) and watch TV and sleep drops faster than the mercury in the thermometer outside my window.
For the past month, I’ve been tired, cold and grumpy. Kinda like a bear, who has the right idea about the winter. At the first sign of cold weather, they head for a nice comfy cave, set the alarm clock for spring and sleep in until it’s warmer outside.
Unfortunately, I don’t have that option, though I wouldn’t mind trying to hibernate until spring.
I bet you I could.
It would be nice to finally catch up on my sleep and when I awoke, I’m sure I’d be really motivated by all the strange and new ideas I got during that extended period of dreaming.
Even if that wasn’t the case, I’d at least have a great story about how I slept all winter to tell you about in my next post.
Friday, December 26, 2014
2014, the year of the Cyberbreach
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| This interactive chart from www.informationisbeautiful.net/ shows some of this year's biggest hacks. |
And I’m not talking about North Korea’s much ballyhooed hacking of Sony Studios to prevent the release of its film, “The Interview,” which features the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un by two bumbling journalists, played by James Franco and Seth Rogen.
 |
The Lizard Squad:
Cyber Grinches
|
No, what I’m talking about is a group of Grinches calling themselves the “Lizard Squad” who tried to steal Christmas from thousands of kids this year by launching a distributed denial of service attack on new Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox game consoles.
The attack, which succeeded in overwhelming Sony and Microsoft’s servers with so much fake internet traffic that they crashed, prevented owners of these new gaming systems from connecting to the Internet. The attack, however, did not affect games that did not require an Internet connection to play.
While the motives behind North Korea’s alleged hack seems akin to an unruly child throwing a temper-tantrum because someone was planning to make fun of it, the aims behind the Lizard Squad’s latest action are somewhat unclear.
In an article on the Winbeta blog, the group claims its motives were more pure. They claim they did it to show consumers just how bad Microsoft and Sony were at protecting their data and to force both companies to upgrade their security. Doing it on Christmas day, they said, would “would anger and reach the largest amount of people – more people [more] angry calls for a greater response from the companies.”
Whether or not you believe their goals were as altruistic as they claim – and it’s hard to, when in that same article, the group also claims to have launched the attack “for laughs” – they are correct. This past year seems to have been the year where Cybersecurity has failed the consumer in some very big ways.
It all started in November of 2013 with the hacking of Target, where 40 million credit cards numbers were stolen. Then in January came news that millions of SnapChat accounts were hacked and info on users, including their phone numbers had been posted online for anyone to download. Then in the Spring, Home Depot fell victim of a cyberattack where approximately 53 million email addresses and 56 million credit card accounts were compromised.
In the summer, while most of us were relaxing at the beach, beside the pool, or with friends and family at barbecues, hackers were hard at work. In May came word that the world’s largest online auction site, E-Bay, had its user database breached, which gave cybercriminals access its customers’ names, account passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and birth dates. Then in June the U.S. Secret Service tipped off the popular Asian-themed restaurant chain, P.F. Chang’s, that 33 of its locations had their credit-card-processing terminals compromised and that the hack had been going on for eight months.
planet, were immune from this summertime hack-attack. In late August the Wall Street Journal reported that
Attacks continued into the Fall with breaches at Google, where in September almost 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were hacked and posted to a Russian web site, and most infamously at Apple, where hackers broke into the company’s iCloud storage site and stole nude photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton and released them on the Internet. That was followed by an attack in October, targeting software giant Adobe, in which 38 million of its users had their account and credit card information exposed.
I could go on and list more – and if you are really interested there is a pretty cool graphic showing the relative size of all the major databreaches in the past few years here – but I think we all get the point. Cybersecurity is nowhere near as “secure” as it needs to be in a world where we conduct and store much of our lives online.
Being in the IT industry myself, I’m not going to point any fingers here, because I know how hard it is keeping computer networks safe with the crop of tools currently at our disposal. That said, I think it’s well past time that the IT industry came up with better methods of keeping our data safe. Chief among these new strategies should be the ditching of any method based on password authentication.
Let’s face it, typing in a password to a computer was OK back in the ’90s when dialup was still the norm and e-commerce was just a dream. But in today’s world, we need a more sophisticated method of identification. Next year I might take a stab at suggesting a few alternatives, but in the meantime, I think the IT industry needs to concentrate on making 2015 the year of REAL cybersecurity.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Gift guide for the truly deserving geek....me!
It’s a sound idea and for the past 20 years, I can honestly say that I’ve never received one of those ugly sweater-type of gifts from any of her relatives that made me want to ask myself, “What the hell were they thinking?” when thanking them.
However, I’ve always felt a bit uneasy about making a list for them. You see I’m a tech geek with an addiction to making sawdust, two hobbies which ain’t exactly cheap, and the stuff I truly want is always expensive. So when I take a look at my finished list each year, I can’t help think what a greedy, self-centered bastard it makes me look like.
So in an effort to appear less of a jerk – and because I’ve also got kind of a twisted sense of humor – I’ve always tried to make my lists humorous by adding things even Bill Gates and Donald Trump would be embarrassed to ask for. Then just to push the whole thing over the top, I add a paragraph or three about why I totally deserve these luxuries.
I’m told my wife's family gets a good laugh from my lists and looks forward to reading them each year. So this year, I figured I’d share mine with you and hope you get a good laugh from it as you prepare to engage in the annual madness that is Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Jeff's Geeky-Gift Guide for 2014
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Hey, if Norm's not using it, why should it go to waste? I'd promise to take good care of it! |
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| Huston, we have liftoff! |
 |
| This is not as cool as the Emperor 200, but it looks perfect for a Sith Lord. |
OTHER DESK CHAIRS. So, it looks like I’m not worth a measly six grand to you people? Fine. Then how bout these other desk chairs: Either the DXRacer Office Chair MX0/NC at $430 or the DXRacer Office Chair FE08NB at $350. Both look comfortable. I particularly like the adjustable lumbar pillow and the fact that they recline. Still to rich for you? Then how ’bout the VIVA Office 08501. This totally reclinable chair with foot rest and the world longest name is on Amazon right now for a special Black Friday price of $320
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| Admit it, you want one of these too! |
SAMSUNG UN55H7150 55-INCH 1080P 240HZ 3D SMART LED TV: Still no? You people are tough. Okay I’d settle for this very modest 55” flat screen. At just under a grand, it even features voice command so I don’t have to bother getting my fat butt off the couch to find the remote! (Bonus points: It would also make me feel like I’m on the bridge of the Enterprise! “Computer, please eject Wesley Crusher out the nearest airlock immediately!”) 
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| Sure it's expensive, but I could have asked for a Festool Dust Extratractor! |
FEIN TURBO II DUST EXTRACTOR: Yup, this year I want a gift that really sucks. And nothing sucks better and QUIETER than one of these orange and black babies. They produce only 67 dB (A) of noise as opposed to the 80-120 dB other shop vacs make. It also has a tool actuated switch that will start and stop the vac at the same time as the tool that is plugged into it for maximum dust extraction. Yes this unit is three-times more expensive than the ones you can get at big-box stores, but isn’t my hearing worth the $400 price tag! Fein Turbo II Dust Extractor, model 92028236090 is only $400. But if you really care about me and more importantly, my lungs, you'll splurge and for the extra $100 get me the HEPA filter equipped unit, Fein Turbo II HEPA Dust Extractor, model 92028236990, $500
SSD HARD DRIVE: I’m looking to upgrade a Dell XPS system I was given, and in order to make it a worthy successor to my trusty old Windows XP workstation -- and to make the Windows 7 really fly on it -- I need an solid state hard drive and bracket for it. Luckily you can get both the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7TE250BW) and the Silverstone Tek 3.5-Inch to 2 X 2.5-Inch Hard Drive HDD SSD Bay Converter, Silver (SDP08) on Amazon for a total of $130. And since the price is so cheap, you could even get me a two of those Samsung 840 EVO drives, as the bracket can hold two!
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You'll have nailed it if you get me
one of these. In fact you could say it'll become a workshop staple! |
PORTER-CABLE NS150C NARROW CROWN STAPLER: Okay, it’s no ray gun, but for attacking…er.. attaching backs to the cabinets and furniture I build, something like this is even better! The 18 gage staples hold better than the brads I currently use. It’s not like I can’t live without this, but hey, if your too cheap to get me my damned workshop, then the least you could do would be to cough up the $75 to get me this!
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| Who said everything Steampunk had to have gears on it? |
GERMAN SAFETY GOGGLES: Speaking of health and safety, my eyes could use some extra protection and my current crop of safety glasses are all scratched up. There is really nothing you can do to fix those cheap plastic lenses, (believe me, I’ve looked!), so I’ve decided it’s time you treat me to a new pair of safety glasses. And not some cheap junk from the big-box store. No. I want something stylish and practical! Something that says I’m more than just your average woodworker! Something that says, I’m a MAKER! Dammit! Nothing screams "I'm a Maker" more than these Steampunk-inspired safety glasses from Lee Valley/Veritas, $16. Plus, for an extra $3 you can get me the swappable tinted lenses that I can put in when doing yard work. Just imaging the suave, geeky figure I’d cut pushing the lawn mower through our weeds wearing these and my pith-helmet! (and yes, I DO have a pith-helmet)
BIONIC FACE SHIELD: Just the name alone should tell you why they’re perfect for someone like me. I mean how much more geeky can you get, than naming your product Bionic? And while they won’t give me Steve Austin-like vision nor even make that cool do-do-do-do sound they will protect my face better than the German Safety Glasses I mentioned when I’m at the lathe. $21
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Yup, that's me in my jacket
30 years ago! |
BUTTON CLOSING FENCING JACKET: Out of all the gifts on this list, this one will be the most challenging for you to get. So if you really want to prove you love me, you’ll find me one of these to replace my vintage Santelli fencing jacket I’ve worn for more than 25 years! Alias my current jacket is beginning to fray and is a bit worn and may no longer be competition legal. It’s made of heavy duck canvas, closes on the left (I’m right handed after all) and is a size 40. Don’t know if any of these fencing equipment makers can do custom jobs but you can start your search by contacting these fencing equipment manufacturers: Blade Fencing Equipment, Triplette Competition Arms, Absolute Fencing Gear and Leon Paul
PADDED PRACTICE SLEEVE: Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “Why should I get him a padded sleeve, when he really needs to be fitted for an entire padded jacket?” Well, if you can’t find me the button closing fencing jacket I want, what makes you think you’re going to be able to find me one of those, smarty-pants? Luckily for you, a padded practice sleeve is readily available and will protect me from all those arm touches during epee practice. $28 WOOD MAGAZINE RENEWAL: Look if you got me my heated 20' x 20' shop, I wouldn’t have to while away the long, cold months here in the great Northeast reading about all the cool things I could be making if I just had a nice warm shop to be in. But sadly you keep refusing me, so now I must resort to bugging you to renew a magazine subscription for me. Some people….
A three year subscription for the price of one is now just $28.
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Don't let Moose and Squirrel
'foil' Boris' plans again! |
TITAN ELECTRIC EPEE GUARD: It’s a well-known fact that epee guards take quite the beating (and are sometimes even used to beat another blade out of the way) and the one on my Russian gripped epee (I call him Boris) has literally had the rivets beaten off it. So it needs to be replaced so I can again have two functioning weapons. After all, you don’t want my Zikov-gripped epee, Natasha, to be lonely do you? So don’t just get this for me. Get me it for Natasha’s sake, dollink. $25
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| Every woodworker needs his vises... |
CLAMPS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Woodworkers can never have too many vises, so clamps will always be on my list. Anything from the two-foot Irwin Quick Grips you can get at the Home Depot or Lowes to this Jet 70411 Parallel Clamp Cabinet Door Set, ($270) will do.
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