Disenfranchised with College

As I continue on in my quest for a four-year college degree I grow and more and more sarcastic about the quality of knowledge transmitted in this quest. Most of the work I do for my classes is busy work, and I feel that at the end of each semester the only thing that grades next to the course numbers on my transcript prove is that I can sit down and do a tons of pointless busy work for a sustained amount of time.

It seems hard to imagine that a rational person would be able to effectively argue the value of the information I am being made to learn to earn my degree. It really isn't even so much the facts in the knowledge that the class is suppose to teach, but the value of how that knowledge is taught. Most classes work like this. Here's some busy work. Thumb through the text book to find the line that has the answer for each question. Turn it in. Here's what will be on the test. Put your short-term memory to the test and then take an exam. Rinse and repeat the formula a few times each semester and you have what passes for a college class.

Let's compare this to what I do in my spare time. Once I was interested in tying some web pages on my website into a MySQL database. I asked someone who knew some PHP and he showed me a piece of paper with some examples. I used that to start and then used the help on mysql.com and after a few hours of fooling around I had it all working. This is real-world learning that has a practical application to my professional career. MySQL + PHP is not used in my job, but the ability to take a problem and solve it in a few hours is very relevant to my job, and probably to most any professional career. These kind of real-world skills seem to be the antithesis of the college experience as far as I have seen.

When I sit down to do my homework I really feel like I am just wasting my time. The only thing that really keeps me going is the ever nearing ability to put on my resume that I have a four-year degree in Information Technology.

Why the cause of global warming doesn't matter

A lot of debate has come from the debate about the source of global warming. It primarily boils down to every scientist that reviews the evidence comes to the conclusion that global warming is a man made phenomenon. The main exceptions are those scientists on the payroll of businesses with an interest in the public believing otherwise. This is not universally true, as a number of scientists not connected with oil companies have come forward and voiced their skepticism. However, I posit that when it comes to planning our future, the cause of global warming is immeterial.
To begin, let's posit that global warming is caused by human activity, namely the release of the so called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The corrective action to this would be to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we emit. Indeed, we should go further and try to reverse the damage already caused by to repopulate the plant and tree population on our planet.
So let's posit that global warming is part of the natural trends of heating up and cooling down. Would that mean we no longer have to worry about the pollution we are producing? Absolutely not! Our current life style still needs to be changed for other reasons. There is no debate surrounding whether or not we are the cause of mass extinction, the pollutions of our waterways and ocean in ways that threatens our food and water supply, without which we cannot survive as a species. It is also a fact that the availability of oil is limited. Sooner or later we must find an alternative energy source.
The green movement does not need a belief in man made global warming to have legitimacy. Man made global warming is only one part of the green argument, a part that can be easily removed without compromising its legitimacy.

Why drilling is not the right action.

Imagine you owe a member of the mafia $1 million. After holding this debt long enough they have warned you your life may soon be in imminent danger. You appeal to two of your friends for assistance.
The first friend is something of a slime ball and offers you this help. "I'll rape your mother and record it and my brother will pay you for the services." You ask how much he will pay and your friend tells you, "I don't know, probably $100."
Your next friend is a financial manager. He assures you that if you make some tough choices now, and work hard enough at it, he believes he can help you earn and save enough money to keep the mob off of your back so you can slowly earn enough money to pay them back.
Whose advice would you take? Why irreparably destroy our priceless habitat in exchange for such a small return when we can responsibly solve our problems? Why is there even a debate about this? I don't see what this has to do with conservative versus liberal. It's about pragmatism versus greed for a few.

Blog reading

I am subscribed to a whole bunch of feeds. Most of them are very low traffic. A few have a medium amount of traffic, generating no more than seven or eight entries a day that can easily be read in about five minutes. Three of the feeds I am subscribed to is an aggregation of blogs from bloggers relevant to the topic. For example, Planet Ubuntu is an aggregation of Ubuntu developer blogs.
At my last job which was about 75% down time, I had no problem reading all the blogs that came through. When I started my new job I unsubscribed from a lot of blogs, especially some of the aggregates.
To the left is how my current unread count looks. This is significantly down from what it used to be a few weeks ago. To the right is a list of all the feeds I am subscribed to. I am contemplating dropping the Planet Mozilla feed. I consider reading many of these blogs to be an important part of my professional development. Getting the insights and news about current technology trends from people across the globe has been incredibly helpful in my career.

Shaky cam and frequent cuts

I was watching the DVD that came with the first studio album by Rodrigo y Gabriela. It had a few live performances on it, and I was interested in watching how they make the magic happen. Instead I got a performance of two musicians that jumped from left to right, and up and down on my camera. The actual musicians where just sitting there, but the cameramen thought it necessary to make the camera look like they where trying to film while driving down a bumpy road. The editors decided that the shake wasn't enough. It was also necessary to not allow one camera to have more than one second of screen time. This may be ideal if you find epileptic seizures to be hip, or you just didn't actually want to watch them play live, but for anyone who actually cared to see an amazing performance caught on video, it really destroys everything.
It seems that cutting and shaking all the time is the big rage. I ran across this problem while watching the Transformers movie. A fight between two giant robots in a large city seems like something that would be hard to mess up. You really couldn't watch them fight though. It was just a bunch of shaky footage. You couldn't really tell what was going on. There was no action. It looked more like an excuse to not hire a real fight choreographer, than a means to produce a bad-ass movie.
For true genius one should defer to the fight between King Kong and the T-Rex. The two monsters take at each other with the skill of two contestants in an ultimate fighting match. The camera moves only when necessary to give the viewer a close up on the action, not as an excuse to hide the fact that there is no real action going on. Everything about this epic battle stands as a model for all moves that includes a fight against two fictional giants.
As a consumer of art and media I appreciate when my intellect to be respected. If I wanted shaky cams where it was impossible tell what was happening I'd watch the worst rated videos on youtube.

A Kim-less Weekend

This weekend Kim is going to Miami for a cousin's wedding. I will be taking the three girls to Pensacola to meet up with Zeke and Vicki before they head to Las Vegas to take up residence.
I don't mind having the girls by myself for a few days, but I really don't like being without Kim's company for a weekend. I think it is good that we are going out of town because when I leave town I expect everything to be different. When I am home and Kim is not there it shows up everywhere. It constantly feels like something isn't right.

The state of the civil rights movement

I just listened to this episode of Fresh Air. This really moved me. Congressman John Lewis discusses his involvement in the civil rights movement. It is followed by the son of a black panther member. Both of these are very honest and provide great context for the world we live in, especially for people like me who grew up post 70s.

A common misconception about plugins.

I follow the White House's blog, and came across this today.

I found the Volt to be very comfortable -- and surprisingly simple. You plug it in and you can get 40 miles on a single charge! Because nearly 80% of Americans commute 40 miles or less a day, this car could potentially provide 80% of Americans with a zero-emissions option for their commute.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/the_technology_is_there/

The reality is that plug-ins are as zero-emission as any other device in your house. Plug-ins do not have some magical source of energy that they charge off of that is zero-emissions. Plug-ins get their power from the same source as the outlet it plugs into. If you plug your car into an outlet at your house then your car will be running off of the source of power that your local electric company provides. This is not zero-emissions and the media should not be trying to sell that sort of misinformation. The White House shouldn't either.
What I would like to see is solar panels on the top of cars charging up the batteries. Solar panels are probably too expensive and produce too little energy to make much of an impact on your car (though I don't know that) it would be nice for your car to just sit in the driveway and charging up from a real zero-emissions source. I have heard that a new generation of solar cells are suppose to be coming out soon that are much more efficient. Perhaps these can provide a relevant amount of energy to our cars of the future.

I don't understand Microsoft's direction.

News hit yesterday of the different versions of Windows 7. Like Vista, Microsoft is going to ship several different versions that range from a crippled version up to a the beefy version that costs a whole lot of money. The idea is sound. Microsoft has to pay developer to develop and maintain features, some of which are only used by advanced users or by businesses. By offering a cheaper version of Windows that does not include these features, they are shifting the financial burden to the users with more needs than the average person. Why should the average consumer pay for features they will never need or know exists?

I think Microsoft did a good job of making this divide in XP. If you didn't know the difference bettwen XP Home and XP Pro, chances where you had no need for XP Pro. If you did know the difference, chances are it isn't that difficult for you to decide which one you need.

With Vista there are six different version planned for launch, Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. This isn't just confusing for the average consumer, this becomes confusing even for technophiles. Microsoft has not yet released pricing.

Reportedly, Starter is for low end machines and protable devices. The report so far makes Start sound like a complete piece of crap. According to The Inquirer, it will only allow the user to run three programs at once. This artificial limitations is absolutely stupid. My XO, which is running much lower specs than the average netbook without much of a problem. It is also highly presumptuous of Microsoft to say "three programs" without any regard to the hardware specifications or the amount of resources the application uses. This means you could run three programs that use a lot of resources, but not four programs that have a smaller footprint. It is believe other functionality will be reduced, but neither the netbook nor low-end computer manufacturer get to have a say which features should be reduced or kept. It is simply a one size fits all job. Since many netbook manufacturers have been putting Linux on these devices because Vista is simply to bloated to offer a good user experience, I don't see what this does to enhance Microsoft's position.

Without dissecting the specifics of the other versions, it is suffice to say that it is just a list of versions that have features added or removed, depending on the target market. In light of Microsofts competition, which has made some small but significant strides in erroding market share in a post-Vista world, this really doesn't make Microsoft look good.

Apple sells their OSX with the current version being Leopard. The only other OS product they are currently selling is OSX server. The decision is clear, everyone buys Leopard unless they want a server. For $129 you get the full OS with all of the features and the improved security and stability offered over the Windows products.

With Linux the situation is not so clear because there are hundreds and hundreds of versions available, but the overwhelming consensus is that everyone should use Ubuntu unles they know enough about Linux to know why they would have a need or desire for any other version. Okay, it still isn't that easy because their is Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu each offering a different interface, but most people should probably just use Ubuntu unless they are technical enough to know why they would use something else. So while Linux doesn't exactly win in this category, it still beats the versioning of Windows.

The stock install of Ubuntu will run just fine on the lowest-end machines that are being sold today including the netbooks. It also scales up just fine to take advantage of a top of the line PC. It does this at install time by looking at your hardware specs and adjusting itself accordingly. It doesn't artificially lock you out of how many programs you can have open, or deny you access to features because you didn't spend more money.

Ubuntu also releases on a predictable schedule of every six months, and gives you a predictable life time of three years of support, while every so often releasing a version supported for five years. If a consumer decides to choose Linux it is very easy. You get the latest version of Ubuntu, no matter how low end or high end the machine you are purchasing, and don't worry about new versions for three years.

This is by no means a Windows bash. There are a lot of great improvements in Windows 7, especially with Internet Explorer 8. I just see their model of havng six different versions that go from needlessly crippled to needlessly expensive, when their competitors handle this in a much more consumer friendly fashion.

Meaningless Corporate Leadership

As a student majoring in Information Technology I have been made to take various business and management courses. I often wonder if those who I work with that are managers or in executive positions ever took any of these courses, because they seem to make a show out of breaking every good practice that is taught.

One important part of management is effective goal administration. There are some fairly standard rules to effective goal setting.

• Specific – Your goals need to be well-defined. Try and be as precise as possible


• Measurable – You need to know when you have achieved your goal


• Attainable – Make sure your goals are realistic


• Relevant – Consider how relevant your goal is within your overall plan


• Time-Specific – Try and keep a timescale

Source: http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=12312

In this light, here are the posted goals that have been posted around my work.

• Increase Customer Satisfaction


• Engage Employees


• Demonstrate Customer Value

These goals fail being measurable, and so it follows they are not attainable. The verbiage is such that they are too vague to have any useful meaning. Maybe somewhere these goals are broken down into a more specific vision for management to review. This is doubtful, or if true, still unhelpful because the first and third goals are goals that transcend management and sit largely in the lap of all employees at all levels.

The goal to "engage employees" is the worst because it doesn't even have any meaning. If it really is a goal it implies that our organization was previously not engaging employees. This goal has about as much value of a goal that says, "Talk." All you have to do is say a word and you are done. Without any verbiage that implies improvement, it really isn't much of a goal.

It really bothers me that presumably well paid professionals put this kind of stuff out on a regular basis when they should know better. If the end goal that they where hired on for was to create goals then they have succeeded. If, however, they where hired on to help our organization grow, and they are trying to use goal setting as a tool to accomplish those ends, then they have failed miserably, and have publicly posted their uselessness for the whole organization to see.