Archive for December, 2006

Happy New Year

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

This is the time of year we typically see a lot of year end wrap-ups and beginning of year predictions. You won’t see them here. Wrap-up and prediction articles always seem sort of like cheating to me — as if we have a deadline, and have to write something, but it’s the holidays and we’re having so much fun and well, here’s a thought, let’s just write a wrap-up of all that happened this year, or better yet, let’s predict what we think will happen in the coming year! Aha, mission accomplished!

I also don’t like New Year’s Resolutions. If there’s something I need to do to improve myself or the world, there is no special and magic time to start the thing. If it needs to be done, and I know it should be done, I should do it when I think of it!

Anyway, in the interest of getting something posted, even though it is a holiday week and I’ve eaten too much, I’ll do my own version of cheap subject matter! Here are some interesting facts that I will not explain or comment on…they’re just things that made me stop and think, “Hmmmm.” Also, they are in no particular order.

Here we go:

• The average weight of an adult male elephant’s trunk is 290 lbs.

• The average weight that trunk can lift is 550 lbs.

• Studies show that people misjudge the tone of an online communication almost 50% of the time.

• In 2005, the average loss experienced by individuals responding to the infamous Nigerian email letter was $5000. That was up 67% over 2004.

• 71% of the net fraud investigated by the FBI was committed by people from the United States. In second place, with just under 8%, were Nigerians.

• If you get an email offer that sounds too good to be true (or even if it just sounds really good), you should go to www.snopes.com/ or http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ to check it out before responding.

So that’s it for tonight and for this year. Have a Happy New Year. Let’s be careful out there!

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Christmas Eve

Sunday, December 24th, 2006

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m not really thinking about technology or business or what you would like to read in a blog on the internet. Like many of you, I’m caught up in the final details of food and presents and family visits.
But I’m also thinking of something I wrote nine years ago, so I dug it out and reread it, seeking some perspective on Christmas and what it means to me. I’d like to share it with you:

Every year I try to think what it must have been like that night.
Some say it was cold. Israel lies in the subtropics, so it wouldn’t have been cold as we know it, maybe in the 40’s or 50’s, but of course, cold is relative, so it probably did seem cold to them, the young couple on that journey long ago.
More than likely it was damp and had been raining most of the day. That’s typical winter weather around Bethlehem, and when you’re tired and wet, 50° would be cold, bone-chilling cold.
And they surely would have been tired. Twenty-five miles doesn’t seem far in a car, but try walking it…or worse yet, think of riding a donkey.
So of course, they were tired, but that still wasn’t the worst of it. They were young, and they couldn’t have been married very long, because we all know the story. When the betrothed, yet unmarried Mary learned she was to bear a Child of God, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and the Gospels tell us she stayed with her for three months.
While she was gone, Joseph must have wrestled with his own problems. As I understand it, in those days, to be betrothed was much more serious than merely being engaged. Joseph had agreed to be responsible for Mary, he had already taken a sort of pre-marriage vow. To learn that Mary was carrying the child of another must have been a tremendous blow. Still, although he would have been perfectly justified in publicly denouncing her, after much consideration, he decided to very quietly divorce himself from her, break all ties…not denouncing her, but leaving her, all the same. He surely took some static from his family over that decision. I’m sure he had a cousin or a friend or someone who made sure he knew just how foolish he would look by treating Mary with some compassion, still he stood his ground. He would not be cruel to this young woman he had known all his life.
Only after he made his decision did God send an angel to explain to Joseph how his future bride came to be with child, and while the explanation must have been quite a relief to Joseph, I’ll bet he really caught more ridicule from his friends and family once he announced that the wedding would take place as planned!
So you see, the young couple had to be emotionally drained as well as physically exhausted when they got into Bethlehem. Newlyweds…Mary nine months pregnant…Joseph concerned for his young wife, worried about the fact that he had to drag her out in this condition. Imagine how frustrated, how angry, how helpless this young husband must have felt when he began to realize that there was not one room left in Bethlehem.
Was the stable where they finally stopped offered by some kind hearted soul who saw Mary’s condition or Joseph’s frustration, or did a greedy innkeeper see a chance to make some pocket money by charging a desperate man for the only space available where a tired couple could pass the night relatively dry and safe? We’ll never know for sure. All we know now, some two thousand years later, is that God’s Plan would happen. For in the night, in the stable, in the little town of Bethlehem, to an ordinary couple, road weary and far from home, a Child was born.
Every year, I try to think how it must have been that night. All the frustrations and human failures and problems, all the hurt and sorrow and pain, everything that was ordinary fell away…paled in the face of the miracle, not just birth, but Birth.
And if ever there was a time when the earth stood poised, with all of eternity within our grasp, it must have been that night, when the angels sang to shepherds and a young mother cradled the Son of God in the form of a baby.
Every year I try to think what it must have been like that night.

I wish you Peace and a Merry Christmas.

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Day 1.1

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006

Starting a blog in the week before Christmas has to be one of my more idiotic moments! I had been planning to start a blog for over a year, but one night a week or so ago, I just plunged, signing on to Blogger.com and setting up a template I liked.

All went smoothly for a few days, but after two entries…I couldn’t get log onto the site to make additions or changes. This appeared to be some confusion over having two accounts with Google…one for checkout at various merchants (saved me some big bucks) and the blog account. With two user names and two passwords and two sites owned by one company, I couldn’t find the combination that would get me into my blog! I could see and read it, but couldn’t make additions. The blog just lay there lamely with two entries.

So today, I discovered that my domain account included the ability to host a blog. This one I will own and it will be at my address and I can name it whatever I want and maintain it or neglect it as I want. I like control.

My first entry in my first blog was called Day One, so this appears to be Day 1.1. I hope to comment on tech news and info that I come across in my daily attempt to keep current. I read a lot and I often have opinions (imagine that!) or thoughts or find information I believe my customers would appreciate or could use. Look for that here.

Problem solving is my life, so I thought I would open with this little stumble at the creation of my blog. I’m going to try to copy my original posts and include them, but blogger.com owns them, so we’ll see if I can solve my own problem.

Here we go…I’ll keep you posted! By the way, below are my two original posts from that first attempt at blogging:

Day One

Just because my mom has taken a big step and tackled learning the computer, I thought I should finally start a blog which I have threatened to do for at least a couple of years. She says learning new things is supposed to keep you young. She’s also been going to Jazzercize (I’m not sure of the proper spelling, but it is a brand)…I just hope I’m that young when I’m that old!

New word of the day: irenic. This was used in this week’s issue of Time magazine to describe the Pope’s visit to Sultan Ahmet Mosque during which he silently meditated while facing Mecca. The word means “conducive to peace” or “fitted or designed to promote peace; pacific; conciliatory; peaceful” and perhaps we should use it more…practice it more. Recognizing another person, religion or country can be a simple act that opens doors and does not have to compromise our own beliefs. Let’s all be a little more irenic.

Day Two

Prices in the computer world are just, well…interesting. I’m not that old (!) but I remember when having a 2 gig hard drive said several things about one: 1) serious geek, 2) rather have computer equipment than eat, 3) more storage space than sense. Now, you can’t buy anything smaller than 40 gig and standard size has become 160 or 250 gig.

Printer costs have come down as well. When printers stop working, no one even calls for repair, they just go buy a new one. And then there is the cost of ink. I found an interesting commentary on the price of ink in Network Computing Magazine. I reprint it here with their permission:

Ink Costs More Than Blood?

Blood may be thicker than water, but it appears ink is more expensive than blood. The per-milliliter cost of an HP 45 printer cartridge is 71 cents, while blood comes out to 40 cents per ml, according to a posting on Gizmodo.com.

Here’s the math. A 42-ml cartridge of black ink costs $30, while a 500-ml unit of blood from the Red Cross is $200. (A quick Web search confirmed the ink price. Redcross.org doesn’t have pricing info for blood, but other sites showed pricing to be within that range.)

The poster also calculated the price-per-ml of other precious fluids, including oil, bottled water and vodka. Ink tops them all. This does a lot to explain HP’s $110 billion market capitalization. -Andrew Conry- Murray, acmurray@nwc.corn

You can find the article and other interesting tidbits at: http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?articleID=194400172

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