Yet you anger us so when you decide to take away things we loved so dearly, like Google Reader, perhaps the most well known and best RSS reader. What made it worse is you didn’t ask us first if we were done using it. How dare you. I deserve free stuff for as long as I deem it something worthwhile to me.

We’ve come to expect that whatever we currently use in the cloud will be there forever whenever we need it. The responsibility shift in computing and data storage is gradually moving from self to others. We don’t want to maintain or manage anything. Let someone else do the dirty work and figure out how to not lose my music, photos, documents, and email. Why should I have to keep track of all that? I’m clearly too important and busy to figure it out.

This trending mentality sheds light on a couple things. 1) We don’t like to take responsibility for much as people and prefer someone else be in charge of keeping those servers that hold bytes that define much of who we think we are. 2) We demand a lot on stuff that we don’t pay for.

In light of recent severe weather in the Chicago area, I was reminded that I need to create & maintain a better backup solution for my personal files. Thankfully I didn’t lose any data (or other valuable items) in my minor basement flooding. However, this has reignited my search for a solution including looking into external drives I store in the house along with cloud based options. And at the same time, I need to have a backup solution in place for all that important that’s only stored online.

As I figure out my plans for saving everything in triplicate, I’ll share those details here.

It is no secret we are in a significant shift culturally where users demand mobility and access everywhere. We want everything to be compatible with our smartphones or tablets because we’re all on the go. I personally benefit greatly from the technology available to me and I do feel like I can do more from wherever I’m at, whether that means phone calls, text messages, accessing Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or any other number of “cloud” based services. But all this wireless access and freedom requires things few of us think about:

Wires. Lots of fiber and T-1 lines. Cell towers. Huge data centers. 

What do they all have in common? You guessed it, these things not very mobile. Yet they exist because we demand to be. Our very ability to be free to do what we want where we want is grounded, quite literally, in hardware that is a bit more of a permanent structure. Cell towers loom over our urban landscape so our phones can send and receive our critical tweets and Facebook status updates. Data centers house (probably way too much of) our personal info, with servers running around the clock just waiting for us to make them show us pictures of our friends or cats, or perhaps even something important like work email.

Without all this, we’re unable to have that freedom we so badly desire.

Part of what I’ve always found ironic about people is that we all need stability in our lives. Whether that manifests itself in faith, a community of friends, family, following a daily routine, or a long term job, it’s nearly impossible to exist for long periods of time without it. I don’t think our psyche can’t handle that much change without a pillar to go back to. We all crave a constant in some form.

As we continue to become a more mobile society that has a difficult time settling down, perhaps more so in the realms of ideals and what we choose to define us, it’s important to recognize there is a much bigger hidden cost being our mobility and freedom. One, that from a technology perspective, we all rely on an incredibly huge backend infrastructure that, like a fence around a backyard, allows us to play to our heart’s content. And two, our own personal freedoms and exploration come out of the strength based on a strong base of support and consistency in our lives.

The same is true for many industries, innovations, products, and ideas that would never exist were it not for the work of someone before us.

The book was written back in 1999. The topics covered hot issues of the time such as Mac vs. Windows, whether Apple would still be around in the 2000′s, the relative newcomer and open source OS Linux, along with a nod to BeOS (I miss you still!). These things were huge areas of discussion in the tech world during my late high school and then college days. Reading and remembering when these issues were current reminded me that I am not as young as I appear. One thing that caught my attention is how the same analogies and challenges within the computing world have not changed much, if at all. Apple was seen as the closed box system from their operating system software to their desktop and laptop hardware from the beginning. Perhaps not so ironically, that mindset in the world of Apple is even stronger today. On the flip side, Microsoft was seen as the “free market” option because a consumer had choice on what hardware they wanted Windows to run on. Inexpensive components were made available and you could build your PC to your own needs.

14 years later, that core concept is still true in those two camps. However, Microsoft is showing signs that they want to control the world their OS runs on, perhaps thinking because it’s working so well for Apple it could work for them as well. Now Android is the most open “free market” OS for mobile hardware and software vendors to explore their creativity and show off. And after all these years, Apple has somehow become even more closed in their culture of the hardware/software ecosystem and going down a path where general computing devices like laptops and desktop computers lack the ability to be upgraded (RAM, storage) or maintained (non-removable batteries in laptops) after purchase by the consumer.

The reflections on culture within the realm of technology are vast and concerning to me. This black box mindset that the end user should never know or need to know what happens inside something they use as troubling. On one hand, the goal may be a simple, easy to use experience for the user which itself isn’t a terrible thing. However, to me it can assume a lack of user intelligence and catering to the lowest common denominator doesn’t push a culture or society forward. Perhaps worse, though, is that it conveys a mindset that the user shouldn’t need to learn anything beyond their current knowledge base and perpetuates everything should be simple and easy and that working hard is best left to others. I’m looking at you, Roku radio commercials (listen here.) And that is by far a larger cultural shift that should worry us all.

We’ve come to a place in technology and culture that assumes computing devices shouldn’t require any training or time to be able to figure out how to use them. We should simply be able to pick up a device, turn it on, and instantly know what to do. I have heard similar arguments at my job in the past where the expectations of employees is to know how to do their job, not know how to use their computers. Leave it to some strong marketing ideas or some unfounded concepts, but I fear for where this will take us in the long run.

There is already a push for this in cars that now automatically parallel park or protect the drivers if they fall asleep at the wheel (thanks Mercedes for subtly telling us your car owners are old and prone to doze off when driving.) How many more years will it be until driver’s education simply skips over driving tasks that not so long ago were considered essential skills to get behind the wheel?

Where is all this going? TL;DR: the average person is becoming lazier and we’re becoming more OK with other making our decisions and choosing what’s best for us. We’re fine with not knowing the “how” behind much of what drives our daily lives and perhaps more importantly, we’re not asking “why” these things are there in the first place.

So what do we do now? That, my dear reader, is for a future post.

• Phone calls are rude
• Thoughts on phone calls

(I want this phone. Image “borrowed” of johnsphones.com)

It got me wondering: is talking on the phone really that bad? And if so, why?

The arguments, or whining perhaps more appropriately stated, that are voiced in the G+ posts and comments point out that they don’t want to be bothered by a call and that, as the recipient of the communication request, control of when they want to respond should be completely up to them. The other primary argument is that Internet and other text based communication mediums are more efficient and ultimately less intrusive.

As a tech savvy person, I use most forms of communication available to me on a regular basis, save for written letters though I hold a special place in my heart for the medium. Yet I fear for the future of human interaction when I read the sentiments in the posts and comments on phone calls. My main problem? The growing inability of people to form cohesive sentences and thoughts in written form. Check out just about anything on social media to see what I’m talking about. If the primary path of future communication is writing, our English teachers have a difficult road ahead of them. My prayers are with you.

While I am not against texts, IM, email, or any other electronic medium to reach people in a written fashion, there’s something missing in all of these: personality, warmth, inflections of the voice, and many other subtle clues that are often misunderstood in the written word. However, the biggest issue I see underlying all this goes much deeper that phone calls:

Control.

Everyone wants full control of everything in their lives. The posters and commenters feel like a phone call is some sort of intrusion into their day. In some odd sense of irony, all these other methods of communication are just as intrusive and distracting as a call is. Smartphones, tablets, and computers so often make a noise to get our attention that some new message has arrived, claiming to require our time. And we’ve trained ourselves to give in to those distractions and allow it to take us away from whatever we’re doing or whoever we may be with in person. Of course, why all these people are so bothered by a phone call when it’s so easy to ignore them in the first place is beyond me.

The “trouble” with talking on the phone is also that we have to give it 100% of our attention for it to be a proper conversation. We can’t (attempt to) multitask the way we do with Internet and text-based communication. It becomes obvious when we’re not paying attention to what the person just said over the phone when you’re also IM’ing with someone on the computer. Do we really think we’re all so important and busy that we can’t focus on one person at a time and really delve into a conversation that has some depth to it? Are our friends and family truly not worth it? Don’t we want the same back when we have something to share?

Maybe it’s time to slow down again, declutter our lives, do a little less multitasking in our communications, and spend time talking with people AND listen when others are talking to us.

So this winter I took it out to try my hand at some night photography and capture Christmas decorations and the quiet stillness of a winter evening. One thing that cannot be properly captured here is the cold air that bites at my fingers while I setup a shot. Below are just a few examples of what I’ve been able to capture so far with the D7000 and a 35mm/1.8 prime lens, except where noted below.

 A view down St. Charles Rd. in Lombard, IL. f/4 stop, 1/40sec exposure. ISO 800.

Walking path lit by lamp posts in Itasca, IL’s Usher Park. f/5 stop, 1.3 sec exposure, ISO 100.

 Villa Ave looking south in Villa Park, IL . f/2.8 stop, 1/30 sec. exposure, ISO 900.

]]> http://www.whatupgoingon.com/2012/12/29/photography-finding-the-light-in-the-darkness/feed/ 3 http://www.whatupgoingon.com/2012/12/16/remembering-the-good-times-top-5-wugo-blog-posts-of-2012/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=remembering-the-good-times-top-5-wugo-blog-posts-of-2012 http://www.whatupgoingon.com/2012/12/16/remembering-the-good-times-top-5-wugo-blog-posts-of-2012/#comments Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:52:27 +0000 Greg Macek http://www.whatupgoingon.com/?p=469 2012 is almost behind us, and if the Mayans are right, pretty soon there won’t be anything ahead of us. Today’s post brings back the most viewed blog posts from this past year with short reflections on each. So here they are in order of total page views (thanks Google Analytics for secretly tracking everyone!):

1) Bathroom Renovation Part Deux

Who doesn’t love a good transformation story, especially when there are pictures? I had linked to this blog post on an Apartment Therapy page about bathroom renovations and it got a number of views from there.

2) Longevity and Loyalty

It’s so rare to hear stories of anyone sticking anything out for long periods of time these days, perhaps this post about my 12+ years at my job resonated with readers.

3) Interactive and Thoughtful Discourse Part 1

A 2011 post makes a 2012 comeback appearance. Some traffic to this came through search results and a little bit through link backs in other blog posts throughout this year. The topic is still incredibly relevant and important to me to this day. Also check out the follow up post to it.

4) Negative Space

This post focused on trying to leave space in life to allow moments and experiences to stand out. Life shouldn’t be running at full speed all the time.

5) My Missing Childhood Stories

Another 2011 post makes its way into the top 5. Apparently, it was a good year for my writing and Google searchers have found me. I guess readers resonated with this post as well.

There you have it. A year in review that isn’t quite over yet. I may have a post or two left, but we’ll see where the holidays take me. Thanks for reading my meanderings. I’ll continue to write and share at my own pace whether or not anyone reads. And that’s.. OK with me.

For an old timer at the company like me, this means a couple things. One, my what I consider an already ridiculous amount of time at 4 weeks is now bumped to 5. (Actually, it’s 6 weeks if you include 5 days I’m rolling over from this year into the first 3 months of next year. First world problems, right?) Two, what am I going to do with all this time? I’m starting a list:

1. Travel and visit some friends in far away lands like Mississippi or Evanston.
2. Travel to new places I’ve been meaning to go like: Iceland (northern lights, natural hot springs, awesomeness)
3. Learn how to do stuff around my house from my super-handy neighbor.
4. Take a day off every other week all year.
5. Sleep. A lot.
6. Other stuff

I absolutely realize the “problems” I have are great ones to have and it makes me reaffirm my choice to still be with the same job I started at right after college. This immense amount of time does get me thinking I should consider some bigger adventures, even if they are local but simply require more time to do. Others, like my dream trip to Iceland, may require saving a few dollars first.

Keep your ears open soon as I may be hitting some of you up for ideas on what to do or a time to visit. This guy has many days he’s free to be away from work. Watch out world! Or don’t.

I struggled over what to share next in this sabbatical flashback series of blog posts. Ultimately, I decided to go a little deeper into my experiences and my personal journal I kept during the trip. This time it’s personal.

A year ago this week I was into my second week in Prague. For new readers, this was decidedly the low point of the entire trip. For most of the second week I fell ill with food poisoning or something else that kept me down. My trips to the cheap Chinese restaurant near the hostel and bar visits came to a complete standstill as just about everything I ate that wasn’t bland disagreed with me. I spent the majority of that second week in Prague finding plain breadsticks, crackers or saltine equivalents, plain rice, and lots of water. The little I did eat still brought upon sensations internally I did not appreciate. Suffice to say I did not venture far from the hostel those days.

Nobody likes being sick. However, being sick away from everything you are familiar with amplifies everything that’s wrong with the world. Whatever is hiding beneath the surface of your exterior begins to make itself known. Emotions are raw and small triggers can set off a wave of thoughts and concerns that normally are well suppressed. I had too much time to avoid anything bubbling up.

Approaching the mid-way part of this trip, I was realizing that in spite of my strong introverted nature and appreciation of time to myself, I was not alone, but lonely. Leading up to this trip, I was increasingly doing stuff on my own, whether doing prep at work after hours organizing projects and documentation to planning lodging and locations to be in Europe, I was increasingly flying solo. Because nobody else around me was doing anything remotely similar, everything took on this feeling of an adventure that only I was called to do. (OK, it’s all kind of true.) It was like there wasn’t anybody around me I could relate to about this trip – and seemingly many facets of my life. Like I said, being sick amplified a lot. I told myself I’d make changes upon returning to the US about spending more quality, intentional time with people. But that in itself doesn’t automatically fix how I feel.

I do believe there are phases in life that where we must go will be a solo journey and it will feel lonely. Sometimes I think I’m still in that phase and journey that is very much mine. Hopefully the end of this specific journey will yield new insights and relationships with people who I can travel with.

One of my favorite things about sabbatical life was the unmatched amount of free time I had. Schedules didn’t exist except when I needed to travel between cities. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the parks of Prague and wandering around streets like those above. It gave me such an incredible amount of time to just… be. A few of you read results of that time to think on the blog a year ago. The rest of my thoughts made their way into a written journal I kept throughout the trip, the contents which I still read over to this day.

I also found myself noticing everything around me from old architecture to how people interacted with each other in parks or restaurants to chalk sidewalk artwork (seen below). My lack of understanding the Czech language basically allowed me to watch everything around me without distraction of unavoidable eavesdropping. It was fun to watch life happen around me, at least for a while.

I also thought I went over there waiting for the epic grand adventure one may assume you have when you travel overseas. I think the fact that I’m still processing ideas from a year ago and thinking about what I saw and how a month of travel alone opened up my eyes to who I am is part of that adventure. There’s still more to go… but that’s for another post.

At first glance, the scene itself isn’t anything special. It was on a quiet side street where few people where walking that afternoon. What caught my eye is the gentleman on the right appeared to have Down’s Syndrome. As some readers may know, my older brother has Down’s. In an instant I was drawn back home. This small part of life in Prague reminded me a little bit of where I came from and of my own life. Perhaps if I was a bit more adventurous or able to speak Czech, I would’ve stopped to have a conversation and learn more about these men. Instead, I leave this image below to our imagination about their conversation and lives.