Relocated!

Hello everyone!

I’ve relocated my content from this blog to my new work-related space. Please join me there, and remove references to this one!

F1 at Blogs.PSU.edu

http://www.personal.psu.edu/dfr11/blogs/f1/

 

RSS Diet

More and more, my time is less and less. That’s not true; time remains the same. But more and more, I crowd my time with all the stuff I want to be involved with. Seems that doing this without focus sets you up for “drinking from the firehose”.

So, I took a long cold look at my Google Reader. Neighborhood of 400 feeds. It’s been more in the past, as many as 650 at one point, but yaknow, some are more relevant than others. BoingBoing? Yeah, sort of a keeper. LOLCATS? debatable. I’m ashamed to list some of the others I had. Yikes.

The more I focus down to “more local” items, the less free time I’m making for myself, and that’s critical. SO, after the long cold look at Google Reader, I axed a big bunch of feeds.

Now, I’m down to 223, mostly local, but alot of tech and a good portion of just mindless entertainment (yeah, lolcats made the cut). Still, I have more items than I really NEED, but at least I can get my “unread” count down below 1000+ on a regular session.

Always that quantity v. quality issue, isn’t it?

 

How to Spread Yourself Too Thin

Seems this is easier and easier to do these days. I constantly struggle with all the stuff I should be doing, and keep creating new things, as if I had all the time in the world for it. Ohwell, that’s a lament for another day.

Meantime, Chicken And Stars.

We (me, micala, robin2go), got together recently at Damon’s and kicked around the idea of trying a podcast out. That conversation ends up here http://chickenandstars.wordpress.com/

The goal of Chicken And Stars is to attempt to create a space of an entertainment flavor, that hits on the broad area of local people that are engaged in global publishing of the things they create online. In this way, we’re hoping to make a fun thing of this whole pool of Too Much Information.

We hope you like it, welcome any and all feedback, good and bad (Lord knows, I’m no expert with audio recording, and the quality shows), and hopefully we’ll have a fun thing that just gets better and better.

If we end up tying a wide range of people together to facilitate community? Well, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Just add water.

 

Decluttering Revisited, Embraced

We’re planning on moving to a new house. Mostly because of finance. This house is fine; it’s really rather neat, in fact, but it’s got some quirks (I guess they all do, right?) that we just can’t fly any longer. So, we’re planning, thinking, weighing options.

With that comes decluttering. My last post, I think, was inspired, in part, by this ‘declutter’ vibe we’ve been on lately, me and my wife. We’ve been entrenched into this house for awhile, doing the day-to-day, but now we’re in the mode of “well, THAT thing, we’re going to have to box and move.. so.. do we want it that much?”.

So we’ve been getting rid of all manner of things in great condition. Some to friends, some to Goodwill, trying to sell some, some, unfortunately, right to rubbish.

And here I am with my most recent hobby-out-of-control; vinyl records. I lost count, but I’m estimating 4000 LPs, 500 45s, 100 78s, four Edison platters, and a fistful of flexi disks and oddities. Most of these were obtained as gifts, or at amazingly ridiculously low cost to me; since, yaknow, records are ‘old’ but not ‘antique’, so the market is a wild frontier.

But I’m finding that decluttering the records is hard. I’ve got a ton that I want to hear, or try out, but I’ve been able to just shelf-for-later; and not care that ‘later’ never comes.

That puts me basically in the same spot with social media; where I have to selfishly swing the axe so that my collections are managable and meaningful.

Music is godlike, but I have to admit I’m no superman, so there’s only so much I can do with my time.. only so many songs I can listen to.

Anyone interested in some Percy Faith LPs on the cheap? How about some ABBA. No, I’m serious.

 

Overload again.

Technology ebbs and flows. There’s a surge of software bloat that requires a surge of hardware performance; there’s a surge of web that requires a surge of interactivity; and I think then there’s a surge of information that requires a surge of choice.

Not only now do I have a wealth of informational resources at my touch, I have a MOB of people at hand, that are pumping out their opinions as fast and as furious as they can choke them out.

I’ve got a great-uncle who will probably outlive me on sheer will alone that used to tell me one of the more important things in life is what and who you surround yourself with. That’s not to suggest that we are all weak and without a mind of our own, but that our surroundings do and will affect the choices we make… either toward or away from those influences.

That’s profound. More profound that it even seems; which is significant.

Am I an I.T. person by trade because I spent my time playing soccer or baseball? Nope, not really. I went to school for Electrical Engineering and then switched to English, hoping for a well-rounded study, if not focused. The thread that bound was that in the early 90s I was using and learning computer techology that was a big component of everything I did, and that became the focus.

So now I’ve got tools like RSS and Twitter, where I can add any number of people into my feeds, and the tools will keep up with the flow for me. Once I have time, I can browse those feeds and get caught up, as if I were watching the flow all day, with nothing else going on in my life. That’s a great deal of freedom; to put my time and attention into whatever arenas I so choose and prepare.

Granted, it’s more efficient for me to process all these feeds in a feed-reader environment than it is to browse all these sites and links, but it can get to the point where I’ve over-subscribed myself, and don’t have the time enough to catch up on all that condensed information.

That’s where the “un” comes in. I have to look at all my feeds, based on time at hand, and decide, do I keep that link, or do I unsubscribe; do I continue to follow that person, or do I unfollow.

So, Web 2.0 puts us all shoulder-to-shoulder. But you can still be a glutton. You have to pick and choose. But, you don’t know the book by its cover, so at times, you’re in a position where you have to partake, evaluate, and then, if need be, move on.

Okay so, more than ever before, we’re divided into categories; Web 2.0 consumers vs Web 2.0 contributors. But the trend, I’m guessing (tag me if I’m wrong here, but I bet I’m not), is that it’s virtually impossible to be a consumer without at some point at least wanting to TRY being a contributor. So, at some point, it’s safe to call us ALL contributors, if we know we are or not (or have become or not).

However, it’s not like “the old days”, where you could meet all your neighbors, keep up with their lives, have coffee with them all in the course of the week, and still keep your ranch in order. There’s only so many people you can really follow; only so many feeds you can hammer through in a day.

So, where do you swing the axe?

I’ve adopted a brutal approach, I’m afraid. I’ll follow or feed anyone at any time, just to see how it goes. But, if I’ve given it a week or two, and I’m not learning, or being entertained, or finding myself engaged, I’m out. Unfollowed, Unsubscribed, and I’m on to other things. I do this without malice; just impunity. Just as I followed for curiousity, I’ll leave with just as light a heart. Sometimes, I’ll follow again, if an interest arises again, but sometimes not. There’s some feeds I’ve added/left multiple times, depending upon the content.

My point being; I’m very selfish with Web 2.0 stuff, and I’m frequent about this. Every day I’m re-crafting the “new television” that takes up my time and my attention.

So, if you’ve got blogs or feeds or media or content of any kind that you’re pumping into the world; know that the numbers might mean something, but might not, just the same.

No less love, I could unfollow you today, and add you right back in some other time; I may not follow you at all, but that doesn’t mean your stuff is irrelevant to others. After all, it’s not ME that’s keeping your train on the track, it’s you.

Keep at it, people.

If you’re not DOING things, this whole machine grinds to a halt.

 

Training the New Guy; Firing on All Cylinders

Today was Day 2 for the new hire. This puts my team back to almost full strength. Having been undermanned awhile, that’s a very nice thing to have happen. My group of five may become a group of six, depending upon plans with an incoming intern, but that remains to be seen. All that is being balanced by rearranged duties at large, and re-geographicating a good number of supported users into a new building in the next few weeks.

So it’s all still chaotic on many levels, but today I got my first sense in some time of; yeah, windows down, weather good, playlists queued, gas full… my turn to drive, so let’s chew some open road.

Being mainly an I.T. Support person, everything I deal with from dawn to dusk is broken. Either by merit of faulty hardware, faulty software, user learning, or any mad mix of any of those across the spectrum: everything is broken (apologies to Dylan).

So when you get a new person in to train, you’ve got that whole hill to climb of getting them over that huge learning curve; one of those pre-broken tasks that often makes up the normal order of business. Push that up against losing two three (sorry, I was thinking very recently, only) very strong coworkers and friends (from the workplace only; we still “kick it” as the kids say), that sorta begins to feel rusty and uncooperative.

All weekend I went through all the scenarios in my head of the things I wanted to pump him full of: the software tools we use, the buildings supported, the infrastructure, the office spaces, machines, software, coworkers, quirks, oddities, politics, religion and philosophy…. then on Monday, decided against all that. So we took it organic. We went over some generals, some basics, let him formulate questions as he would, and it went pretty well.

Today we went through the list of specifics, got some real traction on the “here’s these” and “there’s those” and “remember these things” items. I had a goal to have him ready to kick from the nest at noon, but silently knew that we’d be all day; because that’s how it goes in I.T.; the job always expands, it’s often a telescoping mire of details not communicated for whatever reason.

But then we WERE done at noon. And he comprehended, and was ready to take wheel and chew his own road.

And that was the most refreshing bit of thing.

I stay in Ready mode for any part of the communication process to fail, to jump in and re-explain, or re-iterate, or just start from the beginning again; but I don’t often work with people that do what I do all the time, too.

So yeah, at the risk of pushing this cart until it sounds elitist, it was nice to work with a collegue for once, to be able to communication information once, and have it arrive with understanding, and have some interaction on gear-meshing level.

That as a backdrop to all the bigger changes to come feels pretty good.

I’m feeling like maybe we can do some business.

Jeeves, bring the car around.

 

CB Radio 2.0

Since I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve been trying to put my finger on why it seems like such a familiar mode of communication.  It finally hit me that it feels like CB Radio used to.

There’s the whole mythos of what CB Radio is, with the “10-4 Good Buddy!” triteness and the assumption that it’s only used by truck-drivers and undereducated yokels.  Ok, granted, there are elements of that to it, but as with all things, that’s not where it ends.

When I had my first truck, my junior and senior years of highschool (late 80s), I wanted to pimp it before pimping was cool.  So with my massive fortune I acquired working fastfood, I got a cassette deck, radar detector, and a 40 channel CB Radio, and installed them all myself.

At first, all I did was lurk, listened to the CB to see what was going on, who was talking, what they talked about.  Yeah, alot of truckers talking trash and getting directions, but there was also a local social community.  Warnings of where cops were speed-trapping, prayers of safe travels, laments of missing the families.  Some had mobile radios, some had base stations at their houses.  What did they talk about?  They talked about what they were doing, just like Twitter asks of you.

That radio went with me to college, in a town that was much much larger than my hometown, and since it was a college town instead of a factory town, the CB community was quite different too.  Dozens of people had radios, some were “working” people that were doing daily business of getting trucks and supplies from here to there, some were families talking about what’s for dinner, and a sizeable community of “cruisers”.  Every town has a circuit where the kids drive in circles all night to meet and socialize, but having radios added a new dimension.

I remember one family in particular with obvious nicknames, or “handles”, that were all something like Big Mama, Big Karl, Little Karl, and Little Stacey.  In lurking, I got to know the windows of time they’d be around and chatting, what they were having for dinner most days, and if Little Karl was going to be late for football practice or not.

You could get into the conversation by saying “Break.” and someone in the audio cloud would hear you and answer “Go, Break.”  And then you’d jump in and chat.  Never need a reason other than wanting to say something, anything, to whoever would care to be there.  But still, it became more than that.  I eventually met several people, found places to meet up and hang out, became friends “off air”, where we would not have met for any other reason at all.  There was this one guy named Diamondback (that we also called “sport”, because of an argument that never got settled over if his truck was or was not a “step-side”), who was fond of the idea of rattlesnakes, we had nothing at all in common, but we were friends for a couple years, just because of the radio and that surrounding community.

Twitter gives me that same feel.  It’s like an open mic in a group of people that may or may not “have their ears on” at any one particular time.  But at that same time, you may have a whole new audience at any one time that you didn’t know about.  It’s a very fluid and unstructured environment, but it’s still a community like any other, with its own stars and inside jokes and vernacular.

Now we talk about ‘tweets’ and ‘twhirling’, we live-blog quotes from Lessig at Symposiums, meet up on-the-fly at Otto’s;  because of Twitter.  We tweet about breaking tech news, and what’s for dinner, and when we wake up or go to sleep or have a coffee or if family is ill.

I bet Diamondback and Torley would mix it up.

And by the way, I was “Snowdog” because I thought it was obscure and cool.  Betrayed by Rush again.

I’m going 10-7.

 

Broken Tools

The compelling passtime of Technology, I think, often times, in the natural game of it.  That game is the tendency is to analyze the thing, figure it out, find out what’s good about it and what’s bad about it, with the ultimate end of embracing it or rejecting it.  The unstated mountain we all are climbing together, to be a part of the party celebrating the better things.

Google Mail, dude.  HoTMaiL suuuucks.
Skype, dude.  Vonage suuuuucks.
txt me, dude.  eMail’s ooooold.
ad nausium.

Then sometimes, something happens that makes no sense whatsoever in that light; we decide that the best tool for the job is the one that’s fundamentally broken.  And somehow, pushing ourselves into that place of challenge, puts us in a spot to go farther than we would have with better tools.

Maybe it’s a case of the challenge causing the greater creativity; greater, even, than fantastic tools offering less restrictions.

Weird.

Talking about Twitter.

It’s a website with no content, well except for what you put into it.  But it’s a website with extra in-roads.  You can put stuff in it from the web-on-desktop, from a desktop client, from your txt-cell, from your browser-enabled phone… and there’s other tools that encapsulate audio, video, and linkify those thing into it…  but not very well.

There’s no robust friend management.  No sorting of contacts.  No batch edits of contacts coming or going.  No great stats at-hand.  No way at all to thread together all the dynamic linking of conversations.  Sometimes, updates just vaporize.  Sometimes, the simple things it should do fail; like following and unfollowing.

And despite those shortcomings and more, there’s flocks and flocks of people banging away at it.  Meeting.  Learning.  Teaching.  Sharing information and drawing others in to the conversation…  even though that conversation is like AM-radio static late at night while driving through remote mountain areas.

Says something, I think, about the pursuit of perfection.  The best tool for the job might very well be something that wasn’t a tool at all.

Why learn physics of friction and wedges and rusting metal and buying rubber-gloved mats or oddly shaped gape-mouthed pliers specifically designed for the job, when all you really need is to smash the pickle-jar lid on the kitchen cabinet.

 

Change

Not a new topic, maybe no older topic, but fresh and low-hanging. I’ve been thinking about change.

Mostly on the jobfront. Home’s going great; got all the normal worries with money and time and clutterbalance, but nothing out of control. Oddly enough, I’m not *worried* about my job; I know I’m delivering value, and I know I’m in a place where that’s seen, but I do feel like a stable island in a hurricane.. so that makes you consider options, ‘just in case’ if for no other reason.

I do I.T. Support (yawn, maybe?), although I’ve had greater responsibilties in the past, the resume shows, I’m in a lower point, overall, lately, although I’m on the gain again more recently; adding responsibilities if not growing the career.

For the past few years, I’ve been doing this duty at PSU, with a group of 12 others (3 managers plus 9 others in my role, varyingly), to cover a college of support volume. It’s been alright, nothing ground-breakingly amazing, but good enough to do the job without being so demanding that the Important things have to be neglected. But it’s been full.

Then there’s the change. Over the last couple months, we’ve lost members, with only marginal temporary replacement. And more are going. Rumors of even more beyond that. There’s planning and learning curves and new group dynamic considerations. And then there’s extra work. Upcoming, we’re re-arranging our office arangements, many of us going into a new building entirely. So, change is abundant.

I’ve stepped up into a greater role, so there’s satisfaction there, but at the same time, it’s more of a role of “spend your time doing this stuff” rather than “learn and use these exciting tools and methods to gain these results”. And while I’m okay with that, I don’t feel I’m really learning or gaining at a rate that I’m capable. I’m going, which is important, but I’m not aiming.

And honestly, I’m not excited.

I’m not depressed about it, or against it, because things are not at all Bad; but I’m just not passionate.

It’s when you step out of that normal trench and have something to compare it to, do you gain a new perspective, and think about how to deal with what you have, or resolve to make things change toward a particular direction. Not to harp on the TLT Symposium, but yeah, that was good for perspective. Not the least of which being listening to Lessig speak.

At the moment; I’m going to buckle up and try to haul one more bag, try to get our shop on its feet.. going to pretend that even more will leave, be ready to grab another bag I hadn’t planned for… There’s good value in knowing you did what had to be done. And if there’s any opportunity to step up and haul some slack that no one else is, I’ve got one now.

But at the same time, I’m thinking about change.

 

Twitter, the Scoble effect, RSS, and Unfollowing (fallowing?).

I go through phases of getting and thinning.

One of my hobbies is collecting vinyl records, much to the chagrin of my lovely and tidy wife.  And it’s one of the few areas I’ve had the most difficulting in the thinning process.  But that’s just one example.

With social things like Twitter, I have much less difficulty unfollowing people.  In following, I go through phases where I’ll add 20 or so people at a time, based on linked conversation or any other random cue that makes me think they’d be interesting.  On the flipside, there’s typically three reasons I’ll unfollow someone; if I don’t know you or have never met you and your content is just not captivating to me at the moment, if you turn out to be just bonecrazy, or if you’re a complete Twitter railroader.. someone that just relentlessly posts, off you go.

I did alot of adding this weekend (Thanks TLT!)  I’m doing some thinning this morning.

Some people though, are enigmatic;  Scoble, for example.  I hate Scoble, I really do, no offense personally (I actually hope you keep doing exactly what you’re doing), he just makes my teeth itch.  However, I learn from Scoble, so I like to look in on his junk now and then.  He’s just one of those people that’s constantly into things and trying things, and one of the rare ones of those people that doesn’t hoarde his information, he’s a share-able sort.  So in his frequency of posting, I typically learn something new from time to time, so there’s the value for me.

[edit: Okay 4 reasons... if you're clearly a stats collector, advertising robot, or similar marketing slug; but typically I'm not following you to start with, but if you follow me, I will go out of my way to block you;  becuase I like that I'm decreasing your stats.]

This morning, I wake up, decide to check out some Twitter history in case anything blew up or Martians landed or whatever.  Did you know Twitter ‘Recent’ tab history only goes back 10 pages deep?  Well, from the main interface it does.  I had to find that out by backing over all the Scoble fluff to see if anyone I heart had anything recent to say.  Maybe they did, but I’ll never know.

I pick on Scoble, but I’ve got 10 or so of these highly chatty people I’m following.

So that’s where RSS comes in this morning.  I’m going Scoble’s main Twitter feed, subscribing him into my reader, so I can learn from his content, but then UNfollowing him so he’s not cluttering my local Twitter radar.  Same for Spin, sorry dude.  Prokofy, you too, back of the line.

One of the new necessary skills; management of the information overload.