Facebook Family

Being a knowledge worker, and especially a research scientist in the field of computer science, I hear a lot about social networks and web 2.0. I've even taken the time to join a few social network ventures over the years, but typically (as evidenced by my stewardship of this blog) my activity in them has been sporadic at best. I've tried Orkut, Multiply, Youtube, LinkedIn, and once, in a moment of weakness, I even created a myspace profile (which I promptly deleted with a deep seated feeling of self loathing). Of all these, the only one that I really tend to at all is LinkedIn. I really enjoy how they organize that network. It's allowed me to regain contact with old roommates, colleagues from previous companies, and students I looked up to while I was in school.

I have absolutely refused to join Facebook. I've always thought of it as the online equivalent of the frat house, and I never really wanted to associate with that crowd in college.

Well, today, a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook that I really wanted to see, so swallowing my pride a bit, I created a Facebook account. Apparantly, several months back, one of my brothers had sent me a Facebook invitation that I pretty much ignored, but Facebook hadn't forgotten. I immediately got a notification that he had invited me to be one of his "friends" on Facebook. I accepted the invitation, only to find out that I am quite literally nearly the last member of my extended family to join Facebook. Even my aunts and uncles have Facebook accounts. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed, ashamed, appalled, or some combination of all three.

Needless to say, I've spent the last hour sending friend requests to all my family members. I feel so dirty...

Just another brick in the wall

Our housing development sits on the lower slopes of a good size hill, and our house is pretty much at the bottom of the hill. Most of our neighbors just have a significant slope through a portion of their back yard, but due to how far back in our lot our house is situated combined with the layout of the house, sloping the yard would have rendered a large amount of our back yard unusable. At least I think that’s why the original owner put a terrace in the back yard. It really makes things much nicer, we have a decent swing set in the yard and plenty of room for the kids to run around. The problem has been the retaining walls. They’re made out of railroad ties, and over the 5 years that we’ve lived here, they’ve rotted. Last year, the wall between our yard and a neighbors yard collapsed. So we replaced the wall with a manor stone wall. This wasn’t too difficult, since they had already poured a concrete slab, so we just laid the stone right on the slab, and were able to finish the wall in one day. Another wall, in our yard, was also falling apart, but hadn’t completely collapsed, so we hoped against hope that we could put off replacing it for a year. Well, it started to collapse shortly after we replaced the first wall, but we just didn’t have the money to replace it, so we just let it deteriorate.

It’s now been a year since we put up the first wall, and we had been losing dirt out of the second, so we figured it was time for the annual Tenney Terrace Wall Party. We invited a few of our friends over to help us put up the new wall, and bribed them with BBQ. This wall went much slower. I took Friday off so I could remove the old wall and do some prep work. I had intended to get the base trench dug, but first I had to remove 3 bushes that were going to be in the way (2 on the upper terrace, and one super overgrown evergreen bush that was on the lower level) and take out the old wall. The two bushes on the upper terrace weren’t to difficult to remove, at least not with a mattock. I had originally intended just to prune the evergreen bush back, but we’ve wanted to be rid of that beast for some time, so I took out the clippers, and my reciprocating saw and went to work. Finally, I began the demolition work on the old wall. I started with a crowbar, but found the wood was so rotten that the crowbar was completely useless. So, out came the mattock again. It made short work of the wall, but I think we'll be finding rotten wood debris in our yard for many years to come...

Unfortunately, all this prep work meant that I was not nearly as ready as I would have liked when our friends arrived, and most of them had other commitments which kept them from being able to help us the full day. In the end we got the trench dug, and the base material leveled. I laid 2 rows of blocks, then took the rest of the day off to recover. Over the next week, I spent 3-4 hours each night laying blocks for the wall. Tuesday, my good friend Erin returned to help me place some more blocks (despite the pain in her ear! I had no idea she was in pain or I would have told her not to come). This Saturday, I placed the last block in the wall and took some time to admire my handy work.

Here are some before pictures, along with one after picture. Two of the before pics are from Sierra's birthday the year before, so you can imagine that the wall was in even worse shape than shown here.

Should employers fine smokers? Today I was reading an article on Lifehacker on that subject. Initially, most of the comments were on the side of the employers. I'm not sure I agree though. Don't get me wrong. I think that smoking is a terrible, dirty habit that puts the smoker at risk and all those around him. However, many of the comments were about lost productivity (as you might expect, with the article being on a productivity blog). And, on those grounds I have to disagree.

One comment in particular caught my attention. The author claimed that he knew of smokers at his company that took 10 minute smoke breaks every hour. His contention was that that added up to 80 minutes of lost time every day. On the surface, that seems like a very simple calculation. The guy is outside, away from his computer, smoking a cigarette. Obviously he isn't working. However, in the day and age of the knowledge worker, it's not that simple. I look at it much like a professional athlete. You rarely see an athlete in for the entire game. Every so often, even the most skilled players are given a short rest. The reason for that is obvious to any one who has engaged in a strenuous activity. Your muscles just need a rest periodically to regain your energy level. Many researchers in the area of cognition describe the mind as just another muscle. That 10 minute break may be just what the person needs to refocus, and regain their mental energy. In addition, that is 10 minutes that the person isn't exposing themselves to the eye strain of looking at a computer monitor, the repetitive motion of typing and mousing, and it gives them an opportunity to stand up and get their blood flowing.

A few years ago, I was given an "ergonomic evaluation" at work. The result of that was a list of recommendations, including an ergonomic keyboard, chair height, and a 10 minute break every hour. Admittedly, part of this recommendation is likely due to the fact that I've already experienced some RSI problems (due to a stupid workspace setup when I worked from home during college). This may seem excessive, but some sites I've read actually recommend a 30 second break every 10 minutes, along with a 15 minute break every 2 hours. Add it up, and you're talking about 1 hour 48 minutes a day. Now, I don't take the breaks like I'm supposed to. When I get working on something it's hard to tear myself away. But I do try to do 2 15 minute breaks a day to get up and walk around campus. I think there are 3 benefits to this. First, that short period of exercise gets my blood pumping and helps me to stay alert. Second, I often will use that time to think about the work I have been doing, and refocus my efforts for when I return to my desk. Third, By scheduling in my break, I become more productive by saying "I'll work on this task for 2 hours, then I'll take a break." It helps break up day a bit and gives my day some landmarks to help map it out.

So, smoking may be a dirty habit. But I don't believe it to be the productivity loss that many believe it is.

You oughta be in pictures!

Candy sales for Camp Fire Kids begins this weekend. Normally, I really don't enjoy the whole selling candy thing, but this year something special has happened. A picture that I took of one of the kids in our group (Ciera Schmidt) was entered in a national contest, and was chosen to be on one of the boxes of candy that the kids will be selling. Aside from not being mentioned in any of the press coverage (let's face it, Ciera is a much cuter subject than the 30 something amateur photographer who took the picture), I'm pretty excited. I've only seen a picture of Ciera holding up the box of candy, but it feels pretty cool to have one of my pictures getting national exposure. I'd like to think it won't be my last!

Now that I've seen the picture, it appears they edited it a bit (I've never been great at post processing... need to work on that.) and blurred the background. The picture looks great. Here's my unedited version:

Missed opportunity

I've started reading a blog called Digital Photography School. The first day that I began reading it, they had a post titled "5 Reasons to Take Your Camera Everywhere in 2008." As I read it, I thought that I really wanted to make sure to take my camera everywhere I went. However, the next morning as I was leaving the house for work, I looked at my camera bag, and decided I didn't want to deal with the hassle of carrying it around and left the house. As I drove down the road, I saw the most amazing sight. On a nearby hill, there are a number of windmills, and some clouds had enveloped the hill. The sun had broken through the clouds, and so the windmills were encompassed by a soft golden mist. I found myself thinking "I wish I had my camera right now!"

So, yesterday morning, I did take my camera with me. And I was glad I did. I'll edit this post later with one of the pictures I took that morning.

Trash Talk

One of the difficult things about being an electronics junkie, is finding ways to dispose of old equipment safely. I currently have a several failed motherboards, video cards, sound cards, etc... just lying around taking up space in our closets. Until recently, I wasn't aware of any place that would take that type of waste, but on the Linux club mailing list, someone pointed out a local business that handles electronic waste, and will do so for free (within reason, they do charge a storage fee for monitors). So, without further ado, here is the contact information for this company:

Bachand Electronics Corp, of Richland, has an unofficial service. The really great thing is that they'll even take monitors (although they are going to charge you $5, which is a bargain). They will take most any electronics, and here's the cool part:

If you give them a computer that still has working components, they'll scavenge, and build working machines out of them, and then donate them to worthy efforts that would otherwise go unfunded. I just spoke with the owner, and am planning on taking my current collection from the garage to them, this Saturday.

Bachand Electronics Corp
1351 Wyman St, Richland, WA
(509) 943-6203

If components are truly dead, they store them on a pallet, which gets picked up by an electronics recycling firm...

This post is just for me

Well, mostly at least. Up to this point, most of my pictures have been taken using the auto mode on my fancy DSLR camera. I've gotten lucky and had several pictures turn out very well. I've wanted to learn how to use more of the manual settings on the camera, but haven't taken the time necessary to do so. But, recently a blog I read (life hacker) has had a couple of posts about using the fancy features of DSLR's. I've bookmarked the articles, but just so the links won't get lost, I'm posting them here as well.

Master your DSLR camera pt 1
Master your DSLR camera pt 2