Tech Tidbits

Sleep is a topic much on my mind lately. Our new grandson is making sleep a rare event for his parents - as his mother did for me so many years ago. I live in a household with teenagers where it is not at all unusual to have someone awake and active literally around the clock. I find this nocturnal activity almost as disturbing as my own children’s infancies where they, too, chose to be awake most of the time that I felt was meant for sleep.

I can’t write all this off as young folks flaunting parental expectations. Technology contributes in a way that is fundamentally foreign to my experience. When I was growing up, after a certain time, maybe midnight or 1 am, there was not much potential for entertainment. Movie theaters had their last show around 10. Restaurants (other than truck stops) closed. Libraries closed. Arcades closed. There was a curfew. And yes, I stayed out as late as I could manage.

For our teenage sons, nothing closes. One works night shift at a fast food place. When he is not working, he is able to play games online regardless of the hour. The other regularly starts watching movies at 1 or 2 am. Personal entertainment technology is time-agnostic.

Our house may feel like a hotel to me, with folks arriving and leaving at all hours, but it is not at all unusual. And someday in the not too distant future, we will have it all to ourselves again.

There is not much technical about this post. My younger daughter and her husband have started their family. Our first grandchild was born May 20. And he is beautiful.

It is an ordinary story. And it certainly came as no surprise to anyone. The baby-to-be was announced with great joy. There are surprises, though - different ones for different players.   My daughter announced after her first night at home with the baby that apparently it takes 12 hours to come close to 6 hours of sleep - a surprise to her, though folks who have had babies have doubtless mentioned this and other oddities. But until you experience these things for yourself, they never matter much or seem to be real.

I am surprised at how much fun it is to remember those times-with-baby. I am astonished at how deeply moved I am by this baby’s existence. I am surprised that all the grandparent pride I found so amusing when I was not one is really quite reasonable once the child in question is your own grandchild. And my mother has another chance to smile as I learn yet again that there is more to be experienced in life than I can imagine - and that many of my experiences will follow in generally stereotypical outlines.

In a sense, this is a post about technology in that this grandchild would probably not have survived his birth in an earlier age. He was large, oddly positioned, and a surgical birth after many hours of labor. My daughter might well not have survived this event, either, not so very many years ago or in a venue with less medical attention available. I am grateful.

And, as a grandma, I do have pictures (of course!). Thanks to my husband, you can see some of them here.

In my library life, we would fuss about the growth of user-generated content because it was not authoritative, yet it was so conveniently available that folks would accept it all too readily as valid. Of course, online as everywhere else in life, it helps to be aware of who you are trusting to answer questions and why. We are our own best filters and firewalls.

Though standards change (at my age, “slip” rather than “change” was the first verb that came to mind - but it is not a fair generalization), people do still understand that authoritative is sometimes the only valid source. It all depends on what you are looking for and at what level you need an answer - and, often, whether you are willing to pay for that answer.

Those who live from the publishing industry are understandably sceptical of user-generated content. But one PlayStation 3 game we have (Buzz) encourages user-generated content in a peer-regulated way that furthers the interests of the publishers.

Buzz is a quiz show cast like a TV show, complete with obnoxious host. It comes with a variety of quizzes in subject categories. But … users can submit their own quizzes. Every time a user-submitted quiz is played, it is rated by the folks who played it - and categorized as easy or hard. It is surprisingly fun to watch how your own quiz rates. Since the rating shows with the title of a quiz, you have the opportunity when browsing for quizzes to see how other folks felt about this one.  Quizzes with low rankings will eventually fall to the bottom of the lists and won’t get played much.

And the publisher, though it can certainly add new quizzes over time, is never worried that folks will have played every available quiz, become bored, and moved on.

Nice way to get folks involved in their own entertainment. And no one need take it too seriously.

This is a story about the interplay between government, business, taxes, and accounting. Though the details are either amusing or frustrating, depending on your point of view (and how directly you are involved in the  story), the real point here is how much it cost a variety of entities to correct a clerical error (or two).

Our company, Hen’s Teeth Network, contracts with Intuit payroll services to handle payroll-related filings and deposits. The process works wonderfully well, and is worth the cost to be sure that the right thing is happening at the right time in the right way. I never have to worry about the process.

Imagine my surprise about a month ago on receiving a firm “intent to levy” letter from the IRS. It declared HTN owed an outstanding amount of $26.31 from the fourth quarter of 2008.

No problem - I called Intuit. Well, HTN was not alone. The Intuit voice mail system directed that anyone receiving such a letter should fax it to Intuit - the problem was already being worked on.

So I faxed and relaxed.

A week or so ago, I received another letter from the IRS - this time declaring that an overpayment of $26.31 had been made and that we would receive a refund - plus the interest owed us.

I faxed that to Intuit, figuring they should be kept aware of what I knew of the situation.

Yesterday we received the promised refund check - with interest - now totalling $26.51. No way can I cash this without being sure it is correct, thought I. So off to fax Intuit again.

Sure enough, I got a call from Intuit saying only bad things would happen if I cashed the check. The payment had been erroneously double-posted. After spending some time on the phone with Intuit, I had instructions on how to return the check with a letter explaining the misunderstanding. Intuit also suggested I call the IRS to be sure they were aware of what I was doing.

So I spent a surprisingly pleasant 20 minutes or so on the phone with the IRS while they chased down what had happened. Indeed, there never was an overpayment (nor an underpayment), but one (or two) clerical errors mis-posting one legitimate payment. Returning the check was essential. They added a couple more details to the instructions on how to do this properly.

At all steps, all parties were doing the right thing. I appreciate that. And I do appreciate that the IRS is as willing to refund overpayments as it is to pursue underpayments. But the cost of the episode far outweighed the face value of the check. Total up the postage both ways, phone calls, faxes, the cost of cutting the check, the cost of labor at the IRS, Intuit, and HTN to deal with each phase of the story, and all for $26.31 (plus interest).

At the moment, it appears that the situation is resolved. But I won’t be really sure until we pass several fiscal quarters without hearing more of it.

We have a Playstation 3 and the MotorStorm racing game to play on it. I don’t do video games, but this one is exceptionally good entertainment even as a spectator. The men in the family thoroughly enjoy competing and finding new ways to crash and otherwise create virtual mayhem. There are many things about this that could be talked about, but the point I want to follow is the quality of the graphics in this game. I am told that the different vehicles really “feel” remarkably real to drive and that the physics effects are pretty good.  Dirt, water, and mud stick to the windshields at various points in the races, obscuring your view. The virtual reality is gripping enough that I find myself not breathing during some of the cliff-edge hairpin turns. Pretty cool.

Last night we went to a play at one of the area’s live theater groups: The Rep. It was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There were only six actors in the entire play. The set was simple, the props minimal. I had never seen the play before. In fact, I have never read the book. My ideas of the story come from classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry. So I had the general outline well enough in mind but had no idea of the details. And the performance was gripping. With amazing use of lighting and the up-close energy an actor can project in a reasonably small theater, there were entire scenes during which I wasn’t breathing. Technically, the special effects were reasonably unsophisticated. But that did not diminish the magic effects they produced.

A surprising realization for us was that this was not really a horror story - it was more along the lines of science fiction, given what was known about the human brain and personality at the time the story was written. And that brings up all sorts of thoughts about the power of imagination and how some works of science fiction prove eerily prescient as enough time goes by that technology catches up with imagination.

So what’s my point? Important and mind-blowing as technological wonders like the video games and cell phones are, it is the power of imagination that drives that technology. The power of imagination to bring the feel of reality to things that don’t really exist is independent of technology. Some of the most effective “making real” experiences I have ever had were ghost stories told around a bonfire.

It seems I have been fighting physical clutter all my adult life. You know what comes with the territory: piles of mail, empty boxes, unused but still useful stuff you might need someday, gifts you can’t part with, toys outgrown but still cute, clothes that don’t quite fit, etc. Garages and basements, should you be lucky enough to have them, seem to manufacture clutter.

I have found that in my work life, I can go a long time with a less-than-tidy desk as long as I know at a glance what is in any particular heap. When that point is passed, the desk clutter creates mental clutter and I become both less productive and a tad anxious trying to focus.

Clutter inhibits focus. And technology allows us to amplify my cluttered-desk-syndrome almost infinitely. We create tools to help us cope. RSS readers let me keep up with the blogs I care about without having to spend time making the rounds of my favorite sites. Efficient, yes, but I pay something for that. In my quest to keep up, I don’t very often go the the originating site. So news and updates look like a text reader - informational but without the beauty or the fun.

I recently returned from a business conference in which social software as a business tool was the topic of a few sessions. And though I do participate in some of these, I am not terribly active. I don’t spend a lot of time spiffing up my profile. Twitter is typical of the love-hate relationship I quickly develop with such things. I love the technology and the ease of keeping in touch. I can imagine ways it could be interesting and useful. I can imagine even some specific business/marketing uses. But I can’t imagine spending the time to use the tool effectively. At what cost would that time become available? And how long would I let the message clutter accumulate before I had to do something drastic - the online equivalent of clearing off my desk?

I heard of a software widget that would let me simultaneously text content to my blog, my FaceBook account, and even Twitter. Efficient, yes. But it sort of defeats the apparent purpose of these tools, each of which can be an online home with nearly as much maintenance demands (including clutter control) as a physical home.

I may simply be getting too old to freely give up time to all-absorbing toys. I do enjoy knowing about them and trying them out. But keeping up a presence? That costs me too much to do in many places.

I recently saw a video on siftables that made me sit up and take notice of a new way of literally handling information. I felt I was watching something at the cool toy stage with no real idea of how it might end up creeping into normal life - the same way I felt a year or so ago when watching a video presentation of a process that could build a 3-D virtual reality out of collections of common photos on Flickr. Google Street View has since crept into my life in a very comfortable way.

Siftables are very toy-like right now. They can do simple arithmetic. They are aware of each other in the same somewhat creepy way that self-healing robots are aware of their components. The video shows uses such as mixing colors or animating a projected story by moving the “characters”.

I was intrigued when the tabletop surface computing was introduced, but couldn’t see how it could really change how folks handle information unless they were working on a visual layout like a magazine article. I know touch screens are common in my life, including the  GPS we have that lets us “drag” a map to change its focus.

I suspect that the real usefulness of siftables is in areas I don’t run into much - like military or security applications. I think they may have a role in educational applications if they can be made inexpensively enough to be affordable to the education market. Perhaps in commercial applications, too, like ecosystem research or biochemicals where being able to see interactions may lead to new theories on how things work.

I’d like to think that from simple building blocks very complex discoveries can be made. But I suspect that the building blocks are more useful for tasks people don’t perform particularly well over time or in hostile environments where some communication is important.

Lots of  spy and detective stories waiting to be written come to mind at this point in which spoofing of identity and passing of disinformation are practiced with new tools.

I’ll be very interested to see how this plays out. And in the meantime, the toys are pretty cool.

I come from a long line of collectors - books, antiques, toys. My daughter is also a collector extraordinaire. And though I have shed possessions at several major turning points in my life, I also have some piles of things I would have trouble parting with.

But not books - at least not like I  used to be with books. Current content I would rather use than own - whether that means using the library or the internet. I don’t really need to have that stuff on my shelf.  I have even weeded out the books collected over my young adult years and passed all but a handful along. Mostly what lines our shelves are old friends, books that we received from or remind us of our parents, or particular favorites collected before such things became so readily available for temporary use.

Similar story on videos and movies - we own very few physical versions of these things so it was only a minor sadness to have to get rid of the VHS tapes when we finally realized we have no way to access the content any more. We rely on rental and on “watch it now” capabilities for movies, TV, games, etc.

It is a huge act of faith, of course. Faith in technology and in the availability of the content on reasonable terms over time.  What if the faith is betrayed?

Well, I would certainly be sad. And my life would change again. But folks were able to find entertainment and education before it became so ubiquitously available electronically - and I suspect we could again. We even still have a turntable in our basement and an old TV.  No rabbit ears, though. They went the way of the VHS tapes.