A Tech Guy Who's Behind The Tech Curve

I got my VOIP box today. Set it up in 30 seconds. Works great. No more long-distance toll calling for me.

Thing is, I am a little late to the VOIP revolution - even my 66 year old parents had it before I did. But the fact of the matter is that I have always been a non-innovator when it came to tech:



This is a little surprising from someone who has a Electrical Engineering degree and has worked in tech for 14 of my 16 professional years, but it's because I work in tech that I wait a bit. I know what bugs, problems, and general crap that is put out there early. I have seen that you really need to let the Innovators work the bugs out and - more importantly - wait for the price to come down into the consumer space. If I think about various technical items around my home, I have been pretty consistent in this strategy:

Personal Computer - Probably the only device where I was even close to the Innovator stage, if only because my parents saw the opportunities it could open to their 13-year-old. They were right - look what I do for a living. I wonder what ever happened to that Commodore PET?

PDA - The only reason I was an early adopter on this one was that I came to work one day in 1997 and saw that everyone - and I mean everyone - was walking around with a Palm. Turns out some manager okayed expensing them to the company, so everyone ran out and bought one. Who was I to turn down a free Palm?

Cell Phone - I was a Late Majority on this one not because I wanted to wait for the technology, but because I didn't want to be tethered to my boss. I got my first one in 1999, a bit late to the party, although my boss did make me carry a pager for a year before that.

Digital Camera - This one is pretty funny - I didn't get one until 2001, but I worked at a company starting in 1999 that (planned to) make chips for this market. I was really hoping my first camera would have MY chip in it, but the company went belly-up before I had the opportunity. I was probably right at the Early/Late majority border. I "acquired" a camcorder that same year since I had a kid - a required accessory to a camcorder.

DVR - 2003, almost exactly two years ago. Don't know how I lived without it. Probably Early Majority.

VOIP - Today, probably Early Majority.

I still don't have a flat screen TV (waiting for LCDs to get a lot bigger and cheaper) or HDTV (waiting on the flat panel, plus don't want another box cluttering up my TV area). I may also wait until the whole Hi-Def DVD thing works itself out. There is going to be another Betamax/VHS fight with BlueRay and HD-DVD, and I don't want to invest on the losing side of that war.

If First You Don't Succeed....

There's nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from your mistakes. So, I want each of you gentlemen to reflect on why you failed, and then go out there and give it the ol' college try again. The world is behind you on this one: Mass Suicide Attempt at Gitmo.

And, boys, if you fail there, maybe the good ol' USA can ship you to Oregon and let them assist you in the process. There's nothing wrong with a little help from time to time.

Because There Is No Amex in Hell

Thinking about currency collecting, I thought I would mention a somewhat unusual practice out of Asia: Hell Notes:



This is money that you burn and send down to Hell in front of you. By the time you die - and assuming you're going down instead of up - you can build up a nice account for yourself down there for, well, whatever is on sale down in Hell (You think there is a Hellmart?). You can also burn Hell notes to send down to other people who might be down there, but hey, why bother with charity if they're already in Hell?

There is no equivalent Heaven note. Does this mean Hell is capitalistic and Heaven a commune? I shudder just thinking about it. I'll just assume that Heaven doesn't have any scarcity, so has no need for money.

I'm Not Setting Foot On This Plane

As a frequent flier, I actually am one of those people who makes note of the model of plane being offered when I book reservations. The issue ranks below scheduling in order of importance, but all things being equal, there are some planes I prefer to be on than others (I avoid MD 80s - aka Multiple Defect 80s - for example).

Well, here is one plane that I will change schedules to avoid: Airbus Unveils Monster Passenger Jet. Why? Let's count the reasons:

1. Bigger means more crowded - Getting on a rinki-dink 737 for a short-haul trip takes half an hour for 120 passengers to get on and stow their 4 carry-on bags. How long you think it will take to load 555 passengers?

2. Bathroom Lines - What do you want to bet this thing has the same number of bathrooms as planes that carry half as many passengers?

3. Thirsty? - Since they increased the number of passengers, they'll probably increase the number of stewardesses. Yeah, right.

4. European - I'm sure this plane will hold up as well as the airports the French built for it.

5. Bomb Magnet - For those terrorist cells running low on martyrs, this is a can't-pass opportunity to kill twice as many passengers with half as many suicide bombers.

My Aching Back

An almost imperceptible decline in strength, muscle mass, metabolism, and aerobic activity begins after you enter your fourth decade.

- Ultimate Flexibility, Page 71

After the common cold, back pain is the most common medical complaint in the United States...it is the number one cause of limited activity for adults under age forty-five.

- Ultimate Flexibility, Page 54

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

- Nietzsche

I have been really impressed with my physical improvement since I started taking Tae Kwon Do two months ago, although it hasn't been easy. The first two weeks, my legs were so sore I could hardly do more than walk. I worked through that, but then the joints in my legs started aching. That worried me a little, but it went away after another week as my body adapted. As I have been working deeper into my stretches and higher on my kicks, I have had pretty constant "good soreness" throughout my legs, and in only two months I have gone from hardly being able to touch my toes to being able to put my forehead just about a fist's width away from my knee. In another six months I figure I'll be resting my head on my knee while I stretch.

Starting about a month ago I started feeling a very minor pulling sensation in my lower back. Like the stiffness and soreness in my legs, I thought my body would adapt and work through it - just a part of the conditioning - so I just made sure to always stretch my back.

I wasn't even using my back when it felt like someone stuck two knitting needles into both sides of my lower spine. I was doing a warm-up exercise called a slalom jump where you hop back and forth over a small object to get the heart rate up: back-forth-back-forth-MY BACK! You should have seen me hopping then.

Essentially I have been putting too much stress on the lower back without giving it enough time to recover, as I have been working out four times a week. Jumping isn't particularly stressful on the lower back, but it was the proverbial straw that created a pull in my lower back.

It wasn't all that bad after it happened - I walked it off and took it easy the rest of class, but I knew that after I cooled down that I would be in big trouble. My back never went into a full lock-up, but it hurt enough the next day that I was hobbling around like a much older man than I really am.

This morning - two days later - I was still having trouble walking without pain in the morning, but am probably 90% this evening. I figure I won't have any problems tomorrow, then will take a few more days off before - yes - I get right back out there and keep doing what I was doing. I will also take it a little more easy for a few more weeks to give muscles more time to adapt, but I will say that this would never had happened to me just ten years ago.

Getting old sucks.