A Quick Update

Well, the leaky pipe got fixed ($99 later, not too bad all things considered), and the furnace is going to be serviced some time this week. Of course once that was all over I noticed that the gaskets are going on our water pump, so it's leaking a bit. The thing is old and loud and probably not very efficient, so I've already purchased a new one that just has to be installed (oh, what fun).

As for the other thing, Laura got to her interview fine and no one seemed upset at all. It was a fairly informal meet and greet, and everything went well. She also got back here with no problem, though she did sleep for about 15 hours on Saturday night, understandable after that whirlwind day, followed by less than 6 hours sleep and another full day of work.

The big news, though, is that this morning she was offered the position officially. They gave us specifics on pay, benefits, relocation assistance, and times frames. Mostly it's what we expected, but less than we'd hoped for. We have to go over it all tonight and decide, for keeps this time, if we're going to go through with this. If so, we've got to get our butts in gear and get moving on this right away.

What a Day...

I have the next few items in my list all ready to go, but I’m taking a break today because, well, there’s way too much going on. Blogging helps me to organize my thoughts and process things, and I could use some of that today.

Big Doin’s Down South

The biggest news is that my wife, Laura, is in Georgia today (I’m in Maine, where we live). Specifically, she’s in Roswell Georgia, and she’s there for a job interview. She works for a company that sells medical equipment for veterinary use, where she does technical support. A subsidiary located in Georgia is looking for a phone and field support person who already knows the equipment. They sent out an internal inquiry, she responded, and today they’re flying her down for a face to face interview.

If she gets the job, assuming that the pay is enough (it should be, based on the pay range and her experience), and given that they offer some relocation assistance, we will be moving to Georgia. Needless to say, this is big. Life altering big. Over the past few weeks we’ve gone over all of the implications, doing our best to look at it from every angle and weight the good against the bad. If we move, I’ll probably have to give up on my own business for a while (the reason it works here is that I already have contacts within the local industry) and get a normal job. I will also have to give up on my school plans for at least a year so I can get in-state tuition rates. It also means moving away from family and friends and virtually everything we know.

In the end we decided that this was an opportunity that we just couldn’t pass up. We’ve been talking about moving elsewhere for years, and here’s a chance not only to do that, but to get some help with it, and to have at least one job already lined up on the other side. Georgia isn’t our first choice, but from everything I’ve read Roswell is a nice place. The crime rate is low, it’s a bit cooler than Atlanta, and not as horribly built up. Given that we’ve spent the last few weeks fighting the rapidly expanding lake in our driveway due to all the melting snow and ice that has nowhere to go because the ground is still frozen (and there’s still a good three feet of snow out there), the idea of not having a real winter for a few years is a nice one. Also, living in a place where we wouldn’t have to drive more than 10 miles to get pretty much anything we need is very seductive (we live 25 miles from what most people would consider a real town, and almost 40 from any reasonable shopping, colleges, etc).

She’s there right now, talking with them, deciding our future. So far her plane was delayed (due to snow on this end, of course), and she got lost on the Atlanta highways, but she knows her stuff and she’s good at first impressions. So here’s hoping.

Meanwhile, Back at The Ranch

The biggest problem with moving is going to be selling this house. It’s small and needs a lot of work, and the market stinks right now. We’re hoping to be able to sell it quickly by pricing it low, but there’s a limit to how little we’re going to be able to walk away with. We’ve already contacted the realtor we used to buy this house, and I was supposed to meet with her today, but we had to cancel due to the snow. Even if we don’t go to Georgia, we’re going to try to sell this house and upgrade within the year, so what better time to start the process? We’ve been doing some cosmetic work, and cataloging what’s wrong with this place. Unfortunately, things seem to keep piling up.

Our furnace needs to be serviced, it keep turning itself off for no apparent reason, but we’re a bit strapped at the moment. Just this morning I went into the basement to turn the stupid thing back on and found that a pipe, the one that takes water from the pump to the furnace, had sprung a leak and was merrily spraying down half the basement. Turning off the valve leading to the leak meant completely turning off our water, and our heat. So now I’m cold (space heaters can only do so much), and I can’t even take a shower of do the dishes. When I get done here I’m going to go down and start moving things around so the repair guy can get to it easily. I’m also going to frantically clean upstairs so we don’t look like complete slobs.

Needless to say, I haven’t let Laura in on any of this. She’s got enough on her plate already.

So, when does the fun part of home ownership, and adult responsibility in general, start?

A Short List of Stupid Things People Believe In, #2: The Secret and Other Modern Mythologies

Important Subtitle: “Stupid” Given current evidence (a good skeptic is always ready and willing to change their mind if reliable evidence is brought to light)

2: “The Secret” and Other Modern Mythologies

If you haven’t heard of this, count yourself lucky. Basically, the claim made in The Secret, and other such works, is that the world can be shaped and manipulated to your whim if you just think happy thoughts and will it to be so. In other words, it’s magic, plain and simple. It’s also hopelessly banal, as the authors suggest using this awesome power to get that promotion you’ve been angling for, or to win the state lottery. If that’s the best you can come up with when given the ability to literally rewrite reality, you don’t deserve it. And let’s just look at what this says about people in general. Dying from cancer? Lose your leg in battle? Clinically depressed? Homeless? Blind? Left handed? Orphaned? Well, obviously you’re not thinking positively enough! Get over it, heal yourself (if you can re-write reality, growing back that leg, or some new parents, shouldn’t be a problem, right?), and then go get that middle management position you’ve always dreamed of!

There are also, of course, the massive logical problems with this idea. For one thing, if we all exist within a reality of our own making, how is it that we interact with others who are apparently experiencing the same reality that we are? And once you master this power, how is it our now divergent realities can coexist? Seriously, if I go flying down the street in my reality (in which I can fly, of course), and you can waltzing up the street in your reality (in which all people have become large, super intelligent slugs… hey, anything is possible with positive thinking, right?), what happens when we meet? Why, for that matter, has no one ever mastered the ability to fly, or to melt things with lasers from their eyes? The only way I can see this working is if none of you are real. In that scenario everything makes sense, since the world is exactly as I envision it, including being stuffed with six billion fake people, many of whom have been rude or even violent towards me, and who do things that I wish they wouldn’t do. Yeah, that makes tons of sense. Either that, or you’re the only real person, and the only reason I exist in your world is to call you an idiot. Hmm…

Here’s a little test I’d like to put to anyone who claims to have mastered “The Secret”: Allow me to strap you down (so you can’t do something sneaky and non-magical like ducking), and then use your powers of positive thinking to prevent me from punching you in the face. Several times. Or, we could put you in a car with no breaks and send you rolling down a cliff. Or, to be really fair, we could simply ask you to get a great job without actually going out and looking for one (the instruction given always includes actively working towards your goals, which is how these things happen in the real world, no magic needed!).

As was pointed out in a recent article on Cracked.com, the authors of this book obviously want you to buy this book. Since they are presumably masters of this magical thinking thing, we should be easily bent to their will. Not buying the book therefore proves, decisively, that it is bullshit.

So why am I so vehemently against this sort of thing? Not simply because I don’t believe in it, I can deal with that. No, it’s the fact that when people start believing in magic, when they believe that some greater force is going to save them from the world, they stop trying to make the world a better place. Worse, they start to look down on people who are having a hard time. The fact is that we all have to make our own way in this world, and some people have a harder time of it than others, whether because of certain flaws in their person, or simply circumstances. It’s a lot easier to believe that these people are simply lazy or willfully ignorant than to get down off your high horse and lend a hand.

A Quick Interlude

While researching some of the items on this list, I came across this page, it’s on a near death Web site and claims to be about debunking what they call “pseudo-skeptics”. They take the tired old point of view that a “real” skeptic can’t possibly take a position on any issue for which there is no absolute evidence. They even hint at the laughable notion that the first thing a skeptic should question is their own skepticism.

It’s an old saw, an attempt to cause critics of their ideas to self destruct. First of all, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the Greeks thought a skeptic should be. A “real” skeptic respects the current evidence and bases their conclusions on the current consensus. A true skeptic does keep an open mind, but open to evidence, not to baseless supposition and anecdotes. As for being skeptical of being skeptical, anyone who’s a skeptic has already gone through that exercise. That’s what being a skeptic means, that you’ve decided to live your life searching for truth and seeing past the bullshit, you’ve already decided that being skeptical is the right thing to do. Of course, if you’re ignorant enough to think that you can never come to a solid conclusion if you’re a skeptic, it’s easy to see how you could miss that.

Moving on to the meat of that site, it’s not that skeptics completely reject the notion of an afterlife, it’s that none of the evidence so far presented has held up to scrutiny. In fact, a real skeptic won’t have a position on the afterlife itself, merely on the evidence and phenomena so far advanced as “proof”. Ghosts, for example, are logically suspect for a number of reasons, as are out of body experiences. There has never been any conclusive evidence of either, and so both phenomena are unproven. That’s not a blanket rejection of the idea of an afterlife, merely e refutation of the evidence presented thus far. What they’ve done on this page is construct a straw man argument. It’s easy to knock down a so-called skeptic who has already made up their mind and won’t budge, but that’s not what is happening in reality. The list of poor arguments they give is a good list, but it doesn’t apply to people like James Randi, whom they love to pick on.

As for the specific examples they give (numbered 1-4 on the bottom half of that page):

1. The page they link to pretty clearly shows that the effect was due to researcher bias, so I’m not sure why they think it bolsters their view. In any case, it shows that trying to prove something with so many potential variables (which system of astrology to ascribe to, what qualifies someone as an athlete, or general, or artist, how to account for cultural effects, etc.) is difficult and open to interpretation.
2. This item, which by the way is simply homeopathy (which has been thoroughly debunked), links to an eBook, not a published study. End of story (though the phrase “The researcher complained” is a give away too, painting themselves as victims is a classic pseudo-science trick).
3. The Million Dollar Challenge is a legitimate challenge, complete with legal frameworks in place that compel the JREF to hand over the money if their conditions are met. All that’s required is that a supernatural power be demonstrated in a controlled environment. No one has pulled it off yet. As for Randi’s alleged comment, site your source or keep it to yourself.
4. I’m not sure about this one. If it all checks out then it is, indeed, compelling. Though I wonder if this is like that guy who tested John Edward, and claimed that he’d kept Edward isolated from the subject. The problem is that a video of the tests clearly shows Edward peeking through the curtain separating them, among other problems. Or like that researcher who was convinced he’d found kids with psychic abilities, only to have it revealed that those kids had been trained (by none other than James Randi) to fake it. The thing is, not once did he even ask them if they were using slight of hand, he just assumed that he knew better, which he did not. In fact, they bring up John Edward as part of their proof. Edward, as I’ve already mentioned, is an outright fraud.
   
   Looking into this a bit deeper, apparently the experiments in question are the same ones I mentioned above involving John Edward. Here’s an analysis of the experiments, along with a response to that analysis by the experimenter, and a response to the response. At this point, I think it’s pretty clear that those experiments are not to be trusted (just look at the guys idea of a “double-blind” study, here’s a hint: double-blind means that the researcher doesn’t know the answer either, and he fails in this regard). Ooh, and here’s yet another analysis, it’s quite readable and cuts right to the heart of the problems. It also includes this revealing screen cap:

To add insult to injury, they close the page with a supposed quote from Carl Sagan:

“Probably a dozen times since their death I’ve heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them … It doesn’t seem strange to me.” - Carl Sagan

This was taken from an essay by Sagan titled “Wonder and Skepticism”, originally published in Skeptical Enquirer Magazine. Unfortunately, they edited it to make it sound like Sagan believed he was hearing his parents from beyond the grave. For shame. They didn’t even get the parts that they left in right. The correct quote means the exact opposite of what this version implies.

Here’s the actual quote, without the creative editing (my emphasis):

I have, maybe a dozen times since my parents died, heard one of them say my name: just the single word, “Carl.” I miss them, they called me by my first name so much during the time they were alive; I was in the practice of responding instantly when I was called; it has deep psychic roots. So my brain plays it back every now and then. This doesn’t surprise me at all; I sort of like it. But it’s a hallucination. If I were a little less skeptical, though, I could see how easy it would be to say, “They’re around somewhere. I can hear them.”

Nice try, assholes.

A Short List of Stupid Things People Believe In, #1: Psychics and Other Imaginary Creatures

Important Subtitle: “Stupid” Given current evidence (a good skeptic is always ready and willing to change their mind if reliable evidence is brought to light)

I’m going to be posting a number of these over the next week or two. It may get a bit controversial, but whatever, it’s not like anyone really cares what i think. I mean, who am I right? I’m posting these as much so I’ll have a reason to put these thoughts down in an organized fashion as anything else. Enjoy!

1: Psychics and Other Imaginary Creatures

I think this pretty well sums it up (from XKCD):

Somehow though, people still believe in this.

Here’s a simple question to ask yourself: If these types of powers and abilities really exist, why has there never, not once, been a verifiable and reproducible demonstration of these powers in a controlled setting? Some people believe there has been, but they are mistaken. Let’s look at a few of the examples people often point to as “proof”:

1. Uri Geller - You know, the guy who could bend spoons and keys with the power of his mind? He’s a hack, a slight of hand magician, and not even a very good one. Johnny Carson, with the help of James Randi (both are experienced magicians, and well versed in methods of trickery), once put him to a simple test. He presented Geller with a number of objects and asked him to demonstrate his powers. He refused (previously, Geller had supplied his own materials). Here’s a video put together by James Randi about Geller and his trickery (he also tackles Peter Popoff).




2. John Edward - John Edward’s show Crossing Over was a big hit, and I’ll admit that I was suckered by it at the time. The fact is, he’s just a cold reader, and not even a very good one (notice that, both examples so far are highly charismatic yet not terribly skilled in a technical sense, people just want to believe someone they inherently like). If you watch the show with a skeptical eye, you’ll notice that he flounders quite a lot. There’s a reason he warns that he may only be able to come up with initials or sound-alike names, this opens up the pool of potential hits. You’ll also notice that most of what he actually says - by that I mean the things he says before getting help from his targets, who invariably fill in the specific details - are very general and non-specific. Here’s a detailed, step by step explanation of how he does it. And another one, less detailed but shorter.




3. Sylvia Brown - I can’t believe anyone still believes in Sylvia Brown, but apparently they do. Brown is not only a charlatan, she’s a bad person too. The whole Shawn Hornbeck debacle is her most well known blunder, it’s also well documented. If you want more, watch this, or this, if you can still stomach her.




4. Police Psychics - Don’t believe it. Most of those who claim that they’ve helped the police can’t substantiate those claims. I’d like to see some statistics that actually show some sort of reliability. I don’t think such a thing exists.

These examples don’t prove that psychic phenomena aren’t real, of course. But bear in mind that these are the best examples, the shining lights, and they’re frauds, every one. Similarly, research has been going on for centuries without coming up with anything definitive. You can’t prove a negative, but no one has even come close to proving a positive on this one.

If you still insist on believing, or worse, insist that you’ve experienced psychic phenomena first hand, do yourself a favor: Go to your local community college or continuing education center and sign up for a psychology class or two. Or at least crack open a few books on that subject, as well as science, critical thinking, and skepticism (anything by James Randi or Carl Sagan would be a great place to start).

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

To AutoDesk, the makers of AutoCAD, the program which supplies my livelyhood:

The autosave feature is a great idea, I just wish it worked. Not only does it interrupt me while working - by taking control of the program and unceremoniously canceling any other command or operation I have in progress to do it's thing, something that a program should never, ever, ever do - half the time it doesn't even do what it's supposed to do. I just lost several hours worth of work because your program locked up. Turns out the autobackup was just making a lot of noise, but doing nothing of benefit. It's late and I need sleep, and now I have to redo all of that drafting while quelling a murderous rage.

Get your fucking act together.

My grammar is stronger than your grammar!

Apparently March 4 was Grammar Awareness Day. Who knew? In honor of that day, Grammar Girl posted her Top Ten Grammar Myths.

Being a mild grammar nazi myself, I always find these things to be interesting, usually because they remind me how little I actually know about truly proper grammar. However, in this case I was gratified to see that her number one grammar myth was "You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition". I've been trying to convince people of this for years. Really, I have.

In her words:

1. You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. Wrong! You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence would mean the same thing if you left off the preposition. That means "Where are you at?" is wrong because "Where are you?" means the same thing. But there are many sentences where the final preposition is part of a phrasal verb or is necessary to keep from making stuffy, stilted sentences: I'm going to throw up, let's kiss and make up, and what are you waiting for are just a few examples.

Booyah! In your face!

When I Think About You, iTouch Myself...

I finally got my hands on an iPod Touch.

*Glee*

Answering a Burning Desire

When the iPhone came out I wanted one so badly it hurt, but my contract with Verizon wasn't up for a few months, and $600 was too much. A few months later my contract was up and the iPhone had dropped to $400, but AT&T's coverage around here is even worse than Verizon's (which is, itself, terrible), and the extra $20 per month for the iPhone data plan brought the eventual cost to $880 (with a two year contract), so I still couldn't justify it. I renewed my (and my wife's) contract with Verizon, and got a MotoKrzr. It's an alright phone, and I love being able to use a bluetooth headset, but the internet functions are terrible, and everything else it does it does worse than the iPhone, or for additional monthly cost (damn you for locking down all of the great features, Verizon), or not at all.

I got a fantastic deal on a Palm Tungsten E2 some time later and liked it well enough, and it sated my desire for a super portable device that would hold my contacts, calendar, notes, etc... at least for a while. After a few months the little issues got to be too much (the mail program didn't work, it constantly re-formatted phone numbers, addresses, and even contacts' names, it added numerous empty contacts for no reason, the syncing was clunky overall and as often as not it failed due to some mysterious problem, etc.), and it stopped syncing contacts altogether (I think it's an incompatibility with Leopard). With regret I realized that the Palm just wasn't going to cut it. I'd really come to like having that sort of device at hand though, it helped both personally and professionally.

By this time, Apple come out with the iPod Touch, essentially an iPhone without the phone (or camera, or bluetooth). Initially it looked nice, but it didn't do e-mail, notes, or a couple of other things the iPhone did, and that I needed or wanted. Then Apple updated the Touch with Mail, Notes, and more. With the iPhone/Touch SDK on the horizon, it looked like the Touch had finally become a viable PDA replacement. It did what I needed already, and held the promise of doing more down the line. Then the 32GB version came out, and I knew I had to have it.

Also by this time I'd become self employed, so I had a new tool at my disposal: business expense deductions. If I can justify something as a business expense, and if the business itself can afford it (using money left in the business account for this purpose), then I can get it and claim it as a deductible expense come tax time. The rule of thumb seems to be that you get somewhere between 25% and 30% of a business expense back in tax savings, assuming you are profitable (though it helps even if you aren't). Since I'd been using the Palm mostly for business, it's reasonable to call its replacement a business purchase. I already had a business line of credit with Amazon.com, and enough in the bank, so I went for it. I even got one of the clip-style iPod Shuffles for free with it. I've always been a fan of the Shuffle (I still use my 1st Gen Shuffle regularly), so I figured why not?

Thoughts So Far

I'm really happy with the Touch. It looks fantastic, the interface is responsive and fun to navigate, and it syncs flawlessly with Address Book, Mail, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. The WiFi internet feature works beautifully, and has already proven itself. While I was out and about the other day, I realized that Id forgotten to make an important online bill payment. I pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant that offers free WiFi, and using my iPod Touch logged in and made a payment in just a few minutes. A few minutes later I received an e-mail confirmation, also on the Touch. I used the time in between to send a few emails I'd been meaning to send. Brilliant.

Of course, it's not all roses. The Notes feature is nifty, but it seems oddly hobbled. It doesn't seem to sync with anything, even Mail's notes, which I think are the same thing (they even look identical, graphically). You can e-mail yourself a note, but it would be handier to have them automatically sync both ways. Also, the iPod Touch is apparently incompatible with my Harmon/Kardon Drive+Play. Harmon/Kardon says it should work, but it keeps shutting itself off when I try it (I've sent them an e-mail, we'll see if there's any way to make it work). It also doesn't work with the Logic3 dock/speakers I have on my desk. Well, it works, but it makes strange sounds over the music. I've tried it with other, newer speakers and they work without problem. To be honest, I've been looking at replacing it anyway, but it is annoying. Oh, and I really wish it wouldn't scale photos down so much when it brings them in from iPhoto. It has this beautiful interface for zooming, panning, and exploring photos, and then it scales them down until they look terrible even when zoomed to fit. Meh.

Web Apps, SDKs, etc.

Most of what's available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, for additional software, comes in two varieties: web apps, and apps you install after "jail breaking" the device. I don't have any interesting in jail breaking - I'm neither adventurous nor desperate enough to try it - which leaves me with web apps, for now. There are actually some pretty good ones. So long as I'm in a WiFi area, I have access to currency converters, loan calculators, detailed weather, Sudoku, phone directories, FedEx package tracking, etc. And all from the Touch's home screen, thanks to the ability to rearrange and add to it. It's pretty cool, but having to be in a WiFi area reduces its usefulness. Some I've found are "data URLs", which apparently means they can work offline. Cool, but most of those seem to be very simple so far.

What I've been more impressed by are some of the ways people have found to enhance the web browser using the bookmark function. I have an app called 1Password, which stores passwords and allows you to use them by remembering one master password. It's handy, and actually works quite well. The latest version includes the option to export your passwords to an iPhone (or Touch). The cool part is that it allows for autofilling. Go to a page you want to access, then pull up your bookmarks and select the "1Password Logins" bookmark. A small window pops up asking for your master password, once you've entered that it fills in the necessary fields. Very cool, and very useful.

Even more interesting (to me) is a Bookmarklet called "Tabulate". Hitting this bookmark while on a page gives you more options for opening links. Rather than simply opening in the current tab (or a new tab if the link is programmed to open in a new window), a window pops up giving you three options: Open in this tab, open in a new tab, or save for later. Save for later will collect links, then open them all at once when you tell it to. This dramatically eases web browsing for me, especially on news site, when I will typically open a number of new tabs while still browsing the original page. Major props to the people behind Tabulate.

As for the SDK, it looks like that will be a little ways off. Oh well, there will be third party apps eventually, and right now the Touch does all of the important things I need it to do, so I'm OK with that. That being said, here are a few apps to make if you want my download, or even (if it's really good) my money:

1. A solid task management program, preferably one that's streamlined, has a desktop component, and that syncs with iCal.
2. A program that lets me view full sized photos on the Touch, or at least much larger ones than I currently can, but using the same interface as current photos.
3. A wireless syncing program, even if it only syncs Contact, Calendars, Mail, and Bookmarks, so I can sync over my home WiFi without even being in the same room.
4. A way to sync notes with something on the desktop computer. It's stupid that they're stuck in the Touch like they are (Megaphone looks nice, but I think I'll hold off to see if someone comes up with an even more integrated solution).
5. Some fun little games would be nice, the Touch is practically made for point and click adventures, and simple shooting and puzzle games.