I learned to type on a typewriter sometime after they became electric but before they had spell checkers.  I was never very good at it, but it got me through a metric boat load of term papers. Particularly important since my handwriting has been pretty illegible since I learned to hold a pencil.

In college, I learned to program in a variety of arcane languages all of which depended on entering large quantities of numbers and special symbols into a keyboard.  Touch typing was pretty useless, at least the version I was capable of because I never really got much past the letters and an occasional period or comma.  Out of a sense of self preservation I developed my own technique that involves 4 fingers and one thumb across two hands and requires me to stare at the keyboard while I type.  I can still manage 30 wpm which gets me by for what I do and provides an unnatural source of amusement for Kim who can type 1,530 wpm while looking at me, carrying on a conversation, and knitting an afghan.

Anyway, along came 2-way pagers, smartphones and other things that forced me to learn to type with just two thumbs.  The technique is different enough to require a learning curve, but I managed.  Still, I’d barely hack out a sentence while Kim explained the finer points of why the Celtics have been the dominant force in basketball for the last 3 decades with just two digits.

Well, now we’re up for stage 3.  The Swype technique.  The new Droid X phone is sporting a new keyboarding method where you don’t touch each letter of the word, but rather trace a path through all the letters of the word.  Samsung and HTC are also planning offerings.  This is the method that recently shattered a text messaging speed record. And yes, here’s yet another learning curve, but I’m hopeful as this seems somehow different enough to maybe give me an edge.  Oh who am I kidding?  She’s gonna smoke me again.

Sony recently introduced its new gaming accessory called the Move.  It’s a motion controller for the PS/3 intended to give the Nintendo Wii a run for its money.

The gaming world is super competitive, and I don’t mean just the players.  The big three companies (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) are constantly fighting to one-up each other.  And with Microsoft’s new Kinect system due this fall (demo video here), it’s gonna be a whole new ball game for everybody. Kinect needs no controller at all, it just tracks your movements from the sensor bar directly.

Sony’s also making noises about Kinect like motion tracking in its future, but in the meantime, it’s going to have to be content with eating Nintendo’s lunch.  Or maybe they have a different market in mind.  After all, the Move’s shape does seem reminiscent of a different household appliance. No?

The law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, now operating under the name of US Copyright Group, is accusing Time Warner Cable of being a safe harbor for pirates.  This is based on TWC’s refusal to hand over the names of their customers associated with the IP addresses cited in the 1000′s of “John Doe” subpoenas issued in response to suits filed by the firm on behalf of indie film producers.  Notably, Verizon and Comcast have already rolled over and agreed to comply.

Arguably, this is not a pursuit of a specific criminal activity as much as it is a fishing expedition by lawyers.  And from a consumer perspective, the whole issue of “pirating” content is a mixed bag.  While there are certainly some pirates who are simply stealing content, repeated studies show that the majority of so-called illegal downloaders are also the people who spend the most money purchasing content.  There is ample support for the position that pirating is a consumer led revolt to access content in a format they would happily pay a reasonable price for if the content providers were to make that option easily available.  The result being that TWC has become a hero of sorts to consumers and consumer groups for standing up to the witch hunts.

Now I give TWC more than a little grief in this blog for their repeated consumer abusive practices.  So color me a tad surprised they are standing their ground to protect their customers.  Still, this is how TWC’s publicity department is spinning it.

But then this except from TWC’s response to the subpoenas comes to light:

“If the Court compels TWC to answer all of these lookup requests given its current staffing, it would take TWC nearly three months of full-time work by TWC’s Subpoena Compliance group, and TWC would not be able to respond to any other request, emergency or otherwise, from law enforcement during this period. TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered.”

Ahhh… that makes more sense.  TWC isn’t protecting their customers, they are protecting their bottom line.  This is a lot of work for them, and as they aren’t a party to the suits, they have nothing to gain from taking the task on.  So this is just another financially based business decision they are trying to publicly position as a perk to doing business with them.  Yes, this is the TWC I know all too well.

In the increasingly competitive economy, does everyone need a 4-year degree?  To maintain our edge in the world, the US arguably has a shortage of homegrown people with advanced degrees.  But we’ve also got a lot of people with Master’s Degrees driving bus or managing stores at the mall.

The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts and academics.  But this flies in the face of cultural wisdom that says everyone is better off with a college degree.  After all, aren’t all the manufacturing jobs and other good paying non-degree requiring jobs headed overseas?

There’s certainly truth that college graduates tend to earn more than those who don’t go to school.  But that only really counts if you finish your degree and then actually get a job in the field you studied in.  Only 36% of students finish their 4-year degree in 4 years.  That’s a lot of money spent on kids who drop out or change career paths mid-stream.  Is it worth it?

I would argue that college has the opportunity to be an enriching and intellectually enlightening experience for anyone, regardless of their path in life.  But that assumes the student is ready, open, and engaged when they are attending.  I don’t think that’s always the case.  Further, from a social cost factor, should we as a country be subsidizing the advanced education of people ultimately destined to work in fields that don’t require it?  In many respects, it might make more sense to argue that money should be spent on healthcare for all rather than bachelor’s degrees for all.

The real question becomes, why has our culture shifted to the point there is almost a stigma associated with kids who opt not to pursue college?  As if somehow they are less able or less worthy than those headed to a university.  I don’t personally believe that’s true.  I know people with advanced degrees that aren’t too bright and high school graduates that are brilliant.  I expect you do too.  I know craftsmen who can build with skill and style that no PhD is going to approach.  Does that make them less worthy as people?

I think a lot of this comes from our collective notion that skill-wise and intellectually we are created equivalently.  That any one of us could be President, or a doctor,or an engineer, or a rock star, if only we try hard enough.  That’s sheer sophistry.  We are anything but equivalent, and personally I’m very glad of that.  I’ve come to realize that I’m not capable of very many things, and no amount of trying is going to improve that.  I’m glad there are people who not only have the skills I lack, but take pride and joy in performing them.

Yes, we need scientists and engineers, but we need welders, auto mechanics, short order cooks, and musicians too.  I would much prefer my own son be a skillful and contented electrician than be a disenfranchised MBA credentialed middle manager who wakes up every morning wondering why his life turned out this way.

Diversity is not just about race, religion, and sexual orientation.  It’s about embracing and celebrating differences in aptitude as well as the choices we make.  Our lives do not all lie along a single path.

It’s been a long week of tech support for me.  For some reason there have been a lot of recent small failures on systems I don’t directly control, and hence, can’t fix.  So I do what we all do, I contact tech support.

The problem is, by the time I get to the front of the queue and get connected to a Level 1 tech, I know something the tech doesn’t.  He can’t help me.  This is not my first barn dance.  There’s a high probability I’ve tried all fixes at my disposal already.  It’s not unusual that I wind up explaining to the tech how the system he’s “helping” me with works.  But I know I have to go through the process.  I have to repeat all the steps and waste all the time only to be inevitably escalated to Level 2 support.

Don’t take me wrong, it’s not that I have disdain for L1 support.  I know why they are there.  I used to work in a call center.  I know the questions the average user calls with and that L1s knock a lot of them down.  But I’m a little past that.  Not that I’ve never called with an L1 issue, but generally I know when I call whether or not the issue will require escalation.  But they don’t know I know.

In school, often a course had prerequisites—courses that had to be taken before you could take this one.  As an alternative, you could usually test out of the prerequisite.  Basically, you were proving you already knew enough to gain access to the higher level course.  But this was something you only had to do once.  You didn’t need to test out before every class.

Why can’t tech support be like that?  For help desks I use with frequency, why can’t I test out of L1 support just once such that all my calls go right to L2?  Why do I have to test out on every call?  It would be cheaper for them and so much more satisfying for me.  A win all the way around.  Pretty please?