As I was walking to work this morning, it struck me I have another boundary around my work life of which I had not even been consciously aware. When people want to schedule a phone call with me, I tell them that I am available 9:00am to 5:00pm central time. While that is strictly true, it has always bothered me a little bit to say that because it sounds like I work a very short day. What I have been unconsciously doing is protecting a couple of pieces of my workday from interruptions, one at the beginning of the day and a second at the end of the day. Though I am always at my desk well before 8:00 and usually at my desk well after 5:00, I usually do not answer the phone if it rings outside that time period. I keep my early mornings and late afternoons for work that requires uninterrupted thought.

I think I will change my response when people ask about good times for a phone call with me. Something like, “I am available for phone calls between 9:00 and 5:00″ would be a bit more truthful.

In addition to the problems that I cited in my earlier post, the law also forbids teachers who also happen to be parents from communicating privately with their own children.

While I fully understand the desire to protect children, and the desire to create legislation which will forge a safe society, the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act perfectly exemplifies a failing attempt to use a law to solve a problem which cannot be solved by government. The government can, and already has, made it illegal for adults and children to have inappropriate sexual contact. The government cannot force adults and children to only communicate “safely.” We adults, parents, teachers, etc., bear the responsibility to teach our children how to communicate safely. We teach our kids about secrets, safe and dangerous; about telling a trusted adult if another adult does or says anything suspicious; etc. Most importantly, we teach our children how to build appropriate relationships with other adults. Teachers, in addition to teaching academics, play a vitally important role in helping children learn how to interact with adults.

Here is a typical comment on implementation:

The Fort Zumwalt School District revised its electronic communications policy in June. “Basically our policy says that our teachers cannot have private conversations on a social network site,” said Superintendent Bernard DuBray. “You can have students on Facebook and other sites, but you don’t have a private conversation on them.”

Any communications between students and teachers has to be open and available to parents and administrators, he said.

From: http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/stcharles/education/article_d45b61a8-b87b-5bb6-a641-9f143f6f4b3d.html#ixzz1Ud4qVBIn

The law prohibits social networking contact between students, past and present, and teachers. Here are just a few reasons why it is a bad law.

Teachers play a critically important role in the lives of many students. Often, kids will talk to teachers about things that they will not discuss with their parents. For instance, one of my high school friends trusted one of her teachers enough to have frank dialogs about sexual identity and pre-marital sex. These conversations happen in ways that are comfortable for the student. Most important, these conversations take place in private. If a student is comfortable talking on Facebook or via text messages, blocking that channel discourages the communication. I know a family of children suffering in an abusive home situation. (Yes, the local authorities are aware.) Can you imagine any of these kids talking to a teacher about it if the conversation was also open to the parents?

This law sends a whole host of bad messages to students. It tells them that, as a group, teachers are untrustworthy. It tells students that they are not skillful enough to judge safe versus unsafe private communication with teachers. It tells kids that they cannot learn about safe social networking with their teachers, though other adults are OK. It tells them that lawmakers and school districts can protect them in their on-line activities. None of these messages are true.

The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act overreaches any bounds of sanity. It forbids me, as a grey-bearded computer engineer, from having a private conversation on LinkedIn, a social networking site geared towards professional careers, with my high school physics teacher. It forbids a student from sending a text message to a teacher, even one saying, “Caught in traffic. Will be 5 minutes late. Don’t let the field trip bus leave.” It forbids a teacher from responding via text message, “OK.”

As adults, we certainly need to keep our kids safe. We do that by teaching them good judgement and empowering them to practice that judgement in reasonably safe venues. We encourage our children to grow into independent adults who can protect themselves. We fail completely with bad laws like the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Come on over to my Google+ post and join the conversation.

If you are not yet on Google+ and need an invitation to get in, send an email to art{at}zemon(dot)name and I will be glad to help you along.

Perhaps best of all, Google does not claim to own your data. If you want to delete something, or edit a post, or even delete your entire account, it’s easy to do.

Here is my profile page on Google+ and you will notice that you can see it even if you are not a Google+ subscriber. When you click that link, you will see all of my public posts. I have also posted a number of items to select “circles” and those can only be seen by the intended recipients.

To sign up for Google+, jump over to the Google+ home page.

The user interface is clever and (mostly) intuitive. I love the ease with which I can choose who to share each posting with. I also appreciate that I can share my postings with friends just by entering their email addresses. They don’t have to be Google+ members to get copies of my postings. (Of course, they can unsubscribe from the email notifications so I won’t be spamming them.)

Check out my posts on Google+ and join the fun over there.

– Art Z.

I made the connection because these queries came in close proximity to my opportunity to start a paid digital subscription to the New York Times. I chose to subscribe, to pay for news articles that I have been reading for free, because I want to support NYTimes journalism. Even more important, I want to support its journalists. As I have watched newspapers dwindle and die across the country, I have come to realize that I have a personal responsibility to nurture the reporting on which I depend. My subscription is not much money, just 99 cents for the first month and then $5 a week. Do I get five bucks worth of enjoyment out of the NYTimes each week? Heck yes! No brainer.

A couple of years ago, the free St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Suburban Journal switched to a paid subscription model. My wife skims it; I used to get annoyed at the unread piles of paper in the driveway which I had no way to stop. After she introduced me to the reporting on my kids’ local schools and I discovered a columnist who’s articles I thoroughly enjoy, I found that I actually looked forward to the next issue. When the Suburban Journal ran a front page story asking for subscriptions so that they could continue to pay the photographers and reporters to cover the local school events, I did not hesitate; my $24 check went into the mail. If not the SJ’s reporters, whose? If not my subscription, whose? Is local professional reporting worth 50 cents a week to me? Heck yes! No brainer.

Personally, I am not looking for money. I write this blog largely because I enjoy sharing my thoughts about a wide variety of subjects. The key word in that sentence is “sharing” which, to me, implies a bit of dialog, a bit of feedback, a bit of connection with y’all. Lately, though, I had been feeling pretty disconnected from you, my Gentle Readers, and that disconnection led me to believe that you did not really care what I wrote or whether I stopped entirely.

It’s amazing how a little positive feedback can completely turn around my attitude. Just being asked about my silence made all the difference in the world.

Believe me, I am not laying the blame on anyone but me for my silence. Besides a feeling of isolation, I have spent much of the last several months delving into technologies that are geeky in the extreme and about which I am far from expert. Since I try to write for a “general” audience (not programmers) and since I try to write about subjects where I (at least believe that I) know what I am talking about, that has left me with less to say that at other times in my life. I think that I am past the not-knowing now and can share some of what I have learned with you. With a little bit o’ luck, you will enjoy the upcoming articles.

Returning to the mainstream of this evening’s symposium I do hope that you will actively support the journalism that you enjoy. If you are reading/watching/listening to stuff from a commercial venture, even if it is a not-for-profit such as NPR or PBS, be sure that you kick some money into the ecosystem. You can do that by buying stuff from the advertisers or sponsors. You can subscribe. The important thing is to remember that the writers and photographers need salaries and the companies have bills to pay. If you take everything for free then you contribute to starving them. If they starve, eventually they will die.

If you are consuming “volunteer” journalism, such as this blog, the best support might be the easiest: Send a little love back to the author. Post a comment on the blog. Write an email. Share the blog with a friend. As for me, I would love to hear from you.

P.S. To the guy who I talked to at the EAA 32 event on Saturday: I am embarrassed to admit that I have already forgotten your name. Would you get back in touch with me?

TV excites. The news makes our blood boil. It cranks us up, inflames our passions, gets the adrenaline pumping.

Talk radio excites. We tune in to shows that align with our own beliefs and listen to the callers who are most fired up, most opinionated.

It is all too easy to carry this excitement into our conversations. I have played scenes like this all too frequently:

I meet up with you and we start talking about the news of the day. I heard some great story on the radio and it confirmed my opinions. I know what should be done so I tell you all about it. You know what should be done, too, and you tell me about your ideas. Trouble is, we do not agree. Since time is short, I cut to the chase to convince you that my ideas are right. I struggle to find the words that will change your mind. Eventually, we part ways. I am wired and whipped. The conversation was hard work, frustratingly so because I could not convince you. If only you would see it my way!

Sound familiar? I know that I can easily drop into that mode. I know that I have done so when I leave a conversation feeling somewhere between mildly annoyed and thoroughly angered because yet again I failed to convince. When we do that, we get caught between exhaustion and urgency. We tire of trying yet we cannot abandon the effort because so much is at stake.

I have found another way to converse which inevitably leaves me feeling good about my interactions. It is a little more work at the front-end of a dialog because I often tend toward my convince-you mode and I need to catch myself and change my pattern. Here is the trick: When I start a conversation with you, I consciously ask myself, How can I delight you today? That simple question changes my focus from me to you. Though I may enter the dialog with an idea in mind, an idea that I want to convey, I open myself to what you want to take away from our conversation. Maybe you have something that you need to get off your chest. Maybe you need to vent before you can hear my idea. Maybe you are so consumed with something else that my concerns pale in comparison. Maybe your mind is made up and we can agree to disagree before moving on to a more rewarding topic. Whatever it is, if I can delight you in our conversation then I will always leave the conversation invigorated and cheered rather than battle weary. Smiles are infectious. One of the best ways that I know to make myself smile is to see a smile on your face.

After I ask, How can I delight you today?, my immediate task is to find the answer. I have to know the how. When I was growing up, I tuned my E.S.P. to help with my interpersonal interactions. You probably did this, too. Have you ever wanted something particular for Christmas but been banned from asking for it because asking just is not right? Have you ever wondered what to get someone for his birthday but not asked what he wants because asking is just plain wrong? Trouble is, try as I might, I never got very good at the E.S.P. thing. One bad example came in junior high school when I got my dad a really cool atlas for Father’s Day. He received it graciously but I do not think he ever opened the book. I was such a sensitive, loving son.

I have learned that the best way to answer, How can I delight you today? is to pay careful attention to what you say. When you are talking, I listen. Instead of trying to formulate my next sentence, instead of thinking about what I will say next, I pay attention to what you are saying. The downside is that there might be lulls in our conversation. After you stop speaking, there might be a little silence while I digest what I heard and come up with a reply. That’s OK; if it moves me from convincing-you mode to conversing-with-you mode, the lull is a small price to pay.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion

Many of these ideas come from Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall B. Rosenberg. His writing is kind of dry but his ideas are golden. When we talk or write with the goal of simply understanding each other we grow closer together and avoid violence. At least in my life, I have found him to be right. For instance, I found myself arguing less frequently with my sons after I switched from telling them stuff to consciously trying to delight them. That did not mean that I gave up parenting them, that I tried to always give them what they wanted instead of what I thought they needed. I just climbed down off my high horse.

At the beginning of this blog posting, I worried that I would put you off. I hope that, instead, I have brought a little delight into your day. Please let me know how I did.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

Think of the advantages. If you edit your grocery list on your home computer and want to print it at work, you are stuck. You cannot print that grocery list until you get home again. But if you edit your grocery list on the web, you can get to the same document and print it from any computer anywhere in the world. Similarly, if your hard disk dies, you can still get to your stuff if it is on the web. All you have to do is switch to another computer and keep on working. I could wax rhapsodic about the possibilities for way more paragraphs than you want to read but I’ll spare you.

Google wants to make this transition so easy for you that you will wonder why you did not make the switch yesterday. Chrome will take over your whole computer and hide all of the confusing gunk of Windows or OSX or Linux so you do not have to worry about it any more. You will be able to simply do your work or read your email or stare at your videos or whatever strikes your fancy. And if you are on a Mac today and on a PC tomorrow, it will not matter one bit because everything will look exactly the same.

Does this seem a bit far fetched? Take a look at how your computer appears if you use Internet Explorer to read the news. (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

That looks pretty normal. You can see that you are running IE because there is lots of IE stuff on the top and bottom of the screen and the news is in the middle. Now here is the same web page in Firefox.

That is pretty much the same experience. You can see that you are running Firefox instead of IE because the stuff at the top and bottom is different but the browser stuff is still there and the news is in the middle.

Now look at the same page in Google Chrome:

Now that looks different. Where did the browser go? It vanished in much the same way that your operating system vanishes into the background. As you are reading the article, are you really aware of whether you are using Linux or Windows or OSX? Of course not. But you see Firefox or IE or Safari all the time because it intrudes on your life so boldly.

Chrome is not a web browser. It is the platform on which your application software runs. Reuters picked this up when it reported,

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

“I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world,” Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters.

in Google sees new browser displacing desktop software.

Does this sound familiar? Pick your poison:

1. Microsoft Windows + Microsoft Outlook + Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Office
2. Google Chrome + Google GMail + Google Calendar + Google Docs

Is this good or bad? That is the $64 question, of course. Google’s web-based applications carry no license fees and ought to be highly reliable. But they come with advertisements and the implicit agreement that you trust Google to manage your data properly. Naturally, Chrome will also run other applications, just like Microsoft Windows runs applications which were not written by Microsoft. But by providing one platform which runs identically across all computers, and which is written and maintained by the same Google which provides all of those whiz-bang applications, you can bet that Google is assuring a first-class user experience if you settle comfortably into the Google environment whole heartedly.

Which do you want on your computer? Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX or Linux… or Google Chrome?

OMFG! I just totally realised I have not updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail… You would not believe the amount of people that are totally stalking me. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.

I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with discovering time doesn’t stand still, rock crushing, just generally being a coach to the local soccer team, my day lasts forever from the second star on the right, straight on to I am begging my kid to go to sleep or so help me God that kid will be decorating my wall, ‘Duct tape still life’. I am avoiding recapture. but this damned rock is heavy.

I send you kisses I will write something that makes sense soon. No, really! The Piccaninnies say I have to!.

She bought a copy of The Internet for Dummies and that has been helpful but even this book assumes she knows too much. She has had questions for me like, “When do I press on the right side of the bar?” She is using a touch pad on an Asus Eee PC so her question translates to, “When should I right-click?” That’s a good question and the answer, “When you want a pop-up or context menu” means nothing to her.

Then she asked, “When do I click twice on the left side of the bar?” This was a little easier. To be non-technical, I advised her to single click and, if that does not do what she wants, try double-clicking. The jury is still out on whether this helps.

Finally, she described a real corker of a problem. Neither Candy nor I had any real advice for her, other than to check her manual for a Num-Lock key. The problem, as she described it, was that whenever she typed the “3″ key, she would see an asterisk. Since she lives 850 miles away, I cannot see her screen. I am dependent on her descriptions. I assume she accurately describes what she is seeing and she assumes that I understand what she tells me.

Bad assumptions all around.

At first, it sounds like she is getting shifted characters, or at least the asterisk, all the time. Then it develops that the problem only happens in Firefox, not in OpenOffice.org. Then she tells me that it only happens when trying to enter her password into a new web site, not when doing anything else in Firefox. Ah ha! It turned out that she was typing her password and the browser was obfuscating it, completely correct behavior. But she is so new to the whole computer “thing” that even this behavior, which we take as much for granted as getting water from a sink when we turn the tap on, was baffling.

It’s easy to forget how much we know. That forgetfulness makes teaching all the more difficult.

• Gives us word processor and spreadsheet programs that more than handle our documentation needs,
• Allows us to open Word and Excel documents which clients send to us,
• Allows us to save our documents in Word, Excel, and Adobe Reader (PDF) formats, and
• Runs on Windows and Linux, which is critical since three of us use Windows and one uses Linux.

About the only fly in the ointment is that OpenOffice.org version 2 cannot open Microsoft Office 2007 documents (e.g., .docx files). In practice, this has not been too much trouble since everyone who has sent such a document to us has been able to send us an older format .doc file upon request. Still, I would like to avoid bugging clients with such requests.
Relief is on the way, though. OpenOffice.org Ninja OpenOffice.org 3.0′s new features, an early look includes this snippet, along with several other cool features:

Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly different than the Microsoft Office formats used since 1997. OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support.

There are lots of other useful, new features, too. See the article for “full disclosure.”

The scheduled release date is still about six months away but one of the nice things about open source software such as OpenOffice.org is that you can download the early versions if you want them.

Sure, Microsoft Office provides features that OpenOffice.org does not. But for the vast majority of home and office users, OpenOffice.org will do everything you need and save you hundreds of dollars in license fees. Download it and give it a try.