PAgent’s Progress

Ran across this today in my feed reader. I know you can’t blame the algorithms that match key words with ad content, but this really cracked me up:

I live in Portland, Oregon. Well, I live in the suburbs, but I work downtown. And without particularly trying to do so, I have become entangled in the “tech” scene here in the Rose City. Portland has a particularly vibrant tech scene, and there are a large number of bright young people here who speak in a language that I can barely comprehend. These are people who, when they think “There ought to be a java applet that does that”, will set aside some time later to write one. Or they take some time to help get a President elected. Since they are, by definition, tech-savvy, they tend to have a highly visible presence on a variety of social networking sites. Well, actually, they pretty much infest anything that has been branded “Web 2.0″.

The tech community here is fervently devoted. In general. To many things. Things like OpenID, iPhones, and Twitter. And Ignite. Ignite is “a style of presentation where participants are given five minutes to speak on a subject accompanied by 20 slides. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, and slides are automatically advanced.” That’s it. It started in Seattle, but it has spread like a particularly active virus to many other cities, including Portland.

Ignite Portland has already burned through four incarnations (get it? “burned”? HA!) and IP5 is currently in the works. Selected presentation topics from IP4 include “Five Things Portland Can Learn From Kentucky in Five Minutes,” “How to Bluff Your Way Through Life or a 5 Minute Presentation,” and “How to get people to do what you want them to do…” So, it can clearly be an eclectic and potentially entertaining mix of people and information.

And I can understand that. I mean, getting together to see your friends on stage, maybe have a beer, I can understand that. But folks around here take this way past “politely interested”. They are excited. They are enthused. They submit multiple potential topics, in hopes of being selected to present one of them. Others snatch up the tickets like they were going to a Rolling Stones concert.

And I don’t get it.

I understand the format: Strict time limit, and the slides auto-advance. And as I said, I think I can appreciate the social aspect. But at its root, it is still just an exercise in expository speaking, although one that fails to allow enough time to explain anything in any great detail. And while I’m sure some of the presentations are quite funny, it isn’t an exercise in stand-up comedy. What is it about Ignite that can make so many people so passionate about it?

Because I really just don’t get it.

I think I’ve found the perfect consultant to help with my shed dilemma:

Look at that work of art: Air conditioning, satellite dish, and a handy stack of firewood. Where do I sign, sir?

via Dark Roasted Blend

As I may have mentioned previously, we’ve been having a bit of a conflict in the family over computer access. With one fully-functioning computer that has internet access, it’s in high demand. I need to keep up with my RSS feeds and Twitter, the wife has her Supernatural obsession to feed, and the kids thrive on lolcats and comics. Oh, and we actually sometimes need to work. I log in to work remotely, the wife works on taxes or girl scout projects, and the Girl actually has homework assignments that have to be done online.

You can imagine the problem, I expect. Every evening turns into a knife-fight for internet access, with the loser sitting on the couch, staring at the back of the head of the lucky websurfer and plotting evil retributions.

After much discussion (some of it at fairly high volume) we decided that I should get a laptop. This way I could surf while the iMac was in use, work in another room, or even use it at work or on business trips.

Although we love Apple computers, there was no way I could justify a MacBook. We just don’t have that kind of cash right now. Plus, I use a Windows box at work, and have been doing so for decades. Over the years I’ve gotten into the habit of doing my own tech support, since asking for official help on a problem usually a) didn’t solve the problem, and b) created several new problems.

So, I wandered off in search of a cheap laptop that would satisfy our needs. After a couple of stops, I found myself at Frye’s in Wilsonville, my last, best hope for a laptop. I had been thinking of getting a webbook, something without a drive, but powerful enough to do word processing and websurfing. Unfortunately, every one of those affordable little boxes had microkeyboards which pretty much guaranteed my wrist overuse syndrome would return full force. Plus, my fat fingers are not that dextrous.

So, I was pondering what to do while idly punching keys on a laptop priced at $495, and a Frye’s sales associate asked me if I needed help. I filled him in what I wanted to do, and told him I didn’t really want to spend more than $500. He nodded in understanding, but then told me I should really consider a special deal they had that day. It seems they had received a shipment of 50 refurbished HP Pavilion notebooks the day before, and at a sale price of $595, they had already sold about 30 of them.

Well, I can appreciate the importance of staying under a budget, but I can also appreciate an opportunity when it lands in my lap. I told him I’d take one of the refurbs, with a 3 year service contract and free anti-virus software. Of course, I didn’t get out of the store that easily. I also had to pick up a wireless router, so I would actually be able to use my laptop while it was actually in my lap.

Setting up the router went surprisingly well, mostly because of my fumbling in setting up our original router. Then I configured the wireless access. Because I am not a trusting person, I enabled encryption with a Godawful long encryption key.

To make a long story short, by the end of the evening both the Wii and my new laptop were connected to the internet wirelessly. Victory! And I can’t really notice load times being significantly slower via wi-fi than over the hardwired connection.

Okay, I just hooked up a router. I know that’s pretty simple. After all, it’s not like I wrote my own Open Source drivers or something like that. But for me, this was an epic success.

Now I can put on a beret, take my laptop to an Indie coffeeshop, and tell people I’m an author as I stroke my goatee and update Twitter.

I have become fixated on yet another impractical notion: I want a shed.

No, not a shed like that. A shed like this:

The idea of having an outbuilding that serves as a studio, or office, is an old one in Europe, but it is just catching on in the US. Why do I want one? Simple. I need my own space.
Read entire article.

You can blame Verso for this.

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