David Duey

My Social Experiment

A guy who sits near me has a computer that we've been using for test purposes.  I added some speakers to the computer and I've remoted into the computer so I can play sounds on the test computer from where I'm sitting.  The first sound I tried was a mosquito, but I think the sound quality was poor; he complained about static coming from the speakers.  Oh well.

Next, I'm going to try farting sounds.  I think he's one of those inadvertent farters that just lets one loose if it's available.  I'll have to see if I can get him to question himself (or check his pants).  He's away right now, so I'll have to update the post with the results after he returns. 

I should've been a social scientist.

UPDATE:  It didn't go well; I should've expected as much.  My cube-dwelling pal just said, "This computer is farting."  I did a poor job of setting things up.  I'm a failure as a social scientist. 

I'll make some changes and try again one day.  First, I need better speakers and better sound overall.  Sound quality is important; it has to sound real.  Next, I'll hide the speakers and test to make sure it's hard to determine where the sound is coming from.  Lastly, I'll use annoying insect sounds rather than noisy body functions. 

I've come to the conclusion that people who emit a constant array of gross sounds have some self awareness, and thus, they can determine that the sounds are external to themselves.  (Maybe the experiment wasn't a failure; I determined that farty people can be self aware.)

It's just like a startup: morph and try again.

Graphic Complexity

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

One of Many

One of many great Randy Pausch quotes...

Be prepared: "luck" is where preparation meets opportunity.

RSS in 3D

Microsoft has an intersting #D RSS reader here.  I believe it requires the .Net framework 3.0 or higher and IE7.  It's not practical for daily use, but it is pretty and it has some intereseting features.

Tagged

I was tagged by Eric Norlin to disclose eight things about myself. 

1. I used to hate cold weather.  Then, I moved to Chicago for a year.  That cured me.
2. I’m a private pilot, but I haven’t flown in years.  That’s something I want to start doing again one of these days.
3. All my life I’ve had difficulty with the left hand, right hand thing.  That probably explains why I could never be an accountant (debit on the left, credit on the right) and it may also explain why I was employed by Arthur Andersen.
4. I’d been reading Brad Feld’s blog for about four years before I ever met him.  When I finally met him at a TechStars open event, I was near speechless.  Figures.
5. I attended the 1994 FSU-UF football game in Tallahassee.  It was a tie game (back when tie games were allowed) and the most awesome comeback I’ve ever seen.
6. I was addicted to cave diving for a while.  Having kids hampered my addiction.  Now, I rarely think about the cold, wet caves (but I still have my gear).
7. My wife says I think too much, she might be right.  I’ll have to think about it.
8. I have the most wonderful wife and children that anyone could ever hope for.

I’m tagging Heather Duey, Jon Fox, Jonathan Chauncy, Tom Keller, 5280 Angel (hee hee), Tom Chikoore and Ari Newman.

Joel on Writing

Joel Spolsky has an interesting three-part article titled "Talk at Yale."  He talks about a variety of things including the value of good writing skills.

Being able to write clearly on technical topics is the difference between being a grunt individual contributor programmer and being a leader. My first job at Microsoft was as a program manager on the Excel team, writing the technical specification for this huge programming system called Visual Basic for Applications. This document was something like 500 pages long, and every morning literally hundreds of people came into work and read my spec to figure out what to do next. That included programmers, testers, marketing people, documentation writers, and localizers around the world. I noticed that the really good program managers at Microsoft were the ones who could write really well.

I wish my writing skills were gooder.

Communication Confluence

Lately, I've been too busy with holidays, contract work and Georneys (we're trying to get "good" feedback from customers) to do much blogging, but I came across FWD International via Tom Evslin's blog and decided to write a brief entry.

It looks as if FWD is going to be a big deal:

FWD is better because we are an open network and we don't close doors to any other networks. This means that you can use FWD to talk with people who use other networks to make calls over the internet. Also, you can configure any phone to work with FWD. You can't do this with Skype.

I'm planning to start playing around with FWD as soon as I can break away from my other responsibilities.

Fall in North Florida

It's finally cooling off just a tad in North Florida and we're starting to see some fall colors.  (Yep, in North Florida we have some semblance of four seasons.)  My dad sent me some pictures from a recent outing.  Below, is one of the pictures; it's a place called Rum Island which is on the Santa Fe river.  It still looks mighty green, but take my word for it, it's not summertime green.  (Note:  We were hoping to be living in Boulder by now.  Maybe soon...)

Joe Stagner of Microsoft

Joe Stagner of Microsoft recently posted a really interesting blog entry titled, "The Scoble Gap."  Here's an excerpt:

Reflecting on Robert's time at Microsoft, he was famous for the opinions that he shared but also of primary value was his service as a conversation catalyst.

I think Microsoft has been missing and needing more of each since he left, so I’m going to try to change and increase they way I blog.

I am not suggesting that I will try to fill Roberts “Microsoft Blogger” shoes. Just that I will try to follow his lead and be a catalyst for discussion and HEALTHY controversy. This is harder than it probably seems to the average individual blogger. Blogging when you work for a large company, especially one that is in the news all the time, is a risky thing. Apple, for example, simply doesn’t let its employee’s blog at will. (I was told this at the On Line Community Summit in Sonoma CA last week.)

Joe Stagner has an very good series of video tutorials for ASP.Net Ajax.  I've also exchanged email with Joe.  I had a technical question that turned out to be a dumb question, but he was very helpful and prompt in his responses.  He's smart and entrepreneurial; very cool!

Facebook isn't the internet?

My wife sent me a link to a hilarious rant.

You want to rank and hide comments on your "Completely open and honest corporate communications blog," but only after an admin / editor has approved the comments that have been made? Do you not understand the concepts of "Completely open?" And for that matter, ranking and hiding?