December 2nd, 2009
While I’m back home again to Phoenix Arizona. It’s been a while since I lived here. Ahh! Fifteen years in the Philippines and things have changed or is it me that is just getting set in my ways. Mmmm! That means that I’m getting old. I think I will deny that , I’m not getting old.
Well let me tell my story and I will let you decide. I came to Phoenix to find an intelligent being. I just move from a farm town in California. I needed a job in information technology. The story begins when we arrive and we need an apartment to move into. There are lots of apartments for rent and they are all running specials to attract renters. Our first stop was at Timber Trees Apartments. We were rejected because my credit score was not high enough compared to my income. Well I got into an argument about how stupid credit scores are. We will talk about that in a different blog.
Well we got moved in and now we need a phone and Internet connection. We walk to a nearby mall (MetroCenter) and stop at the Quest kiosk. We sign up and they make a mistake on the apartment number. The say they will change it. We come back the next day, because “we” made a mistake on the apartment address. We are greeted by a new attendant. I sense that he is not to responsive to my request. He changes the install address and ask me if that is all I need. I answer yes. He then says that the billing address is still the original. I say we need to change that also. I then here the comment. “You told me that we are done and nothing more needs to be changed”. I say “ The Install address and the billing address need to be the same”. I again hear the comment “You told me we are done”. I hear this four or five times. In a louder voice I say “I am the customer. You are the dog and I am the master”.
The end of this story ends with the guy calling mall security. They come and talk to me. They are very accommodating and treat me like a customer. We go to the nearby mall customer service desk and I’m ask to fill out a customer complaint against the kiosk. The security officers are friendly and I thank them and continue wonder around the mall.
In our second week in Phoenix I attend a job fair sponsored by the local newspaper. I finally get to meet a lot of intelligent beings. Yes, they are the same age I am and they dress not to look stupid (long dress pants and button shirts, some in full suit and ties). Of course these are all men and no ladies. I find out that represented companies are looking for people that are willing to relocate. The local companies are looking for workers to work in the local defense industry. Well I strike out and my introduction the the intelligent class is a failure.
Our next venture is to ride the local bus and light rail system here in Phoenix. This is a first time experience for me. We buy an all day reduced pass( available for senor citizens). We get the transit schedule and route maps, and we are off on our adventure. We go from MetroCenter mall to Arizona Mills Mall. About a 50 minute bus ride at 3 pm in the afternoon. The bus fills up with students from the local schools and it’s packed and noisy. We get to Baseline Road and transfer to an east/west bus. We arrive at Arizona Mills at about 5 pm and it starting to get dark. We can stay and we move on in our adventure.
We decide to go to the light rail station in Tempe. Arriving a the station, the train is is there and filling with passengers. We are on the wrong side of the tracks and cross the tracks. There is a big sign that says “Do Not Cross The Tracks”. We board the train and we are off on my first train ride in Phoenix. Oh Oh! We didn’t pay. We ask a rider who will swipe our day ticket. Mmm! Seems we bypassed the swipe robot at the correct way to enter to waiting area. The train ride is a very pleasant and we are soon at the end of the line. We get off and two more bus rides and we are home. It’s 8pm, a five hour adventure in the world of mass transit.
My take on my first month in Phoenix
Well I’ve been home here in Phoenix for a month. My experience has been very enlightening and one of my stories to tell when I’m 80 years old. What have I learned?
I’ve been in Phoenix the last month with the old, the young, the disabled, the job seekers and the unemployed. This is what I have found. There is a lot of conflict among these groups. The old is still looking for jobs and are in conflict with the new graduates. The young are in conflict there peers and race is a major factor in this conflict. To be unemployed is very stressful. A lot of unemployed and disabled are riding the bus. The riders on the bus were arguing with fellow passengers or on the cell phone arguing. Public arguments has been very my dominant experience here in Phoenix.
My second take on my return to Phoenix is the tension between the different groups. Tension between races and income class come to the forefront of my mind. My conflict with Quest was race related but I do have to confess that my dog statement did not help. My defense there is that I said “You are the dog” and not “You are a dog”. A possible mix up there. See my blog on “The Dog Theory of Marketing”.
My last take on my return to Phoenix is the robots you talk to when you call a business. Ahh! This one of the reasons I left Phoenix in the first place. Nothing has changed here. Well that’s not true. I have have come back to even a worse thing. Now when you visit a business, the answer to your question is “It’s on the Internet”. Yikes! That’s the same answer I got from my professor 50 years ago. “Read the Manual, It’s in the library.” See my blog “Read the Manual”.
Tags: Add new tag, Arizona, Internet, Light Rail, Metro Bus, MetroCenter, Phoenix, Quest, robot, RTM
Posted in How Dumb Can I Be | 3 Comments »
August 23rd, 2009
Chapter 2
This brings up another point in my theory of faith. The above sentence could have been “God provides but you have to put your nuts away for the winter. Is God nature? Is he the trees, the mountains, the animals, the planet, the sun and the universe? Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The rational point of view would be that this was a conversion from energy to mass. Einstein’s theory E = mc squared.
I now ask the question. Can you substitute the word “Universe” for the word “God” in the Bible? Well not for the first verse. God must have existed to to be the prime mover in the creation. But did the all powerful God, capable of all things, create a rock so heavy that he could not lift it. I think yes. God is dead. Err I mean God was converted to matter or the “Universe”. We still can communicate with God, but he is the trees, the animals and even us humans. We are God.
Making the above statement, I now have a lot of explaining to do. You know that I am a runner and not a swimmer. I come from the forest. I am a protestant and a need to form a pack or a team. To catch the deer for food you have to work together. These are some of the basic things in the change from a Catholic belief to a Presbyterian belief. A need for a more direct connection to God and not thought a hierarchy of Priest and Bishops.
With this argument I am taking man out of the loop of faith. Man is the dog and not the master.(see dog marketing theory)
Tags: Einstein, God, Universe
Posted in The Book of Gary | 1 Comment »
August 5th, 2009
The theme of this months newsletter has been more of a “RTM” tutorial then about Java code. I have a long history of the “RTM” way of learning new technology. Of course it started with my Father. Although he was a dairy farmer, he always had an interest in radios. He had taken a correspondence course from “Radio Institute” in Chicago. Illinois. A complete set of manuals in radio repair was part of me before I was even born.
The local home town library always had a copy of the “ARRL – Radio Amateurs Handbook”. Did I become a radio amateur? No. Something about you had to be able to send and receive the “Morse Code” with some proficiency.
In college, the professors were always giving you programming projects. I had one professor who suggested that this project could be done very easily in Fortran. “But professor I don’t know any Fortran.” The answer, “ The book is in the library, Read It.”
Now a small story from my recent history, instead of my ancient past. The local book story has a nice lady that is in charge all the computer books. You go in there and you often find her sitting on a big stack of books. Of course there is no chairs to set on in a Philippine book store. I have noticed one thing. She does get smarter every time I see her. In college the idea was to put the book under your pillow and sleep on it. Setting on the book to learn its content is new to me.
Even more recently I read an article from the online New York Times. The piece start out about how the youth of today are TV and game junkies. The youth only have an attention span of three seconds. The text then turned to a comparison between the movie “The Hulk” and the latest book from the “Harry Potter” episodes. The comparison was made on the sales volume and gross income.
The opening one day book sales of “Harry Potter” was estimated at $100 million. The opening weekend of “The Hulk” movie was $62 million. Since they opened on the same weekend the movie attendants declined. The authors comment was “… they sat down and read the book perhaps explaining … the decreasing ticket sales of the movie. (Another likely factor: the movie itself.)”.
A good reading habit is a life long source for new ideas and intellectual development. Maybe we should give more credit to our youth for choosing value over a quick multimedia scheme for our leisure hours.
All of this points out that there was never any teacher for the thing I was interested in. If your at the head of the technology curve, your it. You are the only person at the top of the mountain, there is only room for one at the top.
A quote from the root “HTML is a table. A Server is a script.”. Now this means I need to do more RTM (Read the Manual). I just can’t decide, would I learn more if I stuck the book under my pillow or if I sat on it? I guess it depends which end is closest to the brain.
Tags: Harry Potter, Read the Manual, Reading Habit, RTM
Posted in Bedtime Stories | No Comments »
August 5th, 2009
This reminds me of a true life story that happened to me only a few month ago. I have the habit of putting things somewhere and then forgetting where I put it.
Of course my original thinking is that someone walked off with it or just borrowed it and forgot to return it. I have to be very careful about making false accusations. Ninety nine times out of a hundred it is me that is in error.
The story is that I have some antique calculators and digital cameras (yes antique digital camera). NJ the 5 year old boy that was staying with me was playing with them as if they were his toys. I thought I place the on top of the bookcase where they are display as a museum peace. The next day they where gone I couldn’t find them.
I look for them for about 6 months and my only conclusion was that they were stolen by some of my students. Well guess what? About 3 weeks ago, well looking for something else, I found them on the top shelve in a closet in my bed room in Cebu Philippines.
Mmmm think. “Universe - World - Philippines - Cebu - house - room - closet - box”. A bunch of object containers, arranged left to right, such that, the left contains the right. This describes the exact location of the object camera. Wow! I sound like a geeky computer programmer and the nerds on the TV program “The Big Bang Theory”. Yeks! I think I’m turning into an object and losing my soul. The soul is only thing in this universe that is not an object.
Tags: Big Bang, Containers, Objects
Posted in Bedtime Stories | No Comments »
July 12th, 2009
Last week I was riding on a jeepney at the corner of Gorordo and Arch Reyes. This is a busy intersection close to one of the major shopping malls here in Cebu. There is always a tong taker at this corner. He’s suppose to direct traffic and load your jeepney with new passengers. Of course it is illegal for jeepneys to stop here. It’s to close to the intersection and cause big traffic tie ups. So he also has to pay the traffic enforcer or the traffic enforcer will run him off.
He collects a peso from the jeepney drivers for this service. A jeepney is a conversion of a military jeep in to a bus for public transportation. The tong man will not let the jeepney stop at his corner if you don’t pay the tong. He will chase you off.
Well the tong business has taken a new twist. The home made spite wad gun is popular with the street kids here in Cebu. I remember we used to make these when I was a kid. An art I learned from my Father. We would use a branch from a mulberry bush. It had a hollow or soft center and you could push it out with a stiff wire. A hard wood stick was then carved and fitted into the hollow tube. A couple of spit wads and Walla! A Pop gun!
Here in the Philippines the kids use the trunk of small bamboo tree. Now if you have a little money, you are able to buy a plastic pre-made pop gun that shoots small plastic pellets. These have been popular for about a year. Now the new trend in pellet guns is much bigger model and more realistic looking.
Well to end this story, the tong taker had a big old pellet gun sticking out of his back pocket. Big enough for all jeepney drivers and traffic enforcers to see. Mmmm don’t pay the tong. Bang! bang your dead. The tong business is getting more serious.
Tags: air gun, cebu philippines, jeepney, tong
Posted in Bedtime Stories | 3 Comments »
July 10th, 2009
When I was living in Phoenix Arizona, I had a friend and business partner that always played golf and then visited the local pub. He was one of the regulars. As you know in a bar or pub, you could always get into some kind of a discussion (or argument) about anything in general. A long standing topic was the personalities of the regular patrons. They would give each other some kind of a nick name and use it in their greetings when that someone walk in. Of course this was just bar talk and everybody just had a good time.
The topic of a remembered conversation was the words “self aggrandizement “. The friend claimed I was a self aggrandizing person. When I ask what he meant by that. I got the answer “Well it’s in the dictionary, look it up” (Mmmm! The classic RTM -Read the Manual- response). My response was “Your an aggravating person, You can’t even spell that word.”. Well to end the suspense, the word means — self promotion –, you only think about yourself and your personal goals.
Well this friend and I was none of the above. And us two combatants where always great friends. He was a salesman and marketing person. He was just using “Reflection” to find out who people are and what they are all about.
Could we apply these words to some of today’s leaders and politicians. Mmmm! I think the word fits very well but we will leave any more comment to readers.
Tags: aggrandizement, Politicians, Reflection
Posted in Bedtime Stories | 1 Comment »
July 8th, 2009
For our story for this month we again visit the television programs I remember form my past. The TV channel I enjoyed the most was the public supported station PBS (Public Broadcasting System) or in the UK the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). These are station that are supported by federal tax money and from local community contributions.
There was a program called “Connections” hosted by James Burke. Connections told the story of how two different technologies where combined to create a new technology. The show tracked over a period of centuries the history of two technology and how they were combined in modern times to create a new idea.
An example would be that you can’t make a sword until you know how to melt and cast metal. You can’t make a light bulb until you have produced and can distribute electricity. Or you can’t write Java code if computers where never invented.
So let’s follow the track of Java. Where did it come from and how was the light bulb turn on in the mind of James Gosling, the inventor of Java. For that answer we can ask ourselves a series of questions: “If there was no …? Then there is no invention of …” If there is no computers there is no Java. If there is no transistors there is no computers. If there is no periodic table there is no transistors. If there is no chemistry the is no periodic table.
Now we need a companion track. For this I will use the invention of the notes and staff used to write code for music. What are the technologies that had to proceed the invention of the language of music?
Why do I choose music as the companion track? Music is a language. Music appeals to the right side brain. Music is standard all over the world. And where did James Gosling see the light bulb? At a rock concert . The right brain made a connect with the left brain. Java! Music! — Logic! Beauty! Yes, a computer language that is like the music language. Runs anywhere and universal to all users.
Was the idea of an intermediate byte code (Java compiles to a byte code that is then interpreted by the virtual machine) a new idea for Java. No, I remember that Pascal had compiler that generated a intermediate code called p-code. A new idea is not necessarily new. I could be just a better fit to the task at hand.
Tags: Connections, Innovation
Posted in Bedtime Stories | No Comments »
July 7th, 2009
I was tempted to tell a story about my big one heart throb I had during high school and college. Then I changed my mind to save myself the embarrassment So I have turn to my more immediate love affairs. These includes my life style in the Philippines. The people I meet here and day to day interactions with the local people.
My most recent experience was the birthday party of a six year old boy I have claim as my son. He calls me “Daddy” and he has lived with me since he was a baby. His native language is English, but speaks two other languages fluently. His name is Ness Joelius Inocente. We call him NJ.
Actually we had two birthday parties. Party one was birthday cake and attended by the family. Party two was the kids on the street with 1 peso candy and games. Remembering my grade school days when the teacher would let the birthday person pass out a small treat to your classmates. This was only a three minute party and after you passed out your treat, it was back to your lessons.
For our street party NJ and I bought about 40 pieces of bubble gum and candy from the neighborhood store. All we had to do was walk a short distance and we had 20 kids following us. I put the candy in a larger plastic bag and NJ offered it to the kids. Have you ever seen 20 hands in a plastic grocery sack at the same time? Needless to say the candy was gone within seconds. Did NJ get any candy from the sack? No. Did he complain? No.
The older girls started to organize some games and we spent over an hour playing “Hide n Seek”, “Tag”, “You’re It”, “Hop Scotch” and some games I’m not familiar with. I do think NJ enjoyed his street birthday party the best. I know I did. And one thing that did help, I think NJ is in love with the girl next door. He won’t admit it but he always speaks to her. Ahhh! to be young again — and in love.
Tags: Birthday Party
Posted in Bedtime Stories | 16 Comments »
June 22nd, 2009
Why do I like my brain? Well I have spent the last 68 years getting my brain to this state. That means all my life I’ve been putting things in my brain. My problem is how to get it out. I’m not saying that all things are good or I know where they are, but I see the need now to uses all this information before it all disappears.
Well for a first step it might be useful to know what’s there. That’s the problem. I don’t know what is there. I don’t want to bore you with a long list of what I know and what I don’t know. My goal here is to explore how to put all this brain of mine to some useful thing. How do I get it out if I don’t even know what’s in there?
To help in this task I have divided my space into a hierarchy beginning with left brain - right brain. My right brain is my interest in art, music,talking and innovation. My left brain is composed of engineering, management, planning, thinking and writing. Yes I know that writing should be a right brain thing but I find I struggle so much to get the words on the paper, It’s a very logical task for me.
My question now is how do I make the top step and separate left brain for right brain? We have made other blogs that helps answer this question. We know that if we use our logical left side we shut down our right side. So logical left brain is the default mode. How do we tell that thinking brain of ours to shut up and put the right brain on stage?
To start, we see that thinking is a left brain activity and talking is a right brain activity. Let me explain this a little bit further. Talking to a friend you use both left and right brain. You are listening and thinking what to say next. Here I want to use the word talking to mean talking to yourself and not listening to yourself. How do we do this? We mumble out loud so our brain does not know what we said. It’s just noise. I have experienced this a lot because I have live in Philippines for 15 years and I never learned the local language.
I like to tell this story: I go for coffee every morning at the local bakeshop. The coffee is cheap and the cookies are good. Well the real reason I go to a bakeshop instead of a coffee shop is because the girls are at the bakeshop and the men go to the coffee shop. Anyway this one time a bunch of girls are sitting at a table next to me. I’m reading a book and one of them ask in English: Are we disturbing you? I answered no because the chatter was in a language I did not understand. It was just noise and it went in one ear and out the other. Yea! I know, this story belongs in the catagory: “How Stupid can I Be”.
Mumbling and background noise is a form of meditation. It takes you out of this world and into an empty space with a blank mind. I have used this method to turn my brain off from a busy day and fall asleep. Just mumble so you hear yourself (your words make no sense) and drift off to dream land.
We now come to the main theme of this blog. How do I do something useful with the database of knowledge I have? In this blog I want to explore the right brain function called innovation. I want to create the eureka moment. “Wow! it just popped into my head.” I experience this when I forget a word and I can’t think of it. My mind goes blank. As I get older this is happening more and more. This is what I do. I think in my mind the alphabet. I say ‘A’ silence, ‘B’ silence, ‘C’ silence … A large part of the time the word pops into my conscious mind. There is a connection between the spelling of the word and the verbal sound.
I try to use this technique a lot to connect my left brain to my right brain. I have a web application called Idea Generator at tetracebu.com that combines left brain words with right brain words. The connection process is the motivation I want to use to see the eureka moment. The basic theory is to turn some part of the brain off and let the rest of the brain connect in different ways. It gives you a different picture of reality. Another method to get the eureka moment is to brain storm with a group of people. The idea that two heads are better than one.
Science is just starting to look at the brain off methods. These can occur when the brian is injured or can be simulated with a helmet and magnets. I’m trying to do this brain off thing in a more natural way. You can web search on the key words “autistic savant” to learn more.
NOTES:
- Try the Idea Generatorat tetracebu.com
- “Think better: Tips from a Savant” Scientific American Mind Volume 20 No. 2 May 2009 An Interview with Daniel Tammet - page 61
- “Luck favors the prepared mind.”
Credit for that sentiment goes to a legendary inventor — Louis Pasteur — and it accurately defines the reality of innovation.
- “The more you learn, the more you are able to see. When you see a different pattern of doing something, it’s that ‘Eureka!’ moment.”
Art Fry - Inventor of Post-It notes.
- The Internet is a place you go when you want to turn your brain on, and television is a place you go when you want to turn your brain off.
Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs, Business Week 25 May 98
-
“All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.” Mac Beach
- There is no absolute truth in the world and that is absolutely true.
Gary Forbes CAST (Cebu Animators Society for Talent)
Tags: Brain Connections, Brain Off, Brain On, Eurka Moment, Idea Generator, Innovation, left brain, right brain
Posted in I Enjoy My Brain | 2 Comments »