Off to an Adventure

I'm off on Thursday to be part of the support staff for the New Warrior Training Adventure this weekend at Shawnigan Lake, here on Vancouver Island. The training is full, with 32 men signed up, and it's humbling to part of these transformative events.
And that means that I won't be seeing my new computer until Monday! They are still waiting on the video card, so I have fun waiting on my return! Meantime, please refrain from landing your floatplanes at Shawnigan Lake… 

Adventures in ComputerLand

Over the last few weeks I researched and ordered a new computer system.  Even though I have a technical background (major in Computer Engineering) there is always a lot to learn every time I buy a new system.  The system is being built and should be ready in a day or two, but in the meantime here's some things I learned (or was reminded of!) this time:

1. Verify that all vendor-recommended components are the right ones.  One vendor recommended Pinnacle Studio Plus 700 for video input and editing.  I questionned that because Pinnacle has a poor support quality/record and he responded (in writing!) that he's been installing Pinnacle products for 10 years and that the support has improved.  I chose another vendor for the system, but I did order the Pinnacle product.  Before it arrived I thought I'd do a little double check and found that the product rated an average of 1/5 stars on Amazon (reviewers stated that they would rate it lower but 1 star was the lowest Amazon would allow) and 1.4/10 on CNET. This in 50-80+ reviews per site.  I dropped by their support site and the support was apalling: users wanting support are ignored or offered virtually useless feedback.  IMO the fact that the company continues to sell the product constitutes something close to fraud, if these reviews are to be believed.  I cancelled my order and replaced it with a Happauge PVR-150 and Adobe Premiere Elements.  I think I'll be much happier with that, and get pseudo-TiVo in the bargain.  (Aside: Avid bought Pinnacle last year, in what seems to be one of the weakest exercises in due diligence imaginable.  I'd love to know the real story here!  I am astounded that Avid has not chosen to respond to the horrendous PR about Pinnacle's products, which says to me either Avid isn't paying attention or they lack integrity.)

2.  Shop around of course.  Price differentials are huge.  I contacted three vendors, and checked prices on Dell.ca.  Compared to the lowest price: Vendor 2 was +$200, Vendor 3 was +$500 and Dell was +$1,000.   This on a sub-$5,000 system.  Trick here is to make darn sure you're comparing apples and apples: same motherboard/video card/case, etc. etc.

3.  Verify all component part numbers in writing by email.  All vendors made silly mistakes in their quotes, such as changing my 7800 GT request to 7800 GS or 7800 GTX.  A single letter off in a spec and their could be trouble, especially when changes are made to the original order.

4. The PC performance curve is flattening.  Performance increases per year are lower than they used to be.  Prices are coming down though.  I benchmarked my ca. 2001 old machine (PCMark05) and it performs at about 25% of a good machine now.

5.  It's fascinating the Microsoft software versions are now so infrequent.  Perhaps I'm buying Office 2003 at the wrong time as the next version is pending, but it's survived 5 years already.  And XP came out in 2001, and Vista looks like 2007.

6. The media convergence is cool, if still in its infancy.  I wanted XP Pro, but XP Media Center edition is very interesting. 

More to come I'm sure once I get the machine, install a bunch of software and network to my old computer.   FS9 of course will be first, then for the first time I can experience V+ as it was intended.

Boy Crazy

I’m only part way through this book, but what a great resource if you’re parenting a girl going through early adolescence! Going well beyond the usual hormonal changes, the authors explain the phases of romance, and what they mean to a young girl. They explain how in their view the adolescent experience has changed since that of their parents, and some of the implications. There’s useful advice on when and when not to involve yourself in your daughter’s life.
The authors assume for some reason that the reader is a mother, but the book works fine for Dads. It’ll be easier for Moms to connect to their daughters through their own experiences, which the authors encourage.

A couple of traps (in my opinion!) to watch out for: the book is inconsistent in differentiating between behaviour and the individual, sometimes unfortunately lapsing into labelling. And the authors seem to have a Chicken Little approach to life: that society has become more toxic and damaging. In my opinion, despite the obvious drawbacks of increased drug use and other areas of decay, society has improved for children in leaps and bounds. I would much rather be bringing up a child now than in the suppressed world of the fifties, or even the eighties.
So, like any book, if I pick and choose what works for me, there’s lots of good stuff here. It’s easy to read, and well-organized. Available at Amazon.com. Authors: Charlene Giannetti and Margaret Sagarese.

This Book Will Save Your Life

Despite the New-Agey title of this book, I found it to be a playful, silly, profound exploration of the modern techno/stock player/businessman emotionally-numb archetype. Rather than a juicy, gratifying/shocking/resolving ending, the book provides its charms one per page throughout.

Highly recommended. Available April 20, 2006 at Amazon.com

Selling and stats

Tom Peters has kindly provided thoughts on selling in a downloadable PDF. Highly recommended. And here’s some fascinating stats on the music industry as it struggles to adapt to new distribution channels and methods.

What would you do if your engine sucked in a bird?

Will FSX have birdstrikes?  Courtesy of Alex Feldstein, this video shows how a couple of pilots handled it.

Integrity

The government of British Columbia recently sold some old surplus computer tapes, unfortunately without erasing them first.  So a lot of private data on citizens was still on the tapes.  Read here one of the reports on this.  This is quite the screw-up, but I also was amazed that the press apparently chose to examine the tapes in detail, and publish confidential information, although they didn’t reveal names.  I responded to the media chain with the following letter:

It is disturbing that the Provincial Government does not have in place safeguards to ensure that personal information is kept confidential.  I hope this breach will be fixed immediately so it cannot occur again, and the individuals responsible are held accountable.

And there appears to be a further violation: a lack of respect and integrity shown by CanWest, and possibly the tape buyer.  Someone has gone through this private information in detail.  Worse, reporters are choosing to write about (and editors choosing to print) confidential information protected under the Personal Information and Privacy Act.  CanWest publications have said, “Due to the sensitive nature of the information, [this paper] will not identify any people named in the files on the tapes,” as if this is a statement of integrity.  I think not.

Some questions arise: Have copies been made of this information?  How many people are looking at it?  Did the buyer get paid by CanWest for data he didn’t own?  (He bought the media from the government, not the data.)

I understand that the buyer wanted to ensure the government was held accountable; hopefully that was the motivation for sending the information to a third party.  However this could have been done by contacting the police, a lawyer or the privacy commissioner, without examining the information in detail.

I believe the hidden story here is the potentially illegal use of private information shown by the press, and I hope Mr. Loukidelis’s office will be thoroughly investigating this as well.