Heavy is the head that goes to the conference

Ugh, and I've been in a user conference for the Enterprise management software we use at work all week. This might seem like it would be a good way to spend your time, but that would assume that the software was in any way interesting. It is not.
It is giant and all inclusive with modules for accounting, space management, work order tracking conflict management for resources and a hundreds of other things you don't care about.. Probably the best feature of this event is they are feeding me breakfast and lunch as well as snacks. Otherwise I've been using my phone turned tablet (it's a long story but I ended up with a phone that was run over and broken that I nursed back to life and use as a wifi tablet) reading blogs and other general joy.
How about you? What have you been up to this week?

Sudoku Puzzle training

I'm a sudoku player and was finding that my ability was stretched too thin on the Thursday and Friday puzzles so I sought out something to help me learn the strategies a little bit online.  Enter Sudoku wiki.

You have to pay close attention to what it changes, but the strategies of Naked pairs/Triplets and pointing pairs seems to have the most mileage for solving puzzles that you fell the need to guess.  Prior to finding this tool I would review my work against the answers in the next days paper and found that the correct number for a space was often one I wasn't considering for that space, (ie it was a number that could have been in 4 or 5 spaces so I didn't write it down).  In a sense I was finding that I was building myself a box that prevented me from ever getting the correct answer.  If you have any interest, but struggle with the harder puzzles this is a pretty good (though spartan) tool for learning some different strategies.

Talking myself out of technology

It's a strange place to be at right now, the internet is the most fascinating thing I can think of, filled with so many opportunities to do just  about anything and tons of people that are trying new things and willing to help you on your way to try new things.  Everyday I'm bombarded with crazy new and creative ideas from all over the world uncovered and reblog/repinned/reshared ad nauseum until they reach far and wide.  Everyone is plugged in to greater or lesser degrees, but like the speaker in my last post I'm starting to think I'm too immersed.

I play Modern Warfare 3 on xbox, and go out of my way to mute all the jack asses in every room, I don't want to talk to them I just want to compete with them.  I require no human interaction with them I just want to out play them, or when I play with people that are better than me learn how to get better.

I feel like that's a metaphor for something.  What I don't know, but I interact with very few people in a real and meaningful way.  I had the first conversation that wasn't about something that needed to be done with my wife last night that I can remember having in a week.  That's some weird head space to be in.  I don't have a plan, I don't even know if a plan is needed; but something needs to change.  I leave that happy thought with a song that fits my mood for the moment.

Distracting distraction

Thanks to The Verge for posting this interesting video on the nature of distraction.

being deaf

Gizmodo posted an article a little while back on being deaf.  Now the article is written by someone that was born deaf, and is in that 20 something age that is very angst filled anyway, but was pretty insightful none the less for me in my personal life.  My father is going deaf, rapidly.  It's not just a matter of certain tones going away, it's a matter of he's already lost over 80% of his hearing.

This is changing my family dynamic and reading the account of this young man's loneliness in a world that engages largely with our voices was very eye opening.  When there is a gathering of more than a few people, it is not uncommon for my father to not be able to keep track of what is being said.  His most common response is to retreat to his smart phone, that provides him with some entertainment.  It is also getting harder for him to hear on the phone, so he has taken to texting rather than getting frustrated with not knowing what you said.

The article is a little long, but interesting to see a different perspective on life and gave me clues on how to help my father interact with his world.

You know how I know it's Monday?

Shit's broken.

Apparently we had a Tsunami indoors over the weekend so our main fax, print, copier that was conveniently located directly below an air handler is unplugged and pulled away from the source of offending water.  It's broken, and the main printer for about 1/2 of the office.  Sweet.

Next up, one of our partners servers is offline.  Sweet, they don't have on site tech support so it's on me to figure this shit out.  Trouble is someone stacked another server right on top of the server that won't turn on.  I don't know what the other server does, so I don't want to turn it off until I speak to someone, but it's preventing me from turning on their file server, database server, dhcp server,..... you get the picture.  Couple all that shit with I have a 9am conference call, and forgot my tie at home....

It's 10:32am and I need a drink.  The hits keep coming today, and for fun I get my Mother this week.  That ought to be about as much fun as I know how to have.

Anybody?

Anybody participating in the current Microsoft bribe you to use our search engine scheme?  I was doing the club bing, that was all word games and you use the search engine to solve the puzzles until it closed down recently.  For me it was a pretty decent deal, in a few years I managed to get 2 xbox 360's (well I earned one and they cannot keep track of anything so the sent a second one) and a kitchen aid mixer and some other miscellaneous garbage.  I'd say that puts the net at around $800 or so dollars in money I didn't have to spend.  They capped you at 500 tickets a day, but if you where efficient you could do that in about an hour.

The current scam is faster to complete (especially if you just keep using search autocomplete) and caps you at 10 points for searches and they have some daily offers of 3-50 points you can complete.  You're out maybe 5-10 minutes a day, and can earn points to redeem towards xbox live subscriptions, or xbox live points.  I think they have some other crap in there, but it's of no real value to me.

Pretty sad, I think.  Here at Microsoft we are not above bribing you to use our products....