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4月26日 Another Horseman Arrives...Another Horseman Arrives...
I've been spending a lot of time lately with my face stuck to a computer monitor. This is not all that unusual but this time around I am intently learning the intricate and arcane facts of business life in 'Second Life'. The Virtual World might have some very real economic opportunities for the financial doldrums we are caught in.
So Laurie and I almost always have a radio on in the house. We are genuine talk-radio junkies. So every 30 minutes the news reports come on and with it comes the usual depressing blather about wars, recession and political incompetence. You would think we would just shut the damn radios off but this would be just be a kind of denial. To deny reality is not an effective way to deal with life.
Yesterday we start hearing something different coming in the news. The story is about something called 'Swine Flu' and how it is turning into an epidemic in Mexico. Now part of me immediately thinks of the 'Bird Flu' and some of the near hysteria there was around that. That particular bit of viral evil didn't live up to the hype. We didn't need to wear surgical masks to work or stock up on MRE's, Spam and bottled water. We already have enough Spam.
This morning I get up and the news seems more urgent. There appear to be outbreaks in several parts of the United States. So far the discovered cases are described as 'mild'. It does appear to be spreading. There is some growing hysteria; I've seen various websites even asking if this is some kind of biological attack. Various government agencies are starting to wake up that something is going on.
Have faith, your government is watching out for you.
Now I did some research awhile back on the Spanish Influenza of 1918. This epidemic shortly after the end of the First World War was probably the worst to hit the continental United States. The fatality estimates run as high as 800,000 in the United States alone. It was far worse overseas; some historians believe that if the war in Europe had not been ended by the time the Armistice was signed it would have been ended by the death toll the disease would have taken within the various armies. It could have potentially killed more soldiers than the battlefields.
One thing I remember from my research was the near hysteria caused by the 1918 epidemic. People were locking themselves within their homes and avoiding contact. There were American cities that instituted martial law. In Rapid City, South Dakota, the police could and did arrest you for spitting on the sidewalk! The health professionals of the time were dying as fast as the patients they were treating. There are some historians that believe if the disease had persisted it could have pulled apart the social fabric of the era. It is hard to maintain order when people are desperate and scared and the people responsible for sustaining order are sick or dead. Luckily the disease came to an end before this could have potentially happened.
The Spanish Influenza of 1918
I tend to be an optimist. I earnestly want to believe in the promise of the future. The problem for me today is that the facts screaming at me from the radio and scrolling in front of me on the internet argue otherwise. Part of me thinks of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; one of them was the bearer of disease and famine. Hopefully this all blows over just like so many other scares. The problem is there is a dark part of my mind that wonders if this is one of the Horsemen arriving... 4月19日 Drinking with BobDrinking
with
Bob
These days I spend almost all my free time with my face stuck in either a tech book or a computer screen. I'm not often playing games when I stare into that computer screen. I am working to try to keep my skill set up so I can survive in the job market. The world is changing and I need to change with it. I have no choice, this is survival.
So every so often I pull up a online news source ( I almost never read a newspaper anymore ) and I see how the economy of our country is eroding away. It can make things seem pretty hopeless at times. It is hard to find a way to express the feelings I get sometimes.
I think I found somebody who manages to get some of those thoughts and feelings out.
This is exactly how I feel.
4月18日 The Drawbacks of TechnologyThe Drawbacks of Technology
Laurie and I make our livings on the basis of technology. The problem with technology is when one starts sliding into obsolescence. If you are lucky you will be working in the new wave of things and not the outgoing one. Right now the landline telephone is rapidly fading away. Now we don't work with POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) much anymore. The problem is every one of these landlines that goes dead means less revenue for the company in general. This then translates into job losses. The key to survival is the ability to adapt to the changing technology and this is something I tend to do well.
Denver Post story on the closing of call centers.
This means a new cycle of learning. Years ago I remember attending a seminar in which one of the speakers talked about the concept of "life-long learning". There was a time when a person could go to school and come out with a degree and make a living with what they learned using this knowledge. The problem is the world has changed, the old model of education is dead. Now if you want what you need to know to be relevant you need to constantly study. Luckily I can still manage to do this sort of research.
The Next Big Thing?
The problem with this is learning to balance your life around this sort of learning. I remember taking a class from a network designer working for a large international corporation. This guy was making an income in the six figures and had a home with 28 networked computers in it! His life revolved around computer networking and telecommunications. Everybody in the class was sort of in awe of him. Then one day,near the end of the course,somebody asked him what he did for fun? He told us that every year he tried to read one book that had nothing to do with technology. This was his idea of a vacation. He made a lot of money but he had literally surrendered his life to technology.
So right now I am immersing myself in what I think will be the 'Next Big Thing'. It is sort of a calculated gamble. I can think of a lot of technologies that looked promising and then faded away. Just think of Betamax:
I also believe that if you don't keep moving ahead you will start falling behind. I may not be correct in 'Second Life' representing the platform of choice for the commercial usage of virtual reality but it seems like a good place to start. The technology is evolving rapidly, especially as bandwidth constraints decline and cost-effective processing power increases. I am betting it is only a matter of time before this technology becomes prevalent.
4月16日 External Websites for Second LifeExternal Websites
for Second Life
'Second Life' is a virtual world. You can find just about anything in-world. There are some aspects of 'Second Life' that are external to this 3D digital world. These are website that can provide a glimpse of what it is like inside to outsiders.
Zatzai Services
Zatzai Services is the property management company for the area in which Laurie and I have our virtual home. They run their properties very much like a traditional real world managment company. You can set up leases with them, order services and pretty much do business with them. The most interesting thing you will find on their website is that they also cater virtual meetings for real world business. What this means is that if your company decided it wanted to hold a corporate meeting in cyberspace they could host the event. This is not as unusual as it might sound. There are considerable advantages in cost and security for a company that wants to bring together executives from around the real world. The only thing you have to do is get your people into establishing avatars to do this with.
Murakami Steamworks
This is just one of the thousands of business enterprises that exist within 'Second Life'. They can sell you a digital ironclad. I've done business with them and own a couple of their fine digital ships. There is quite a sporting society for people who like to battle with their digital ironclads within 'Second Life'. Now there are also companies that also provide digital business and security products of a more practical nature. My own research shows that IBM found it more cost-effective to purchase some of these products for their in-world business campus.
.png) This is a picture of one of Murakami's ironclads at the Port Merrimac shipyard.
You will also find a lot of the groups and companies within 'Second Life' maintain external websites and blogs. You can get virtual newspapers and books within 'Second Life' but the blog still provides some of the best information you might need.
The official site of the Fleet of Wrath Exiles.
The Fleet of Wrath Exiles is sort of like a combination of reenactors, historians, gamers and social circle. They take their role as protectors of home island very seriously. Of course it isn't often that neighboring communities within 'Second Life' take it upon themselves to invade each other. I personally enjoy chatting with the various officers of the fleet.
4月15日 The Shape of Things to come...The Shape of Things to come...
Things are not good in the telephone business - at least if you provide the traditional landline sort of telephone. It is a convergence of new technologies, particularly cell phones, and the perception that the economy is lousy. People are dropping their old phones for cell phones at an unprecedented rate. It doesn't help that local number portability has made it relatively simple to move the number off your old wired account to these cell phones. Things are not so good for the companies that took most of their revenue off those old phones.
I've always made my living by trying to be on the cutting edge of what I thought was the next 'big thing'. I've been pretty lucky in that I burned up a lot of time and money learning about various broadband technologies. I saw the advent of things like ADSL and ethernet literally wipe out the dial-up internet industry. You don't catch a lot of people riding the web at 56 k anymore.
Now I need to take my best guess at what the future holds. I am betting that 'Second Life' potentially represents what the World Wide Web is going to transition into. This just means I'll be posting a lot more stuff about what I'm learning here. I'm sorry if this isn't what you want to see on the blog. This won't be forever. I do think this is the most important thing I need to do right now. The world is changing and changing fast. 4月13日 Second Life and the ParanormalSecond Life
and the
Paranormal
It was inevitable. If there was something, anything, paranormal to 'Second Life' we would find it. The fact of the matter is we haven't found any virtual ghosts yet but we have found at least 29 different groups here that are interested in the paranormal. Some of the people in these groups are members of real world paranormal groups. They have regular meetings to discuss their research and to share content.
The fact of matter is there are interest groups for just about everything here! You name it and there are avatars getting together here to enjoy it. I found it a bit funny one day when I saw there was even a airship interest group and then saw a highly detailed virtual Zeppelin cruising over our home here!
4月11日 Second Life, The Journey continues...Second Life:
The Journey continues...
Laurie and I have become quite addicted to our 'Second Life' experience. It is an ongoing learning experience on every level. For some of you who are not familiar with the 'Second Life' virtual world I am including some PDF's about it all. I will probably add more as I discover some with constructive information:
Link to my Skydrive folder on 'Second Life'.
On a practical level what we are learning about 'Second Life' could be professionally practical for me. This might be one of the best potential uses for any type of broadband internet access. Let me state that 'Second Life' is not a game. You can play games in it. 'Second Life' is a virtual world in which participants communicate and interact in a highly interactive 3D environment. Most of the content is actually created by the people who populate 'Second Life'. This is a computer world, a 'metaverse', in which the participants can make their own digital creations, market them, and even make real money. There also seems to be a thriving "real estate" business in this virtual world as people set up shops and homes there.
I'm not going to try to tell everything that has happened in the last week for Laurie and me. I will probably just post a seperate weekly update titled 'Second Life' as we learn and experience more. I am now seeing a very real, not so virtual, potential for this all to help us finance our eventual retirement. People are making real money in 'Second Life'.
Laurie and I are currently leasing 'property' within SL. We have a nice little virtual island with a nice little virtual Victorian home. It is kind of funny how much time you can end up spending buying virtual furniture to put in your computer generated house.
 Our virtual estate.
 Another view of our virtual home. The deck gun on the dock is
strictly decorative. The tank behind it is not. That is part of our
home security system. We picked a community that allows the
right to bear virtual arms. My weapon of choice is a tank.
If you are a resident of SL and want to get in touch with me just drop me a message here. We welcome visitors - most visitors.
What a week....What a week...
The Fall of Bob Davis
He will rise again
What a week! It is kind of hard for me to know what to get started on. First off I am going to talk about the changes at KSTP 1500 AM. Laurie and I are both talk radio junkies. You won't find a lot of time that we don't have a radio on and it is usually tuned to one of the local talk radio stations. We have been particularly fond of the on-air people at KSTP 1500. In the last couple of weeks we lost two more of them; Dave Thompson and Bob Davis were both laid off.
 Bob Davis
The Man,
The Legend
It especially bothered me when they cut Bob; he was not only one of their most intelligent hosts but he and I had become friends of sorts over his years at KSTP. Some people had a hard time with his sometimes combative nature but I just think they didn't understand that Bob always wanted you to support what you were saying. He was often pigeon-holed as a "conservative talkshow" host but Bob had a lot more depth than that. Somebody once asked him if he was a Republican and he responded that he wasn't. He said that he just hated Democrats. I heard him throw a fair amount of thunderbolts towards the Republican Party. He also pointed out the absurdity in some of the factions of the Libertarian Party. Bob was very much an equal opportunity disser.
It seems to me that KSTP has forgotten their talkshow roots. Maybe they are just terrified that the 'Fairness Doctrine' will be dragged out of the closet again. Even if the political forces of Washington decided to do this it would be nice to see more media outlets have the courage to challenge it. I am confident that Bob would have been happy to take a stand.
It is also my understanding that KSTP's much celebrated contract with the Minnesota Twins hasn't done all that well financially for them. When they lost most of their syndicated hosts a few years ago it was definitly a shot to them but the Twins deal wasn't going to offset this. Maybe its time for the program managers at KSTP to remember the listeners and return to their talkshow roots.
4月5日 What if...What if...
Electromagnetic Pulse
I have a ritual of sorts; every morning I check my E-mail, the blog and a half dozen or so online news sources. Today all the lead stories were either the North Korean missile or Obama's attempt for nuclear disarmament. I just want to add a couple items of information to all this:
This wasn't little presentation wasn't all that long ago.
Fox News talks a bit about it.
Nuclear weapons are not going to go away. There are plenty of nut cases in the world who are working zealously to get their hands on this sort of capability. The history of disarmament efforts is bad, very bad. Verification is almost impossible. Enforcement is even more difficult. Now the rogue state or terrorists don't even need a lot of weapons. Just think what they could do with one bomb...
4月4日 The Booming Prairie Chicken meets Second Life!The Booming Prairie Chicken
meets
Second Life
Laurie and I make our livings in what has become essentially a testing ground for new technologies. We work for what was once simply known as the "phone company". Over less than twenty years the combination of federal legislation and evolving technology has largely transformed the telecommunications industry that we work in. I can easily see a day now when the traditional telephone, that is defined as the clunky handset on the end of a pair of wires, will fade away. It will be replaced by wireless technologies and a dynamic environment of varied broadband technologies. In order for telecommunications companies and their workers to survive in this new world they will need to learn and adapt with each new wave of change.
I have learned, sometimes the hard way, that the best way to learn a new technology is to immerse yourself in it. Sometimes this isn't all that comfortable but when faced with the choice of 'sink or swim' I will generally manage to swim. One of the biggest challenges of this evolving world has been the user interface of the varied digital systems you have to deal with. There was a time, not all that long ago, that the only way people could interact with a computer was through typing in long lines of complicated code. Today most of us are still sending lone lines of complicated code but we do it through GUI's, Graphical User Interfaces, of one sort or another. This has lended a level of ease to working with our machines.
 William Gibson
Years ago I read a number of books written by a fellow named William Gibson. He was the fellow who created the word 'cyberspace'. Many of his books concerned a future time when people used a computer interface that was literally plugged into their heads! They would then navigate through the computer or network with the perception of interacting with a three dimensional world. Now the 'neuro-interface', literally plugging a jack into your head, hasn't happened but the use of 'virtual worlds' is becoming increasingly common. The most common use of 'virtual reality' has been associated with games.
 Typical screen view from 'Doom'.
I can remember when the computer game 'Doom' first arrived. There had been other games using the idea of virtual worlds but none seemed as popular as this violent trek through a space colony overrun with the spawn of Hell. Soon there would be whole new generations of such games, generally 'First Person Shooters', as computer graphics cards evolved and high speed processors became more financially available to players. These games have created an industry that is still vibrant inspite of our current recession. It has also been responsible for driving advances in computer graphics technology. Today it seems like every computer company has a machine that is optimised for such games.
The thing is the idea of virtual world envisioned by writers such as William Gibson was a interactive environment of communication and creativity. It was going to be a place in which people from anywhere in the world could meet and share. Some of them even saw this as a way for people to bridge the differences inherent in language and culture. I don't want to sound like I'm going to break out singing 'Kumbaya' but a lot of people working on this technology had higher goals than gamers simply blasting each other to virtual oblivion.
Now there is one place in which this more altruistic use of virtual reality technology has a foothold. Behold, 'Second Life':
 Second Life Logo
'Second Life' has actually been around for awhile now. It has been around for almost six years and grown fairly steadily. It initially seemed to have generated more excitement than it has now but has survived. The thing is I think the essential idea of 'Second Life' was ahead of its time in terms of the available technology. In order to effectively use it you need to link your users to it with a dynamic network of broadband connections. As broadband becomes more readily available to people it will also allow a greater share of people access to 'Second Life'. It is hypothetically possible that virtual worlds such as this could be the model for future business and social transactions.
 Yup, Hope and Change made its way into 'Second Life'.
Now Laurie and I have both been wandering around inside 'Second Life'. The first bit of knowledge that hits you is how big it really is; there are almost 2 million users on over 6000 servers with about 30,000 of them on at any given time. They have literally built whole virtual cities within their virtual world. What do most people do while they are logged into 'Second Life'?
Well, I've found a few of them that fell back on the old habit of blasting each other in virtual combat in zones set up for that. I've also found people chatting, selling art, building virtual reality objects, throwing parties, doing political organizing, having virtual sex, writing novels, taking classes, operating flight simulators, sharing music, and sometimes just hanging out. It seems like the only thing limiting people is their own imaginations.
I'm adding this video because it is inevitable that
somebody is going to ask...
So here I am looking at one direction that technology might eventually take us. Right now 'Second Life' seems like the environs of people with an exceptional amount of geekiness. The thing is there was a time when anybody who used the internet was essentially a geek. What we are seeing in 'Second Life' could eventually become far more common in usage. I can see limitations currently in that it requires a definite learning curve. I also think that we have a generation of people who are going to be more comfortable with this sort of technology. The kids that play those video games today might be very receptive to this sort of virtual world.
Nifty little video about the educational uses of 'Second Life'.
Another blatant plug for 'Second Life'.
I'll probably be writing more about this in the future. Laurie and I still have a few years before we can retire and in order to hold onto your job people need to adapt. I think one of the secrets to survival in our modern era is to recognize trends socially and technologically. It might not be 'Second Life' but I do see this sort of virtual reality technology taking a greater role in society. Heck, don't be shocked if you see the 'Booming Prairie Chicken' someday and somewhere within this or some other virtual world.
4月2日 Trailer Park BoysTrailer Park Boys
 So how do Laurie and I relax after a hectic day at Qwest? Quite often we watch a DVD. Every so often we find a DVD that we get utterly hooked on. Well, I'm hooked on a Canadian cable TV series called 'Trailer Park Boys'. This is not a family values sort of show; it concerns the idiotic misadventures of two petty crooks and their cat-loving cohort Bubbles. The language makes the series 'Deadwood' seem mild. The thing is the show can be incredibly addictive and funny.
Yeah, I know, completely socially unacceptable but incredibly funny if you have a twisted frame of mind.
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