The Occasional Blog

My family and I had the opportunity to go see Behind the Myths tour staring Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman two weeks ago. The best way to describe the experience is as “the world’s best school assembly.” They spent time doing some Q&A, explanation on how the show started, their own backgrounds, and general insight as to how they approach the show and the myths they examine.

A big intent of the show is to help people consider and examine the world around them. It was a very fun evening and I’m looking forward to seeing their companion show MythBusters: The Explosive Exhibition when (if) it comes within driving distance.

The family and I were able go see Blue Man Group’s new tour this past Sunday down in San Diego. It was much different from their How to be a Megastar tour a few years ago and was actually more akin to their Las Vegas show. The below video gives a really good idea of what is was like.

In yet another time where I can’t tell if I should be proud or embarrassed as a parent. Here’s a brief conversation between my wife (B) and my daughter (K, 14):

B: What’s my cell phone number?

K: I don’t know.

B: What’s Jenny’s number?

K: 867-5309

My son was at Hume Lake with the Junior High group from our church this week. He wasn’t due back until today (Saturday). Plans change. Thursday night, he called home but from the infirmary. He had a sore throat and fever since the day before but it got bad enough over the next day for him to be segregated from the rest of the camp. Between his significant disappointment, a small case of homesickness, and the fact he was likely to be isolated until the group came back today, we decided that it was appropriate to head up Friday to get him. Road trip!

We got up at 4 AM and were driving by 4:30. Driving when we did, we avoided the world-famous LA traffic and were up there about 11:30. The camp is quite impressive and we’ll need to keep it in mind for a family trip in the future. After we signed out Brian, we gassed up, had a little lunch, packed his bags up and we headed back home.

Not as smooth coming back. Due to the timing, traffic made the drive take about two hours longer than the way up. Total trip: 15 hours and 689 miles. Worth every minute and mile.

I have been a geek pretty much my entire life. I am a geek both at work and at home and am comfortable and, in fact, proud of it. Some examples:

• I have built my own PC
• Built a Linux installation from scratch
• Seen Star Wars, the original, in a theater, eight times
• I always worry about having the right cables available, just in case
• I have more screens in use or at-the-ready than I should at any given time
• I’ve been to Maker Faire

That last one is where this confession is related to.

I have one confession that I fear will lower my geek cred with all that know me:

I’ve never seen Doctor Who.

There, I said it. At Maker Faire, we watched a talk by Adam Savage from MythBusters and at the end, he was coaxed into performing an über-geeky, go-go dance to the Dr. Who theme with ArcAttack! It was a lot of fun but it reminded me of this significant lapse in my geek development.

I know that the show is where the Tardis, Daleks, and the Sonic Screwdriver comes from. I just don’t really know what they are. I’d like to rectify that. The question is how does one start? The original series? The new one? Please comment below and help straighten me out.

This past week, I turned in my BlackBerry. At work, we’ve been starting to use Good for Enterprise by Good Technology. That’s an app that runs on iOS (iPhone or iPad) or Android devices and allows me to check mail from my iPhone. The end result is that I no longer need to carry a separate device to have access to work email. That’s great, but I’ve been wearing a BlackBerry on my belt for over six years. It’s going to take some time before I stop thinking I lost something.

This week my boss heads to London for a meeting of the combined IT groups from the three primary PlayStation divisions. It’s the same trip I went to last year that resulted in my extended stay. This time, however, I am unable to go as I had already made plans to attend Maker Faire with my family.

While thinking about that trip, I realized that while I don’t travel too often, I have had the opportunity through work to visit quite a few ‘motherships.’ Since I’m a geek by profession, they’re ones most people wouldn’t care about but some might find the list interesting:

• Sony Computer Entertainment America (my employer) – Foster City, CA
• Sony Computer Entertainment Europe – London, UK
• Sony City – Shinagawa, Japan
• NetApp (storage vendor) – Sunnyvale, CA
• EMC (storage vendor) – Hopkinton, MA
• Apple – Cupertino, CA

I have a love/hate relationship with traveling. I like the experience, but can’t say that I wish to do more. I can’t think of any upcoming additions to the list but who knows what the future has in store.

Wow, that was an experience I’d like to avoid in the future. Yesterday, I was able to successfully connect our router to the new DSL circuit and get the house fully transitioned over. That makes the final count of ‘days without broadband’ 10. Granted, I was able to utilize a borrowed MiFi but that provided what was essentially minimal connectivity. Things would have been quite ugly if that wasn’t available.

The two heros to come out of the experience are Xochitl who is a customer service supervisor for DSL Extreme. And Mike, a field technician for Verizon. Both of them were genuinely interested in working through the problem and each were essential in getting to a resolution.

Now I need to figure out what to do with a considerable amount of Verizon FiOS equipment (router, UPS, Optical Network Terminal, etc.). I wonder if there’s an aftermarket for it? I’ll likely just leave it all in place. Hey, maybe there’s a chance I’ll be able to go back to FiOS?

I’ve been a DSL Extreme customer for years starting back in the modem days. When they made FiOS-based service available in my area, I was quite excited about moving from 3000/768 to 20000/20000 and jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, Verizon changed their policies and decided to no longer allow independent ISPs access to their circuits. As a result, I was given a choice; move my FiOS service directly to Verizon (become a Verizon customer) or drop FiOS. Fortunately, when the fibre optic cable was run to my house they did so without removing my copper-pair phone line (they usually do) so I am able to go back to DSL. That is the direction I chose to take due to my desire to continue to host my server (the one you’re reading this on) which would be a violation of their terms of service. An order was placed for 7100/768 DSL last week and I confirmed that both circuits would be up for me to transition.

Then this past Tuesday, a Verizon service worker came by to install a dry-loop circuit for the new DSL service. Since I only have a single pair providing the phone service, we both agreed that disconnecting that to install the new circuit would be bad and canceled the work order so that it could be re-submitted correctly. The problem was, it still somehow got communicated/interpreted by DSL Extreme as a success so they requested the disconnect of FiOS (which they said they weren’t going to do, btw).

Now, I’m 5-7 days out from having DSL, have FiOS that is dark and cannot be re-instated without a request for new service which doesn’t fly (I was moving away from them, remember?). My only viable fall-back was to borrow a MiFi and get minimal functionality working so that essential services are available. That’s why the site is slow as you read this.

Next step, talk to DSL Extreme customer support management to let them know their business practice is busted. Oh, a credit to the account would be appropriate, too.

Tomorrow I’m going on a business trip to Tokyo for the week. It’s kinda exciting since it’s my first time but it is always tough to be away from my family (they don’t like it much either).

Two things come to mind about the trip. First, I’ve been taking Japanese lessons for almost a year. My confidence is rather low on my language abilities, though. I’ll have to force myself to use what I know when I can. If nothing else, I’ll keep my ears open in the hopes that immersion solidifies a lot of the vocabulary that I’m having trouble learning.

The other thing is what happened the last time I travelled internationally. Like with London, I wouldn’t mind an extra week in Japan, but coming back when expected is my preference.