Maybe I upset you?

I'm kind of stuck. I did something last week that I thought at the time would not be a big deal. In hindsight, maybe it was a big deal and maybe I have upset you.

I, of all people, should have known you would have been upset at feeling excluded. That was never my intention.

Maybe I am making a big deal out of all this, but I know you a long time and I think I understand how you are likely to have interpreted what happened last week.

I tried contacting you, but you seem to be ignoring me. I'm hoping that you are away or some other problem is preventing you from seeing my messages or from replying to them.

A little voice is telling me, however, that you are really pissed with me. I understand that and respect what you are feeling about what I did.

6 hours in the car...

photo by mcdarius via Flickr.com

Almost six hours in the car today, driving on the motorway to Limerick and back again. Motorway driving in Ireland is really boring nowadays. Nothing to watch but the concrete barrier on the right, to avoid crashing into it. And maybe a fence way off to the left, for the same reason.

I had to stop after 2 hours because I was becoming hyponotised by the humming of the tyres (well not exactly humming, whatever that sound is.. the uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh-ing). Coffee and a donut (strictly for energy purposes) later and I was grand again.

 Repeated that trick on the way back and finally stepped out of the car and into the house again. Now to repeat it on Thursday.

Need to get myself a new ipod FM transmitter, one that works.

Car competition in the Airport

photo by HikingArtist.com via Flickr.com

I was in Birmingham (the one in England) yesterday for a meeting. The meeting ended up in the afternoon and the next available flight was around 8PM. That left me with a lot of time to kill in the airport.

I tried accessing the 'free' wi-fi. Nothing. Maybe it's me but I have never had much success connecting to free wi-fi in airports. In fact free wi-fi is generally not available nor working properly.

Enough of that. With no internet to browse, I headed for a book shop and picked up a copy of New Yorker magazine. I spent about 10 minutes deliberating about which magazine to buy, which probably reveals a lot about my mental state these days.

I sat down on the first available seat and started to read. I didn't get very far because right beside me there was one of those platforms on which stood parked two high power sports cars. An Aston Martin and a Porsche. With the cars were two eager salesmen trying to grab the attention of passers by, with the aim of selling them a raffle ticket for ten pounds.

I tried ignoring them, zoning them out by extra hard concentration, but it didn't work. Their constant hooks such as "what about you big man, do you want to win this car?" or "come on sir, let's get you into this Aston.." or "come on sir, we'll be giving it away at the end of the month, why not you?"

One one level it was interesting to see who did actually stop. In a word, Germans. Almost universally it was Germans who stopped to learn more. There was one guy who stopped that was not German. He was from the UK and had bought one of these tickets recently. They really love bombed him and looked him up on the computer to see how his ticket was doing?

Anyway, I eventually was drawn into the magazine by a brilliant Malcolm Gladwell piece on Steve Jobs and a harrowing murder investigation story (not related to Steve Jobs) about a soldier who was on death row, and then free, and now possibly heading back to death row.

And then it was time to board.

Until the next time.

image courtesy of HikingArtist.com via Flickr

User.Guide.Duh!

I got a new phone a few weeks ago. It's a Samsung Galaxy S smart phone. It runs the google Android software so it can do lots of clever things.

Naturally I assumed it would be able to connect to my handsfree unit in my car, a Plantronics K100. The Plantronics unit is easily the best car handsfree unit I have ever used. Simple to set up and simple to use. How hard could it be?

Well being a man I managed to make it much more difficult that it should have been. Step 1 was to try and do this without reading any instructions whatsoever. This step usually takes a week or two.

Step 2 is to scratch your head and repeat step 1 all over again.

I finally gave in and googled "Samsung Galaxy S pair with Plantronics K100" and all I got was a load of websites trying to sell me either device. I then youtubed (if that's even a verb now) "Plantronics K100" and found a few well made videos that explained what the K100 does and how to turn it on and off. Not very useful for my predicament.

We're probably at step 5 now which is to visit the manufacturer's website and look at the user guide. I did that and it explained exactly what to do. Turn off the Plantronics K100. Hold down the power button continuously until the little light flashes blue and red. Then click "scan for bluetooth devices" on the phone handset and that's it. It worked! 3 weeks later.

Lesson learned? Probably not.

Power in my hand

I have one of those fancy android phones that allows me to blog wherever. Man is it slow to type though.

Currently i am on the sofa. Riveting i know.

Hoping for a rough this week

A rough is what my graphic designer refers to as an early draft of the cover design she is working on for my book.

She and I met two weeks ago and I am really excited to be working with her. She has done some amazing work with established authors and I am her first self-publishing author client.

I am hopeful that she will have a couple of designs to choose from this week and that it will not be too much longer before the book is typeset and heading for distribution.

It's a super exciting time for me just now.

I have my fingers crossed that I will have something to look at by the middle of the week.

Hope you are well wherever you are reading this.

Beautiful sounds

Downstairs my wife is playing the piano. She thinks nobody is listening. The music she is making is really lovely.

I wish I had even a fraction of her talent.

A new year begins and it's time for some serious positivity

Well nobody can argue that 2010 was not an eventful year, especially anyone reading this in Europe. In Ireland we have had our fair share of bad news stories, shameful levels of international attention, and the kind of year that in truth most people just wished would end so we could move on.

I'm a bit like that myself. It's been that kind of year where I got very low about things. I think I let all the negative media stories get to me. And then when I would meet people all that would be discussed was how screwed we are as a country.

Then I decided to do something about my worsening mood and my feeling down about things. I went back to the books because in the past that's what I always did and it always worked for me.

Thinking about it way back when I was in college and wondering what the hell I was doing studying to be an electronics engineer I went through a phase of visiting second-hand bookstores. Every so often I'd visit and pick up something that caught my attention and I would read voraciously, allowing the stories to take me away and re-engage me in thinking about positives in another place. I remember going through a few by John Steinbeck, a whole raft of Graham Greene titles, and then kind of having a Russian phase with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. It did the trick. I managed to park all the crap that was a struggle and escape when needed to divert the brain to a more positive state. I ended up passing all my finals.

A few years later when working for IBM I went through a kind of dip and started to find my interest in work waning. I took to the books and again they did the trick. Lots of business titles and a special focus on stuff that really resonated with me. Patrick Lencioni's books are great for engaging you in a great story with a powerful message.

And so I am back into the books again. I went looking for something to lift me and in that serendipitous way a friend in facebook made a reference to a book she had read recently and that turned out to be exactly what I needed.

I'm determined to choose my own disposition in 2010 and to be as positive and enthusiastic as I can because nobody else can make me so. It's in my power to enjoy each day and I intend to do just that.

I've kept my mood up over the Christmas and new year's holidays and have had a really great break with my family. The bad weather didn't set us back and we've had a great time relaxing and sleeping loads and doing whatever we feel like.

I'm back to work in the morning and I'll be bringing the same sentiment with me :-)

Wishing you a fantastic year and looking forward to sharing whetever great news and positivity comes my way.

Trick or treat. Well mostly treats to be honest

It's about 8:20 PM in the evening now and the steady flow of little kids dressed as monsters, psychopaths and Lady GaGa seems to have ended.

We had about 70 tiny visitors to the house this evening with varying degrees of effort on the costumes it has to be said. We had plenty of store-bought examples from Spider Man to Batman. We had the usual gaggle of princesses. We had death (grim reaper), victims of death (skeletons etc.) and various other forms of scary characters. We had a few Lady GaGa types, a few of what my wife said were "Nerd Chic" attempts and one character that looked like a kid in a number with a wooly hat and bad teeth.

Usually after all the kids have called on the various houses I venture out with my eldest boy to watch the fireworks. It's usually pretty decent to watch and draws a decent crowd. This year there was about 10 minutes of fireworks and very few people watching. The recession has started to well and truly bite in Ireland. I guess this year it's a straight choice between fireworks and eating. Maybe not that extreme.

Anyway I vainly brought the camera and once again took a bunch of really terrible photos. Maybe I should take a course. Once I get the kids to bed I will eat all their treats. Only joking! Happy Hallowe'en!

Poo, chips and Dolphins

I was in two minds last Sunday evening. My wife was taking the boys down to see their grandparents leaving me with an enviable free-house. Admittedly the thought of sitting on the couch and watching sports for 3 hours was very attractive but in the end I decided to grab the camera and zoom lens and head out in the car to take some spontaneous photos.

I have only done this twice before. The first time I drove down to Blackrock, a nice little village on the south coast of Dublin and a place where I spent a lot of my summers as a young boy with my younger cousins. The first time I wandered about and just took random snaps, trying hard to get the camera to focus on what I wanted it to focus on. Easier said than done. I inadvertently snapped some rather choice graffiti on the bridge over the railway tracks.

It just goes to show that you should pay attention to the details of what you are snapping and not just focus on the focus.. if that makes sense. Anyway the few pictures I took were OK so I was happy enough.

A month or so ago I decided to repeat the act and drove down to Dun Laoghaire, again on the south side of Dublin and a bigger place than Blackrock. It has a ferry terminal with a link to the UK port of Holyhead, a main train station, even a Burger King. A decent sized town. It also has two lovely piers, the aptly named East and West piers and they are splendid for all kinds of leisure activities such as fishing, skating, cycling, and of course good old walking. I grabbed the camera and zoom lens this time and drove down there and found a great parking space right next to the pier entrance.

Alas when I returned to the car after walking and taking photos the car was kaput. It would just not start. Turned out that the starter motor and ignition were crocked and my little jaunt to the harbour would eventually set me back just north of five hundred euros in car repair costs.

Undaunted, I decided this weekend that it would be fun to head out to take a few more snaps. This time I headed to Bray in Wicklow, the next county to the south of Dublin. I had hoped that there would be a summer fair or festival or something like that but there wasn't. Instead there was just a lot of people sitting about and strolling along the seafront and cars everywhere.

I parked and put the camera stuff over my shoulder and made my way down to the beach. The first thing I encountered was a man wearing headphones and waving a metal detector about. He seemed to be very focused on a particular area, perhaps he was helping someone out who had lost something on the beach. I headed south away from his work and passed various people hurling stones into the sea with great venom. It's usually a male thing to go to the water's edge and hurl stones into the sea and if you can find them it can be fun to skim flat stones on the water even at 40 years of age.

Moving past this group I walked along the pebble-covered beach and passed a huge poo on the sand, covered with flies. Clearly this was the work of a canine as nobody would be so bad as to do that on the beach. Nonetheless there is a rule for dog owners in Bray and this is why. Totally gross and actually quite rare to see in Ireland these days. Granted it would be nicer to have rare things like a Picasso or a vintage Rolls Royce to look at but these would probably look just as out of place on the beach as the poo. Enough about that.

There were precious few people in the water at this stage of the evening, not that it was a cold evening more that it was likely to be fairly chilly in the water at this stage of the summer. At the end of the beach I ventured up Bray head, Bray's version of that huge mountain that overlooks Rio. It has a cross on top too but it's just not that spectacular. I climbed a little but the light was already starting to fade and I wanted to be home in time for the family. I headed back down the hill past a now almost-decrepit guesthouse which still seemed to be open for business. It looked like one of those spooky old haunted places you would see on Scooby Doo or on that episode of CHiPs in season 2 (quite specific I know) where the little kid runs away on Hallowe'en and ends up hiding in a wardrobe of an abandoned place like this. I digress.

Walking back along the pavement and a little away from the shore I was intrigued by the amount of people sitting eating fish and chips or chips with something fried anyway. The smell was very powerful and wafting all along the seafront. I looked for the place where all these chips were coming from and there it was. A tiny little hut on the seafront selling all this fried food to all these happy soul-food eaters. Why not. I reckon eating at a place has the effect of burning a memory into the heart and the head through the gut. Just a theory.

About two-thirds of the way back to the car I was very taken with a group of young people down at the water's edge, one of whom was screaming. It was a kind of unintelligble excited or frantic scream and impossible to make out what she was saying. She was jumping up and down and pacing and running from side to side. At this stage lots of people had stopped to see what all the screaming was about. There about 100 metres from the shoreline was a fin protruding from the water and swimming in very straight lines from side to side parallel to the shore.

My initial reaction was 'crikey there's something in the water'. Often in Ireland the only thing you find in the water off the coast is seaweed, trash and the occasional bit of raw sewage. (Shopping trollies and couches are mostly found in rivers these days). Clearly it was not a shark as it was too small and nobody else was freaking out.

Turns out it was a dolphin and apparently (my wife tells me) they are pretty common off the coast of Ireland these days. A woman passing by pushing a wheelchair asked me if I had managed to capture it and I told her that I had not been quick enough with the camera. Turns out I was and one of the snaps I took shows the fin sticking up out of the water. Granted it's miles away and not that clear but it's a fin nonetheless. Success. Pictures from Bray were OK too so a decent sunday night's effort with the camera too.

Roll on next weekend.

I hope all (optimistic I know) that are reading this are well and in good spirits and that life is treating you well right now.

Best wishes until the next time.

The end of the summer

This is my first post on this blog for absolute ages. I am determined to keep writing and don't really know what is taking all my time up these days.

Anyway - I have just finished my first week back at work after 3 weeks of holidays. It was not fun if I am completely honest. It all began wit me having trouble opening my eyes on Monday morning. I don't mean when the alarm clock went off. I mean between the hours of 8am and 12 noon when I was actually awake and upright. I just could not keep my eyes open. Let's face it, the fact that I went to bed late every night of the 3 weeks of holidays probably made opening my eyes before noon a little bit more difficult than a normal week.

And of course there was a whole heap of stuff waiting for me when I got back to the office. Not a heap of gifts or praise or even curiosity. Just work, problems and deadlines. But I made it to friday evening and am still alive and well so I guess that's good.

So driving home tonight from work I was thinking all kinds of things about the way life is right now. One the one hand it does seem like something has ended. Maybe it's a general feeling about the way the westernised world is struggling to get out of this awful mess we got ourselves into. Either way it seems to me that life feels like it is in mourning for the golden days of excess and queuing up for iPhones and new cars and buying property and stock and all that.

Then I washinking about what my work demands of me at the moment and how different it is from when I entered the organisation. And I'm still thinking about that.

Then I thought about an interesting question I had posed to me by a video on YouTube last night. What if this is as good as it gets? What if life is meant to pretty much be like this for the rest of your time and you won't be able to do much about it? Kind of bleak I know and probably not entirely true since I could go out and change things in all kinds of ways albeit shallow and superficial. I could get a haircut for example or grow a moustache like Napoleon Dynamite's brother Chip or like his friend Pedro (a fuller moustache if ever there was one).

And then I started leafing (via the computer.. I think it's still leafing even if you are pressing [right arrow]..) through old photos and something inside me was saying 'awww' and 'oh wow' and all kinds of gushy outpourings looking at pictures of my little boys when they were just babies. And I figure that from then to now plenty of great things have happened and changed for the better.

So I figure I'll leave it there. My eldest son is climbing the stairs begging me to let him watch a clip of Rodney Mullen doing tricks. He is charming me with "please dad, you're the best!". How can a dad resist such precise and balanced feedback.

Cheerio for now and slán leat / libh.. probably leat if I am honest.

I remember a chat many years ago

It used to be a kind of informal custom on a Friday afternoon at the end of the working day for a few of us to get together in our work area and ramble about how the computer industry might take shape in the future.

These chats used to take place years ago at this stage, but there were a couple of things that really stood out for me from those chats.

It seemed to be inevitable that at some point in the future Microsoft would start to lose momentum. The idea was that at some stage it would stop being about Windows and it would be about something else that users were concerned with. It looks like we're getting very close to that time where people won't care what software runs on their device (I'm avoiding the use of the word computer since it doesn't matter any more really). They just want the device to be useful and to be ready immediately when they need it. Another idea killed this week too.

It also looked odds on that at some point Dell would run out of road for their 'Dell model'. There comes a time when pretty much anyone who wants a microwave oven has a microwave oven and no amount of repackaging and pricing will create demand that is just not there. Even accounting for countries with possibly high demand for computers (China, India, Brazil etc.) it's no longer just a case of making it fast and pricing it low. They have their own problems just now.

And what about Sun. Those people that were supposedly the dot in dot-com. Gone to all intents and purposes certainly as a stand alone company. Consumed because they really had no real road ahead anymore as a standalone.

That just leaves Intel. They have done OK and keep churning out better and better processors and they have their fingers in lots of important pies. Maybe this will be the one exception, the one that proves it has found a way to keep on moving forward instead of being passed by.

It sure is a long way from how things looked in 1997 when this all became the centre of my world.

I guess there is a part of me that will forever be an IT lover.

From a time ago

This is my Atlantic beach pebble.

I picked it up many years ago on a windy grey North Carolina Sunday and have had it ever since.

I remember that day vividly.

I was with Grainne and we just decided to drive to the ocean, not knowing how far it was or how long it would take.

I remember passing lots of sleepy little places, places that were once vibrant but not any more. I remember the monotony of the drive and the unusual greyness of the day.

I remember passing a Sea Harrier mounted on a pole on the left-side of the road at one point.

And then we were at the ocean. Atlantic beach had those funny little coastal wood and wire fences that you often see in movies. So we put on our sweaters and took a walk on the beach. There were some people attending to an unfortunate whale that had washed up on the beach and had clearly died.

There had been efforts to move it but they had failed.

And for some reason I stopped, bent down and picked up this pebble and held it in my closed hand for a little while, slipping it into my pocket back at the car.

Lots of things have changed and happened since those days.

Stuck with the artwork

I may have mentioned that I have been working hard trying to bring the book project to a close. Primarily I want the book to be done because I have been working on it for years and it's dragged on too long. Second - I have some ideas for other books and would like to start exploring one or two of those too.

Anyway, I think the text of the book is all but done. I need to beef up the conclusion at the end a little. Yes it's a serious book.. hence the conclusion section.

The hold up now is the artwork, specifically the picture for the front cover and a few diagrams/models used in one chapter near the end.

I have been deliberating over the diagrams especially because the first run I took at those contradicted (subconsciously) a couple of important points. I need to find a way of representing the key idea without conflicting with something I've said earlier in the book.

It's not easy.

I will carry some paper and a pencil with me today and wait for inspiration to come at a most unlikely moment.

Fingers crossed.

so far so goooooooooood

Yes my plan to inject some much needed excitement into my life is going well. I can't say too much at this stage other than to say that the plan does not involve crime, taking drugs, getting smashed drunk or anything with an escapist dimension.

What I can say is that I am smashing some of the mental myths that prevail in my daily thinking - and it already feels like a big positive and useful step.

Why exactly I don't know but I think I have made better use of the last 2 days than I have the last 2 years. There shall be no going back.

I promise this will all make more sense in a little while.

p.s. M - I haven't heard anything from you since you finished the Triathlon. Hope you are well and that everything is good.

YEEE-HAAAAA

It's time to bring some excitement back to life and that's exactly what I am doing this week.

I've been living in a stupor, wandering about in some kind of work-induced trance and missing all the opportunities to engage with life that are everywhere.

So this is a big week in the overall scheme of where I am going and what life must mean from this point on.

I feel like I'm about to climb in through the window of the General Lee and jump over a ravine with my insane cousin Bo behind the wheel. That's how the excitement level is right now.

There is always a reason...

Just after I was thinking about deactivating my Facebook account something interesting happened. I got an email from a friend pointing out how a mutual acquaintance of ours had posted something really inappropriate about his wife on Facebook.

There was a brief husband-wife exchange via facebook and then it stopped. It was not pleasant.

Thankfully because my account was not deactivated I was at least able to reach out to the guy to see if he wanted to just talk things out with someone who would listen without judgement.

I hope he and she sort it out because this would be a terrible way for the wheels to start to come off a relationship.. and for things to have come to a head via facebook instead of talking to one another.

I won't deactivate my account just for the moment so.

Time to pull back

I have been thinking of deactivating my facebook account. I am conflicted between the way it satisfies my inane curiousity about what others are doing and the way it wastes time and distracts me from what I could and should be doing.

I started using it and found it brilliant for reconnecting with old friends and for that I am truly grateful. On the other hand it seems to be a monumental waste of time for the other 99% of instances that I use it.

I went in there today and went to the deactivate my account option.. but didn't go through with it.

I still may deactivate it tonight. I could of course just ignore it but I don't trust myself to stay away from it.

Ever feel you were in the wrong job?

Right now I feel like I am in the wrong job. I can't work out exactly what it is but I just feel my energy is not quite flowing into my work the way I would like.

I notice it when I am doing stuff I enjoy, stuff I find interesting and engaging and I feel the energy again. And I want to keep working even though I should sleep.

But lately when I apply myself to my work it's not the same. I don't feel that energy. Maybe I am over analysing it. Maybe I just need more sleep and a holiday.

I also feel I am afraid of something just at the moment. Afraid to let myself experience what could be good for me. Hmmm. Enough blather for tonight. I am probably going to have a mad dream now and wake up confused. Ah well.

Time to brush the teeth.

Are critics the arsenic of the people?

Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have been listening to this song (not saying which one.. you'll only slag me off) and was curious about who wrote it and what the story behind it was.

So I googled it.

Boy was I sorry.

I found what can only be described as a hate-filled stream of invective at each result displayed by google. So here's what seems to be happening. A song is recorded and released. Maybe it gets some airplay, maybe it doesn't. It's not important. Some people like the song, like hearing it on the radio and go out and buy it in some form. Some probably download it illegally. I'm saying nothing about that. The song gets billions of plays on ipods, walkman phones, and just about any other kind of device that can play music.

At the same time the song is reviewed at various websites. The person reviewing the song either likes, dislikes or has a neutral opinion about the song. That's pretty reasonable up to that point except for one small factor. The person reviewing the song is comparing it with something. What will they compare it with? That's the million dollar question.

The review comes out and guess what. It annoys all those people who hold a contrary view. A row breaks out. Mud is thrown from here to there and people get pretty agitated. You're wrong. No you are. You are a dumbass. No it's you that's a jackass. And so on.

And it's down to this thing about subjective opinion, judgement. It's disastrous for us because we don't really need to judge something as harmless as a song, or a band, or a singer, or a sound. But we do. And that judgement is not very honest. And it annoys the hell out of people.

And what does judgement actually bring to us? How exactly is critique of someone else's work useful when all it does is say something as trite as "I don't like this". And should anyone really care what someone else thinks about what another likes.

I think Seth Godin once wrote that while Washington DC has hundreds of statues of great leaders, poets and thinkers not one of the statues is of a critic.

I don't have much time for critics because it's such a waste of time trying to make a living spotting the faults in something when someone has laboured to create it out of devotion or just plain hard work.

I promise to never read reviews of songs, albums, artists or movies. Why should I care?