In Search of Clear Focus

 Near the end of his Nobel acceptance speech the other day, Al Gore had this thought provoking statement:

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon – with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

Let me start by saying that I am not an economist, so I can’t even begin to tell whether this is feasible or not. To me, though, this is a singularly interesting idea. What would be the effect of eliminating income tax and instituting a pollution tax?

I imagine that the prices of all goods would increase to cover the costs of the pollution tax to the manufacturers. Those producers with lower emissions would be able to offer lower priced goods and have an economic advantage over their competitor. This should force others to find ways to reduce their greenhouse emissions to stay competitive. So that side of things passes the sniff test for me.

What I am simply not smart enough to understand is what would the affect be on the consumer? In the short term, I imagine the that this would be hardest on those making the least amount of money. They pay a relatively small percentage of their income in taxes and I would imagine the increase in costs would more than wipe away their ‘increased’ income. Over time, would this correct itself? Would the progressive rebate back to the people ease this burden?

I might have to find a way to submit this as a question to the folks at Freakonomics…

Hat tip to Raising Kaine.

I thank God every day that I don’t have to date anymore. I have been blessed with a wonderful wife and daughter, so hitting the singles scene is long past for me. I never liked hitting the bars to try and find a mate, anyway. It was always too noisy, smoky, and I was never the life of the party who attracted a lot of attention from the opposite sex. If predictions from the tech blogosphere are correct, I’m even more glad that I’m done with that part of my life. There is an post over on TechCrunch which discusses a new mobile social networking system called LimeJuice, but the worrisome (to me) statement is more general to mobile applications:

Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet. The reason is that the network is useless until it achieves a critical mass of users who are online and using the application via their mobile phone. If no one else is online, there’s little point in you being online, either. And presence detection is another (technical) problem. Even if people have joined the network, how do you know when they are near you?

But once it does happen, look out. You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat. Instead, you can do the online an [sic] real world thing simultaneously.

How much worse would the bar scene have been if I could have looked at my phone and found out that no girls in the place were interested in me? I mean, I already had an idea, but at least without confirmation, I could at least hold out hope that someone found me attractive/interesting/a better catch than my drunk friend who had already passed out.

I love technology more that the average person, but even I feel like there’s an appropriate time and place for its use. Maybe I’m showing may age as I move through the last few months of my late twenties, but once you’re in an environment where you can talk face-to-face, do you really need to hide behind the technology?

I’m old.

It’s been quite a while since I last posted. Work has been busy, holiday shopping, etc. These are the common reasons, but there are several other which are far more interesting to me:

1. I started reading for fun again. After numerous attempts to turn my time on the bus (which I especially love after an easy commute in yesterday’s inclement weather) into more productive time (read about my plans to write blog posts and learn Spanish), I gave up and decided to use the time to read. I sometime print newspaper articles or technical reports, but mostly I read for fun. I raided my wife’s collection of mystery novels and have started plowing through the works of Ngaio Marsh. I have found them to be very enjoyable so far. I’m only on the third of her 32 novels, but early results are promising. I’m also looking forward to The Lying Tongue, which I have on reserve at my local library. It was listed as one of the year’s best in the Post’s Book World this past weekend.

2. I’ve been updating Twitter and my Google Reader Shared Items more and more. I find that it’s quite a bit easier to publish <140 characters of text at a time or share out someone else’s insightful post. Less thought and editing go into it (though you still need some of both). Look to the sidebar to see widgets for both of these things.

3. I’ve been reading and thinking more about social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and collaboration tools for project management and software development. These thoughts are occupying more of my time than blogging as I try to wrap my head around how to mesh the two intelligently.

4. I’ve played a little with the site design. There’s an alternate stylesheet that is currently pretty ugly and incomplete. I’m trying to find a new color scheme that would make the text more legible. Light background/dark text kind of thing, hopefully without being too light in the background, which can also be annoying.

My wife, daughter, and I went car shopping yesterday. Actually, more of information gathering, as we’re just getting started with the process. We currently have two small four door sedans which work just fine for the three of us… Unless, of course, we want to move anything larger than a few grocery bags. By the time you take out room for the car sear, stroller, two adults, and the various supplies we need for our little girl, there isn’t much room left. On top of that, my wife’s little VW Jetta has a lot of hard miles on it and we’re not looking to drop any more money to keep it going. With plans for another child at some point, we need to upgrade.

So, we headed out to a Honda dealership yesterday to poke around at the CRV and Odyssey. It was very clear that this would be primarily my wife’s car. She is the one doing most of the research, asking the questions and directing things at the dealer, and sitting in the driver’s seat. So, when the salesman started asking me for all my information and ignoring my wife, she didn’t like it too much. She informed him that she was the one that would be buying the car, so he needed to deal with her. At which point, the salesman lost himself a potential sale, with the well thought out statement, “You can’t buy the car without your husband’s help, so I wanted to talk to him.”

It really doesn’t matter whether or not what the salesman said is true or not. He certainly isn’t in any position to know who has the money or how much we (or either one of us) have. We didn’t discuss jobs, financing, or anything related to money. So, if my wife could afford the car all on her own, he’s just annoyed her by assuming she can’t. If she can’t, he’s pretty much just rubbed that fact in her face. Neither way does this work out well for him.

A simple appology for making a bad assumption would have potentially helped him. I say ‘potentially’ because he wasn’t exactly rocking the sale before his blunder. In fact, there was a complete lack of salesmanship from this guy. Here are some hints: Maybe you should try to tell me something about the car. We’re a young couple with a one-year-old daughter. Lead with some of the safety features of your vehicle. Maybe mention the reconfigurability of the seating. Gas prices rising? Talk about fuel economy. Planning on long trips? Talk about the comfort of the interior. Now, I don’t really like a hard sell, but some basic information is nice.

I can guarantee we’ll be looking at another Honda dealer entirely in the near future to get a better feel for our options.

I recently started playing with FriendFeed. It’s still in beta, but you get in and try it out by submitting your e-mail address and waiting for an invitation. Or, if you really want in, leave a comment below (with a valid e-mail address) and I’ll send you an invite.

Anyway, I really like the concept of FriendFeed. For me, it’s all I want from Facebook without all the extra crap I find so annoying. I like Facebook because I’m (voyueristic?) interested in other people’s lives. I like to know how old friends and aquaintences are doing. I like finding out what people from my freshman dorm are up to, even if we haven’t spoken more than ten times since we moved out. Maybe that makes me creepy. I don’t know.

What I’ve learned that I don’t need is to play games (I do that enough at LittleGolem, MasterMoves, and, for a brief time, LandGrab). Zombies, super pokes, and imaginary gifts are not my cup of tea. Status updates, blog entries, book reviews, etc. which give me a peek into others’ lives and offer that insight into who they are what I enjoy. FriendFeed is that stripped list of items that I get updates in Facebook’s news feed. FriendFeed gloms together updates you make at other sites and posts them to a feed others can subscribe to. You can even create “imaginary” friends to track non-subscribers who you know to have public accounts on the supported sites.

My major problem is that my truly good friends are few and they’re not social networkers for the most part. I don’t know how I would convince them to start using twitter, furl, stumbleupon, or other sites so we could share our thoughts/experiences. The friends that I’m not as close to and do network online seem to enjoy the extras of Facebook, so I wouldn’t even try to lure them away to FriendFeed. So, while I see the benefits of FriendFeed (and all the social networking sites), I don’t know if I’m ever going to get into it big time. Maybe I need to add some new friends.

With all the joy of my daughter’s first birthday, there was bound to be some kind of letdown this week, but things have just been lousy in many ways.  It doesn’t help that work has picked up and I’ve been spending all my time in the office writing documents and not doing the more interesting technical work in which I’d rather lose myself.  These documents–and the difficulty of getting them reviewed between various time zones and often without network connectivity–have become a real bear.

Work, though, doesn’t really factor into things too much, other than the fact that I have to be there to get stuff done.  I think I’d be home today if I didn’t have to finish the docs by Thursday.  Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be posting much this week.  We’ll see how things go.

It’s always surprising to find a major vendor out there that actually cares about its customers. Symantec–makers of the Norton line of antivirus and system recovery tools–not only has customer service, but it’s very good.

My wife needed to get antivirus software for her computer. When I renewed my Norton Internet Security product several months ago, I sort of recalled seeing that it licensed use on up to three machines in my home. So, last night, I look back at my order and can’t figure out if I really have a 3 seat license or not. I looked online and couldn’t figure it out there, either. [Maybe they should work on their website a little more, but that’s hardly the point of this post.]

Unable to figure this out on my own, I used the online chat capability that Symantec offers. I was connected, after a short wait, with a helpful analyst. I explained my question and he proceeded to tell me that, unfortunately, my product did not come with the 3 seat license. I had merely renewed my old version and not upgraded to the latest and greatest at the time. I think it saved my $5 or so, and I hadn’t anticipate needing anything new. Also, as I still run Windows 2000, my system isn’t supported by Norton Internet Security 2008. Thinking this was the end, I prepared for the guy to sign off.

Instead, he offered me a free upgrade to NIS 2008, and a way to activate my older NIS product with a new key, which would power two additional seats of NIS 2008. They could have charged us full price for her machine or at the very least, the incremental cost of the upgrade from what I paid over the summer. By giving us what we needed for free, though, they have guaranteed that we will not look for another vendor and made sure that I will recommend their products to my friends and family (many of whom are not too tech savvy). As my parents are looking to purchase another computer soon, their actions last night will likely result in at least one more full-price sale in the near future.

This past weekend had its ups and downs. The downs (sports teams losing, etc.) were so insignificant on a grand scale, that I just can’t help but feeling incredibly blessed.

Saturday was my daughter’s first birthday party. This meant a lot of yard work and cleanup around the house last week. I spent good portions of my night on Thursday and Friday mowing the lawn, edging, trimming the hedges, and pruning trees and large bushes. While not my favorite activity, there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment and pride that comes along at the end of such a task. Of course, no one ended up outside, so it may have been for naught.

Anyway, the party went off without a hitch and my daughter did so well with everything. While she did look a little nervous with all the people a few times, she didn’t cry or whine and she even smiled and clapped when everyone sang to her. The most shocking thing to me, though, was that she didn’t like the icing on the cake. She tested it out, made a face, and then discarded it off the side of her tray. The cake itself she gobbled up, after my wife scraped the rest of the frosting off.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with her new favorite toy:

This is such a cool concept, it makes me wish I had money to travel and a free weekend in December. A group in Dublin is looking to see if they can bring together a team to develop a startup - concept to finished product - in a single weekend. I wonder what I would have done if this opportunity had come up three or four years ago. I hope I would have signed up and gone for a trip. Either way, that site has been added to my feed reader and I’ll be tracking their progress.

Thanks to BlogNation for the heads up.

I don’t think that today is lending itself to coherent though, so here are a few quick hitters on random topics.

1. I’m very disappointed that I didn’t post anything yesterday. Work has been busy this week, forcing me to post at night instead of mid-morning as I prefer. Yesterday was the worst day of the week, due to presentations to our customer, miscommunication about the start time, no lunch, late getting home, etc. It was a long day, and when I realized I still hadn’t written anything I was too tired and just went to bed.
2. I was loving the weather this morning. After a streak of unseasonably warm (and even record setting) days in the low 90’s, we’re finally back to normal - highs in the 70’s. This morning was so nice and crisp, I had to open my windows on my way to catch my bus. Of course, it was a little too cold to do that comfortably, so I was rocking the seat warmer and had the heat blasting on my hands. It reminded me of the year I drove a convertible. Good times.
3. Taking the bus may very well be the best decision I’ve made recently. I’ve been doing it since late August, but having driven to work twice already this week, I’m realizing how much better the bus is. I don’t have to deal with traffic. I can close my eyes when I want. I don’t have to deal with crazy drivers. On top of that, I just fueled my car yesterday for the first time in two weeks. Not too bad for a commute of ~30 miles each way.
4. My daughter’s first birthday is coming up soon. There’s a party this weekend nominally for her. I think it’s more for my wife and I. I plan to take a lot of pictures, though I really need to find out if my wife is expecting my to help out with any specific activities, apart from grilling the food.
5. My wife is a little odd some days. Yesterday, she was really hung up on the happening on Live with Regis and Kelly. The reason: Kelly Ripa’s hair went from curly to straight and back to curly during the show. It was straight for the interview that they did with Joaquin Phoenix. It bugged her enough to keep the show on out DVR and tell me about it at night. Not only that, but she’s planning to e-mail Ripa to get an explanation. I love my wife for silly little things like this.