I should have really loved this book.

I like science fiction.  I should love anything by Ursula K. LeGuin.  But the honest truth is – I don’t.  In fact, I have never really enjoyed anything she has written, including ‘A Wrinkle In Time’.

Not really sure what the reasons is.  Maybe it is because everyone (all my friends) made such a fuss about A Wrinkle In Time when it came out (yes, I was a child then) and I have always been a bit of a rebel.  Maybe it is just that I don’t care all that much for her writing.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way and I am also sure that she is OK with that.

I guess the big thing for me is that I really don’t feel all that close to her characters.  Somehow they seem distant and cold to me, but when I saw this in Brilliant Books in Traverse City I thought ‘ah, ha, this is my chance to redeem myself.  there is undoubtedly tons of hidden meaning in this and I will finally recognize Ursala K. LeGuin as the genius she is’.

Oh well, so much for thinking I will change.

I don’t want to spoil it for you but light is the left hand of darkness, and I have no idea what this has to do with the story.  It is set on a planet where it is winter 51 weeks out of the year.  A representative of ‘human kind’ has been landed on the planet to invite the folks who live there to become members of the galactic federation (I can’t remember what it is actually called, which says something about the story).  What he finds is a fragmented planet with two main waring nations (even though they don’t have actual wars).  He starts with one, then has to (more or less) flee to the other and is eventually thrown into a penal colony and has to be rescued by the only important figure on that planet who understand that he is for real.

Now if I were writing the story this is the point where star ships would descend from the heavens shooting lasers and all kinds of things all over the place while The Rock or Bruce Willis lands secretly and breaks this guy out of prison.  But I am not writing this story.  in the end, the guy who breaks our Earth ‘hero’ out ends up getting killed for no apparent purpose.

Oh, did I mention that the people on this planet are unisex?  there are no males or females, and they only occasionally go into a sexual state.  I guess the idea of the book is to show how weird it would be to deal with ‘people’ who were not sexual animals but it just seemed boring to me.  I never connected with the characters.  The Earth character was aloof and cold, sort of like Sting without a guitar.  Or a personality.  But he did have an almost unerring ability to misunderstand what was happening and to not ask any questions that might have clarified the situation.  And don’t get me started on the citizens of the winter planet.  Just a bit too freaky for me.

Without a doubt, Ursula K. LeGuin is one of the literary giants of the late 20th, early 21st century.  And, without a doubt, what it is that makes her great escapes me.  Maybe I should go back and read A Wrinkle In Time again.

Well, I have finally done it.  Built my own web site.  It took me a while, but I am finally finished.  With the first version, that is.

Technically the first version was developed about seven years ago with Front Page and used tables.  Yes, I am now aghast that I ever did that but it seemed like a good idea at the time and there is no way I would admit to that publically anyway.

But this version was developed from scratch with just HTML5 and CSS3.  It was also developed as a Responsive Web Design so that it sizes more naturally on different size screens.  And in the process of doing that I have learned a number of things.

The first is that I was wise not to embark on a career as a web designer.  It’s not the code that is the problem although you can get really sick of modifying padding percentages until you get things just right.  It’s mostly I am just not much of an artist.  Picking just the right shade of a color or deciding exactly how to position the text on the page is not my biggest strength.  And this is where most of the time on this effort went, trying to figure out where to put stuff.

The second is that I can really emphasize with web designers who get frustrated putting in hacks for IE8/7/6/etc.  Using a lot of stuff from HTML5/CSS3 and not putting those hacks in, the site really doesn’t look that good on those very early versions of IE.  But anyone who is still using IE, much less those early versions, kind of has it coming to them.

And the third thing I learned is that no matter how happy you might be with your site when you get it done, it only takes a few minutes before you start planning for the next version.  In my case I plan to incorporate some jQuery in the next release.  Oh, and media queries to make the RWD a bit more sophisticated.  And maybe a redesign for mobile.

But that is going to wait for a while.  I’m all webbed out right now.  And so what you see is what you get right now.  But take a look.  www.shireyllc.com   See what you think.  And let me know.

I know.  I know what you are thinking.  Isn’t this blog supposed to be about the IBM i and RPG and business and crap like that?  And the answer is I guess so but sometimes that is so boring.  Besides, almost nobody reads this blog unless I hold it up in front of their faces and force them.  So what’s the harm in doing a few posts that are just fun.  And I have gotten to a point in my life where what I read is fun to me.  So, I am going to start posting book reviews in between my professional posts.  What are people going to do?  Stop reading the blog???   Oh, they’ve already done that.

This particular review deals with ‘The Physics of the Future’ by Michio Kaku  (ISBN 978-0-307-47333-2).  I will start by admitting that I am a sucker for any book that proposes to tell the future.  I guess it started in the 1960’s when I got my hands on Arthur C. Clarke’s book ‘Profiles of the Future’.  I really need to re-read that (a 1964 copy is sitting in one of my book cases just waiting for me) but that is not my issue right now.

Michio Kaku is an American of Japanese origin who got his degree in theoretical physics from Harvard and Berkley and has written a number of books (including two NY Times Best Sellers) and over 70 legitimate papers on topics in theoretical physics (string theory, mostly).  In short, he’s the real deal, somebody who knows modern physics and is yet adept at describing it for the lay audience, having hosted a number of science oriented programs on the BBC, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and something else that I can’t remember right at the moment.  And, he’s just about the same age as me.  We are like twins separated at birth, except during  Vietnam he went in the army and spent his time getting ready for combat at Fort Benning while I spent my time in the Navy Reserve and did two Med tours and one in the Carribean.   But now he’s a famous author and I’m nobody so I guess it cancels out.

But enough small talk.  What about this book; Physics of the Future.   When you first start reading it you might think that it is a book about the future, a birds eye view of what is going to happen.  But about half way through I realized that the title was pretty accurate and he is actually talking only about the parts of the future that are related to the principles of physics.  The good part is that this book is a pretty well written and is an exhaustive review of what is going on in physics research today and how it may very well play out in the next 100 years.  It does touch on medicine, but only in terms of the interaction with physics (like all of us having a tricorder like device that we can use to diagnose ourselves and stuff like that).  Yet, the scope covered by ‘physics’ is broad enough so that among the topics considered are Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, Medicine, Energy, Space Travel, Wealth, and Humanity.

How much of this turns out to be the future is yet to be determined but given the very sound scientific basis of everything discussed it is hard to dismiss his predictions as the kind of ‘flying car’ nonsense that we are use to with future predictions.

The problem I have with all of these pictures of the future is that they generally ignore the human side of things.  That is, the book talks at great length about how robots will perform all but the most complex imaginative jobs and that is probably something that will come to pass.  So what happens to everyone who is not a Steven Spielberg or Karen Sherry.  To it’s credit, the book does try to grapple with the human issues.  Unfortunately, in my opinion it falls a little short.  That is, it doesn’t answer the question of what are most people to do when robots are pretty much as smart as we are.

The future is full of neat gadgets that allow us to live longer and be more productive but with most of the traditional jobs being done by robots, where are we getting the money to buy these things or services?  The retort is that tomorrow’s jobs will be ones based on creativity.  Nice thought and I feel all warm and fuzzy about it but to be honest most people are not all that creative.  Is it wrong for me to say that most people just want a simple job that keeps them busy and pays them money?  Most people don’t want to write the next symphony.  They just want to live.  And, if you believe this book, most of what those people do will be done by robots.  Am I wrong to see that the next century will be one of great disruption?  One where there is no place for many, many people.  And it won’t be like the last great disruption; the industrial revolution, where farmers began to work in the mills and so found purpose.  I fear that for many people, there will be no place to go, nothing for them to do.  And what kind of society will we have where there are islands of privilege in a sea of malaise.

So, what’s the bottom line?  The bottom line is that I am right.  I was a child in the exact, absolutely perfect time to be a child, the 50’s.  And everything since then has been a move downhill.  This is definitely a good book, and one that is packed with information and probably some pretty good guesses at what the future will be like.  But keep a close reign on your emotions.  If you really think about what things are going to be like over the next 100 years it could just be a little depressing.  Unless you are one of the fortunate ones.

Over the past few years, I have worked with three PRMS (i.e. AS/400) clients who have been moving to Oracle.  Now I am not going to get into the fact that up time was much lower under Oracle, or the fact that it really did no more than PRMS did (but it did different things differently).  What I want to talk about was how Oracle was run.

In all cases, the Oracle gurus’ convinced the IT group that if you are running Oracle you need to run it on servers.  But, au contra ire.  You can run Oracle on the i, and the benefits are increased up time and decreased cost.     http://benchmarkingblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/bad-boy-oracle/

Would the Oracle people lie?  Hey, does a snake have hips?

Back in the day, I used to fly all over the place.  Almost every week.  My wife and I got into a real routine and it didn’t seem to bad.  But for the last few years, it seems that people are more than happy to have me work from home.  And so I have gotten use to working in sweats and shorts.  And not risking my life by getting into a metal coffin and having some teenager fly it up to the stratosphere.

But this week I had to actually go somewhere.  And to do that I had to fly.  Lots of stuff has changed.

First, after being 1K on United for x number of years I am now officially ‘nobody’.  Take a seat there in steerage, boy.  Actually, you can get good seats, but now instead of them being given to me because I deserve them thanks to my loyalty, but because I pay extra for that privilege.

And drink prices are higher.  I don’t need a drink on short flights, but anything of any length it’s best if I am partially sedated.  Keeps the screaming down.  They use to be $5.00 (although a long time ago they were often free) and you had to have real money.  Now it’s $7 and they only take credit cards.  I can understand the price going up but I am still surprised that no one from United called me to see if this price increase was OK.  I wonder if they have my current phone number.

But the biggest change was at the airport.  When did they put the ‘full body cavity search’ in place?  I did everything I was supposed to do, took off my shoes and got my laptop out even though I have lived in this country all my life and am a veteran.  That’s OK, I can be a team player.  Then they had me stand in a metal box in a position that might be OK for a Playboy photo shoot but which I found demeaning.  And finally, when I was done with that they insisted I take off my belt and some guy decided it was OK to stick his hands in my pants.  I will admit, I probably shouldn’t have muttered, partially to myself, ‘this is ridiculous’ but it was.  That’s when some other guy got right up in my face (I was having a very nice conversation with the guy who was feeling me up) and said that they had told me three times I should do that.  And he was right, they did, but I didn’t think they were serious.  I replied, as I started to take off my belt, that I had a right to my opinion and he seems satisfied with that.  At least they didn’t arrest me.   Although I was sure a guy followed me for the rest of the day.

I plan to be really rude to the people I flew in to visit.  You know, make them think twice before inviting me back.  But I have to be rude in an endearing sort of way, don’t want to alienate them.  Should be easy.  They are in New England.  The Hopper!  (I love that commercial).  The Hopper!!

For some reason, I seem to get an odd array of blog posts sent to me.  Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  You get some interesting ideas that way.  Like this one.

Has anyone taken a vacation lately?  I did, I took two days last week after the 4th.  It was great, and fortunately, I was at a hotel that had Wi-Fi so I was able to dial in and work the first two hours (and the last two hours) of each day I was on vacation.  That’s what vacation is, right?  You are out of the office but you are still working part of the day and your mind is on the job the entire day.  And that’s the way it’s supposed to be, right.  I mean I am the job.  You’re the job.  We’re all the job.  24 X 7.

But you and I know better.  I remember, one of my first jobs with a large company, one of the teams was on a big project and they worked night and day.  The only thing was, I noticed that during the day, the only thing those guys really did was walk around and talk to people about how horribly busy they were.  And I thought – dude, wouldn’t it be better to have these guys chill a bit and just work from 8 – 5 like the rest of us.  The truth is, rest is good.  It refreshes you and helps you work more efficiently.

But that’s not the way it’s done today as we persist in pursuing the wrong path to the wrong goals.  And so I found this blog post refreshing.  I am trying to contact them now to see if they have any openings.

I have found something really neat.  The Ted Talks.  If you are not familiar with TED you should be.  It is a series of talks, around the country (and the world, I believe) given by experts in the field that cover topics of great interest to any intelligent human being.

Whether it is Leymah Gwobee’s heart wrenching description of women in Africa (including several young girls who, after meeting her, begged her to take them with her rather than be left where they were), or Chip Kidd’s humorous description of how book jacked designs are done, or Michael Norton on how to buy happiness, or Regina Dugan describing the sensational work that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Area does, it is an amazing look into the present, the future, and into worlds that I have never noticed were there.

For access to the Ted world, click on this or add  feed://feeds.feedburner.com/tedblog  to your RSS Feeds in your mail client (Outlook, Mail, etc).  And enjoy.

I was just watching ESPN (it is 4 PM my time so there is nothing else on) and I see the World Poker Tour is on.

Seriously?  There’s a world poker tour?

I knew they played Poker on TV but I never gave it much thought.  And now I find out there is a tour?  Of what? Atlantic City?  Vegas?  Monheghan Sun?  And it  has had a champion every year since 2000?

Seriously?

The time for action has come.  Poker is not a sport.  Neither is bowling or golf but let’s put our differences aside here my friends.  Poker is not a sport.

And, as far as I am concerned, there has only ever been one poker champion.  Brett Maverick.  Jimbo that is, not Mel.  No wonder we are going to hell in a hand basket.

From Woody Paige on ESPN – A man dreads fame as a pig dreads fat.

Just sitting here and noticed that Manning has given his agent permission to finalize things with the Broncos.  Don’t have a major problem with that but I see that the first reaction out of the Bronco’s is to say they are going to trade Tebow once the deal is done.

And I just don’t get it.  No one is surprised if it takes a DB or LB a couple of years to really hit their stride but everyone (including football gurus expects QB’s to step right in and be all world.  Does that seem stupid to anyone else but me?

What I hear from the Bronco’s announcement is that they want five years of success followed by another ten years of trying to find ‘the guy’.  I agree, Tebow is a mess of poor fundamentals (although it’s not like the Broncos have a set of receivers to rival the Giants).  But you do have to admit the boy does try to find a way to win.  Why not enroll him in a five year stint at the University of Manning and then see what he can do?

Football people are just as short sighted as business people.  Why is it so hard for us, as a society, to look down the road?  And the answer – because we are not taught to look for the long term, we are only taught to look at the here and now.  And that is a perfect blueprint for long term mediocrity.