At Home with Tech

December 15, 2013

Give your Computer the Gift of Updated Software

“Less than a minute remaining” is the most excruciating message ever invented by software developers. I think the phrase actually makes time slow down. In this moment, your Mavericks OS X upgrade is so close… yet still so far away. Here are three recommended steps to help you get your computer to the finish line…

There’s a battle waging deep within your mind.
You may not be aware of it, but subconsciously… it’s always there.

To Update or Not to Update…
Almost every day it seems, your computer prompts you to update its software arsenal.

Some are small updates.
Others are game changers.

But you’ve always got a choice to make.
And the opportunity to update to the latest and greatest carries both a blessing and a curse.

Advantage: Your computer should work better than ever.
You’ve got the best chance for all your software to play nicely on your desktop if every piece is up to date. You generally tend to have problems when you run into ‘compatibility’ issues.

Risk: Your computer ‘blows up.’
Face it… you’re doing brain surgery on your computer.
Sometimes it’s minor.
Occasionally, you’re updating the whole operating system.
Either way, you’re messing with your computer’s noggin.

“It’s Amazing How Productive Doing Nothing Can Be.”
You’ve probably wandered about this thought matrix before:
If it ‘ain’t’ broke, why fix it?
(The above quote from TRON: Legacy says it all.)

And to be frank, the fear of update glitches causing catastrophic computer failure regularly prevents me from going for the update.

And who really ever has ‘the time’ to handle that stressful moment when your computer suddenly goes dark?
(To reduce those odds, it’s always wise to wait a few weeks after significant software updates come out. Let the ‘early adopters’ identify the bugs…)

But sticking your head in the digital sand only works for so long before you realize you’re two operating systems back, and you’ve been fooling yourself that your computer isn’t sluggish.

You can delay your software updates… but only for so long.
The alternative is ultimately computer obsolesce.

Usually something compels you to finally take the plunge on the big software updates.

Finding my Inner Maverick to Upgrade to Mavericks
For me, my Mavericks moment arrived rather suddenly when I tried to update my sluggish Aperture photo editing software, but couldn’t because it required the power of Mavericks.

It was time to welcome in OS X 10.9.
(Buckle up!)

The Saturday Morning Gauntlet
If you’ve got a few spare hours over a weekend to be your computer’s wingman, it’s the perfect opportunity to face this gauntlet together.
(Just make sure an Apple Store is within rescue distance…)

And you’re going to want to nurse your computer through its brain surgery.
So it didn’t hurt when I became housebound this past weekend due to the season’s first snowstorm.

Three Steps to Prepare Your Computer for its Software Update

There are a variety of websites offering step-by-step instructions on how to prepare for an OS upgrade such as.

While they provide an exhaustive list on every step possible to ensure success, it can all become a bit overwhelming.
The complex series of precautions add fuel to the argument of doing nothing at all.

Honestly, I found it too daunting a process to follow every safety suggestion.
(I hope that didn’t anger the tech gods.)

That said, here are three steps I always follow:

Upgrade all your current software via the Software Update utility before taking any big leaps forward.
(It’s the last time you will use it. In Mavericks, updates are done via the Apple App Store.)
Back everything up on your computer. (Yes, this always bears repeating.)
I use Time Machine locally with an external hard drive and Backblaze to the Cloud.
Then do some system maintenance in Disk Utility.
Click on Repair Disk Permissions and Verify Disk to make sure your Mac is healthy enough for its upcoming operation.

Diary of a Nervous Tech Blogger
11:46am: The upgrade begins. Download Mavericks from the App Store.
(Note: I’m working with a 2010 iMac with 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 4 GB of RAM.)

12:34pm: Return after snowball fight in my driveway with my three-year-old son. (He wins.)

12:42pm: Official installation begins. Looks like a 44-minute process…
(Go have lunch with the family.)

1:42pm: “Less than one minute remains.”

1:52pm: “Less than one minute remains.”

1:55pm: Look for paper bag to hyperventilate into.

1:59pm: Computer takes pity and moves on to the next screen.

2:15pm: Installation completes. iMac reboots and proudly display’s its new ocean world.
(Apparently ‘galaxies’ are so yesterday.)

2:18pm: Computer complains that I’m missing Java and asks if I want to download the latest version.

“Yes, please.”

2:20pm: Check for more recent software updates for Mavericks.
Only find updates for Mail and iBooks.

2:25pm: Try printing a photo.
-WARNING-
Uh oh! Suddenly, my printer permissions are installed incorrectly!
iMac politely asks if I’d like to fix them.

“Yes, please.”

2:45pm: Successfully upgrade to Aperture 3.5.1.

3:00pm: Blood pressure returns to normal.

The Perfect Gift for the Pseudo Sentient
I’m proud to report that Mavericks has been humming along just fine.
And yes, Aperture does seem to act a little zippier now.
I’d label this little weekend tech project a success.

Half way through the upgrade, I did wonder how my blog post would fare if I had to spend the rest of the weekend trying to breathe life back into my iMac.
Not sure what it would say if my 100th post didn’t make it to the finish line.
(I know life would somehow go on…)

So in this holiday season of giving, why not give a little love to the most important pseudo-sentient entity in your life.

In all the excitement of celebration, just be careful not to spill your cup of Joe on it!

December 8, 2013

Starving to Stay Connected while Feasting on Smartphone Tech

How difficult is it to understand this? It’s only a problem if the smiley face shows up instead as the letter ‘J.’ But this could be the least of your smartphone problems when it comes to keeping you feeling comfortably connected to the rest of your life. Especially when you’re away on a trip…

8:26pm…

“Hello?”

“It’s Barrett.”

“Who?”

“Your husband!”

“I can barely hear you.”

“We just landed.”

“What?”

“Jus w ntd you kno tha I can’t m do mak ak fo bap rit.
…I’ll tell you more later.”

“What?”

“Bye.”

Click

Deep down, we all know the wonders of technology are only as good as the weakest link.

It wasn’t that long ago when mobile phones freed us from our homebound communications tether.
(But those sky high cost-per-minute charges… ouch!)

Eventually, the business model matured and then truly blossomed when phones morphed into email and texting machines.

Today, smartphones connect us in ways unimaginable only a few years back.
That you can talk with and sometimes see your loved ones from almost anywhere is two parsecs shy of science fiction.

Welcome to the World of Words
As smartphones developed each new trick, that capability quickly became the dominant one.

As a result, the near lost art of writing is experiencing an amazing renaissance.
It’s the new normal.
Why would you endure the rigors of a phone call when you can ‘more easily’ email or text someone?

It’s like we’ve already abandoned using the smartphone as a simple voice tool.

Ring, Ring
That said, I have long been a stubborn proponent of the seemingly old fashioned practice of calling up someone instead of forwarding along a bunch of alphanumeric characters and butchered words.

Plus, emotional context is inevitably absent throughout the act of texting.
Though the use of emoticons does help.

And think of all that incessant back and forth of an email chain, often over the course of hours. You’d likely arrive at the same facts as with a one-minute phone conversation.

And remember, your more highly evolved smartphone is not as limited as your grandfather’s Ma Bell indestructible monster. With mobile video enabled technologies like Skype and Apple’s FaceTime, you can enjoy the purity of non-verbal communication cues to help you stay totally in sync with your phone buddy. It’s almost like being in the same room.

Why wouldn’t you want to reach out and touch someone?

What Did You Just Say?
Well, if you don’t have access to a strong connection, that value proposition falls apart pretty quickly…

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how frustrating it is having a conversation with someone on a spotty cell connection.
Understanding one out of every three words just doesn’t cut it.
And adding video into the equation is immediately hopeless.
You get the first video frame or two, and that’s about it.
Then the call crashes.

Conversely, getting a simple text out into the ether over a mediocre connection feels downright glorious.

Keep it simple. Get it done.
The pleasantries can wait till next time…

In Search of Clarity of Communication on the Go
I’ve just returned from a short business trip to Charlotte, and I clearly stretched the limits of parts of AT&T’s cell phone network in North Carolina.

While waiting at the airport gate, I tried accessing
the voodoo of a Skype video call to watch my son open up a present.

I got about 30 seconds in, and the call tanked.
(though I did get a chance to see a few of his shouts of delight!)

So sure… you’re supposed to have a Wi-Fi connection for optimal Skype results, and I was working it with a mere three bars of signal.
(FaceTime doesn’t even try to operate without Wi-Fi.)
That it connected at all is probably a miracle.

But I also had trouble successfully reaching out
via simple voice communication.
When you can’t hear all of what your wife is saying over a few minute stretch, that quickly becomes a problem.
You can only intuit so much.
And you can only say, “what?” so many times.

So sure, one time I was travelling in the car rental shuttle bus, and my wife was driving down Route 95.
Maybe I should be satisfied the call worked as well as it did.

The Frustration-Free Moment
Our nationwide cellular networks still have their holes, even in metropolitan areas.
And calling from inside thick tall buildings or moving metal cars doesn’t help much.

The truth is… smartphones can’t yet mimic the magic of a Starfleet communicator on the prescient ‘Star Trek.’
(You can’t really have a crystal clear conversation from inside a Horta’s cave with your starship in standard orbit above Janus IV.)

There are limits…

So when my plane landed back at LaGuardia airport, I texted my wife instead of going for a quick phone chat from inside the cabin.

She texted back a question about a contractor’s phone number. I pulled up the contact on my iPhone and texted it to her.

When I received back a happy face emoticon 30 seconds later, I felt this rush of happiness.

After a series of generally splotchy phone connections to my family during my trip, I had finally found some Tech Zen:

Simplicity
Clarity
Accuracy

In this instance there was no need for a call.
Even if my iPhone had access to a strong signal, it would likely be marred by the competing sounds of the plane’s engines blended with the loud, nasally passenger in row 12B.

And trying for a video call…?
Forget about it!

Just because you can access the wonders of your tech, doesn’t mean you should.
Especially if your experience isn’t going to be so wondrous.

Just the Facts, Ma’am!
So finally, I’ve seen the light.
When you’re on the go, texting is the clear leader for straightforward communication.
(as long as you’re not driving!)

When you just care about getting the facts across, it takes all the frustration out of the equation.

Sure… you’ll lose all the personal touches of a phone call.
But how hard is it to interpret a smiley face emoticon?

Well, that is until it shows up as a letter ‘J.’

Agent J
Even the clarity of written communication is not totally immune to misinterpretation.

One morning, while on my trip, one of my colleagues walked over to me with a worried look as he stared at his iPhone. He explained that recently he had been receiving messages that ended mysteriously with an uppercase ‘J.’

He thought it was code for some kind of newfangled valediction.

I had no idea. So we took the question to the rest of the room, which included representation across several generations.
Nobody else had a clue either.

I half expected a Man in Black to walk up with the explanation before he pulled out his neuralyzer.

But we successfully Googled it instead.

Get this… The ‘J’ apparently originated as a smiley face.
But then it got lost in translation on its way to his smartphone.

Some mail clients get confused by a 🙂
and simply replace it by a ‘J’ instead.
It’s something about a smiley becoming an upper case ‘J’ in the ‘Winding’ character world.

Weird.

My Mind to Your Mind
So really, there’s no foolproof way to ensure 100% accuracy when communicating with someone from any distance beyond 4-6 feet.
After that, all bets are off.

Technology can help through the precision of ‘word delivery’ to your phone, but only up to a point. It’s ironic that in a world overflowing with communications technologies, we often feel more disconnected than ever.

Until we master the Vulcan Mind Meld, we’ll have to struggle along as best we can.

1 Comment

December 1, 2013

Diary of a Frustrated Black Friday Cyber Shopper

Hitting the malls to purchase your favorite doorbusters is so yesteryear. This time, all I needed was my cup of Joe and my computer. Or so I thought…

10:00pm, Thanksgiving evening-
Go to sleep early.
(too much tryptophan)
Must be frosty for Black Friday!

6:00am, Black Friday-
Wake up. Make coffee. Sit down and boot up iMac.

6:10am-
Navigate to Apple’s big one-day sale.
No real discounts anywhere in sight.
Deep sigh…

This year, Apple only offered gift cards towards future Apple Store purchases… Their previous Black Friday discounts were never that great to begin with, but this ‘evolution’ was even less inspiring.

6:30am-
Next stop – Amazon
Review list of Lightning Sales. Nothing electrifies.

Out of frustration I did put an $11 Rayovac ‘head lamp’ into my cart.
(My old geeky REI head-mountable flashlight had stopped working recently.)
It’s useful to have one of these flashlights around when you need an extra directional light source in front of you, and you can’t hold it in your hands.

6:35am-
PING!
Great deal on a Blu-ray Disc of ‘Star Trek into Darkness’ for just $7.99 on Amazon.
(Complete with digital download for Road Warrior’s iPhone.)

I said to myself, “Make it so!”
But then I noticed a review warning the universe this version didn’t contain enough of the fun bonus material.

6:40am-
Delay purchase.

Up further research, I uncovered a raging Star Trek fan controversy a few months back when four different Blu-ray Disc versions were released to separate retailers.
This sales tactic effectively split up all the extra content outside of the movie itself. So no one version contained it all.

And Amazon’s Blu-ray package seemed especially lacking…
So I put away my phaser and cancelled the mission.

6:45am-
Rayovac deal on Amazon expires in cart.

6:50am-
Head over to Target.
See the fans’ ‘preferred’ Star Trek Blu-ray version with more goodies.
Only $9!

After I completed my little happy dance, I took a closer look.
The online purchase button was grayed out.
You could only buy it in the store.

KHAAAAAN!!

7:00am-
Little Lester wakes up.

Frustrated with all my shopping roadblocks, I put my computer to sleep and headed off to the family breakfast table…

Hunting and Gathering like our Ancestors
Later that morning, I ventured out of my cyber bubble to do a little brick and mortar shopping, and ironically found my old-school experience much more satisfying.

At Staples, I picked up a 32 GB SanDisk USB Flash Drive for just $10.
(not available online)

And I found a couple of good deals on Thomas Train Set accessories for my three year old at Toys”R”Us.
(also not online)

Yes, I know the day is called Black Friday and not Cyber Monday for a reason.
But I figured with all the cyber creep going on, there really wasn’t much of a difference anymore.

Apparently, the stores still want you to get off your tushies on Friday….
It seemed their best deals were still only available on sight.
(not on site)

Following my shopping adventure in the wild like my ancestors, I headed out to a family lunch gathering.
Additional cyber shopping would have to wait…

The Discount Gift Card Illusion
Later that night, I found one last window of opportunity to distribute some of my hard-earned money back to the Black Friday economy.

A few minutes in, I ran across what I thought was a genius idea:

Discount gift cards…for myself!

It was the inspired moment I’d been waiting for all day.

If I couldn’t find any online deals, why not buy discount gift cards to use at those very same stores…?

It’s like engineering your own discounted purchase.
Right?

So I checked out the usual suspects:

They claimed to offer deals up to 35% off store gift cards.
But the harsh reality was the discounts were substantially smaller for the better-known cards I was interested in.

More like 2%-9%.

Yes, that’s technically a savings, but it wasn’t enough of an incentive to keep me interested…
So I chalked up the wasted research to my ongoing education towards tech nirvana and moved on…

Canon to the Rescue
9:00pm-
Wait! There’s a sale on the Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS!

All along, I’ve been looking for a deal on a small pocket camera for my wife and me.

I’ve used the older Elph 300 and found it to be a fabulous little workhorse of a camera. The Elph 330 has been upgraded with a nifty 10X zoom and has been selling this year at a $179 price point..

And now I saw that Best Buy was selling it for only $129!!
(Including an 8 GB memory card and camera case)

Deal?

Truthfully, I’m not sure how much of a Black Friday moment this was.
Multiple retailers were selling it at the same price point, because Canon was offering the $50 discount.

So the only real deal was how many ‘extras’ the retailers would throw in on top of the Canon mark down.

I did a little more research and noticed that Adorama had a slightly sweeter offer.
They included a larger 16 GB memory card along with the camera case.

So I took the Adorama deal.
Click.

Shopping Endorphins Released
I had finally found my Black Friday moment!
(I would not be denied my annual Black Friday endorphin surge.
Though I have to admit this time around, I had my eyes wide shut.)

Honestly, this annual ‘hunt’ is a lot of work, and I’m not sure if the payoff justified the effort this year.

What does all this say about me?

Coincidentally, The New York Times just ran a Black Friday story
talking about how retail marketers are targeting ‘self-gifters.’

The article identified this shopping group as a ‘special demographic niche’ and then identified a poster child by featuring an ‘incurable self-gifting’ man from North Carolina.

They included a photo of him happily sitting in his living room, working his laptop while his wife stood by.
As I looked at the smile on his face, his hyper-focused eyes looking for bargains…
…he actually appeared a bit maniacal.

Could that be me?

Should I be worried?
(pregnant pause)

I say, “NO!!!”

Look, we all end up buying ourselves things from time to time.
Is it so wrong to buy yourself a gift or two on Black Friday?

And isn’t that the day you’re supposed to find better prices?

Why should all this be such a surprise?

So I’m a self-gifter from time to time…
I know I’m low-hanging fruit.
I’m good with that.

The Truth is Out There
So another disappointing Black Friday has come and gone.
Yes, I bought a cheap flash drive and got a couple train deals for my son.
And, I’m relatively happy with my Canon Elph purchase.

But it’s hard for Black Friday to live up to all the hype.
Especially if you’re not heading out to the malls at 12am to stalk your ‘doorbusters.’
(This year, stores actually opened on Thursday!)

The good news is you get to avoid all that madness if you stay close to home.

And if you can distance yourself a bit, a simple truth permeates through all the holiday advertising Kool-Aid.

The act of pounding the pavement may still be the way retailers reward you on Black Friday.
But finding all your holiday shopping deals is not a one-day sprint.
It never was…

It’s more like a marathon.
You’ve got Cyber Monday,
and then most of December ahead of you.

Take a breath.
Exhale.
Pace yourself.

Then you may find your Tech Zen.

Good luck!
I’ll see you at the finish line.
(or somewhere close!)

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