Jeffrey's blog

The Great Divide Between Government and the Governed

While viewing a few more amazing RSA Animations with friends, I found this 10 minute segment of a lecture by Stein Ringen, a professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, assessing the New Labour government and the state of the British constitution.

About Empathy (and a cool video)

What an interesting presentation! The RSA Animate collection takes a short audio lecture clip and "animates" it with coordinated time-lapse video of a whiteboard sketch artist. What a wonderfully engaging experience! I've watched several of these and "The Empathic Civilisation" [sic] caught my interest—enough to spawn this post!

Finally, I Have Finished My Vegan Mouse Trap Project

My vegan mousetrap (live trap) project is now live! I have finished adding the images to the document that I started last fall. With the completion of this project page, I have also published the video that I made last fall, showing the capture of a mouse in my trap!

Becoming a Manager

I am now officially a manager! My job title hasn't changed. I wasn't granted a pay raise. I didn't even change positions! Rather, my department finally decided to give me more than one assistant!

Day-dreaming About the End of Technical Support

 My current employment is all about technical support. I'm the go-to-guy for any computer problems. Mysteriously, this includes anything with electrons or photons.

I've worked in the technical support field most of my life. One of my talents is comprehending machines and systems, which is quickly recognized by others in trouble with objects and processes. Sadly, I'm not omniscient, nor omnipotent (even if some problems magically fix themselves when I'm around). There are days when my talent becomes a curse.

The Inevitable Outcome of Socialized Parenting...Er, "Education"

First off, I was home schooled, K through 12. It was a wonderful experience, but not the topic of this post. Being raised outside of the public school system, I often see it with "new eyes" and not a little suspicion. The idea that a central authority could trump my parents bothers me. It all comes down what I call unalienable responsibility. Much like unalienable rights, there are some responsibilities that cannot be subsumed by society, government, or other third parties.

Selling My Time; What Am I Worth?

I have a lot of marketable skills. At least I think I do. I've never really sold them on the open market. That is essentially what freelance developers and consultants do. I want to. So what's stopping me?

Plenty.

Persuasion, Correction, and Righteous Influence; a How To

The following is an excerpt from a post to the MormonVeg email list that I helped moderate several years ago. After a major upheaval over post topics, conflicting opinions, and accusations of apostasy (in both directions), I wrote a studied response which really summed up my feelings about righteous influence and persuasion, while respecting an individual's agency.

Originally posted Mon Apr 22, 2002 12:22 am, I have added some links and edited a little here and there to apply the message generally.

Do You Belong In Your Zip Code?

The New York Times recently published a web service showing the movie rental habits, by zip code, of 12 major cities over the past year. The data comes from Netflicks movie rentals for 100 movies. I initially visited the site just to see how they presented the information (very well) and it really made me think. This is a great example of how data is only what you make of it. And, that no matter how unbiased you try to be, just collecting and presenting data induces inacuracy or bias.

Managers, Meet the Maker's Schedule

How do you manage your day-to-day schedule?

A friend just pointed me to this recent post by Paul Graham, about a schedule's impact on the productivity of creative types, "makers" as he calls them.