User Group Demographics

As a youth, I participated in the Rancocas Valley Commodore Users Group in southern New Jersey. At that point in time, Commodore had a sizeable share of the home computing market, and meetings reflected this, with a broad ranges of ages represented, and a gender imbalance that wasn't too bad for "back then."

More recently, I made it to two or three meetings - over the last two years - of the Big Island Linux Users Group here in Hilo. The demographics of this group were distinctly different. I don't recall seeing anyone I'd consider a kid - it was pretty much college age and up - and the majority of participants were male.

This evening, I attended my first meeting of Hawaii Mac Nuts, a Macintosh Users Group which also meets in Hilo. (I use both Linux and Macintosh, and know that I'm hardly alone in doing so.) I still didn't see any kids, but one lady who I believe to be a teacher brought in some peripherals for "show and tell" that she'd borrowed from kids. The gender balance was basically 50-50, though.

Of course, I've yet to attend a Windows Users Group, so I can't say for sure whether Macintosh users are more or less gender-balanced than "the majority," so to speak. I'd expect a pretty even gender split among Windows users, but that might not hold true when it comes to attending users group meetings.

Anyway, I'd definitely recommend Hawaii Mac Nuts to anyone in the Hilo area who uses a Macintosh. There are some very knowledgeable people there, and overall the meeting was enjoyable and informative.

Metric century on the Hamakua Coast

Here's a photo from my bike ride on February 20, 2004. I had initially hoped to do a 100-mile (imperial) "century" but due to time constraints and headwinds on the return leg, completed only 67-70 miles. Of course, that's more than a 100-km "metric century" so I'm... content.

Elevation marker near O'okala, Hawaii

I rode up the Hawaii Belt Highway (19) from Hilo through Papaikou, Pepeekeo, stopped in Honomu for food, continued through Hakalau and Ninole, stopped in Laupahoehoe for food, continued through O'okala, stopped in Paauilo for food, then turned off the highway at Honoka'a and took the road from there out to the Waipio Valley overlook. On the way back, I stopped riding in Paauilo and was retrieved by my family.

I might have gone further had I actually practiced, eaten a good breakfast, gotten enough sleep, remembered to grease my bike's chain, and lost the extra 40 pounds I'm lugging around first... and had someone not wanted me to get home faster so they could go to a dance class. :)

I took this photo with my Nokia 3650 smartphone's camera, held at arm's length. Unfortunately, the 3650 is a 900/1800/1900Mhz "world" phone, and after selling it to me for quite a lot of money, AT&T chose to upgrade all the towers in my area except the one nearest Hilo to... 850MHz. It's not very "mobile" when going more than 10-15 miles from that one cell tower results in a total lack of service coverage. When I finally got coverage again in Honoka'a and called home, I learned that they'd been calling hospitals to see if I'd been brought in injured or dead.

Surrounded by Innumerates

I get home after being away for a couple weeks, and amidst the accumulated mail, there's a bill from a certain large department store chain that rhymes with serial killer John Wayne Gacy asserting that the store card card was used to purchase a few items of clothing, nothing extravagant, $38.12 total, and that oh, I should pay it by... today, or they'll tack on a dollar finance charge. So of course I go right over to the local store and pay it.

While I'm there, I note that at the bottom of the bill, there's a stated annual rate of 72.24%. That seems a little odd - even though I missed one of their bills a year or so ago, the rate really shouldn't be more than somewhere in the twenties. Not that it matters, as I don't carry a balance and hardly even use the card. I mention it to the cashier, who says, laughingly, not to be late.

After doing some math and figuring out that the daily periodic rate stated next to the annual rate multiplies out (1.0006822 to the 365th power) to about 28%, not 72% (which would be 100% minus 28%), I decide to call their customer service department... which is closed.

Their automated voice system tells me that my balance was $39.12 (which it wasn't; it was $38.12 since I paid on time) and that I paid $38.00 (which I didn't; my receipt clearly states I paid $38.12).

Given their apparent inability to do any kind of math at all, count money, et cetera, I've decided that these really aren't people I feel like having a credit account with. If I do buy from them in the future, I'll pay cash, and I'll count my change very carefully.

It's official: AOL is lame

They're not offering me enough...

So I got an offer (that I can refuse): Try AOL 9.0 blah blah blah and get a free 3-day, 2-night "getaway" at a Fairfield Inn by Marriott. Right-o. I think I can see a few problems with this:

1. It's not really 3 days, it's 2 nights. Nobody stays in the hotel during the day.
2. The closest Fairfield Inns to me are... over 2,000 miles away. No, it doesn't include airfare.
3. This presumes that they expect me to at least try AOL, and they're not indicating that they'll pay my usual (very reasonable, I might add) hourly rate for putting up with things that suck horribly.

So. All AOL needs to do is throw in airfare and a steamer trunk full of cash, and... I'll think about it. 

Giving Thanks

For what?

Thanksgiving is one of those interesting holidays that "seemed like a good idea at the time." I mean, heck, if you'd come to a new continent, survived the winter in mud caves courtesy of the friendly natives, then managed to actually plant and harvest some crops the next year so you could scrape out a meager existence... yeah, I could see being a little thankful for that.

As someone who does freelance, contract and consulting work - none of which generate much of anything resembling a "steady income" - I can relate a little to the whole thing of celebrating simply having survived another year.

But overall, since the first Thanksgiving? We've gotten progressively more (to the point where most of us now have too much, and I don't think I'm an exception to that rule)... and we take it for granted. Yes, we pay lip service to thankfulness one day out of the year, but even then, we don't stop and think about it all that much. What if we did?

"I'm thankful that there are twice as many computers in my house as there are people."

Hmmm. One or two of those computers aren't even used for anything, anymore. Sure, they're old, but not too old to run, say, Windows 95 or Linux. Somebody, somewhere, would probably be pretty excited to have one of those.

Maybe Thanksgiving should be a time to look at what we have, give thanks for having what we need and want, and try to think of ways our excess could better serve humanity.

Busy Month!

It would've been a busy month anyway, what with being in the midst of a large programming project, but infrastructure made it even more fun.

On the 16th, my long-awaited Power Mac arrived from Elk Grove. This represented a huge boost in processing power for the programming project and other computationally intensive work, but of course there was some time involved in getting it set up, transferring the project over to it, and so on.

Then, on the 24th, Apple released the latest version of their operating system, Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther." To maximize the amount of optimization for the new Power Mac, I upgraded to that, of course. There went another little chunk of time.

Now I'm into "crunch" mode, working on wrapping up the primary development phase of the project before getting ready to spend a couple months testing and tweaking!

Oh, what, you want my thoughts on the Power Mac? Okay, here they are. It's shiny! And fast. Put it this way - on a number of processors times number of megahertz basis, all the other computers I use regularly, combined, total up to only seventy-five percent of this one.

In other news, excerpts from the two chapters I wrote for John Levine's 2000 IDG book, "Internet Secrets 2nd Edition" are now available here.

I'm waiting for Elmo...

 Finally, a terror threat level... thing that even a four-year-old can grasp. Click on it. Go ahead.