Caddickisms

free wi-fi hotspots wifi cafes coffee shops hotels airports RV Parks

(Okay, so I’m slipping in one more post before the new year…)

If you’re looking for free wi-fi connection anywhere in the US, check this site out. I found three spots in my area this way.

Technorati Tags: wireless hotspots, laptops, mobile, wi-fi, free

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I’ve been quiet on here for a couple weeks due to some time pressures. Lots to do during the lead-up to Christmas, as I’m sure you can all understand. I had it all planned out - a full week of vacation to get it all done - but then some problems at work forced me to give up most of my “free” time. The week after Christmas was spent running around to stores with gift exchange related activities and trying to catch up on my online reading.

Basically, I’ve been too tired to blog.

But as I said, I have been reading, and I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff. I thought the last day of the year should be a good time to throw my thoughts at you once again. Here are some of the topics I’ve been thinking about lately:

• Materialism - most of us get more stuff than we need at Christmas, and spend more than we should getting things for others. And yet we usually still want more. That’s just stupid. (Related thoughts)
• Money - partly due to the above, and just as a condition of where I am in life right now, getting serious about personal finance is becoming a major topic for me. “It’s about time,” my father would probably say. He’s right, too. It’s not like I’ve been irresponsible, but the fact is I’ve made a couple big mistakes and then had a couple surprises foisted upon me in the last few years. I’m still doing okay, but definitely need to change my path. It’s starting to work, too. My net worth curve has recently started to curve in the right direction again.
• Children - I have two young children that (happily) occupy a lot of my time. I’m frequently amazed at what they learn, and at what they teach me.
• Influence - I recognized years ago that people have a larger influence on others than they realize, both directly and indirectly. The easiest example to give you would be the overplayed, but excellent, movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart. (If you’re one of the three people on the planet who haven’t seen it, basically, this guy wishes he’d never been born, and an angel lets him see what the world would have been like without him. Major changes happen.) Little things you say and do can have large influences on others, especially if you are seen by them as an authority figure. If you think no one cares what you do - you’re wrong. Someone sees you as either a positive or negative example in their life, and is influenced by your words and actions, whether you’re aware of it or not. If you’re a parent, for instance, your influence extends far beyond the obvious impact you have on your children. Here are a few examples: your children’s friends, other parents, young couples thinking about parenting who see you interacting with your children in a store, your children’s teachers, your co-workers, your relatives, the people your children will meet when they get older - and indirectly, the people all of the above meet. Your world isn’t as small as you think.
• Influence II - Mass Media - In many ways, mass media runs our lives. It’s scary.
• TV - Heroes (don’t forget to read the online comics!), Battlestar Galactica (new night and time!), 24 (2 night/4 hour premiere!), and Smallville (Jan 11th at 8pm!) are all returning in the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to all of them, among others. A lot of people laugh when I say I watch Smallville, but it really is a well made show. It has been great to watch the characters develop through the seasons into the icons we all know.
• Talents - How do we encourage the building of talents in ourselves and others? I started thinking about that with respect to my children, but then realized it applied to me as well. I know I have talents that haven’t really been developed, and I’d like to start. I want to help my kids identify their talents and encourage them appropriately.
• Technology - this is very close to the antithesis of my first point above, but I really want a computer upgrade and a few other gadgets for the house. The only reason I’m holding off is my second point. I can’t justify spending close to $1000 (on the low end) for stuff I don’t really need, however much I might want them. I am getting to the point, though, where I have to rebuild my current machine. Wacky stuff is happening periodically and it just needs a good “cleaning” to straighten it out. I’ve put it off for a long time because I hate going through the hassle of reinstalling Windows, then all the patches, then all the software. Plus I keep thinking I’m going to lose data because I forgot to back up a certain directory that looked unimportant at the time but actually holds all my “save games” or config files or plug-ins or something. (The technology problem that truly bugs me, though, is at work. My current laptop just isn’t doing the job for me anymore and my IT team refuses to believe me and order me a new system, even though my boss is willing to fork over the dough. I can’t even get them to replace my fuzzy monitor.)
• Learning technology - with the merger of NETg and SkillSoft earlier this year, the content provider space now has a huge new leader. I hope it works out for customers as well as it should. I also hope to be able to focus more on blending the formal and informal learning opportunities that are out there. I’d love to start using wikis for some documentation projects, discussion groups for distance training, and podcasts for on-demand information, for example.
• Vacation - I need a real one. One where I go somewhere else and don’t worry about work. Preferably for a month (yeah, right). But then… see the second point above. It’s hard to go anywhere without spending at least a couple hundred dollars. Eh… maybe in 2008.

So there you have it. Some of the topics I’ve been thinking about lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them become posts of their own next year. And I’ll still have movie and tv reviews up from time to time (though I seem to be the only person who reads those). For what it’s worth, I’m also thinking about making some new static pages on the site.

What thoughts have occupied your minds these last few weeks? What’s important to you? Drop a comment and let me know (comments are moderated and may not appear immediately).

I hope you all enjoy your New Years celebrations! Welcome, 2007!

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Usability in the Movies — Top 10 Bloopers Jakob Nielsens Alertbox

Obviously a slow day in the world of Usability. This has got to be one of those posts that Jakob had stored just in case he had nothing to say one day.

But it’s amusing, it’s movie related, and it’s a topic that geeks go on and on about amongst themselves, so I was, of course, interested to read it.

The one I can’t believe that he didn’t mention as an example of amazing interoperability is the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum negotiates a connection with and delivers a virus to an alien spaceship. Even if you get past the connection bit (and as he says, how easy is it to even get PCs and Macs to speak to each other), what are the odds that the aliens are running an operating system - or even a single application - that will be affected by a virus written for Windows or the Mac OS?

You could probably write a full book about these kinds of “bloopers”. Fun stuff, if you’re a geek.

Technorati Tags: geek fun, movies, bloopers, computers, usability, Jakob Nielsen

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Diabetes breakthrough

Before you get too excited, let me say this: from my read of the article, it’s a long time before humans could benefit, and even when they can, you’ll probably have to catch it within a certain amount of time.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

The link to the nervous system is the breakthrough idea. Until this point, the auto-immune system was seen as the problem. But recently the researchers in the article tried a nerve inhibitor that actually removed the disease from infected mice.

In diabetes, the inflammation (and eventually death) of pancreatic islet cells, which produce the insulin we all need to convert sugar to energy, is the root of the problem. The researchers concentrated on the nerves surrounding these cells, and told them to stop firing “emergency” messages to the nervous system. In the mice, this caused the islet cells to recover and begin functioning normally again. In other words, they were cured.

(Note: obviously the islet cells have to be inflamed, not dead, for this to work. That’s why I said at the beginning that you’d have to catch the disease within a certain period of time.)

Obviously if this holds true for humans as well, this is an incredibly huge development, not just for Type I, but for Type II diabetes as well:

They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.

While this study concentrates solely on Diabetes Type I (or Juvenile Onset Diabetes), other diseases not previously linked to the nervous system may benefit from this research as well:

They also conclude … that nerves likely play a role in other chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and Crohn’s disease.

This is potentially the biggest medical breakthrough since curing polio. Here’s hoping the research proves to be true and transferable to humans!

Technorati Tags: diabetes, medical breakthroughs, medical research, nervous system

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GateWorld - Staite talks Atlantis Season Four

Stargate Atlantis’s newest recurring guest star is ready for the show’s fourth season, which enters production this February in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jewel Staite recently discussed her casting on the series and her new character at her blog.

So Jewel Staite (’Kaylee’ from the series Firefly) is playing a doctor in the next season of Stargate Atlantis. She won’t be a regular, but will be a recurring character. Be aware that there are spoilers for the second half of season three behind that link.

(Hey, Dave… I think we found a reason for you to become a fan of Atlantis!)

Bonus info: A new Stargate series is in the works! Details are few and far between, so the jury is out as to whether this is a good thing.

Technorati Tags: Stargate Atlantis, sci-fi, Firefly, Serenity, TV, Jewel Staite

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Easy Meal Prep Association and Meal Assembly Directory

I’m looking for ways to live cheaper. I got a tip in the comments of another blog to check out a Meal Preparatory business. The link above is a directory of these kinds of businesses.

In case you aren’t familiar with the concept, the way it works is that you sign up for a session, choose the meals you want to make from that month’s menu, then go an prepare the meals in their store. They provide all the food, preparation utensils, storage containers, instructions, and a workspace. That saves you from having to go to the grocery store (as often) and spend a lot of time figuring out how much to buy of what, and getting the proportions right.

The idea is that you are taking advantage of the bulk savings the service is getting, as well as saving yourself some time. It looks like you can get through a session in about 2 hours, and come out with at least 40 servings (which in my house would be about 12-15 dinners, depending on how hungry I am). Try to create the same 15 dinners on your own and once you figure in shopping and preparation time you’re easily hitting 6 hours of time, conservatively.

I found a couple of these services in my area and looked at their websites. They both came out at about $200 for 42 servings, give or take, which is a little under $5 per serving. On Dream Dinners, though, you save some serious bucks the more servings you buy. For 96 servings, for example, my choices came to $340 (or $3.54/serving) - which is about a $120 savings.

Now, 96 servings will pretty much set me up with dinners for an entire month, as well as a number of leftover lunches, I would think. On the surface, this strikes me as a good deal. After all, I’m spending somewhere around $400-500 a month for groceries lately, so $340 is appealing. I did a pretty good sales job for this idea on my wife as well. I think I’ve got her willing to do it.

But something continued to nag at me about it. I think I finally figured out what it is.

Where the heck am I going to store 30 days worth of meals!?! Seriously… I’d have to buy a freezer just for that purpose! Aside from the initial cost of the freezer, that’s gotta add to the electric bill, too. That’s crazy. Even 15 days of meals is probably more than my current freezer could handle (after all, I still gotta have room for the ice cream, right?). Plus, what you get here is the entrees, not the drinks, salads, desserts, etc., so you still have to pick them up at the grocery store, and that’s gonna eat into what you’re saving (pun not intended). Besides, a good chunk of my grocery cost these days is tied up in baby food and formula, and this service doesn’t make a dent there.

Even so, I still think there is a place for these services, and I’d be willing to bet that with some flexibility on order quantity I could most likely come out ahead and not have to purchase another major appliance. But it’s probably not something we could use at this point. Maybe in a few years.

Technorati Tags: meal preparation, Dream Dinners, cooking, frugal, personal finance, living cheaply, eating in, groceries

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Long-distance callers have some money coming - MarketWatch

Make any long distance calls in the last three years? Claim your cash in 2007!

The repeal of the Federal excise tax (initiated in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American war) means the government is handing out refunds. Niiiiice.

You’re eligible for the refund if you made a long-distance call between Feb. 28, 2003, and Aug. 1, 2006. To make it easy, the IRS is offering a standard refund between $30 and $60 (one exemption gets you $30, two get your $40, three get you $50, four or more get you $60).

Technorati Tags: tax refund, personal finance, excise tax

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The Simple Dollar

If you’re looking for a simple, easy to follow personal finance blog, check out The Simple Dollar. I get a headache just thinking about personal finance, but I seriously enjoy this site and I’m learning quite a bit as well. It’s not the be-all-and-end-all of finance information, but it is open, personal, easy to read, and full of good advice - especially if you’re looking to lower some of your debt.

I found the site through a link on Digg.com to a post about free alternatives to many Windows software applications. I perused the blog as a whole from there, and found some very helpful tips about debt reduction. I also found that I really enjoyed his writing style and conclusions.

Recently, a friend introduced me to Google Reader—I’ve been looking for a good online RSS reader. Partially as a result of reading the Simple Dollar and partially because of the focus on expenses the end of the year brings, the only set of pre-existing subscriptions that I found vaguely interesting was the Finance set. It included another personal (as opposed to corporate) site that I like, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which shares a conversational tone, personal touch, and good advice with The Simple Dollar.

Reading from those two blogs got me pumped up enough to go to a couple corporate sites. First stop, CNNMoney.com. Almost immediately I realized that was way too much stocks and market watching to be immediately applicable to me. Good stuff, but I couldn’t use it. Same thing with MarketWatch.com (probably should have predicted that from the name, huh?). Then I hit The Motley Fool. Now I was back on track. I knew about the Fool for years, and had even read their first book, years ago. Good stuff, well written, and down to earth. The same applies to their website. In fact, they had this great self-paced “seminar” that I’m now going through on (I’m sensing a theme here) debt reduction. I’ve looked at similar programs before, but this has the best, and easiest, planning and budgeting approach I’ve seen. It’s not hugely time consuming, it’s easy to understand, and it works. Aside from having it actually reduce your debt for you, I think that’s the best you can ask for.

In that seminar are two more links I wanted to share. CardWeb.com will let you easily find and apply for great low rate credit cards. It also has some good articles and services, but for me its primary benefit is the card search. Similarly, Bankrate.com lets you search for credit card offers. It also looks for just about every other kind of debt related activity (mortgages, home equity, credit, loans, etc.), and has some excellent articles, plus some great calculators (including one that will approximate your FICO score, which I found very helpful). The main problem with that site is that it showed some problems when I browsed through Firefox, and in all browsers it had an extremely annoying habit of throwing up pop-up windows to various other parts of itself on virtually every click, plus it had some confusingly placed ads. The pop-ups are one usability problem that is so disturbing to me, though, that I will only go there now if I have something extremely specific to find so I can get in and get out before I want to throttle someone. Which is a shame, because there is some excellent content there.

Hopefully something in this post helps someone. Not one of my usual topics, but I found myself spending hours reading this stuff without feeling overwhelmed for the most part, so I figured other people might find them equally accessible.

Technorati Tags: personal finance, debt reduction, blogs, money matters, credit score, credit cards, open source, digg, rss readers

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J. Michael Straczynski - B5:TLT Pre-Production - Babylon5scripts.com

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, Disc 1 has now finished principle photography. B5:TLT is a series of Direct-to-DVD stories that focus on a single character, or a few, in the B5 universe. Characters are played by the same actors who created the roles in the previous Babylon 5 series (both B5 and Crusade, at least). Creator/writer/director/producer J. Michael Straczynski describes the first offering:

This first DVD, entitled “Voices in the Dark,” covers the same 72 hour period of time as Sheridan travels on board a Presidential Cruiser en route to Babylon 5 from Minbar for a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Interstellar Alliance. One part of the story follows Sheridan as he picks up an unexpected visitor on the edge of Centauri space, Prince Regent Dius Vintari, and a warning about what will come afterward delivered by the techno-mage, Galen. The other part of the story is set aboard Babylon 5, as Colonel Lochley summons a priest from Earth space to deal with a problem that may have dark supernatural overtones. The two parts of the greater story intersect at certain key plot and thematic points, so that they overlap and complement each other while telling separate, but simultaneous, stories.

The link above includes behind-the-scenes photos from Straczynski’s personal stash, as well as more information about the process and effects.

Technorati Tags: J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5, B5, Crusade, TV, Direct-to-DVD

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