Lying frogs aside, I can finally answer the pesky perennial question, that question that’s troubled techie types for the last decade or two. That question: [...]]]> Kermit’s a liar. You can’t trust a frog (and any princess worth her salt could tell you that). It’s easy being green, at least a pale sort of green.

Lying frogs aside, I can finally answer the pesky perennial question, that question that’s troubled techie types for the last decade or two. That question: Should you turn your PC off at night or over the weekend?

If you’ve been in with the IT crowd, the answer to this question has always been a hearty “Nope!” (No kisses, no frogs, no princesses.) Leave them on. (Go away.)

Enterprise-wise, you see, we need those beasts on and working; even at home, you’re screwed if you don’t let them have their way. It’s the updates you see. Miss an update and the zombies come calling.

If you turn your PC off… well, then all those nice automated things don’t get done — important things, like updates, and bug patches, and virus signatures, and disk defragging, and other gobbledygook sort of technical things. They’re necessary, unfortunately. They’re important.

When confronted, I typically explain the simple trade-offs: It’s a choice between “leave them on” or you’ll be responsible for immanentizing the eschaton, triggering the inevitable zombie apocalypse or another Republican administration — to some, no doubt, one in the same.

Moreover, you’ll suffer! If your PC is off at night; well then, all those pesky updates will have to run while you are actually trying to work, trying to finish your radically over-due dissertation about Romance in America: The Myths of the Frog Prince, or trying to put those ever-so-important final touches on your resume, or, perhaps you’re writing the great-American-time-travel novel about relativity and love across the space-time continuum. Whatever it is, it’s important stuff all, right?

Between you and me and the blue screen, there is no need to tempt the fates by actually choosing to run the automated Windows Update and Crash system while trying to actually use the PC. To do that is foolish; to do that tempts fate.

If you’re going to do that, you might as well just stop now, randomly delete the first ten files you find that end with “DLL,” slide a Kraft single into the DVD drive, and pound your head directly on the keyboard for twenty minutes. It’s easier, tastier, more entertaining to your co-workers, and, in the end, will have much the same effect on your PC. Don’t forget to un-wrap the cheese first.

(Hey,Mac-head: don’t get smug, bozo. It happens to Mac’s too. Remember, it ain’t the machine, it ain’t the manufacturer, and it ain’t the OS. It’s the universe that’s laughing at you — and the universe is OS-agnostic. Although I have heard that Mac’s will actually read a properly formatted Kraft single.)

The counter argument to all this is, of course, wasteful energy consumption — the collective impact off all those PCs and laptops leaving huge Al Gore-sized, carbon footprints all over the global rug; wastefully burning up the world, leaving us to play frog in the global green house’s boiling pot of water, not noticing that it’s getting kinda warm and wet.

It just doesn’t feel “right,” leaving all these machines humming all the time. There are more and more and more every day. It just ain’t right, right?

So, hold on to your frogs— now there’s a better answer. The answer is still “nope.” But now, the answer is “nope, but…”

Now you can leave them on “smartly,” a princely green; leave ‘em on, tuned to the heavenly sixty cycles of sun and moon and automated software-tuned power efficiency.

The answer to all this is smart, power management software. It’s all about real-time fine-tuning — my third force, the move from sampling to monitoring — has found a terrific home in Green IT. It’s time to kiss the frog.

It’s about time: It’s a fracking computer after all. It should be able to tune itself, start itself up, do what needs to be done, and then gently fall to sleep.

Previous power management was pretty stupid — essentially offering two choices — asleep or awake; governed by a timeout. Not all answers are binary, and — at least in my case — the needs varied by time of day and day of the week. I needed the pesky PC’s perky during the day, and wanted them to embrace their lethargy the rest of the time. Life is not static. All in all, my goals are simple:

• Maximize energy savings and minimize user grumbling
• Be smart yet cheap about it
• Make it easy to set up and manage

The solution is a relatively unique software and management service. The software is called “Surveyor” — it’s made by Verdiem. Centrally managed and administered, it lets us tune the power management, by time of day, by day of the week, of individual PCs across our network. It even lets us do periodic “wake-up calls” to check for those required zombie updates, and to minimize the end-user grumble factor.

With Surveyor running, you still need to leave the PCs on— but now you’ve got the ability to twiddle and tweak the power management scheme, on the fly, to suit the time of day and the needs of the office. Now, they’re on when needed, up and responsive during working hours and asleep when they’re not needed, blissfully dreaming robotic dreams of world domination or plotting to kill Sarah Connors.

Power profiles can be changed on the fly. We set up two, one for the “Workday” (basically 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM) and another for evenings, nights and weekends.

Then, we got fancy — modifying the power settings on the fly to maximize the so-called “user experience” (or minimize the grumbling) and to minimize our carbon footprints. It was item two — the user grumbling — that took some fancy footwork with the scheduling.

We solved that with a couple of what I call “wake up calls” — essentially the system automatically sends out the magic “wake-on-LAN” packet to wake the machine up. It does it once at 8:00 AM so that those early to work are greeted by a wide-awake PC; once again at 9:00 AM so that the late arrivals also get a wide-awake PC. The 75-minute Workday timeout covers lunch.

Off-hours we get aggressive, switching promptly at 5:30 to the shorter timeouts, effectively putting all the un-used PC’s to sleep by 5:35 PM. We wake them all at 3:00 AM to process any pending updates — if there’s nothing to do, they’re back to sleep by 3:05 AM.

I’m a skeptic. So I metered it. The promised to save money, to knock tens of dollars off my electric bill for each PC, and to be green, seemed too good to be true.

And so, armed with my trusty “Kill-a-Watt,” the results convinced me. For a 24-hour period, the software dropped the power consumption of a typical workstation from 1.28 KWh in 24 hours, to about .62 KWh (with average usage), resulting in an estimated annual savings per PC of a little more than $20.

Even given the software costs (about $15 for the first year and $2/year thereafter), there’s a net savings of $5 per PC in the first year, with around $18 in subsequent years. For 100+ PC’s that’s real green. Besides, it’s worth it to unmask Kermit’s perfidy. Go ahead, kiss that frog. It’s easy.

In each case, I had been invited —and cheerfully [...]]]> Different venues, different audiences, but the same query: Six times in as many months, I stood in front of a group asking (perhaps demanding) that I answer the same question. Audiences can be scary — and the question pointed to the heart of the matter.

In each case, I had been invited —and cheerfully agreed — to talk about web 2.0 and online networks, these new fangled “social” technologies. But, the audiences wanted brass tacks — my academic musings and observations from on high were not enough. The crowd was hungry. They wanted the secret answer.

Folks listened patiently — but only up to a point. I, no doubt, had waxed idiotically on about social technologies being “messy, fast, and casual” — generally ill suited to any sort of organizational context. They are designed to be “personal.” They don’t adapt well to the organizational context, and I don’t think they ever will.

To that, well… I’ve always felt Marion Barry, the former Washington DC mayor, put it eloquently (in three little words): “Get over it.” The fact of the matter is, with social media, an organization no longer can speak with a single voice, or deliver a single message. We need to get over it. It’s all about one-to-one personal communications, only it’s one-to-one with thousands or hundreds of thousands, of people. Sounding silly, I’ve said that since the ‘net began and it’s truer today than ever.

But, such answers have not been enough for hungry audiences, waving netbooks, iPhones, torches and pitchforks.

Folks know there is a secret; what’s worse, they want the secret. They’re unabashed. After all, Obama’s campaign had proven it, right? The virtual cat was out of the digital bag, and it was time for me to come clean. (Pitchforks and torches not withstanding —obviously, I’ve a bit of a love-hate relationship with these presentation things.)

The question on the lips and placards of the angry villagers, the Question with a capital “Q”, is simple: “How can we raise money with these new social networking things?”

I suppose I could blame Election ’08 — specifically Barack Obama — for setting the stage. His campaign’s success was evident. They had raised money, apparently with online social networks. They had also rewritten the rules of politics, and perhaps changed the world forever.

Unfortunately, the answer is not so simple. Moreover, deep down inside, that question is tinged with an underlying belief, a belief that more “friends,” more “followers” equals $uccess. (That’s bull, by the way, pure and simple.)

Nevertheless, nonprofits are nonplussed; they want to raise money with Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever. In the end, it’s the ends. It’s dollars, not donuts, not even the euphemistic “constituent building.” It’s about money, filthy lucre— and deep down inside they know that they’re missing the boat. (So, it’s damn the Tweets, and full speed ahead.)

This belief persists, despite the facts. The facts are clear: social networks are much better “friend raisers” than they’ll ever be “fund raisers.” But, believe is difficult to fight, logically or otherwise. Social networks are the big thing, like direct mail, or telephones, or fax, or email before them. (And, like those that have come before, we are rapidly filling up web 2.0 with random streams of amazing stupidity – but that’s another discussion.)

The “Social Networks = $uccess” belief is ubiquitous. Recently, I reviewed more than 90 grant applications, proposals focused on the intersection of jazz and technology, a far cry from my typical business. However, the same threads were there — a remarkable and overwhelming percentage cited the same holy trinity: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. I read it so often I started to refer to it by acronym (FYT — pronounced Pffufft).

‘Till now, I’ve had no ready answer for the Question. Nothing I say seems to satisfy — folks want the secret code.

Lean in a little closer. Today I’m going to tell you that answer.

Here it is: the secret decoder ring, the magic ingredient, the answer to the Question of how to raise money with online social networks. Ready?

Step One… First, you get yourself an Obama.

Wait… Don’t hit that big “X” …

I say this with all seriousness. First you get yourself an Obama. That’s the secret of the Obama campaign. It was Obama — not Facebook, not Twitter, and not the bevy of would-be Dick “Bite-me” Morrises or the myriad of MoveOn’s anxious to fill up your inbox, dance across your Facebook page, or displace Ashton Kutcher in the Twitterstream of useless things in 140 characters.

The real secret is this: It’s never the tools, it’s the content. It’s never the medium, it’s the message.

The tools can make it easier to deliver the “ask,” and they can surely smooth the logistics of it all, but it’s still all about the message; it’s the content, stupid. More followers does not equal $uccess, unless you’re Ashton Kutcher. And that only works because Ashton Kutcher is selling Ashton Kutchers. (Or maybe he’s selling Demi Moores? I’m never sure.)

There you have it, the message in the cryptex, the answer to the Question. Tools only streamline the process. Today’s fancy network tools, social or otherwise, can move mountains, remove the barriers, streamline the donation, facilitate the transaction, and instantaneously validate the act of giving, relaying thanks, community, appreciation, and a receipt.

But, fundraising is about content; it’s about the Obama-factor. Facebook? YouTube? Twitter? Pffufft… Tools don’t create community. Get over it.

I read the announcement again. I clicked the buttons. The download started. I double-checked the URL — “Perhaps it was a fancy phishing [...]]]> I thought it was a joke. Who could blame me? After all, the announcement began: “Starting on April 1, 2009…” Then again, Microsoft usually ain’t one to make “April Fool’s” jokes.

I read the announcement again. I clicked the buttons. The download started. I double-checked the URL — “Perhaps it was a fancy phishing scheme,” I thought to myself. “Better check.” “Free” often means free trouble.

I Googled. I got half-a-dozen links. I clicked the Wikipedia entry. It said: “SharePoint Designer 2007 is available as license-restricted freeware.”

Hey, if Wikipedia says so, it’s got to be true, right?

Here’s the scoop, the lowdown, the straight poop:

As of April 1, SharePoint Designer is free. Get it here. Now, it’s not free as in speech, but it is free as in beer. Shamelessly, let me admit here and now. I use SharePoint Designer (hereafter referred to by me as SPD). I use it almost every day. It lets me work magic. It’s a buggy piece of ssssssss…software, but it lets you do magic.

Since we’re talking beer, I liken SPD to Mickey’s Big Mouth Ale — AKA the “green grenade.” It’s kind of rough, kind of wild. But, like SPD, I also like Mickey’s — at least I did when I last drank beer. Perhaps there’s still a bit o’ cowboy in me.

Nevertheless, it’s one of those things I’m not sure I want to advertise — liking Mickey’s, SPD, or the cowboy part. None of them are things you’d mention in the mixed company of a crowd of open source, micro-brew city-folk.

But, it’s true — acceptance is the first step — I like SPD — that affection affliction goes hand in hand with my liking SharePoint. Don’t tell anyone. SharePoint rocks.

Like it or not, to work SharePoint, to do real SharePoint magic, you need SPD. It ain’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Moreover, you don’t want to touch SharePoint with FrontPage. You don’t even want FrontPage to flirt casually with IIS when it’s hosting SharePoint. You don’t even want it to sidle up and try to buy it drinks, casual-like.

FrontPage will break SharePoint quicker than you can say “Joomla.”

On the other hand, with SPD, a little bit of undaunted adventurism, and some cowboyish bonhomie, you can work magic — good magic as well as some of the sinister dark arts, things like custom workflows, fancy dataviews, and point-and-click connections to XML webservices. Welcome to the dark side.

In fact, it’s SPD that will let you turn that all-too-boring look of SharePoint into something almost purty. It’s all there, it’s all in SPD, and now it’s free.

Let me warn you though. Like that green grenade, SPD is big, and brash, and none too gentle in its approach. You know what they say about “operating heavy machinery.” SPD does not have a light touch. The fact of the matter is, SPD can wreak havoc — breaking a MOSS or WSS site in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Moreover, it’s prone to crash — especially when messing about with the dark arts of dataviews.

I’ve learned. One must use the “undo” button judiciously. Moreover, it’s wise to only create (and destroy) web parts in a temporary environment; you should, at the very least, isolate your cowboy antics to a subsite for god’s sake, if not a stand-alone development environment.

[On the other hand, that’s the nice thing about webparts — do ‘em right and once you get them done and all nice and shiny-like, just the way you want ‘em, they’re easy to move about. Importing (and exporting) is easy. I typically develop my parts on a stand-alone WSS site, and then import them into MOSS when they are acting proper. Sure, this is just good sense, but the portable nature of web parts makes this pretty easy too. ]

The Dark Arts: Custom Workflows

One of the extras you get with SPD is custom workflows. SharePoint OOTB workflows suck. Custom workflows are magic — black magic, pure and simple — and they are, to me, an example that the IT industry has finally managed to somewhat lessen the gap between the marketeer’s hype and the reality of real-life computing. Perhaps we are finally seeing the age of integrated software that actually interoperates, does what it says it does, and makes your teeth whiter, your hair thicker and more luxurious.

Back to the magic: workflows are magic. Incredibly, with SPD, custom workflows are at your fingertips for no extra costs; a standard feature in both MOSS and WSS. All it takes is SharePoint Designer. Sure, it’s not K2 — then K2 is slightly more expensive.

Here’s a simple example:

We scan lots of documents. We use a fancy scanner. It connects to an automated, server-based PDF conversion and fancy OCR system. It not only scans and converts the docs to PDFs, it also automatically tags them with custom metadata before sliding them smartly into a SharePoint document library. It tags them using information the OCR system pulls from a custom coversheet. It works. It’s great, except for some persnickety problems with people’s names.

For reasons only known to the gods of OCR, some particular names never seem to make it through the OCR process intact. Moreover, they are predictably wrong. I won’t say the original names, but my two favorite OCR errors end up as: PASSMOKE and SLANDER. And, while that might make a terrific name for a law firm, I wanted zero defects.

My solution, on the other hand, was rather simple. I used a simple SharePoint workflow. With a workflow it was easy to fix. In fact, my first cut was done in less than 5 minutes.

In a nutshell, I created a workflow that examined all new documents, looked at the metadata for the known OCR errors, and, in the wink of an eye, corrected them. No muss, no fuss, no kitchen drudgery. It only took two steps. Here’s how:

Step zero:

Using SPD, attach to the proper site and create a new workflow. You find it under File/New/Workflow.

Step one:

You see a screen like this. This is the toughest part. You’ve got to name it. While you’re here, you choose if you want it to start automatically and/or if you want it so you can start it manually. All this can be changed later, so — while debugging — I choose “manual.” Once it’s all smooth sailing, I switch it over to automatic.

Here, you also choose what list or document library or other SharePoint item you want to attach the workflow to. This is the downside of workflows, by the way. They have to be attached to a SharePoint item and once attached, they’re stuck there. This means that you absolutely have to develop the thing in a production environment. Steel your nerves and quaff that grenade.

Step Two:

Once you’ve named it and attached it to a SharePoint item, you get presented with a set of screens that allow you to build your workflow steps based upon various conditions and variables. The nice thing — starting off — it’s all point and click.

In this example, I use a set of simple IF/THEN conditions. Basically:

o IF [STAFF] equals “SLANDER”

o THEN set [STAFF] to “Correct Name”

Since the universe of errors is relatively small, it could work to simply hardcode the various cases, one after another. That’s it in a nutshell.

Step just-push-the-buttons:

Now, in reality, I got fancier. Not wanting to hard-code a series of problematic names forever, I instead decided to use an existing table of staff names — treating it as a lookup table.

SharePoint workflows can perform limited lookups, matching information in one list to fields in another. It can then, based upon that match, substitute one value for another.

In this example, the workflow fixes my SLANDER problem by checking a list of possible errors stored in one list, finding the proper name based on that match, and then slips it into the original field, correcting the error.

It takes a bit of puzzling to get the logic straight — and if you ask me, all the help text just adds to the confusion. In the end, I found that just clicking the options — in a logical order — worked. Like most Microsoft products anymore, over-thinking can get you in trouble. Just push the buttons.

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and [...]]]> A Thanksgiving Tale from the Wild Wild East

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and the car’s steel struts, I felt every bump and grind of the ancient city’s streets. I was the car’s only functioning shock absorber. Noticing that it was past midnight, I thought: “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.”

As we zoomed around yet another roundabout, my friend Tamás shouted over the engine noise: “This is ‘Hero’s Square. You can see the statues of the seven Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarians into the Carpathian basin. You remember, Saint Stephen — he’s there. See.” He gestured with his right hand, his ubiquitous cigarette smoldering in the other. He was a hell of a driver, Tamás. One hand always on the wheel, another manhandling the stick shift, ratcheting through the gears, clutch be damned; another Bogarting a constant cigarette, and another hand to spare, artfully used to point out landmarks and other points of interest along the way.

I struggled to see out of the side window, smudged and clouded with urban fallout and the night’s reflections. I could see shadows, light and dark, vague objects lit by the cold calculating stare of mercury lights. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ll have to come back here sometime during the day.” “Yes,” said Tamás. It’s a beautiful city.” With those words, he lit another cigarette and whipped the car to the right, sliding me away from the window. Like a square, steel security blanket, I cradled the PC. We dove down, down into the dark, diving driving deep into the Budapest night. I was glad he knew where he was going, or at least he seemed to know. I wasn’t going to question. If this worked, it would be he who had saved the day; saved the week, saved my ass — assuming it, and I, survived the ride.

The week had been one unmitigated disaster after another. It was one of those times where just about everything went wrong. The giant rabbit, a bunny the size of a German Shepherd, had shaken my essential belief in my on sanity. The trip had turned all too Kafkaesque, despite the fact I was in Budapest, not Prague, and Nietzsche was tumbling through my forebrain. “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” I muttered to myself, “especially giant rabbits.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

The story begins the week before. Plans were afoot, and I needed to quickly outfit what was to be our new office in Budapest. Tamás was moving from Prague to Budapest, others were moving from Prague to London, and still others were relocating back to the States. The Prague office was to be closed. Budapest needed to be up and running first and fast and furious. With the others, I had some time to spare and a moving company to help.

Taking it in stride, I laid out simple plans that involved donating all the existing equipment in Prague, and starting fresh in the various new locations. That meant shipping new equipment to Budapest, post haste, and that meant DHL. This was a few years ago, before accession into the EU. If you wanted to get stuff into the wild, wild east, DHL was your Jedi Knight. Try to do it yourself, and you’d be tied up in paperwork for a month, and end up paying double in taxes and quadruple in baksheesh and baklava. If I had gone that route, winter would be here, and I’d be wearing a balaclava.

My plan was simple. Ship a new PC via DHL to Budapest. Order a new MFC printer from a local vendor. Arrange for all the necessary connections for phone, fax, and internet. Time everything, just so. Arrive after the PC had cleared customs. Carry all the other bits and pieces. Leave a weekend as buffer, just to be safe. Take a day and purchase the other things I might need (like a fax machine). Spend a few days in Budapest assembling, training, eating cakes, and drinking coffee. When done, zip up to Prague, tie up loose ends there, and make it home by Thanksgiving — a simple plan that adhered to the KISS axiom.

It started to go wrong when the PC went MIA, supposedly somewhere between Ohio and Budapest. The timing of this news couldn’t have been worse. It broke while I was snoozing on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. “They’ve lost the shipment,” said the message in my Blackberry. Bleary-eyed and stiff from the flight, I had to read the message twice as I pounded my second espresso in Schiphol Airport. “Huh,” I muttered. “DHL lost it in mid-flight?

I could of understood it if it had been routed through Amsterdam. Then I could blame it on some chocolate-crazed Dutchman or a ring of international PC thieves, trading computers for aged Gouda. But this had been a direct flight. It got on in Ohio and never got off. I felt like Jodie Foster. How can a PC simply disappear in mid-flight from a DHL plane? Its fate remains a mystery. I figure it’s somewhere embedded in a cow pasture, as it must have fallen out of the door of the plane as it banked to the left over Ohio; probably surprised a few cows, no doubt. Watch out Ohio — falling PCs! Cowdude, you’re getting a Dell!

I was committed. It was too late to turn around; too late to do much of anything. I caught my connection to Budapest with a mind towards taking solace at the hotel’s all-you-can-eat cake bar. Upon arriving, strengthened by a Sachertorte, sugar and chocolate coursing through my veins, I hatched an alternate plan.

I was not to be outfoxed by the cows, or the Dutch. Quick as a wink, with a call back to the States, my staff had a second PC out the door and onto a DHL truck. I figured if we got all our ducks in a row, I’d only lose two days. I could hang out at Café Gerbeaud, pretending to be an intellectual, eating cake and drinking coffee. Not a problem. I am especially fond of Hungarian cakes and tortes, and other pastries. I’d just have to dig up a tattered copy of Proust to complete the image. Besides, there was Tokaji to try. (I discovered I did not like it — and also learned not to say that out loud to the waiter’s face and still expect any sort of service.)

I spent the days wisely, lining up the other ducks, setting up printers, NAT routers, and phones. I even had the immensely ironic pleasure, comrades, of buying a Hungarian fax machine at the largest shopping mall in downtown Budapest. The mall is located in plaza named for Karl Marx. The machine’s instructions were in Hungarian — a lovely language with absolutely no relation to any of the Indo-European languages. Rather it is Ugric, perhaps related to Finnish, perhaps not, and thought to have originated from Siberia, one, two, or three million years ago. I was lucky. There were pictures.

Everything was ready. Then the bureaucracy took hold, like a rat terrier, and refused to let go. The paperwork accompanying the PC was incorrect. We were sub-leasing. We weren’t registered in Hungary. We didn’t exist. It was surreal. I felt unreal. According to the Hungarian authorities, I did not exist. You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization, said DHL. “You don’t exist.”

Easily rectified, I thought, my sense of identity barely dented, I’ll just have new paperwork faxed over. But time was against me. First, it was now Friday. Second, there’s six hours difference between Michigan and Budapest. I had to wait for my office to wake up and get to work. By then it would be 3:00 PM in Budapest. Of course, the customs office closes at 3:00. They wouldn’t get the new paperwork until Monday. Assuming it was all in order, the earliest I could get the PC from DHL would be Monday morning. I headed back to the all-you-can-eat cake bar where I considered supplementing my diet of Dobos torte with a bottle of absinth.

Bright and early Monday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “It would not be delivered today.”

Working reverse banker’s hours, the customs inspector didn’t start work until 4:00 PM. I thought this fact particularly strange, since the customs office closed at 3:00 PM. Logic aside, DHL assured me that the inspector would look at the paperwork that afternoon, and IF it was all in order, the PC would be delivered the following day, Tuesday.

“There’s a certain perverse logic to it all,” I thought to myself. Customs closes at 3:00 and the inspector starts work at 4:00… This meant that, no matter what you did, who you paid off; no matter how pious and righteous your life; there was no way to get something through customs in a day. I accepted my fate and waited another day. My schedule was already shot to Shineola. I was supposed to have been to Prague by now, and be headed home by Wednesday. I was now, officially, a day late and a Forint short. I celebrated with a plate of goulash and a piece of Rigó Jancsi.

Bright and drearily Tuesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

The paperwork was not correct. The people from whom we were subleasing also didn’t exist. We couldn’t ship something to them either. “You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization,” says DHL. Tamás, in his quiet wisdom, spoke up. “Why not have it shipped to me?” he said. “I exist.” Not in the mood for epistemological arguments, despite the temptation, I agreed and new paperwork was put in process.

Back to the future we went, waiting until 3:00 to have a new commercial invoice faxed to DHL from the States; back to the café for coffee and cake.

Not-so-bright and early Wednesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

There were taxes to be paid. Since we had shipped the PC to an individual, we had to pay import duties. “Let me guess,” I said, “once we pay the taxes, we have to wait for the custom inspector to clear the shipment.” “Yes,” they said, “he starts at 4:00. We can deliver the PC in the morning.”

Time, unfortunately, was not on my side, no it wasn’t. I had shuffled trains, planes and schedules. Now I was scheduled on a train, bound for Prague, the next morning. Even then, it was going to be tight. Time was running out.

On a whim, I asked: “Is there any chance we can pick the PC up ourselves?” “Why yes,” said DHL, “not a problem. After customs clears the shipment, you can pick it up at our airport facility after 6:00.

At 6:00, we pulled into the DHL facility — a facility hidden deep in the warehouse maze that surrounds the Budapest airport. Our timing was a thing of beauty. We pulled into the lot just in time to watch a DHL worker roll two Dell boxes off the back end of a truck. They fell, with a note of fragile finality, onto a flat-bed trolley and were wheeled away into the building in front of us. “Those have got to be ours,” I muttered, “got to be.”

Bundles of paper work in hand, we stumbled into the lobby, a lobby furnished in industrial green linoleum, Formica and vinyl, even the lighting had a greenish tinge to it. I shoved the paperwork at the first clerk I could see. He smiled and said, “Yes, the PC is here.” I handed him a fistful of Forints.

As if on cue, at that moment, the double-doors in the rear of the room burst open, and two Dell boxes tumbled into the room. Like a mother who’s found her long lost child, I gathered the boxes into my arms and lovingly tucked them into the car — the monitor into the trunk and, after a little light maneuvering, the PC into the only place it would fit, the front passenger seat. We headed off, full tilt, for Tamás’ new office.

Time being of the essence, I mentally mumbled a check list of tasks that needed to be done. With luck, I figured, I could catch a late dinner. My train left early the next morning for Prague.

By 8:30, we were back at the office. I slide the hard drive into the PC. I had hand-carried it, and a spare, from the States. I checked all the cables. I smiled and plugged it in and…

I could hear the “snap.” I could physically feel the “crack” and “pop” deep in my bones. I could smell the ozone. My face must have turned ashen, as Tamás immediately said “What’s wrong.” I slumped against the wall, defeated. “I forgot,” I said. “Shit. I forgot to switch the power supply from 110 to 220. I just fried it. I give up.”

Tamás looked at me quizzically. “What does that mean,” he asked? “It means we’re screwed,” I said, screwed, screwed, screwed — even in the States, I couldn’t find a new power supply at — glancing at my watch — almost 10:00 at night. Worse than that, it’s a Dell. That means the power supply is proprietary. We’re screwed.” “Humm,” said Tamás. “It’s just a part, right? Let me call my uncle.” He pulled out his mobile phone and, after a few seconds, spoke a few words in Hungarian. He hung up and smiled.

“My uncle says that there is this special number,” he said. “It’s a number you can call and get answers to any question, 24-hours a day.” I looked at him, incredulously, thinking to myself: “Any question? – whew I can think of a few I’d like answered…” But, before I could come up with a question about life, the universe, and everything, he was already off the phone, answer in hand.

“There’s a place,” he said, jotting it down on a pad of paper. “It’s way on the other side of the city. It does all night computer repair. They have the part we need.”

Without further ado, we bundled up the PC and piled into the borrowed car — the Soviet knockoff — and headed off into the Hungarian night. It was thus I found myself, self-employed as a shock-absorber, careening through the dark streets of Budapest, at midnight, in search of a Dell power supply, the day before Thanksgiving. Rabbits were the furthest thing from my mind.

After what seemed like hours, we pulled down a dark street — more warehouse than residential — and stopped in front of what looked like a small square suburban ranch home surrounded by 8-foot tall chain link fence, festooned with video cameras, and dotted with ever popular mercury vapor lights.

The rest of the street faded away into pitch black, stomped out by lights that would shame a football stadium. We parked and stood in front of the sliding chain-link gate. “This is the place,” said Tamás, glancing at the notepad where he had scrawled the address. On cue, the chain link gate silently slide open and we walked into the graveled yard, following the concrete walkway around the side, to the back, as there was no door in the front.

A giant man, six-foot-plus, dressed all in white — white pants and a white T-shirt, with a strange belt of off-white sheep’s fleece and leather wrapped around his substantial midriff — stood at the top of a short flight of stairs. Tamás and he exchanged what I assumed were pleasantries or secret Magyar passwords, and, once complete, Tamás motioned us up the stairs and into the house.

Glancing around, readjusting the PC cradled in my arms, I began to walk up the stairs. It was then I noticed what I thought was a rather odd looking white German Shepherd off to the side of the back yard. I looked again. It wasn’t a dog — despite being at least two or three feet high. It was the ears that had made me think “German Shepherd.” It was a rabbit. It was a three-foot-tall white rabbit. It was looking at me. I glanced around wildly, looking for Alice.

Tamás called, “Gavin, are you coming in?” I stumbled quickly up the stairs, and through the rabbit hole and into the house, glancing with every step at the rabbit. The rabbit watched intently and then turned away as the door closed.

I found myself in a house furnished in gilt, white lace, bad taste, and computer parts. The furniture — where visible under the computer parts — was that particular color of white and peachy gold favored by cheap hotels and porno producers.

After a brief technical exchange in Hungarian and English that consisted mostly of grunts and technical terms like “power supply,” “220 volts,” “Dell,” “Removable hard drive,” and “200 Euros,” the dead power supply lay abandoned on one of the gilt sofas. I was 200 Euros lighter, and we were back in the car, headed through the late night streets of Budapest.

Back at the office, still feeling slightly stunned by the bunny, I slapped the power supply into the PC, check things thrice, and powered it up. All things were right with the world. Tamás had an office.

We packed up shop, and Tamás dropped us at the hotel. Up before dawn, I was on the train and bound for Prague before a bunny’s breakfast. I spent the train trip in the dining car, either dozing or thoroughly entertained by the various notifications from different GSM carriers that appeared on my Blackberry. Arriving in Prague, I once again realized it was Thanksgiving — I had not made it home. As any ex-pat will tell you, Thanksgiving in Europe always lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nevertheless, I had three days to finish up in Prague before my rescheduled flight back to Amsterdam, and then on to Detroit. I would be seeing no more bunnies.

Since it was Thanksgiving, the evening called for at least a fancy dinner; if not turkey, then it would have to be duck (an easy call in Eastern Europe). My choice was Obecni Dum (Municipal House). It was just a short walk away. It’s called the “Pearl of Czech Art Nouveau.” It’s a landmark in downtown Prague, and home to a pivnice (beer hall) in the basement as well as a kavarna (café) and the classy Francouzské (French) restaurant on the first floor. You can dine surrounded by deco glass by Alphonse Mucha. The food is good too. I had duck, in lieu of turkey. Rabbit seemed out of the question. I remember the dinner with great fondness, and was to see the exact setting again, later, in “Triple-X” with Vin Diesel; same table in fact — art, once again, imitating life — through the rabbit-hole.

Oh, the bunnies; they’re real, by the way, and not at all a vision born of too many cakes and tortes, too many long days and sleepless nights. You see, this arrived in the email one day, assuring me of my sanity. Thanks Jonathan.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when [...]]]> I’m quite fond of my Kindle. Sure, the design’s a little bonkers; and it’s a wee bit awkward. That aside, it is easy to read, easy to use, and mine happens to be loaded with books I want to read.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when I’m travelling. As a result, I tend to carry lots of lots of books along for the ride. For unfathomable reasons, one book is not enough. I must have at least two or three, sometimes more. Consequently, I end up schlepping somewhere around three-point-two million pounds of books to the far corners of the world.

It’s a proven fact that books get heavier the longer they remain in your luggage. It’s something to do with gravity, airplanes, hotel food, relativity, dirty socks, quantum mechanics, and the amount of missing dark matter in the universe. Perhaps, too, the TSA is involved. I can’t quite explain it.

Nevertheless, somehow — depending on the number of books you’re carrying and the length of your trip — they get heavier. It’s one of the true mysteries of the universe, right in my briefcase.

For me, the Kindle has solved this problem. I’ve cut my beastly book burdens down to one pound. I do still, however, manage to clutter up my briefcase with lots of other stuff, but the book weight has definitely diminished. Sadly though, the addition of my Kindle contributed to what I call “the YAB epidemic” (Yet Another Brick). The Kindle added one more power brick to my ever-expanding multiplicity of power bricks; another brick for the wall.

Obviously, the Kindle’s designers were suffering from some form of contagious group insanity when they decided on an almost proprietary charging system. I had just one thing to say to them: “What are you nuts?” (I’ve yet to get their response.)

Just to rub it in, though, those same nutty designers added a mini-USB jack right next to the power connection. I simply fail to understand their thinking. There’s a USB connection right there! USB equals voltage, five volts to be exact. I think they were smoking something and all “ooh, my hand is so huge” and spaced it. There is no other explanation.

Now, supposedly you can use the USB to “trickle charge.” So say the docs. Reality says different.

I haven’t been able to get it to do squat — and I’ve tried with great diligence, several times. And, I mean great diligence. It’s been a diligence driven by the discovery, upon arrival in some faraway place like Sterkfontein, Ashtabula, or even SoHo, that I have once again forgotten to bring the damn charger.

Trust me when I say that I get very diligent when presented with a choice of: A) staring at the walls of my hotel room for a couple of hours, or B) watching late night TV in Afrikaans.

After tiring of the Afrikaans’s late night soaps, and after pummeling a few unlucky people with one or two thousand-word email messages on esoteric subject like telegrams or time travel, I decided to figure out how to fix the Kindle; how to cure my YAB problem and avoid this sort of late night tomfoolery. A few minutes with Google and I had my answer. I’m sure the people that got my meandering missives are all the happier for it too.

It turns out to be easy. The secret is USB. The Kindle wants 5 volts (DC); a USB cable delivers 5 volts (DC). Problem solved. I just need to trick the Kindle into actually charging from a USB cable. After a little research into USB pin-outs — what wires carry what in a USB cable — I was ready to go.

The solution: a cable with a USB Series “A” plug on one end and a “Type-A” power tip on the other end. The trick is to plug the USB’s power into the Kindle’s power socket. I added the solution to my list of stuff to do when next near a soldering pen with a few hours to kill.

The tough part, it turns out, was finding a “Type-A” power tip. Radio Shack had the right stuff, a modular plug and matching cable, but I didn’t like the idea of the plug being detachable. I’d lose that, and end up in the same boat, up a creek without a cable.

We are gathered here today to join these two cables together…

Remembering my father’s advice of “when all else fails, do the obvious,” I took the easy road, bought a replacement Kindle power adaptor direct from Amazon($15.00), and just cut the brick off. (I figured if it didn’t work, I’d just glue everything back together and award myself the consolation prize of a spare power brick — YAB!)

The severed cable gave me the connection to the Kindle — a nice Type-A power tip with wire attached. It turns out the USB side of the equation was equally easy. I just cut the end off of one of the ubiquitous USB cables I have laying around my office. With wires in hand, I proceeded to get down and get funky with rosin core solder and Heat-Shrink tubing.

Might I just break in briefly here to talk about “Heat-Shrink” tubing? It’s second only to duct tape in my panoply of necessary things. Like duct tape, it can solve problems, save the world, and be great fun at parties. Heat-Shrink can save your project or — in my case — make a mediocre soldering job look nice and neat and professional. Everybody should have some around the house.

My cabling ménage à trios:

One “type-A” power tip, Heat-Shrink tubing, and the flat end of a USB cable

The assembly was easy. (The hard part here is remembering to slide the Heat-Shrink tubing onto the wires before you solder them — I got it on the second go-round.)

Knowing what wires go where is also easy. On the USB side, Pins 1 and 4 are the power and ground, respectively. Typically, once you neatly strip off the outer insulation, they’re the red and black wires. Pins 2 and 3 are data (green and white). I just cut them off. Don’t want them, don’t need them.

(Note: I said typically. Who knows what kind of fly-by-night cables you’ve got. You’re on your own. Trust but verify. I ain’t responsible for frying your Kindle, singeing your fingers, or burning down your house.)

Then, you dig out your soldering pen, some rosin core solder, and connect up the following:

• Solder the Red USB lead to the center lead of the power cable.
• Solder the Black USB lead to the braided ground of the power cable.
• Admire your work.
• Realize you forgot to slide on the Heat-Shrink tubes and start again.
• Cut all the wires and slide on all the tubing you think you’ll need.
• Strip the wires again, and solder them neatly for a second time (see above).
• Slide the Heat-Shrink tube up to cover your not-quite-perfect solder job.
• Heat the Heat-Shrink tubing, watch it shrink like magic, and then admire your work.
• Say “argh, ain’t that right purty” like a pirate.

The happy cable couple

The final proof is always in the pudding. So, watching for stray sparks, I plugged one end of my new “hybrid” cable into the Kindle, and the other into my laptop, and was greeted with the warm glow of the “charging light.” Heat Shrink — gotta love it. It even looked and felt relatively neat and sturdy.

Confident in my craftsmanship, I’ve made a special place for the cable in my briefcase, right next to my various passports and my treasured collection of unreturned Kimpton Hotel keycards. It’ll be there, ready, waiting for the next time the Kindle’s batteries are about to die. No longer will I be faced with the vexing choice of either staring at the hotel room’s ceiling for a few hours or watching Hannity and Colmes. The ceiling usually won anyway.

It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me [...]]]> I blame Santa. It was he that started me down this road.

It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me in to the dark world of digital photography. And, at first I was happy, wandering the night streets of Brussels, amazed at the versatility and just down-right fun of modern digital photography. But soon, I wanted more — more lenses, fancy carrying cases, tripods, books, and filters; batteries and bling.

The birthday fairy — an enabler working in cahoots with Santa — served only to fan my addiction. She delivered an amazing piece of glass; a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens. Oh my. With this combo, I’m almost superfluous in the process. You want a lens, this is the one. One lens to rule them all, One lens to find them, One lens to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…

Between the camera and the glass, I need only twirl a few dials and pretend like I know the difference between aperture and exposure, mutter a few incantations about depth of field, and… voila! I have pictures, pretty pictures. I was caught, before I knew it. I’m now carting Nikky the Nikon, everywhere, buying her presents and shiny bling. And, her latest bling is a marvelous thing — automatic geo-tagging.

It’s the lazy man’s way to avoid dragging photos willy-nilly around on the Flickr map. It’s perfect for me. Quite frankly, it’s a great substitution for organic memory, as my poor organic memory was not up to the task of actually remembering just exactly where this or that picture was taken. Was it Traben, Trabach, or Trier? Was it Haute-Garonne or Lot-et-Garonne or Tarn-et-Garonne? Where is the Garonne? Is that the Dordogne or the Lot? Is this France? Who am I and why am I here?

[This whole process, of course, is complicated by the fact that I can't spell half the towns in France anyway. Just when I think I have a word "right" the incessant need to swap vowel and consonant between regions trips me up.]

You see, while the camera can faithfully remember a thousand shots a day, my memory can’t. It only gets worse, as I try to sort through them one or two or three weeks later. So, the latent engineer in me takes over. I call it creative laziness — my incessant drive to figure out easier ways to do things.

Thus, with enthusiasm, I greeted my latest gadget when it arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. Ok, I admit it, I am very — almost (but not quite) pathologically — fond of gadgets, and this was one cool gadget. It was, after all somewhat near my birthday. It was after all only 150 bucks. It would after all save me hours of time! Besides, Nikky would love it. It was important. This little item would save me much embarrassment by automatically adding longitude and latitude to my amateur attempts at photography. That’s right: Automatic geo-tagging, GPS for my camera. Oh boy, would Jane be jealous.

It’s called a Geomet’r and it’s designed to fit right on to my particular Nikon. It fits the D300, D3, D200, D2Hs and D2Xs, as well as the Fujifilm S5 Pro. About the size of a small box of matches, it plugs into the camera and stealthily slips not only the latitude and longitude into the EXIF data, but the altitude as well. Now I know not only where I was, when it was, but just exactly how high above sea-level I might have been. Ain’t that just neat?

Gavin’s Nikon with Geomet’r GPS attached

For $150 it does what it says it does. There are some upsides and downsides, however. First the downsides:

• Despite what the docs say, it seems to take upwards of a minute or two to warm up and find itself. The docs say 45 seconds from a cold start. My experience is that it’s more like 120 to 200 seconds. Given that warm up time, one is tempted to just leave it on. However, there is a slight problem with leaving it on that I mention below.
• You need to be outside to use it. Like most GPS devices, it doesn’t work well without clear access to the sky. I’ve found that even a heavy tree canopy can be a problem.
• The way the connecter connects to the camera body is kind of awkward. It juts out from the side of the camera and makes it difficult to drop into my carrying case. Moreover, I think that it gets jostled around in the bag sometimes, and gets accidently turned on. This is a drag for reasons I also mention below.
• This baby hits the juice like a sailor on shore-leave. I find it cuts my battery life at least in half, if not by two-thirds. This is also why you just can’t leave it on and why having it get accidently turned on when jostled is a drag. Typically, the battery life on the D200 is extraordinary. Rarely did I run out of juice. But with the Geomet’r it can kill a battery dead in less than a few hours. I looked into getting a super-powerful multi-battery pack but decided to just invest in a few more batteries. I typically travelled with two – one in the camera and one spare. I’m upping that to four (proving once again that gadgets beget more gadgets).
• Finally, it has some strange bugs. Namely, occasionally, it seems to just lock up the camera. The LCD display seems OK, and the battery level seems OK, but it won’t take a picture until you click the camera “Off” and then “On” again. When this starts to happen, the battery indicator usually drops to one bar, and I switch batteries, so I think it’s a power problem.

On the up side, it does what it says. It’s the lazy man’s way to add latitude and longitude and altitude information to your pictures. Here’s what I like:

• You’ve got options when it comes to where you put it. I attached it to the leather reinforcement of the carrying strap using the super-Velcro that came with the unit. There is also a small-plastic piece that fits in the camera’s hot shoe, but I find it nicer and more out of the way attached to the carrying strap. The two pairs of Velcro that came with the unit are the “super” sort of Velcro that doesn’t wear out. That’s good. The curly cable is also nice, as it keeps things out of the way but flexible.
• The whole thing seems well designed. My only quibble is the location of the “On/Off” telltale. It’s a small red diode located on the underside. It flashes on and off when seeking a satellite lock, and burns a steady red when on and locked. If I had chosen to put the device in the hot-shoe, I suppose it would be more visible, but I still think it would be better located on top or something, or maybe a blue diode instead of a red one.
• It works. Pictures are tagged with the proper info, and when I uploaded them to Flickr, they all appear right on the map just where I was when I took the photo. My memory is spared the heavy burden of keeping track of where I am, or was, or might be.

As I mentioned, it does what it’s supposed to. You can see the results of a few hours I spent wandering in the Bon Air Rose gardens in Arlington, Virginia. It took a fresh battery, but it tagged all the photos. On Flickr, the mapping is not that accurate, but when using Picasa and Google Earth, it was within a few feet. Here is the Flickr set, if you’d like to see the results. As you can see, I seem to like bees and bugs. Thanks Santa.