I bought a Time Capsule right when it came out, and started backing up my iMac and MacBook Pro immediately. I was so happy that finally things were safe and I never had to worry about losing my files again.

And then the Time Capsule died.

My computers were running just fine, but now I was paranoid. What if my backup failed? If it could happen to Pixar with Toy Story 2, then it could certainly happen to me and I did not want to take that chance. I needed to get serious about backup, right away.

But I didn’t. I mean, I did — I had Time Machine backups on both machines right away — but that was it. If my backup failed as it did before, I was still screwed. And yet, somehow, this kept me feeling safe and secure. Sure, I could lose all my files tomorrow, but whatever, like that’s gonna happen. I’m good.

They say that when something strikes close to home that it hits you, and that’s what happened to me last week. My mother and father own a software company nearby, and my father was installing Visual Basic onto one of my mother’s machines when the hard drive controller failed. It was running two mirrored hard drives, but when the controller failed, it took the machine and drives with it, and even professional data restorers weren’t able to fix the problem completely. It turns out there was a problem prior, and the last backup was a month to the day before.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the end of the world since my mother doesn’t keep anything too serious on that particular machine, but it was a wake-up call to me. No longer could I just have local backup, I needed to make this happen. So here’s what I did.

First, I’ve got my iMac. This is our dedicated media machine for the most part, and otherwise it’s where my wife holds our financial information and all that. Since this is a 2007-era iMac, it doesn’t have a huge hard drive so we keep most of our media on separate USB drives connected via a hub. I have three drives, all named after Futurama characters. There’s Nibbler, a 1 TB drive that holds most of the Whipps Industries archives, as well as some personal data. Then we’ve got Fry, a 2 TB drive that has our iTunes library and nothing else. Finally we have Clamps, a 3 TB drive that backs up Fry, Nibbler and the iMac (which, for the record, has Kif for an icon). Again, all local, all right in one room.

Running everything on USB drives is not ideal. Although my data is backed up on Clamps, it’s still not redundant enough for me. My solution is going to be a Drobo S. It’s Mac friendly, has dual redundancy so I’m covered if two drives fail, and it’s infinitely expandable. I know this may not be the best setup ever, but for someone who doesn’t want to setup an entire server, I think this is probably the best route for me to go. With five 3 TB drives it will also get me 8.17 TB of usable space, which is enough to last me a good little bit, for sure.

For my MacBook Air, I have a 1 TB drive that’s partitioned into two halves: one is Hypnotoad and that serves as my Time Machine backup. The other is Roberto which holds my iTunes library. Since I use Home Sharing for my library, it doesn’t really matter if Roberto is backed up, because if I lose it, I lose the Time Machine backup on Hypnotoad too, and I can always restore the library from the iMac. Just to be doubly sure that everything is covered, I plug in a 500 GB drive named Zapp every Saturday night for a full cloned backup. This way, I know that if my Time Machine drive fails, I’m covered with a clone that is, at most, a week old.

In addition, I use Dropbox (or click here, sign up and I get some bonus space!) for a lot of my files. This is where I keep the current projects and a few other work-related items, which gives me a few different advantages. First, I can share files with friends easily. Second, I know that my work is always backed up, which means I can always get an older version of the file if I need to. Finally, it’s also on my iMac (and therefore, backed up by Clamps), so I’m covered if the Air gets nuked.

Now this is all well and good, but I still don’t feel secure. If some major tragedy happens — fire, flood, sprinklers go off — I’m fucked because it’s all in one space. To solve the problem, I knew I had to go into the cloud for backup, but I wasn’t sure what method was not only the most affordable for me, but also the most attainable and Mac friendly. I decided to use Backblaze, because it’s affordable and will also backup USB drives. This means that not only are Nibbler and Fry covered as part of backing up the iMac (Clamps isn’t because Backblaze doesn’t backup Time Machine drives), but if I ever get a Drobo S, that will be covered too. That means I could have over 16 TB of data backed up to Backblaze, all for $5 a month per machine. That’s worth it to me.

Uploading that many files takes time though, and even at the higher bandwidths that my network provider offers, I’m still looking at over two months to get my stuff into the cloud. Until then, I’m stuck with what I’ve got, but I do have one additional plan that will help out a bit.

My mother has a 27-inch iMac, and it’s been at the Genius Bar five times now with logic board issues. We seem to finally have things worked out, but one thing we did get coordinated was backing up her drive regularly with both Time Machine and weekly clones. In between going to the Genius Bar, we ended up cloning her hard drive twice for two different dates — one for before all the shit hit the fan, and one for right before we had the second logic board replaced (for the record, they do have AppleCare, and we’ve been assured that next go-around we talk about a new replacement). This means she has two drives, and since I have drives floating around here as well, I could have two cloned drives as well. This gave me an idea.

We meet for dinner every Friday night, and if we rearranged our backups for every Thursday, we could just unplug the drives and swap them once a week. This means that my cloned drive would be at her house, and hers at mine. That way, if there was ever a fire at one of our homes, the data would be safe at the other person’s place. We’ll swap two drives each week (one from each machine), and then we’re always backed up for at least a week at a time. It’s not quite foolproof, but it’s not too bad, either.

I know I’ll never be completely safe from problems, but I’d be devastated if we lost any of KJ’s baby pictures or our mammoth iTunes library. By keeping our stuff backed up everywhere, I think we’ve got the best chance of being as safe as possible. Now I just need to get that Drobo and I’ll feel even safer.

after writing my post about keyboards, i soon became a man on a mission. i was obsessed with discovering more about these crazy “clickity-clack” keyboards; could they really improve my typing skills and minimize problems with rsi? i had to know. i just didn’t want to waste the money if i didn’t have to.

there were a few keyboards that i was interested in: the das keyboard, the apple extended keyboard (either the original or the second version) and the matias tactile pro. since both the das and the matias run between $130 and $150, that seemed a little bit stiff for my little experiment. maybe i could find a used apple keyboard online somewhere.

i haven’t used ebay a whole ton in the past few years, but since craigslist didn’t have anything of note in the way of keyboards, i decided to hit the online auction site to see what i could find. after searching through piles of yellowed plasticy messes, i found an apple extended keyboard ii model m3501 for stupid cheap — like $10 — and scooped it up. i couldn’t wait to get my new keyboard and see how it worked.

what i didn’t realize until after the sale had gone through though, was that the keyboard i purchased didn’t come with the required adb cable to make the whole thing happen. no problem, a quick tenner spent at amazon took care of that, but then i remembered that i needed a way to get from adb to usb on my mac. shit. down went another
$20 out of my wallet, bringing the grand total up around $50. this experiment was getting expensive.

i got the adapter and cable pretty quickly, and then waited for my keyboard to arrive. anxiously i checked the tracking number again and again, hoping that soon it would arrive on my doorstep. it came this past tuesday, and i couldn’t wait to hook it up.

making the connection was a breeze, which shocked me a bit considering i was using an adapter from the mid 1990s and a cable made for a product of the same era, but sure enough, everything worked. plus, the keyboard itself was in better shape than i thought. it was nowhere near as yellowed as it looked in the pictures, just a bit down by the base. this might not be too bad.

and then i started typing, producing clickity-clack after clickity-clack, happily stirring up a din in my office. but wait — something was wrong. why were my sentences all starting in lowercase? what happened to the shift key?

well, that’s the real bummer of the whole situation. the left shift key doesn’t work, and i’m not really sure why. i popped off the key to look and see if there was any kind of obstruction and there wasn’t, and even after opening up the case i found no sign of anything that could’ve screwed up the key other than overuse. i tried using just the right key, but thirty years of typing has taught me to rely on that left shift key, and without it, the keyboard might as well be a big paperweight. bummer.

you’ve probably already guessed this by now, but i’m using the keyboard to write this post. it is enjoyable to hear the keyboard click and clack with every hit, something i made fun of other people for commenting on, but it is quite satisfying in a weird way. of course, without that left shift key i obviously can’t use this for my keyboard every day, but it does give me an idea of what it would be like to have one for my daily use. out of the three options, i think this one might be my favorite purely because of the aesthetic. the das keyboard just looks horrible to me, particularly with their font choice. the matias seems really cool (and it uses the same switches as the aeii model), but i’ve heard mixed reviews on the product itself so i can’t quite see myself plunking down $150 just to ship it back a week or so later. that’s the really disappointing part.

so i’m left with the apple extended keyboard ii, but of course, that also means that i have to find a new one. and i do mean “new,” which, believe it or not, is possible. there are people out there who have brand new keyboards wrapped in the box ready to go. unfortunately, they usually understand what it’s worth, and the price goes up accordingly. i’ve bid on two of them on ebay recently, and one i lost and it sold for $300, the other is currently at $276.88 with 16 hours to go. that’s a bit rich for my blood right now.

it’s unfortunate that this one doesn’t work the way i need it to, because i’ve found a cleaning process that helps to remove the yellowing from the plastic, which means that this thing could look brand new with a few hours of work. i think that having an apple keyboard, no matter how old, in front of my other mac products really does seem appropriate, even if it has a bit of an old-school flair. i just wish it worked.

so for now, i’m going to pack up the old keyboard and call it a learning experience. maybe i’ll find a new-in-box model sometime soon for a price i can afford, but until then, i’ll just continue using my apple wireless keyboard. it may not make that clickity-clack that’s so appealing, but it works just fine and that’s the important part.

I feel this way more often than I would like to admit, but today is particularly rough. I’ve got client work ahead of me that is daunting in both size and scope. It requires me to use Microsoft Word, and the last time I used it (for this project, ironically enough), the app crashed so hard I had to reboot my computer, and of course, I lost everything — well, a lot of it, to be sure. More pounding on the keys, more feeling like I’ll never get anything done.

Some people might call this writer’s block, but it’s not. This is procrastination, plain and simple. I don’t want to do the task, so I don’t do it; I’m like a young child who isn’t getting their way; I pout in the corner until something changes. It doesn’t. The job is still there, standing over me like a parent who doesn’t want to deal with my whining. I won’t get paid if I don’t do this, and if I don’t get paid then we won’t be able to pay the bills. I need to do this job. I need to. I just don’t want to. Back to my corner I go.

I delay by going to the kitchen and getting something — Jello, orange juice, water, Ritz crackers — whatever I can handle for this brief moment. I know this procrastination and constant delaying of the inevitable is draining my wallet and fattening my waistline, but I still do it. The task just seems too tough. I remember that there’s something else I need to do — put in a load of laundry, clean the hall bathroom, write a blog post — and I do that instead of what I should be doing to make money.

If I continue down this path, I know what will happen. 11:30 will come and I’ll say, “I’ll just take an early lunch,” then 30 minutes turns into 90 and I find myself in the bedroom considering taking a nap. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” I’ll rationalize, and then set the alarm for two hours even though I know that puts me at 3 pm, way past time to get anything done. I’ll wake up and reflexively check my email/Facebook/twitter for a bit (which kills 15 minutes), and then maybe I’ll grab another cup of Jello. Next thing I know, it’s 5:25 — time to get KJ at his grandparent’s house. No reason to work until after dinner now, so I wait until 7 pm to get back on the trail and accomplish things — assuming there isn’t something good on TV, of course. Then I just want to “catch up” for a minute on my daily reading, and soon it’s time for me to go to bed. I can’t sleep because of the nap, so I lay in bed watching Adult Swim or old reruns of Friends until I finally pass out at 1 am. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It dawns on me that this pattern I find myself falling into way too often isn’t just unhealthy for me, but it’s damaging to the family. I can’t do that to them. They’re relying on me. How can I let them down? This isn’t about me and my selfish desires, it’s about making sure that my son can go to a good school and that I can buy a new car for the family at some point. It’s making sure that I can give them the best life possible, and if I don’t get this project done then I’ll never be able to finish any of my books, which is the stuff that brings me real joy.

This is stupid.

No more procrastinating. No more waiting. No more putting off work.

Fuck it, let’s get some shit done.

OK, fibbing, lying, same thing, right? Well kinda, but it wasn’t as much an outright lie as it was me trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing. Because truthfully, I was pretty sure that I had fucked up pretty bad.

The problem came almost immediately when I sat down to work at my desk. One of my requirements to moving things around in my office was that when I was seated my chair faced the door. This was not easy to accomplish.

For years, I’ve worked with my back to the door, and in moments of intense concentration I’ve found myself surprised half to death by my wife when she innocently walked into the room. This was also a problem when I worked at 944 magazine, but I’ve already covered why an open floor plan office sucks. As a result, I prefer looking out towards the hallway instead of sitting with my back to the door.

Since the door is near the northeast corner of the room, this meant my two options for seating were sitting facing north or facing east. Previously, I was north and it worked out pretty well. The only option was to move east, and that’s exactly what I did. That’s when I discovered the problem.

I own an Apple Display similar to this one. If you look at the description, you’ll see it reads, “And its glossy finish shows off graphics, photos, and video in rich colors and deep blacks.” That it does — oh, and it also gives you a nasty glare when you sit with your back to a window that faces to the west, particularly in the late afternoon.

It was quite clearly an unacceptable issue, but I tried hard to find a way to work it out. I looked at special films that I could apply over the monitor, but those also changed the color a bit, which is obviously a problem for a guy who works with pictures. I considered flipping the orientation of the monitor so that I had my back to the door, but that drove me nuts as well (my kid can walk into a room like a ninja, then scream “HI!” like nobody’s business). It really pissed me off.

I had a long talk with the wife about it, and we realized that, yet again, we were facing a Bryce Conundrum. Do this, and this wouldn’t work, and so on. To make things worse, my wife said something pretty profound.

“You know, I think you just might never be happy. Even if we moved things back to the way they were, you’d be upset knowing that you were close to having exactly what you wanted and couldn’t have it. It would drive you nuts.”

Essentially, I had opened Pandora’s Box and there was no way to get it closed again. Wonderful.

Her solution, although simple, wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but we threw the idea out there.

Curtains.

Now this may seem like a “go to the store and just buy the fucking things” type of solution, but you have to understand that I’ve waged war in this house with previous significant others over simpler things. I had a full-on fight with one girlfriend years ago about a bath mat. Seriously. They say I’m quirky, I say I’m fucked in the head.

I hated the concept of curtains, but whatever, I decided it was the easiest and quickest way to fix the problem and get things back to normal. Plus, if I hated them I could return them, no biggie. So off to Target for some blackout curtains and to the hardware store for a curtain rod, and then about an hour to install and iron the things. The result?

Well, I wasn’t sure. They matched almost a little too well, but the glare was now gone, so that mission was accomplished. But the room looked like a tomb, and now I needed more light. Man was this frustrating.

But the room was still a mess, with paperwork and dust everywhere, so I decided to take a moment to fix those things before I went nuts. I put up a whiteboard, organized some things around the space, vacuumed and then put down the carpet that sat underneath the desk previously (It’s green, kinda looks like grass and is really cool to rub your toes through). Once that was in I walked out of the room for a few minutes and then came back in.

Huh. It was missing something — but what? That’s when I remembered that my wife bought my a poster of Fenway Park a few years back, and we unearthed it during our move back up to Scottsdale. It needed a frame, so off to Aaron Bros. I went, and an hour or so later a framed shot of Fenway with the city of Boston in the background was up on the wall.

Perfect.

It’s weird, but just doing a few quick things really made all the difference, and now I’m much happier with the arrangement. I don’t have a place for my printer yet, and I don’t have a sofa or TV either, but those will all come in time. For now, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got and I find myself rejuvenated by my workspace.

I just can’t wait for the next time when I fuck it all up all over again.

It would be really cool if you followed me on twitter here.

It was the SEMA show, maybe 2003 or 2004, I’m not quite sure of the year. I was just a goofy guy who had his ride parked at the event, not anyone special. At the time, I was at the show with a few friends of mine who had never been before as their personal tour guide. We stayed at the Sahara (what a dump), and had taken the monorail down to the show. After getting dropped off, we started walking towards the North Hall to start our day.

We’re walking in the northwest parking lot, which at the time was mostly trailers and the like, walking behind them to try to navigate my way through the throngs. I wasn’t really paying attention, and I turned my head back behind me to make sure my friends were still there when I suddenly hit this large person square in the chest with my face. Being that I’m 6’1, that’s not a easy task, this was a tall gentleman. “Whoa! I’m sorry, my fault,” I said, as I put my hand on his back. That’s when I noticed the large, wide-brimmed hat he wore and the cane in his hand. I steadied him a bit. “Seriously, my mistake,” I said. “No problem,” he replied, and we went our separate ways. Holy shit. Was that? NO. NO WAY!

As soon as we cleared the corner, I turned around and mouthed “OH MY GOD!” to my friends. They say, “Who was that?” and I respond, “That was Carroll Fuckin’ Shelby, that’s who it was! Holy shit!”

Of course, since my friends weren’t car nerds like me, I had to explain how he was the guy who built the Cobra, the legendary sports car that changed the game for Ford. You know, the one that everyone copies, I’d explain, and I think they eventually got it. The show went on.

I saw Mr. Shelby several times over the next few years at SEMA, just here and there, nothing personal or anything like that. He was always nice to everyone I saw him with, never seemed to have a mean bone in his body. I obviously didn’t know the man personally, but he was a legend in the automotive world, and that’s why I’m sad to hear of his passing.

I’ve interviewed lots of famous people, from movie stars to CEOs and everything in between. I’ve sat down with celbrities before, and asked them intensely personal questions that I was almost uncomfortable to say. And yet, one of my favorite stories, and one of the moments I’m the most proud of in a weird way, was that time I bumped into Carroll Shelby.

Man. Carroll Fuckin’ Shelby. He will be missed.

I tend to write these posts in batches. Occasionally the urge will strike and suddenly I’ll bust out five posts in an afternoon, and I just schedule them for the week ahead. Sometimes something topical will pop up and I’ll hammer out a post, but most of the time these things are done either in advance or after normal business hours so this site doesn’t interfere with my business.

I wrote Messing With Perfection Redux last Saturday, and in the following days I started talking to the wife more and more about what I could do with the office. She’s a kitchen designer by the way, so when I talk to her about moving things around, she gets all excited. Anyways, we were in the office having the conversation, and she starts looking around. Thirty seconds later, she has an answer.

“If you move your desk here, move these cabinets here, move another one here, then put the iMac here and the trash can there, you can get a sofa in here that’s 73 inches long and 37 inches deep, and still have room for a mini fridge, TV and a coffee machine.”

Marrying her was a smart decision, that’s for sure.

Once she tells me this, the wheels start turning in my head and I realize that she’s right — I can fit a sofa, desk, cabinets and all that into my existing space, and it won’t look cluttered. That’s fucking amazing.

But I couldn’t just tear into things, I had my normal workload ahead of me and things were getting busier as the week progressed. I did have a window where I could squeeze a few things in however, and I told myself if I got those projects done, then I’d reward myself by redoing the room. I got things done a bit early, and started tearing things apart, making sure to do it as methodically as possible so I could not only keep the network up in the house, but also so I could have the iMac running in case KJ wanted to watch a movie on the Apple TV. It wasn’t easy, but once that all was done, I could officially start rearranging my office in my new layout.

It took me a few hours to do, but now things are done and it is substantially better. I’ll post pics up at some point, but for now, here are the highlights.

For one, my desk is now bolted to the wall. This seems like a weird step, but my current desk is pretty long, and in spirited typing sessions the monitor and desk would bounce up and down a bit, which was quite distracting. I fixed that by screwing a pair of cleats to the wall, then to the bottom of the desk, which keeps it nice and rigid. No more bouncing monitor for me.

Second, I’ve actually minimized the amount of wiring and power required to keep the room functioning. Before, I used to have a printer connected to the network, which required a switch and a few extra cables. That’s gone now, as is the power strip that used to be bolted to the underside of my desk. No need now, I’ve kept things light enough that I don’t need them.

Third, although I don’t have one yet, there’s now plenty of room for a couch behind my desk. It won’t be huge, but it’s big enough that this can truly become the sanctuary I wanted. My wife came up with the mini-fridge and coffee maker idea, and frankly, it’s brilliant. I found a fridge at Home Depot that’s pretty affordable, so when the money becomes available, I’ll pick one of those up. It will truly turn this room into an isolation tank, which is exactly what I’ll need come next year.

My final big requirement was having a place to mount a television. I’ve done two wall-mounted TVs so far, and each time I’m amazed at just how cool it really is. For this room, I just want a television so that I can watch a few games during baseball season, which is a surprising way to keep me productive. Additionally, I could use it for editing video, or just streaming cool stuff from my iMac or MacBook Air. That’s most likely going to be the last thing I do, because it’s certainly not a cheap proposition. But whatever, I’ve got time. As long as I’ve got a place to put it, then I’m fine.

There’s one other thing that I’ve got in the works for the office, but it involves a bit more backstory.

After writing Keyboard Snobbery, I found myself constantly looking for new information on keyboards. Turns out my father did the same thing, and bought himself a Rosewill keyboard complete with Cherry MX Blue switches for his office computers. While he was doing that, I was simultaneously bidding on an Apple Extended Keyboard II on eBay. Now it wasn’t pretty, but it was stupid cheap and if I’m going to try an experiment, it might as well be on something that’s affordable.

My father started bragging to me about his awesome new clicky keyboard, and finally I went down to his office to try it out. Interestingly enough, I found myself pushing too hard on the keys because I expected it to register the push later than it actually did. This meant that I was exerting myself needlessly, and after figuring that out, I determined that I loved the key switches, it would just take some practice to make them work for me. But I also wanted to try those Alps switches in the Apple Extended Keyboard II, and since I’ve still got a day or two until the keyboard arrived, I don’t have a verdict on that one yet.

That said, even though this particular model is crappy looking with yellowed plastic, if I like it, I’m going to hunt down an original. There are ones that are new in the box on eBay all the time, they just go for a lot of cash. In fact, I even found one that comes with an Apple IIGS, and I considered buying the whole thing just for nostalgia’s sake.

Anyways, it’s not even day one in the new office layout, and I’m already enjoying it. I guess you could call it Day Zero. Huh. What a good name.

It would be really cool if you followed me on twitter here.

I fought this for a long time. When I started my business in 2009, the logic was that I couldn’t go off and move somewhere that I wasn’t known, because my company was based around the automotive industry. If there weren’t custom trucks (and lots of them) then there was no reason for me to move there — and moving to California would be career suicide. No way I was going to do that.

But things changed, and now there really is no roadblock to my moving. I could go anywhere I want within reason, and I really only have a few requirements:

1. Live within 1 hour of an MLB team (preferably in the American League)
2. Be in a primarily liberal area (as opposed to the Red state that I live in currently)
3. Have a moderate climate that doesn’t require me to scrape ice off the windshield frequently, although the occasional snowfall would be fine.
4. Be free (or at least minimize) any chance of natural disasters

I figured this would put me in a pretty good position, and even though the list was pretty specific, I didn’t think I’d fall into a Bryce Conundrum situation based on my criteria.

So let’s say those are the specs, what’re the options?

San Francisco and the surrounding area.

No really, that’s pretty much it. First, you’ve got to look at the Blue states on a map, then cross reference that with American League teams. That leaves you with Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington. We can pretty much cross off the east coast right away, because as much as I love Boston, I hate New England winters. Scratch Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio for the same reasons, and Minnesota might as well be the Arctic Circle as far as I’m concerned. That leaves me with Washington State, Florida and California.

The only reason I would consider keeping Washington in this mix is because I’ve been to Seattle, and it’s just beautiful — sometimes. There’s a huge tech sector there, meaning that there’s potential for my work to expand, and I’d just have to give up the snow issue. Otherwise, it hits all the notes.

So there’s Florida and California left, which requires some examination. In Florida, we’ve got the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins. Tampa is not exactly my cup of tea, and I’ve seen too many episodes of Dexter to live in Miami and not worry about serial killers every day. Plus, natural disasters are a nightmare there, with hurricanes coming almost yearly. Fuck that.

Last is California. I have lots of friends in the L.A. area, so if I wanted to move to SoCal, I’d be in good company. Plus, there’s the Angels there, which means I could see the Red Sox play during the playoffs, and be at a gorgeous stadium. It’s driving distance to the Padres and Dodgers too, so I’ve got it all covered. It’d be great on that basis alone.

But SoCal would absolutely kill my freelancing gigs with the automotive industry. Although I don’t do as much work with them as I would like, it doesn’t mean I want to shoot myself in the foot in the process. Plus, L.A. is so packed with traffic that I just don’t want to deal with, and the price of housing is insane. No, I think the general L.A./Orange County area is out of the question.

All that’s left is San Francisco, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. How the fuck would that work out?

Let’s compare things to the previous checklist:

1. They’ve got the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s, which means I can catch some great baseball in a cool stadium, or see the A’s play the Red Sox.
2. Doesn’t get much more liberal than the SF area.
3. Doesn’t seem like it snows much out there
4. Yeah, so that’s a problem.

The Bay Area is notorious for their earthquakes, and that’s something that genuinely concerns me. They all say that we’re waiting for “the big one,” and I don’t know if I want to be there when it happens.

But why does it have to be San Fran proper? There’s lots of nearby options that still fit the criteria, and could work just as well. There’s San Jose, Cupertino, Mountain View and more in the Silicone Valley area, but if I decide to go a bit more east and inland, there’s Stockton and Sacramento. Would they work for me? Who knows, but they’re options at least, which is more than I can say for some spots.

Now the big question: Will this ever happen?

Probably not. Although I feel right now like a change in scenery would be a good thing for me, I’ve got a family to consider. The schools in my area are fantastic, which means that KJ would get the best education possible. Financially, it makes more sense to stay here, even though it’s not exactly a cheap place to live. Plus, it means that I’ve got to actually put forth the effort to find a place, which is a huge battle in itself. That, and I’m scared to death of moving, it’s just one of my things.

Still, I have friends in the SF area, and it’s an option that I’d like to explore further. I’d hate to think that I turned down moving to a different area just because I was lazy or scared. Maybe in the next few months I’ll take a trip out there to see what it’s like. Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love.

It would be really cool if you followed me on twitter here.

But in my quest for perfection, various ideas have come across my mind in the pursuit of having a drool worthy workspace. And one of those ideas was the direct result of thinking outside of the box — in particular, about a novel.

I’m working on writing a few different books right now, and one of them is a piece of fiction. That’s a different concept for me, because although I tell stories for a living, they’re general non-fiction; I’m crafting what someone else has actually done, not coming up with something from scratch. And let me tell you, up until very recently I had a genuine concern that I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

See, I knew the basic concept of what I wanted the book to be, but I didn’t know how to setup the arc of the story properly. I knew there were a series of different events that needed to happen at specific intervals, but not a lot of ways on how to tie them all together. I had this idea that I needed to sketch things out ala J.K. Rowling, and I still think I do — I just didn’t know how to do it.

To figure it out, I went to the bookstore with my wife and started trying to find books on the topic. I found a few, but it looked like I was going to spend a few hundred on books that may or may not help my cause, so I found them on iBooks, tried the samples and ended up finding one out of the twelve that really helped me out. I’m about a third of the way through it so far, and it’s been a boon to my productivity by giving me tons of ideas for the book.

One thing they brought up was to have a space where you sit down and sketch out some ideas. This is a unique area (read: not my desk) where I can come up with fresh ideas and concepts and will also help foster creativity. They suggested a comfortable chair or a sofa, and I thought about how I could do that with my current situation. In theory, I could just temporarily relocate with my laptop to the bedroom or the living room — lots of comfy stuff there — but since we’re planning on having another kid soon, I need to really turn my office into an isolation tank of sorts. A real cave for me to be able to focus and get my stuff done in, which is complicated by the fact that I don’t have a lot of space to work with.

The other problem is funding for this little project. I don’t have the cash right now to plunk out and buy a new sofa or loveseat, particularly when it’s for my office and not the main part of the house. My first thought was to take the loveseat from our living room and relocate it in the office since we want to replace those anyways, but it’s way too big. At 40 or so inches deep, it would just dominate this room like nobody’s business. I’ve looked for alternatives as well, but nothing really pops out there quite yet. I’m hoping to find something soon.

Creating this perfect cave is an exercise. Sometimes things work, sometimes things don’t, and it’s all about finding a proper balance between them all. In the next few months, I may do some tweaking to make things just right, but in the process I’m a bit concerned that I’m going to be stuck in a Goldilocks situation. Right now, it’s a little too warm. Next time, maybe a little too cold. Here’s to hoping I find just right before kid No. 2 comes.

It would be really cool if you followed me on twitter here.

The argument often goes like this: The iPad is more portable than a MacBook Air, and because it allows the user to focus on one task at a time, it means that they can get more done on a smaller device. There are other, very valid points about the iPad’s advantage over the MacBook Air such as the price, LTE option, weight, battery life and so on. But “distraction free” is not an advantage, nor is it a liability. It’s a function, not a feature.

Right now, I’m typing this document in Byword on my MacBook Air connected to a 27-inch Cinema Display. In the background is a Google Chrome window with various web links open for the purposes of this article, and I’ve got nvALT running as well to sync this doc with Simplenotes. Yes, I can switch between things quickly on the iPad, but stopping, highlighting links and the like is just not as fast on it as it is on the MacBook Air. There’s just no comparison.

What really prompted me to write this piece was an article titled, Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop. I expected to agree, and for the most part, I do. But then there’s this part:

Of course a writer would like the ipad. The tools most needed to get their work done are right there for the taking, you can hunt and gather all day long and it does make a fantastic, distraction free space to write in.

But it doesn’t.

Most writers that I know that use the iPad for writing have a setup akin to this:

I too had something similar for my iPad when I first bought it, and I carried around this bag that contained my iPad, keyboard, stand and various charging accessories. It was this one, matter of fact, and it was thicker and heavier than my 13-inch MacBook Air.

If you have to carry a keyboard and stand with you wherever you take it, then how is the iPad any better than the Air? LTE? Sure, if you want to pay that premium. Battery life? I’ve gotten 6 hours out of my Air before, which is enough to cover me on a flight between my home and Boston. And it’s not like you’re going to travel across the country without a charger, whether you’re using an iPad or an Air so the longevity of the battery isn’t really that big of an advantage to me. And even though it lasts a long time, running out of battery power on your Bluetooth keyboard sucks because last I checked, Delta Airlines doesn’t sell AA batteries.

Now, is the iPad an excellent tool to use? Definitely. I think the Smart Cover alone revolutionized the whole device, because now it has essentially an integrated stand. That makes typing all the easier, although it still doesn’t really negate the need for a separate keyboard if you want to do some heavy lifting. And as others have pointed out, the iPad sucks for editing. That’s at least 40 percent of my writing workflow right there (write, do a first read with copy editing, edit more, rewrite, etc.), which means I’m going to be slower doing the same task. How is that an advantage?

So to me, all this talk about being a laptop replacement is a bunch of overhyped hokum. Look, I love my iPad, and most of my family loves theirs. Hell, you can’t pry my mom away from hers, and she thought it wasn’t that special when it first came out. But it’s not a laptop replacement, no way, no how. It can’t be, not as long as I have to carry around accessories to make it functional as a true writing device.

What would change that for me? The Hooper Selection option is definitely one route, but even just modifying the keyboard ala iA Writer is a better approach than the current layout, particularly if you’re writing in Markdown. Even putting arrow keys on the stock keyboard makes things faster than it is today, meaning that I wouldn’t have to carry a keyboard. And if I don’t need an accessory, then it’s a laptop replacement.

If I could only choose one mobile tool to take with me everywhere and I had $1,000 to spend on either a maxed out iPad with LTE or an 11-inch MacBook Air, I’d get the Air every time. At the end of the day, I want the best tool I can use for the job and for me, that’s a laptop. I hope the iPad gets there someday, but until I can use one full time without needing to carry $300 in accessories with me, that’s not going to happen.

5/3/12

KJ-

You’re scaring the shit out of me kid, you really are.

Three days ago, you had a temp — 102.8, a number high enough to freak me and your mother out pretty good. Although we know full well that a toddler can run a temp up to 101 and it’s really not a big deal, it’s huge to me, and it puts me right into emergency mode. When the fever subsided, I thought we were in the clear, but we weren’t. The next day it went up and down, peaking at 103.8. Then yesterday, you were at 104 when we dumped you in a lukewarm tub. There you were, sitting there, shivering with blue lips and freckled fingers like you were going to get frostbite, and your temp read 105. Holy fuck.

I started to pack up to hit the hospital, and then we checked it again. 103.5 this time, then 104.5, then 102. Is this thermometer even working right? Since I wasn’t sure, I sped to my parent’s house and borrowed their brand new one to find out. Turns out that we were in the danger zone, but not quite as much — 103 or so for about 15 minutes, and when the Tylenol finally kicked in, 101. We finally got you to bed, but it was rough, and so was the rest of the night. Like clockwork, every three hours the temp would spike. We’d select which med we could take as our doctor recommended alternating acetaminophen and ibuprofen every three hours, and dose you up. Forty-five minutes later, you’d be sleeping again, but not comfortably. It’s been quite scary.

We took you to the doctor today, where she discovered that you might have a bacterial infection. Something is going on with your tonsils (a problem I know way too much about, unfortunately), and so even though it doesn’t appear to be Strep, she’s going to treat it like it is anyways. We’ve been told that if your fever hits 105 again to go to the ER.

But that’s the good news. Last night, after you went to sleep, I broke down, sobbing in front of your mother. I was scared you were going to die.

When I was a kid, just over four years old, I was told that my sister was going to die. She was being worked on by doctors at a major hospital that knew their shit. They were the best in their fields, and they knew without a doubt that she was going to pass away — and it was going to be soon. She didn’t die.

I heard this story throughout my life. It seems like I was told my sister was going to die more than she was to live, and there were quite a few rocky years in there. But right before she turned 27, she was scheduled for open heart surgery to correct a problem she had since birth. We were seeing the best surgeons in the world at a place that did surgery on presidents and congressmen. They told us she was going to live. She died just a few days shy of her 27th birthday.

I have to trust doctors, but that doesn’t mean that I’m happy about it. I feel like I have to trust them because I don’t have the knowledge or the schooling that they do, but I also am very aware that they are fallible, and they will make mistakes. This is the way things are.

I can’t let something happen to you the way it did to my sister. I can’t go on living if I lost my sister and my son, it’s just too much for me to bear. Doctors may call me a “helicopter parent” as a result, but I could give two fucks what they think. If they went through what I’ve been through, they’d hover more than me.

KJ, right now your favorite movie is Finding Nemo, a story about a father who loses his son in the middle of the ocean, and travels miles just to try to find him. Along the way, he realizes that he’s been too smothering and needs to let Nemo live his own life and make his own mistakes. It’s something I’ve taken to heart and I’ll be sure to let you become the person that you want to be.

But when it comes to your health, I’m not fucking around. I’m not going to let the same thing that happened to my sister happen to you, because I care about you too much. I’ve. Ever loved anything as much as I love you.

Tonight, your mood is much better, and your temp has toned down quite dramatically. I’m hoping that tonight will be easier than the last, and that tomorrow you’ll be fever free.

As always, I love you.

-Dad