Scallop Sauté

(Most of my blog entries will be tech related.  But some will be about other things.  This one is about cooking scallops)

Scallops can provide an amazing seafood experience without being difficult to prepare. This dish is all about delicate textures and delicate tastes.

When buying scallops you’ll see them under several names including “bay” scallops, “sea” scallops, “diver” scallops, “calico” scallops, “ocean” scallops, etc.  Some of those are meant to indicate where the scallops are from, some are about how they were harvested, some are just confusing.  For my money, and for this dish, sea scallops of a fairly large size, maybe 15 or so to the pound, are the choice.

Rinse your scallops and pat them dry with paper towels then season them with just a little bit of salt.  Make a ponzu sauce by adding a little orange juice to some soy, or just buy a ready-made ponzu.  Get about a ½ cup into a bowl, ready to dip the scallops after sauté.

Prepare a sauté pan with a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil and get it good and hot.  Cook large scallops 6-8 at a time (fit the pan, but don’t crowd them), for about 3 minutes on a side.  I believe that the single most important thing about cooking seafood is to avoid overcooking.  As with fish, overcooking scallops or shrimp will ruin the flavor and texture.

Remove them from the pan, dip them in the ponzu, and then sprinkle sparingly with sesame seeds. Stack them high on the serving plate and sprinkle each new batch with sesame as you add them to the serving plate. My advice is to make a lot!  These will be popular. 

I serve scallops either over white rice seasoned lightly with lemon pepper or with couscous, and with either a tossed salad or a cooked leafy green vegetable on the side. Have a salt and pepper grinder on the table.  Serve with your favorite wine.  Though I drink red wine with almost any meal, white seems appropriate for scallops.

If you make this dish, please let me know how it turned out and how your guests liked it!  This one is always a winner at my house.

I’ll probably return to tech posts early next week.  Here are some possible topics.  Leave a comment or drop me a direct mail/message if you like one of these or want to point me to some of your favorite articles on those subjects.

•                A year with the location service "Foursquare"

•                Wearable technology

•                Thoughts on customized search results

Please leave a comment on the recipe, on what I should write about next, or on what you think I should read.

Amazon's Storm Clouds

Whether it’s your data center or someone else’s, downtimes still happen

Amazon EC2  is a cloud computing service operating from multiple data centers around the world, including at least Singapore, Tokyo, Ireland, and in the US, California and Virginia.  Businesses can have servers operating on their behalf from one or more of these locations. Amazon speaks of more conceptual groupings of facilities with terms such as “availability zones,” but ultimately collections of physical and virtual servers are running in physical data centers.  Those data centers are part of the real world and can still have real world downtime.

Amazon has a status page online and that page showed a pretty rough couple of days recently for one of the locations where Amazon operates its EC2 service.  Those who had services running from that location may have experienced a serious disruption for an extended period of time.  If a service was running at only that location, it was very likely down.  Popular services like reddit and foursquare suffered as a result.  Many lesser known businesses did as well.

Should this steer us away from Cloud Computing?  Certainly not. The Wall Street Journal correctly pointed out that Amazon does not guarantee 100% uptime, and that it’s possible to use Amazon’s services (or any combination of servers) to protect against single failures.

In ZDNet's Seven lessons to learn from Amazon's outage, the author points to some of the key responsibilities of the enterprise to understand the cloud service and how to use it carefully and effectively.

If businesses think twice in the near future rather than simply assuming that cloud computing is a silver bullet of low cost, flexibility and resiliency, that will be a fine outcome.  I think the single lesson is that running “Always Available” online services isn’t a matter of enterprise data center versus cloud services, and it isn’t a matter of which big vendor’s software you run.  It’s a matter of careful design by qualified IT professionals who know how to make best use of those enterprise data centers, cloud services, and software (vendor proprietary and open source alike).  It involves serious technical savvy and an understanding of business objectives.  Just like it did before we put services in clouds.

Please leave a comment about Cloud Computing, about designing for availability, or anything else!  And please follow me on Twitter as @dkassabian.

Links:

Amazon Service Health Dashboard

http://status.aws.amazon.com/.

Wall Street Journal

http://onespot.wsj.com/small-business/2011/04/25/b299b/amazoncom-goes-down-is-online-software

ZDNet

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/saas/seven-lessons-to-learn-from-amazons-outage/1296

Tackling Pre-Season Preparation

Sorting, cleaning, organizing my fishing tackle instead of buying all new

I’m a saltwater fisherman. Over the last few weekends I’ve spent about 7 hours reviewing my rods and reels and going through my fishing tackle boxes, pulling out the things in poor shape that need to be thrown away, and then cleaning and organizing the rest.  While at it, I also cleaned up the three tackle boxes the tackle was stored in.

It’s unlikely that I’ll spend 7 hours during the coming year with a fish on the other end of the line!  Most of the fish I catch take only a few minutes to “land,”  so I’d have to catch a lot of them to add up to 7 hours.  Why then would I spend 7 hours fiddling with tackle?

Tackle isn’t free, but it’s fairly inexpensive.  I know lots of fishermen who’d throw away most of the tackle I had on hand and would start fresh, buying sharp hooks and bright spoons and feather jigs.  Why didn’t I do that?

It’s not because I’m thrifty, and it’s not because I’m “green.”  I could stand to be more of each of those fine qualities.  The reason I don’t just buy all new tackle to stuff into my tackle boxes is because by spending time examining every piece, I really know what I have, and what condition it’s in.  And later, out on the water, when my instincts tell me “a larger hook” or “a heavier barrel swivel” is needed, I’ll know whether I have what’s needed and exactly where it is.

Even people who don’t fish much know that clean, sharp hooks are a must.  If you fish with dull or rusty hooks, you’ll miss fish.  But most of the better fishermen I know spend significant time thinking about the knots and the connecting hardware.  Snaps, swivels, wire leaders and the like.  This is the stuff we depend upon to keep the fish attached to us until landed!  Rods need to be sturdy, the guides smooth and clean, and a fresh spool of line for the reel couldn’t hurt. 

I’ll start fishing regularly in the next week or so.  When my first fresh bait hits the water, I’ll have confidence in my rod and reel, in my hooks, my knots and my connecting hardware.  I’ll have confidence that I’m as ready as I can be and that I won’t miss fish by bringing less than my best.  Somehow, that lets me really enjoy my day of fishing.

Please leave a comment about fishing, about preparation (for fishing or anything else!), or both.

Hey, Where Did My iPhone Go?

Surprise!  A cell phone is a location-tracking device.

One of the big news items this week was that Apple iPhones collect and store location information.  Some researchers posted details and also software to show collected data on a map.


But this is not a surprise, right?  It shouldn’t be to most people in the tech industry.  We’ve always understood that every cell tower, and more recently every WiFi access point, has the potential to use signal association data to say “this particular device was just nearby.”  Collect those records together and the network operators know where your iPhone (or other mobile phone) has been. 

What’s potentially interesting about the iPhone revelation this week is that the data is stored on your phone and synced to your computer.  And, seemingly, sent to Apple.

Location as an element of information about users is really very interesting data.  It has value to you and it has value to those who want to sell you things.  For you, location data allows you to get help with questions like “how do I get from wherever it is that I am to the nearest gas station?”  For businesses, the answer is obvious.  Your phone says you’re near a Starbucks, FaceBook says you like a grande triple cappuccino extra dry, and oh look, FourSquare has a coupon for you.

I’m very interested in location data (I'll have more blog posts on the subject in the near future) and how it impacts the way we provide services to users and the way users make use of services.  If I know you are on a smartphone driving down the highway, I might have my application or service interact with you differently than if you seem to be stationary, on a desktop computer, in a library. And of course the privacy implications of location data is really interesting stuff.  I’m interested in how to preserve a user’s privacy while still allowing for location-enabled services.  Storing the data on my phone and computer and sending it to Apple without my knowledge probably isn’t the answer.

CNN reported on this situation and made it seem as if the data is trivially available to any casual hacker (or jealous spouse).  It’s not yet clear to me whether this is true. 

ARS Technica says that Senator Al Franken was motivated to write a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs with 9 pointed questions about the situation.  They seem like pretty reasonable questions to me.  Let’s hope he gets some answers.

In a report that seems credible to me, F-Secure asserts that Apple is using this data to build up their own location database like the ones that Google and Skyhook have.  I’m not sure that they can get everything they need by watching us walk/drive around with our iPhones, but it’s likely that they can get some useful data toward building a large location database (or at least refining one).

So is this really a problem?  My take is that we shouldn’t be surprised that by using wireless devices we can be tracked.  We have a right to be surprised (and annoyed) that we haven’t been clearly told the details and given more meaningful choices.  We have a right to wonder whether the data is anonymized at Apple, and under what circumstances it would be turned over to authorities.

Apple should have been more clear in giving users a choice.  And they should be doing more to protect that valuable data so that a hacked computer or phone (mine or theirs!) can’t expose our location data. 

What’s your opinion?  Please share this blog post with your friends, and please leave a comment here with your thoughts.

Links:

CNN Report
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/04/20/iphone.tracking/

ARS Technica Report
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/senator-questions-apple-in-wake-of-ios-tracking-scandal.ars

F-Secure Article
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002145.html

Public/Private Tensions in Cyberspace

Potholes in the Information Super-Highways?

I’m at the last day of an Internet2 conference on advanced networking for higher education.  Over the years we’ve achieved some really positive things that enable university and federal laboratory research, and also that advance the general state of information technology. 

A quick review may be in order.  Initially, we developed nationwide networks that could be used as alternatives to the commercial Internet.  Borrowing the well-worn highway metaphor, these were fast, wide highways with low traffic and short cuts to everywhere.  The result was that researchers on Internet2 could do things that until then were impractical or outrageously expensive.

That work on the highways (the networks) continues, with more lanes and more destinations added all the time. More recently, though, many of us spend our time in related areas such as online security, privacy, and identity strategies and services that benefit our research community and the broader Internet.  Some of our time is spent directly on user tools, too, in areas including collaboration, video distribution and voice communications over research networks to better support our campuses.

A perennial problem for us is how to get our best advancements – on network designs, on security and identity, on user tools – out to the broader public.  It’s worth remembering that a very large portion of what we know today as the Internet came not from the commercial sector, but from universities and government funded research programs.

So, is there a good way to get commercial network service providers to take up the best of our development and make it available to their customers?  Is there a way to get them to at least provide more bandwidth to more users without large increases in prices when they may be motivated to move more slowly and maximize their profits? Google may have some influence on that one, if their experiments in Kansas City, and perhaps elsewhere, are successful.

Or instead of trying to influence commercial service providers, should our small but successful research networks and services expand to include far more users, going beyond our traditional community to include a larger and more general community across the country? 

A related question is whether US communications networks should be more like the national highway system, substantially funded by the federal government.  A part of me is concerned about government regulation, but a part of me is concerned about the lack of it and the implications of unchecked practices of commercial providers who have a financial interest in the success of particular applications or entertainment channels. 

What are your thoughts on these questions?  Please comment, or share this post with a friend (or both!). 

Communications Magic

I’m in Washington DC for a few days meeting with the higher-education advanced networking community, plus representatives from the federal government, and a few people from some high-end network equipment makers.  We’re here to discuss how to continue to make cutting-edge high performance computer communications available to our researchers.  I’ve been actively involved with this community for about 15 years.

I do see the irony in a meeting such as this.  We’re supposed to be the experts on high performance networks and communications tools, and yet we all travel to Washington to talk in person.  Yes, we could use our technology instead of traveling to meet.  And often throughout the year, we do.  But we all also understand that face-to-face communications are a special kind of magic.  Sharing a physical space with someone, having a friendly argument with them in person, seeing the subtle look in their eyes, reading their body language… these are all elements of communication that nothing else can replace. 

Of course, we have tried.  With the networks we’ve built over the last 15 years – easily 1,000 times faster than the ones we started with – some amazing things are possible.  Immersive virtual reality, video conferencing that allows 6 remote participants to interact as if in the same room, collaboration tools that allow many people to share rich content in real time – these things are enormous improvements over the way we worked together 15 years ago.

Still, when we want the very best, when we want the magic, nothing beats in person interaction.  So we’ll be together in Washington DC this spring, and probably once or twice a year for many years to come.  It’s wonderful to be a part of the community developing the future of online communications.  But I never want to forget that communications magic is still best in person.

Saving Private Browsing

Access To Data About You on the Web

You’ve always suspected that someone was watching your web activity, but you were wrong.  LOTS of people are watching, and they are correlating data about you.  Or to be more accurate, there’s lots of data being collected in an automated way (with few human eyes involved) about your browser’s activities, with or without your actual name, and there’s also lots of data elsewhere on the web that connects lots of things with your name.  So a really complete picture comes about by pulling that data together.

There’s currently a bill in the senate, sponsored by Senators John Kerry and John McCain, that tries to address online privacy concerns.  It’s the first serious effort that I know of to consider privacy in the context of modern online practices.

The bill deals with data collection, retention, and re-distribution of data such as email addresses and other identifiers, phone numbers, credit and banking information, location information, and more.  The full text of the bill is linked below.

It’s a little over 40 pages long, and I’ll admit I haven’t read very much of it and don’t plan to until we see how it’s received and how it evolves in Congress.

According to ars technica the bill would make it possible for internet users to access information about themselves anytime in order to review it, change it or get the information purged.  It also would allow users to be notified every time a third party such as an advertising network accesses some of that data.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this bill would create the nation's first comprehensive privacy law, covering personal-data gathering across all industries. They also point out that in December, the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to authorize creation of a "do-not-track" system, modeled after the do-not-call list that governs telemarketers.  The EFF, though, points out that the lack of controls on tracking is the bill’s most glaring deficiency.

Do the protections the bill would afford us make it worth it, even with it’s shortcomings?  Is it a stepping stone on the way to even more comprehensive protections?  Or would the passing of a bill in the current form allow those tracking practices not specifically addressed to become more entrenched?

Please leave your comments.  We’ll keep an eye on this one together as it develops.

Links:

Text of the bill as it stands now: http://kerry.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Commercial%20Privacy%20Bill%20of%20Rights%20Text.pdf

ARS Technica Article:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/consumer-groups-skeptical-about-new-kerry-mccain-privacy-bill.ars

WSJ Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629104576190911145462284.html#ixzz1JamVtDhr

EFF Article:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/well-meaning-privacy-bill-rights-could-codify

Bobbing for Apple iPhones

A Few Reasons Why Apple Might Not Release the iPhone5 in June

Apple has managed to get the faithful to expect a new iPhone release every June without ever really making that promise explicitly. Heavy speculation begins in the tech-press on the features, form factor and specifications every March or April.  It’s as though in the Spring a young geek’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of iPhones (sincere apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson!).

But while some feel confident about a June 2011 release of the 5^th generation iPhone, others have been talking about possible delays, with a next generation iPhone not coming until later in 2011, perhaps closer to the winter holidays.  Only Steve knows for sure, but I’m with the “delay” group.  I have four reasons.

• The Verizon iPhone4 just came out early this year
• A delay makes LTE capability more likely
• Supply chain problems could have impact
• Waiting now is simply good business

Let’s look at each.

1. The Verizon iPhone just came out

In thinking about the current carriers in the US, AT&T and Verizon, Apple has three main choices if it releases a new iPhone in June. 

The first is for Apple to release a new iPhone5 with separate Verizon and AT&T models.  This is the situation they are in now with the iPhone4 and with the iPad2.  It’s not a great place to be.  Two sets of radio hardware, two slightly different internal designs, and complexity in managing the parts supplies to meet the demands. While possible, this is clearly not ideal.  But most importantly, the current Verizon iPhone4 users, who just shelled out big bucks and agreed to a 2 year contract, could well feel slighted.  They’d have an "old" device, and poor prospects for upgrading soon. 

The second choice is to release one new iPhone5 that can work on either network. That would be technically challenging, and that may be a good reason to delay.  Newer, better dual mode radio hardware may be more available a little later in the year.  Overall, this approach seems better in several obvious ways.  But Apple has to pull off some more complex magic, and Verizon users still feel slighted in the same way as above.

The third choice is to release an AT&T only iPhone5, delaying the Verizon iPhone5 for at least another few months, and maybe until June 2012 to get back on the yearly cycle.  Of the three, an AT&T only release in June seems the most likely to me. But I’m betting against all three.   I think June seems unlikely.

2. A delay makes LTE capability more likely

As the big US carriers think about ways to handle huge user generated load on their networks, especially data loads for smartphone users, they are lining up behind LTE network technology.  But it takes time to roll out LTE networks with large footprints.  And time can only help in getting the radio hardware to be efficient on the user equipment side.  A delay helps on both ends of the connection.  If Apple can wait half a year to get LTE into the next version iPhone, and gets a little maturity in the chipset and in the carrier footprint, that’s a winner.  The iPhone5 would be a significant improvement over the iPhone4 in terms of data rates.

3. Supply chain problems could have impact

I think this is the least likely of the four reasons I list, but it could have impact.  If even a small percentage of key parts used in iPhone5, such as memory, are sourced from Japan, and if Japan is slow to rebuild capacity after recent tragic events, then delivering large numbers of iPhones sooner could be problematic.

4. Waiting now is simply good business

For Apple to even allow uncertainty about a June release is good business for Apple.  For one thing, it keeps people focused on Apple.  It gets me to write this blog and you to read it. 

If Apple doesn't feel too terribly pressured by other top smartphones available, a delay means they can continue to market and sell a product they already have.  That, too, is good business.

Those who want their first ever iPhone, and those current users whose contract is up or who have failing phone devices today might be tempted to wait until June if they knew for sure a new phone was coming.  But if you don’t know for sure, maybe an iPhone 3GS or iPhone4 starts to look like a pretty reasonable option.  That helps keep sales from dropping in the spring.

If the delay turns out to be real, there may be some brief negative press, but then there will be increased buzz building all year, and the faithful will know for sure what they want this Christmas.

I’d like to be wrong, of course.  Because like so many others, I’d like to get a new iPhone5 in June this year.

Please leave a comment and share what you think.

And U and I?

I’m no linguist, but I know that language evolves.  The way English is spoken and written today is clearly different from the ways in which it existed hundreds of years ago.  The same is true for other languages.  New words are sometimes introduced, while some words fall out of common use. 

What makes any particular change in language acceptable?  I don’t think it’s up to the dictionary.  Not exactly.  I think the use of a word or phrase reaches a tipping point.

There are already some words, phrases, and acronyms/abbreviations that have come into common use because of mobile phone text messaging.  Not all of them seem like winners to me, but there’s one in particular I think I can defend.

If the word I use for myself is “I” – one single letter that is as clear as can be – why is it somehow wrong for the word I use for you to be, well, “U”.  I know that a sea of the best literature, as well as letters, newspapers and magazines have been filled with the word “you” for as long as anyone alive today can remember.  And for a lot longer than that.  But so what?  What if this is the moment in time where “you” transforms to “u” for all uses, and does so in a way in which it is just as acceptable in High School English class as it is in the text message my teenager sends to me?

You becomes U.  Your becomes Ur.  I suppose You’re becomes U’re.  Maybe even U’r.

U mean the world to me.   I love u.  U are the sunshine of my life.

I think I’m already getting used to it.  How about u?

Please post your comments and thoughts.

Grill Your Fish (Briefly)

(Most of my blog entries will be tech related.  But some will be about cooking, some will be about fishing.  This one is about cooking fish.)

Now that the spring is here again, I've been grilling more often.  As I get older, I grill fewer burgers and steaks, more chicken and fish. Grilling has really become my favorite way to cook many kinds of fish. 

Start with a large filet from a good fish market.  Salmon is a great choice and widely available.  But fresh local fish can be even better.  I love this recipe with fresh caught striped bass.

I prefer to use large filets with the skin still on one side.  Dry the filet, rub the skin side with olive oil and place that side down on the grill over a medium heat. 

Mix a glaze from 1 part olive oil to 2 parts soy or teriyaki, and add ground ginger and lemon juice to taste.  Slice half a lemon (or lime, or even orange) into very thin (round) slices to use on the grill.  Cut the other half into wedges for the plates.  Brush the glaze onto the exposed fish meat at the start, half way through, and just before taking off the grill.  Place the round slices on the fish and move them aound when you apply more glaze.

I believe that the single most important thing about cooking fish is to avoid overcooking.  Overcooking ruins a good piece of fish by drying it out and by killing the flavor.  If the fish is an inch thick or less, just cook it on one side, skin side down, with the grill cover closed to hold in the heat. 10-15 minutes total time depending on the heat.  For a very thick piece of fish, place foil on the grill, spray it with cooking spray, put the meat side down and cook the fish for 4 or 5 minutes, then proceed as described above for a thinner piece of fish (oiled skin side down).

Take the filet off the grill carefully in one piece and serve on a long serving dish, arranging the citrus slices around it.  If you are plating the fish, I suggest a flat layer of rice, couscous, or mashed potatoes on each plate, a portion of fish over that, citrus on top of the fish, asparagus or string beans on the side. For even more color and variety, grill red and yellow pepper, slice into long thin strips, and serve over or along side the fish.  

Have a salt and pepper grinder ready on the table, and of course a bottle of your favorite wine. If there are left overs, fish tacos for lunch tomorrow!

I’ll probably return to tech posts next week.  Here are some possible topics.  Leave a comment or drop me a direct mail/message if you like one of these or want to point me to some of your favorite articles on those subjects.

•                The new smart phone social network tool “Color”

•                Why a delayed release of the iPhone5 makes good sense

•                Wearable technology

•                Thoughts on customized search results

•                Why Rock & Roll is better than Hip Hop

(Okay I probably won’t write about that last one, but I do honestly think it’s objectively true :).

Please leave a comment on the recipe above, on what I should write about next, or on what you think I should read.

My Doctor Just “Friended” My Pancreas

A Future with Biotelemetry

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor or a bioengineer, and I don’t play one on TV (with apologies to both Robert Young and Marcus Welby, M.D.)

You may already know that you can buy a bathroom scale that tweets your weight, or a home blood pressure cuff that tweets your blood pressure.  Surely all your friends want to see this data about you.  And seeing it once isn’t enough -- they need to see it every day.

Okay they don’t need to.  But if they follow you on Twitter, they might have to.

Biotelemetry involves the measurement and communication of health information. Possibly sent frequently.  Maybe not via Twitter, and maybe not to your friends.  More useful would be to your health care providers.  Maybe it could be sent frequently enough to allow them to do something very useful with the data.  

Sensors and devices on your end and biotelemetry software running at your doctor’s office might together uncover trends like your weight or blood pressure going up.  Now clearly tracking your weight in some fancy new way isn't very exciting.  But what really could be interesting is real-time sharing of vital signs that might allow your health care providers to recognize early indicators of, say, a heart attack or stroke about to happen.  What if they could do so and could contact you and, using geolocation information, direct you to the nearest hospital?  What if they also contact the hospital with information on your identity, suspected condition, and relevant medical history?  

What if all this could happen not just for the very sick or the very rich, but for large portions of the adult population? It seems likely that this could help to save some lives.  Maybe a lot of lives.

It also seems to me that most or all of the technology needed to achieve this is in existence today.  Much of it is even cheap. Tweeting scales have demonstrated that at least some people are comfortable with the idea of biotelemetry, and that it doesn’t take anything much more complicated than Twitter to communicate. Replace Twitter in that picture with secure, encrypted communications of this data to your designated health care providers and your doctor might soon be providing you with a valuable new set of services.

• Do you want this future?  Why or why not? 
• Do you have relatives whose use of pacemakers or other medical equipment already involves the transmission of data to their doctors?  Does it work well and do they like this?  Are there privacy concerns?

Let’s hear your thoughts.

I think that bird said "beep"

This past weekend I found some time to sit out in my backyard with a book, a rum drink, and a Cuban cohiba (big thanks to a good friend for that one!).  It was the most relaxing hour or two I’ve spent in months.  At one point I heard a beep behind me and my brain reflexively wondered what gadget made it and what that beep meant I had to do.  And then I came to my senses and realized there were no gadgets behind me, that wasn’t an electronic beep at all, it was the chirp of a bird.  And then I realized how out of balance I had become.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about technology.  I work in a technology field, I read endlessly about technology news and technology research.  I own and use lots of gadgets. I spend time thinking about how technologies come together and what tech changes and tech trends mean for the future.  I am incredibly lucky in that I can surround myself with brilliant technology thinkers at work, and I listen to what they tell me. I integrate what they say with what I read and what I think, and what I observe about the way people use technology for productivity and for fun.  In short, I’m swimming in technology and while I like it (okay, I LOVE it), nobody should think “gadget” before he thinks “bird” when sitting outdoors on a beautiful early spring evening.

The lesson I take away from this is that I could use a little more balance in my life.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have other interests in my life.  I like to go fishing, I like to cook, and I like good food and drink (a little too much).  But it’s time to adjust the balance and spend a little more time playing piano and a little more time reading about non-technology topics.  So as I kick off this blog, which in all likelihood will spend more time on technology than anything else, I commit to being more balanced.  Maybe some of the entries will bring balance, and will be about fishing or cooking or things I learn from my wife and kids.

I vow to think “bird” the next time, and to turn quietly to admire its delicate beauty.