Jar Full O' Marbles

Yikes, it's been over a month since my last blog post. I've been keeping rather busy with my job, spring yard work, the family and other obligations. Sadly, those distractions have allowed time to slip away from me. That can be a dangerous thing.

I used to be frightened about letting time go by so fast that I would forget about the really important things in life; God, family, friends... all of those things that often bring regret or guilt once you realize that you've been missing them. Years ago, I was fortunate enough to come across an idea to track time that is worth sharing. The concept is to track time visually and to actively participate in a countdown. Being physically involved in the process helps to make certain that you maintain perspective on what amount of time may remain ahead for you.

Here's how it works. I keep a set of glass jars next to my nightstand that are full of marbles. There are a specific number of marbles; one for each week that I may expect to be alive.

Yes, I know this sounds a bit morbid, but bear with me.

After making an assumption on how long that I may expect to live, barring some type of fatal accident or illness (see Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Life expectancy), I purchased a quantity of marbles that represented the number of weeks that may remain in my life. Then, each week I remove a marble to be discarded, and contemplate the number that remain in the jars.

Over the course of time, the number of marbles has visibly gotten smaller. Enough so, that I am reminded about how short our time on earth is. How important it is to cherish the time that we have. How our lifestyle choices may have an impact on the number of marbles that remain in those jars.

Although some may find this idea sad or depressing, I find it rather uplifting. When I see the jars in my bedroom each day, I think about how fortunate I am to have so much time left to live a fulfilling life and how important it is to be grateful for the time that has already passed. The marbles remind me to love my wife and children. To spend time with my parents and friends. To live my life in a way that is spiritually fulfilling.

Those simple glass jars filled with marbles have helped me to live my life with no regrets. If your life is going by too quickly, you may want to consider doing something similar. After all, marbles are very cheap, and life is much too valuable.

Human Powered Search

I've been toying with Mahalo.com for the last few days, and specifically with the web site's special feature: Mahalo Answers. It's a very interesting concept. According to the Mahalo site, "Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links." The idea is that a staff of folks at Mahalo manage the search index to filter out the garbage. It works as advertised.

With Mahalo Answers, folks like you provide the answers to the other visitors questions. I found this much more intriguing than the standard Mahalo search function. Essentially, Mahalo has harnessed the expertise of the public so that they can assist each other with questions that range from hum drum to hypothetical to genuinely very, very interesting.

People who answer questions are rewarded with points, with the opportunity to earn bonuses for having the best answer. Those who take the task seriously can actually earn enough credits to get paid a small amount of cash.

At first I was skeptical, but after reviewing a sample of the questions and answers over the course of a few days I have been left rather impressed. For every question, there is a handful of experts out there in the ether who can provide an accurate response much quicker than what it would take to find the answer through independent research. Most questions appear to get answered in a matter of several minutes; even some of the more complex technical queries (e.g. "How can I modify my wife's 2005 Prius so that the accessory plugs remain live when the engine is off?").

The beauty is that people like you and I often have expertise in something. Mahalo offers us all the opportunity to share that expertise with the rest of the world. Often with people who share similar interests (e.g. "Where can I download/view the Star Wars graphic novels?")

A couple of issues are apparent. One, not all of the people answering questions appear to be bona fide experts, so you must be able to maintain a healthy level of awareness to ascertain if the answer is reasonable; and two, a lot of the questions are kind of goofy (e.g. "Who will give me the best rate on car insurance?"). Mahalo monitors the questions and answers, providing a kind of moderator role. However, they do seem to allow many of the rather silly questions remain. Maybe I expect people to have a bit more common sense than what they possibly are capable of having.

The clever folks at Mahalo have also tapped into the power of Twitter and Facebook to make it even easier to post questions to Mahalo Answers from these popular social media services. They also categorize the questions into a rather lengthy list of useful groups. It has all been well designed up to this point.

Of course there is more than one way to ask questions on line. I have seen Twitter used in this manner (posting questions to the Twitter public for a response), but the vast majority of Twitter users are not monitoring the public timeline waiting for questions that they may be qualified to answer. You can also seek out a forum of experts who may be able to assist, but that in itself can be challenging, especially if you are not certain what type of expert may be qualified to answer your question. Mahalo has solved that problem by providing a web site where questions are consolidated, making it easier for experts of many kind to provide helpful assistance.

There will always be a place for the universal power of an index powered search service like Google, but I believe that Mahalo has found a niche that will hold its own for some time to come. The ultimate power of the "Human Powered Search." I recommend that you give it a try.

Another Birthday

Well happy birthday to me. Another year has somehow passed by without me noticing. They tend to do that.

Celebrating my birthday always makes me think of my parents. On a sentimental note, I think of the decision that they made to have a fourth child, conceived several years after their third. Thank you for choosing life Mom and Dad.

My parents have told me for years that time goes by more quickly the older you get. I never quite understood what they meant by that when I was younger, as everyone was stuck with 24 hours each day, and time was measured using the same atomic clock for everyone. However, they have once again been proven to be oh so wise. It didn't take long for me to realize that the busier my life became, the faster the days, the weeks the hours would fly by. Now as my wife and I try to keep-up with three busy kids of our own, we can hardly believe how the seasons come and go.

Birthdays also make me think of my parents because of the perpetual gift dilemma... What do you buy your parents for their birthday? As children, this is a very frustrating situation. You would like to buy a nice gift to recognize your parents' special day. However, what do you buy somebody who pretty much has everything that they need? Oh sure, it would be great to present them with a 'round the world cruise or a new car, but financial realities moderate those ideas rather quickly.

When we ask our parents what their wishes are, the response is usually something like "Oh just keep your money, there's no need to buy us anything." That just won't do though, as we are compelled to try and make them feel special with a gift, so we usually wind-up giving them something that is either very practical ("Dad says to just get him some new socks.") or very impractical ("Oooh! Another flower vase!").

The humorous side to this story is that for all of the complaining I have done to my parents about this, I now find myself in the very same situation. Our children are in their teens and usually have enough pocket change to want to buy Mom and Dad a little something for their birthdays. Trouble is, we don't really need anything either, so we repeat the same speech "...there's no need to buy us anything," while our children desperately try to choose between the socks or the flower vase.

Whenever your birthday is, happy birthday to you.

If it's Fat Tuesday, it must be Paczki Day!

Ugh! My belly is full. I have been literally overdosing on my favorite Polish pastry... paczki.

Paczki (correctly pronounced as 'ponch - key') are only around for a short time each year. The tasty treats are special-made as a pre-Lenten tradition, making their appearance for only a week or two before Ash Wednesday.

The pastry is often mistaken for a simple, jelly-filled doughnut. However, it is much more than that. The dough is extremely rich, containing plenty of eggs, fat, sugar, milk and yeast. They are filled with one of several different types of tasty fillings, such as custard, prune or raspberry. After frying, the paczki is coated with powdered or granulated sugar, or light icing. The flavor and smell of the dough is noticeably strong. It's difficult to eat more than one, unless you are a gluttonous binge-eater like me.

I grew-up in Michigan City, Indiana, a small town near Chicago that has a Polish-American community that still celebrates many ethnic traditions. My family would make paczki, as well as buying some from the local bakeries. I fondly recall the yeasty smell and wonderful flavor of these treats. My grandmother used to tell me that making paczki was a way to clean out the cupboards and icebox of all those ingredients that would not be needed during Lent; the 40 days before Easter when Catholics sacrifice some of the luxuries of our normal lifestyle.

Now that I live in the wasteland of suburbia in Northern Virginia, my Polish-American heritage is somewhat lost. The area is a great melting-pot of cultures from around the world, but that has also resulted in many of our cultural traditions being lost or watered-down. However, I was not about to give up on having my annual fix of paczki!

After soliciting the help of some friends that live near Chicago, and making a few phone calls, I found a 'qualified' bakery (i.e. a bakery that actually knew how to make a real paczki; confirmed by the fact that the women I spoke to could hardly speak English through her thick Polish accent!). They agreed to ship a couple dozen of the pastries to me via overnight delivery. Thanks to the good folks at Delightful Pastries in Chicago, I have been eating more than my share of apricot, boozy custard, plum, raspberry and rose petal jam paczki for the last four days.

Now that I am dizzy from the rush of carbohydrates, I am properly prepared for the beginning of Lent. And honestly, I've had enough paczki until this time next year.

Mac OS X Lessons in File Permissions and Installation Discs

I am fairly confident in my ability to perform a number of administrative tasks on both Mac and Windows computers. Unfortunately, I may be a bit too confident.

Recently, while working to modify the file permissions on a secondary hard drive installed in our Mac Pro, I allowed my mouse finger to work faster than my brain and I wound up changing the file permissions on the hard drive that holds the operating system and network user accounts.

Uh-oh.

As soon as I clicked the mouse button the world started moving in super-slow motion. It was one of those events that made you wish that you could go back in time for just a few seconds, just like they did in one of my favorite science fiction comedies, Galaxy Quest, where the characters have a beryllium-powered time machine.

So I found myself in a predicament. With the file permissions changed on the OS X drive I was unable to access any applications or files. I was essentially locked-out of using my computer and there it sat in a sad, disabled state.

"No problem!" I told my wife, I figured I would just pop in the OS X installation DVD, access the Disk Utility application and set the file permissions back to their default values. So I dug through my collection of old software discs to find the Mac Pro's gray-colored OEM ("original equipment manufacturer") installation DVD and proceeded to reboot the computer to begin the process.

Not so fast there mister techno-geek.

I booted the Mac Pro holding the Option key (or ALT key if you're using a Windows keyboard). This start-up option will present you with a screen that allows you to select which connected device to boot from. I chose the OEM installation DVD and waited patiently for the installation application to bring-up the menu where I could locate the Disk Utility. Instead I was greeted with a 'kernel panic' screen (see image).

That's not what I was expecting.

So I booted again, this time holding the 'C' key right from the start. This option will force the computer to load the operating system from whatever disc happens to be in the CD / DVD drive.

Kernel panic again... not good.

The kernel panic screen is normally displayed when a Macintosh computer encounters some type of fatal error from which it cannot recover. Such errors are usually attributed to a hardware issue (i.e. bad memory, disk controller, motherboard, etc.). I was confused. My Mac Pro had operated just fine until I changed the file permissions, why was I receiving a kernel panic?

"No problem!" I told my wife again. If I could not access the Disk Utility via the Mac's graphical user interface ("GUI"), I would just use another cool start-up option, holding the Command and 'S' keys while booting the computer to access a good old-fashioned command line through what Apple calls single-user mode.

Soon enough I found myself at the command line and after locating the brain cells that were not killed-off while I was in college, I recalled some of the basic commands needed to navigate via the text-based interface. In a few minutes I was executing commands that allowed me to check the disk for errors (Phew! None found!) and to mount the drive to be writable. However, when I attempted to run the Disk Utility application to repair file permissions I was denied. Evidently, this operation cannot be performed in single-user mode.

Uh-oh (again). Now I was getting nervous. Somehow I had to get to the Disk Utility application from the installation menu.

I was stumped at why every attempt to load the installation DVD resulted in a kernel panic. I found some obscure references on the Apple support site that suggested the OEM installation disc was specific to the original configuration of the computer; so if the user had added more memory or another internal hard drive, the OEM installation may not work. The user would need to remove the added memory or storage device to bring the computer back to its original specifications.

Think man, think...

Well, I hadn't added any memory. I hadn't changed any of the storage devices. The only thing that I had changed from the as-purchased configuration was the video card. The original economy-model nVidia GeForce 7300 GT crapped-out just after the one-year warranty expired, so I had replaced it with a nVidiaGeoForce 8800 (much better!). The failed video card had been discarded long ago, so it could not be reinstalled to bring the machine back to original specifications, and besides, it had failed; it wouldn't have worked even if I had it handy. Certainly, Apple would not allow a replacement video card, one that I had to be replaced because of failure, to prevent me from using the OEM installation DVD.

Au contraire Apple breath.

It seems that the gray-colored installation discs that come with your high-priced Apple computer are essentially worthless the moment you must replace any failed component in the device.

That hardly seems fair to me.

Well, I had no choice but to stop by the local computer store and purchase a OS X installation disc. Not a gray OEM version, but the full-blown, black-colored, retail version.

I inserted the new DVD, and booted the Mac Pro holding the 'C' key. Presto. The installation menu displayed as expected and I was able fix the file permissions and save myself from total embarrassment. The only price to pay for my 'over-confidence' was the $130 for the new copy OS X. A cost that I blame on Apple, since the crippled OEM DVD that they provide with each new computer purchase is absolutely worthless.