I had a traditionally busy day today… Wall-to-wall phone meetings, punctuated by some recreational programming. Not all bad. The one highlight that I had was a conference call at which a friend of mine, Luis, was talking about his life beyond email.
That’s right, I said life beyond email. I must admit I was skeptical. The premise of his talk was that using social networking, or the enterprise equivalent of social networking, one could free oneself from the daily burden Of picking your way through a huge mail inbox. I assume most of you can sympathize with this problem. I personally get between 100 and 300 emails a day and attempt to answer everyone. Most nights I go to bed with my email more full than when I woke up and so by the end of the week I have a mountain that I have to struggle through over the weekend. Worse yet, going through email takes away from actual time of doing things. I once heard someone say that email is a task list managed for you by other people.
As skeptical as I was, I listened with interest as he told us how he had gone from one day of having hundreds of emails like me to his current situation where he gets one or two emails that he responds to every day. I want that inbox… I’ll bet you do too. His suggestion on how to get to that point was stunning… He suggested you just stop answering email. What? Stop answering email? How would that work?

I don’t know…. But whats the worst that could happen ?

Night all, night Sam
– Me

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

As in ‘ whats nu’ the greek letter used to denote frequency .. Like :

E = hv
Lambda = C/v

Im sitting here watching Gbae work through an amazing chemistry lab write up on rutheford, bohr, planck etc…

–

They’ve calculated the speed of light to 0.02 % accuracy using a microwave and a chocolate bar.. Calculated Planck’s constant using a voltmeter and a bunch of colored leds and calculated the frequency of violet light using a cd and a yard stick…
… I am looking at this stuff…most of it that i have used in my work over the years… And realizing how little i really understood it the first time i saw it… Watching gabe grind through it now, i find im still learning…

We were Never this smart as kids..

Nite all, nite sam
-me

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

So careful readers may realize that I have been trying out new speech dictation technology in my iPad. If it only would work, it would remove one of the biggest barriers I have to writing. I’ve never been able to write easily. Actually sitting down every day like I do to write here, has been The best thing I’ve ever done to overcome my fear of writing.
The promise of a technology that would make writing as easy as speaking is almost too wonderful To consider.
The problem is I’m not better a reader as I am a writer… That means when I try to proofread something that I dictated like I am doing right now I often don’t see the errors. At least this way when I’m talking everything maps to a word… it just may not be the word I mean..
Still the technology that I’m using is just the little microphone at the bottom of the iPad does a pretty serviceable job. It allows me to speak at a normal rate and pace. It gets most words correct or at least closed. And it allows me to say certain punctuation like., – “”!?, ;…
As smart as it is it still doesn’t know the difference between 22 and two.
Oh man, really garbled that one.

But any technology that can recognize supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Is pretty cool in my book.

Let’s try some dictated tongue twisters shall we?

She sells seashells by the seashore…
Peter piper picked a peck of peppers
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Not very good in foreign languages though. My Favorite Spanish tongue twister
Pancha plancha con quatro planchas,con cauntos planchas Panca plancha ?
Becomes:

Punch up Logicon Quatro’s contest on toast crunch as punch Uppland?

I going to actually try dictating my next white paper. That will be interesting to see if it can get technical Jarjon correct I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s it for now more speech tomorrow
Night all, night Sam
– Me

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Quiet and Cold here Today. Linda and David took off this morning around 10. It was so so nice having them here. It was cold and raw, too cold to go out and run. Not enough snow to snowshoe or ski. So we just stayed in. The rest of the day was pretty quiet. We went to Marcy’s house for Finns three-year birthday which was fun.

And we had a quick dinner at Jen and Tim’s which was fun as well.

The rest of the day I spent puttering in the lab which was down time I sorely needed.

While I worked, I thought about a dream that I had night before last. It was a dream about Sam. In the dream I had found a small electronic button. It was about an inch And a half wide. . When I pushed it, I could see and hear Sam as he was when he was about 10. I kept pushing the button and listening and watching him. It was so clear and so funny and so much fun. Then I realized that he was actually talking to me. Each time I pushed it he told me that I could really talk to him. And I did. It was a little strange because you could only have about a five second conversation.… In the conversations couldn’t span between the button Clicks. Even so, it was great to be able to talk to him like that. He seemed like he was doing well and was having fun. I woke feeling really good.

I was trying to figure out why such a dream would make me feel good not sad. I didn’t come up with a good answer. But I guess there really isn’t one.
I have to confess I rummaged around in some of my junk drawers trying to find that button or something that look like it. But no luck.

I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Night all, nite sam
– Me

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad