Things I hate about flying First Class

I normally fly coach for all my business trips but recently took advantage of an upgrade offer to First Class on an 6 hour trip to Boston. I have not flown First Class since I was 12 years old, and I had forgotten what the experience was like. I thought I would run down my "like" and "dislike" list for you.

First of all, I really hate that you get on the plane first, bypassing the long annoying line of coach passengers. Oh wait... that was supposed to be on my "like" list. Well, I really hate that they serve lunch like it came from a 4 star hotel with a never ending supply of red or white wine "on the house". Hmm... that was supposed to be on my "like" list too.

Let's see....
Hot steamy towels to wash up before lunch...
Gold label salted almonds for snack...
Chocolate praline desert (OMG that was good)....
Fresh brewed coffee in a real mug...
Complimentary headset....
Nice fluffy pillow...
Extra twelve inches of leg room...
One flight attendant for 6 people....
Fold down foot rest for my tired feet....

...yeah.... those were all supposed to be on my "like" list.

Ah here it is... the "dislike" list..
Those pesky flight attendants always filling up your glass or asking if you want anything else to make your flight more comfortable.

OK, so I had to have something on the dislike list. So I guess it is pretty clear, I will be trying to book First or Executive class for all my long flights in the future.

I think every person who is involved in providing front-line customer service should take a First Class flight at least once every year. This is an airborne classroom in the art of exceeding expectations. If you interact directly with clients and are responsible for their satisfaction, a First Class flight to anywhere is a good lesson in the difference between meeting customer expectations and exceeding them. Anyone who has a goal to provide exemplary customer care can learn from this experience.

No, I did not save you any almonds.

Afghanistan ... Again....

There are a few numbers that have been on my mind lately.

One Hundred and Fourty Six (146) - This is the number of Canadian soldiers who have given their lives during the current war in Afghanistan.

One Hundred and Three (103) - This is the number of months that Canada has been actively involved the war in Afghanistan.

Twenty Eight Hundred (2800) - The approximate count of Canadian Military troops engaged in the war.

Eighteen Billion ($18,000,000,000) - The approximate dollar value the Canadian government has spent on supporting the war.

Thirty Four Million (34,000,000) - The number of Canadians who just want our troops to come home safely and just have it all over with.


We are in Afghanistan to help restore the democratic government that was over thrown by Sunni radicals (Taliban) in 1996. Hamid Karzai is the rightful, democratically elected president of Afghanistan, and he deserves the right to lead his people to rebuild and prosper in a democratic country, for the good of all other countries on this planet. In order to do that, the oppression and violence of the Taliban insurgents (NOT a government by any means) needs to be removed before that rebuilding process can really begin. We, the USA, and the Russians are largely responsible for allowing the Taliban to take power in the first place, so we have a moral obligation to set things right.

I get a little weary of hearing people whine about how Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party are responsible for us being there. This situation pre-dates Stephen Harper by decades. The previous Emperor of Afghanistan was overthrown in 1973 and the country has been in a variable state of civil war ever since, often fuelled by US/NATO and Russian arms sales. We joined the allied forces in Afghanistan under Jean Chretien's Liberal government in October 2001 and that party had 5 more years in power to choose to change that path before the Conservative government came into power and inherited the situation.

If Canada were overthrown by a radical, violent, oppressive regime bent on self-serving profiteering by turning our farmland into drug growing operations, as the Taliban has done in Afghanistan, I would welcome an invasion of NATO and allies to fight them and help win back our freedom and right to a democratically run country.

We *have* been there too long and we *do* need to bring our troops home, but we have important work to do there and the people of Afghanistan deserve the right to self government. This is about global stability and fighting for the concept of open democracy. This is about fighting oppression and tyranny where it lives strongest. I support our troops there 100% and hope they can get the job done soon so they can all come home safely and we can look forward to a long term beneficial relationship with the new democracy of Afghanistan.

We live on this planet, not just in this country and we all have a moral obligation as citizens of Earth to help other countries provide for a safe, democratically run government for the good of all mankind. Canadian soldiers know that their lives are at risk every day to meet that goal, regardless of the country they do it in and for that I can only say "Thank you".

Criminal Negligence in the Oil Field

I have to wonder if anyone on the planet actually believes that the thousands of barrels of oil per day that spill into the Gulf of Mexico are anything more than a scheme to increase the value of oil while creating work for thousands of unemployed Americans. I am actually starting to wonder if BP execs didn't engineer the "accident" in he first place. It would not be the first time a large company broke the law and ignored morals in order to turn a profit.

Where were the inspectors who are supposed to ensure that safety mechanisms exist in the event of a failure? Where was the government regulation that was supposed to prevent this kind of disaster in the first place. Where is the political will to enforce a fix and clean up? Why are we now 45 days into he worst ecological disaster in written history without any sign of repair or responsibility?

Why is it that a couple of farmers can come up with an almost free clean up scheme [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6_LU4zHlSE] while BP, who is at least partly responsibe and is one of the largest corporations in the world chooses to spend $50 Million on TV advertising to basically say "it's not our fault". In fact, there are a large volume of suggestions to fix this mess that are going largely ignored. It amazes me that the US Army core of engineers has not been engaged to seal the leak. Leaving the clean up responsibility in the hands of the idiots who caused the problem in the first place is insane. If the US government will not step in and take action then perhaps the UN needs to engage their peace keeping forces and their associated engineering cores to solve this problem at any cost and them bill it all back to BP and Transocean.

Once we finally clean up this mess, Transocean and British Petroleum should both be held criminally responsible. Yes, I said criminally responsible. The damage this has and will cause to the life-forms that depend on the Gulf of Mexico for survival, including humans, is staggering. Their inability to protect the environment that surrounds their drill-site absolutely must be punished not only in painful financial damages, but in prison terms. If the US government will not demand it, then we and citizens of Earth must do so. If this kind of business over humanity thinking continues, our civilization will be lost forever.

You may think that sounds overly dramatic, but history tells us otherwise. Greed makes men wealthy while destroying the planet we rely on for survival. This kind of environmental impact can only have devastating effects on us as a society of people, and where will the perpetrators be when we are looking for new resources to feed ourselves years from now?

It's time for people to take a stand against corporations who recklessly endanger our lives by poisoning the environment with their waste and accidental fallout. Entire species face extinction because some corporate executive chose not to spend the money to fix a safety mechanism.

What an incredibly sad commentary on what 21st century man has become.

Hackers, Crackers and Programmers

I recently had a discussion with a person who presumed that since I knew how to write code for computers, that I was a programmer. I guess this is true at a very high level, but I prefer the term hacker for what I do. So what's the difference?

Programmers will use a $50 brand name crowbar and will postpone a job if they don't have the right one. Hackers will use a left over piece of re-bar from the garage. A programmer speaks one or two languages fluently, while a hacker knows 10 or 20 languages at a functional level.

A programmer will write an elegant piece of code that is fully documented and takes most variations into consideration with error handling and pretty error messages. The code will be written to industry standards with strict variable scopes and attention to validation on inputs. There will be copious commenting as well as a fully documented usage guide. It will take two months to release a final version and even then, it will be called "beta" until several users have tried it without any problems. There will typically be an upgrade path that is well thought out in advance and patches will will be built for all possible operating systems.

A hacker will give you the same piece of code in three days and it will work exactly as you requested for the environment you want it to work in. It is unlikely to run without modification on any other operating system and all new versions will have to be hand coded. The comments will all be in-line with the code because only other hackers would want to look at it right? It is unlikely that you will see a manual or user guide, but you might get a one page README file explaining basic usage. You will most likely be handed version 0.01a and the concept of "beta" if foreign to hackers.

Programmers will introduce themselves as a "C programmer with a degree from Stanford" or a ".NET Programmer with a degree from UBC" and they will have experience with methodologies like "Agile", "Scrum" and "Rational". A hacker is unlikely to identify themselves at all and never had the time to bother with finishing a degree. You often have to "know someone who knows someone" in order to find a hacker, while programmers typically carry business cards touting their credentials. Programmers have rules and ethics and follow protocol. Hackers don't think too much of rules, have flexible ethics and only follow protocol when they need to.

Crackers are hackers gone bad. These are the people who spend thier time writing mail worms and viral files and password decryptors. They often are brilliant one-time hackers who crossed over to the dark side and the allure of the pirate world. They get high on the thrill of seeing one of their code creations seep into millions of computers undetected. They sometimes are recruited by corporations for digital espionage or by organized crime for a multitude of nefarious reasons.

Hackers don't like Crackers.

I definitely fall into the "hacker" category in everything I do. Whether it is software, hardware, robotics, AI, writing, or building a deck on the back of the house - I'll always take the hacker approach. I have a number of friends who are professional programmers and I have immense respect for what they do. If I want a polished market ready application built, I would definitely have a programmer build it, but you can guarantee the first version would have been hacked into place.

Fat Tuesday!

Whether you call it "Fat Tuesday", "Mardi Gras", "Carnival", or "Day before Ash Wednesday", today is the last day before the fasting and penitential season of Lent. It is also Pancake Day!

The later may be more significant to many these days, but there was a time when the known universe operated in fear of, or under the rule of the Roman Empire that was fuelled primarily by the Catholic church, and no pancakes were served.

In any other measure, it is 47 days into the new year and the hours are ticking away. If you planned on making a difference this year, carpe diem and all that, it is time to start (if you have not already). In the days of the Roman Empire, when every day was critical to your survival, the 44 days of Lent had other important geo-political functions, and Fat Tuesday was a pretty significant day. Today, it is a good reminder that there are only 365 days in a year and this means we are well past the 10% point.

In the business world, it is critical to understand that this is also the point at which business gets back to business. The holidays are over, summer is on the distant horizon and there is a window of opportunity for the next few months to make your mark on the year. After three decades of working for a living, I've noticed these patterns emerge in every company I have worked for in every industry. There are always those people who don't take advantage of this opportunity and find them selves scrambling in the fall to make up for lost time.

It is a fabulous time of year to be creative. Writers, painters, and sculptors find inspiration in this time of year and with good reason. Not only is it the beginning of a season of fasting, it is also a season of new growth, rebirth and the melting away of icy oppression. Any hungry creative person should take heed of the chance to teach, build, write and generally do whatever they can to mold the world around them.

The Chinese call this the year of the Tiger (4707 post Huangdi) and in the tradition of the tiger, I plan to stalk and pounce on every opportunity. I think I wave written more this year already than I did most of last year. Unfortunately I have less time for pancakes.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2010. Wow - There were a few times over the past decade that I thought I would not be saying that, but here we are - fat and happy in 2010.

Like most people I try to take some time today to be introspective, to take stock of who I am, where I'm going and where I've been. I like to crack open my resume and touch it up with all the new things I've learned over the past year, and to write a few "thank you" cards to people who have helped, inspired or somehow improved me as a person. This year will be no different except that I have been thinking over the past 10 years a little more.

What a decade this has been. We started by battling fears that 2000 would see a worldwide computer crash leading to feast, famine, accidental wars, and general badness. Well the crashes were minor and deserved, the plagues of locusts never appeared, and it turned out to be a lot more media hype than anything.

In 2000 I was working with First generation (28 million transistor) Pentium CPUs, movies were watched on TV and theatre screens, and a "Walkman" was still the device of choice for portable music. Ten years later, even compact notebook computers use multi core processors with nearly a billion transistors on a chip. YouTube has replaced all other forms of video entertainment as far as volume goes, and the iPod has completely revolutionized how we store, carry and listen to music.

I personally have seen a number of changes in my life that track with technology including a move from the sunny Okanagan Valley to Calgary in 2002, a complete transformation of my business between 2002 and 2006 and a new lifestyle that has me spending more time in jets than cars. I've been able to watch "robotics" grow from a hacker hobby into an actual industry, Ive seen the Internet transform from "tool" to "environment" and I've witnessed the birth of real virtual communities. This year I think I will spend a lot of time thinking about what the next decade will look like and what part I will play in it.

The past year has been an interesting adventure for me personally and in business. I have met many new people and learned many new things. I could easily argue that 2009 was the most tumultuous year of my life. Working with cutting edge technologies and with companies who are shaping the future is both exhausting and incredibly rewarding. I am privileged to be associated with a group of people who will create what they need if it does not exist yet or help a community fix technology that is broken. I am thrilled to see what is on the horizon just out of reach of the general population, but still find myself guessing at what is coming next. In 2009 I litterally spent more time in airports and on flights than I did driving my own car, yet I have more contact with my family and friends than ever before.

I am an inventor and a writer, a builder and a teacher. I have seen the world change dramatically over the past decade and I fully expect twice that volume of change again in the next 10 years. I plan to spend more time writing about what I see, know, and predict. I will spend more time with my family, even if I am on a plane. I will enjoy more music, food and video choices because of the emerging technologies around me. My creative energies will be focused on making lives easier through invention. Most of all I will learn to be even more accepting of change, embrace the unknown and forge ahead into the wilderness.

Happy New Year.

Windows 7 - Finally something done right

About a year ago I dove into MS Vista with ugly results. I finally bailed completely on Vista in February of this year and blogged several different ways to remove it and replace with something else. When Windows 7 Beta released this year, I initially avoided it thinking the MS team couldn't possibly recover from the disaster known as Vista. I was wrong.

When I finally took the plunge and installed Win7 onto test box I was pleasantly surprised by the quick and clean install. Then I was even more impressed by the quick response to a restart and reconnect back into the network. After running Win7 through it's paces it appears that all the problem issues that were chronic with Vista have disappeared with this new version. In fact it is very clear that this isn't just a new version, this is a whole new ball game.

I was so impressed that I upgraded a number of systems to Win7 and have not looked back. That was a month or so ago and I have not had a single BSOD, network fail, inexplicable random restart or anything else I can really complain about. When it does break, it's completely acceptable and it does it with grace.

To put it in a nutshell, Win 7 is like all the great functional things from XP with all the cool views of Vista but all in "turbo" mode. The same box with Win7 runs considerably faster then on Vista or XP. Startup and shutdown both work faster and cleaner and applications respond faster.

I still love my Mac, but I'm not afraid to install Windows 7.