Occupy This

There is a revolution happening planet-wide - unfortunately the message is getting mangled. I was in Manhattan during the Occupy Wall Street rally on October 5th (have the flyer to prove it) and the message at that time seemed clear - enforce fair taxation on the uber-rich so "they pay their fair share" into to social good. I agree with the core of this argument, but there is a great deal that is being misrepresented by the protesters and misinterpreted by the media. Don't get me wrong, I am not trashing the movement as a whole, there is a real problem here, what I take exception to is misinformation and obfuscation of the truth.

Really, that is what it is all about - truth, fairness, social justice, and global responsibility. I get that. I wish the majority of "occupy" protesters did too. By the time Occupy Calgary happened a few of weeks ago, the message had been perverted into "I want my fair share" - That is different. That is Marxism - and it doesn't work. Here's a newsflash - the fact that you exist does not entitle you to jack shit. Get a job, prove your worth, help the planet by reducing your consumption, be generous with what you have even if all you have is time. Begging for attention and handouts while trashing shared public space is not doing the movement any favours. While there may be a very small percentage of these protesters who actually understand the under pinning of the movement, the vast majority show up because it is what everyone else is doing. Lemmings.

Don't even get me started on Occupy Edmonton. Really? Protesting big oil companies in a city that was founded and is still primarily funded by big oil companies? This is the epitome of the bastardization of the movement. The majority of the protesters are students that are there because their parent could afford to send them to university on money made in the oil industry. Astounding hypocrisy.

I find it particularly amusing that the "Occupy Wall Street" concept - specifically condemning big business for not sharing the wealth - was originally started by the CANADIAN activist movement "Adbusters" in an attempt to effect global social change - awesome idea. The thing is that it was supposed to be about effecting global social change and it was quickly twisted into an "us verses them" conflict. The 1% verses the 99%. The uber-rich verses the impoverished.

What seems to be getting lost is that it is about GLOBAL social change, not fixing the US economy. The 1% you hear referred to is specifically a number representing the US economy which is a capitalist economic experiment gone sadly out of control. On a global scale *I* am in the 1% and there is a very strong probability that 99% of the people reading this are too.

I agree with Occupy Wall Street protesters in the argument that the US government should enact changes to capture some of the top end wealth and have it distributed to productive social causes like funding universities or eliminating extreme poverty. In the same vein I agree with the Occupy Berkley protesters in the concept of reducing student debt to encourage economic growth. All the other "occupy" protests have gone sadly awry, and even those two are missing the important part of the equation that is personal social responsibility.

While the US government may not be collecting tax and forcing the uber-rich to pay into social programs, many of those in the upper echelon do so voluntarily - something that has been glaringly absent from this discussion. While Bill Gates may not be paying millions of dollars to the government tax coffers, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has generated over $26 billion (yes that was BILLION) in grants to effect social and economic change globally since its inception in 1994, seeded by their own personal income. While Mark Zuckerberg may not have been forced to pay millions in federal tax last year, he voluntarily donated $100 million to the most needy school district in the US - something the US government itself failed to do despite the fact that it is their responsibility to look after education. The reality is that the majority of these large corporations and individually wealthy people do in fact pay a great deal toward making direct and effective change where it is needed. Can the occupy protesters say the same?

Really now - answer the question. When was the last time you (occupy protester) spent a day on the volunteer side of a food bank operation or soup kitchen? Did you donate 10% of your earnings to help someone in a third world country last year? Did you help out in a local shelter to make sure the homeless in your neighbourhood had a warm bed to sleep in? Don't tell me you are too poor because it takes less then $20 per month to feed, clothe and provide an education for a child in impoverished Burkina Faso, Africa. It costs nothing to donate your time to a homeless shelter. While you are sipping your Starbucks triple shot, skinny, decaf latte and Tweeting your daily protest activities on your iPhone through your ATT or Rogers account, maybe you should think about who is *really* affecting social change.

If you want to occupy something, try occupying a new state of mind. Try thinking about the social responsibility revolution that was behind the original "occupy" protest. In the US it is mostly exemplified by a small percentage of individuals and corporations who have exempted themselves out of paying a fair portion of their income to taxation. On a global scale it is about governments that exploit the local population for cheap labor in return for poor living standards. Its about big global corporations moving jobs to locations that allow them to exploit cheap labor and dangerous work standards. It is also about populations who are unlucky enough to live in areas of the world that have been hit with decades of war, famine, drought and ongoing political stress. If you want to be part of the solution then do something to effect real social change globally.

I work 80 to 90 hours every week to maintain my place in the 1% (globally) and am not afraid or ashamed to say so. On the contrary, I am proud of the fact that my hard work had allowed me to build a nice home and help my son through University. I also use some of that to help a young girl and her family in Africa make ends meet so she can complete her education in a safe environment. The odd goat and cash for school books does not mean a lot in New York or Toronto, but in Burkina Faso, Africa, it is the difference between despair and a life of hope and success. On the other side of the planet, I use some of that hard earned money to help a dozen homeless people in Calgary with a hot meal and a place to sleep 3 or 4 times a year. So when I see dozens (or hundreds) of young people using the "Occupy" movement as an excuse to party, rebel, and generally be useless, I get a little miffed.

The Mayans had it absolutely right. This is a time of change, resurrection, new beginnings. This is not a time of doom and despair - unless you feed the fear monsters. There is definitely upheaval in the forecast - geological, astrophysical, and interpersonal. We are evolving as a species and we need to pay attention to the fact that we exist as one consolidated people of Earth. The time for political and economic separation is past, the future is all about moving forward as a planet of people not a collection of separated castes.

Change is good - embrace it, but understand what you are embracing. Making a political stand about economic fairness in the US… in Edmonton… is just missing the whole point. There *is* a need for social change and we *do* need to challenge our governments, but we need to challenge ourselves first. After all there really is no "them" there is only "us" because "we" are the government and "we" do have the power to change it, but only if we understand the change we are asking for and act on it by not supporting offensive companies and actively supporting those in need directly.

There will be massive political change in the next year in a global sense - of that I have no doubt. We have been stagnant as a race for too long. Europe is already feeling this and North America (the "new world") is not far behind. The "Occupy" movement and the social unrest in the Middle East is merely a symptom, not a cause. Leaders will fail, people will rise and geopolitical fallout will be extreme, but the resulting global society will be stronger for it for an eon. So are you part of the problem or are you part of the solution?

Be awesome. Change the world.

Remembering 1976

The recent passing of Steve Jobs jarred open a lot of memories and emotion for me. While Jobs and I never actually met in person, our paths crossed numerous times and he had a profound affect on my life. Like many IT professionals my age, the late nineteen seventies was fertile ground for new inventions, creative thinking and imaginations spinning out of control. Steve Jobs was only one of the influential technology forces in my life at that time. Equally inspirational were Steve Wozniak, Allan Kay, Bill Gates, and Doug Bailey to name a few.

In 1976, I was an impressionable 10 year old living in British Columbia, Canada and had an interest in space, robots and fire trucks like any normal 10 year old boy. At the same time my uncle, Doug Bailey, was an ex IBM engineer who was also a curious inventor. Today we call people like him hackers, but back then he was just an engineer trying to figure out how some of this new emerging technology was going to affect people and work and lives. I was lucky enough to be hanging around his house one day when he was scavenging the keyboard out of an IBM Selectric 80 typewriter. He was building his own keyboard interface to replace the manual input switch panel on the Altair 8800. I remember asking how he knew that pressing a certain key could make a letter appear on the screen and he proceeded to explain binary and switch matrix logic over the next hour. I was hooked.

That summer Doug sold some of the first Apple I computers in white boxes as hobbyist kits out of H&S Micro Systems, his attempt to bring computers to the masses. The TRS-80, Apple II, and Commodore computers followed closely afterwards, along with a host of names no one remembers like Acorn, and Franklin. I spent part of the following summer visiting, hanging out at H&S, and generally ingesting all I could that was "computer". The place was abuzz with hobbyists looking for the next cool thing, talking about "Home brew" computers and the future. There was a whole new world evolving between the Home Brew Computer Club and Xerox Parc. Altair, DEC, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Apple… it was anybody's game and people were writing new rules for it every day. When I look back on it now, it is hard to believe the revolution that was percolating around me.

The following year I sold one of the first IBM-PC's, complete with 64Kb RAM and floppy drive. The retrofit 10Mb hard drive (yes that was megabyte) was an extra $3000 so it was not a popular item. I don't have actual statistics, but at 13 years old I may have been the youngest computer sales person in Canada. That was about the time when the whole thing exploded. Everybody wanted to be part of the computer revolution. The TRS-80 in my bedroom was constantly in pieces and my soldering iron was always ready for the next home-brew project culled from the pages of Byte Magazine. With some inspiration from my brilliant uncle again, a modem was created and phone lines were hacked so I could rampage through BBS's and the emerging FidoNet. I made some interesting connections and friendships "on-line" in those early BBS's, some of whom went on to create or contribute to things like Netscape and the original MSN. If I had only known then what I know now about where those small projects were headed.

Today I look back in amazement at where we have come from and the changes that have taken us to where we are now. This week is my uncle's birthday, and while I was thinking about his contribution to my IT career path, I received the news that Steve Jobs had passed away. In a heartbeat, a flood of memories stored away by a 10 year old came rushing to the surface. I sometimes wish I had done more in a creative sense to dramatically change the IT landscape, but I am satisfied with the number of other 10 your old minds I have infected with curiosity. I try to seize any opportunity to help kids explore IT whenever possible, mainly due to the impact of curious, creative men like them. If I can influence just one young mind to greatness, then I think the journey will have been worth it.

Be Awesome. Change The World.

Red, Black, and White Stripes

I was already a fan of The White Stripes, but I have just finished watching "Under Great White Northern Lights" and am now completely over the edge. If you have an hour and thirty five minutes to take in this great rockumentary, I highly recommend it. If you are Canadian and love music, it is an absolute must.

For those who have not yet been indoctrinated into the musical world of Jack and Meg White, YouTube "Hotel Yorba" or "Seven Nation Army" immediately. Jack White is quite possibly one of the most creative, original, musicians of our time. Meg and Jack manage to fill any space with a sound that should come from a full band of five or six, yet there really are only two of them on the stage. The raw, unfiltered emotion explodes in the form of bass beats and treble riffs that engulf you and wont let you go. Yeah, I'm a fan.

Jack and Meg broke up the band earlier this year much to the disappointment of their fans, but fourteen years is a long time to maintain that pace and it was time for something new. Their cutting edge music lives on in the fans that just wont let it go and new projects have them busy in new directions.

I think what I like most is their ability to break out of the constraints of the corporate music world, and the general constraints of society as we know it. They play what they feel, not what will sell and in the end, their honesty to themselves made them one of the best loved alternate music bands of the last decade.

Be Awesome - Change The World.

A few good men…

I did not realize how particularly unique my skill set was until I started the search for more people like me to help spread out work load. Before you think this is going down the line of an arrogant "I'm so awesome" rant, you should understand that I really don't think so and I am certainly hoping it is not true. I need clones.

Actually, building a clone army is a pretty awesome thought, but really I just need a few good men, um… people… to share the work load. The company I spend most of my waking hours producing activity for is growing by leaps and bounds and our team just can't keep up to the business volume. Sure, that's a happy problem, but its still a problem.

The team I am part of work with some of the most brilliant minds on the planet and we are creating better, faster ways for other companies to market their products, deliver information and enable communication globally. I am one of five who demonstrate, integrate, and implement the fastest multi-protocol messaging system in the world. Five people who's installed clients transport on the order of six billion digital messages every day. Five. We could use a little help.

Message Systems is approximately 100 brilliant engineers, marketing experts, sales professionals and software developers spread across 6 countries. We have installed products in the USA, Canada, China, India, UK, Brazil, France, Italy, etc, etc.. pick a country, the world loves us. We can transport digital messages to your email inbox or mobile phone or web browser or instant messenger and we can do it at over a million pieces per hour.. per server. We can do it in plain text or in vibrant full multi-media and we can save production costs at the same time.

With all that awesomeness, there is a need for some very special people to help us present it, sell it, integrate it, and support the customer through the early days of an implementation. While we also need sales people and software developers, I particularly am looking for what my friends and I call "the new renaissance men." We need individuals who are just as comfortable in a sales presentation as they are writing a PERL script. They need to understand business operations and also have intimate knowledge of RFC2822 (and all its friends). These people can discuss the impact of the debt crisis effectively with a sales prospect over dinner, then sit down and write 200 lines of PHP or PERL or Python to demonstrate how our products can solve that client's problems.

We are looking for entrepreneurial, self starters who have a passion for Information Technology. We are looking for that geeky kid who got laughed at in school for building a home made rocket complete with digital telemetry… until it worked. We need people who can learn a new programming language, write a script to demonstrate a function, and present it as a solution sale to a prospect… in 3 days.

These are the men and women of the new renaissance. They cross disciplines easily and consume information like water. They can write code, sell ice cubes to Eskimos, and have hobbies like painting or writing that are closer to professional work than hobby. They are often published writers, guest speakers, inventors, or that guy at the end of your block who can just fix anything.

If you are this person and you are stuck in a mindless code-monkey role and screaming to get out. Please contact me. If you know someone like that please forward this to them. If you live with this person, do them and yourself a favour and put this in front of them. We need clones.

Send me your resume and I will get it to the right person. You can review the current official career posting here or just go to www.messagesystems.com/careers and take a look at some of the other positions we have open. We are looking for the best, brightest individuals. We don't need 100 generic people to pound keyboards we just need a few good miracle workers.

Be awesome. Change the world.

Fixing my Keurig B60 coffee maker

I love my Keurig B60 coffee maker but every once in a while it fails me. I am not the only one, Google is full of searches for "how do I fix my Keurig coffee maker". Most of the time I can slip in a coffee packet (K-Cup), push the button and get a perfect cup of coffee. However after a few months of stellar performance, it will sometimes sputter and die with only a few teaspoons of coffee in my cup :(


There are several different symptoms and fixes with these things. Lets make sure you are fixing the right thing here.

Symptom 1: Coffee brews and pours into a mug, but makes less than expected. This gets progressively worse and can get down to a trickle.
Fix: This is most likely just water scaling from hard water. You should descale the machine first and if that does not fix it, try my fix below.

Symptom 2: Water will not draw from the tank to fill the maker.
Fix: This is again a scaling issue and the Machine should be descaled, but you will want to clean the water intake in the base of the machine with a vibrating or ultrasonic toothbrush first.

Symptom 3: Coffee was brewing normally, then suddenly stops. Water seems to draw from the tank then cycles out just as quickly but never pours any coffee.
Fix: This is most likely a clogged dispensing valve which is what I am fixing in the instructions below. This can happen from hard water build up but it is more often caused by coffee grounds getting lodged in the valve.

I have taken this little guy apart a few times to fix it and I thought I would share how in case you have one of these too. The B50 through B100 seem to have similar architecture so it should be similar for most of those models but this one is specifically a model B60.




What you will need:
#1 Phillips screwdriver
#15 Torx driver
canned air
long tweezers
small cable tie
cable snips
Broken Keurig B60 Coffee Maker


Unplug it. There are heaters, pumps, sensors, etc here that are powered and could be potentially dangerous. Right under the top cover there are a few sensors and switches as well, so unplugging first is prudent. It is also important to remove any coffee packet that may be left in the machine and leave it out until the fixing and cleaning is done.


Remove the top access handle. Remove the two Torx screws at the handle pivot points. Before you lift the handle off, use it to open the top like you are going to load it. Now take the handle off.

Remove the lower cover. There are two black screws holding that in place. This just gives you room to get to the upper screw you need to remove next.

Looking up under the front of the top cover, there are two silver screw - remove them. Be careful with these as they are easy to drop and lose. It is a good idea to use long tweezers for taking these out and re-installing them as well.

You should now have 3 sets of screws - don't mix them up.

Push the hood back and lift - it should come off easily. If it gives you any resistance, you probably have it open too far, close the top slightly and push back, then lift.


At the front of the unit there is a hose that terminates into a valve that eventually injects hot water into the coffee packet. Carefully snip the cable clamp and remove the hose.

There are two silver screws holding this valve in place, remove them and the whole assembly will drop out.

Clean out the outlet side with caned air or high pressure water. Be careful, this is really sharp and is normally the part that pierces the top of the coffee packet so it can just as easily pierce your hand.

If this is the problem you will likely find bits of coffee or hard water deposits built up in here. after it is cleaned out you should be able to blow air through from the hose connected side easily.


Reassemble in the reverse direction. Attach valve, then hose and cable tie. Screw in the upper cover (may need tweezers for this), then the lower. Screw in the access handle.


Now plug it back in and run it without a coffee packet so that clean water flows through the system. You may want to also take this opportunity to descale your Keurig and if you have hard water like we do, use an electric toothbrush (the vibrating kind) to clean out the water intake.

You should now have a working coffee maker again.

A robot that can make robot parts... and other stuff

I saw this on the Colbert Report last night (thanks Stephen) and I have to (*have to*) have one! I can not believe I have not seen this in my news feeds yet. Every robot building shop needs one of these.

What am I ranting about? The Maker Bot Thing-O-Matic! [http://www.makerbot.com/]

This thing is tres cool, mon ami. Of course it makes other stuff too, but the first thing I imagined when I saw this on Colbert was custom gears sets, then the elusive artificial Phalanges I have been wanting to mould, then my mind went crazy with possibilities.

If you are a gear-head (robot builder/hacker) then you have probably come across the situation where the gear set on the motor in your hand is not the one you need. The search begins to find a replacement gear that will give you the reduction you need, but hours of driving between scrap yards and surplus stores yields nothing. Now, you can just make one.

In fact, you can make just about anything. Gears, hinges, struts, eyelids, shields, faceplates, actuators, fingertips, grippers, spacers, levers, buttons, bumpers, and more.

The alternative has been the CNC milling machine where you can cut the shape you need out of a block of material. There are desktop varieties like this one but they are expensive and can waste a lot of material. The Maker Bot Thing-O-Matic creates an object from scratch using hard plastic thread feed. This is the same plastic used to make Lego and when was the last time you broke one of those?

For $1300 USD, this is a must-have for any custom developer / bot-hacker / gear-head shop.


Be awesome. Change the world.

It's the end of the world as we know it

According to Harold Camping's 2011 end times prediction, the rapture begins tomorrow May 21st at 6PM precisely. Pack appropriately and don't be late or you will miss the bus.

If you are not already marked as one of the 200 Million select pre-millennial Christians signed up for the rapture, please disregard the above notice - you are going to burn in the aftermath ... or you will be able to make your tee-off time at the club - the prediction is not really clear for the non believers. In any case the rapture is apparently scheduled for Saturday at 6PM so it will be very convenient for everyone to make it and not miss any work in case Mr. Camping is wrong... again.

If you ARE planning on being all rapture'd up and accepted into the heavenly fold on Saturday, it is not too late to take care of those you leave behind. You can always sign over the deed to your house to me and I will make sure it is appropriately used to house the sadly fallen remnants of this world. After all, you will not be needing it after 6:01PM Saturday anyway. That goes for your cars and bank accounts too. Really. Honest. I will make sure your no-longer-needed worldly possessions are well taken care of. Just write up a quick note saying that all your worldly possessions will be signed over to Tom Mairs as of May 22nd 2011, and send that with copies of your property deeds and vehicle insurance to Tom Mairs, Suite 341, 7620 Elbow Drive, Calgary, AB, Canada, T2V 1K2. Really, I promise.

Lou Reed's "Busload of Faith" plays in the back ground as I write this. Ominous?

I was recently in the Mayan Riviera and had a chance to talk with locals about the December 2012 predictions, end of the world issues, and misconceptions. Apparently Hollywood is good for business but they don't listen very well. I am looking forward the the sunset season of 2012 and the dawning of a new age as they have predicted. Quite frankly I am more apt to believe Mayan scholars over crackpots like Harold Camping. In the later case, I think there is a misinterpretation where "end of the world" should be read "end of the way we live". There is definitely something afoot in the universe, but I prefer to think it is a good thing, not the fire and brimstone version.

Of course Canadians have know about the end of the world for a while - just ask the boys of Great Big Sea. It's all a matter of perspective. Take a pill Harold, the world will still be spinning on Sunday so you can go to church and apologize to everyone. If I am wrong, ...well, ...it's been a great ride. :)


Be awesome. Change the world.