A friend of mine published on her blog a list of things she just loves, to give folks out there ideas for Christmas gifts, not for her, but for others in your life. I thought it was such a groovy idea I decided to a similar post of my own. Having recently seen our house burn with all our belongings in it, I’ve had a chance to acquire some new stuff. Most of it hand selected by me, after careful deliberation, spec-analyzing, and testing out. So without further adieu, I bring you Ryan’s List of Stuff I Really Like:

SmugMug. At $35/year it’s a low price for unlimited online secure photo storage. There’s no limit to the size or quality of your pics, and it’s easy enough to upload out of iPhoto or Picasa. It’s a weight off my shoulders knowing that I don’t have to worry about backing up our favorite photos.

Kuhl Pants. I love love love my Kuhl “Kuhldry” pants. So much so that I own three pairs and they’re basically the only pants I wear. They’re light, durable, great for travel, look nice enough to wear to work, and of course my primary requisite: comfy. (PS: order from Zappos for free return shipping if you don’t like ‘em)

This is the deodorant I’ve used since before I hit puberty. I’ve tried many others, but this is the smell I like. I only wish I could find it in sub 3oz containers so TSA would stop confiscating it!

North Face “Surge” laptop backpack. This holds my 15″ MacBook laptop in a padded compartment, very easy to remove for airport security, and has all the other bells and whistles of a modern, “performance” backpack. It doesn’t have wheels, but makes up for it by fitting my body so well that it’s almost a pleasure to lug around heavy loads.

North Face “Hedgehog” Shoe w/ Boa. OK this is a controversial subject, but I love these shoes. Not only do they fit me really well, but the Boa wire thingy I find very handy. It tightens on my foot uniformly, doesn’t stretch like laces, and makes it very easy to “tie” and “untie” my shoes using one hand while standing up. Yes, I wear these to work.

Makita Lithium Ion Impact Driver. Not that I’m doing much household upkeep these days, but if I did this is the first tool I’d reach for. Not only is the impact-ness powerful enough to drive long screws into solid wood (I’ve used it to mount kitchen cabinets), but it’s lightweight, charges quickly, and just feels so damn sexy to hold. Incidentally, this tool not only survived our house fire but still works to this day!

Sesame Honey Cashews from Trader Joes. Love love love ‘em! We don’t have a Trader Joes where I live, which is probably a good thing else I’d gorge on these way to often. Everytime a friend goes to there, tho, I ask ‘em to bring me back these luscious lil nuggets. They go great with…. anything!

Dropbox is one of my favorite computer utilities. I have it installed on four of my computers and my iPhone. It provides secure online storage. I use it to store all kinds of files, and it makes it a breeze for me to edit a document on my laptop, then pick up where I left off with the same document from my work computer. The free account provides 2GB, which is enough for my current needs, but if you need more you can upgrade.

Many of our more venerable educators, administrators, and board members think that Social Networking (aka Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) is a fad of sorts. They are surprised when I tell them these should be integrated into their curricula. When they ask why, I tell them that companies are hiring people who know how to properly use these tools.

Since many of them often don’t believe me, here’s a “real world” example:

After we lost all our belongings in a house fire over the summer, and winter has rolled around, I find I have no winter boots. So I send out a casual post to my social network:

When I make a post it gets delivered to everyone who is “following” me (both on Twitter and Facebook). So about 800 people were able to see my note about the new snow in Juneau. One of them replied:

To which I replied:

And now things get interesting. Because Twitter is an open social network, you can tune in to public conversations. You can even save search results so that you’ll be notified whenever a key word appears. This is what smart businesses do. They monitor the social stream for mentions of their brand, so they can stay in touch with their community.

I was surprised, and impressed, to see that Zappos noticed my post and sent me a nice reply. Zappos is a great online store, and they prove it by being savvy enough to tune into the public Twitter stream. They even gave me a nice smiley face =).

But that’s not where the story ends. Later that night I finally selected the boots I wanted to try and placed the order. After I did so I replied to @Zappos_Service:

And they responded with a nice, personal message:

But they’re not the only savvy company monitoring the stream, because this morning I got this message, also with a nice smiley face:

The interaction with not only the vendor, but the manufacturer of the boots was a great experience for me. It solidified my faith in both brands and gives me the feeling that they’re not just faceless corporations but people wanting to connect with customers. This feeling makes me happy, and those companies know it’s a worthy investment because a happy customer is a repeat customer.

So if you are surprised when you learn that companies are hiring people with social networking skills, don’t be.

Jane Hart shares with us a list compiled recently when 278 “learning professionals” were asked their top 10 tools for learning. Then she made a slideshow of the list:

Here in Alaska, Apple’s “genius” model for repairs is broken for two reasons. First because we’re not just rural, we’re expansive and rural. We don’t have simple mountain ranges, we have mountain fields. When you get to the top you don’t look down into the valley, you look across to the next mountain, and the ones behind it.

There are two Apple Stores in Alaska. The Mac Haus and the Alaska Mac Store. Both have shops in Anchorage and Fairbanks. If you don’t live in the big city, you can’t drive your broken Mac into an Apple Store. You have to ship it. In our case, the nearest qualified Apple repair center is, as the crow flies, 600 miles away.

The second problem with the Genius Model is this whole notion of a “genius”. I’ve been to Apple stores in Seattle, London, San Franciso and I’ve talked with the staff. Many of them are truly well versed in Apple’s products and troubleshooting. In Alaska? Not so much. In fact the most knowledgeable Apple experts I’ve met in Alaska work in schools.

In mid-August of this year one of our six month old Apple 24″ LED displays up and died. It simply wouldn’t power on.

Over the years we’ve sent in plenty of Apple laptops for repair. This is generally a painless process. You call them up, they do some troubleshooting over the phone, when they deem it needs repair they send you a box. Shipping is prepaid. You slap the laptop in the box, put it in the mail, and a couple weeks later it comes back fixed. No muss, no fuss, no extra cost to the consumer.

With anything other than laptops, this is not the case.

It took me two hours on the phone with Apple just to get to the point where I knew where the monitor needed to go. At first they gave me the address of a local store. So I called the store and they told me they didn’t service Apple products. I called Apple back and they told me that no, in fact that local store was indeed a service center. I called the local store back, and they reassured me in terse terms that they did not fix Apple stuff, only sold it. So, back on the phone with Apple, they gave me a list of the nearest service centers. Coincidentally, this was the same list I found when I searched Google. The Apple rep on the phone couldn’t give me much more help, so I selected one service center at random.

We didn’t have the original box the monitor came in, so I asked Apple to send us out a box for it. They couldn’t do this. I called foul and stamped my feet, reminding them how much business our agency’s recommendations drive their way. They claimed it was impossible to send out a box, something about China, production, and blah blah. I gave up and packaged the monitor myself, carefully.

The Apple tech on the phone wasn’t able to set up any sort of RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) with the repair center, or pave the way for me at all. It was up to me to make all arrangements. Once I got them on the phone, the Alaska Mac Store gave me their shipping address and told me to leave a note in the box so they would know who sent it. With most RMA’s, there’s a form you print out, with an assigned number on it for tracking the repair. In this case, nothing of the sort, just the pink Post-It note I affixed to the monitor.

So I shipped it out, with insurance, to the tune of $60. Since I’m a busy guy, it was easily forgotten. Three weeks later I had a voicemail from the Alaska Mac Store. They had a monitor with our name on it, and wanted to know what to do with it. Apparently my original phone call with them wasn’t logged or shared with their repair staff. So I called them back and answered their question: “please fix it”. A couple weeks later I received a call that it needed a new logic board, which Apple was sending up. A couple weeks after that they left me another voicemail, the monitor was fixed, and how did I want to pay for return shipping. I returned the call and gave them a credit card number over the phone to pay $42 for return shipping. Another week later the monitor arrived, in perfect working order.

Leaving the coordination in the hands of the customer is a disappointing contrast to other warranty repair options with other companies I’ve worked with. In this day and age, I’ve just come to expect more, especially from a company like Apple whose brand tends to set the bar higher.

My advice if you’re in rural Alaska? Don’t buy Apple iMacs or big Apple monitors unless you’re comfortable with the idea of shipping them out for repair yourself. Instead stick with MacBooks, or the Mac Mini which can be easily shipped. For monitors go with standard flat screen options from “normal” vendors. Or, if you really want that Apple Cinema display, remember to keep the box and packing materials for at least as long as the warranty.

Over the years I’ve used a gajillion different Content Management Systems. For websites that need custom features and extensions, I go with Drupal 98% of the time. But for a basic blog or mostly standard website, great selection of themes, plug-ins, and drop dead simple site maintenance, Wordpress can’t be beat.

The main reason? Updates. If you maintain an interactive website, you should know that it can be dangerous. If you don’t install the latest patches, you’re leaving your site vulnerable. If you’re lucky the bad guys will just post porn spam, like they did for these elementary students in the UK when their Moodle site wasn’t properly patched. If you’re unlucky, your user database or content can be compromised or destroyed.

Traditionally (and with many current CMS) the process to update the core software or modules goes like this: download the new software, upload it to your webhost, login to your webhost, unpack the software, backup your database, backup your existing software, carefully install the new software (taking care not to overwrite anything custom), upgrade your database, cross your fingers, test. This process usually involves using a terminal (command line) program, file transfer program, database program, and the admin section of your website. Maintaining one, much less dozens of CMS driven sites, easily becomes a chore for system admins.

With Wordpress, the upgrade process is mostly automagic. First, when an update is available, it lets you know after you login:

You then push the “Upgrade Automatically” button, and Wordpress does the rest for you:

The process is the same for third party modules you may have installed:

As a lazy website admin who likes to keep sites up to date, this version of Wordpress is a joy to use.

Now I know all you broadband whipper snappers out there will just shrug, but since when did it become normal for software updates to consume over half a gig of disk space? I feel for you rural folks on satellite Internet. PS: when will Microsoft recognize that Macs need an enterprise software update service?

On June 1st, 2009, a fire in our neighbor’s basement spread to our home causing total loss. For information on the relief and (hopeful) rebuild effort, visit http://basinroad.com.

I was recently reminiscing about my geeky childhood when I came across a memory about my first robot. I was overjoyed to get Verbot for Christmas one year, and tried desperately to make the dern thing follow my prepubescent voice commands. My only real solid memory is frustration at it not doing what I told it! But I do have vague recollections of getting it to pick up something and move around while clinging to it. Or maybe I’m just remember the commercial.

Oh Verbot, where are you now? Some landfill somewhere I imagine.

Some of you may know I’m a moderately big Star Trek fan. Yes I’ve been to a convention. No I didn’t go in costume. Yes I’ve watched all episodes of the original series and Next Generation as well as all the movies. No I haven’t watched all the episodes of the decidedly crappier Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise series.

I should also point for disclosure that I took a 48 credit course in college whose overarching theme was Star Trek. We used the show as a jumping off point to study sociology, screen writing, spacial physics, cognitive psychology, and many other related subjects.

Of particular interest to me was how the original series could run for only three seasons but make such a huge impact. After 1969 when the show ended, there wasn’t anything else (with the exception of a cartoon) until 1979 when the first movie came out. Yet in those 10 years the ethos of the characters and storylines grew and developed into one of the most popular mythologies of our time. How did this happen? Fans. The fans continued the adventures of the characters through unofficial “slash” stories and conventions.

So I was naturally excited that they’d come out with a new movie. All the other movies were pretty lame, starting with the abhorrent Star Trek I, which came out shortly after Star Wars and looked like a pitiful imitation, and ending with the attempt to bring the TNG cast onto the silver screen which never really panned out.

This latest movie though, they did a number of things right. Here’s my bullet-point grading of Star Trek 2009:

• Relative to other Trek movies: Great
• Relative to TV series: Really Good
• Compatibility with existing storylines and “science”: Great
• Acting overall: good enough
• Overall rating as a standalone movie: average-good (two stars on a four star scale, three stars on a five star scale)

I thought the writing was good to Star Trek standards, especially in the campy humor that only makes sense if you’re already familiar with the ethos. They did a good job making the storyline fun and accessible to everyone, dumbing down the complexity enough while still building on the epic timeline of, let’s face it, one of science fiction’s most revered characters: Spock.

I think they modeled this movie mostly after the original series, minus the presence of a Gene Roddenberry-esque omnipotent creature. Roddenberry always tried to introduce the concept of something larger than us, in more control than us.

For our main characters, they did a great job setting them up. The legendary James Tiberius Kirk especially. None of the prior movies or TV series really gave us the back story we needed to understand why Kirk got to captain the best ship in the fleet. Knowing that he’s a Will Hunting like smarty pants really helps to understand his position in Starfleet.

Overall, I give it a big hearty thumbs up, from an insiders perspective. For people who don’t know the entire Star Trek context, it’s a good science fiction movie with plenty of fun action, although much of the humor predicates on knowing some back story of the characters (Scotty in particular made me LOL).

I’ve always wondered about this one and I finally looked it up. Turns out my confusion is well-founded:

The Anchorage Daily News has reported that Royal Caribbean cruise ship “Serenade of the Seas” has a crew member infected with H1N1 (Swine Flu). The crew member became sick on May 2nd. According to the 2009 cruise ship docking calendar the Serenade arrived in Juneau on May 8th after leaving Ketchikan on the 7th. She continued on to Skagway on the 9th, Petersburg on the 10th, and then moves on to Sitka (12th), Prince Rupert (13th), and Vancouver on the 16th.

For more information about the geography of H1N1, try this flu-tracker map.

Laurie Garrett gives a detailed look at the state of healthcare and community response to potential pandemic. This video is from Feb 2007 and focuses most on the Avian flu but is quite pertinent. Her primary bottom line is that defenses should be arranged at the community not individual level.