www.geekybob.com

Snakes in the Lane

26 May 2016 • by bob • Bicycling, Arizona

I saw a four-foot rattlesnake in the bicycle lane during one of my cycling laps around Saguaro National Park today, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

On the one hand, he's not riding a bicycle; but on the other hand, he's not in a motorized vehicle.

I think he gets by on a technicality.

Cycling Perspectives

03 May 2016 • by bob • Bicycling, Arizona

I was watching a video about last year's 104-mile El Tour de Tucson cycling event, when they interviewed the guy in this photo...

This cyclist is 86 years old, and he was riding the full 104 miles as he has done every year for the past 33 years.

I have officially lost every opportunity for whining about how hard that ride was for me...

PS - Bonus points for this guy's cycling jersey from the 160-mile Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day.

The Importance of an Apology

23 April 2016 • by bob • Family, Marriage

A friend of mine recently shared the following article on Facebook about a study that was just published by Dr. Roy Lewicki and others at the University of Ohio on the subject of what constitutes an effective apology:

The Six elements of an Effective Apology, According to Science

While the information contained in Dr. Lewicki's study is certainly relevant, it is more or less a rehash of the material which Dr. Gary Chapman presented in his book The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships, which was published ten years ago.

Five of the six points in the OSU study's "new research" are directly lifted from Dr. Chapman's points - and they are almost verbatim quotes. To show just how closely Dr. Lewicki's points are to Dr. Chapman's, I will present the OSU study's list in the first column below, and then I will present the matching points from Dr. Chapman's book in the second column:

That being said, the OSU study ultimately draws the wrong conclusions; the OSU study suggests that there is one formula for apologies which works in all situations, whereas Dr. Chapman's book demonstrates that what is most-important in an apology for one person may not be for another.

For example, taking responsibility is of paramount importance to me, but not so much for my spouse. However, requesting forgiveness is extremely important for her, and yet Dr. Lewicki suggested that you could leave out the request for forgiveness entirely. If my wife and I were to follow the OSU study's recommendations, she and I would be apologizing to each other in ways that do not align with the other's communication needs, which will undoubtedly result in additional strife at a time when effective communication is most critical.

In contrast to the OSU study's conclusions, Dr. Chapman's recommendation is that each partner in a relationship learn their partner's expected form of apology and strive to address their partner's needs when expressing their apologies. Attempting to pigeon-hole the communication requirements for every relationship based on a single formula as the OSU study suggests is ludicrous.

So ultimately the OSU study is heavily plagiarized from Dr. Chapman's pre-existing research, and yet that study still manages to arrive at an incorrect outcome.

First World Problems

31 March 2016 • by Bob • Hardware

One of the four computer monitors on my desk has died and I'm left thinking, "Well, darn. How am I going to get any work done?"

(Note: They're actually flat-screen monitors; the CRTs are from Visio.)

How to Add the Nik Collection to Corel's PaintShop Pro

24 March 2016 • by Bob • Photography

Following Google's acquisition of Nik Software, Google has decided to make it's suite of plugins available for free. With that in mind, I thought that I  would post a simple "How-To" guide for using the Nik plugins for anyone who is using Corel's PaintShop Pro instead of Adobe's hideously-priced Photoshop software. (Note that Photoshop is really cool, of course - it's just priced and/or licensed badly.)

In any event, here are the steps to use the Nik Collection plugins with Corel's PaintShop Pro on a Windows computer:

1. Download the Nik Collection from https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
2. Install the collection into the default folder; this should be something like the following path:

   
   "%ProgramFiles%\Google\Nik Collection"
   
   

3. Open a Windows command prompt
4. Change directory to the plugins folder for the version of PaintShop which you have installed; for example:

   
   cd /d "%ProgramFiles%\Corel\Corel PaintShop Pro X8 (64-bit)\PlugIns\EN"
   
   

5. Create a directory junction to the Nik Collection:

   
   mklink /j "Nik Collection" "%ProgramFiles%\Google\Nik Collection"
   
   

6. When you next open PaintShop, the Nik Collection will show up under Effects->Plugins:

   

That's all it takes. Have fun!

Manhood Explained with Muffins

18 March 2016 • by Bob • Ponderings, Humor

Sitting by a pool today, I have decided that there are several seasons in each man's life which can best be summed up in the following manner:

• Mini-Muffin
• Stud-Muffin
• Muffin-Top
• Stale-Muffin

(PS - You'll thank me for not including photos to illustrate my point.)

Election 2016

29 February 2016 • by Bob • Humor, Politics

I've decided that I'm voting for this guy this year...

Don't put him down as arrogant. (Unlike some other candidates,)

PS - Yeah, sure he's Canadian, but since when has a lack of citizenship slowed down anyone's chances for candidacy?

Geddy Lee or Jacques Offenbach

25 February 2016 • by Bob • Humor, Music

After careful consideration, I have decided that Geddy Lee of Rush is actually a time traveling musical genius who was also posing as the nineteenth century composer Jacques Offenbach... That would explain why Rush named one of their last tours "Time Machine" and their plethora of science fiction lyrics over the years...

Geddy Lee or Jacques Offenbach? You decide.

Windows XP... Really?

22 February 2016 • by bob • Humor, Computers

This was an advertisement on Facebook today - seriously? Asking people to "upgrade" to Windows XP? That's like asking smart phone users to upgrade to rotary dial.

Adventures With Proxy Servers

11 February 2016 • by Bob • Windows

One of the things about being an ubergeek is setting up a full Active Directory Domain to manage all of the computers in my house and running my own proxy server to provide Internet access for our home network. I am currently using Microsoft's Threat Management Gateway (TMG), and before that I was using Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server - both of which have allowed me to do some fun things.

For example, for one whole year I intercepted all requests for the Google website and sent them to a website which I had created that looked and acted like Google but used the Bing API to provide the results. (No one could tell the difference, and I eventually wrote a blog about my experiment called Fun with Search Engines.)

At other times I would intercept my kids' Internet requests and send them to a "Your Internet is Turned Off" page when they failed to complete their chores; this was often met with much grumbling on their part. (Although one of my daughters learned how to pirate a neighbor's unsecured WiFi connection, and I was too proud of her ingenuity to get upset at her for skirting around the house rules.)

Running my own proxy server was good for accountability, too: I created a program which crawled all of the proxy server logs and created detailed reports that were dumped in a public share so everyone in the family could see where everyone else was browsing. (I'm a parent - so there is no such thing as "Private Browsing" in my house.)

That being said, I recently ran into a situation where I felt it necessary to interfere with the Internet for a few days. I had seen too many people post spoilers on Facebook about who died on The Walking Dead, and my wife saw too many spoilers about what was happening on Downton Abbey. With that in mind, when Star Wars VII  was hitting the theaters, I decided that I needed to block Facebook for a few days.

But I couldn't just "block" Facebook, I needed to have fun with it... so I did this - I sent all requests for Facebook to the following page until my wife and I had a chance to see Star Wars:

http://www.geekybob.com/star-wars-warning.htm

Yeah, it's a really simple script - but it did the trick. ;-)

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